Recall of MPs Bill
Lord Howarth of Newport Excerpts(9 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab)
My Lords, this legislation is intended to help promote and restore confidence in the political system. Yet the absence of transparency, clarity and regularity in campaign financing in the politics of this country is one of the principal causes of cynicism and disaffection from politics. It therefore seems contradictory and strange that apparently so little thought has gone into the provisions of the Bill regarding campaign financing. It is singularly important that the provisions be clear and universally acceptable. I look forward to the Minister explaining what he believes the justification can be for the vagueness and looseness of the current arrangements, the manner in which they will permit outside intervention from people whose intervention we would have thought was not legitimate, and how he proposes in the light of those considerations to strengthen and improve the legislation.
Lord Gardiner of Kimble (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for her amendment. Concern has rightly been expressed by noble Lords and in the other place over the impact of “big money” on the recall process.
Amendment 60, however, focuses on the opposite end of the scale—namely, the lower limit above which campaigners will have to become accredited. The noble Baroness’s amendment will lower this from £500, as currently proposed, to £50. She rightly asked about the justification for £500. It is based on the previous spending limit for third-party campaigning for or against a candidate at the election. Indeed, the current limit is £700. This will, we believe, therefore permit local groups to carry out a certain amount of campaigning, such as printing and distributing leaflets. That is the reason for that number.
However, all campaigners will be subject to rules on the content of their literature, including imprints, as well as the rules on acting in concert, notional petition expenses and pre-election expenses. Once a campaigner becomes accredited, a significant number of additional registration and reporting rules kick in. We believe that these will deliver transparency over what is being spent and who is providing the financial backing.
Lord Howarth of Newport
I am inspired with confidence when I listen to my noble friend expounding the Bill. Perhaps she can correct me if I am wrong, but am I right in thinking that in effect there can be any number of these non-accredited groups operating in parallel, but there is provision that where expenses are incurred by persons acting in concert, the total value of those expenses is to be regarded as having been incurred by each of the persons in question? It seems to me that the protections, if there are any, are very flimsy indeed. As my noble friend Lord Foulkes suggested, we have the very dangerous possibility of a great proliferation of many organisations campaigning to unseat a Member of Parliament with no control over their number, no control over their aggregate of expenditure, and with the freedom for them to solicit and receive expenditure from anywhere in the world. Is that not deeply unsatisfactory?
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
It is interesting to note that when we were dealing with the transparency of lobbying Bill, which has been mentioned, we could see that as soon as charities work together they all have to take account of each other’s expenditure. But as long as these groups do different things, with one of them responsible for the literature and another one doing something completely different, there can be any number of them. As I say, there can be any number of non-accredited campaigns and any number of accredited campaigns. Ten of them could all spend £500 and another 10 could all spend less than £500. The cumulative amounts could be very large. However, that is for the Government to answer rather than me. For the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Howarth of Newport
The noble Lord emphasised that the Government are anxious to limit the influence of big money and outside money, and he quite rightly made the point that neither big money nor outside money can trigger the recall process. However, he gave no explanation as to how the provisions of the Bill would in practice limit the power of either big money or outside money to influence such local campaigns. It would be helpful, because it is very important, if he could explain what the safeguards are; and if he cannot, if he could undertake to go away and invent some.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the distinction between local and national money, as all of us currently preparing to fight a range of local campaigns at the next general election know, has become increasingly blurred over the years. As we know well, NGOs and civil society organisations have local branches of national organisations, so of course there is not a rigid distinction between local money and national money. We understand that one cannot entirely build a wall around a particular constituency in terms of funding. However, the limits proposed are intended to limit the amount of money that can be spent, and thus to limit the role of outside funds.
Lord Howarth of Newport
But there are no limits to the number of organisations that are able to mount such campaigns. The Minister is rejecting the amendment that my noble friend has proposed, but he does not seem to have any other safeguards.
Lord Grocott
I put the question in a slightly different way. If the Minister is confirming what I think that he has been saying, it is really alarming. I was most interested in the earlier parts of the Bill. Whereas we all know that in a local election campaign for a particular Member in a particular constituency, there are controls over what each candidate can spend which have been there since about the 1870s, I think that that—not the figure, but the principle—is understandable, because a number of different choices are available: Labour, et cetera. In the case of whether there is or is not to be a recall, there are only two possible positions: you are for it or against it. You may be for it or against it for a variety of different reasons, but the decision to be made is binary, there are two choices.
It seems to me so fundamental as to be hardly worth stating that there must be a balance between the expenditure on the two sides of that simple argument. Is the Government’s position that there is no need to worry about that and that, on a range of different issues, one side in what I repeat is a binary decision can spend vastly greater sums of money than the other? Are the Government comfortable with that?
Recall of MPs Bill
Lord Howarth of Newport Excerpts(9 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)
My Lords, I apologise to the Committee: I have to go to the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy later this afternoon. No doubt, the Minister will be disappointed that I am not here to support him. I very much support the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter. During the last session in Committee the Minister appeared to be telling us that we should really mind our own business and that this was a matter for the House of Commons.
The thing that I find remarkable about this Bill is that if it has been designed and put forward by the House of Commons, it shows an extraordinary ignorance of what it is like being a Member of Parliament and how the process is carried out. Extraordinarily in my old constituency of Stirling, for example—I cannot do square metres, but know that it was 800 square miles—it took me from 6.30 in the morning to 8 at night just to drive to every polling station to thank the people standing there. Even then, people had difficult journeys and it was quite an expensive operation to do this. Quite what the cost, which is not accounted for, would be if one had to provide that kind of coverage over a longer period, I know not.
The noble Baroness is absolutely right: if this is an exercise in democracy and is to be carried out fairly, you have to make it possible for people to cast their votes in secrecy at a reasonably convenient opportunity and near where they live, whether they work or whether they do not. I guess I am with the noble Baroness, Lady Quin, in thinking that this needs to be at the discretion of the local authority. The local authority will have to find the money and the people to do all this, and to train them—and, of course, none of this is costed, so if the Minister is not prepared to accept the amendment on cost grounds, I have an elegant solution, which is that he abandons the Bill altogether.
Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab)
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, was probably wrong to suggest that such a small number of constituencies—perhaps a couple of dozen—would find it impossible to cope if there were only one to four signing places. The constituency that I had the honour to represent for a number of years—Stratford-upon-Avon—was some 450 square miles in size and had 116 parishes. It is simply unimaginable that people would have been able to use the public transport available to get to one, two, three or four signing places. It is a very scattered constituency, so that is unrealistic.
I strongly echo the point just made by my noble friend Lady Quin. If the Government’s proposals in this regard are to have any credibility, they owe it to us to say what premises would be used. Clearly, public libraries, which are disappearing as we speak, will not provide the solution, nor can it be acceptable for schools to be disrupted for a period of eight weeks. That is one good factor to bear in mind when we come to the next amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Foulkes.
Finally, it would be helpful to the Committee if the Minister would give us a fairly detailed breakdown of costs. The impact assessment tells us that the best estimate the Government have made for the total cost of conducting a recall petition process in a constituency would be of the order of £55,000. I do not think that figure is remotely credible. It would therefore be very helpful if the Minister could give us his analysis of the costs of operating this aspect of the process.
I support the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lady Hayter, although I think there is also much wisdom in simply leaving it to the discretion of the petition officers to determine what is appropriate.
Lord Crickhowell (Con)
My Lords, like the noble Baroness, Lady Quin, I have not spoken previously on the Bill although I followed the proceedings closely. Like my noble friend Lord Forsyth, I have read the debates, and listened to them this afternoon, with a sense of incredulity that such an extraordinarily ill prepared and ill considered Bill should have come from the elected Chamber. I find that bizarre.
I agreed with almost every single word that was said by the noble Baroness who moved this amendment, not least because until comparatively recently my home was in Powys. It was literally at the very edge of Powys, yards from its border. I can vouch for everything that she said about the distances involved and the impossibility of complying with this measure. Similar difficulties would have applied in my former constituency of Pembroke, which in those days covered the entire county of Pembroke. It would have been perfectly impossible to implement this measure there. Indeed, I am impressed by what my noble friend Lord Forsyth said about getting round all the polling stations to thank the people involved. I divided my constituency in two and my wife undertook to go round half of it and I did the other half, as it was an impossible task for me to cover the whole constituency adequately.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)
My Lords, not long after I came into this place, the Labour Whip approached me and asked me to support a “panic” amendment. I thought, “That’s unlike my noble friend Lord McAvoy”, to ask me to support something that had been drafted in haste because of some emergency that had arisen. To my relief, I found out that it was an amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, so I was very happy to support it.
However, this is a panic Bill. The one to blame for it is not the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, but the Deputy Prime Minister. It is one of the many crazy things that he has come up with. This proposal is so crazy that even the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, cannot accept it. I thank that that shows noble Lords how daft it really is. This particular part has been opposed by everyone who has spoken so far. We are all waiting for the noble Lord, Lord Finkelstein, to get up; he has been the only advocate of any part of this Bill, apart from the Ministers themselves. The noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, who has tremendous experience as a Minister and a Member of Parliament, spoke against it, as did the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, who again has great experience from his constituency.
I want to do the same from my experience in my constituency of Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley, which was 800 square miles in size. I held surgeries in 25 different centres throughout that constituency; there were even more polling places. No buses went from Cumnock, in the north, to Girvan in the south. There was a long distance beyond Cumnock, right up to Muirkirk and Glenbuck, which was home of the famous Cherrypickers, that wonderful football team that the Shankly brothers originally played for. The constituency stretched down to Ballantrae in the south, which was the home of Lord Ballantrae, who some noble Lords will remember, and where his title came from. It was a big constituency.
My noble friend Lady Kennedy of The Shaws knows Scotland well, and she knows that the difficulties faced in my constituency by having a maximum of four places would be even worse in others. Let us take the Western Isles, for example. Let us suppose that that wonderful Scottish Nationalist Angus MacNeil was subject to a recall petition—that is, if he continues; I doubt whether he will, but let us imagine. It would be possible to have a place to sign a petition on Lewis, one on Harris, one on North Uist and one on South Uist, but what about the other islands? What about Benbecula? What about Rum, Eigg, Muck, Barra and all the other islands? We have heard talk about areas having only one bus: I can tell noble Lords that no buses go between these islands. There are ferries, but think about all the difficulties that this would create for all the people who, understandably, wanted to sign the petition to get rid of Angus MacNeil.
Lord Howarth of Newport
Will my noble friend tell us what it costs to ride on those ferries?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
Let us discuss it off the Floor of the House rather than detain the Committee further.
Of course, we will be relying on the discretion of the petition officers, who will be the local election officers, on the use of public premises around each constituency. I note the strength of feeling that has been expressed about four centres not being enough in a number of constituencies, although I also note the section of the Electoral Commission’s report which the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, did not quote, which states that, equally, four signing locations may be more than is required in some constituencies. There is, perhaps, a greater degree of flexibility and I am willing to take this away and discuss whether a degree more flexibility is desirable.
Let me touch on a number of other issues that have been raised. The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, discussed the impact assessment. I can assure him that, under the Bill when passed, the costs of each recall process will be reimbursed to the local authority. The impact assessment covers the fact that the direct and indirect costs, including training, will be reimbursed.
Lord Howarth of Newport
Will the Minister write to us before Report with a detailed analysis of the costings that led the Government to come to the conclusion that they expressed in the impact assessment? It was:
“The cost attributed to one recall petition in the United Kingdom is estimated to be in the region of £55,000”.
It would be very helpful if he would explain how those costs are made up.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I will be happy to promise that we will reconsider that and I will write. Perhaps it is also worth talking at this point a little about regulations. A number of the amendments before us today consider how much should be in the Bill and how much should be in regulations. We have placed in the Library of the House a draft sketch of the regulations, but I should stress that it will not be possible to lay the regulations before either House between now and 7 May. The exact regulations will be the responsibility of the next Government and will come before the two Houses within the first year of the new Parliament.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I was not aware that I had said “none” of them. A sketch of the regulations—which I am sure that the noble Lord has looked at—has been placed in the Library of the House, but the final form of the regulations have not been entirely agreed. As the noble Lord well knows—although he is looking in puzzlement at me—things like this have to be agreed closely through consultation with the Association of Electoral Administrators, the Electoral Commission and others. These things need to be done well and they take time, after one has agreed the overall shape of the Bill. That is the process through which we are now going.
Lord Howarth of Newport
The Minister says that these things take time and have to be done carefully, but it is some four years since the Government produced their draft Bill. What have they been doing?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the Government have been fairly busy with a range of issues. We have perhaps taken longer on this than we should have done, and I note that the House is currently enjoying itself. The question of adequate training is, I suggest, a matter for regulations rather than for inclusion in Bill. I am happy to discuss that with the Opposition Front Bench between Committee and Report. Having said that we will discuss these issues further, I hope that the noble Baroness—
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the noble Lord is being a little mischievous. There have of course been extensive discussions with the Association of Electoral Administrators and others throughout on these matters. They have not come to a conclusion because the details will need to be worked out as we move forward. For example, this detailed amendment concerns the question of how many places one will have open for signing over an eight-week period. I have just offered to take that back and consider whether we could be a little more flexible. I have also explained that our proposals came as a response to a report from the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, to which evidence was given by a number of these people—so we are not simply starting from the beginning. There has been quite extensive consultation, with which I am sure the noble Lord is familiar, and on that basis—
Lord Howarth of Newport
Does the Minister recollect that the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee advised the Government to drop the Bill?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I do not recollect that. I recognise that all those in this House who have been MPs are deeply unhappy about the Bill. I also recognise that outside the Palace of Westminster there are many who would like the Bill to be a lot rougher and tougher than it is.
Lord Elystan-Morgan (CB)
My Lords, I respectfully suggest to the House that the suggestion and proposal made by the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, is an excellent one. I was thinking about the problem raised earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Martin, in that there were two principles that were diametrically opposed to each other. One was the principle of the innate secrecy of the ballot; the other was the principle of the innate public nature of the petition. The answer and the compromise may very well be in the sort of suggestion made by the noble Lord, Lord Hughes. What would be wrong in having two questions—yes or no? You would have a hybrid; it would be something of a ballot and something of a petition, but you would be free from many of the disadvantages that would attend a situation where the fact of having voted would mean that you had voted only one way.
Lord Howarth of Newport
When the Minister replies, will he explain to the Committee why the Government have not, apparently, involved the Electoral Commission in this process? It is so obviously the organisation equipped and tasked to deal with matters of this sort and it is a mystery why it is not more fully involved here and in other aspects of the procedure. The commissioners are not normally shrinking violets. I even wonder whether the Electoral Commission, in taking the view that this is a thoroughly ill founded measure, has declined to play a part. I do not know, but in any event is it not really reckless to put the definitive wording of the petition in the Bill before it has ever been tried? If it turns out in practice to be inadequate, everybody will be in very great difficulty and primary legislation will be needed to change it.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I hesitate to suggest that the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, has come to the debate a little less well prepared than he sometimes is. I have here the Electoral Commission’s briefing of 13 January for Committee, which does indeed remark on the consultations that it has had with the Government on the Bill. It says:
“Whilst the Commission has given informal advice on the current wording of the petition card and signing sheet based on our experience of testing referendum questions, we have not undertaken any user-testing of the wording. We understand that the Government plans”—
as has already been said—
“to user-test both the petition card and signing sheet with members of the public”.
It goes on to say:
“We are not persuaded that this amendment is necessary, given that the wording of the petition signing sheet can already be amended by regulations”.
The Electoral Commission has not been left out of the process, as one would naturally expect.
Lord Howarth of Newport
That is just what I said. It has been only informally consulted. I do not understand why it has not been given a formal role in this process.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the Electoral Commission unavoidably has a formal role throughout this process and has been consulted throughout. Informal consultations are part of the formal process. We need not batter about words too much. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Hughes of Woodside, that an election or a petition process that generates such excitement would be a joy to many of us. Part of the pleasure, in a sense, of the Scottish referendum was that it did indeed generate a great deal of excitement.
It is the nature of a petition that a petition is one-sided. The noble Lord, Lord Martin, remarked that petitions are petitions—they are not elections. I hesitate to suggest that some wish to turn the recall petition process itself into the by-election that may or may not follow.
I will speak first to government Amendment 43, which would make a small change to the final sentence of the wording to appear on the petition signing sheet that is set out in Clause 9(4). The signing sheet must include this specified wording, as it explains to the eligible constituent that they are signing the petition for their MP to lose their seat and for a by-election to be held.
During debates in the other place, it was suggested that the wording could be improved in relation to explaining when a by-election would not take place. The Government agree and therefore this amendment responds to the debate in the other place by making it easier for the elector to understand that the MP will not lose his or her seat and a by-election will not be held if less than 10% of the registered electors in the constituency sign the petition.
The wording of the petition signing sheet was developed with input from the Electoral Commission before the Bill was introduced, but we have a power to amend the formulation in regulations if that proves necessary after undertaking user testing of the signing sheet and notice of petition with members of the public. In doing this, it will be possible to confirm whether the formulation that we have best serves constituents’ understanding. I repeat that the Electoral Commission was happy with the proposals as set out in the Bill.
Amendments 40 and 44 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, would remove the specified wording of the signing sheet from Clause 9 and replace the power to amend that wording through regulations with a power to set the wording in regulations following further consultation with the Electoral Commission and the Welsh Language Commissioner. The signing sheet must include wording specified in Clause 9, which explains to the eligible constituent that they are signing the petition for their MP to lose their seat and for a by-election thereafter to be held.
There is value in the appearance of the wording in the Bill, as it has allowed MPs to express their views on it. This mirrors the position for UK parliamentary elections, where the form of the ballot paper appears in primary legislation, the Representation of the People Act 1983, but may be amended through regulations that must be approved by a resolution of both Houses. No amendments were tabled in the other place to remove the wording outright, but an amendment was tabled to improve it, so I think we should be mindful of that when considering this issue.
A further modest but worthwhile advantage of the appearance of the signing sheet’s wording in the Bill is that future changes made to it would then be reflected in the text of the parent Act, which helps to make the law as clear as possible for petition administrators, parties and campaigners.
On consultation with the Welsh Language Commissioner, I can assure the Committee that the Government will prepare a Welsh translation of the wording in secondary legislation, as is the practice at other statutory polls, using a power and following a principle established in the Welsh Language Act 1993. This translation will be subject to user testing in the same way as the English version. I hope noble Lords are aware that, throughout this Bill, we are following as closely as possible comparable regulations and comparable legislation in other Acts concerned with our democratic process.
As is usual practice, we will consult the Electoral Commission’s Welsh language experts to ensure that the translation is accurate and will accommodate any changes identified through user testing. One of the amendments suggests that, in addition to consulting the Electoral Commission, the Minister should consult the Welsh Language Commissioner. The Welsh Language Commissioner has an important role in promoting and facilitating the use of the Welsh language, but it has not been standard practice at elections to consult the commissioner directly on Welsh translations of voter-facing forms and notices.
In summary, I believe that it is important that the wording of the petition appears on the Bill but that it is user tested and commented on to ensure that any improvements that are identified can be made. For these reasons, I hope that I have persuaded the noble Baroness not to press her amendments.
Lord Finkelstein
I understand the point that the noble Lord is making. It is not a pure mechanism, merely on recall; that point has been made by other Members. But it is a better mechanism for testing the broad support for the Member than a counterpetition which, under this proposal, has only to reach 10% before it cancels the petition in favour of having the by-election at all. The by-election is a better mechanism for the Member of Parliament’s attributes to be debated and considered by the electorate than a counterpetition, which would not even have the merits of constituting the whole of the constituency.
Lord Howarth of Newport
My Lords, Amendments 41 and 51, as proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton of Epsom, both seem good amendments and I hope that the House will accept them. Amendment 41 deals with moving the petitioners’ threshold of more than 10% being in favour of a by-election up to 20% before the by-election will occur. That 10% threshold is nugatory. As the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, made clear to us in what I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Finkelstein, to have been a plausible scenario, it could be all too easy for a well organised campaign to secure that 10% of votes to precipitate the by-election. Indeed, if we raised that threshold to 20% the team that the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, envisaged would need to secure only two signatures an hour. That is hardly very hard work or a really difficult threshold to cross either, so raising the threshold to 20% is the very minimum upward movement that would be needed.
I very much like Amendment 51, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, because he would even the scales of justice. That seems sorely needed in this situation. With the procedure that the Bill proposes, we would otherwise see a Member of Parliament hung out to dry for a period of eight weeks, during which the media would engage in political blood sports and an animus against the sitting Member of Parliament would be all too easy for his critics and enemies to beat up. On the other hand, the noble Lord, Lord Finkelstein, argues that the Bill is tightly drawn and that only three triggers could precipitate this process. In every one of those cases, the MP would have had to have been judged guilty by his peers in the House of Commons of serious wrongdoing. I take that point but the noble Lord has asked us on a number of occasions to draw comfort from the fact that the Bill is thus tightly drawn.
I suggest that the Bill, without any of the Front Benches intending it to be so, will be a battering ram that will beat down doors through which Mr Goldsmith and those who think as he does—many people outside in the country will be egging them on—will seek to advance in the next Parliament so that they can introduce at least one more trigger, a fourth. That would transform the model of recall that we may be about to legislate into something much more like the American model, in which people who do not like the politics of the sitting Member will have the opportunity to use this procedure to unseat a Member of Parliament of whom they do not approve and whom they resent. That seems massively dangerous. If we are to establish in this legislation a model which could then be used in a much more wide-ranging set of opportunities, that is very dangerous.
The noble Lord, Lord Finkelstein, said that the by-election would itself be the counterpetition. The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, offered some words of caution on that, drawn from all his enormous experience in the way that elections actually operate. As I think the noble Lord, Lord Finkelstein, indicated in his response to his noble friend, such a by-election will not be fought on the narrow issue of what the MP charged with serious wrongdoing has done. It will be fought, as all by-elections are, on a large range of issues so that the MP will be liable to be scapegoated for all the unpopularity of his Government—the brave Government doing the unpopular things that the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, described. That seems to be a formula for injustice and I hope that we will accept both these amendments.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
My Lords, I do not intend to go through all the arguments as I have dealt with them on previous amendments and they have been dealt with eloquently by my noble friend Lord Howarth and particularly by the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, who did a splendid job in moving the amendment. I am not sure which Minister is going to reply. It will be good if it is the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner, as we might get a straight answer. Perhaps, in his reply, the Minister could say why it is 10%. That is all I want to know. Why is it not 5% or 20%? My amendment has it as 20% because I do not want to make it too easy to unseat Members of Parliament, but it could be any figure. Why did the Government alight on 10%?
Lord Gardiner of Kimble (Con)
My Lords, this has been an interesting debate and I have listened carefully and seriously to all the points that have been made. I know I am repeating this point, but it should not be forgotten that for a recall petition to be opened in the first place a Member of Parliament would have had to have committed serious wrongdoing and to have met one of the three conditions in the Bill. All of your Lordships know very well what those three triggers are.
The noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport, raised the concern that a future Parliament might do this or that with other triggers. We obviously cannot bind what another Parliament might wish to do. This Bill before us is about three triggers which involve serious wrongdoing. That is the right balance. That is the point which the other place had come to as well. We believe that reaching the figure of 10% of constituents signing the petition would show a significant level of support for a recall and would trigger a by-election in which the sitting MP could stand.
Lord Howarth of Newport
The noble Lord is invariably fair-minded. Is he really relaxed about and content with arrangements whereby someone could be subject to a petition by 10% of their electors precipitating this trial by ordeal, which would then take the process beyond the eight week period through to a by-election, while it is entirely possible that 90% of their constituents thought that there should not be a by-election and that recall was the wrong thing to do but have no opportunity under the Government’s proposals to express that view?
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
I understand that, of course, but the whole purpose of the legislation is for the three triggers to be for serious wrongdoing. If a Member of Parliament has been found guilty, convicted or suspended up to the level, it is a view that there should be an opportunity for constituents to decide whether there should be a recall and then, if a certain threshold is reached—noble Lords have made different points about the level of that threshold—there will be a by-election. It will then be for 100% of the electorate to come to a view about what they want to do for their future representation.
Lord Howarth of Newport
Does the Minister accept the very powerful point made by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester that in reality it is hardly likely that an MP who had been subject to everything that will have occurred in the run-up to the result of the petition would actually want to contest a by-election? Is he not actually being drummed out of Parliament through this process in a way that must leave the Minister deeply uneasy?
Lord Howarth of Newport
I am most grateful to the Minister, who is long-suffering. Even if we accept that there should be scope for recall, how does he, speaking on behalf of the Government, justify that a by-election should be precipitated on the say-so of just 10% of the MP’s constituents?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
The noble Lord has not yet used it since. I stress again that we are following the existing law and regulations as closely as we can, and not attempting to take through major electoral changes. The first two amendments in the group are, after all, an attempt to take through a major change, whereby 16 year-olds would be able to vote for a recall, even though they would not yet vote in the subsequent by-election. There are differing opinions among the three parties; indeed, there are differing opinions within the current coalition Government on this issue. This is not the place to address it. It is an issue on which we need to build consensus. I am personally in favour but as a government Minister I am not prepared to accept that we move towards it. We need to discuss the whole question of the franchise at some point in the not-too-distant future.
The amendment to allow a signatory to withdraw their signature also would introduce a major innovation. There is no precedent for returning officers withdrawing ballot papers on the request of electors who change their minds prior to the beginning of the counting of votes.
Lord Howarth of Newport
The noble Lord is talking about two entirely different situations. If one is voting in a conventional election, one is doing so at a single opportunity on one day, and of course one cannot scratch that vote once one has cast it. It is entirely different when there is an eight-week rolling period, during which campaigning is taking place. What argument does he have as to why people should not be allowed to be influenced by these campaigns?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I have already said that we have now extended the period for postal voting. Indeed, postal votes may be delivered nearly three weeks before the election. If the principle in the amendment were to be accepted, the question would come up as to whether postal voters might be allowed to change their minds in the light of events they learnt about in the final two weeks of the campaign. That would be a major innovation also. With postal votes, we have slipped from a vote on one day to a vote that takes place over a period. Perhaps the noble Lord has not yet recognised that, but that is the position we are in and the current law is that when one votes one does not have a chance to change one’s mind.
Lord Howarth of Newport
My Lords, I shall be very brief because I know that noble Lords are waiting for the next debate. My noble friend has evoked vividly some of the realities of life as a Member of Parliament and some of the pressures that could be brought to bear on an MP in a recall petition situation. I know that he will also reflect carefully on the difficulties and dangers of limiting the freedom of the press in such a situation, notwithstanding the fact that we have reason to fear that the press may be very virulent and determined to create an even more charged atmosphere in which it is even less likely that the Member of Parliament will get, as it were, a fair hearing.
However, I want to ask my noble friend about one particular point, which is whether Amendment 55 would cover the publication of opinion polls undertaken in the individual constituency during the period of the recall petition. We are becoming increasingly accustomed to tactical opinion polling being commissioned and published for tactical purposes so as possibly to manipulate opinion and thus affect the outcome of the election. It seems that the same considerations that apply to limiting the freedom of the press more broadly may not necessarily apply to the regulation of opinion polling during such periods. One of the dangers we have to anticipate is that there could be manipulative polling to exacerbate the situation. I wonder whether my noble friend has that in mind in part in his amendment and what his view is on the issue.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
My Lords, I am afraid that I cannot support the noble Lord’s amendment because it would be almost impossible to enforce, even if it was desirable in the age of blogs, the internet and everything else. I understand where he is coming from and, at the risk of repeating myself, I think that any Member of Parliament who finds himself subject to a petition is already dead in the water.
I was rather intrigued by our earlier discussion. If someone was present at the count of postal votes in any election and then inadvertently told someone else what the position was, they could very well find themselves facing a prison sentence and a recall petition of this kind. That is a good example of something which might be regarded as a matter where one could win the argument, but in practice it would be very difficult to stop the kind of comments that are made.
However, the noble Lord has done the Committee a service by underlining the key point in all this: once you get to the point of a petition being launched, it will not be about the issues surrounding the Member of Parliament; it will be about 1,001 grievances, political views or whatever. That is why I think that the Bill is fundamentally ill conceived. The House of Commons may think that where the committee has decided that someone should be sent away from the House for more than 10 days, that should start the procedure. However, it would have been better simply to have gone to the point of creating the by-election that would inevitably follow. It would save a lot of time, bureaucracy and cost, as well as a lot of grief and further damage to the standing of the House of Commons and the status of Parliament.
Recall of MPs Bill
Lord Howarth of Newport Excerpts(9 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab)
My Lords, the issue raised by the whole Bill and by this amendment in particular is whether the House of Commons still has the self-confidence and the self-respect to take responsibility for its own self-regulation. If you introduce the principle of recall, it is a very strong signal that it does not. If you then amend the original Bill so that you emasculate the powers and the capacity for useful action of the Privileges Committee, you demonstrate that the process is even more far gone. If you create a state of affairs in which the Privileges Committee has such greatly reduced scope and discretion to exercise its own judgment in relation to the particular circumstances of the cases before it, it becomes well nigh useless.
It is deeply sad—and, more than that, as other noble Lords have said, it is deeply damaging to representative democracy. I hope that even at this late stage it is not too late for the House of Commons to reconsider the matter. After all, there has been great public anxiety about the conduct of certain Members of Parliament and there was a crisis, but the rational and proper response to that is not to give up on the principle of self-discipline and self-regulation; it is to reform it and strengthen it and make it work effectively, and, that way, rebuild the public’s confidence in their House of Commons.
Lord Maxton (Lab)
My Lords, I agree entirely. Perhaps I may make one very important point—I had a conversation in the corridor not that long ago with a very distinguished Member of this House, whose name I shall not mention, to this effect: we must always remember that denigration of politics is a denigration of democracy. Democracy and politics are hand in hand; they are opposite sides of the same coin perhaps, but they are the same coin and we should never forget that.
My second point is on the Standards Committee. There is a sense being expressed tonight that it is Back-Bench Members of Parliament who take decisions—they are often the right decisions—but the committee always works on the basis of a report and investigation done by the commissioner. Yes, the commissioner works for the committee, but it does not take a decision just on the basis of some wild allegations that have been made.
As I know to my own cost, the commissioner makes a thorough investigation, perhaps lasting several weeks if not months, and then reports to the committee. In most cases—not all of them—the committee goes along with that report. We should bear in mind that this is not just some ad hoc committee taking decisions on the basis of allegations; it is a serious committee receiving reports from the commissioner and making decisions based on a very thorough investigation.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, let me speak briefly to the government amendments, which, as the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, remarked, are consequential to amendments tabled by the Opposition Front Bench and passed in the Commons by a significant majority. We have also tabled three amendments, Amendments 6, 9 and 10, to future-proof the second edition by ensuring that the reference to the Standards Committee captures any other committee that in future exercises the relevant functions. Perhaps I should mention that the Standards Committee is at present reviewing its arrangements, including the role of lay members—although I suspect that it is more likely to expand the role of lay members rather than to do what the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, would like, and dismiss them.
The amendments therefore make it clear that any other committee doing that function, whatever it is called, will continue to be given that function. They also make it clear that it is the report of the Standards Committee from which suspension follows and has to relate to the conduct of a particular MP, rather than, for example, a report about conduct or suspensions more generally.
The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, has tabled several amendments. Amendment 5 is a wrecking amendment, which would render the Bill unworkable by making the first condition ineffective and by removing the second condition. Amendments 7 and 8 would overturn the will of the other place, which voted on Report by 204 to 125 to support an amendment tabled by the Opposition Front Bench to set the threshold at 10 sitting days, as has been remarked on. I suspect that those who were absent were doing other things elsewhere, rather than sitting outside determined to abstain but frightened that the Daily Mail might see what they were doing, which is what I think some noble Lords were suggesting.
Amendments 12 and 36 would amend how the seat might otherwise be vacated by deleting the phrase “or otherwise” from the Bill. Another way of future-proofing the Bill is to emphasise that the seat may be vacated for a number of other reasons—disqualification, death or other causes which the Commons may in future decide for itself. That would of course mean that no recall process was necessary. If the MP’s seat becomes vacant for whatever reason, the MP will not need to face a petition. Those words are therefore needed to stop unnecessary recall petitions being started where the seat has already been vacated.
Perhaps I may say a few wider words on the tone of our Committee so far, because what I hear is a number of noble Lords saying that we have to save the Commons from itself—we know better than the other place. I wish that when we had been debating House of Lords reform, we had the same sense that the other place knows better about us, but I did not hear that sentiment from noble Lords—particularly those here at the time. We have to be very careful not to have nostalgia for British politics of the 1960s as a golden age in which we had two-party politics, mass parties, respect for MPs and Parliament and deference.
Lord Howarth of Newport
Do not Members of both Houses equally have a responsibility to try to ensure the integrity of Parliament and that our institutional arrangements are such that Parliament is effective in the way that we all wish? Is not the right test to apply whether proposed reforms will improve the performance of Parliament or otherwise?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I wish we had heard that sentiment a little more often when we were discussing reform of this House. We have to be very careful about nostalgia. I think I heard the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, say: “It should be as it always was”. I thought about that wonderful quotation from The Leopard:
“If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change”.
We have to be very careful not to abandon ourselves to the same nostalgia for the world of our youth that motivates those who vote for UKIP.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
I was leading up to that. I want the time to be discussed. My amendment changes the time to “3 months”. In fact, “3 months” is not what I had intended. I should have said “13 months”. That was a drafting error when I put the amendment in. I want more time between. It will take much longer because it is such a complicated procedure. If six months only are available it will be difficult to carry out all the procedures and provide the arrangements in time for it to be sensible to carry out this procedure before a general election comes upon us and overtakes the process.
I must apologise to the Committee for the mistake in doing that, but the question about the length of time still stands. Six months is completely inadequate for dealing with the procedure. The general election will overtake it for the reasons about the complicated nature of setting up the polling stations and the other technical arrangements that have to be made, which I was outlining. I hope that the Government will look again at the period of six months and not reduce it to three months but extend it.
I have also suggested in Amendments 54 and 59, which are linked to this, that as well as the Speaker laying the notice of the recall petition process before the House of Commons, the Lord Speaker should lay it before the House of Lords. I realise that it is a matter principally for the House of Commons, but things undertaken relating to Parliament often have a wider importance than just for the House of Commons. In relation to them this House often gets forgotten. On every occasion when it seems to me to be appropriate, the Lord Speaker should look after the interests of the House of Lords and the House of Lords should be equally informed, at the same time as the House of Commons. That is why Amendments 54 and 59 have been tabled.
As I said, I was not immediately ready to move this amendment so late in the evening, so I must apologise to the House, and also for the error in the amendment as drafted. I want to extend the period rather than to reduce it. I beg to move.
Lord Howarth of Newport
I do not think that my noble friend Lord Foulkes should apologise at all. I congratulate him on the way in which he has threaded his way through these thickets.
There is a common theme in this group of amendments. The proposal is that legislation should lay duties on the Speaker of the House of Commons and the Lord Speaker. I would be grateful if the Minister, when he comes to reply in a few moments, would share with the House his understanding of the constitutional rights and wrongs of legislation that lays duties on the Speaker. Are we risking breach of privilege? I refer here to the independence of the Speaker of the House of Commons. Are we once again risking the possibility of running up against the ancient tradition embodied in the Bill of Rights, or not? There may be many precedents in legislation that lay specific duties on the Speaker, but my impression has been that the Speaker should be unconstrained by legislation and that the Standing Orders of the House of Commons may lay duties upon the Speaker. So I question the appropriateness of the measures not only in the Government’s Bill as we have it, but also in my noble friend’s amendments, which refer to the role and functions of the Speaker of the House of Commons.
The position of the Lord Speaker is of course entirely different and is not analogous to that of the Speaker of the House of Commons, but none the less there may already be a body of practice and precedent that establishes certain customs, conventions and proprieties in relation to any attempt to legislate on the role of the Lord Speaker. It would be helpful if the Minister would guide us on these points.
Lord Grocott
My Lords, perhaps I am slightly out of turn in mentioning this at this point, but it will save time. My suggestion that Clause 5 should not stand part of the Bill is included in this group. I tabled it simply to enable me to make a point that I cannot find a way of making by means of an amendment, but it is something which goes to the heart of the Bill. My view is very simple indeed, because I like simplicity. We have a very good system for recalling MPs—it is called a general election. That is the point at which MPs should be judged and perhaps removed by their constituents; that is, on the basis of their performance over the preceding period of time.
I love the word “anomaly”, which has been used today. It seems to me to be rather anomalous, or perhaps inconsistent, that this Government, who deliberately and as a matter of public policy decided that general elections will be held less frequently, should be introducing a Bill to provide for recall. Of course, if you have general elections every four years instead of every five years, then as we know from Clause 5, the recall does not operate during the six months prior to the election. If there were elections every four years, there would be more occasions when the recall provisions would not apply, which I suppose is a legalistic way of saying what I am arguing. Recall becomes redundant when general elections are held.
If the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, is to reply to this debate, I should say that I have found that not many members of his party agree with me on getting rid of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, but I am heartened by the fact that I know members of his party—I do not want to disclose names—who think that fixed terms, if they exist, should definitely be every four years, not every five years; indeed it used to be his party’s policy. That is a less bad situation as far as I am concerned, and it is undoubtedly and unarguably a more democratic and accountable system. In trying to appeal to the values that are frequently claimed as being a particular characteristic of the Liberal Democrats, perhaps I may put it to the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, that on the grounds of democracy and accountability, it is better to have elections every four years rather than every five years. Should that happen, we would have less need to invoke the provisions of this Bill for recall.
Recall of MPs Bill
Lord Howarth of Newport Excerpts(9 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)
My Lords, I want to say a few words on this issue and this amendment seems an appropriate point as it deals with the third trigger. What worries me is the accretion of triggers—the first, the second and the third—because I suspect that if we pass this Bill, which does not seem to have many friends anywhere, we will end up with more triggers in subsequent legislation. We are starting on a very dangerous course.
As my noble friend Lord Hughes of Woodside said at Second Reading, this is the thin end of a wedge, because the green light will be given to people such as Zac Goldsmith to come up with his amendments again in the next Parliament. He is a multimillionaire who treats being an MP as a hobby rather than as an occupation, a calling or as something that is really worth while. I look at some noble Lords opposite, for whom I have the greatest respect, who carried out their jobs as Members of Parliament with great diligence. I disagreed with them on policy and on everything else in relation to what they did, but they looked after their constituents, took up issues and worked hard. Now we are getting dilettante MPs coming in and we end up with this kind of legislation.
Members of Parliament should have the power and the authority to look after their constituents without fear or favour or threat, and should know that they can stand up to vested interests without always looking over their shoulder. Once we pass this Bill, and particularly if we take further steps, we will have MPs looking over their shoulder week in and week out. I could give dozens of relevant examples, which my noble friend, a former Speaker, will know well. For example, Tam Dalyell was so persistent on the “Belgrano”, Aldabra and even, I am afraid to say, devolution. However, he might have been intimidated if he had had to look over his shoulder, anticipating challenges, because of this kind of provision.
Other examples include Chris Mullin, who raised the issue of the Birmingham Six, and the Liverpool MPs who looked after the interests of the relatives of people killed at Hillsborough, and kept on and on about that in spite of vested interests. Tom Watson is raising the issue of historic child abuse and feels in a strong enough position to do that. However, if MPs are always looking over their shoulder, they will have less strength to do that.
I have the greatest respect for the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire. I have known him a long time. Indeed, I knew him when he was simply William Wallace. I used to listen to him very keenly because of his knowledge of international affairs and had great respect for him. He said at Second Reading:
“We have put forward the Bill believing not that it is the golden trigger”—
actually, I think that he meant the silver bullet, but never mind—
“that will somehow revive public trust alone, but that it is one element among many that we need to begin to re-establish public trust in democratic politics and in Westminster”.—[Official Report, 17/12/14; col. 221.]
I do not see many leaders in newspapers such as the Daily Mail saying, “Well done, Westminster. This is re-establishing trust by bringing in a Bill to recall Members of Parliament”. I just do not see that it will do that. I think that trust in Westminster would be restored if we ensured that the legislation we passed was sensible, workable and intelligent. This legislation is none of those. It is not sensible or workable—and it is certainly not intelligent.
I was not able to be here at Second Reading, but I read the debate in great detail. Many Members of this House rightly said that they were in favour of the principle of recall but none of them said that they agreed with this Bill. It is a terrible Bill. It was brought in right at the end of the Session and rushed through the House of Commons. It was not given proper consideration in the House of Commons, and even I have had my arm twisted to agree to all its provisions and not create too many problems.
Yet there are things that the Bill could deal with. When Members of Parliament cross the Floor they are not obliged to be recalled. That is not included in the Bill. You would think it would be, would you not? I do not like giving credit to Mr Carswell and Mr Reckless, but I will, because at least they triggered by-elections by resigning. There is no obligation to do that. I mean no disrespect to some noble Lords who are here now, but I would have thought that crossing the Floor, being elected as a Conservative and moving over to become a Labour Member—in fact, there are two of them staring at me; I feel their eyes piercing—might present an argument for taking this matter forward.
There was once a Tory MP—I am trying to remember his name—who in his last term of office as a Member of Parliament went to live in California.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
Thank you. I knew that someone younger than me, with a keener brain, would remember his name. Eldon Griffiths went to live in California—yet he was supposed to be representing his constituents. That seems to me a better argument for a recall, if we are to have recalls. This has not been thought through.
As for the provisions about imprisonment, if, for example, Caroline Lucas, as a result of her recent protests against fracking, had been sent to prison, would that have been a sensible reason for a recall? She was making a legitimate protest. If she had been sent to prison, would we all really have thought that she should be made to go through this tortuous procedure? Or if some of us had been arrested when we were picketing in the miners’ strike, and had been sent to prison, would that have been a good reason? And what would have happened to the Red Clydesiders? This has not been thought through. It is a terrible piece of legislation.
Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab)
My Lords, how are these amendments and the proposition that has just been put to the House by the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, reconcilable with Article 9 of the Bill of Rights 1689? I remind noble Lords of the wording of Article 9:
“proceedings in Parliament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any court or place out of Parliament”.
The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, is a confident constitutional reformer but it is certainly brave to seek to overturn the Bill of Rights, if I understand correctly what he is doing. He also seeks to overturn the doctrine of exclusive cognisance which has always formed a central part of parliamentary privilege.
It seems to me that these are crucial points at issue as we consider these amendments. It is proposed that there will be a parliamentary misconduct petition that will be heard and considered by two judges on the rota for the hearing of parliamentary misconduct petitions. They are to handle themselves—as nearly as circumstances admit—as if they were a High Court. They will have powers to compel individuals to attend as witnesses. I am not sure whether those powers would extend to compelling Members of Parliament themselves to attend as witnesses; certainly it is proposed that the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards should be subject to this requirement. It is proposed in Amendment 30 that a parliamentary misconduct petition,
“shall be tried in an open hearing without a jury”,
by these two judges on the rota. We are told further on in Amendment 30—the noble Lord emphasised these points when he ran through subsection (3) of the proposed new clause—that the parliamentary misconduct hearing,
“may consider evidence adduced by the petitioners that the respondent has … contravened the code of conduct for MPs operated by the House of Commons … failed to attend the House of Commons for a period of six months … otherwise abused or brought into disrepute the office of Member of Parliament”.
It seems to me that what we have going on here is a questioning in, if not a court, a place out of Parliament of proceedings in Parliament. Moreover, there is to be a low threshold of proof, as again the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, told us. The parliamentary misconduct hearing needs only to be satisfied as to the balance of probabilities before launching this exceedingly drastic process of recall. That process would of course take place, as would the hearings that he has proposed, without the ordinary safeguards that are provided for a defendant in court proceedings.
Along with the fact that we can certainly anticipate that there will be intense media attention and fascination, so that it will be a trial by media as well as a trial by these rather informal judges, it all suggests to me that some fairly rough justice may be in prospect. It is proposed at the end of subsection (12) of the proposed new clause that:
“Where the Speaker receives notification from a parliamentary misconduct hearing … he must follow the procedure set out in section 5 of this Act”.
The amendment actually proposes that this quasi-court should have powers to compel the Speaker of the House of Commons. All that seems very strange, very daring, very unorthodox, very risky and very improper. The Bill of Rights of 1689 is not like any other old statute that a subsequent Parliament is free to amend or repeal. It has a very special status in our constitution and, as I am sure noble Lords would agree, it is not something that we should lightly set aside.
Lord Snape (Lab)
My Lords, I made my view on the Bill plain at Second Reading, and I will try not to repeat anything that I said then. I am going to break that promise straight away. I said then that I could not imagine anything that could make this Bill worse, except perhaps for the coercion of the two Front Benches. But these amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, make an appalling Bill even worse, if such a thing were possible.
My noble friend Lord Grocott touched on proposed new subsection 3(f) in Amendment 30, which states:
“subject to the condition in subsection (4), otherwise abused or brought into disrepute the office of Member of Parliament”.
On Second Reading, I said specifically to the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, that there was never a great problem in getting 500 signatures in any constituency on any matter at all. Some years ago my noble friend Lord Howarth crossed the Floor in the other place. He will well remember that I attended a meeting in his then constituency of Stratford-on-Avon. The meeting was fairly heated, as one can imagine, and a number of the people there would not only have signed a petition to achieve the magic 500 but taken him outside and hanged him, I should have thought. They probably would have taken me outside and hanged me, too, for chairing the meeting. So I should think that there would not have been any great difficulty in getting that number of signatures, or getting some of those people together to say that my noble friend, for one reason or another, had somehow brought Parliament into disrepute.
Lord Howarth of Newport
My noble friend does not exaggerate. At the Conservative Party conference that year there were lapel stickers saying, “Hang Howarth”—which, it seems, were very popular. I tried to get hold of one but never succeeded. It may be that noble Lords can still find one in their own archives.
Lord Snape
I have to say that, having spent 27 years in the other place, I never achieved such notoriety in West Bromwich. There is still time, of course. One never knows.
The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, ought to reflect that his own distinguished parliamentary career was sadly brought to an end without the necessity for this Bill, without the coercion of the two Front Benches and without these amendments which he has tabled. It was a matter of deep regret to us all, though particularly to him, that that event transpired in the way that it did. The fact is that these amendments illustrate the dangers of the Bill. I hesitate to use the clichés about a slippery slope, but we are on one. Members of the other place are apparently intent on this self-flagellation. There is not much that we can do about that except try to stay their hand occasionally to make sure that the scars they leave on themselves are not too deep.
Lord Maxton
He soon got back: I accept that. My uncle would have been elected. It was he who coined the phrase: “Why should we bother counting my votes? Let’s just weigh them, because I know I am going to win”.
Lord Howarth of Newport
My noble friend has talked about an important case, arising from his family history and the history of this country. He has just exposed in the Bill that we are examining the inconsistency and confusion between the powers of the Speaker to suspend and the provisions for recall. Do not these demonstrate the regrettable failure of the House of Commons to examine and amend, thoroughly and satisfactorily, legislation of fundamental constitutional importance, and of fundamental importance to its functioning and future? Is that not a good reason why we in this House should feel entitled, with genuine respect, to offer our advice by way of amendments, so that the damage that the House of Commons is inflicting on itself through this measure may be lessened?
Lord Tyler
As the noble Baroness will know from her ministerial experience, they are already under the Ministerial Code—properly so. I want to turn to the critical issue, which is of course the one raised by the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, about the Bill of Rights, parliamentary privilege and exclusive competence. I am not a lawyer but I experienced—or suffered, whichever way one wants to say it—two years, I think, sitting on the Joint Committee looking at the issue of parliamentary privilege. As a result of that experience, I contributed to the discussions in this House when we were looking, after the expenses scandal, at the whole issue of IPSA.
What is absolutely clear—my noble friend the Minister effectively made it clear again today—is that if Parliament decides that parliamentary privilege should be constrained in a particular respect, it is up to Parliament to make that decision. That is what the Bill is already doing, to some extent, without my amendments. The noble Lord is quite right that there are implications for parliamentary privilege, but it is not a yes/no or a black/white situation, it is up to Parliament to decide if and when it wants to constrain and restrict its own position in relation to parliamentary privilege.
Lord Howarth of Newport
I am not a constitutional lawyer either, but would the noble Lord agree that the House of Commons now bitterly regrets the passing of the legislation establishing IPSA?
Lord Tyler
I am not sure that the noble Lord was here during the debate on that Bill, but I was and took an extensive part in the debate. I was very concerned about a number of elements, including the way in which MPs seemed to be all too easily restricting their own responsibilities in terms of exclusive cognisance.
I want to go back to the whole rationale for trying to find a route in this particular direction. My noble friend Lord Forsyth, who was as generous as ever in recognising the contribution to the work of this House of his coalition colleagues, identified very precisely that there was a recognition throughout the House at Second Reading—as was made so clear by the Constitution Committee—that putting this new responsibility on the Standards Committee was a serious weakness in the Bill. That is where we are coming from.
My noble friend the Minister has been very generous in his response but there has not been any government reaction to that very serious weakness. Frankly, I do not think that this is a good Bill, but it is made even worse by the responsibilities and the danger of serious politicisation of what has previously not been a political process in the Standards Committee—again, I regret very much that the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, is not here.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
My Lords, this has been an interesting diversion down the highways and byways of Liberal land. Fortunately, it has come to a dead end. We now come to a large number of amendments, which illustrate the practical problems arising with the Bill. I say to all Members, but particularly to the noble Lord, Lord Finkelstein, who has been assiduous in his attendance today, that some of my amendments are probing amendments. If he, or indeed any noble Lord, should find any contradiction between one and another of them, it is entirely because they are there—I say this to both Ministers as well—to explore the issues rather than to be definitive as to what either I or the other signatories believe.
I will speak to the other amendments that are in my name and in the name of some of my colleagues, but the first amendment states:
“Page 1, line 13, after ‘Kingdom’ insert ‘or elsewhere’”.
The clause refers to an MP having been,
“convicted in the United Kingdom of an offence and sentenced or ordered to be imprisoned or detained”.
It is limited to the United Kingdom, but it is not clear why the conviction of the MP is limited to convictions in the United Kingdom. This is quite a good amendment, because I did not draft it. It was drafted by the Law Society of Scotland, which, as my noble friend Lord Forsyth will know, is a very reputable group of people. It has pointed out:
“The Representation of the People Act 1981 s1 disqualifies a person from membership of the House of Commons where the person is found guilty ‘in the United Kingdom or elsewhere’. If an MP commits an offence in another jurisdiction, which is serious enough for that MP to be sentenced and ordered to be imprisoned or detained, is that offence not serious enough to trigger recall? There may be issues concerning the rule of double criminality but limiting the first recall condition to offences punished in the United Kingdom could create unexpected results”.
Any Member of this House might get up and say, “Well, what about an offence committed in Saudi Arabia or some of these other authoritarian countries?”. That is a very good question—I am reading people’s minds in suggesting that they might get up and ask that. But if that applies to this Bill, why does it not also apply to the Representation of the People Act 1981? All we would be doing is bringing it into line with that Act. If it is wrong, and we are worried about these regimes that might not be our favourite regimes in terms of the rule of law for this Bill, why are we not worried about it in the Representation of the People Act 1981? I hope that the Minister in his reply, and indeed my colleague on the Front Bench for the Labour Party, could indicate whether or not they now think that an amendment to the Representation of the People Act 1981 would be necessary if this amendment is not accepted for this Bill. We should have some parallel or some—what is the word I am looking for?
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
Consistency, thank you. That is the second time that my noble friend has assisted me this afternoon—and for no charge. We need some consistency in relation to this. That is Amendment 3.
Lord Howarth of Newport
Before my noble friend moves on from the issue of consistency, does he find our constitution characterised by consistency? Does he see it as a bulwark and constitutional principle that we should seek at all costs to conserve?
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
That is a very good question. I could spend an hour or two on that, although the Minister and other noble Lords will be pleased to know that I will not. We could start with the constitution of the United Kingdom and talk about the total inconsistency between one part and the other. That would take us down the highways and byways—not the Liberal ones on this occasion, although it could perhaps be some of them. Instead, I move to Amendment 13.
The clause that this relates to deals with two further provisions to the first recall condition, referring to imprisonment and detention following an offence. It deletes a proviso which states that the first recall condition includes offences committed before the MP became an MP. It also deletes a proviso which states that the first recall condition does not include offences committed the day before this section comes into force. Acute Members will notice that Amendment 16,
“Page 2, line 24, after second ‘MP’, insert ‘unless that offence was disclosed before the MP became an MP’”,
contradicts the one to which I have just referred. I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Finkelstein, would have jumped up and pointed this out if I had not done so myself. It attempts to amend the subsection that the previous amendment deletes, so if we had deleted it, we could not have amended it. It gives the House an option.
The reasoning for this amendment, which was also provided by the Law Society of Scotland, is that Clause 2(1) elaborates the reference to an offence in Clause 1(3) as including an offence committed before the MP became an MP. If an MP was elected by the constituents after he or she had been convicted and sentenced for that offence, there should not be a recall because he or she was already elected in the full knowledge that that offence had been committed and that he or she had been sentenced for it. I am not talking about where there might be an appeal or whatever but where the matter had been dealt with. That would be clear because the constituents must have known about the MP’s offending history prior to the election but nevertheless elected that individual. I do not see any reason why these two amendments from the Law Society of Scotland cannot be accepted.
The more difficult one for the Government to accept might be Amendment 4. This relates to the first of the two criteria—that the offence must have resulted in a sentence of imprisonment of more than a year. Noble Lords will know that, under the present arrangement, if Members of the House of Commons and, indeed now, of this place are sentenced to more than a year, there is automatic exclusion. That is part of our provision in this House. It is part of the provision in the other place. The point I want to raise is that it is not whether it is a year or 18 months or six months, it is a question of who decides. Should it be this House or the other place that decides in relation to the Members of this House or the other place, or should this cumbersome, expensive, complicated recall mechanism be enforced? Why, if it is less than 12 months, should it be this complicated, expensive trigger mechanism, but, if it is more than 12 months, we are able to deal with it ourselves? Why can we not deal with all of them ourselves? Would it not be more sensible for us to deal with Members of this House who are convicted, whatever the length of their sentences, and for Members of the other place to deal, equally, with their Members, irrespective of the length of their sentences? What is magic about one year? What is special about one year? We will come to this in relation to other amendments later on. What is the logic behind it? There is no logic.
Recall of MPs Bill
Lord Howarth of Newport Excerpts(9 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab)
My Lords, the Bill is what might be called a delayed knee-jerk reaction. Shocked to their respective cores by the expenses scandal, the leaderships of the three main parties all pledged in their manifestos in 2010 to legislate to provide for the recall of Members of Parliament found guilty of serious wrongdoing. Here, at last, in 2014, is the legislation. At least it is an extensively premeditated knee-jerk. The coalition published a White Paper and a draft Bill in 2011, and the Political and Constitutional Reform Select Committee of the House of Commons then subjected it to pre-legislative scrutiny. As my noble friend Lord Grocott noted, but as the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner of Kimble, omitted to mention in his advocacy of the Bill from the Front Bench, the Select Committee recommended that the coalition drop the Bill. That was a good recommendation, but of course it was not accepted.
Nothing I am going to say should be construed as condoning the abuses that led to the expenses scandal, but the party leaders made some hasty and ill judged responses to those events. At the behest of the party leaders, the House of Commons effectively abandoned self-regulation. It established IPSA, which it now regrets. It is legislating for recall, which it may well regret. Moreover, gross injustices were perpetrated on a number of individual MPs. Members of Parliament who transgressed were treated quite inconsistently by their party leaders, depending on the view that their party leaders took of them. Those panicky, partial and erratic judgments did the House of Commons further harm.
Moreover, it is remarkable that the three party leaders were all so keen to legislate to provide for fixed-term Parliaments, because, as my noble friend Lord Grocott expansively and eloquently told us, fixed-term Parliaments diminish rather than enhance the accountability both of Government to MPs and of MPs to their constituents. Now, in this zombie fifth year of the Parliament, Members of Parliament are regretting that too.
Be all that as it may, we are now presented with a fait accompli. Here is the Bill about the conduct of Members of the elected House approved by the elected House without even a Division at Second Reading. We are invited merely to consider certain details which the House of Commons did not have time to finish sorting out—important details, as my noble friend Lady Hayter said. But some of us may take this opportunity to lament that the Bill is a measure of parliamentary self-immolation.
I would say, however, that the debates in the other place in four sittings on the Floor of the House were of high quality. They were passionate, thoughtful and, in the main, courteous and good-natured, although Mr Zac Goldsmith expostulated at Report that the Bill was,
“a sham, a shambles, a farce, an insult and a disgrace”.—[Official Report, Commons, 24/11/14; col. 668.]
The divisions were not between the parties but between those who want to protect representative democracy and those who take the view that Parliament now finds itself in a new era in which it must accommodate itself to direct democracy. Not surprisingly, there was something of a generational division. A notable speech rejecting the principle of recall was made by my right honourable friend Mr Frank Dobson, but of course he will be retiring at the end of this Parliament.
Whichever side of the various arguments MPs were on, they all expressed deep concern about the poor standing of the House of Commons in the eyes of the public. There was indeed, as some Members noted, much self-flagellation. I am pleased that some Members of Parliament also expressed pride in the greatness of the House of Commons as an institution.
What do the proponents of recall seek to achieve? The impact assessment tells us that:
“The Government believes this mechanism will contribute to restoring public confidence in MPs and Parliament as a whole”.
Mr Greg Clark, the Minister introducing the Bill, explained that it would fill some gaps in the disciplinary process, as the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner, also said. Its supporters think, or at least hope, that it will go some way towards rehabilitating the House of Commons by demonstrating humility and extending accountability. My honourable friend Mr Thomas Docherty spoke of the Bill signalling to the public that,
“Parliament is listening and changing”.—[Official Report, Commons, 24/11/14; col. 669.]
It may be so, but events may not work out quite so comfortingly. It may be that both the courts and the Standards Committee will modify their behaviour in response to the legislation. The courts, warned off by the Bill of Rights, have traditionally been concerned to keep out of politics, and, as my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours explained to us, they will be acutely aware that a custodial sentence will condemn a Member of Parliament to the trial by ordeal of recall, intense, highly political, vulture-like media coverage and, most likely, a by-election. The Standards Committee, members of which have always taken it as their duty to refrain from party politics in that capacity, will be acutely aware that a 10-day suspension will condemn a Member of Parliament to the process of recall and, probably, a by-election, with all the political consequences for the parties that go with that. The amendment introduced by Labour to reduce the period of suspension which would trigger a by-election from 21 to 10 sitting days has greatly reduced the scope of the Standards Committee to temper its judgments to the particularities of the cases before it.
Like my noble friend Lady Corston, I was saddened, reading the debates, to learn of the decline of the esteem in which the Standards Committee is held. Were I still a Member of the House of Commons, I would not have favoured the addition of lay members to the committee, and I utterly deprecate suggestions that the lay members should have a formal veto over the committee’s recommendations or even that a lay member should chair it. Surely the correct response to the public’s anger at the failure of the Commons to regulate itself properly was not to hand over the responsibility of regulation to outsiders but to improve self-regulation, thereby showing that the House of Commons could be trusted to deal with malpractice. Why is it the case, as I think it is, that the Standards Committee is still not elected by the whole House of Commons? The Commons has long had the power to expel a Member but it has not used that power since 1954.
Public dissatisfaction with Parliament is not new. As the noble Lord, Lord Cooper of Windrush, said in his excellent maiden speech, there are multiple causes of it that this legislation will not touch. Among them are the decline of Britain’s power and prestige in the world; the perception of Parliament’s impotence in the face of the new jurisdiction of the European Union and of global corporate power; a more interventionist judiciary; a trivial, cynical, power-hungry and frantic media; the decline of deference; and a culture that encourages everyone to believe that their individual judgment is as good as anyone else’s.
In addition to all these factors that may cause members of the public to doubt the efficacy and worth of the House of Commons are the new means of communication that enable citizens instantly to bring pressure to bear on Members of Parliament. Active, concerned citizens advising MPs of their views are a good thing, but an online mob is not. It is of course very properly the right of citizens in our democracy to demonstrate and to lobby, but Edmund Burke, in his famous formulation, said that the Member of Parliament owes those citizens his judgment and he betrays instead of serving them if he sacrifices it to their opinion. MPs should listen very attentively to their constituents who may demonstrate, say, in support of the Countryside Alliance or against the poll tax, the Iraq war or tuition fees, and they should note with care what 38 Degrees and the Taxpayers’ Alliance say to them, but they should not allow themselves to be browbeaten. It was shocking to hear stories of MPs waiting to be sure that the Goldsmith amendment would be defeated before going to vote in the Lobby in support of it in order to keep on the right side of 38 Degrees.
Mr Goldsmith is zealous for what he calls “voter-led” recall, as an instalment of direct democracy. No doubt if he is returned to the House of Commons in the next Parliament, he will once again table his Private Member’s Bill. However, parliamentary government is representative government, not direct democracy. Government is difficult and the responsibilities of Members of Parliament are complex. To make Members of Parliament constantly and instantly answerable to those who press most insistently in their constituencies is the wrong direction for reform. Voter-led recall would be open to abuse by organised, well funded and powerful interest groups, and would seriously destabilise our politics. The general election should be the day of judgment.
As it is, we are not being asked to approve a Bill on the model that Mr Goldsmith would wish; we are being asked to examine and approve a limited measure that provides for recall in specific circumstances where serious wrongdoing has been established, and not on the initiative of citizens. I understand the good motives of the supporters of the Bill. It is an act of penance. It expresses a recognition that the House of Commons should not be judge and jury in the cause of its own Members. It extends accountability and can be seen as a response to changes in our political culture. However, I fear that it represents a weakening of representative democracy. I fear that it is a vote of no confidence by the House of Commons in itself.
Hong Kong
Lord Howarth of Newport Excerpts(9 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab)
My Lords, is there not a striking contrast between the passion for democracy among the people of Hong Kong and the democratic inertia and cynicism of so many people in this country who are entitled to vote and do not do so?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I can only agree, but it is up to all of us and the Members of the other place, as well as all those involved in democratic politics, to re-enthuse the British public with democratic politics as far as we can and, in particular, in the next five months.
House of Lords: Labour Peers’ Working Group Report
Lord Howarth of Newport Excerpts(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friends. The tone of their report is right and they have charted out an extensive area of common ground. They are proud of our institution but also critical of it. It always seems to me that the test that should be applied to proposals for reform of your Lordships’ House is not whether they would be popular or radical but whether they would tend to improve or impair the functioning of the House and of Parliament as a whole. The working group has made an unanswerable case for reform and I agree with nearly everything that it has said. Some of what it has recommended has already been advanced in the recent Steel Act.
I profoundly agree with my noble friends when they say:
“Constitutional reform only works well, perhaps only works at all, when it is the product of consensus, conducted away from partisan political processes and electoral considerations”.
No Prime Minister or Deputy Prime Minister, and no party or coalition of parties, has the right to play fast and loose with our constitution. Politicians are elected and we in this House are appointed to serve within the frame of the constitution. We should have massive respect for the constitution, which is the product of the whole of our political history. A majority in the House of Commons, particularly in circumstances of coalition, does not confer upon the politicians who find themselves in office for the time being an entitlement to rewrite the constitution at whim or act recklessly towards our historic institutions. The formal power to do so does not confer a moral right to do so. An elective dictatorship is still a dictatorship. Our unwritten constitution is predicated on restraint and on the attempt by those in government to construct a genuine majority, indeed a consensus, where major reform is in question.
There is an excellent passage in the report on the desirability of political balance in your Lordships’ House. The working group is right to dismiss the newfangled doctrine enunciated in the coalition’s programme for government that it would be appropriate to make appointments to a second Chamber so as to create a Chamber,
“reflective of the share of the vote secured by the political parties in the last general election”.
There is no basis in theory or convention for that proposition. It was a self-serving proposition that betrayed a failure to understand the place of your Lordships’ House within our wider constitution. The role of this House is to scrutinise and advise, to hold the Executive to account and to act as a check and balance against the more arbitrary or ill considered initiatives of the Government and the House of Commons. We perform that role by way of debates, reports, questions and, perhaps most importantly, the amendments that we recommend to legislation.
To perform that last responsibility of offering our advice to the elected House of Commons by way of amendments to Bills is difficult, if not practically impossible, in circumstances where the Government have a political majority in this House. We understand that, by definition, the Government of the day have a majority in the elected House of Commons and will use their majority to get their way. For that very reason it is inappropriate that the Government should also be able to use the political machine, through a whipped vote with an assured majority, equally to bulldoze opposition and get their way in the second Chamber. Ministers ought to be able to make their case rationally and persuasively, and to prevail by virtue of their arguments. The House works properly when no party has a political majority, and certainly when no coalition has one.
There are at present rumours that new Members from the coalition parties are to be appointed to your Lordships’ House to increase their political majority even further. They do not need it, not least because, as we have seen from the valuable statistics offered to us by the House of Lords Library, all Governments—not just the present coalition Government—can typically rely on some 18 to 20 Cross-Bench votes to boost their majority. If they create more Peers now, it would simply be an abuse of patronage.
I am apprehensive of the recommendation in the working group’s report for a constitutional commission. It is true that we face major systemic challenges all at once: the move to Scottish independence which will issue, at a minimum, in more devolution because of vague and rash commitments made by the political parties; our future relationship with the European Union as the integration of the eurozone proceeds; the growing problem of the disproportionate power of London within our national life; and, of course, the widespread disaffection of our citizens from our formal democratic processes. My noble friends have been tempted by a grand attempt to wrap up all these issues in a blueprint for constitutional reform but I think that the parties should distance themselves from any such exercise. It might valuably be undertaken by academics and think tanks, which could elucidate the issues and offer useful ideas.
A royal commission, or a commission or convention, will get things wrong. What they recommend will be found not to work. Even the founding fathers of the United States of America, those preternaturally wise constitution-makers, failed to anticipate the power of the Supreme Court within their system. They failed to anticipate the impasse created by having two elected Houses of the Congress. The members of the National Convention that was established in the French revolution thought that they could rebase French history at the year zero. Their work proceeded amid the utmost bitterness and its products were proved unstable in practice. In the end, much of what they did was undone. The members of the Scottish Constitutional Convention, the architects of devolution, thought that they had designed a system which would be proof against one party and one man dominating the Scottish Parliament and driving Scotland on a reckless path towards the break-up of the United Kingdom. They failed to foresee the future.
The phrase “constitutional settlement” always rings an alarm bell with me, as it did when I saw it in the report. There is no such thing as a constitutional settlement. Written constitutions are in due course amended or indeed overthrown; unwritten constitutions continuously adapt and develop organically in response to new events and needs. That is their great merit. My noble friends were right to call for gradualism: for an incremental, pragmatic and cautious approach of testing opinion, seeing what works and beginning to descry what may be appropriate at the next stage. However, they contradicted themselves by then saying that there ought to be a commission to report within two years by working at breakneck speed—the grass would be far too short—and then that there should be legislation within the next Parliament. If we were to proceed that way, I fear that way constitutional madness would lie.
As politicians, we are guardians and trustees of our constitution. If Parliament, after much debate, concludes that major constitutional change is needed and that there ought, for example, to be an elected second Chamber then it would be right that that proposition should be put to the people in a referendum. The constitution belongs to the people and not to the political class.
The Earl of Caithness (Con)
My Lords, I have listened to and read our debates on the gracious Speech with interest. I was struck by the catalogue of omissions that this Government had made and what should have been done. I am therefore delighted that the first debate in Labour time is a navel-gazing exercise on reform of the House of Lords. It is also the first debate on reform of the Lords that I have taken part in where Conservative Peers have been outnumbered by Labour Peers by over five to one.
I found the report a very interesting document and a useful contribution to our ongoing debate about reform of the Lords. I have one criticism of it: I thought that the way in which the recommendations were set out made it difficult to tie them in with the places in the text where they appeared. That could have been clearer.
However, we ought not to be considering reform of the Lords without the wider context. As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby said, reform of the other place is just as important as reform of this one. While I am on Bishops, or indeed past Bishops, I say to the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, that defeats are but a small part of what this House does. When I was a Minister I was much more interested in getting a compromise with the other side. There was therefore no Division and it did not strike a headline, but it was actually better for the country to do it that way round.
People change when they come to this House. It is noticeable how many Members from another place change when they come here. Therefore, I say to my noble friend Lord Stephen that he should not be surprised that some in the Labour Party have changed their position, from being abolitionists of this House, to wanting an elected House, to wanting something a bit more democratic, a bit more in touch. That is quite normal when people come here and see the advantage of this House and that it should be maintained.
Where I disagree profoundly with the report is on the question of hereditary Peers, and I do so on a point of principle. I take your Lordships back to 1999 when we discussed this and what the then Lord Chancellor, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, said. He was referring to the Weatherill agreement:
“The noble Lord’s amendment would provide for the interim retention of one in 10 of the hereditary Peers, 75 out of the existing 750, plus 15 hereditary office-holders, until the second stage of House of Lords reform has taken place. The amendment reflects a compromise negotiated between Privy Councillors on Privy Council terms and binding in honour on all those”—
I stress “all those”—
“who have come to give it their assent. Like all compromises it does not give complete satisfaction to anyone. That is the nature of compromise”.—[Official Report, 30/3/99; col. 207.]
A lot of people who had served this country well left this House as a result of that. There was no alternative to that compromise. It was a fait accompli. We were not allowed to amend it. It would be quite wrong for the hereditary Peers to be removed and for by-elections to be stopped until we have stage two. I see it as somewhat similar to Russia being able to tear up an international agreement about Ukraine when something binding in honour in the House on which we voted is summarily torn up. I will fight that—
The Earl of Caithness
No, I am not going to give way to the noble Lord. I have limited time, and I will debate this with him at length on another occasion.
The report suggests that attendance should be three-fifths of the working time. That happens already. If one looks at the latest figures, since the 2010 Session the figure is already more than 60%, and I am glad to report that the hereditary Peers are higher than the rest of the House. It just shows that the hereditary Peers are taking their duties more seriously than the life Peers. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Richard, that it is the hereditary Peers who are the block to stop the subtle creation of an appointed House. He and I want an elected House; therefore, I say to him that we should keep the hereditary Peers because we are his best chance of getting the elected House.
On the size of the House, I think 450 is too large. I would like to see a House half the size of another place. I shall make two suggestions about how we can get to whatever figure is agreed, be it 450, 300 or half the other House. We have had an election of hereditary Peers, so why do we not have an election of life Peers? That would reduce the numbers quite happily.
My second suggestion would be that no MPs are allowed to be made Peers until five years after they have ceased to be an MP. One could offer them a peerage without the right to sit in this House, but I think it would help the House if there were rather fewer former MPs. Our debates have changed in character enormously due to their influence. A lot of that is to the good, but there is quite a lot that is to the bad.
I disagree about money Bills. I think the House of Lords should now discuss money Bills. I would say that we are better qualified, having listened to the work of some of our committees, to discuss money Bills than those in another place. I hope that we will be able to discuss them.
Let us take a step back to look at the future. Some people have talked about a constitutional convention or committee to look at this. Whatever happens in Scotland on 18 September, the constitution of this country has to change. We cannot stay with the status quo. Therefore, it might be that this Chamber becomes the chamber of the regions in due course. It would be a very good use of this Chamber. There will have to be fewer Scottish MPs in the other place and there will have to be more self-governance for Wales and perhaps other parts of the United Kingdom, so this Chamber could be transformed to a chamber where all those features came together to discuss things which would not be discussed in another place. We could also continue our role of looking at Europe in a critical way, which we do so effectively in our sub-committees and Select Committees.
Electoral Registration: National Voter Registration Day
Lord Howarth of Newport Excerpts(10 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the Government recognise that they alone cannot do everything in this regard. We welcome conversations with all other organisations. I wondered whether the right reverend Prelate was going to promise that the Church of England would give sermons on the subject. Once, when I was a parliamentary candidate, I was taken by a young woman called Liz Barker—the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, as she is now—to the Methodist church in which her father had been a minister. The sermon came as close as possible to suggesting that the congregation might like to vote for me.
Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab)
My Lords, the Prince’s Trust reported recently that more than three-quarters of a million young people in this country believe they have nothing to live for. How will the Minister seek to motivate those young people to engage with the formal processes of our democracy?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, that is a huge question which engages—or should engage—all of us in political parties and beyond. We recognise that alienation, of the younger generation in particular, from conventional politics is a problem which has developed over the last 25 years or more and it will take 25 years or more to reverse that trend. It will take a whole host of initiatives including, I suggest, some changes in our constitutional arrangements.
EU: Balance of Competences Review
Lord Howarth of Newport Excerpts(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I am not a lawyer, so far be it for me to question the sort of language they use, in particular international lawyers.
Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab)
As our officials wander around Europe begging for bits and pieces that might be repatriated, does the Minister sometimes worry that the Government will end up generating a good deal of diplomatic irritation without achieving any genuine reconstitution of the relation between Britain and Europe?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
No, my Lords, I do not. I am very struck by the extent to which a number of other Governments are following a similar agenda to ours. I am sure that the noble Lord is familiar with the Dutch Government’s recent study of subsidiarity. In the process of publishing the opening stage of papers, the Minister for Europe and I spoke to Ministers in other European Governments and many of them have very similar views to our own. We are pursuing a reform agenda for which there is a great deal of sympathy in a number of other Governments.
Poland: Restitution of Property
Lord Howarth of Newport Excerpts(12 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, Her Majesty’s Government have said on a number of occasions to the Polish Government that we regret the slow progress on this issue. We supported the 2010 Terezin declaration. We will be an active participant in the review conference next year and are actively engaged with other like-minded Governments on this issue. We do not have a formal position at present on the question of an EU representative for Holocaust restitution.
Lord Howarth of Newport
My Lords, will the Government be more ambitious in, at any rate, the field of cultural property? Will they take this opportunity to put forward proposals for a treaty, possibly a convention—perhaps under the auspices of UNESCO—to establish internationally agreed legal principles for the determination of claims for compensation for, or restitution of, cultural property that was wrongfully taken in circumstances of war or occupation?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I am not sure how far back the noble Lord wishes to take that. I remember being taken around Prague Castle in 1993 and shown the empty spaces on the walls where the pictures that the Swedish army had taken away in 1643 had been. As we know, the issue of cultural property, particularly that of the 20th century, is actively being pursued. A number of museums are extremely hesitant about this, and there was an interesting article in one of last weekend’s supplements about this. We are engaged in the whole issue of cultural property and restitution but, as the noble Lord knows from a number of current cases in New York, this can sometimes raise immensely complicated questions.