House of Lords Reform (No. 2) Bill

Thomas Docherty Excerpts

Friday 28th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I have listened enormously carefully to what has been said by my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire (Dan Byles), the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) and my right hon. Friend the Minister. I have the impression that the mood of the House is against my proposals, and I therefore beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 3

Conviction of serious offence

[Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)]

I beg to move amendment 1, page 2, line 23, leave out ‘one year’ and insert ‘6 months’.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Amendment 12, page 2, line 24, leave out ‘it is irrelevant’.

Amendment 13, page 2, line 25, after ‘(a)’, insert ‘it is irrelevant’.

Amendment 14, page 2, line 27, after ‘(b)’, insert ‘it is irrelevant’.

Amendment 15, page 2, line 28, leave out from ‘Kingdom’ to the end of line 29 and insert ‘or Ireland’.

Amendment 16, page 2, line 29, at end insert—

‘(c) It is irrelevant subject to a resolution of the House of Lords whether any of the offence, conviction, sentence, order, imprisonment or detention occurs in any Commonwealth Realm.

(d) It is irrelevant subject to a unanimous resolution of the House of Lords whether any of the offence, conviction, sentence, order, imprisonment or detention occurs in any Commonwealth country.

(e) No offence, conviction, sentence, order, imprisonment or detention that takes place in any non-Commonwealth country is relevant under this Act.’.

Amendment 17, page 2, line 37, after ‘appeal’, insert ‘or is pardoned’.

Amendment 18, page 3, line 8, leave out ‘subsection (9) and insert—

‘(9) This section does not apply to unelected hereditary peers who sit in the House of Lords.’.

Amendment 23, page 3, line 8, leave out subsection (9) and insert—

‘(9) A certificate under subsection (2) in respect of a conviction outside the United Kingdom may be issued only if the House of Lords resolves that subsection (1) should apply; and where the House does so resolve the Lord Speaker must issue the certificate.’.

[Thomas Docherty]

I am in august company today. It is excellent to be in the presence of the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), a fine example of the Conservative workers party if ever I saw one. However, I must chide him very gently about one matter, about which I have already spoken to him.

Both the hon. Gentleman and I serve on the Procedure Committee. The House recently resolved that, whenever reasonable, Members should publish explanatory statements. The hon. Member for North Warwickshire (Dan Byles) has published such a statement, but I have not, because, as the hon. Member for North East Somerset knows, the Procedure Committee said that it was not necessary to publish one when what a Member was trying to achieve was so blindingly obvious. However, I must gently tell the hon. Gentleman that it took me several attempts to understand exactly what his amendments would do, and that an explanatory statement would therefore have been useful.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I am shocked that the hon. Gentleman is so slow on the uptake. I always thought that he was one of the faster thinkers on the Opposition Benches. If he waits for a few moments, however, and if you are kind enough to call me, Mr Deputy Speaker, I will explain all.

[Thomas Docherty]

I am most grateful, Mr Deputy Speaker.

Let me begin by saying something about my amendment 1. The origin of the requirement—in this place, and, indeed, in the United Kingdom’s other Parliaments and Assemblies—for someone to have been given a jail sentence of more than a year to be disqualified is almost accidental. The hon. Member for North East Somerset will correct me if I am wrong, but I understand that until the 1960s there were two classes of criminal acts, felonies and misdemeanours. I think that it was Roy Jenkins who, as Home Secretary, abolished the distinction. Until then, someone who was convicted of a felony would automatically be disqualified from serving in the House of Commons. Thankfully, it had been a long time since any Member had been sent to prison, so the rule had fallen into desuetude, and, at the time when the classes of felony and misdemeanour were scrapped, it did not occur to anyone to introduce a provision for that purpose.

Let us now fast-forward to 1981, and the election of Bobby Sands as a member of Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland. His election understandably prompted a great deal of public outrage, and the Government of day, Mrs Thatcher’s Government, introduced a law providing for the disqualification of anyone who had been given a sentence of more than a year. That would have caught Bobby Sands, and the other terrorists who were on hunger strike in the Maze prison. Again, no one really thought about it at the time. As far as I can ascertain after having consulted the records from the period, there was not a great deal of consideration about whether a year and a day was a particularly suitable target. The provision was designed to capture a very specific group of people; it met that test, and it was therefore passed.

As I think all Members know, there is a long and noble tradition of the right to protest, and, in particular, to engage in political protest. Anyone who visits the Tea Room will see a painting hanging at the Labour end of the room. If Government Members wish to pop down to our end to have a look at it, they are more than welcome to do so. It depicts one of the great protesters and pamphleteers of the 18th century, who was regularly incarcerated for speaking out against the Government. It is an important principle that we should maintain the right to speak against the Government, and that there should be protections against politically motivated arrests and imprisonments. We would not want someone who was simply sent to jail to be disqualified. Many of my constituents have talked to me about this issue, for reasons that I shall explain shortly.

While I strongly disagree with the views of the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) on fracking and, funnily enough, on many other issues, I respect her right to engage in political protest and to be arrested, and, if she were convicted and sentenced to a few days, it would be absolutely wrong for her then to be disqualified from serving in the House of Commons. The voters in Brighton, Pavilion should have the chance to do that in 14 months’ time.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I hope that the hon. Gentleman will forgive me for being pedantic. Members of the House of Commons who are given prison sentences are not disqualified from serving; they are expelled from the House, but they can stand again in a by-election.

[Thomas Docherty]

As ever, the hon. Gentleman has shown that his knowledge is superior to mine. He is absolutely right. My point was that such people would be denied the right to be a Member of Parliament for a period.

There is, of course, a huge difference between the length of a sentence that would be received by someone who had engaged in political protest and the length of the sentences that have been received in some of the cases that we have—regrettably—seen in recent years, in this Parliament and in other United Kingdom Parliaments and Assemblies. There was, for instance, the outrageous case of Chris Huhne, who perjured himself, and Opposition Members in the House of Commons as well as Conservatives in the other place have been jailed in connection with expenses. I think that there was a great deal of genuine public revulsion at the idea that politicians in either House, or indeed in any House, would be convicted of serious crimes and go to prison, but would not necessarily have to resign their seats or be disqualified.

The case that made me such a champion of reform in this regard arose in the Scottish Parliament, in my own constituency of Dunfermline. The local nationalist MSP, Mr Bill Walker, was convicted last August of 22 accounts of domestic abuse and one charge of breaking a frying pan over his stepdaughter’s head—which serves to demonstrate the scale of the violence he was showing to a group of women over a 20 or 30-year period. I praise the Sunday Herald, which did so much to bring this story to light. Owing to the way in which the Scottish courts work, the maximum sentence that Bill Walker could receive—and did receive—was one year, so he was not automatically disqualified from serving in the Scottish Parliament, and if he had been a Member of the House of Commons, he would not have been automatically disqualified from serving in this House.

I welcome the recent statement from the Leader of the House that he is interested in starting a dialogue about the rules of the House of Commons and I hope the Minister will set out the Government’s broader thinking about the rules of disqualification and whether or not we need to look at this again.

[Mr Nuttall]

The hon. Gentleman will be aware of the report of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee that looked into these matters. It was happy with the proposal as it stands, and there was no suggestion that the period should be six months. Would he like to comment on that?

[Thomas Docherty]

Indeed, and I have had a brief chat with the Committee Chair, my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen). As I recall, the report that the hon. Gentleman is referring to addressed the broader context of the recall of MPs, and from what I can ascertain from the newspapers, I think it is fair to say that that option is now off the table. If we were having a broader debate about recall, I could see the argument for keeping the period at a year and a day.

[Mr Nuttall]

I just want to make it clear that the report I was referring to was the Committee’s ninth report of the current Session entitled “House of Lords reform: what next?”

[Thomas Docherty]

I was referring to the previous look at the issue in the Committee’s recall report.

Sometimes in our debates on a Friday Members say “We haven’t had many letters about this,” but I can truly say that I have had a large amount of correspondence on the issue of what is an appropriate disqualification period. On this occasion, I disagree with my hon. Friend the Committee Chairman. I think there is genuine public disquiet at the idea that someone can receive what is frankly quite a lengthy jail sentence yet continue to serve in Parliament, creating laws.

There is an obvious question which I am sure will be posed to me: why do I propose to make the situation for the House of Lords different from that for the House of Commons? If a Member of the House of Commons receives a jail sentence—of nine months, let us say—and tries to tough it out, the electorate still has an opportunity at the next general election to remove them from office. As things currently stand, however, in the House of Lords there is no term limit and therefore no other mechanism for recall. I believe there is merit in exploring whether the period set should be shorter, because the people of Britain do not have an opportunity to remove a Member of the House of Lords who tries to tough it out.

Regrettably, a small number of Members of the House of Lords, on both sides of the political divide, have gone to prison in recent years, and each time it happened there was genuine anger and people said, “Why is there nothing we can do to remove them?” I hope that today we will tease out the Government’s thinking on whether these rules are appropriate and whether there is merit in asking, “Due to the unique nature of the House of Lords—there is no democratic mechanism—should there be the same procedure?”

Turning to the broader issue, it appears that the hon. Members for North Warwickshire and for North East Somerset take slightly different approaches. The hon. Member for North Warwickshire has, I think, managed to achieve all that the hon. Member for North East Somerset wants, but does it in a single amendment. Far be it for me to get in the middle of an argument in the workers party about what is the correct approach, but it seems to me that this is a debate about whether it is appropriate to have to take a positive step following a conviction in a foreign court or whether our starting point should be that we regard foreign courts as having sensible judicial processes and only in exceptional circumstances would we seek not to abide by their recommendations. I hope that this is a rare technical argument.

I have to say that I have more sympathy with the original view of the hon. Member for North Warwickshire. I would find it slightly disconcerting if our starting point were, “We don’t believe a court in Germany, or in Canada or Australia, has due legal process.” Of course there are countries around the world that do not have the same legal history as us, but I have more sympathy with the view put forward originally by the hon. Member for North Warwickshire than I do with the view proposed by the hon. Member for North East Somerset. I look forward to hearing from the hon. Member for North Warwickshire shortly, and I am sure the Minister will set out the Government’s thinking.

May I again congratulate the hon. Member for North Warwickshire on introducing this Bill? There appears to be some noble interest in our debate today, and it is perhaps worth placing on the record the fact that the Bill is supported on both sides of the House. Lord Steel deserves a great deal of credit for championing the issue in recent years. It is possibly not as contentious as legislation he previously introduced when he was a Member of this House, but it is certainly an important Bill and I hope it makes it through both Houses and becomes law.

[Dan Byles]

I am very grateful to the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) for introducing his amendment, because we should regularly revisit and discuss what the correct length of time should be. I took the trouble to look up in Hansard what was said in 1981 when the Representation of the People Act was debated. Lord Belstead made it clear that it was a pretty arbitrary decision to pick 12 months. He said that the Government did not

“rely exclusively on the precedent of 12 months in the 1870 Act. We felt—I admit this quite openly—that it would be more likely than not that persons in the category of those who had received sentences of more than 12 months had committed graver offences and that no injustice would be done by imposing a disqualification.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 30 June 1981; Vol. 422, c. 143.]

However, I disagree with the hon. Gentleman about the idea that we should have different limits for the House of Lords, the House of Commons, the Scottish Parliament and so on. He has certainly made an eloquent case that we should perhaps routinely reassess the level across the board, but I do not think that at present more stringent rules should be imposed on the House of Lords than we have in this place. For that reason, I am afraid I will not be supporting the hon. Gentleman’s amendment.

Turning to some of the other amendments in the group, Amendments 12 to 14 are drafting amendments that remove the words “it is irrelevant” from the start of the subsection in question, but then include them twice within the body of the subsection. They are, in my view, unnecessary.

Amendments 15 and 16 deal with convictions in the United Kingdom and abroad. This has been a controversial issue. Amendment 15 would make disqualification on the ground of a conviction of a serious offence in the United Kingdom or Ireland automatic. Amendment 16 would make disqualification on the ground of a conviction of a serious offence in any Commonwealth realm subject to a resolution of the House of Lords, and in any Commonwealth country subject to a unanimous resolution of the House. It would prevent peers from being removed from the House if they were convicted of a serious offence outside the United Kingdom, Ireland or any Commonwealth realm or country. I believe that I have interpreted that correctly.

The purpose of my Bill is to make straightforward, small-scale changes to the membership of the House of Lords, and I purposely avoided over-complicating the clauses. To make such small distinctions between countries is unnecessary and not something that I believe many of our colleagues would support.

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[Thomas Docherty]

Does the hon. Gentleman share my disquiet that we could be creating an artificial divide by saying that Commonwealth countries have a more robust judicial system than, say, European countries or the United States? I believe that the Foreign Office is troubled by the judicial process in some Commonwealth countries.

[Dan Byles]

I would agree with the hon. Gentleman on that. My heart entirely understands the distinction in the amendments between the Commonwealth and elsewhere, but my head says that it is difficult to justify the suggestion that countries such as Germany and France, for example, should be put into a different category from some members of the Commonwealth.

I presume that the amendment that would make the application of the provision automatic in the case of convictions in the Republic of Ireland is designed to emulate more closely the Representation of the People Act 1981. However, we all know that that legislation was enacted during the troubles in order to deal with the unique circumstances of that time, and incorporating the same provision in my Bill is therefore unnecessary.

In addition, I object to the assertion that it is permissible for a peer to commit a serious crime anywhere other than in the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland and the Commonwealth, and not to face sanction here for it. Allowing peers to do so and to retain their seats would damage the reputation of the House of Lords, and my Bill seeks to achieve the opposite. I believe that peers who are fairly convicted of offences that are regarded as serious within the United Kingdom should be disqualified if the House so resolves, which is why I am tabling my own amendment to that effect. I will speak to that amendment in a moment.

Amendment 17 would put a duty on the Lord Speaker to issue an additional certificate if a peer were pardoned following conviction for a serious offence to confirm that fact. The impact of a free pardon is that the person is cleared from all consequences of the offence and from all statutory or other disqualifications following conviction. If a peer who has been disqualified on the ground of a conviction for a serious offence is then pardoned, the effect of that would be to remove the disqualification. The amendment is therefore unnecessary.

Amendment 23 has been tabled in my name, and I have given a great deal of thought to this matter. I believe that anyone convicted of murder or any serious offence, whether in Bolton, Belgium or Brunei, should be subject to disqualification from the House of Lords. However, we all agree that criminal justice systems in different countries vary, and of course other jurisdictions sometimes try people in very different circumstances from those in which they would be tried in the United Kingdom. In addition, some countries impose lengthy sentences on individuals for actions that might be deemed to be minor offences, or not offences at all, in this country.

I have listened carefully to those who spoke on this issue on Second Reading and I have given the matter a great deal of consideration. I have also looked carefully at what happens in this House, where only sentencing and imprisonment that takes place in the UK and Ireland result in automatic disqualification. Of course, this House has the inherent power to disqualify whomsoever it chooses and can therefore choose to consider foreign convictions on a case-by-case basis and subsequently disqualify a Member. It seems to me that the House of Lords should be given the same opportunity.

My amendment 23 would make disqualification on the ground of a conviction for a serious offence abroad non-automatic. Instead, the House of Lords would need to resolve that the penalty should apply in each case. This would provide a sensible mechanism by which noble Lords could assure themselves that the conviction and sentencing were safe and met British perceptions of justice before disqualifying Members. I will therefore be pressing this amendment and I urge the House to support it.

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[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I am extremely grateful to you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am also rather troubled, because that means that I can be rude about hereditaries who are not in the House of Lords. That would be deeply upsetting, however, and I would be shocked if I did such a thing. Anyway, the point about Nevada was that a judgment made there was not considered to be authoritative.

[Thomas Docherty]

Will the hon. Gentleman confirm that this would not apply to members of the royal family who had been sitting in the House of Lords as hereditary dukes?

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

rose—

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is inconceivable that anyone would ever want to be rude about the royal family.

So, Nevada was not taken seriously and Earl Russell was found guilty of bigamy. My amendments distinguish between the jurisdictions of a variety of foreign countries, and with good reason. The reason for including Ireland along with the United Kingdom is that it matches the form used for exclusion from the House of Commons, and there seems to be a logic in maintaining that. It is also set down in statute that we recognise the unique relationship that the United Kingdom continues to have with Ireland. Irish citizens are the only ones other than Commonwealth citizens who are always allowed to vote in United Kingdom elections, and travel from the Republic of Ireland to the United Kingdom does not require a passport. Ireland is not viewed as a foreign country in the same way as other countries are.

The Commonwealth realms are either serious nations such as Australia, New Zealand and Canada that have a legal form based on ours and that follow the legal traditions of the United Kingdom which they inherited from us, or they are smaller nations, nine of which have the Privy Council as their court of appeal. We can therefore say that any conviction within the Commonwealth realms will be of such standing that we can recognise it because it has been made in a nation with which we have the friendliest relations and the tightest of historical links.

[Thomas Docherty]

I am seeking enlightenment. The hon. Gentleman has mentioned “realms” a couple of times. If a Member of the House of Commons or the House of Lords were convicted of a crime in one of the Crown dependencies or the British overseas territories, would they automatically be disqualified? I truly do not know the answer to that question.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

They are not included in my amendment, although it would obviously be possible to amend the Bill to bring the Crown dependencies in. I am talking about the Commonwealth realms, which are the independent nations in the Commonwealth of which Her Majesty is still head of state. Nine of those nations have appeal to the Privy Council, which is their final court of appeal. They therefore have a standard of justice in which we can have confidence, because it is a standard that we ourselves implement.

[Thomas Docherty]

I am listening carefully. The hon. Gentleman has made an assertion a couple of times, both directly and in the round, that we have confidence in the Commonwealth judiciary. Without causing an incident by naming the countries, I am sure we can think of a number of Commonwealth countries where the judiciary, perhaps at a state level rather than at federal or national level, is less than it could be. Does he accept that is a concern?

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. At the moment, I am talking about the Commonwealth realms and he himself said in his own speech that it would be peculiar if we did not trust the judicial system of Canada. I happen to share that view; there is no particular difficulty with Canadian justice. When we come to some of the smaller Commonwealth realms, they have appeal to the Privy Council and that is the safeguard—that it becomes essentially a British form of justice. In the end, a peer would be able to appeal to a court based in this country. It is actually based in the Middlesex Guildhall; if you have a good arm, Mr Deputy Speaker, it is a stone’s throw away from this palace.

With the Commonwealth realms, it is reasonable that the House of Lords should be able to recognise a conviction in one of them and it would then be able, by an ordinary vote, to expel the peer from the Lords. That seems a perfectly reasonable approach, because one can have confidence in the justice that would be meted out in those realms. In relation to other Commonwealth countries, expulsion would require the unanimous agreement of the House of Lords. That is because there are certainly Commonwealth countries where one would have some concern about the standard of justice that applied and would worry that having an automatic acceptance, or even a simple majority acceptance, of their judgments would not necessarily be helpful.

That relates to my broader question about other foreign courts. There are some Commonwealth countries where one can be imprisoned for a year for some quite extraordinary things. I do not know whether you knew, Mr Deputy Speaker, but if you should go on your travels to Singapore representing the Houses of Parliament, which would be a worthy trip for you to make, although Singapore is a great and civilised country—I am one of Lee Kuan Yew’s foremost admirers—it is illegal to connect to an unsecured wi-fi hot spot. It is classed as

“unauthorised use of computer service”,

it is punishable, for both Singapore nationals and tourists, by a fine of up to 10,000 Singapore dollars and/or imprisonment for up to three years. In 2006, a man called Garyl Tan Jia Luo received 18 months’ probation, nine months’ curfew, 80 hours of community service and an 18-month internet ban for use of an unsecured wi-fi hot spot.

Let us think of some young peer who travels to Singapore and accidentally connects to the wi-fi because he wants to read Hansard to find out what has been going on in their lordships’ house or attend to other matters of public business. If he is caught by the Singaporean police and if we accept judgments of foreign courts he could get three years in prison and be disqualified from the House of Lords.

[Thomas Docherty]

I am slightly troubled by the hon. Gentleman’s argument, because he seems to be saying that we have a right to look at other countries’ laws and say, “We think that’s a silly law.” Quite a lot of the world’s people drive on the wrong side of the road, but we respect their right to do so when we go to their countries. Should not that young lord have respected the rights and laws of that land, and made himself familiar with them before he travelled there?

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I suggest that the hon. Gentleman visits Singapore; he will remember that people there drive on the correct side of the road. They know how to do things there. It is a wonderful country.

Breaking obscure laws that it is unreasonable to expect people to have knowledge of ought not to exclude people from the House of Lords. Uganda has been in the news recently for its stringent laws against homosexuality. Are we really to say that peers who end up in Uganda and get into trouble with the law there should be banned from the House of Lords? They could get a life sentence. Is that really a way of deciding who is in a legislature of the United Kingdom? What happens if a lord displays a flag in Kiribati? Someone who displays a flag in Kiribati or wears a uniform in connection with a political object can be sentenced to a year in prison. Lords would suddenly be excluded for doing all sorts of minor things that in this country would not be an offence.

Rather splendidly, in Swaziland it is illegal for any female under 19 to shake the hands of a man; I do not know what the punishment for that is. Under the Bill, a peer could be convicted, regardless of when the offence took place. A 90-year-old peeress, who as a 19-year-old girl had shaken hands with a gentleman in Swaziland, could suddenly be deported to Swaziland, put in jug for a year and excluded from the House of Lords.

There is a tremendously serious point in this. It is that around the world there are hundreds of countries. I have a list of them: Afghanistan; Albania; Algeria; American Samoa; Andorra; Angola; Anguilla; Antigua and Barbuda; Argentina; Armenia; Aruba; Australia; Austria; and Azerbaijan. That just gets us to—

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

Mr Deputy Speaker, I think you are a mind reader. I was going to read out only the As, so your intervention came at absolutely the right moment to help me to continue.

We know remarkably little about many of those countries. We have not carefully considered their legal systems. What is the law in American Samoa? What offences could lead to somebody being sentenced to a year in prison? If a peer went there on a parliamentary delegation, would they randomly find that they had committed some offence? What if somebody has a gin and tonic in Saudi Arabia? They may get lashed, but—

[Thomas Docherty]

One thing that I can point out to the hon. Gentleman that he probably should know about the “country” of Anguilla is that it is, in fact, an overseas territory and not a country.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

It is listed as a country. [Interruption.] But then Wales is a country and it is also part of the United Kingdom. The hon. Gentleman’s pedantry is taking him down a blind alley, if I may say so.

There are also great countries—countries that we respect—that have a legal system about which we have doubts. I will mention two of the friendliest and most civilised countries that the United Kingdom has dealings with: the United States of America and Italy.

In the United States of America, the noble Lord Black was basically told that he could either plead guilty or face decades in prison if he was found guilty. There was a charge sheet against him as long as your arm, and there was a witness to give evidence against him. The witness was told, “If you plead guilty and turn the equivalent of Queen’s evidence, then we will give you a few weeks in a country club.” That approach to plea bargaining ought to raise serious concerns. In this country, it would not be allowed. There is not the possibility to say to somebody giving evidence, “We will give you something very cosy if you help us to find somebody guilty”, and guilty not just of an offence but a whole string of offences with huge sentences, and all in proportion to what was being alleged, so that people are bullied into pleading guilty. The reason that America does that is that it has so many constitutional safeguards to provide for a fair trial that it is consequently very difficult to get convictions. Plea bargaining is therefore used as a means of getting the result that was sought in the first place, but which the protections in place would have made it hard to get. That form of justice should not determine who sits in the House of Lords.

In the example of Italy, we see cases, and reports of cases come to us, of people being found guilty, not guilty and guilty again. In a British sense, that is not justice; it does not observe the requirements of double jeopardy. I know that in exceptional circumstances those requirements can be got round in this country, but as a general rule the oppressive state cannot charge and recharge somebody once they have been found not guilty. Many foreign countries are also willing to try people in absentia, so one does not even have the ability to defend oneself against the charge.

Therefore, it seems to me that when we in this country are deciding how our Houses of Parliament should be designed and who shall have entitlement to sit in them, foreign courts are not a valid place to determine membership. That is the right of our sovereign and of the British people; it is not the right of courts outside this country. Consequently, I support the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire (Dan Byles), which turns things round.

[Thomas Docherty]

The hon. Gentleman or the hon. Member for North Warwickshire (Dan Byles) may correct me if I get this wrong, but where someone does not attend for a parliamentary Session—a whole year—they are deemed to have been disqualified from serving in the House of Lords. Someone who has been detained at the pleasure of the Italian Government for two or three years will not have been able to attend the House of Lords and will surely be disqualified on that basis.

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[Greg Clark]

I am delighted to give the Government’s response to this important set of amendments. We are very sympathetic to the reasoning behind amendment 1 from the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty), but what his Front-Bench colleague the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) has said pertains: any changes to our procedures in the House of Commons in terms of the length of imprisonment that would trigger disqualification and expulsion are a matter for this House rather than this Bill. I can confirm what the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife said about the Leader of the House having indicated that he is open to cross-party discussions to consider these matters. In Committee the hon. Gentleman was right to raise the situation of the Scottish Parliament, which is of course beyond the scope of this House. The Secretary of State for Scotland has given an undertaking, equivalent to that given by the Leader of the House, to engage with the Scottish Government and the Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament to discuss the position pertaining to Scotland, which I know has particularly exercised the hon. Gentleman and his constituents.

The thrust of the Bill is to bring the rules in the House of Lords broadly into line with those of the House of Commons, and that is done for a reasonable purpose. There are lots of issues that this Bill could have taken on—there are lots of outstanding areas of contention about the reform of the House of Lords—but my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire (Dan Byles) is to be commended for navigating a sure course between various possibilities that might distract the Bill and prevent its entering into safe harbour. This issue is one such possibility, so the arguments as to whether the limit should be more or less than 12 months is for another time. His proposal would bring the other place into line with this House.

[Thomas Docherty]

I welcome the spirit in which the Minister has set out the Government’s case. Does he think that, as has been put to me by a number of organisations, we perhaps sometimes focus on the length of the tariff rather than the type of offence? Would the Government consider that as part of the broader discussion about what the appropriate tariffs for disqualification are?

[Greg Clark]

What I would say to the hon. Gentleman is that this is a matter for the House. The Leader of the House has agreed that discussions can be initiated on this, and it is not for me to prescribe the content of those discussions. However, as the suggestion was that they should be cross-party, the hon. Gentleman has at least had the opportunity through his own party to raise that matter.

In amendments 12 to 14, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) proposes moving the words “It is irrelevant” from the start of subsection (3) to the body of the subsection. He always has an eye to elegance on paper as well as in verbal communication. I dare say that it was the aesthetics of the drafting that caught his eye.

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[Greg Clark]

I understand and I am grateful for the clarification.

On amendment 23 tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire and the point about foreign convictions, the mood of the House is to acknowledge that criminal justice systems do vary from our own. Of course it is right to respect the differences, but it is equally true that in some cases, as my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset has ably drawn attention to, what is illegal in one country may jar quite violently with a British sense of justice. The issue of homosexuality has been mentioned in this debate, and, regrettably, it is currently illegal to be homosexual in at least 77 countries. Under the Bill as it stands, someone convicted of homosexuality in one of those countries and sentenced to more than a year in prison would automatically lose their place in the House of Lords. The hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife said that we should start with a presumption of upholding the authority of overseas courts. However, it would be monstrous, even though the Bill would allow their Lordships to overturn the penalty by dint of special circumstances, for even a temporary disqualification of someone convicted of practising homosexuality in one of those countries and for them to need to apply for relief from the consequence in the House of Lords. That would be a very retrograde step, and we should not for a moment countenance such a temporary disqualification.

[Thomas Docherty]

The Minister is being persuasive. Does he not accept that in the House of Commons, under our rules in the Representation of the People Act 1981, we do not have a right to wait for an appeal? A Member is automatically disqualified once the judge has passed sentence, and that is for more than a year and a day. It is occasionally possible in the UK that our courts get it wrong, so why is he supporting a different rule for an overseas court than we have in a UK court?

[Greg Clark]

The hon. Gentleman points out something that can, on occasion, be a source of regret in the procedures of this House. It does not follow from that that we should introduce the greater possibility in the other place through this Bill. I do not think that we should contemplate that.

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[Greg Clark]

My hon. Friend is quite right to explain the differences between the two Houses. That is why it is right to focus on the fact that this is a Bill that proposes changes to the House of Lords. The Houses are not identical in every respect, but my hon. Friend has been careful in restricting his Bill to the House of Lords and to its procedures there.

It is right that their Lordships should review the circumstance in which a Member was convicted abroad in order to satisfy themselves that the offence is recognised as being serious in the United Kingdom and that the circumstances of the conviction are fair. I know that a number of Members raised this issue on Second Reading, and I commend my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire for the diligent and sensible way he has managed to find an amendment that is elegant and to the point, and the Government are pleased to lend their support to it.

[Thomas Docherty]

I have listened carefully to the arguments, some of which have been most persuasive. Given the assurances that the Government are open to the whole issue and the fact that I do not want to hold up this Bill, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Amendment made: 23, page 3, line 8, leave out subsection (9) and insert—

‘(9) A certificate under subsection (2) in respect of a conviction outside the United Kingdom may be issued only if the House of Lords resolves that subsection (1) should apply; and where the House does so resolve the Lord Speaker must issue the certificate.’.—(Dan Byles.)

Clause 4

Effect of ceasing to be a member

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I beg to move amendment 19, page 3, leave out line 29.

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[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely correct. There is indeed a precedent, which I was well aware of, and it is not just the late Lord Home of the Hirsel; Lord Hailsham did exactly the same. Both of them resigned their peerage for the 1963 Conservative leadership contest, at which point Tory leaders emerged from the magic circle—a very satisfactory way of doing it, but it is now done in a more modern way, and I am glad to say that all Conservative Members have an equal vote in our leadership elections. I cannot quite remember how the trade unions sort it out in the Labour party, but I know that they have a lot of fun with it.

There is indeed a precedent, but the hon. Gentleman will remember that when the ability to disclaim peerages was introduced, a limited time was provided when all peers could disclaim their peerage, regardless of when they had received it. Thereafter, peers who disclaimed their peerage had a limited time in which to do so after inheriting their peerage. It was all done so that Tony Benn, the then Viscount Stansgate, could get back into the House of Commons to be elected for Bristol. That was done to provide for an extraordinary circumstance where people had no choice but to be peers. They had become peers by the wonderful accident of birth that had raised them to such a status, which took them into the House of Lords and forced them to leave the House of Commons, whereas the precedent had already been set in relation to Lord Curzon and George V that the Prime Minister had to come from the House of Commons. Therefore, to allow the widest choice of candidates for that leadership election, peers were able to resign their peerages and come into the Commons. However, people becoming leaders of the party in that way is very different from it becoming a standard part of the career progression of a politician to go to the Lords first and then come to the Commons. The first should not be seen as a stepping stone to the other.

It is also a problem in relation to our constituency work, because it would not be inconceivable that an election result in a marginal seat could see a Member of Parliament defeated, and that his party might so value his or her services that they put them into the House of Lords, from which he has the ability to campaign for the marginal seat for the next five years, before resigning his seat in the House of Lords to come back to the House of Commons.

[Thomas Docherty]

Again, that situation already exists. We have had a number of cases of Members of the House of Lords being elected to the Scottish Parliament, but it has not led to widespread problems.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

The devolved Parliaments are different, because the simple logistics of needing to be in Edinburgh or Cardiff and also in the House of Lords make it much harder to work on that basis than between these two Houses, where the role, the position, the place of activity are so very similar. It is perfectly reasonable to foresee someone who has just lost a seat spending five years as a Lord preparing to campaign for it again. As it becomes clearer, and parties are well aware of this, that to win seats we have all modelled ourselves on the Liberal Democrats—I say that with not a single one present in the House now—we have worked out that to win marginal constituencies—[Interruption.] I was not aware that there was anyone that I could see in the Galleries.

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[Thomas Docherty]

I shall be brief. I had not planned to speak, but I was so interested by the arguments put forward by the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) that I want to challenge some of his assumptions.

As I said earlier, we already have a system whereby Members of the House of Lords can serve simultaneously in both the Lords and the Scottish Parliament. Lord Steel served ably for four years not just as a Member of the Scottish Parliament, but as its Presiding Officer while serving in and on occasion, I think, attending the House of Lords. Lord Watson, who was previously an MP, took a life peerage in 1997 and then stood successfully for election to the Scottish Parliament in a constituency in Glasgow in 1999. Lord Foulkes of Cumnock went from the House of Commons to the House of Lords and the Scottish Parliament and maintained his very active role in both the House of Lords and the Scottish Parliament at the same time.

There is no suggestion in any of those cases that being a Member of the House of Lords gave an unfair advantage to those three noble Lords while they were campaigning for election to the Scottish Parliament. Lord Steel in particular was and is still a huge figure in Scottish politics, deeply respected for his 30-odd years’ service to the people of the Borders. That was why Lord Steel was successful when he stood for election on the list in the Lothians region of the Scottish Parliament in 1999.

I fear that on this rare occasion the hon. Member for North East Somerset sees mischief where none will exist. He was right to mention Lord Hailsham and the issue with Alec Douglas-Home. I read Alan Clark’s diaries a few months ago, as I am sure the hon. Gentleman has done. He will recall that at one point Baroness Thatcher was considering the merits of Lord Young as a possible successor. It is utterly inconceivable in the 21st century, never mind the 20th century, for a peer to become Prime Minister. That would be unacceptable to the electorate, and possibly even constitutionally these days there would be questions about the validity of that role.

The danger with the argument that the hon. Gentleman makes with some sincerity is that it would close down the possibility that someone may go into the House of Lords and then emerge as a serious contender for high office, though perhaps not the highest office, but if they wished to be Foreign Secretary or Chancellor of the Exchequer, for example, it might be felt more appropriate for them to be a Member of this House. We have a slightly quirky situation at present, and that was true also under the Labour Government when the First Secretary of State was a Member of the House of Lords and a junior Minister had to answer in this House. Personally, I hope we will look at that again. Putting in an artificial bar—

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

The proposal would not put in an artificial bar but maintain the status quo, because currently a specific Act of Parliament would be required for a life peer to come into this House. Lord Young could not have been Margaret Thatcher’s successor without an Act of Parliament allowing him to disclaim his peerage.

[Thomas Docherty]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that this door has been opened by the Bill, and I recognise that he is trying to shut it. That was my point in talking about putting in an artificial bar. I hope that the Minister will clearly set out how the Government intend to respond to this issue. I think that the hon. Gentleman is seeing a mischief where there is not one. I hope that when he responds he will reflect on what the two Front Benchers have said.

[Dan Byles]

Amendments 19 and 21 would prevent a peer who resigns or is disqualified through non-attendance from being elected to the House of Commons during the course of the next two Parliaments, thereby making provision for a cooling-off period. I think we all agree that we would not want the House of Lords to become a training ground for a seat in the House of Commons and thereafter provide an opportunity to ping-pong between the Houses. As my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) said, my Bill does not allow departing peers to return to the House of Lords, so the ponging is gone, and perhaps we are now just discussing the pinging.

I am conscious of my hon. Friend’s concerns, but the likelihood of many of them becoming reality are quite slim. On the first group of amendments, he spoke with great eloquence about how desperate many people are to get into the House of Lords. In my experience and, I think, that of most people in the House, people are very keen to go in that direction but there is not necessarily quite such a large queue waiting to come in this direction. When I have discussed this with colleagues, they have looked at me and said, “Why on earth would somebody want to go from the Lords to the Commons? Most of our colleagues seem to be trying to go the other way.”

On the potential power given to party leaderships, I am not convinced that the party leadership—in our party, anyway—has quite as much control over the candidate selection process as my hon. Friend seems to give them credit for. Whenever the party leadership tries to impose a favoured candidate on a safe seat, the fact that they are known to be the Conservative central office-favoured candidate can at times be the kiss of death with regard to the local association, which usually likes to exert its independence when it come to selecting candidates.

My hon. Friend’s argument needs to be weighed strongly against the very serious issue of barring a British citizen from seeking election to the House of Commons. I take his point when he says that someone will have made this decision when they chose to go into the House of Lords, but it is very large step to say to them, “You, as a British citizen, are one of a small group of people who, through dint of your previous job, are not permitted to seek election to the House of Commons.” We have traditionally prevented people from seeking election to the House of Commons only for very narrow reasons, and I am wary of the amendment for that reason. I am not aware of any widespread desire among parliamentarians to ping-pong backwards and forwards—or ping, at least—and I very much doubt that the party leaderships of all three parties would seek to use that as a method of grooming candidates in future.

Amendment 21 says that any peer who resigned or was disqualified would retain their peerage. That principle is already inherent in the Bill, which does not provide for peerages to be lost, and the amendment is therefore unnecessary. I urge the House not to support the amendments.

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[Thomas Docherty]

I, too, will be brief because there are other important Bills that will come before us shortly.

I thank the hon. Member for North Warwickshire (Dan Byles) for bringing the Bill forward. It is an impressive Bill, in that it has not only generated a lot of debate, but made sufficient progress in a packed legislative programme to head down to the House of Lords. I hope that, because of the work that has been done here, the House of Lords will not feel the need to spend too long on it and it will become law before the end of the Session.

If the hon. Member for North Warwickshire is the father of the Bill, it is probably worth stressing that Lord Steel is its godfather. Like many godfathers, he is no doubt taking an interest in what we are doing and watching over us in some way. I hope that the whole House will join me in thanking him for his work on the Bill over the years.

I believe in reform of the House of Lords. I hope that this is not the last Bill on the subject. Whether or not Members support an elected or partially elected House of Lords, I think that it is recognised across this House—indeed, it is recognised in the House of Lords itself—that it is absurd to have more than 800 peers and for that number to be growing quickly. I hope that the Bill will have an impact on that, but I also hope that Front Benchers are committed to having another look at the composition and operation of the House of Lords.

I thank the Clerks who have done such a fantastic job, in particular Kate Emms, and all the House officials who have worked with the hon. Member for North Warwickshire, the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), myself and other Members who have tabled amendments.

I commend the Bill to the House. It is an excellent piece of work. I urge the other place not to spend too long rehashing these issues, because it is important that the Bill gets on to the statute book before the end of the Session.

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[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. Unfortunately, the rule has a caveat that the House must be full for someone to speak from the Galleries, and sadly that is not the case today.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) for her incredibly generous comments, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire (Dan Byles) on piloting this Bill. I am surprised that I find myself supporting a reform Bill of any kind, as I am normally with Lord Palmerston: “Change? Change? Aren’t things bad enough already?” My hon. Friend has piloted this Bill with incredible courtesy, efficiency, and a willingness to listen to the points that have been raised. Although I think all its proceedings should have been on the Floor of the House, it is a rare event for a Back-Bench Member to pass a constitutional Bill and it requires a good deal of patience and perhaps responsiveness.

[Thomas Docherty]

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman would agree that the hon. Member for North Warwickshire (Dan Byles) is much more successful at such things than the Deputy Prime Minister appears to be.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

For once, I will praise the Lord President of the Council, because to be fair to him—my right hon. Friend!—having not been able to get through a massive reform of the House of Lords that would have had enormous constitutional implications, he has shown good grace in not sulking in his den and trying to obstruct this reform. This Bill allows transitions to take place which, although minor in themselves, are actually quite fundamental. A life peerage is now no longer for life, the problem of peers committing offences is dealt with at last—which in some ways is long overdue—the House of Lords is now able to expel peers, and non-attendance has a sanction. I think those reforms make the upper House stronger. That is not to say that I do not have minor qualms about some of the detail, but my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire has been incredibly successful in piloting the Bill, and has done so in such a way that even those of us who are accused of being Neanderthal about constitutional matters are on his side.