Leaving the European Union

Lord Hope of Craighead Excerpts

Monday 21st January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I can certainly reassure the noble Baroness that the issue of the border has been absolutely paramount in our minds, which is why the Prime Minister has worked so hard to make sure that we and the EU can come up with a solution that works to ensure that we keep our commitments to the people of Northern Ireland. That is what we are absolutely determined to do.

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

My Lords, perhaps I could return to the point that was made that the language used by the EU in describing the effect of the backstop has no legal standing. There may be reason to think that the words it used have a greater force as understood in Europe than we give credit for. It might well be worth asking the Attorney-General to look more closely at the meaning of the words because it would be most unfortunate if the whole thing were to fall apart because of a gulf between what we and the EU think the words mean, and how it regards them as affecting its future conduct. They may well be much stronger than we so far give them credit for. There may be a way through if we really understood what they meant.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

That is an extremely interesting and constructive point from the noble and learned Lord. I will make sure that it is fed back through, so that we can ensure that a real understanding of the force of those words is understood by everyone.

Brexit: Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration

Lord Hope of Craighead Excerpts

Wednesday 5th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

My Lords, for me as a self-confessed remainer, it has felt from time to time as if we are trapped in a maze from which there is no way out. I did not want to enter the maze at all. I did not believe the declarations by some of those who were selling the idea of leaving the EU to the public. Theirs was a false prospectus, as the noble Lord, Lord Sugar, pointed out in a memorable contribution to our debate on the people’s vote on 25 October. It seemed to me that despite the EU’s obvious shortcomings, we would almost certainly lose more than we would gain by leaving it, but I was willing to respect the result of the referendum, and that has been my position ever since.

Yet from the earliest months of the negotiation it was clear to me that it was an unequal struggle. It did not take the EU very long to get its act together and work out what it needed to achieve on its side if it was to hold the 27 together. Our side was beset by disagreements about what we wanted and the drawing of red lines before our case had been properly thought through. A prime example was our position that we would have nothing whatever to do with the jurisdiction of the ECJ—the CJEU as it is now—in any circumstances, a misguided and constant obstacle to progress. It was impossible to hold on to—as the agreement and the Attorney-General’s commentary on the legal position now show. To take but one example, the ruling by the CJEU on an issue referred to it by the arbitration panel is to be binding on the arbitration panel, and this means that it will be binding on us. For too long it seemed that such an arrangement would have been totally unacceptable, but it is obvious, given the assumption that the issue will always be one of EU law not domestic law, that this had to be so. There are other examples. We were far too slow to accept the inevitable.

Now we have a deal which we are told is the best that can be achieved. That is what the Prime Minister, guided by those who were conducting the negotiations on her behalf, is telling us. So too are Mr Tusk and Mr Barnier. Then we are told by so many on our side of the channel, who seem best placed to say so, that it is a bad deal and unacceptable. They seem to have a point. There is the backstop, of which we have heard so much, and its implications for Scotland, among other things, if it is invoked. We now have advice from the Attorney-General that there is no prospect of our being able to withdraw from the backstop unilaterally. Then there is the fact that so much will be decided for us during the implementation period by institutions of the EU of which we will no longer be a member and on which we will no longer be represented, and the contributions, which have meant so much, by our European Union Committee and its sub-committees will no longer be able to be made, and so on.

One thing seems to be certain in this fast-moving situation. As the law stands, we will be leaving the EU on 29 March, so we have to find the best way out if we can. What is it to be, I ask myself. I sympathise with those members of the public, many in the business community, who are fed up with the process, want to move on and want certainty. As one of our Cross-Benchers, who unfortunately cannot be in her place, said to me in a note attached to her Christmas card, “People I talk to have given up on the detail. They just want a deal to happen and to move on. Trying to discuss the complications brings a level of irritation from all sorts”. In other words, people recognise that there is a price to be paid because the deal has not a few things wrong with it, but they are willing to pay that price and move on.

There are three ways out of the maze that I find myself in, other than accepting the deal: no deal; to seek to renegotiate; or to go back to the people. As to no deal, it really is the cliff edge. If leaving the EU with this deal will make us all poorer, to leave it with no deal at all is far worse. Business leaders tell us that it is the worst of all worlds. So does the Governor of the Bank of England. The consequences for our security and for judicial co-operation in criminal matters would be very serious, and time to do anything about it is fast running out. I could go on, but the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, made all these points for me. For me, it is simply not an option.

Next, to ask the Prime Minister to renegotiate, in the expectation that any significant changes can be achieved by that method, seems to me to be barking in the wind. It will prolong uncertainty, and changes of a fundamental nature in the backstop arrangements seem remote. It is far from clear how much of the political declaration, on which so much depends as we move to the implementation period, would survive if we were to go back to the negotiating table and try to start again. That may have to be thought through again. All in all, this option seems highly unlikely to produce enough by any further agreement to satisfy those who argue for this course. The arguments that whatever is got out of it is still a bad deal will simply not go away.

Then there is the option of taking it back to the people. Of course, if a second referendum were to reverse the vote, it would open the door to a declaration by Parliament not to leave at all: to no Brexit. For me, as a remainer, this of course has some attraction, but I think we would be deluding ourselves if we thought this would settle the matter for ever. The last campaign was unpleasant enough. Project Fear and all the other slogans would raise their ugly heads again. I do not think the most reverend Primate, the Archbishop of York, was far wrong when he said on Monday that a second referendum would undermine trust in democracy, that civil unrest would follow and all that that means. If the result were to go the remainers’ way, perhaps by a similar margin to last time, there would be much resentment among the people who voted the other way. They would feel they had been cheated, and one could understand why. It seems to me that there are real dangers here, however attractive this option might seem.

So where am I? It seems to me that the best way out of the maze is to accept this deal for what it is. Part of me regrets this, because there are aspects of it which I do not like. However, I cannot bring myself to describe the consequences as “grave”, as the noble Baroness’s Motion invites us to do. Let us have a sense of perspective. It is, after all, a deal about the withdrawal and implementation period. There is much more work still to be done after that. It is not the end of the story. I believe we should move on to the next stage and concentrate our efforts now on establishing a sound framework for our future relationship with the EU. That is what really matters in the long run.

Let us also face the fact that the decision to leave was always going to leave us with less than we wanted. We were always going to have to compromise. It is an imperfect deal, but it is all we have, so I am prepared to swallow my misgivings and get on with it.

Salisbury Update

Lord Hope of Craighead Excerpts

Wednesday 5th September 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I am sure that the Home Office has. I am afraid that I do not have the information, so I will see what I can add to the letter that I have already committed to write.

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

The European arrest warrant can be executed effectively only if the individuals are present within one of the European states; if for the moment they are outside that jurisdiction, the arrest warrant is a precautionary measure. The other way of keeping an eye on this is through the activities of Europol and other institutions of that kind.

Can the noble Baroness assure us that steps are being taken to maintain that channel of communication? The European arrest warrant will fall, I suspect, when we are no longer part of the European Union simply because it is dependent on being part of the structure which allows it to be enforced. If we are kept informed by Europe and other similar institutions, there are other ways of proceeding, by means of a request for extradition. That is very slow, I am afraid, but at least it is a step that could be taken if we know where they are.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I am certainly happy to give that reassurance to the noble and learned Lord.

Death of a Member: Lord Carrington

Lord Hope of Craighead Excerpts

Tuesday 10th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, Lord Carrington was, for people of my generation, a somewhat distant figure but someone who one knew embodied the highest values of public life: honour, integrity and a very strong sense of public duty and public service. As we have heard, he had a most remarkable and lengthy period of public and parliamentary service, and he had to cope with those elements of luck and chance which characterise all public life. He was arguably lucky to be moved from the Ministry of Defence to become High Commissioner to Australia just before the Suez crisis, but he was even more unlucky to be Foreign Secretary at the time of the Falklands invasion. Despite having warned of the danger of possible invasion, he took the blame when it happened and resigned. It was a rare case of a ministerial resignation on a matter of principle and an even rarer one in that it enhanced, rather than soured, his reputation. In his memoirs, he set out the principal reason for aspiring to ministerial office:

“It is office which gives the chance to do things, to steer things perhaps very slightly, almost certainly very gradually and, sadly, often most impermanently, towards what a person believes right”.


These seem like old-fashioned sentiments today, but they mark Lord Carrington out as a man of remarkable character and principle. He will be sadly missed by his family and friends, and we send them all our good wishes.

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

My Lords, I shall add a few words on behalf of these Benches to these tributes to the noble Lord, Lord Carrington. His distinguished career both in this House and beyond has been described by those who have spoken before me. I have no details to add to what has already been said, but it seems to me that he was one of those rare people of whom to describe his career as distinguished is a massive understatement. So much happened to him during his long life, and he gave so much back to this country in return.

He first took his seat in this House over 70 years ago when Clement Attlee was the Prime Minister. It was not long before he began to make his mark here, but of course, like so many others, I look back to his decision, at the start of the Falklands conflict in 1982, to resign from the position that he had held as Foreign Secretary. I saw this then, and still do, as a prime example of the very high standards that he set for himself in his public life. It was the first time that his name came to my attention, and although that was 36 years ago I have never forgotten the occasion. I recall the keen sense of regret that I think we all felt up and down the country that he had to bring his political career to an end in that way, but that sense of regret was coupled with much admiration for him as a man. What he did, not only then but throughout his public life, was an example to us all. There is so much to look back on in his long life and to celebrate.

I think I can say with confidence that few, if any, of your Lordships were here at an earlier stage in his career, more than half a century ago, when he was Leader of the House from 1963 to 1964 and can speak from personal recollection of his time in that office. But how fortunate we are that we have a lasting memorial of him: some 30 years later, he was there in Andrew Festing’s painting of the Chamber, which hangs outside the Peers’ Guest Room. We can see him there in November 1995, sitting on the Treasury Bench just along from Baroness Thatcher. Not many of your Lordships were in the House then either but there he is, instantly recognisable. Judging by the portrait of him, some 23 years ago, talking to those beside him, he was then still at the height of his powers.

Like others on these Benches, I look forward to reading much more about him, and the remarkable life that he led, in the obituaries that will be published in the newspapers. I am sure that there will be far more there than it has been possible for us to recall and to reflect upon this afternoon. On behalf of these Benches, I join those who have already spoken in extending our condolences to his family and friends at their sad loss.

[The Lord Bishop of Chester]

My Lords, from these Benches I endorse all that has been so eloquently said about this remarkable man. I shall add two more local footnotes. The family home of Lord Carrington is in Bledlow in Buckinghamshire. He never made anything of this but he would open his gardens every year, and over his lifetime more than £100,000 was raised for local charities. That is the sort of man that he was.

Secondly, the family home is next to a wonderful Romanesque grade 1 listed parish church dedicated to the Holy Trinity. While Lord Carrington was of course a deeply self-effacing man, others thought there should be some recognition of his presence in the community so there is a splendid gargoyle on the north side of the tower. It may even be that, when the painting has faded in your Lordships’ House, the gargoyle will still be there as a permanent recognition of a very remarkable man.

European Council

Lord Hope of Craighead Excerpts

Monday 26th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

We have been very clear that it will. We want to make sure that there is no hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland and we will work to achieve that.

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

My Lords, it seems to be agreed that the European Court of Justice will have a continuing role during the implementation period. Has any thought been given to whether the United Kingdom should continue to have representation on that court after exit day?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

The noble and learned Lord is absolutely right that during the implementation period there will continue to be a role for the ECJ. We will be leaving the jurisdiction once we leave the EU, although of course EU law and the decisions of the ECJ will continue to affect us; for instance, it determines whether agreements the EU has struck are legal under the EU’s own law. But we will be leaving the jurisdiction.

Tributes: Lord Richard

Lord Hope of Craighead Excerpts

Tuesday 20th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, Ivor Richard, as we have heard, had an exceptionally varied and successful career in both domestic and international politics. As MP for Barons Court, as the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, pointed out, he gained the battle honours of being sacked from his Front Bench for supporting the Bill taking the UK into the European Community in 1971. After leaving the Commons, he was a forthright UK Permanent Representative at the UN and then a successful commissioner when he succeeded Roy Jenkins at the Commission in Brussels.

On these Benches, he is especially remembered, particularly by my Welsh colleagues, as architect of the Richard commission report, which was commissioned in the early days of the National Assembly for Wales by the coalition Government, of which the Lib Dems were then part. The report looked at the powers and the size of the Assembly, and, somewhat remarkably, proposed changed the voting system to STV—which particularly commended it to my friends. He was a committed devolutionist and a committed Welshman. He helped push the boundaries of thinking on full powers for the National Assembly, which eventually, many years later, have come to fruition.

But the thing which always impressed me most was his presence and his voice. He had a solidity, an authority and a manner of speaking which commanded attention and made me, at least, want to listen very carefully to everything he said. This, in my experience, is a very rare ability and made him a most effective leader of your Lordships’ House. I will certainly miss that voice.

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

My Lords, on behalf of my colleagues on the Cross Benches, I too wish to be associated with the warm and very well-deserved tributes that have been paid to Lord Richard. As we have heard, he had a distinguished career before he became a Member of this House. Under the name Ivor Richard, he became very well known to the public, first as the UK’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations and then as an EEC commissioner. Perhaps less well known is the fact that he had practised at the Bar for nearly 20 years before accepting these appointments. His clarity of thought, his skill as a communicator and the air of quiet authority which in later years were to become his hallmark when he spoke in the House must surely have owed much to his legal background.

As we have heard, he spent much more time on the Front Bench as Leader of the Opposition than he did when he was appointed Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House after the 1997 general election. It was not until after he had left that office that the House of Lords Act 1999, which was the first measure to reform the House that was passed during the then Labour Government, received its Royal Assent. So he had the difficult task of being Leader when the party in government were very much in the minority in this House because of the presence of the hereditary Peers. I was serving as a Law Lord during that time, so I did not see how he handled that, as I was usually sitting upstairs with the Appellate Committee during Questions and on other occasions when his skills would have been put to the test.

His contribution as Leader was by no means the only contribution he made to the work of the House. I saw him in action when he chaired the committee that has already been mentioned, before which I gave evidence, which was appointed to scrutinise the Bill that became the Constitutional Reform Act 2005. That Act is certainly steeped in my memory because it resulted in the departure of the Law Lords and the creation of the UK Supreme Court. Then he was invited to chair the Joint Committee on the draft House of Lords Reform Bill which sat from 2011 to 2012. The careful and measured way in which he fulfilled these responsibilities and the many others that came his way was an example to us all.

The noble Lord, Lord Newby, referred to Lord Richard’s presence. We on these Benches had the advantage and pleasure—denied to those on the Opposition Benches because of layout of the Chamber—of seeing and watching the noble Lord every day when he was in his place on the Back Benches. He was one of those remarkable men who could communicate his views by the look on his face or maybe the movement of his shoulders almost as well as he could when he spoke. There was much entertainment to be had when he was in that mood. We shall miss him very much, and to his wife and all the members of his family, we on these Benches wish to extend our condolences on their loss.

[The Lord Bishop of Winchester]

My Lords, on behalf of these Benches, I also pay tribute to Lord Richard and associate myself with the comments already made. Lord Richard’s life was clearly one devoted to public service: MP, ambassador to the United Nations, where he worked hard on both the Middle East and then Rhodesia, and EU Commissioner before coming to this House, where he first became Leader of the Opposition and ultimately Leader of the House. Most of us aspire to making an impression in one area alone: he clearly excelled in many.

Although there is no one now on these Benches who had the privilege of serving under his leadership of this House, the last Bishop of Leicester had the pleasure of serving under his chairmanship of the committee looking at the coalition Government’s plans for Lords reform—an experience made all the better for his impressive command of the brief. Any Member who is given—or, indeed, accepts—the unenviable task of navigating their way through that contentious swamp has to be possessed of a formidable intellect and firm resolve, and command the trust and respect of all sides. These were qualities that Lord Richard held in abundance and which he applied to his service to the public good in so many different ways over the years. He will be much missed.

Black Rod

Lord Hope of Craighead Excerpts

Tuesday 20th February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, on behalf of these Benches I too welcome Sarah Clarke very warmly to the House. I and my colleagues look forward very much to working with her. I also express our thanks to Neil Baverstock for serving as acting Black Rod in the intervening weeks since David Leakey’s retirement. We are extremely grateful to him for filling this role with his customary professionalism.

David Leakey had an extremely distinguished career in the Army before he became Black Rod. One of his military roles was particularly useful preparation: from 2004 to 2007 he was commander of the European Union’s peacekeeping force in Bosnia and Herzegovina. His civilian opposite number was my colleague and noble friend Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon, then the EU’s high representative. I doubt whether they saw their regular dealings in Bosnia as training for their eventual roles here, but in any event it clearly stood Black Rod, at least, in good stead. Being a professional peacekeeper would, I am sure, have proved extremely useful training because, in addition to the ceremonial roles played by Black Rod, sorting out disputes between Members of your Lordships’ House has traditionally been an important element in his work. I know from my own period as Chief Whip on these Benches that there were times when Black Rod had to deal with disputes between Peers, sometimes of an essentially trivial nature but of great importance to the Peers concerned. He did it with calm authority and due seriousness.

It takes much meticulous planning to ensure that the great ceremonial and state occasions referred to by the Leader of the House run smoothly and without a hitch. David approached all of these with great skill and care and ensured that they were all flawlessly executed time after time. We are all deeply grateful to David for his dedication to public service and this House. We on these Benches wish him and his wife extremely well in his retirement.

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

My Lords, on behalf of these Benches, I join the Leader of the House in welcoming Sarah Clarke most warmly to the House and in expressing our thanks to Neil Baverstock for the exemplary way in which he has served as acting Black Rod since David Leakey’s retirement. We are very fortunate indeed in our Yeoman Usher—and to have such a worthy successor to fill the place that David left behind him.

I am sure I am not alone in being glad that David Leakey was in his usual place in the Chamber on 21 December last year to hear the loud chorus of “Hear, hear” when the Lord Speaker told us that he wished to place on record his thanks and the thanks of the whole House, and to wish him well for the future. The warmth of that response was as good a tribute as one could have wished for, to show the affection in which he was held on all sides in this Chamber.

I think our best memory of him will be of a slim, dapper figure in his Black Rod’s uniform. As we have heard, he made no secret of the fact that he liked dressing up. Perhaps this was because of the bulky clothes, designed for outside duties in a cold climate, which a photograph on a website shows him wearing when, as a brigadier, he was in command of operations in Kosovo. He certainly was not slim and dapper then. He put all of that behind him when he came here. As for the disciplines which guided him during his long and distinguished career in the Army, happily they were not so easily discarded. I recall his attempts to instil some sort of discipline into the very unmilitary combination of the Lord Speaker, the three party leaders and myself as Convenor—I hope my colleagues will forgive me—as we rehearsed for our appearance as commissioners in the Prorogation ceremony at the end of the previous Parliament. We did our best, several times, but I am sure our drill was not really up to his high standards. But if he was disappointed, he was far too polite to show it.

For most of us, much of what David did was unseen. There were the grand occasions that had to be planned for, of course. No state visit is complete without our welcoming the visitor to Parliament. But these things do not just happen. Like all the other ceremonial occasions in which he was involved, they have to be planned for. Nothing must be allowed to go wrong. If anything did go wrong during his time, the mishaps were so small that no one ever noticed. Security issues occupied his time, too. They, too, had to be planned for, and one of his legacies is the improvement of the oversight of the parking of cars in Black Rod’s Garden. But there were occasions when he had to cope with the unexpected, as happened during that dreadful terrorist incident last March, and others when a swift and sympathetic response was called for to attend to the needs of someone who had fallen ill. Unseen to most of us this part of his duties may have been, but the fact that he was here to be called upon as needed and to respond so quickly was a reassurance in itself. For that, as much as for as his ceremonial duties, we are most grateful.

David is not one who is likely to be short of things to do during his retirement. On behalf of these Benches, I join all the others who have spoken in wishing him and his wife well in whatever he may wish to do to occupy his time in the future.

[The Lord Bishop of Winchester]

My Lords, from these Benches I emphasise our gratitude to Sir David, particularly for the steadfast and dependable way he supported this House during quite a challenging term of office, with threats to the building from without and within. He will be remembered by the Lords spiritual especially for the time he took to welcome each one of us when we first arrived, and of course for his self-deprecating sense of humour.

On a personal note, there has been a long connection between my diocese and holders of the office of Black Rod, and we both serve as officers of the Most Noble Order of the Garter. I am personally grateful to him for the support he gave me when I took up my role as Prelate to the Order. I shall miss our conversations about Kenya, and I hope his retirement from this House will afford him more time to spend on his smallholding. We wish Sarah all the very best in her new role as Black Rod.

Palace of Westminster: Restoration and Renewal

Lord Hope of Craighead Excerpts

Tuesday 6th February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure once again to follow the noble Lord, Lord Newby. We are all grateful to the Leader of the House for bringing this Motion before us today. As she said, we have waited a long time for it. But the Motion that was passed in the House of Commons last week, albeit by quite a narrow majority, has moved the situation forward quite a bit from where it was only a short time ago. As the noble Lord, Lord Newby, said, we owe a debt to Meg Hillier, Sir Paul Beresford, Chris Bryant and all the others who moved the amendment to the Government’s Motion, which the Leader of the House has placed before us today. I can speak only for myself from these Benches, but I think it is a positive step that I personally greatly welcome.

There can be no dispute whatever about what is said in the first three paragraphs of the Motion. The amendment in the other place sought to resolve the issue that is the subject of the fourth paragraph, which is a key point. The Government’s Motion would have left three options—full decant, partial decant and retaining a parliamentary foothold—open for consideration after a further report, which would have led to much further delay. And with all due respect I must say that that, I fear, is what would result if the House were to vote in favour of the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Naseby.

I welcome the fact that, if the original Motion is approved by the House today, we can at last get on with it. The unanimous recommendation of the Joint Committee deserves to be supported. We must assume that, having the full facts before them, the members of the committee chose their language carefully. They said that there was a “clear and pressing need” to repair the services in the Palace to prevent their “catastrophic failure”. Those are very strong words and I assume that they meant what they said in the light of what they knew. A failure of that kind would put public safety at risk and would make it quite impossible for the business of Parliament to be carried on here for who knows how long. So I agree that, to minimise the disruption caused by carrying out the work, a full decant offers the best and most cost-effective option.

I suspect that one’s reaction to the idea of a full decant and then a gap of several years before we can move back in again may depend on who we are and where we work when we are not in the Chamber. As for where we work, my route home when I leave the Palace in the evenings takes me through the narrow passage into Star Chamber Court and then along the Colonnade to the Underground. In front of me as I walk in that direction is Portcullis House. Most Members of the other place have their offices there and there will be no need for them to be decanted. For them, one imagines, the idea of a full decant is not as life-changing as it will be for the many Members of this House who have offices in the Palace.

As for who we are, that really depends on how old we are. The Leader of the House is fortunate. Happily, she has many years ahead of her. She can be decamped and then come back again. But I am in my very late 70s. I may well have retired before the decamp—and that has nothing whatever to do with the QE2 Centre. Life being what it is, I cannot reasonably expect to be around when the move back eventually takes place. So in a sense there is nothing in this for me—but surely this is a situation where one’s personal inconvenience and expectations must fade into the background. There are so many other people to think about, and this is indeed a world heritage site.

I recall being astonished, when we were subjected to the terrorist incident last March, by the huge number of people of all ages and physical conditions who emerged from all over the Palace to be taken to places of safety. I do not like to think what might have happened to them, or at least some of them, if a serious fire had broken out due, for example, to an electrical fault in the basement from where it might have spread very rapidly through the ventilation shafts, as the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, has reminded us, and right through the building to the point of destruction. A catastrophic failure of our electrical supply after dark could have a serious effect on our staff and members of the public, too. So we need to think about the public interest and that, as I see it, points only one way—in favour of the recommendation.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Newby, one tends to look forward and think about what is to happen next, and there are certainly some important matters to bear in mind as we move forward. The sixth and seventh paragraphs of the Motion refer to the costing of the project. As the noble Baroness the Leader of the House said, in effect, we have been here before. Initial costings of other projects have proved to be wholly unreliable and, to say the least, it is very bad for the reputation of Parliament. We must remember that with costings, as with anything else, you get what you pay for. Care must be taken to select the most reliable method even if it costs more, because that will save time and money in the long run.

Then there is the system of employing a sponsor board and a delivery authority to carry the project forward, referred to in paragraph 7. That has been shown to work with other major projects, and I would welcome its adoption, but the arrangements for co-ordinating work across a wide variety of disciplines in a unique building will require very careful planning. They should not be rushed and great care must be taken to ensure that the contractual arrangements which will underpin the system are suitable for the task and that mechanisms are in place so that the timetables for carrying out the work by each of the interacting disciplines can be strictly enforced.

The Motion envisages a long timeline before the decant takes place. That time, too, must be carefully used to think things through so that delays caused by the unexpected can be cut to a minimum. There is a lot of work to do and many questions need to be answered, one of which is where we decamp to. Names and places have been mentioned, but it needs to be carefully thought about and planned for. Moving to another public building may not be as simple as it sounds. The consequences for that building and its occupiers will have to be taken into account before any decisions are taken. It is a long timeline and my hope is that the time will be put to good use and will not be wasted. But all of that lies in the future. I am conscious that it is not really for me to tell our expert advisers how to do their job. For the present, all that really matters is that we pass the original Motion, and I hope very much that we will.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Hope of Craighead Excerpts

Tuesday 30th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

My Lords, I think that we need this Bill. It is in everyone’s interest that the gap in our law book when we leave the EU should be filled. As the noble Baroness the Leader of the House says, we need a seamless transfer from one system to another when that event occurs, so I think that the Bill deserves to have a Second Reading and must be allowed to pass. Nothing that I am about to say should be taken as being in conflict with those basic points.

However, the Bill comes to this House in a sorry state. It was drafted many months ago when we knew much less about how the exit was likely to be managed than we do now. It all seemed so simple then; you only have to look at Clause 9 to appreciate that point. It is designed to give power to Ministers to implement the withdrawal agreement. It also provides that no regulations may be made under that section after exit day. The idea that everything that needs to be done could be achieved on or before exit day informs the entire Bill, but we now know that there will have to be an implementation or transitional period—call it what you will—after that date. So that is an absurd provision in the light of what we now know. Moreover, the Government have failed to bring forward the amendments that are so obviously needed to meet this changed situation and deal with other criticisms that received cross-party support in the other place.

Time is short so I will concentrate on just one of the important issues: devolution. This is of concern to all the devolved Administrations, but I hope that the others will forgive me if I speak only about the devolution settlement that is set out in the Scotland Act 1998. I spent many hours late into the night debating that Bill here—we often sat well after midnight in those happy days. I worked with the Act as a judge on many occasions from its enactment until my retirement and learned to respect the way in which it had been drafted. That is why I am astonished by this Bill’s failure to respect that settlement in its formulation of the regulation-making powers given to Ministers.

There is of course a political angle to this issue, too. The Scottish Ministers have declared that they will not put a legislative consent Motion before the Scottish Parliament unless their objections to this are met. The bonds that hold the UK together would be stretched almost to breaking point if the Bill were to proceed to enactment without their consent. As a mere lawyer, I am in full sympathy with their objection.

Ministers may think that this is merely an enabling Bill, but it is not. It is about our constitution, too. The situation that it provides for as we leave the EU is entirely new. It is one that we have not had to face since the Scotland Act was enacted. The constitutional arrangements that were settled by the Scotland Act 1998 have to be changed but, as the Bill stands, they are being rewritten in a way that is naive and very damaging. Others will criticise some of the clauses containing regulation-making powers as amounting to Henry VIII clauses. As far as I know, Henry VIII never got to Scotland, but Oliver Cromwell did and he and the forces under his command did quite a lot of damage while he was there. I think that these clauses have a touch of Oliver Cromwell about them.

This issue goes far beyond the much-criticised Clause 11, which is about retaining EU restrictions in devolved legislation when we leave the EU. You can find these regulation-making powers in Clauses 7, 8 and 9 and throughout the entirety of Schedule 2. They are far-reaching and we must assume that they are there because it is intended that they should be used. As the wording stands, they could all be exercised to their fullest extent in all areas that are devolved to Scotland without any consultation whatever with the Scottish Ministers.

The legislative competence of the Scottish Parliament after exit day has been called into question, too. That would not be so bad if we could be certain that these provisions would have a very short life because everything that needed to be done could be achieved on or before exit day. As matters stand, though, we can expect these powers to be exercised for many months after that date. Those in Clause 9 are time-limited, absurd though that limit may now seem to be, but the remainder are not.

Ministers may say that that is not their intention; I listened with great care to the words from the noble Baroness about devolution. If so, I urge them to make their position clear in the Bill. Only if they are willing to do that are they likely to win the confidence of the Scottish Ministers in the area where a real opportunity lies for a mature and intense discussion, as we seek to define how the system of devolution can best operate in a new and vigorous UK single market after exit day. That is what the discussions about a redesigned Clause 11 should really be about. It is an area where there ought to be a real opportunity for an agreed way forward.

However, there is much more to the issue than Clause 11, as I have tried to emphasise. It is hard to see those discussions getting anywhere so long as the basic architecture of the Bill is so misguided and ill-informed. I will be bringing forward amendments that seek to resolve that problem and I hope that they will be supported across the House. If others seek to do the same thing, I will support them, too.

House of Lords: Lord Speaker’s Committee Report

Lord Hope of Craighead Excerpts

Tuesday 19th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Burns, for the very helpful way in which he introduced this debate, and all members of his committee for the work they have done in the preparation of the report. How very fortunate we are that the Lord Speaker was able to capture the noble Lord, if capture is the right word, during his brief period of rest between two very demanding appointments, to perform this task for us.

As so often happens in life, the problem is easy to identify. Finding a solution to it is much more time consuming and difficult. The problem, of course, is that the House is too large and, if nothing is done about it, the House will without doubt grow still larger. The comparisons so often made with the Chinese People’s National Congress in Beijing are rather unfair. We have all seen the pictures—the serried ranks, everyone there, every seat filled, everyone anchored to their seats, no sign of any dissent from the party line. Of course we are not like that. For one thing, so much of what we do is done outside the Chamber, as the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, pointed out yesterday. For another, in our case, attendance is not compulsory. The daily average at present is only about 490. In the case of the Cross-Bench group, for example, on any given day, no more than about half of our number are present. To a not insignificant extent, therefore, we are a part-time House. We draw strength from that. Many of our Members have outside interests, their engagement with which adds to the quality of our debates and the work of our committees. Nevertheless, our increasing size is an embarrassment to say the least, and if nothing is done, it risks being even more than that. We are running out of space. We cannot give everyone the desks and office space that they need. That, in short, is the problem.

What, then, of the solution that the noble Lord, Lord Burns, and his colleagues have come up with? In answering that question I must make it clear that, although I am their Convenor, it is not open to me to express a view on the issue on behalf of the Cross-Bench group. It was suggested that I should seek to gather signatures from our membership in support of the report. But that is not the way that the group works. It is not for me to tell them what to do or to canvass support for either side. What I can say, however, is that it is my impression—1 can put it no higher than that— that the group is in favour of the report’s conclusions. I base that impression on the complete absence of complaints or representations given to me against it, and on the many indications that I have received of support for it.

I am sure that if any of the 31 Cross-Benchers who will speak after me disagree, they will make their position clear. My own position, for what it may be worth, is that the noble Lord, Lord Burns, has taken our search for a solution a very long way. This is an excellent report, which deserves to be supported. But I must leave it to those who will speak after me from the Cross Benches to express their own views.

Time is short, and this is not an occasion to go into detail, but, speaking for myself, I am content with the recommendation that we should seek to limit our numbers to 600. A system of fixed-term appointments is far preferable to a system based on age or length of service, and I am of course happy with the recommendation that the Cross-Bench group should be fixed at 20% of the House’s membership. But I must face the fact that reducing the number of Peers on the Cross Benches in the way recommended by the report will not be an easy task. The Convenor can advise or try to persuade, but cannot direct or give orders to anybody. Of course, everything will depend on whether the Government, and the Prime Minister in particular, will support the scheme. I very much echo the words of the noble Lord, Lord Newby, in searching for a cast-iron guarantee in that respect. I hope that they will be able to give that. The scheme cannot operate without their agreement.

I should like, however, to mention one matter that, although not within the remit of the noble Lord, Lord Burns, will require careful attention if the scheme goes ahead—here I echo some words of the noble Baroness, Lady Crawley. We must try to ensure that all regions are properly represented so that the House does not become even more centred on London and the south-east than it already is. Members who attend less frequently, and would thus be among those more likely to be asked to leave as we reduce our numbers, tend to be those who live further afield. We must not be too ready to ask them to go. We must also bear in mind that the daily allowances have not been increased to keep pace with inflation since they were introduced seven years ago. Left as they are, they risk leaving Members who have to find accommodation in London out of pocket day after day after their hotel bills or other costs have been paid. Those who live in London do not face those costs and they do not have to travel long distances to get here.

This is a serious issue for people like myself who do. If, as seems likely, a smaller House will require more frequent attendance, steps will have to be taken to ensure that those who live further away are not so penalised by lack of support that they will stop coming, as some perhaps already do. I am sure that other factors will require attention as we reduce our numbers, but the need for proper representation by Members from all parts of the country and ensuring that they are not out of pocket when they come here—that at least they are entitled to expect—should be high in the order of priority.