Financial Services Bill

Lord Wakeham Excerpts

Monday 18th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Barnett]

My Lords, I do not want to talk about the other parts of the short debate that we have had but rather about where the Bill should go and where it would be best scrutinised. I know that the noble Lord, with whom I normally disagree, is very keen to see the Lords Reform Bill go through. He has always made that clear, but it is irrelevant to what we are discussing.

I am bound to say that the Government’s management of the lengths of recesses and the business of the House has not been of the best. My noble friend Lord Grocott was right to deal with those issues. The important issue for me, as it was when I spoke in the relevant debate, is where the Bill will best be scrutinised. I have a little experience of taking two Finance Bills a year through the Commons over five years, and did so with great difficulty. A major part of the scrutiny of those Bills was taken upstairs in Committee in those days. Now Governments of all parties are very keen to guillotine Bills in the Commons, and they are rarely properly debated. In fact, when we get Bills here, especially large ones, they have rarely been properly scrutinised at all. Therefore, the really important issue for me is not all the other stuff that we have talked about briefly today but where the Bill will best be scrutinised. The Bill is important; I do not deny that.

As I have said before, giving a huge amount of powers to the Bank of England is not unimportant. However, for me the question is: where will the Bill be best scrutinised? I have no doubt whatever that that will be in Grand Committee. If any Member of your Lordships’ House has great expertise and wants to speak, there will be no difficulty in them doing so in Grand Committee.

One has to understand that in Committee this House does not normally vote on the Floor of the House or in Grand Committee. On top of that, the Bill will come back to the House for Report, when votes can and do take place, and again for Third Reading. As I said, personally I prefer a Bill to be properly scrutinised in Grand Committee, and this is a rare occasion when I feel bound to speak in support of the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde.

[Lord Wakeham]

My Lords, I do not often intervene in these matters, and no one could expect me not to understand the position of the usual channels, but I have listened to this debate with some horror. In my view, these matters should have been resolved by the usual channels and it is very disappointing that the Front Benches are unable to find a sensible and satisfactory agreement. Often, finding such an agreement means persuading their Back-Benchers to do something that initially they may not want to do. If I may say so, the job of the Front Benches is not to be the cheerleader for the Back Benches; it is to find the best solution for the House. When there is no agreement between the Back Benches, the question arises of what the House should do. In my view, the responsibility then falls on the Leader of the House to do what he thinks is best for the whole House. Without going into the details, where there is a disagreement between the usual channels, the House would be right to support the Leader of the House in what he proposes.

[Lord Naseby]

My Lords, I just make an observation as a former Chairman of Ways and Means and as someone who was responsible for the Finance Bill for five years in another place. In my experience, each Bill was very different. Sometimes the usual channels, and indeed individual Members, chose to make representations that certain clauses should be taken on the Floor of the House, with others—often the majority—being taken in Committee. I remember one occasion when a great deal of a Bill was taken on the Floor of the House, mainly due to representations from the minority parties that went against the proposals from the usual channels. Nevertheless, I reflect that last Monday night the key issue to come out was unanimity across the House that this was the most important financial Bill that this House had seen in probably the living memory of anyone here. The second thing that came out was that it was not a partisan Bill—there was no inter-party challenge—and that this House, with its width of experience, was best able to debate the Bill in depth.

I deeply regret that now, on the first Monday since then, what I thought had been settled by the usual channels in the normal way is not settled. That is a very unsatisfactory situation, and maybe my noble friend, as the Leader, will either follow what my noble friend Lord Wakeham said or recognise that the House as a whole may need 24 hours to quieten down a little. Looking at the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, on the Cross Benches, I am reminded that she once said to me, “You didn’t give them long enough to settle it, Michael”.