Liaison Committee

Debate between Lord Cormack and Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts

Thursday 15th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

I understand that we will not have any post-legislative scrutiny committees this year. Learning from our mistakes is one of the most important things that we can do when things have not gone as well as we wished. Could my noble friend the Senior Deputy Speaker explain why we felt on this occasion that there were no lessons to be learned?

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

I wish to add to that, because my noble friend has made a very important point, and one that I was going to seek to make anyway. Should it not be almost automatic that all major Bills of a highly contentious nature—we have had a number of them this year—should be subject to a degree of post-legislative scrutiny? I fear for many of these Bills and their impact. Your Lordships’ House has a wonderful record of post-legislative scrutiny, as my noble friend the Senior Deputy Speaker said in his opening remarks, and we should try to move to a situation where it is an automatic follow-through for all major Bills—not necessarily in the year after a Bill has been passed but within a cycle of five years, at the very outside.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Debate between Lord Cormack and Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts

Report stage
Wednesday 12th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I made a very brief reference to restorative justice in one of our debates on Monday. I am glad to have an opportunity to comment briefly on the amendment just moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher. I agree with her wholeheartedly. We should always do everything we can to keep people out of prison; to repeat myself from Monday, although sending people to prison is the punishment and the aim is rehabilitation, it does not always work like that. I know that from experience in my former constituency, which had a very large prison—Featherstone—and a young offender institution at Brinsford just a mile or so away. I believe a lot of the young people in Brinsford would have benefited enormously by not going to prison and would have benefited from restorative justice.

I became totally convinced in this view when I had the privilege to be the chairman of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee for the last of my Parliaments in the other place, 2005 to 2010. I saw at first hand the effect of restorative justice in Northern Ireland, and a lot of young people who would perhaps have gone on to a long life of crime were rehabilitated and came to terms with their victims. As the noble Baroness said, there has to be agreement from both sides, as it were, but it was wholly beneficial in a vast number of cases.

Following the White Paper to which the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, referred, it seems very strange indeed that there is no provision or recognition in the fairly massive Bill before us. One of my criticisms of the Bill is that it is too long. It should be three Bills rather than one—but that is another story and we have touched on that in the past. But although the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, said that she will not press this to a Division—I do not dissent from her on that—I hope nevertheless that my noble friend the Minister will be able to make some favourable and encouraging comments about the importance of restorative justice and its place in the criminal justice system.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords, I intervene to express my support for this modest but worthwhile amendment and, like my noble friend Lord Cormack, to urge my noble friend the Minister to give a sympathetic response when he winds up in a moment or two.

I have had an interest in RJ—restorative justice—for a number of years. In particular, I have followed the work of Why Me?, which has briefed us on the debate this afternoon. My noble friend the Minister will be aware of my concern, which I know is shared across the House, about the levels of reoffending, which seem a reproach to us all: a moral reproach, a societal reproach, a financial reproach—you name it. This high rate of reoffending is not a new problem; it has bedevilled our society and our prison system for many years.

It is said that the definition of stupidity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. That seems to be one of the positions we have got to with regard to trying new ideas which may—maybe at the margin—help cut the underlying reoffending rate. I am sure we need to try a new approach, or new approaches. To use the cricketing analogy, if I may, in light of the results of the test match in Australia, we need to change the bowling—

Immigration Bill

Debate between Lord Cormack and Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts

Thursday 3rd April 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts]

The noble Lord is right, but if what UK universities are saying is that they want to bring foreign students here to subsidise our university education system, that would be a clearer argument than the rather lofty arguments we hear that our duty is to do this because of our benefit to the world and because it is actually to our long-term advantage. If the noble Lord is saying that it is really all about money in the short term, fine—let us say that and be clear about it. I understand that as an argument and I am perfectly happy to accept its value.

Perhaps I may conclude. I repeat again for the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, that we should attract students to study here, but we need to do so with realistic aims in mind. In our very proper wish to do right by the world, we should not overlook the needs and indeed the rights of our settled population. That is why in my view the Government are right to take these measured steps. They are steps that I believe, and which the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, and the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, have acknowledged, have become more measured as the Government have responded to comments and criticisms as laid out in my noble friend’s letters of 12 March and 1 April. That is why I will be supporting the Government if the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, decides to test the opinion of the House on this amendment.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, will not feel that he has to test the opinion of the House, but I can imagine that he has been to some degree sorely provoked to do so by the remarks of my noble friend. That is because there did seem to be an inherent contradiction in them. On the one hand he protests—I do not doubt his integrity for half a second—that he wishes to see foreign students come here in great numbers, while on the other he seems to be arguing that we should not push it too far.

I do not want to repeat what I said in Committee when I supported the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, but I will briefly refer to one thing that I touched on then. I have the honour of being a member of the senior common room at St Antony’s College, Oxford. As I told noble Lords last time, we have students from 73 countries there at the moment. It is an extraordinarily important centre for postgraduate education—not just in Oxford, not just in England, but in Europe and, indeed, the world. From all over the world students come. In common with students at other colleges and universities, many of them go back and play leading roles in their countries. Some stay and play leading roles in ours. Where would we be in medical science and many other disciplines if some of them had not stayed? I hate to think how many consultants there would be in some of our hospitals—excellent consultants—if it were not for the fact that foreign students had come here, been taught—no doubt inspirationally—by people such as the noble Lord, Lord Winston, and had stayed. We are protecting ourselves, as well as our image as a nation, if we encourage without inhibition and without qualification.

I was very taken by what the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, said, both in Committee and today, and by what my noble friend Lady Williams of Crosby said. However, I have also been extremely impressed by the diligent interest that my noble friend Lord Taylor has taken in these matters. He clearly listened carefully to the arguments advanced in Committee and has tabled a number of amendments today that will go a fair way towards meeting many of the concerns that were expressed in Committee. I thank him for that, and for the infinite patience and trouble that he has taken in talking to me and others, and in trying to recognise where we are coming from.

A word that cropped up many times in our first debate was “perception”, and it has been touched on again today. How are we perceived? Where I take slight issue, not with my noble friend Lady Williams of Crosby but with the National Union of Students’ report from which she quoted, is that my anecdotal evidence from St Antony’s, Hull, Lincoln and other universities with which I have a connection would not bear that out. Most of the foreign students to whom I have talked have always said that they feel extremely welcome here—and proud to be here. They are anxious to stay to complete their studies, and most of them are anxious to return to play a leading part in their countries or localities when they go back. The National Union of Students’ statistics, which of course I am not in a position to challenge, clearly depend upon the questions that were asked. I just wonder what questions were asked.

However, I am concerned not with the past or the present so much as the future. It is clear from the article from which my noble friend Lord Hodgson quoted, and from other reports in recent months, that there is a falling off in the number of students coming from certain countries. Of course my noble friend Lord Hodgson is entirely right to say that there are a variety of causes and reasons for this. Of course he is right to say that cost is a factor, but it is not by any means the only factor. What we have to be absolutely sure of is that students coming, or contemplating coming, from other countries still keep the United Kingdom very much at the top of their wish list. From talking to Professor Margaret MacMillan, the Warden of St Antony’s, who herself is a distinguished Canadian historian, it is clear that Canada and the USA are more attractive to many students who would hitherto have put the United Kingdom at the top of their list. I am concerned about that.

I very much hope that when the Bill becomes an Act of Parliament, as of course it will, we will have been able to inject amendments into it that will make it very clear that, in seeking to tighten up our immigration policy, we are not in any way setting our face against students. The Prime Minister himself has said on many occasions that foreign students are welcome here without any cap on numbers. I welcome that. I am sure there is not a single Member of your Lordships’ House who does not welcome that. But it is important that we prove that that is what we mean by the contents of the legislation that we pass.

I look forward very much to what my noble friend the Minister will say when he replies. I hope and believe that he will be able to give the sort of assurances that the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, sought in his speech. I hope that the House will be united in backing his amendment, secure in the knowledge that, supplemented by future regulations, the situation will be as we would wish it to be: namely, that any potential student, be he or she in India, any part of the African continent or anywhere else for that matter, will feel that not only are the doors indeed open but that the “Welcome” sign is above them.

Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill

Debate between Lord Cormack and Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts

Wednesday 15th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack]

I was just about to sit down anyhow.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts]

My reason for having supported the noble Lord in Committee and again tonight is that if, like me, noble Lords participate in the Lord Speaker’s outreach programme, they will know that when you go to schools up and down the country the issue that comes up again and again and again is that of money. We have a generation of schoolchildren about to go to university who have grown up with the idea that this is a dishonourable place where rich men and influential groups have a power because of their ability to fund.

The noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, has put forward some incremental steps, which I support. I can only believe that the Front Benches cannot support them because they believe somehow, or they fear, that the comparative advantage, or competitive advantage, will be lost forever. They cannot think what it is, but something might come out of the woodwork that leaves one party at a disadvantage forever.

Sometimes, somewhere, we have to be brave, because against the £2 million to £3 million that the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, has said that it was going to cost, is the drip, drip, drip of damaging information about the behaviour and performance of this Parliament. That cannot be right for our country, whatever your political beliefs. Someone, sometime, somewhere has to be brave, and we need to give them a nod tonight to get on and be brave as soon as possible.