House of Lords Bill [HL]

Lord Foulkes of Cumnock Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 21st October 2016 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Elton is absolutely right to say that there is concern about the size of the House. But my noble friend Lord Strathclyde is equally right to say that this is more a perception than reality. Of course, there was a perception pre-1999 that the House was too big, but the vast number of the hereditary Peers did not attend. The net result of the 1999 Act was that about 90 working hereditaries were removed from the House, as well as a lot of non-working hereditaries.

If we are concerned about the size of the House, the Bill before us does nothing to reassure me. To limit this House to the size of the House of Commons would positively encourage Prime Ministers to keep on appointing working Peers in order to build up their number to 600. I think that that would be to the great detriment of the House.

My noble friend Lord Strathclyde was absolutely right to say that when we move out of here in a few years’ time, that will be the ideal point at which to start reducing numbers. Rather than follow the suggestion of my noble friend Lord Elton, I would rather go for a fixed number of Peers. I would go for 350, which is not that different from the current working House. To have a figure of 600 that would be variable over the course of a five-year Parliament would be a nonsense that would not help the situation.

If it comes to an election in order to achieve that, it will be nothing new in your Lordships’ House. For 273 out of the last 309 years, part of this House has been elected. I refer in particular to the Scottish representative Peers. Since 1707 until the Peerage Act 1963, there were 16 elected Scottish Peers—Peers of Scotland. After every general election they held an open election in Holyrood Palace, to which they were summoned, and they decided who the 16 would be. When that happened in 1707, it represented a reduction of 90% of Peers sitting in Parliament, because there had been 143 Scottish hereditary Peers sitting in the Scottish Parliament. So what my noble friend Lord Elton suggested, and indeed what the Lord Chancellor at the time, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, who I am pleased to see in his place, did in 1999 is minor in comparison with what the Scots suffered in 1707.

One of the problems that resulted from the reduction in 1707 applies to what my noble friend suggested. There was resentment in Scotland that they were not properly represented. As we move increasingly towards becoming a full-time working House, the remoter parts of the country are going to get cut off. I found this particularly when I was living in Caithness; it was one of my reasons for moving back to London. If one wanted to take part in business here on a Monday, the only way to guarantee that was to leave home on Sunday night. On a good day it was possible to make the journey in around five hours, but on a bad day it could take well over 16 hours. If the House of Lords is to become more political and professional, inevitably Peers in the outer reaches are going to be squeezed because they will not be able to participate.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)]

I support what the noble Earl said. Is he aware that almost 50% of the membership of this House is currently from London and the south-east of England?

[The Earl of Caithness]

My Lords, I am grateful to hear that from someone who lives comparatively close to an airport compared to where I used to live. I always welcome the noble Lord’s support—and indeed he makes a point for me. We are far too south-east orientated—M25-orientated—and if there is to be an election, it should be on a regional basis rather than on any other. We must make certain that we cover the geography of this country.

Also, the election should not be held on the proportion of Peers sitting at the moment but on the vote at the last general election. At the moment we have a disproportionate number of Liberal Peers, while the number of UKIP Peers in this House is insufficient to represent the electorate, and there are no Scottish Nationalist Peers. That might be their choice, but at least it should be built into our legislation that the parties that get a certain percentage of the vote at a general election should be allowed to be represented here. It should be up to them who they put up and in which region.

So I say to my noble friend that I would like more of what he is proposing in the Standing Orders to be on the face of the Bill—far too much is left to Standing Orders—and that the system that he is proposing is not one that will be workable or indeed popular throughout the country.

Franchise: British Citizens Abroad

Lord Foulkes of Cumnock Excerpts

Thursday 20th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

I think that quite a lot of people who live abroad still have houses and relatives here, and come here quite a lot. They still have a lot of connection with this country. There is no reason why they should not be allowed to have a view on the elections.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)]

Following the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, if British citizens who have gone abroad to avoid paying British tax are allowed to vote, but EU citizens living and working in Britain, who pay tax, are not allowed to vote, what has happened to the principle of no taxation without representation?

[Noble Lords]

It is the other way round.

Civil Society and Lobbying

Lord Foulkes of Cumnock Excerpts

Thursday 8th September 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)]

My Lords, I add my voice to the well-deserved, growing chorus of thanks to my noble friend Lady Hayter for giving us the opportunity to discuss this today. I have sat through every speech and am a regular attender in this House, as some noble Lords know. I have found it one of the most interesting debates that I have ever sat through. It has not been repetitive. We often have debates where people say exactly the same as the person before them, and the same again. This has been really fascinating, not least the excellent speech by my noble friend Lord Chandos—I hope we will hear a lot more from him, because it was tremendous.

Following the speech by my noble friend Lady Rebuck, I am going to rush out and get some books after the debate. That reading is going to do me a lot of good, I now know. I will not just enjoy it, it will actually help me to live longer—so I am looking forward to that. This has been a really fascinating debate. I am very pleased to have sat through it and to be a member of the Select Committee on Charities, which has been mentioned. It is most ably chaired by my noble friend Lady Pitkeathley, who has vast knowledge of this area. She is chairing our committee with great skill, expertise and insight into the sector. I hope the committee will come forward with some positive recommendations. I think that my noble friend, when she speaks, will confirm that we are already being inundated with lots of recommendations, evidence and submissions.

However, as I have said to the committee—my noble friend Lady Pitkeathley knows this—I do not want us to have just the usual suspects: the ones who regularly give evidence on this subject. Otherwise, we will not get the new, innovative ideas. We have been trying to encourage people to come forward with new ideas and with things that they have tried and that have been successful or not. I think we can learn from that. I am really looking forward to the further formal evidence sessions when we come back in October.

I should have declared at the start—it is in the register of interests—that I am now chair of Age Scotland. Before I was elected to the other place in the 1970s, I was director of Age Concern Scotland, so I have been involved in that area for a while. When I was asked to become a trustee of Age Scotland a few years ago, the current chief executive, my successor, said, “We want you on, George, because we knew you would have an interest in it, having been director of Age Concern Scotland”. But he said, “You’ll have more of a vested interest in the subject now”. I swore at him and said, “What a—something—cheek”. But he was right; I do have an interest in it and I understand the issues much better by being on the wrong end of the age spectrum myself.

I have found the debate fascinating, but I refute almost everything that the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, said. I do not think that he understands the charitable sector at all. He said that we are not accountable. That is rubbish. We have an annual general meeting coming up later this year at which all the members—we have more than 1,000—will be represented. They will decide to re-elect or not the officers of the organisation. In Scotland, we are also accountable to the OSCR, the Scottish Charity Regulator, and in England to the Charity Commission. That is a great deal of accountability.

Having become a trustee, I have great piles of paper about the responsibilities of trustees. The grave responsibilities are putting people off becoming trustees. If they get it wrong, they are in trouble. The noble Lord, Lord Balfe—I was going to say “Comrade Balfe”—should understand that. Trustees are accountable, and certainly more accountable than any member of this House at the moment. It is really important to recognise that.

Most of the debate has been about lobbying. I am not going to say very much about it except that it is a pity that it has become a dirty word because of some of the scandals. There is absolutely nothing wrong in a democracy with any body, organisation or individual making representations, particularly to elected Members in the other place. That is what it is all about in a democracy. They are supposed to take account of the views of all the organisations working in our communities and in society. There is absolutely nothing wrong with it; it is democratic accountability—representation at work. That is all I want to say about lobbying.

My main point is that we on the Select Committee are already finding, and I am finding at Age Scotland and I know other people in other charities are finding, that charities are currently between a rock and a hard place, to use that old phrase—the upper and lower grindstones of the mill—and are being really squeezed. Charities are expected to do more and more. The need is growing, particular among the elderly. The number of old people is growing almost exponentially. As we live longer, the needs become greater. Loneliness is a huge problem that we are having to tackle. I echo what my noble friends Lord Chandos and Lord Griffiths said earlier: charities should not be taking on the responsibilities that should rightly be carried out by statutory bodies. That is clear, but we are still being asked to do more and more of the work that is rightly done by voluntary organisations.

At the same time, it is becoming more difficult to raise the money to do the work. We heard earlier about chugging. That is being questioned and challenged—and rightly so. Philanthropy is not as widespread as it ought to be. Sometimes, it is the poorer people who are giving more—and certainly a larger percentage of their income and wealth—to charities than anyone else. It needs to be recognised that raising money is becoming more difficult. I hope that we will take account of this when we look at it in the Select Committee.

I have one last thing to say. We have three hours, so the noble Viscount, Lord Younger, should not worry too much—or indeed the noble Baroness, Lady Chisholm of Owlpen, for whom I have great respect, whether she is responsible or not, as my noble friend Lord Chandos said. I want to say a positive word about trade unions. I am a member of the General and Municipal Workers’ Union, and did a bit of work in this place for USDAW, the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers. Again, this comes back to what the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, said. USDAW asked me to take up an issue because its members were being attacked in shops, particularly when selling alcohol, and were being threatened; they were under tremendous pressure. I took up the issue and moved an amendment here. That is exactly the kind of thing that trade unions do to look after their members, so I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, will listen carefully when he goes to the Trades Union Congress next week. I think that he will find a message there that he ought to take account of, just as he ought to take account of the message that charities are democratic, are accountable and, equally, are doing a damned good job.

Civil Service Fast Stream

Lord Foulkes of Cumnock Excerpts

Monday 11th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

That is absolutely right and is key. As noble Lords said earlier, we need to ensure that diplomats have a grasp of culture, not just language.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD)]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

I absolutely undertake to look into it. I do not have a reply on that specific case at the moment.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

My Lords, as a member of the Official Opposition party, I ask the Minister whether he is receiving the same reports as me that morale in the Civil Service is plummeting because of the suggestion that all the best and the brightest should have the futile task over the next few years of extricating us from the European Union instead of improving our education, housing and transport and all the other important things that need doing. How will this affect recruitment to the fast stream?

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

I am sorry; I do not agree with what the noble Lord has said. I am interested that he is part of the Official Opposition; I wonder which is the unofficial opposition. All I would say to him is that we need to ensure we get the very best to undertake this task. However, at the same time, as he rightly says, we need to ensure that we continue to attract, and retain, the best right across the board.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Foulkes of Cumnock Excerpts

Tuesday 24th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Faulks) (Con)]

My Lords, it is a privilege for me to open the debate on Her Majesty’s gracious Speech in which we will be considering the Government’s priorities on the matters of home, legal, constitutional and devolved affairs in the year ahead. Underlying all these priorities, I should emphasise, is our commitment to be a one-nation Government who seek to extend opportunity wherever they can and help everyone in this country reach their full potential.

I turn first to the Government’s legal business. The prison and courts reform Bill included in the gracious Speech is, above all, part of a comprehensive strategy to reduce crime. It will reduce reoffending by making prisons places of education and purpose and ensure that our court system is accessible and proportionate. There is no doubt that our prison system is in need of reform. Those who work in our prisons—prison officers, governors, probation officers, charity workers and volunteers—do so tirelessly to support the individuals in their care and address the causes of their offending, and yet the system they work in hinders, rather than helps, their commitment to rehabilitation. They have to deal with an ageing estate, elaborate and centralised rules and regulations and increasing levels of violence and self-harm.

Those barriers to rehabilitation are reflected in reoffending figures. At present, nearly half—46%, to be precise—of adult prisoners are reconvicted within one year of release. The Government must therefore act to reduce those figures, cut crime and make our streets safer. The public would expect nothing less. However, an effective criminal justice system cannot afford to ignore the evidence on the causes of crime. We know, for example, that prisoners come disproportionately from harsh and violent backgrounds. Around two-fifths of them observed domestic violence as children, nearly one-quarter were taken into care and 47% do not have a single school qualification. So there will be a new emphasis on rehabilitation, based on a belief in the innate worth of every individual. Offenders, the Government argue, should be seen not simply as liabilities but as potential assets—people who can redeem themselves and contribute fully to society.

To achieve that, we need to unlock the potential not just of those in prison but of those supporting them, giving those at the front line the freedom to pursue what works. We will start by creating six reform prisons, where governors will be given more freedom over budgets, staffing and their relationships with business and charities. The Bill will support the creation of new reform prisons and provide that they are independently run and legally separate from the Secretary of State. The lesson of other public service reforms is that greater autonomy generates innovation. By giving such freedoms to governors we will allow them to choose the best education, training, healthcare and security for their prisoners. Reducing violence and self-harm will be a high priority since a calm, orderly environment is critical to the opportunity to rehabilitate.

These reforms will also allow for better accountability. There will be comparable statistics for each prison on reoffending rates, employment on release, and levels of violence and self-harm. That is how we will identify successful innovations and replicate them. These new freedoms for governors sit alongside our commitment to replace 10,000 places in ageing and ineffective prisons with new establishments better suited to the needs of prisoners today, to be built with £1.3 billion of investment announced at the spending review.

We also need to make sure that our courts and tribunals are operating efficiently and effectively and are able to deliver a system that is just, proportionate and accessible. The Bill will make justice more accessible to users by digitising the courts and tribunals system, making our systems easier to use and built around those who use them, while supporting those who are digitally excluded. It will enable us to get cases out of the courtroom that should not be there, so that a judge and a courtroom are used only where necessary. Across all jurisdictions, trained case officers will carry out routine case management, and technology will help to progress cases more efficiently and resolve more of them online. This will make for a more efficient courts estate.

We are making our family courts more focused on outcomes. More collaborative problem-solving approaches will be used, promoting better outcomes for families in the public and private family courts. We are also continuing the drive to make it easier for disputes to be resolved through mediation.

I turn now to the rule of law and to a crucial aspect of it: human rights, here and abroad. The Government remain committed to human rights, but we are committed to reforming domestic human rights law so that we can have a system that protects people’s rights but also commands the confidence of the public. This country has a proud tradition of respect for human rights, which stretches back centuries—long predating, I should stress, the Human Rights Act 1998. With that tradition embodied in Magna Carta, the Petition of Right, the Bill of Rights, the Claim of Right and other statutes, this country has always been a beacon for liberty and democracy. Indeed, our rights tradition has been exported all over the world.

That continues today. The UK has played a key role in dealing with the human costs of the conflict in the Middle East. We have contributed £2.3 billion to the Syrian crisis since 2012 and have committed to taking in more than 20,000 Syrian refugees by 2020. We have transformed the fight against sexual violence in conflict, persuading more than 150 states to agree for the first time that sexual violence should be recognised as a grave breach of the Geneva Convention.

That commitment to human rights and civil liberties is matched at home. The coalition Government scrapped ID cards and cut pre-charge detention. This Government brought forward the Modern Slavery Act 2015. The Government were elected with a clear mandate to reform the UK’s human rights framework. I know that noble Lords have eagerly awaited our proposals for a Bill of Rights, and I hope they will not be waiting much longer.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)]

Having spoken about treating prisoners more humanely, the Minister is now talking about human rights. Why do the Government not accept the decision of the European Court of Human Rights in relation to prisoners’ votes?

[Lord Faulks]

The noble Lord will know that both Houses of Parliament have had a chance to consider this issue on more than one occasion. The House of Commons has decided by a significant margin that it does not wish prisoners to have the vote, and that remains the position.

As I indicated, the Government have a clear mandate, but I want to address some worries that have been raised and talk about what our proposals will not do. Our reforms are not about eroding people’s human rights. They are not about walking away from the list of fundamental rights set out in the European Convention on Human Rights. The Government are and will remain committed to the protection of those rights.

The problems that have been highlighted by many—all over this House and in the other place—about the way in which human rights have been applied are not to do with the text of the convention itself. Rather, they are to do with its interpretation, which has been extended far beyond what those who drafted it ever planned.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

My Lords, I hope the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, will forgive me if I do not follow the theme in her excellent speech, but I want to revert to type and say a few words about the Queen’s Speech and Scotland.

The SNP parliamentary leader, Angus Robertson, writing in the Sunday Herald, which I think the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, will confirm is the house magazine of the SNP, said that there was “nothing of substance” in the Queen’s Speech concerning Scotland. We know that it was a pretty thin Queen’s Speech, and we know that the Government are a bit preoccupied with the referendum and the deepening divisions within their own party, but it would be a mistake to follow Angus Robertson and say that there are no measures affecting Scotland which require scrutiny. Indeed, of the 21 Bills in the Queen’s Speech, 13 apply in whole or in part to Scotland.

For example, the digital economy Bill promises,

“a legal right for all citizens and businesses to have a fast broadband connection installed”.

That is a big commitment which applies to the whole of the United Kingdom, and it is particularly important for us to know how it is to be delivered in Scotland, especially in rural areas, of which we have many, where broadband connections are often slow or non-existent. Can the Minister tell us whether the duty to implement the legal right will be devolved to the Scottish Government and, if so, will they be under the same commitment as a legal right? If he cannot answer that in his reply, I hope that he may drop me a note.

Although most of the proposals in the planning and infrastructure Bill relate to England, the National Infrastructure Commission, chaired by my noble friend Lord Adonis, is put on a statutory basis covering the whole of the United Kingdom. The briefing on the Bill says that the commission will “work closely and collaboratively” with the devolved Administrations, but that requires a two-way buy-in. If one of the commission’s main roles is to ensure that the regions of England do not suffer in relation to London, it makes it all the more important that Scotland is closely involved in the decision-making process as an integral part of the United Kingdom, rather than as a half-hearted onlooker whose only real interest is in not being part of the United Kingdom.

Thirdly and finally, there is the Higher Education and Research Bill. Although, again, most of it applies only to English universities, the research function covers Scotland. As we saw in the referendum when we thankfully decided to stay part of the United Kingdom, that is very important to Scottish universities. I hope that we will examine the Bill. If the SNP will be unable to do it in the House of Commons, I hope that we can all exercise our function, as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, rightly said, of scrutiny in the House of Lords.

Finally, I return to devolution for Scotland. We have had a lot of that; most noble Lords are probably fed up with hearing about it. Scotland now has the greatest power of any devolved Parliament anywhere in the world. Now is the time for consolidation. We should say, “That is enough”, with regard to Scotland. What the Scottish Parliament needs to do is to use the substantial powers that have been devolved to it. The priority now must be to look at English devolution and to fit the devolution that we come to an agreement on in relation to England into a structure—a whole United Kingdom framework. I favour a federal or quasi-federal system. We need some United Kingdom constitutional convention, as we had many years ago in Scotland, to find a coherent and stable solution, which is neither independence nor the status quo for Scotland. I think that a federal system would meet that requirement. I hope that we see some work done in that respect.

In the long term, I would like to see this House replaced by a senate of the nations and regions. Meanwhile, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, said, we need to look at how this House is becoming increasingly discredited. The appointments system is suspect, as he rightly said, and we need to have a serious look at it. As I said in my Question this afternoon, we have a huge regional imbalance in this House, which needs looking at, as 385 out of 808 of our number are from London. What do we do to resolve this? As a numbers of noble Lords have said, the Strathclyde review was set up and reported as a result of a fit of pique, and has been roundly rejected. But that is only part of the changes that need to take place in this House. There are so many of them, and we need to look at them in a coherent and comprehensive fashion. We need to set our House in order and, if we do not, someone else is going to.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

Ah, I am told by a noble friend that it will be “shortly”; let us see. I know that it is being awaited with avid anticipation. Before I leave the subject, I would like to talk about the point raised by a number of noble Lords about the need to tackle the size and composition of the House of Lords. Obviously, these are important questions, which is why my noble friend the Leader of the House has convened cross-party talks regarding the way forward. Those talks have been constructive and there are plenty of ideas around, as we heard tonight.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

I wonder if I can give the Minister another idea. If the number of Peers from London was reduced to the same percentage as those from the rest of the United Kingdom, the size would come down below 600 immediately.

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

That is an extremely interesting idea, which I know was raised this afternoon. I will take that away and mull it over tonight. There have been plenty of ideas around, as I was saying, but to make progress there has to be the political will on all sides to move forward. The best way for us to proceed is in the way that has been so successful in recent years: to look for incremental change that commands cross-party support rather than risking biting off more than we can chew.

Turning to other aspects of the constitution, my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth and others raised concerns about our approach to constitutional reform. I argue that the Government have a very clear goal: to deliver a constitutional settlement that is balanced and fair to everyone in the country and all parts of the UK. The British constitution is characterised by pragmatism and an ability to evolve and adapt to circumstances, and our unique constitutional arrangements enable agility and responsiveness to the needs and wishes of our citizens. I know it is 10.10 pm but I cannot resist the temptation to quote Bagehot at this hour. I dug this out as I thought my noble friend might raise this point, and I am sure he knows this quote by heart:

“Half the world believes that the Englishman is born illogical, and that he has a sort of love of complexity in and for itself. They argue that no nation with any logic in it could ever make such a Constitution. And in fact no one did make it. It is a composite result of various efforts, very few of which had any reference to the look of the whole, and of which the infinite majority only had a very bounded reference to a proximate end”.

That is not necessarily the Government’s strict position but I think it informs debate on this issue.

As to how we make decisions on these matters, the Government make these policy decisions, like all others, through the Cabinet and the Prime Minister, while the Cabinet Office has oversight of constitutional policy and the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster chairs the Constitutional Reform Committee. I look forward very much to the report of the Constitution Reform Group to which the noble Lords, Lord Hain and Lord Lisvane, referred. I am sorry to disappoint the noble Lord, Lord Lennie, but there are no plans to establish a constitutional convention. I still hold to the view that, to have such a convention, we would need a convention on a convention to agree its remit and membership. Instead, our focus is on delivering a fair and balanced settlement, as I have said.

Turning to another part of our constitution—the hidden wiring that is the Civil Service, which the noble Lord, Lord Razzall, mentioned—I have a great deal of time for the Civil Service, mainly because my grandfather and uncle were both civil servants. I believe it is excellent at policy and implementation. That said, I am certainly not complacent. There is always more that we can do. We are indeed building on the work of my noble friend Lord Maude, transforming how the Civil Service operates to meet the challenges of the digital age.

I turn to another part of our constitution: the little platoons, or charities, which the noble Baronesses, Lady Scott of Needham Market and Lady Barker, spoke about. I assure them that the Government work closely with the sector on all manner of issues, including on volunteering and charities. I will look in particular into the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, about procurement, but at this stage I will say that I entirely agree with her that we need to harness the power and energy of the sector if we are to meet out life chances agenda. She is absolutely right on that.

The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, mentioned party funding. I very much look forward to reading his Bill. He calls it a modest offering, but I do not think anything that the noble Lord produces is modest. We will always look to constructive ideas. Obviously, the Government cannot impose consensus on the political parties, but we are open to debate and dialogue, including taking forward measures for discussion on promoting small-scale private fundraising. That brings me to the point on the overseas voters Bill raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter. She asked whether overseas voters who have lived abroad for more than 15 years will be able to donate to political parties. This will become clear when we publish the Bill.

As my right honourable friend the Prime Minister has repeatedly said, the fight against extremism is the struggle of our generation. There is obviously the question of how we define extremism, as a number of noble Lords said. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, the noble Baronesses, Lady Hamwee and Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark all raised this. I will ensure that these points are highlighted with the department, but will say at this juncture that we will consult on the detail in the coming months, and if a definition is used in the Bill I am sure it will be debated at length, quite rightly, during its passage through Parliament.

On the broader point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick of Undercliffe, that these measures could undermine freedom of speech, I would argue to the contrary. Our extremism strategy protects fundamental shared values such as freedom of speech, and nothing in the powers will stop people from holding or expressing their religious views. The measures will not curtail the democratic right to protest, nor will they close down debate. We are going to consult on these measures and will continue to talk to community groups, the police and others. We will of course listen to the views of groups and individuals as the legislation undergoes scrutiny in Parliament.

Turning to the proposals to reform our prisons, I was delighted by both the support and the interest that this package of measures has received. As my noble friend Lord Faulks said, this will be the biggest shake-up of prisons since Victorian times. A pilot of six trailblazers, including one of Europe’s largest prisons, Wandsworth, means that more than 5,000 offenders will be housed in reform prisons by the end of this year. A number of your Lordships, including the noble Lord, Lord Palmer of Childs Hill, said that what is really needed is more investment. I do not want to bandy lots of statistics around, but we are investing £1.3 billion to modernise the prison estate, building nine new prisons and creating 10,000 new prison places with better education facilities and rehabilitative services. On top of that, we have responded to staffing pressures—a point raised by a number of noble Lords—with an increase of 530 officers since January last year. Noble Lords will also be aware that, in addition to the £5 million which we have committed to rolling out for body-worn cameras and additional CCTV in prisons, the Government have allocated £10 million to deal with prison safety issues.

A number of noble Lords raised the issue of overcrowding. We want to tackle overcrowding and stop warehousing prisoners in a way which simply fuels reoffending. That is what the reform programme will do. Our current prison estate is overcrowded. We will close down ageing and ineffective prisons, replacing them with buildings fit for today’s demands. We will also reorganise the existing estate so we are using it as effectively as possible, by ensuring prisoners are held in environments that match their needs and risks. In doing all this, we will be mindful of the advice and recommendations we receive, which the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham—who speaks with so much experience on this matter—spoke so eloquently about.

All that said, the best way to reduce the prison population is to tackle the causes of crime in the first place. My noble friends Lord Farmer and Lady Stroud, as well as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Rochester, spoke passionately about the Government’s life chances agenda, which aims to do just that. We need to do more—much, much more—to tackle deep-rooted social challenges which threaten not merely to thwart opportunity but lead to a life of crime, including, as my noble friend Lady Stroud mentioned, family instability and breakup.

Elections: Campaigning

Lord Foulkes of Cumnock Excerpts

Thursday 5th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

I have no idea about that second point, but this was about elections, not referenda.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)]

My Lords, without diminishing in any way the report of the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, I ask the Minister to comment on the Electoral Commission’s reference to more than 30 Conservative MPs who overspent and broke electoral law and why nothing appears to have been done about this in the run-up to today’s election.

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

If the noble Lord is referring to allegations that the Conservative Party broke electoral spending limits in constituencies, as far as I understand, the Conservative Party correctly declared all local spending in the general election. An administrative error was made by not declaring some national spending, but the Conservative Party still considerably underspent the national spending limit.

House of Commons: Ministers

Lord Foulkes of Cumnock Excerpts

Monday 30th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

First, I pay tribute to what the noble Lord did on this issue in the last Parliament, in which I seem to remember that this matter was discussed quite considerably. Just to illuminate the issue, as the noble Lord said, a number of comparisons could be made between the other place and other Chambers around the world. Some 14.6% of Members in the other place can be appointed Ministers, which compares with Australia where Ministers account for 23% of their Parliament and New Zealand where, also, 23% of their Parliament comprises Ministers. I, for one, think that the other place actually does a very good job, although I would like to pay tribute to this place as well, as it performs an excellent role in what I consider to be legislative acupuncture, which can be quite painful for those standing in this place but can be very good for the nation as a whole.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)]

Did the Minister manage to read the article in the Telegraph about a proposal to reduce the size of this place by 20% by what the former Leader of the House described as a “hair cut”? How does he reconcile that with the introduction of Peers two by two, day after day and week after week?

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

It is always good to see the noble Lord on such fighting form. I did read that—I always read the newspapers on a Sunday morning, obviously. It is always interesting to read about what might or might not happen in the weeks ahead. I shall save what might happen for the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde.

Security: State Procession

Lord Foulkes of Cumnock Excerpts

Thursday 9th July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

The noble Lord has raised interesting questions based on his own experience. I have looked into the clauses of the leases for both the Old War Office and Admiralty Arch and I am satisfied that they allow for appropriate access for both security and ceremonial purposes. The hotels will employ their own staff, and while the Government have not insisted on security clearances for each member of staff, it is obviously in the hoteliers’ interests to take their security checks on their staff into consideration. Furthermore, I should point out that both the Metropolitan Police and the security services are very involved, as always, in ceremonial processions and major events, and will continue to be so to make sure that security is upheld.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)]

My Lords, this is privatisation gone mad. Does the noble Lord really think that selling off the Old War Office building, just up the road from the Cenotaph, to a private foreign company for use as a hotel and private apartments will not cause major security risks? Of course it will. There will be Remembrance Day services and the Queen coming to open Parliament; it is extremely dangerous. Surely he must think again.

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

My Lords, I would take the noble Lord’s advice a lot more seriously if his own party had not recommended that we sell Inn the Park, the Civil Service Club and Marlborough House at the last general election. However, putting that to one side, I also point out that once again the Labour Party seems to be in a state of sleep as regards the deficit, as the noble Lord, Lord Mandelson, seems to have suggested. We do actually need to bring down the deficit—

Taxation: Capital Gains Tax

Lord Foulkes of Cumnock Excerpts

Tuesday 7th July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

I draw a number of conclusions, my Lords. Overall, the Government believe that the current top rate of CGT at 28% is a good balance between raising revenue, reducing the incentives to substitute income for capital gains and retaining incentives to save and invest.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)]

My Lords, further to the question of the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, what are the Government doing to make sure that people liable for capital gains tax are paying it?

Regulation of Political Opinion Polling Bill [HL]

Lord Foulkes of Cumnock Excerpts

Friday 19th June 2015 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

That the Bill be now read a second time.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)]

My Lords, many Members of the House will recall that I introduced this Bill in the last Session. It only got to First Reading, but when I introduced it in this Session it got a much more animated welcome, for reasons that I will go into.

First, I will go back a few years to when I was a student—well, that is many, many years. I did some work on polling then, and I learnt some of the techniques of polling, such as random sampling and the importance of finding the people who were chosen for the random sample and going back to them until you actually get their views; you do not take any substitutes. I learnt about quota sampling and the importance of getting class, sex and age in the right numbers and the right groupings to represent a cross-section of society: the make-up of the whole population.

I also learnt about the inexorable margin of error, however good your polling is. Most important of all, I was told about what makes a good poll and what does not. A poll should be run in a scientific, politically neutral manner, with no influence from those who have commissioned and indeed paid for it. That means, to take just one example, avoiding leading questions and ensuring that the wording of questions is fair and unbiased.

For some time now I have been concerned at the direction in which polling in this country has been moving. Rigour and accuracy seem to be subordinated to the demands of speed in getting the poll out and keeping the cost down: instant polling and cheaper polling. The media expect polls to be completed in an extraordinarily short time, often to be ready for publication the day after the sample has been taken. That means that there has been a preference for a predominance of internet and telephone polling, often using predetermined panels which stay the same throughout the whole of the polling period.

My concern about the dangers of this corner cutting were reinforced when I attended a seminar chaired by my noble friend Lord Lipsey, who I am glad to see is going to speak in the debate. Polling experts John Curtice and Peter Kellner were in attendance and they confirmed, in answer to a question I put, the paramountcy of speed over accuracy because of the incessant demands of the media. That is the background which gave rise to my strong determination to introduce this Bill.

What reinforced for me the point that accurate polling is an important issue for the future of our democracy was the one rogue YouGov poll held on 7 September 2014 that seemed to indicate for the first time in the referendum that the Yes campaign was ahead, by 51% to 49%. This caused a widespread panic among politicians in the Better Together campaign. It resulted in a vow set out on the front page of the Daily Record to go for even greater devolution of powers to Scotland and led to the creation of the Smith commission. In light of the actual result of the referendum, it is clear that the fears of a Yes victory were unfounded and that the nationalists had directly benefited from just one highly inaccurate poll. It is not right that the real issues of democratic politics should have been so materially affected by a statistical prediction that turned out to be so wrong. Indeed, the course of history was changed by that one inaccurate poll.

The general election gave further evidence of the direct and highly undesirable impact of polling on politics and on events. The constant polling—and it was constant—and the constant media coverage which resulted from that made it seem beyond doubt to the media and to all of us that the contest for the general election was going to be neck and neck. Some polls suggested that Labour would be the largest party. All of that polling shaped the nature of the debate. Members of this House will recall that throughout the election, the main topics of debate were not important policy issues such as defence, foreign affairs and the health service, it was the consequences of a Labour minority Government, with the SNP set to hold the balance of power.

Noble Lords will remember the posters of Ed Miliband in Alex Salmond’s top pocket and of Nicola Sturgeon pulling the strings. All those resulted from the polls, which predicted that the election was going to be neck and neck. Consequently, major policy issues were absent from the campaign and the result of the election could well have been different if we had focused on those major policy issues. Inaccurate polls, as they turned out to be, again appear to have changed the course of history.

As a result of those manifest polling errors, I have found that when I talk to—I was going to say “comrades”—colleagues and others, there is now far greater support for the creation of some kind of regulatory body overseeing political opinion polling than ever before. That is why I have reintroduced this Bill in this Session. The political will is there to ensure that similarly damaging mistakes are not made in the future and that our democratic process is not undermined.

Even the British Polling Council realised that something went wrong and admitted it. It has set up an inquiry into why the polls in the run-up to the election were so consistently inaccurate. But the British Polling Council is a self-regulating body and will be so in carrying out the inquiry. It proposes merely a one-off investigation. Understandably, the council claims credit when the polls are correct but it needs to accept some blame now that its methods have been shown to be ineffective. To ensure that a more rigorous and accurate system is introduced, we need an independent and permanent regulator.

Contrary to what has been said in some media headlines and comment, the Bill does not legislate to ban polls but would allow the proposed regulatory authority to impose limits on their publication if it thought fit. That is already the case in Spain, France, India and Italy where, if it is thought that that could be helpful, the decision could be taken. The Bill would replace the self-regulation of the British Polling Council with an independent body which would have responsibility for issuing regulation and guidance on things such as sampling methods, the wording of questions and arrangements concerning publication, including how close to election day polls could be published.

I should answer some of the criticism made by Professor Ron Johnston of Bristol University in a letter to some noble Lords—interestingly, he did not send a copy to me—and by the Political Studies Association on Twitter. I wish that both had approached me directly. They have expressed concern that the Bill might infringe academic freedom to undertake polling on political attitudes and behaviour for the purposes of independent research. That certainly is not my intention. Clause 1(8) makes clear that the authority’s regulatory powers will be restricted specifically to polling concerning voting intentions in, first, local authority elections; secondly, in parliamentary elections, including the Welsh, Northern Irish and Scottish Parliaments; and, thirdly, referenda. Academic research on other political behaviour will therefore not be affected. If there is any worry that wording changes might be needed, I would be happy to consider any amendment necessary.

It is also important that all those with an interest in polling are represented on the board of the authority. The Bill proposes that we should have representatives nominated by the British Polling Council, which would represent the industry, as well as representatives from all the political parties and the media. Indeed, I am open to other suggestions as well. Transparency is also important, and this Bill provides that the authority would publish its rules within six months of its establishment and consider amendments at least annually.

I welcome the fact that the noble Lord, Lord Cooper of Windrush, will speak in the debate—in the absence, sadly, of the super-pollster Lord Ashcroft from our midst. Are we not less spectacular and exciting in his absence? Incidentally, he is not really a pollster. He contracted organisations to carry out his polling during the election. He decided where it would be, the questions and the publication—he is a multimillionaire, of course, so he can pay for it—but he would not tell us which organisations carried out his polling.

So we have the noble Lord, Lord Cooper, from Populus, who will no doubt give us a view from the industry. I will be interested to hear what he has to say. I feel that the industry has been unduly defensive about my Bill. Given that the BBC is regulated, that we have regulators such as Ofcom, and that other organisations and industries are regulated, it surely makes sense that the multimillion-pound political opinion polling industry is brought into line with the others. I look forward to the noble Lord’s comments.

In conclusion, polling has grown exponentially in recent years.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

I am very grateful to the noble Lord. I do not want to be mischievous—well, not too mischievous—but has he seen the report about the Glasgow pensioner who got odds of 7:1 on an outright Conservative victory, apparently put down £30,000 and cleared £240,000? Has the noble Lord considered recruiting him to head up his polling organisation?

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

That is a very interesting suggestion. As usual, the noble Lord is not being mischievous; he is being very helpful. It would be good to have an independent chair of the polling authority. I am not exactly sure whether it should be that pensioner. We must find out who he is and whether other predictions and suggestions he has made have been successful. We certainly should take that on board.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

Can I raise a more serious question: is there any point to polling at all? You ask people what they are going to do at the next election. They say, “The next election is not for weeks or months. I haven’t even made up my mind”, so their views are not even very relevant.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

That is a very interesting question and much wider than what I am suggesting. If the noble Lord is suggesting that the regulatory body I am setting up should have a wider remit, that is certainly something the House can look at. I would not be averse to looking at it.

As I was saying, in the general election of 2015 we saw almost daily polls for a while—it was astonishing. However, almost all of them turned out to be wrong. The media moguls, who are very rich and own most of our newspapers, commission most of those polls. They publicise them and they become a very powerful election tool. As the noble Lord implied, this has moved beyond a method of independent measurement of voting intention to having real and increasing influence over the result, with potentially serious consequences for our democracy. Polls now play a major part in deciding the future of our country. It is therefore essential that they be carried out in a rigorous and unbiased manner. That is what the minimal and independent oversight that I am putting forward in the Bill sets out to achieve. It is with that aim in mind that I beg to move.

[Lord Cooper of Windrush (Con)]

My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes of Cumnock, noted, following the recent retirement from your Lordships’ House of my noble friend Lord Ashcroft, I think that I am the only Member of this House who is a pollster by trade. Therefore, I declare my obvious interest and draw the attention of the House to my entry in the register. I am the co-founder of a research company. For well over a decade I have earned my living by conducting research. A very small part of that research is polling, a very small part of which is political polling. The Market Research Society says that less than 1% of all the market research conducted in this country is polling and a tiny fraction of that is political polling. The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, exaggerates when he describes it as a multi-million pound political polling industry.

I put firmly on the record that I, of course, accept that the recent general election was a serious failure for those of us who produce opinion polls that try to capture accurately the proportions in which people support the different political parties. The polls did not get it all wrong; they were pretty accurate in describing and predicting the scale of the landslide that took place in Scotland. They got the vote share for the Liberal Democrats and UKIP about right, but they got wrong the single most important thing—the proportions of Labour and Conservative votes in England. That was a serious error.

Voting intention polls are meant to scatter either side of a mean—in other words, when you look back after the election, there should be about as many polls a bit over what each party got as there are a bit under. However, that did not happen with the recent general election. All the final polls overstated the support for the Labour Party and understated the support for the Conservatives. In fact, if we look back further, there were more than 1,000 polls in the second half of the last Parliament, and, far from scattering either side of a mean, only one of those polls put the Conservative share of the vote higher than the 38% that they eventually got.

We know that at some point between 2010, when the polls were pretty accurate, and 2015, when they were wrong, tried and tested methods suddenly failed to capture accurately a snapshot of how voters were going to vote, and in what proportions they were going to support the Labour and Conservative Parties. One of the flaws of the regulatory body proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, is that, had it existed during the last Parliament, it would have had no point of reference and no way of detecting during that five-year period that suddenly, poll methods which had been accurate had become inaccurate. It is only after they err at an election that we can see that clearly, and at that point, obviously, they must be addressed.

There was a serious failure and the polling industry takes it seriously. Before breakfast on the morning after the election, the polling organisations had all agreed without reservation that a full and open inquiry had to be held. That inquiry was established within 24 hours under the joint auspices of the British Polling Council and the Market Research Society and under the independent chairmanship of Professor Patrick Sturgis, a highly respected academic and director of the ESRC’s National Centre for Research Methods. The inquiry holds its first public evidence-gathering session this afternoon.

Since the general election, I have encountered an amazingly large number of people who are very keen to tell me that they knew all along that the polls were wrong, and they had always foreseen a Conservative victory. I struggle to recall many people who said that before the fact, but I note for the record that the Minister, my noble friend Lord Bridges of Headley, is one of the few who certainly did. As noted in yesterday’s Question for Short Debate, he not only placed a bet a year ago that the Conservatives would win a majority but even correctly predicted the exact size of that majority. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, said, perhaps we should all have saved ourselves the trouble and just polled my noble friend Lord Bridges. It would have been quicker, more accurate and cheaper than polling the 4,000 others whom we polled in our final pre-election poll.

However, it is important to remember that we have been here before, and more important still to remember the lessons of that history. One of the reasons why almost everybody assumed the polls were right was that they had been right for the previous four general elections. However, those four consecutive successes for the polls came after another humiliating failure. As many noble Lords will remember, in 1992 the polls were also wrong—in fact, they were even more wrong in 1992 than they were in 2015. After that failure there was a full inquiry, conducted publicly and transparently, just as there is now. Its conclusions led to a series of changes in the way that voting polls were conducted. These changes by and large fixed the problem. As I noted, at the next four elections, the polling organisations that used those post-1992 methods got the result right. They scattered either side of party vote shares and remained within their margin of error. That is about as accurate as we can expect polls to be, as the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, noted earlier. Most if not all the changes that were adopted by the industry to fix the failure in 1992, which resulted in the polls being more accurate subsequently, would have been less likely if the noble Lord’s Bill had applied and the regulatory body he proposes had existed.

The noble Lord has expressed a nostalgic attachment to face-to-face polling, as if that is the immutable gold standard of doing a poll, but the switch away from face-to-face polls was one of the central recommendations and conclusions of the 1992 inquiry. The inquiry concluded that for many different reasons it had become too difficult to get a representative sample of the whole population—of all different types of voters—by doing a face-to-face poll, so one of the recommendations was to switch to random digit-dial telephone polling. It was very controversial at the time. Many people opposed it and felt that switching from face-to-face to telephone at a time when only about 90% of households had a fixed-line telephone was a dubious step to take. After the inquiry, some pollsters switched to the phone method; some did not. Learning from the inquiry, some adopted new measures of weighting polls; others did not. At the next election in 1997, the pollsters which had made those switches were accurate and the ones that had not got the result wrong again.

The lesson from the last time the polls were wrong is that we need to define the problem openly, frankly and fully, and then innovate to solve it. The flaw at the heart of the Bill, in my opinion, is that it would obstruct this process, not help it. The noble Lord’s Bill would give a new regulatory authority responsibility for, “specifying approved sampling methods”. As I say, it is highly likely that in 1992 such a body would have judged telephone polling to be too risky and would have probably stopped the change that made the single biggest step towards fixing the problem and restoring accuracy to the polls. The noble Lord also wants “the wording of questions” to be governed by the new authority that the Bill would create. That seems to be verging on the Orwellian—the idea that we have a state-established body that will decide what you can and cannot ask, and in what terms, seems extraordinary to me.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

Just on that specific point, does the noble Lord not agree that in the Scottish referendum the wording was vital? There were discussions between both Governments about it, and wider discussions about it, but it was an absolutely crucial issue.

[Lord Cooper of Windrush]

I entirely accept, of course, that the wording of questions matters. Everybody who works in opinion research and everyone who does polls knows perfectly well that the way you ask the question can make a big difference to the answer you get. But my point is that on any issue of consequence, substance or controversy, where there will be impassioned views on both sides, there is no universally accepted neutral way of expressing a poll question. That goes to a central error at the heart of the Bill, which is the idea that these things are or ever could be subject to clear-cut right or wrong answers. There is no consensus—or anything close to one—among research organisations about either the best way to conduct a poll or the right way to phrase the questions that you may ask. That is why the British Polling Council was created: to ensure transparency and disclosure, rather than attempting to define the undefinable or police a supposedly objective “correct” approach, because no such approach exists. In my opinion, the state-backed regulator proposed by the noble Lord would stifle or kill the experimentation and innovation that have worked for the industry in the past, and which it still needs.

The third and final power proposed for the new regulatory authority is the power to ban the publication of polls before elections if it so chose. I think this would be an extraordinarily illiberal step, an affront to freedom of expression and one which certainly the courts of France and other places have judged to be a prima facie breach of Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. There are two further very clear practical reasons why it is a terrible idea.

First, it would create an asymmetry of information. The Bill posits restrictions on the publication of polls. It would not and could not stop polls being conducted, certainly by political parties, which would continue to conduct private polls and would no doubt continue to talk to journalists about what those polls say. It would not stop polls being conducted by, for example, hedge funds and investment banks, and quite likely by media clients as well, as the noble Lord says. All it would do is stop those polls being openly reported. Pollsters would get to sell what would have become privileged information to private clients—information which, without the provisions of the Bill, they would have had to read in the newspaper like everybody else. The Bill would turn a world where everyone has the same information into one in which the powerful would know what was going on but the voters would not.

I was struck by the way that the noble Lord spoke about the supposed influence of the polls in the recent election. Most of his remarks were actually about the way that the polls were reported and the dominance in the media coverage of the picture that they were telling which, as we now know and clearly accept, turned out to be wrong. However, unless he is also proposing to circumscribe the freedom of the press to comment on what they think is going on in public opinion and how they read the state of the parties, I do not see how his Bill would in any case achieve the objectives that he set out. I assume that he would not propose to circumscribe the freedom of the press as well.

The second fundamental flaw with the Bill is that, in the internet era, it should be pretty obvious that banning the publication of polls is totally unenforceable. That fact was explicitly at the heart of the judgment of the French courts in 1998 to scrap the law that France had to ban polls in the seven days before elections because they judged even then, nearly 20 years ago, that the viability of media blackouts was fatally undermined by the emergence of the internet. There would be nothing we could do to stop foreign polling organisations conducting online surveys and publishing them online. There would be nothing we could do to stop anyone else publishing on websites with domains beyond UK jurisdiction the results of these polls, so any attempt to ban the publication of polls is simply unenforceable and futile.

I submit that the provisions in the Bill could not and would not have done anything to alter the fact that the polls were wrong, or to stop them being wrong. In fact, it would have made it much more difficult for the polling industry to respond responsibly to those problems. That is why anyone who cares about opinion polls and their accuracy, and their important role in a vibrant, free democracy, should oppose the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

My Lords, this has been a very interesting, and at times quite exciting, debate. I loved the Orwell/Clouseau allusions.

Perhaps I may deal with the Minister’s comments first. My point about Space Invaders had nothing to do with aliens or ET; it concerned the machines that young people get addicted to. In the 1980s, it was Space Invaders; now, there are other kinds of machines and activities which young people get addicted to and which create problems. One of my colleagues in another place raised this matter very recently.

The Minister mentioned the Scottish referendum and challenged me, because not just one poll but three polls were wrong. That reinforces my argument. All three of them were wrong and that makes it even worse. I am sure that the Minister’s reply was written before he heard my speech. I did not argue that I was introducing the Bill because Labour lost the election; quite the reverse. That was not part of my argument. I will come back to the Minister shortly but I think that in the end, he gave at least a little bit of an indication that he was willing to discuss this issue further.

I welcomed the response from my noble friend Lady Hayter on the Front Bench. She made a particularly important point about recall ballots. It would be quite outrageous if opinion polls were used in the way that they have been against an MP who was facing a recall ballot. That is a very important point and I was grateful that my noble friend said that she welcomed the debate on this issue.

I was particularly grateful for my noble friend Lord Lipsey’s welcome. He and I usually agree on most things. We agreed on most of this today, and I look forward to further discussions with him, in Committee and outside, so that we can consider this whole issue further.

I think that the noble Lord, Lord Cooper, with no disrespect to the Minister, made the most effective criticism of my Bill. I respect that, because he knows exactly what he is talking about. This issue needs further discussion. He said that the pollsters got it wrong in 1992. I remind him that they also got it wrong in 1970. He may be too young to remember that far back, but I remember it very well; I was a candidate in that election. They thought that they had got it right in 1992, but they got it wrong again. It seems that they get it wrong every 22 years.

The noble Lord referred to tried and tested methods. However, it seems that the methods that were tried and tested are being abandoned, and that is my concern. He also raised a question about publication and suggested that it may be the media that need regulation. I would not disagree with that. That is being dealt with elsewhere in another context, but it should be looked at in relation to this issue as well.

I hope that we will look at this. I said in my introductory speech, and I reinforce and underline it now, that I am willing to look at amendments. I just want this to be looked at. If there is a better way—if my noble friend Lord Lipsey or even the noble Lord, Lord Cooper, can come up with a better way—I am willing to look at it and to consider a substantive amendment.

I must say that I respect the Minister—his speech was fascinating and enjoyable, especially his Orwell and Clouseau allusions—but way back in the 1980s I proposed something. I was strongly, sometimes violently, opposed by the industry, the Minister pooh-poohed me and the other place threw out my proposal. It said that it was ridiculous. Why was I suggesting it? Why was I imposing this limitation on people’s freedom? I was proposing at that time to ban smoking in public places. Now it is the accepted norm. Everyone agrees with it.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

I am most grateful to the noble Lord—perhaps I may call him my noble friend—for letting me intervene. I was rather struck when listening to the Minister’s contribution because I read an article from 2012 in the Daily Telegraph by a certain George Bridges—I am assuming that it is the same George Bridges as the Minister—in which he said:

“But politicians who are guided by polls are chasing will-o’-the-wisp in a forlorn search for popularity. They are not selling baked beans, but something more complex: vision, belief and leadership. And the more politicians change to reflect every passing fad, the less the public believes what they say, and will-o’-the-wisp flits away”.

I congratulate the noble Lord on his championing of the ban on smoking in public places at the time, which shows a bit of the vision and leadership that was not entirely deflected by the polls. I thank him for airing this issue in the Chamber today.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

I am really grateful to my noble friend, but I would have been even more grateful if he had given me that quotation earlier. I could have used it in my speech because it is a devastating one in relation to the Minister.

He has reminded me of something else that I was going to say to the noble Lord, Lord Cooper. He said that political polling makes up less than 1% of the income of polling and market research organisations such as Populus. However, it is a key and prestigious part. Their reputations depend on getting it accurate. The soap manufacturers and chocolate producers look carefully at how accurate these things are, so although it is only small, it is an important part.

There has been substantial criticism from the other side and support on this side, but this is something we should look at further. I shall conclude by asking the House to give the Bill a Second Reading.

Bill read a second time and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.