Political Parties: Funding

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Thursday 1st July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally]

I will certainly give it my consideration and I will report it to the Deputy Prime Minister. I think that I had better stop there.

[Lord Grocott]

Is it not worth noting one of the lessons from the history of funding and politics? At the end of the 19th century, very strict limits were introduced on the amount that could be spent in individual constituencies, for very good reasons. Does it not strike the Minister that to concentrate on how much is being spent is more important than examining precisely where the money comes from? We need to look, at a national level, at the ludicrous amounts of money that are spent in general elections; we do not want to get anywhere near American levels. Any review should concentrate on putting much more severe, strictly applied limits on expenditure.

Parliament: MP Numbers and Constituency Review

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Thursday 24th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally]

That is a fair point. The integrity of the Boundary Commissions and the way in which they go about their work have never been in doubt, thank goodness. Because this is constitutional legislation, it will be taken on the Floor of the House in the other place and we will have in this place experts such as the noble Baroness, Lady Gould, my noble friend and others who have great experience and will put their input into the deliberations as this legislation goes through.

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, two weeks ago, when I asked a similar Question, the Minister was good enough to acknowledge that the Answer provided by his civil servants was wholly inadequate. He was also rather disappointed that the answer with which he attempted to improve the efforts of his civil servants was not that good either. Now that he has had a fortnight to think about how long he estimates the Boundary Commission will take bearing in mind that the last review took six years, and now that the finest brains of the civil servants in his department have been focused on this for the past couple of weeks, can he give any improvement on the wholly inadequate Answer that he gave me last time?

[Lord McNally]

I very much regret that the noble Lord has raised that. I was severely reprimanded by the department and it was a couple of days before any of the civil servants talked to me. As I said in answering this question, Ministers are taking advice on the detailed proposals and will bring forward legislation and a timetable as soon as possible.

Parliamentary Constituencies: Boundaries

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Tuesday 15th June 2010 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Lord Grocott]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is the estimated time required for a full review of parliamentary constituency boundaries.

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

My Lords, the Government have announced that legislation will be introduced to provide for the creation of fewer and more equal-sized constituencies. Further details will be announced in due course, and we will of course seek to frame the legislation in a way that ensures that the boundary commissions can complete their task in a timely, fair and thorough way.

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, that was an Answer to a question but not to the one that I asked. The Question was what the Government’s estimate is of how long it will take to undertake a full review of parliamentary constituencies—a simple and straightforward question, I would have thought. Is the Minister aware that the previous review took six years and eight months? That was quite proper; it gave local people the opportunity to appeal and for full local inquiries, part of the localism that the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, rightly referred to as being a crucial part of this Government’s objectives. I appeal to him to ensure that there is no short-circuiting of local democracy and no denial of local people’s rights to appeal. If there is any short-circuiting of the appeals procedure in the established parliamentary Boundary Commission, then if this is the new politics, I for one prefer the old.

Prisoners: Voting

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Wednesday 9th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Maclennan of Rogart]

My Lords—

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords—

[Lord Ramsbotham]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Maclennan of Rogart]

My Lords—

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords—

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, I accept that there is great expertise and a great interest in this subject. We have already heard from the opposition Benches. May we hear from the Liberal Democrats?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord McNally]

I agree, my Lords, but when the court makes rulings and then makes new ones, it is up to the Executive to consider them carefully and consider the implications before they come to a decision. That is what we are doing, and I have already said that we will update the council of our view—not in seven years’ time, but in September.

[Lord Grocott]

There is clearly difficulty here, particularly between the two parties to the coalition. In an effort to be helpful to the Government, I therefore suggest that they do for this issue what they have done already for so many other aspects of the coalition agreement document—set up a commission.

[Lord McNally]

Even for a former Chief Whip, that attitude is shameless. As has already been pointed out from the noble Lord’s own Benches, that lot sat on this decision for seven years. We have to face a new decision made on 8 April, and we have said that we will bring our conclusions to a September meeting of the council. I think that that is pretty good going.

Queen's Speech

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Thursday 27th May 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally]

The power of the Whips never ceases to amaze me.

[Lord Grocott]

If noble Lords are disappointed at not having that intervention, may I suggest this one? Will the noble Lord explain how announcing in May 2010 that the next election will be in May 2015 strengthens Parliament?

[Lord McNally]

We have had many debates about fixed-term Parliaments, and this is the first example. The noble Lord may recall the dithering and doubts caused by the recent Prime Minister and the harm that that did to good governance, and that many colleagues, including those on his Benches, have for a long time argued the benefits of fixed-term Parliaments. I would have thought that as he is a reformer he would welcome it, but I must move on. The legislation will provide for the possibility that a dissolution of Parliament may be needed outside the five-year timetable. Our proposal is that it should happen if more than 55 per cent of the other place votes for it. Parliament would still be able to dismiss a Government, but the Government would not be able to dismiss Parliament.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, I shall use my time to talk about matters relating to constitutional change. I must begin by acknowledging a different experience from that of the noble Lord, Lord McNally, who talked about clear public support for constitutional change. I spent four weeks knocking on doors in Telford during the general election period and must have had a different experience to the noble Lord knocking on doors in Blackpool, or wherever it was, because I did not find the slightest public interest in any aspect of constitutional change, whether Lords reform, fixed-term Parliaments, the alternative vote or any other of the often academic discussions that we have. Neither, I might say, did I notice anyone saying that what they were really looking forward to after the general election was a Lib Dem-Conservative Government. The people of Telford are pretty shrewd on these matters—as they were, I might say, in again returning a Labour MP.

I shall concentrate my arguments on three points but, as a brief preamble, I should say that I have been in politics a long time, and I understand that when two parties try to form an agreement, there will be all sorts of concessions and compromises. That is inevitable, but when the concessions, compromises—or, if you want to be more robust about it, horse-trading—take place in respect of constitutional change, that is far more serious. One party is saying to the other, “I absolutely hate that constitutional change you are proposing but I will go along with it as long as you support the constitutional change that I propose, which I know that you hate”. That may be a way to try to fix short-term policies, but it is not a way to rewrite fundamental parts of the constitution of our country. The constitutional changes proposed in the coalition agreement between the two parties have been described already by the leader of the Liberals as the greatest reform Bill since 1832—so no pressure there then. I would have thought that that is quite a high hurdle to leap over, even for someone more popular than Winston Churchill.

These constitutional changes, should they be carried out, mean a significant weakening of Parliament. That is how I would describe them, not least because for the past 13 years I have heard nothing other than, “Governments are too strong and Parliaments are too weak”. That was the received wisdom. Overnight on 6 May, the received wisdom became, “Parliaments are too strong and Governments are too weak, and we are going to have a strong Government”. That underpins a lot of these constitutional proposals. In particular, I shall mention three. One is the fixed term, which is supposed greatly to strengthen Parliament. Clearly, it does not. I could not have imagined a situation in which a Prime Minister—a Prime Minister who, I might say, had fewer MPs than any Prime Minister since the war, if my maths is correct—was able in effect to announce, the day after the general election, “I am going to be your Prime Minister for the next five years, almost irrespective of what happens in Parliament”. That does not strike me as strengthening Parliament; it makes Parliament less important and its votes of less significance.

I will not go in detail into the 55 per cent rule, which will surely have to be dropped. I was present, as were a number of other people here, when the Labour Government were quite properly voted down on a Motion of no confidence and quite properly immediately and without any fancy laws to refer to went to the country. From a purely personal point of view I wish they had not because I lost my seat. It would have been quite nice to say, “Oh, it doesn’t matter. There are a few more months yet before the five years are up”. I would have been amused to see my friend—I call him my friend—the noble Lord, Lord NcNally, a far more important man than the rest of us, going to see Jim Callaghan and saying, “We just lost a vote of no confidence, Jim, but don’t worry, it doesn’t really matter. Votes come and go, and we’ll stick around for a bit longer”. That is just silly. You can have all sorts of arguments about what is a good number, but 55 per cent is a silly proposal, so let us get rid of it.

I want to mention one other thing very briefly. If the proposal to increase the membership of the House of Lords in line with the number of votes in the last election is carried through, although I am not convinced that it will be, the fundamental convention that has operated certainly all the time I was the Chief Whip and throughout the time of my predecessors—that there is rough parity between the Government and the Opposition and that the Government must not be able to have a majority in the House of Lords—will be destroyed. It has been destroyed already, actually, because the Government have 250 seats and the Opposition have 210.

Please let us not confuse the argument by talking about the Bishops or the Cross-Benchers, who have never been included in any argument that I have heard or that has ever been advanced. The Government have a clear majority in the Lords, as they have a clear majority in the Commons. If that majority were enhanced even more, that would be quite outrageous. If I as Chief Whip had known that the Liberal Democrats would have voted with the Government on every single vote, I could not have justified a full-time job. I could have come in at midday and watched the cricket in the afternoon, and I would have loved it, because the Government would have known perfectly well that they would win every vote. Check the maths, check the history. This really cannot be allowed to sustain, and I hope that it will be addressed.

There is another way in which Parliament is being diminished by the constitutional changes. I do not call it reducing the number of MPs; I call it increasing the size of constituencies. I have some expertise in this in that I have represented two seats in Parliament, both of which were very large with 90,000 electors. Let me say that it is extraordinarily difficult to represent that number of people in anything like the way in which we have been accustomed to doing. I may upset some of my friends when I say that I do not object at all in principle to moving towards anything that makes constituencies of roughly equal size. That is not the problem; the problem is reducing the number of MPs. How on earth can that be described as making MPs more accountable? That really is torturing the language. MPs will be less accountable if the number of MPs is reduced.

In conclusion, I was particularly alarmed to see that the Government were proposing—I hope that this can be denied—that the whole process of drawing parliamentary constituencies is to be accelerated and local involvement in it diminished to get this through quickly. Let me remind the House that the previous redrawing of constituency boundaries in England has taken around six years, because local people have to be consulted and there have to be proper procedures for dealing with this. Both the Conservatives and the Lib Dems have in their manifestos the importance of local democracy, local control and local involvement. If they are going to run roughshod over the established procedures for redrawing parliamentary constituencies, that yet again diminishes Parliament.

In three crucial respects these constitutional changes diminish Parliament, rather than enhancing it; and, my word, we will not do our job here unless we scrutinise them very carefully indeed. I hope that some of them are thrown out.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, I have heard so often from those Benches the expression that the public are in support of something because the polls show that and because a large majority of people voted for those parties. That is what people do at general elections. They do not vote for every jot and tittle of the manifestos; they vote to support the judgment that they believe to be nearest to their own view. That is what happened. I say this honestly and sincerely to friends on the opposite side of your Lordships’ House: it is important that they, too, recognise what the electorate said on 6 May, as we have, because people recognised, in the light the economic legacy, that a different response was required. The Labour Party has not yet woken up to that reality.

I yield to no one in my respect for the former Leader of the House, the noble Baroness, Lady Royall of Blaisdon. I have the greatest respect for her, but, honestly, her speech on Tuesday did not do her justice. Sarcasm does not suit her. It was a very ungracious speech. It is amazing how quickly former Ministers, bereft of their advisers, fall into the trap of silly oppositionitis. Take the example that has regularly been mentioned today that the new Government have a complete and guaranteed automatic majority in your Lordships’ House. That is to suggest that Members on the Cross Benches have no influence and no say in what happens in this House. That is simply not true.

[Lord Grocott]

I shall be brief. Can the noble Lord confirm that, if the Liberals had always voted with the Labour Government in the past 13 years, every single Division—bar one or two at the most—would have been won? The Government have a majority in this House and to suggest anything else is to distort the language.