House of Lords (Cessation of Membership) Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Davies of Stamford and Lord Norton of Louth

Friday 29th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

My Lords, this is a timely Bill which has been brought forward by a parliamentarian and colleague for whom we all have the highest regard. I think I am right in saying that the noble Lord has served in three legislatures, over one of which he has presided. On a memorable occasion he sought election to a fourth, the European Parliament. He has enormous experience and, most important, he is a man of great wisdom, integrity and, if I may say so, of humanity. I therefore come to any Bill drafted and presented by him with the greatest respect. But I hope he will forgive me for saying that, though I certainly hope the Bill makes rapid progress, I do not share the noble Lord’s hope that it will go through without any amendment and therefore without the need for a Committee or Report stage.

I will take the clauses of the Bill in turn. I entirely agree with Clause 1 on retirement. That is a necessary measure to introduce—no doubt it should have been brought in years ago—and I have no difficulty in supporting it. I also agree with Clause 2 on non-attendance. I take it that the reference there to our Standing Orders fully provides for the possibility that someone might need to take absence on medical grounds for a year or more but would then be able to come back and resume his or her responsibilities. On that basis, I am extremely happy with Clause 2.

My problems arise under Clause 3. Let me explain: first, I am mystified by the reference to “one year” as being the defining point beyond which a sentence of imprisonment would result in the automatic exclusion or expulsion of a Member. I heard a rumour or suggestion—I do not believe that it is true—that the reason the noble Lord had thought of one year was because it would have caught one individual and excluded another who he had in mind. I cannot believe that that is correct because that would of course be an ad hominem form of legislation. The law should be based on universal principles universally applied. The attempt to simply target one individual rather than another would amount to a Motion of impeachment, or non-declared impeachment. We would not even be able to consider the merits of an individual case or look at the evidence. That would involve the breach of a whole range of the rules of natural justice. I am sure that the noble Lord had not got that in mind. It may be the case, though I am not aware of it, that in sentencing people convicted of criminal offences courts distinguish very specially between sentences of, say, 12 and 15 months and there is generally regarded to be a great qualitative step between those two points. But I have never heard that to be the case and I do not know that it is. If it were, there would not be any assurance that it would remain so, so that would not be good grounds for making that distinction.

I am very worried about the 12 months. I would like to know the rationale for it. I totally understand that the noble Lord wanted to distinguish between a criminal offence and a serious criminal offence. After all, to drive at 65 miles an hour in a 60 mile-an-hour zone is a criminal offence. Even if you did not notice that there was a sign saying that the speed limit was going down from 70 to 60, it is still a criminal offence if you are driving at 65. If traffic violations of that kind were grounds for automatic expulsion, I think quite a lot of us might have an individual problem. So I quite see the need to find some particular criterion but this is not a very satisfactory approach, for the reasons I have mentioned. There is a better way, which I will come on to in a second.

My second problem is much more serious. I do not believe in the idea of automatic expulsion. Here I totally agree with my noble friend Lord Wills, who made exactly the point that I had in mind to make. He said that he could not think of any particular examples but that there could well be some anomalies and injustices involved in having an automatic mechanism of that kind. I can think of some notable examples, not going back to the Middle Ages or the 16th or 17th centuries but to the last 100 or 150 years, when parliamentarians—Members of the House of Commons, at least—have been sentenced to prison. Fortunately, they were not as a result excluded from Parliament or from standing again. Had they been so, in retrospect all of us would have regarded that as a national scandal.

Let me mention a few names that will be familiar to noble Lords. Jimmy Maxton was imprisoned for a speech he made in Glasgow in the middle of the First World War. Arthur Jenkins was imprisoned at the beginning of the 1920s for aiding and abetting an illegal strike. George Lansbury—I put it to noble Lords that there has been no finer human being or man of greater integrity in British politics over the centuries—went to jail in 1913, just before the First World War, for a speech in which he supported the suffragette movement. Look at the large number—I think dozens in all—of members of the Irish Parliamentary Party who went to jail under the Coercion Acts that we passed here in the 19th century, including Parnell and Redmond who are two enormous figures of Irish history. Indeed, Parnell is a dominating giant of Irish history. They were also two very great parliamentarians. I think there have been no greater in Westminster and the House of Commons than Parnell and Redmond—fine men who dominated that Chamber for decades. They went to jail under the Coercion Acts and would automatically have been excluded from Parliament for all time if we had had the automatic mechanism contained in the Bill, so I do not believe that it is the right way forward.

What is the right way forward? I think it is the one that the noble Lord, Lord Steel, has resorted to in Clause 3(5). There he has reserved it for Members of the House of Lords who might be convicted in a foreign court with a sentence of more than one year. Of course, I totally see the logic of his making that particular provision in the light of the other provisions of his Bill. Clearly, in some foreign courts, it would be an offence, perhaps imprisonable for 12 months or more, just to criticise the current dictator or the ruling party in a one-party state. It is quite natural that he has decided to make provision for that eventuality in Clause 3(5). By doing so, he has recognised that there might be circumstances in which we need to consider the merits of an individual case. If we can consider those merits when someone has been imprisoned for a criminal offence—or supposed criminal offence—in a foreign court, why can we not consider them when he or she might have been convicted and sentenced to prison in a court in the United Kingdom? The noble Lord has admitted the principle of this alternative approach. I put it to him that he has solved the two problems that I have set out. That particular approach would be the right one to adopt in all circumstances. We should use the opportunity of the Committee stage of the Bill to remove the automatic mechanism and replace it with one along the lines of that he anticipates in Clause 3(5).

I have one final point. I am not clear that the Bill as currently justified would not contain an element of retrospectivity. I am sure that it would not be the noble Lord’s intent that it could be retrospectively applied but it does not explicitly say that it should not be. I see from the gestures of the noble Lord that he totally agrees with me on that. It would therefore be desirable to introduce a new clause or provision into the Bill in the course of the Committee discussions making it absolutely clear that there is no retrospectivity. There may be many of us on both sides of the House—I put that in the subjunctive for obvious reasons—who regret that we did not have in place a provision for expulsion when one or two egregious breaches of the criminal law, and what we might all think of as rules of personal honour and morality, were breached by Members of this House recently. Yet we did not have that mechanism in place at the time and we cannot retrospectively apply a penalty that did not exist at the time that those actions were committed. Therefore, we must make it absolutely clear that we stand by that fundamental principle that the law must not be retrospective.

With those few comments and suggestions, and looking forward to the future stages of the Bill—which I hope will proceed as rapidly as possible—I congratulate the noble Lord on the initiative that he has taken. The whole House will be grateful for it.

[Lord Norton of Louth]

Is the noble Lord aware that the purpose of Clause 3 is simply to bring this House into line with the House of Commons in terms of the triggering mechanism for expulsion? While I am on my feet I will just mention that the wording of subsection (5) is taken from the previous Government’s drafting of the original Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill in 2010.

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

When we consider legislation, we really must consider it on its merits and look at the general principles to which we in this House are attached and which we believe should guide and inspire legislation. It is not a good excuse—if I may say so—for bringing in bad or inadequate legislation or legislation that conflicts with those general principles that one was at some point in the past a member of a Government who in one particular, peculiar situation may have done something that creates a precedent for the bad proposal that is before us. I stick by the comments I made just now, and I do not believe that, whatever may be the case in relation to precedent that the noble Lord cites, we should do other than look at the merits of the case.

[Lord Norton of Louth]

Is the noble Lord therefore saying that the House of Commons is wrong in its provisions for expulsion?

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

I do not wish to repeat the speech that I have just made, but I have explained that I think that the Bill as currently drafted is not correct and could be improved. I hope it will be improved along the lines that I have suggested.