Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill

Debate between Lord Adonis and Lord Deben

Committee stage
Monday 14th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, if I followed the earlier debate correctly, we have now had six months without a free speech director. I believe that that is correct, based on my noble friend’s earlier amendment probing when the appointment was going to be made. If it were so vitally important that this legislation was on the statute book because there was an imminent danger to freedom of speech, presumably the free speech director would have been appointed by now.

In my experience, it is a golden rule of public appointments that those who are most important are filled immediately—for example, we would not be without a Prime Minister for six months because the country would not be run. However, it does not appear that freedom of speech in universities has been imminently threatened and undermined by the fact that there has not been this rather Orwellian-sounding and very un-Tory-sounding person—a free speech director; somebody from the centre who will decree that free speech shall prevail—in post.

If the sunset clause does come in, as my noble friend is suggesting, it may be that, by the end of it, we will still not have a free speech director, and so we will not have seen whether these vital provisions will underpin freedom of speech in our campuses up and down the land. Since this appears to be largely a Bill in search of a problem, removing it from the statute book at the earliest possible opportunity—maybe even before the Orwellian free speech director has been appointed—would seem to be a thoroughly worthwhile development. Since, by then, there could be a Labour Government in office—I imagine that the Tories would be very wary of a free speech director appointed by a Government opposed to them, who could have all kinds of secret agendas—this could be in their interests too.

The Minister may have a wonderful opportunity here to avoid implementing legislation which the Government themselves do not appear to be very keen to implement at the moment—given that they still have not appointed a key officeholder under it—and to prevent it being misused by their political opponents.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, is always a pleasure to listen to.

As a matter of fact, I am not in favour of this amendment, but I want to ask the Minister a question. One of the reasons I raised the question earlier about public appointments is that the period of time it takes to make any appointment is becoming a scandal. I am still waiting for two appointments to the Climate Change Committee. The meetings of the chairmen of all the organisations always say that they are fed up with trying to run committees in which there are no members because the system takes so long.

Could I have the assurance of the Minister that, under this Bill, an appointment will be made, and made quickly? Will she say to the Government as a whole that, until the system works quickly, we will go on complaining about it? It is not reasonable to have so long a gap. It is not that, for some reason or another, this is not an important appointment—I think that there is a lot to be said for it—but that this problem is true right across the board. The time waiting for appointments gets longer and longer, and the process gets stuck more often than it should.

Northern Ireland (Executive Formation) Bill

Debate between Lord Adonis and Lord Deben

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 15th July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Deben]

Of all the parties in the country quoting public opinion polls, I should have thought that the Liberal Democrats should be particularly careful. I am not prepared to take public opinion polls—although I would point out to her that nearly 70% of the women of Northern Ireland and more than 65% of all people in Northern Ireland say that this should not be something that the United Kingdom Parliament decides.

So we can all bandy polls, but 2016 is a much more recent democratic decision than the democratic decisions that we have made. We are simply suggesting that, in order for the people of Northern Ireland not to feel that we are dictating to them in areas that are specifically their own, we should have proper discussion and proper concern for their views—and if that is not a Liberal view, I cannot think what is.

[Lord Adonis]

Before the noble Lord sits down, he is an extremely reasonable person, but surely he is missing the fundamental issue: for how long can people be denied fundamental rights simply because there is not an Assembly sitting in Northern Ireland? Of course, we agree with him about the virtues of devolution, but for how long can people be denied those rights simply because it is not sitting? It is two and a half years so far and the clock is ticking. Most reasonable people would think we are reaching the point where Parliament has to intervene if the devolved institutions are not there and working.

[Lord Deben]

I say to the noble Lord: that is in fact what is in the amendment. It enables that consideration to be done; it enables that conciliation to be done in the sense of giving people the chance to say what they think. There is a date on it and I remind him that I said in my own speech, as elegantly and delicately as I could, to the Government that I was not sure that the kind of oomph that we ought to have behind the attempts at the restoration of normalcy in Northern Ireland was there and I hoped that it would no longer look as if it was lacking. So I am not sure that we are very far removed. We are talking about making a decision but with the full respect of the people of Northern Ireland, either through their devolved Assembly or, if they do not have a devolved Assembly, through a form of discussion and understanding which means that people feel it is their decision and not ours.

Equivalence Determinations for Financial Services and Miscellaneous Provisions (Amendment etc) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Debate between Lord Adonis and Lord Deben

Monday 18th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

Was the noble Lord in the House to hear the exchanges between the chair of Sub-Committee A and my noble friend Lord Rooker about a letter which apparently is going to be sent to the Treasury, but has not been made available to your Lordships, complaining about the way that consultation and impact assessments have been conducted? It came out only in the course of debate that this letter is in preparation: apparently, the chairs of the two Select Committees cannot agree on the terms of the letter, even though we are in the midst of debating literally dozens of these statutory instruments. Does he not think it would have been a good idea if we had had this letter before this debate? If the relevant authorities of the House are about to write to the Government fundamentally questioning the way that the Government have approached the process of consultation and assessing the impact of these regulations, surely it is not satisfactory for us to be considering these regulations in advance of the completion of that process.

[Lord Deben]

I was indeed in the House to hear that exchange. It was an amazing, remarkable exchange and another example of the total removal of this whole discussion from reality. It was so unusual that I left the House to recover some sense of sanity. First, it is obviously true that we should have had that letter. We thought that the letter, according to a senior member of the committee, had gone. We were then told by the chairman of the Joint Committee that it was almost gone, or nearly gone, or on the way to going. We did not understand whether it would go or whether it still had to be recovered and discussed. The fact of the matter is, I can think of no more appropriate role for the House of Lords than to tell the Treasury that it needs to be very much more precise and correct in its treatment of this House and of the other place. The answer is that it must at least give the figures, and to do that, it has to have a useful impact assessment, not one which is merely a matter of form.

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, the noble Lord is a distinguished parliamentarian of long experience. Does he not worry that the tone of self-congratulation which we always adopt in this House for the way we conduct scrutiny and the excellence of our processes is coming under serious strain as a result of this no-deal regulation process? The earlier exchanges raise fundamental questions as to whether we are fit for purpose in the way that we are conducting this process ourselves. If it has taken us six months into this no-deal regulation process even to seek to agree an approach to the Government on how they should conduct consultations and impact assessments, does that not fundamentally question the whole process which we are ourselves adopting in holding the Government to account? Earlier a noble Lord made reference to horses bolting and stable doors being closed. Already 100 or so of the statutory instruments have bolted before the Select Committees of this House have been able to agree on what the procedure should be for considering them, let alone whether they are adequate in their own terms.

[Lord Deben]

I feel philosophically and religiously opposed to self-congratulation, so of course I will not suggest that we should congratulate ourselves. As I said earlier, it is quite clear that our processes do not admit the proper consideration of the issues being put before us. However, the second thing which is quite clear—and after this, I really will sit down—is that the world outside thinks that we are absolutely barmy and wonders what on earth Parliament as a whole is doing. The world outside has become less and less willing to accept that our system is fit for purpose. We all know that all political parties—I mean all of them—are not seen by the vast majority of the population as in any way reflecting what they think, want and expect. We are engaged in a serious situation, and one of the sadnesses is that, if we are trying to do the job as well as we can, we have to be involved in them. However, we are involved in them in a way which may well mean that we are ourselves part of the very situation which is undermining the whole reputation of this, the oldest of Parliaments.

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, I have amendments down in respect of the later statutory instruments, and on the substance of this statutory instrument I do not have much to add to what we have heard so far from the two noble Lords. However, the earlier exchanges raise significant questions. I put on record my hope that when we have the next string of these statutory instruments on Wednesday, the chairs of the two sifting committees might address us on what their procedure will be in respect of the handling and processes of consultation and impact assessments for regulations. I hope that the letter which is to be sent can be agreed—apparently there is a dispute between the chairs of the two sifting committees—and sent tomorrow. It sounds urgently necessary that it should be agreed and sent; indeed, that should probably have happened six months ago, not now. At least we are shutting the stable door after only half the horses have bolted, which I suppose is better than after all of them have left. I put on record that if the letter can be agreed, it is important that it is circulated to your Lordships before the debates on Wednesday, because it will have an important bearing on our proceedings. It may even be possible to slightly shorten our proceedings as a result. I feel obliged to make a speech on each of these statutory instruments about the inadequate processes of consultation and impact assessment, but if the relevant committees of your Lordships’ House are making these points about all the statutory instruments and requiring the Government to improve their regime in respect of all of them, we will not have to go through this gruesome process, statutory instrument by statutory instrument.

Air Passenger Rights and Air Travel Organisers’ Licensing (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2018

Debate between Lord Adonis and Lord Deben

Tuesday 12th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Adonis]

It is clearly a cut-and-paste exercise—that is what is going on with most of these regulations. I hope that the statutory instrument committees are drawing attention to this. To be frank, in my view this alone is a reason for your Lordships declining to agree the regulations.

[Lord Deben]

The noble Lord has not pointed out that, in this particular SI, there is no discussion as to whether the people consulted were “selected” or “trusted”. In previous SIs, some of them were “trusted” and some of them “selected”, but none appears to be both “trusted” and “selected”.

Occupational and Personal Pension Schemes (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2018

Debate between Lord Adonis and Lord Deben

Tuesday 15th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Deben]

I was not making the assertion about my noble friend; I was referring to the meeting of the Grand Committee last week, when that was very much the underlying assertion. That is all I was doing. I do not wish to make any such implication or accusation about my noble friend, whose presentation was perfectly right and reasonable, except that it is based on falsities. I will go on to the other falsities on which it is based.

The second falsehood is that this SI is not making much difference and therefore we do not have to go through the usual procedure. The difficulty with that is that there is a definition here which I find very peculiar. The definition of “impact” refers only to the direct impact of what is in this—the impact on people in the United Kingdom who do not have anything outside the United Kingdom, and who are concerned only with the United Kingdom. There is no reference to the cost of or the damage done by these regulations to those who are in the United Kingdom but have arrangements outside the United Kingdom within the European Union, who will be seriously disadvantaged because the UK will not be within the same arrangements. I realise that that is a result of Brexit but the idea that you can assess the impact without mentioning that seems very peculiar. If you mention that, you have to have an impact assessment. I am very suspicious of this because I think the Government do not want an impact assessment that explains to people precisely why exit from the European Union is so damaging. I do not understand how we are supposed to deal with an SI when it says simply that there is no, or no significant,

“impact on business, charities or voluntary bodies”.

That is the second reason that it seems to me that this is a kind of fudge.

The third reason, and this is the most important thing that I want to say, is about consultation.

[Lord Adonis]

The noble Lord and I have spent some time with other noble Lords in Grand Committee scrutinising a whole swathe of these regulations. Does he agree that a pattern is becoming very clear in that there has been no formal consultation on any of these regulations, whether or not they are making minor changes? In parenthesis, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, that the deficiencies in the first set of regulations were not minor but major in their impact and were not picked up by the engagement of the department with the industry. However, even those that involve substantial changes have not been consulted on formally. He will recall that in Grand Committee yesterday we were told that there had been selective engagement with “trusted” individuals. It became clear to us during those debates that there was a huge reluctance on the Government’s part to engage formally in consultation because—until the moment that we have just reached, when it has become public knowledge—they did not want the degree of preparation made for no deal to be known. The very scale of the problem to be encountered in respect of no deal and the alarm it would create was a reason why the Government have not been consulting, as they should have been, on these and other regulations. That ought to give the House very great concern about the state of the regulations and the degree to which the Government have engaged with those who are going to be very significantly affected in the way that he suggested.

[Lord Deben]

The only problem is that the noble Lord’s intervention was so long that my name has been changed to his on the annunciator.

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[Lord Deben]

My noble friend is right to say that the problem with all this legislation is that it takes time. If you are going to make fundamental changes, you have to face it: it is better to have short consultation periods in which everyone is told that there is a consultation, rather than this egregious kind of concept where you say, “We have had a bit of a consultation and we have ongoing talks”. We cannot get up in this House and say that we have had a consultation that shows that we have covered everything. I agree with my noble friend that you have to have a short consultation but it must be public and clear. It is frankly not our fault that we have lost a lot of time. It is because the Government did not start two years ago to prepare for what might be a no-deal exit.

[Lord Adonis]

The noble Lord raises an extremely important point about the need to consult before regulations are published, rather than after. The Minister said that these were technical and that there was ongoing engagement. Responses from practitioners in the sector show that they were concerned about the mistakes made the first time round. Unlike the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, who thought that everything would be perfect the second time round, the response of Faye Jarvis, a partner at Hogan Lovells whom I quoted earlier, was that they were getting very significant impacts from the original version of these regulations. She warned schemes to pay attention to any further changes to the regulations in case they brought such unintended consequences again, saying:

“People will need to be scrutinising and seeing what else is coming out in terms of draft regulations to make sure there aren’t any other inadvertent errors but also to check there aren’t any unexpected impacts”.


Does the noble Lord agree that the whole reason one consults before presenting regulations for approval to Parliament is so that these kinds of inadvertent changes do not take place? The fact that partners in pensions law firms are saying that they have not been consulted and are not content that these regulations will not produce more inadvertent errors with a major impact entirely supports the noble Lord’s argument. We need proper consultation and not the rushed, informal dialogue which is taking place because of the very rushed nature of these no-deal preparations.

[Lord Deben]

I will answer the noble Lord, but I do not want to prolong my remarks. I am already a bit fed up with being told that I must not talk about these things because it takes too long. I find it extremely difficult but it has to be talked about. The noble Lord is entirely right. This will be true and, if so, I have to declare my interest as chairman of PIMFA. I have some allied interests, but not as far as pensions are concerned.

I come back to my noble friend. There is national concern about the responsibility of government and Parliament. That leads me to say very seriously to her that if it looks as though you are hiding the consequences of decisions that you make, that does a great deal of harm. Not having the proper costs here—

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[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, my noble friend made an extremely powerful argument, which corresponds to a pattern that has emerged to those of us who have spent time in the Grand Committee discussing these regulations. They have all been prepared in a rush to meet an imminent deadline. Because of the rush, the need to meet the deadline and the secrecy inside the departments with which these regulations have been drafted and all no-deal planning has taken place, the pattern that has emerged in the debates in the House and the Grand Committee is that much wider issues have become apparent that could only become apparent through consultation.

The conclusion I can see we are already reaching—my noble friend makes an extremely powerful argument—is that it is not just the technical changes of the regulation and the precise changes in UK law, though clearly those have been very badly handled and have potentially had a dramatic impact on UK pension funds, but the whole wider context in which these funds and the professionals engaged in them will have to operate under no deal that will bring about fundamental changes. That is precisely why one would wish to have a full consultation, which has not taken place.

The noble Viscount opposite asked how long we would wish a consultation to be. There are established Cabinet Office rules on this which, when I was a Minister, we observed as a matter of course for any changes in the law; he will know this better than anyone, having dealt in this area so frequently. The rules say 12-week consultations. That is the norm. In my day, when we had a quality of Government rather higher than the one now engaging in all this helter-skelter planning for no deal, you needed a special exemption based on special emergency requirements not to go down the 12-week route, and that could happen only if the changes concerned were exceptionally minor. In this case, the Government themselves have imposed the deadline and the changes under consideration have a very wide potential impact. It is abundantly clear that the right thing to do in this and other cases is to have a 12-week consultation, with the wider policy environment under consideration being subject to consultation too.

I would like to ask the Minister some other questions about the detail of these regulations. For those of us who are not experts, it is not clear precisely how deep the impact will be. Paragraph 2.5 of the Explanatory Memorandum says that,

“UK occupational pension schemes will no longer need to obtain authorisation from the Pensions Regulator for cross-border activities”.

I take that not to be a minor change in the regulatory regime but a fairly significant one, on which the Pensions Regulator should have been asked to give advice—including to the House—when we were considering these changes. Can the Minister tell us what the impact of that change will be and why the Pensions Regulator was not invited to give us advice?

On the wider issue of no-deal planning, which of course underlies all these regulations, the Government have said that they do not wish to see no deal take place. Last week, when the House of Commons debated no deal and voted that it should not take place, Robert Jenrick, the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, said that,

“the Government do not want or expect a no-deal scenario”.—[Official Report, Commons, 8/1/19; col. 269.]

It is entirely within the purview of the Government not to have a no-deal scenario; if they do not want it, they can ensure that it does not take place, not least because of the ruling of the European Court of Justice before Christmas. They could revoke the notice under Article 50 to ensure absolutely that there will not be no deal.

A point was raised perfectly properly by the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of York that one should prepare for contingencies, but these are contingencies entirely of the Government’s making. They are not talking about preparing contingencies for, if I may say so, acts of God or other things that happen for which one cannot be accountable. When I was Secretary of State for Transport, a volcano went off and we had to get planes flying when there were big ash clouds. One should be expected to make contingencies for those kinds of things over which one has no control. In the case of the contingency for which we are discarding all our normal consultation mechanisms, playing fast and loose with a regulatory regime and, as my noble friend said, not taking account of the wider policy context and what may happen as a result of no deal, it is all self-inflicted by the Government because they are sticking to a self-imposed deadline.

The response of noble Lords who have sat in Grand Committee is that this does not sufficiently justify not going through established consultation routes. A whole stream of statutory instruments will be coming from Grand Committee where big concerns have been raised, not least by the noble Lord, Lord Warner, in respect of a set of pharmaceutical-related SIs that we debated yesterday. Key affected partners were not consulted at all; the reason for that, it appears, is that the department did not want to hold a consultation that would have made people aware that no-deal planning was taking place. Indeed, in the debate we held yesterday on one of the key regulations, the only person who we could establish firmly had been consulted was the noble Lord, Lord Warner, himself; he had phoned the relevant public authority that was engaged in the no-deal planning.

[Lord Deben]

My Lords, I invite the noble Lord to give way, because it gives me the opportunity to say that I think my noble friend the Minister will now understand that when I said that if one looks as if one is hiding something, I did not refer to her at all. I referred to a very long experience of exactly what the noble Lord refers to: a refusal to consult the very people who could have made sure that the SI was correct. In the case we talked about yesterday, it seems to me that the Government are very likely to have to withdraw that SI and then replace it, as they did with this SI. I did not think it was unreasonable to point that out.

Patents (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2018

Debate between Lord Adonis and Lord Deben

Monday 14th January 2019 Grand Committee

[Lord Deben]

The noble Baroness makes an important point. I want to follow this line because if the consultation itself does not cover the industry, and those others whom you would expect to be covered, it is not likely that the Grand Committee can reasonably expect to accept the concept that there is no effect or problem. We can only do that if we are sure that the consultation has been widespread, properly chosen and the rest. Will my noble friend explain who was consulted with, why some people who are obviously necessary consultees were not consulted, on what basis that choice was made and why these were informal discussions? This is surely a very important SI and there should have been formal discussions.

Secondly, there is a problem in all these SIs which we have to remind the Minister of each time. It is suggested that we can allow these SIs to go through because they are very unlikely actually to be used, because they are based on the principle of a no-deal exit from the European Union. That may be true, but it does not excuse us from ensuring that the SIs are as good as they could be. They might be used, unless the Minister is going to say that they are not going to be. At the moment, they could be used and we have to apply the same intellectual rigour to these as we would to any other SIs.

[Lord Adonis]

The noble Lord is making a powerful point. Did he note the remark made by the Minister in the debate on the last regulation: that the reason why there had not been full and proper consultation on the regulations was because the department was so preoccupied with consulting on and framing arrangements for the Prime Minister’s deal? We are being told that the regulations which we are debating to make provision for no deal, and which the House is expected to approve, are being inadequately consulted on and—as is clear from the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Warner—inadequately prepared precisely because the Government are so overloaded with making arrangements for the deal. If the Government’s priority is the deal, rather than a no deal, is it not right for them to withdraw these regulations, and the option of no deal? The Minister made the frank admission to the Grand Committee earlier this afternoon that the Government have not had the resources and capacity to conduct proper preparations and consultation for no deal.

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[Lord Adonis]

Before the noble Lord sits down, in the concluding remarks of his extremely powerful speech he referred to part 2 of the Explanatory Memorandum, which is where the Minister makes the appropriateness statement in respect of the scope of the regulations. He noted that the Minister, Sam Gyimah, who made all three statements in respect of the Equality Act 2010, in respect of the regulations being appropriate and in respect of whether they are in order with regard to the legislative powers conferred on the Government by the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Act 2017, has since resigned, and because of Brexit, the very policy enshrined in the regulations for which the Minister was giving these authorisation statements.

Further, in his resignation letters and subsequent statements, the Minister has expressed his extremely deep concern about Brexit in principle, and in particular the no-deal Brexit, the very subject of the regulations about which he was making the appropriateness statements which are before the Committee. Would the noble Lord agree that not only is this unprecedented—in my experience and maybe in his—but that it raises a huge concern: should we be proceeding with these regulations at all without either a statement signed by the current Minister and/or Sam Gyimah giving evidence to us on whether the concerns he has expressed about a no-deal Brexit might lead him to review the statements he has made on behalf of the Crown in part 2 of this Explanatory Memorandum?

[Lord Deben]

I do not want to embarrass any Ministers, including the noble Lord who is here. I want to exclude Ministers, both past and present, for a kind of corporate nonsense which the Government have presented and which is supported by a surprising number of people across the Benches. I think this Committee has a responsibility to say to the Minister, “One could not imagine this in any other circumstances. You could not make it up, as you can see when you read the detail”.

I end by coming back to the words I put before the Committee at the beginning. In one case it was “trusted people” and in the other it was “selected people”. It was not just a joke. It was to point out that whoever had to write this stuff knew perfectly well that it did not add up, and that there was no basis for presenting it except that somehow or other, the Government had to find a way of talking about these issues without telling the public the truth about impact, about cost and about the deprivation which this measure would bring to the British people if it were ever implemented.

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, in my now quite long experience of the House I have found that on most occasions when policies are being tested and explained, amendments are being considered and so on, the difference narrows as debate advances. That difference can be eliminated entirely, sometimes because the explanations given by the Government turn out to meet the concerns, sometimes because the Government themselves move to meet the concerns and sometimes because the concerns are misunderstood. That is the general course. Because our job is to scrutinise there may still be resulting differences, but those differences are narrowed, not expanded.

However, a pattern is now emerging in the consideration by the Grand Committee of these no-deal regulations. In almost every case now, as the debate continues the difference widens, for three reasons. The first is precisely the point that the noble Lord, Lord Deben, has made so eloquently, which is that you are expected to believe, in the words of the White Queen in Alice in Wonderland, six impossible things before breakfast before you even consider these regulations. The first suspension of total disbelief that we are expected to entertain is that, all other things being equal in no deal, these regulations will simply make technical changes to govern the fact that we have left the EU with no deal. The problem is that all other things are not equal. The whole ground has shifted underneath the very activities, and the national interest and the companies, that are at stake.

That could not have been clearer than in the remarks of my noble friend—as I continue to call him; I know he now sits on the Cross Benches but he and I were Ministers together for many years so he will always be my noble friend—Lord Warner. I dare say that my noble friend, whom I hold in extremely high regard, knows this sector better than anyone in the House except possibly my noble friend Lord Darzi. He has huge, detailed knowledge from a long period of time as a Health Minister. My noble friend has reported to the House two issues of extraordinary import. The first is that the impact of the actual changes in these regulations will be profound for the industries concerned and for those who need to use their services. The second is that most of those directly concerned were not consulted at all.

That leads to the second big issue that has now arisen time and again in the Grand Committee: the consultation has been exiguous or non-existent despite the fact that the issues concerned are hugely important. The noble Lord, Lord Deben, who is one of the most forensic debaters in the House, noted to brilliant effect the use of the weasel words in respect of consultation in the Explanatory Memorandum regarding the,

“selected individuals with expertise in the relevant areas”,

who the Intellectual Property Office chose to consult.

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[Lord Adonis]

I think that the Grand Committee will be extremely concerned to have information on this point. If what my noble friend has said is the case, it would be a situation without precedent in my experience: that on matters of significant impact on a major industrial sector, precisely one person in one company has been consulted and the relevant trade bodies were not even given the opportunity to express their views.

[Lord Deben]

What is more, that one person was selected but clearly not trusted.

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[Lord Adonis]

A difference of fact, as my noble friend has just said, between the Minister and my noble friend Lord Warner, who has just pointed out to me that paragraphs 1 and 2 of Regulation 55 specifically concern exclusivity. This is the precise issue which he said should have been consulted on and on which the companies and trade associations concerned say they were not consulted. I simply note that, but this issue needs to be explored more fully before these regulations go to the House itself, as the situation at the moment is clearly unsatisfactory. The Minister, who is deeply honourable in these matters, would not wish this dispute of facts to be unresolved.

[Lord Deben]

Is the noble Lord not being a bit unfair to the Minister? Is the real problem here not the word “informal”? The Minister’s problem is that, if you have a formal consultation, you know precisely who was consulted and on what points. As I said in my own speech, if you have this curious thing called “informal” consultation, no Minister is able to answer these questions because you do not know what was said in any of the discussions. That is what is wrong with this consultation mechanism. The noble Lord is being unfair to the Minister, who can only say what is passed on to him, because this was not formal. There was no formal report, so we have no idea and nor does he.

[Lord Adonis]

The noble Lord makes a very good point. The Minister himself played no part in this process. All he can do is read out messages passed to him by officials. I do not hold him responsible in any way. Nobody was suggesting for a moment that he was personally responsible for engaging in this consultation and has therefore given misleading information to the Grand Committee. The point is that the House needs to know the truth.

I will make one remark on what the noble Lord, Lord Deben, said. He said it is hard to be precise about what happened if conversations took place during informal, as opposed to formal, consultation. However, there is a difference between informal consultation and no consultation whatsoever. The point made by my noble friend Lord Warner is that it appears not that there was informal as opposed to formal consultation, but none whatsoever. No conversations took place between the relevant trade bodies and companies, and the authorities responsible for drawing up these regulations. That is what he said, and it is of huge moment to the House. Using the word “informal” does not excuse these consultations being non-existent, which is the issue before the Grand Committee.

I return to the third thread of concern we have about the whole way in which these statutory instruments are being conducted. First, they depend on us believing the impossible proposition that no deal is not itself going to make a fundamental difference. The second issue we are constantly wrestling with is the inadequate or non-existent consultation. The third is the inability of Ministers to answer the points raised in the debate. That has been a running theme in these discussions. What happens—I dare say this will happen again when the noble Lord, Lord Henley, responds to this debate—is that the Minister restates the case for the statutory instrument that he made at the beginning. He selectively answers one or two points—to give him his due, he has just given a list of organisations that he said were informally consulted; it may or may not be accurate, but we need to establish that—but most of the points raised in the debate are not answered at all by the Minister. To be fair to him, the Minister himself played no part in this consultation and is simply having to read notes given to him by officials, who may themselves have been at some distance from the consultations that took place.

We are then expected to approve these regulations. Because of the inadequate arrangements for the scrutiny of statutory instruments—a point made very eloquently by the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, in earlier debates—we then have no further recourse. We cannot do what happens with primary legislation in this House, which is that we have a Committee stage, we can move amendments and probe the Government further, and the Government are under an obligation to come back to the House with further information. None of that happens. The only recourse we have is to seek to repeat this debate by referring the statutory instrument to the House and hoping—we then have no ability to amend it or to move amendments—that when the Minister comes to make the next speech in the House, he will respond to the points raised in the Grand Committee.

That leads me to an important point about how we handle these statutory instruments when they go to the House. On each of these statutory instruments that we have been debating and doing our best as Members of the Grand Committee to scrutinise, a lot of concerns have been raised but not met by the Government. I see that my noble friend Lord Foulkes is a member of the Liaison Committee and the Procedure Committee. He is a real power in the land in this House. Most of us are never admitted to the inner sanctum of these bodies, but he is. It is extremely important that Ministers write to Members of the House setting out their response to all the issues raised in the Grand Committee before the House comes to debate these regulations, so that we can then properly consider the adequacy of the Government’s further response. Let us consider the vital issue of consultation, which has been raised by my noble friend Lord Warner and on which I do not think the Minister is going to be in much of a position to comment, because he is dependent on notes passed to him by officials who are one stage removed from the consultation anyway. The House would expect a full statement to Members on what happened in the consultation—who was consulted, on what basis, what they said and what the Government’s response was—before this statutory instrument is debated in the House.

We need some mechanism—perhaps it is the Liaison Committee. Perhaps my noble friend Lord Foulkes, who takes on many public responsibilities, should take it upon himself to see that this process is conducted in a timely and adequate fashion before the House debates statutory instruments. I do not know whether my noble friend would be willing to take on that responsibility, but I am volunteering him. Otherwise, he may have a suggestion that we as a Grand Committee can then make for who should undertake this responsibility.

Human Tissue (Quality and Safety for Human Application) (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Debate between Lord Adonis and Lord Deben

Wednesday 9th January 2019 Grand Committee

[Lord Adonis]

This is very closely related to the matter under discussion because the issue under discussion at the moment is no-deal planning, along with the whole basis on which that no-deal planning is being conducted. I am sure that the noble Lord will agree.

[Lord Deben]

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, that we have a real issue here because it is very hard for the Minister to have to respond to this situation. Again, I apologise to her for the fact that I feel that I have to speak—because we cannot go on, in the politenesses of this House, ignoring the fundamental problem. The fundamental problem is that we are being led up the garden path in two different ways.

The Deputy Chairman of Committees is perfectly right to refer us to the Standing Orders, but this is central to the discussion that we having on this particular SI. The centrality of it is that, first, we are assuming that this could happen, and the second part of it is that we are assuming that the Government have made proper arrangements that if it were to happen, what is in this instrument is relevant and effective. There is actually a third thing, which goes back to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, about whether this is legally possible to happen. That, I think, is a question which is beyond the remit of this Committee but is certainly of very great importance.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Deben]

I hope that my noble friend will be able to answer this question, but I point out that it is rather difficult to answer. Yesterday or the day before, we were informed that we have had to withdraw two cutters from the work being done because of people coming across the Mediterranean. That was the only way that we could stop people coming across from Calais. In other words, we appear to have a very exiguous ability to do these things. I am told that we are only borrowing these cutters for a bit and then they will go back again. I also want to know whether our forces have the ability to provide the prioritisation of which the Minister speaks.

[Lord Adonis]

The noble Lord makes an important point, and we look forward to the Minister’s response in more detail on what these contingency arrangements will be. If she is not in a position to tell us, the advice that was given to the Committee by my noble friend Lord Winston is apposite. If the Government cannot give adequate assurances that these arrangements can in fact be put in place or meet the objectives set by the Government to see that there is no disruption in the vital flow of embryos, tissue and so on, the right thing for them to do is to withdraw this regulation and come back to the House after they have done two things. They need to engage in further consultation—as the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, said, the consultation on these regulations has been exiguous—and the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, said that no impact assessment had taken place at all, because the Government judged that the impact was not serious. It does not appear to be the opinion of the Grand Committee this afternoon that the impact is slight; we think that it could be significant in the sectors we are discussing.

So, our advice to the Minister would be that the best thing for her and the Government to do would be to withdraw these instruments and to do two things. First, to engage in further consultation, and secondly, to engage in more intensive contingency planning, particularly on the issue of how disruption will be coped with. That will give the Grand Committee and the House more confidence that we could agree regulations of this kind because they would be capable of meeting their objectives, which is not the case at the moment.

I will raise one final issue for the Minister to address in her reply. Martyn Day, Member of Parliament for Linlithgow and East Falkirk, in the debate in the House of Commons on these regulations, said:

“We do not know what the exact process will be for licensed establishments to apply for a new import-export relationship”,—[Official Report, Commons, Third Delegated Legislation Committee, 19/12/18; col. 5.]


in the case of a no-deal Brexit. That seems to be a significant issue. Since Jackie Doyle-Price was unable to respond to the point in the House of Commons, could the Minister tell us what the process for licensed establishments to apply for a new import-export relationship will be. On the point the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, raised, in the event that new arrangements are not put in place within six months—the period the Minister set out in her opening remarks—what will happen? This is a vital contingency issue, and these are difficult, complex issues. Will the six months be extended? What arrangements will the Government put in place for that? What will happen to the additional costs? I hope the Minister can respond to all these issues in her reply, which will be important for the further consideration by the House of these matters. The House will look to the debate we have had in Grand Committee to inform its own debate in due course.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Adonis and Lord Deben

Report: 4th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 30th April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Deben]

It is unusual to negotiate with 27 different countries, but I have negotiated with large numbers of different people on the other side. That is one thing that we just have to accept. It is, like anything else, a negotiation. If we think that it is so unique that we cannot do it, we should not have started the negotiation in the first place. It does not make any difference if you have a second negotiation: it is the same position that you had with the first negotiation. The fact that it is with 27 different countries makes no difference because it does not change from the first negotiation to the second. I do not think that my noble friend has a point on that.

The real issue is the fundamental fact: the amendment does not operate unless Parliament has voted in a particular way. The Government’s answer to the amendment must therefore be that they have a reason not to let Parliament continue to be involved after such a vote. The Government do not think that Parliament will take such a decision. They are very sure—and I have listened to government speakers again and again—that they will produce a result that will be cheered by Parliament. We will all be thrilled with what they have been able to achieve. I would be very suspicious if the Government’s answer is that they do not think they will get that sort of result and therefore do not want to get themselves into a difficult position. I am assuming that, whatever agreement they have, it will be a good one and this amendment will never come into operation.

The only reason for the amendment is to be a backstop for the circumstances in which the Government do not achieve what they tell us they can achieve and they therefore produce something that is so unacceptable that Parliament decides that it cannot accept it. The Government have to say, “What happens then?”. Unless they accept the amendment or some technically different one that suits them, their only answer can be, “We the Executive will decide”. That is why this is not about the European Union. It is about the powers of Parliament and it is why I am surprised at my noble friend Lord Hamilton, who was chairman of the 1922 Committee, who protected and defended the rights of Members of Parliament and who believes and believed in the nature of Parliamentary democracy. It is why I do not understand why this divides the House.

This should be something that both leavers and remainers—and those who wander between and those who are confused—all of us, should accept that we want Parliament to be in a position to accept and to decide. This will not work unless Parliament has decided that it does not want the agreed solution. The amendment will not come into operation unless that happens. Surely it is not too much to ask that the Government say, if we get to that point, that Parliament should have the right to ask the Government to go back and try again.

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, I am a great admirer of my noble friend Lord Reid and therefore, if he presses this to a Division later on in the evening or at whatever hour of the night we get to it, I will of course support him. I have nothing against the contents of the amendment because it is clearly desirable that, if we cannot support the Government’s treaty, the default should be that we stay in the EU unless the House of Commons has a better set of propositions that it wishes to agree to.

However, my concern is that there is a certain element of unreality to the proposals to try to bind the hands of the House of Commons as to what it may or may not do in the autumn. One of two things will in fact happen when the Prime Minister presents her treaty. The House of Commons will either vote for it or vote against it. There are no other alternatives. If the House of Commons votes against the treaty, that is, to all intents and purposes, a Motion of no confidence in the Government. There has not been an incident since Gladstone’s Home Rule Bill in 1886, which was rejected by the House of Commons, where the central plank of a Government’s policy was rejected outright by the House of Commons. The idea that there could be a further negotiation after that is entirely unrealistic. The negotiation would have been concluded with the European Commission and the Council of Ministers, and ratified or not by the European Parliament and so forth. It is not realistic in the real world to expect that there would be further negotiation.

In the eventuality that the treaty is rejected, there are only two things that could conceivably happen. Either there will be an election because the Government have been defeated on what is in effect a Motion of confidence—it might take a formal triggering Motion under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act to produce it—or there will be a referendum, which we discussed earlier. A referendum could happen if the House of Commons itself resolved that there should be one immediately after the defeat or perhaps as an amendment to the Motion that the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, has said would be tabled. Everything else beyond that seems to be superfluous. The policy of the Government will then be the outcome of the referendum or the outcome of that election. A Government will have to be formed after the election, which will have to have a European policy and that will then be the policy of the Government that they would seek to negotiate in Brussels. There would either be some amendments to the treaty, if that is possible or—as I hope there is a Labour Government—there will be a decision not to proceed with Brexit, or there would be a referendum and we would proceed with the outcome of that referendum.

I say all that mainly to my noble friend on the Front Bench and her colleagues in the other place. There is no point in engaging in this displacement activity at the moment and making it sound as if we are being very tough on Brexit by placing ever more elaborate manacles and handcuffs on what might or might not happen in the vote in October. The only thing that really matters is the attitude of the Labour Party when the Government present their treaty. Either we are in favour of it or we are against it. If we are against that treaty, I can assure my noble friend that everything else will take care of itself. If we are against the treaty and vote against it, we do not need all the protections in this Bill. One of two things will happen. Either there will be another referendum or there will be an election. If there is an election, what matters is the policy of my party in that election. Will we or will we not proceed with Brexit if we win the election? Very simple facts of political power come into play.

What happens in Parliament after that will depend on those decisions. Ever more elaborate provisions in this Bill are, I say respectfully, entirely beside the point because they miss the reality of political power. That is that there has to be a Government, they have to have a policy and that can come from only one of two ways. Either a new Government are returned if this Government are turned out on the treaty or there is a referendum that will determine it.

I am entirely in favour of everything in my noble friend’s amendment and I hope that it will be warmly welcomed from the Front Bench, but what really matters, I say to my noble friends, is the policy of the Labour Party when the Prime Minister presents her treaty. If we are against the treaty and we are successful, there has to be either an election or a referendum. I am afraid that there are no alternative options on offer.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Adonis and Lord Deben

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 26th February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, I have six amendments in this group. They refer to the United Kingdom having continued access after withdrawal to passenger name records, to the Schengen Information System, to the European arrest warrant, to membership of Europol, to the European Criminal Records Information System, and to the fingerprint and DNA exchange with the EU under the Prüm Council decisions.

The questions put to the Minister by the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, went to the heart of the matter—that is, given that the Prime Minister said in her Munich speech that she wishes to see a treaty replace all these elements of the existing arrangements, the Minister should simply tell us the process by which we will be negotiating the treaty. This debate, as with many others, gives the complete lie to the ridiculous assertion that no deal is better than a bad deal. Let us be clear: if there is no deal on 29 March next year, the current arrangements to which the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, referred, painstakingly negotiated over many years, for the European arrest warrant and the very high levels of engagement between the member states of the European Union—which the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, said were so important to his work as Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police—all fall.

Is the Minister going to tell us that the security of this country will be as safe as it is now if all those arrangements fall? I assume that he is not, in which case the United Kingdom leaving the European Union with no deal at the end of March next year would be a complete abdication of the national interest. We need to get that firmly established. As we have more of these debates and see the precise benefits of the EU—which, after all, are the reason we went into the European Union—it becomes clearer and clearer that leaving with no deal would be a dereliction of the national interest.

[Lord Deben]

Before the noble Lord leaves that point, does he also agree that asking the Government to explain how this treaty is being discussed and by whom cannot have any effect whatever on the negotiations between the Government and the European Union? Is it not true that several of the questions asked have had nothing to do with the negotiations? We would just like to know where the Government are on matters which are unconnected with those negotiations.

[Lord Adonis]

I entirely agree, and I hope that the noble Lord will say that to the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, who is sitting right next to him. It provides a devastating response to the noble Lord’s intervention just a moment ago.

We are asking the Government simply to declare the policy of Her Majesty’s Government in the negotiations that are taking place. Since one assumes that our European partners are being told what we are seeking to negotiate—it is quite hard to negotiate something if you do not tell the other side what you are seeking to negotiate—I cannot see that there is any damage to the public interest in telling this House and the public. These are very straightforward questions. The noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, says that we should not declare our hand midway. Are we or are we not in favour of keeping the European arrest warrant after 29 March next year? If we are, that is a clear negotiating objective of the Government. It will require a straightforward continuation of the current arrangements, and people like me will say all the way through that it is yet another argument as to why we would be much better off staying in the European Union in the first place and not having to go through this hugely complex and difficult process of attempting to replicate arrangements so that we do not end up with a worse situation, when there is every likelihood that we will.

The devastating response to and commentary on all these matters come from the Prime Minister herself—both in her Munich speech, in which she made it very clear that she would regard it as damaging to the national interest not to have a treaty at the end of March, and in her speech on 25 April 2016 before the referendum, in which she was even clearer on these matters. In that latter speech, in which she sought to argue why we should stay in the European Union, she went through in great detail the benefits that the European arrest warrant, the Prüm arrangements and so on gave to the security of the United Kingdom. Those are all points that the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, has raised.

The noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, seems to want to will the ends without the means. I understand that he has not had to negotiate these issues himself, but just says, on a wing and a prayer, that he wants these objectives to be secured and is sure that our negotiators in Brussels will be able to do it. If the noble Lord had had any systematic engagement with the Ministers responsible, I do not think he would necessarily have so high a degree of confidence in their capacity to negotiate his objectives.

The Prime Minister herself gave the devastating response to the question of why we should stay in the European Union in respect of these security and justice issues. In her speech of 25 April 2016, when referring to the European arrest warrant and the passenger name record directive, she said that these show,

“2 advantages of remaining inside the EU … without the kind of institutional framework offered by the European Union, a complex agreement like this could not have been struck across the whole continent, because bilateral deals between every single member state would have been impossible to reach”.

Let us be frank: that is why we are in the European Union, why it serves our national interest and why we have a very high degree of co-operation when it comes to justice and home affairs.

We are talking about very large numbers. The Prime Minister herself gave the figures, saying that in the five years prior to her speech—2011 to 2016—5,000 people had been extradited from Britain to Europe under the European arrest warrant, and 675 suspected or convicted wanted individuals were brought to Britain to face justice. She said:

“It has been used to get terror suspects out of the country and bring terrorists back here to face justice”.


Just as the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, gave his extraordinary statistics about how long it used to take to get extradition proceedings under way, the Prime Minister said:

“In 2005, Hussain Osman—who tried to blow up the London Underground on 21/7—was extradited from Italy using the Arrest Warrant in just 56 days. Before the Arrest Warrant existed, it took 10 long years to extradite Rachid Ramda, another terrorist, from Britain to France”.


These issues are of the utmost gravity and we need an assurance from the Minister that, in the negotiations for the treaty that the Prime Minister referred to in Munich, we will seek to maintain arrangements that are in every respect as good as those we currently have. If we do not have those in the treaty she presents to Parliament at the end of the year, many of us will say that this whole Brexit process has seriously damaged the security of the United Kingdom.