House of Lords Appointments Commission

Debate between Baroness Neville-Rolfe and Lord Cromwell

Wednesday 6th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

One further statistic is that the Conservatives won 56% of the seats at the last election and we still have only 34% of the seats in this House. As to the noble Baroness’s point about suitability, constitutionally and legally it is for the Prime Minister to make recommendations to the sovereign on new Peers. He is head of an elected Government, not a member of an arm’s-length body. Of course, he places great weight on the advice of HOLAC, but he remains of the view that it should remain focused on vetting for propriety. It is for him, and for future Prime Ministers, to think about suitability and bring the right mixture of Lords on to these Benches, so that the conduct of business, which is a mixture of public life and politics, continues well.

[Lord Cromwell (CB)]

My Lords, speaking for myself—although I suspect many other hereditaries would agree—I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, on this, at least: we have nothing to fear from a HOLAC vetting process and I think it entirely appropriate that we should all go through it.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

Hereditaries are subject to a good deal of questioning during the by-election process, which is laid down by the Standing Orders of the House, and we have no plans to change the vetting of hereditary Peers. Of course, they play a very important part in this House, on the Front Benches and right across it, bringing different aspects to our work in the public interest.

Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete: Public Buildings

Debate between Baroness Neville-Rolfe and Lord Cromwell

Wednesday 6th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

The Government are investing and will continue to invest in public sector buildings. Take education: the Government have allocated £15 billion since 2015 to keep schools safe and operational. In this area, professional advice has evolved over time. Successive Governments since 1994 have managed the risk of RAAC and will continue to do so. I have explained the central advice given to help individual public sector bodies manage their responsibilities in the way that all building and property owners need to do.

[Lord Cromwell (CB)]

My Lords, it is my understanding that four out of five schools have asbestos in them, as do many public buildings, including this one. If the concrete part of a building is now degrading and exposing the asbestos, at which point its disturbance makes it extremely dangerous, what are the Government’s plans to budget and implement a way to deal with the asbestos and the concrete at the same time?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

As the noble Lords knows, there is of course a legal framework for managing asbestos through the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012 and I refer to the expert advice and involvement of independent building experts that have played a very important part in identifying RAAC in places such as hospitals and managing that in a responsible way.

Emergency Alert System: Fujitsu

Debate between Baroness Neville-Rolfe and Lord Cromwell

Wednesday 19th April 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I do not have information on how many contracts Fujitsu plans to bid on, or indeed whether it will be successful in bidding for those contracts. All I can say is that we are pursuing the Post Office side of things extremely keenly, and I think we have moved from a very bad place into a better place with the plans for compensation. I note what has been said about Fujitsu, but I emphasise that the small contract we are talking about is very separate from the large and troublesome contract that we have all discussed on other occasions when we have been debating the awful circumstances of the postmasters, which, frankly, is probably the worst thing I have ever dealt with while I have been in government.

[Lord Cromwell (CB)]

The Minister prays in aid the process of procurement, and that is quite right; let us leave aside for a moment the moral cases that some people have made. Is it not a standard part of procurement processes to have regard to performance on previous contracts by bidders? Other contracts, for example with the NHS, have been mentioned earlier in the comments this afternoon. If that is not part of our procurement process, surely it should be. If it is part of our procurement process, what on earth must the other bidders have been like?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

The noble Lord is right that we do not always get as many bidders as I would like in procurement, and one of the things we are trying to do in the procurement area is to broaden procurement so that we get more bidders. Having said that, of course he is right that those who are looking at contracts, both within departments and across government— because we have central assistance for procurement now—look at the track record of companies, but you have to do that in a fair way.

Peerages: Letters Patent

Debate between Baroness Neville-Rolfe and Lord Cromwell

Thursday 17th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cromwell (CB)]

If the Minister is unable to answer this question, could she at least reflect on it? Should a peerage be allocated to somebody who is a sitting MP and they subsequently blot their copybook, will the Government rescind their peerage, or ask the monarch to do so? Have we also completely now abandoned the process of two out, one in?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

On the point of sitting MPs, as I said yesterday, the sort of reports that have led to this debate are rumour and speculation. However, we will of course reflect on the debates we have and have had here—yesterday, today and tomorrow.

Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Bill

Debate between Baroness Neville-Rolfe and Lord Cromwell

Committee stage
Monday 14th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, as we move on to the final group, I rise to move my Amendments 91 and 96. I was sorry that the short notice prevented me speaking at Second Reading, and as the Bill may have implications for trade and investment, I declare my interest as the chair of the UK-ASEAN Business Council.

Today we are rightly focused on Russia, and are full of sympathy and horror for all that is happening in Ukraine. This Bill has been accelerated and we all want to speed it on its way. I am well known for taking a contrarian view to try to tease out important issues as part of the vital role of scrutiny by the House of Lords. For example, on the Covid legislation, I emphasised the importance of perverse effects and cost benefit, and I think I was right to worry about the adverse impact on health problems other than Covid, such as cancer, and the harm to children’s education, and on the social agonies of the pandemic. Happily, that is behind us thanks to the Government’s brilliant record on vaccination.

As my noble friends the two Ministers said in their very helpful recent letter, the economic crime Bill is novel, particularly in relation to property rights, and largely unprecedented in other countries. In most respects, it will also apply very widely and way beyond Russia, as the Minister made clear. It is concern about that which is behind my amendments.

There are three aspects. First, while a good deal is on the face of the Bill, there are also wide-ranging regulation-making powers, so I propose that any such regulations should be subject to an impact assessment before being laid. The object of this is to ensure that they are properly thought through and to minimise red tape, bearing in mind that the Bill extends beyond the current crisis. I am very grateful for the three impact assessments that have been produced by BEIS, the Home Office and HM Treasury. Helpfully, the BEIS impact assessment discusses on page 36 a Malaysian investment—Battersea power station. Fortunately, it concludes—presumably with its knowledge and agreement—that the new rules would not have resulted in new information being made available or any substantive compliance costs relative to the value of the investment.

However, with my practical mien and business experience, I know how easy it is to get the detail wrong in legislation and regulation of the kind we are debating. The money laundering regulations are a good example. The compliance costs on the honest, including, but not confined to, the rules on politically exposed persons—such as affect some noble Lords—are often burdensome. The bureaucracy involved is also bad for the UK economy without, apparently as we have heard, actually catching the bad guys. So I believe we must stick to the discipline of impact assessments which requires us to balance these matters and do our best to get the rules right, simple and clear across the wide areas covered by this Bill. We also need proper enforcement, probably by investment in tough public sector experts, not external lawyers.

Secondly, I am seeking assurances on the use of sunset clauses. To those noble Lords who are remainers, I refer them to some good practise by the EU—the five-year reviews in single market legislation. These reviews were uncomfortable for incumbents, both the civil servants or the large or dominant external players, but they were good for new thinking and for new entrants. My amendment asks for a specific end date to regulations. But, of course, it is possible to vary the timescale and provide for extensions, as was done with the Covid regulations.

My final area of concern, articulated in Amendment 96, is that there should be a review of all the provisions we are putting so rapidly into law in this Bill and the regulations and guidance made under it. That would take place a year after its passage or at some other suitable period, allowing for the economic crime Bill part 2. It would cover, first, its effectiveness in achieving the objectives set out in the Explanatory Notes; secondly, its impact on parties involved, including small business, whose investments in the UK might dry up needlessly; and, finally, enforcement, especially enforcement by Companies House. I share the concerns expressed by others on the need for accuracy, resourcing and effective enforcement, and I look forward very much to hearing from the noble Lord, Lord Brennan, and my noble friend Lord Agnew of Oulton.

I have no wish to delay the Bill. Indeed, I am proud to have played a part as the Minister responsible for the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015, which contained the domestic provisions on beneficial ownership discussed here in this very House. I also worked on the groundwork for David Cameron’s commitment to a register for foreign companies which own or buy property in the UK. The importance of getting this on to the statute book quickly has been underlined today by Ukraine’s tragic circumstances. I beg to move.

[Lord Cromwell (CB)]

My Lords, I recognise that we are on the home straight. On Amendment 91, the House needs to be clear whether we are having a sunset clause or not. My understanding from the outset from talking to Ministers is that we are not, and that this is going to be a permanent piece of legislation. In fact, throughout the two days we have debated this, we have been talking up having ECB 2—something I coined, which I am glad everyone has adopted—to fill in the gaps and be the unspecified bag at Christmas in which we are all going to find our favourite toys, but we shall see.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

Just for clarification, my proposal is for sunset regulation within the regulations, not within the Bill itself—which will, of course, be entirely permanent.

[Lord Cromwell (CB)]

My mistake; I struggle with joined-up writing.

Since I get only bite of the cherry and have an amendment coming up in my name, I will tackle both Amendments 93 and 95 on resources. It is widely acknowledged and was highlighted emphatically by speakers at Second Reading that the resourcing of those responsible for the difficult work of identifying, investigating and prosecuting those covered by the Bill are currently inadequate. In the Minister’s letter of 11 March, which I referred to earlier, page 6 refers to an overall package of £400 million and the creation of a kleptocracy cell in the National Crime Agency and says that the NCA has “surged additional officers”. I am aware that the NCA has obtained fewer than five prosecutions for economic crime offences in the last five years and has seen its budget cut, despite calls for increases. The number of investigators at the proceeds of crime centre has declined, despite Parliament raising concerns. I simply do not know whether the resourcing now referred to is sufficient, but I am told that a figure of £1.7 billion is a more realistic amount to get this job done.

Amendment 95, to which I have added my name, calls for an annual review of the suitability of funding arrangements for enforcement agencies. A theme of our debates has been the need to revisit what we have discussed and agreed to here. It is pure vanity to pass legislation that cannot be enforced and resourced effectively. This amendment will be useful in making sure that a proper focus on resourcing is maintained. I therefore support Amendment 95 or, if it is preferred, Amendment 93, which has much the same effect.

Turning finally to Amendment 94 in my name, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, for adding his name to it. We have heard an awful lot about enablers during our debate, which draws a pantomime hiss that used to be reserved for lawyers, accountants and bankers—but, unfortunately, we all fall into that category of enablers now.

A number of speakers, myself included, raised the issue of SLAPPs, or lawfare, at Second Reading. As is appropriate at this stage, I do not propose to rehearse in detail what was said then. Nevertheless, it is a well-established fact that UK law firms and others—some, anyway—undertake deliberate intimidation tactics known as lawfare to prevent journalists and others bringing matters of public interest to light.

It is further well known that this has ensured that information in the public interest is regularly neutered or hidden. The rule of law requires equality before the law, but this behaviour goes well beyond any reasonable approach to a defence of reputation. It is the dark side of our legal system, where inequality of arms means that the wealthy can—at times, using ill-gotten gains—out-resource those on whom we as a society rely to find out the truth and shine a light into dark places.

The Defamation Act 2013 sought to introduce some protective measures, but this is a complex area of law that not only is costly but carries the risk of liability for the other party’s costs. It is this prospect of bankruptcy or insolvency that is primarily used to intimidate journalists and other organisations. Furthermore, such a defendant against a claim may be unable even to obtain a legal representative willing to take on the risk of cost recovery from the other side. Even what are known as “trials of preliminary issue” regularly run up costs of £25,000 or more, and a full trial will often cost well above £500,000. Even if successful, the defendant will be faced with the irrecoverable portion of their costs, which can also be very substantial—and we should remember that this does not take into account all the work, time, disturbance and anxiety before a court action even arises.

We must not allow the Bill’s purpose—tackling dirty money and illicit practices of the sort that it covers—to be undermined by allowing the wealthy to abuse our legal system in order to intimidate and muzzle the free press in this way. Amendment 94 would require the Government to assess how the Bill might be frustrated, have its impact blunted and its implementation thwarted by such conduct, and it would require the Government to share their findings with Parliament.

The Bill is operating in a very compressed timeline, and I am grateful to the Minister for his email exchange with me over the weekend on this issue. I note that the Deputy Prime Minister announced on Friday the launch of an urgent call for evidence in this area, and I have the Minister’s assurance that this call for evidence will not be just a listening exercise but that:

“Where action is needed, we will take it quickly and effectively”.


The origin of the Bill’s arrival here is the Russian invasion of Ukraine. An immediate step by the Putin regime has been to shut down the channels of free communication and free media within Russia. Surely we must ensure that we do not allow the same regime to do the same in the UK. I therefore invite the Minister to confirm on the record the Government’s commitment to this, not just as a one-off inquiry but on a regular basis, as foreseen in Amendment 94. I also ask him to confirm that the action he has referred to will include specific provision for it in ECB 2. I beg to move.