House of Lords Reform

Lord Lea of Crondall Excerpts

Tuesday 15th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lea of Crondall (Lab)]

My Lords, I am also grateful to the noble Baroness the Leader of the House for including my Motion on the Order Paper.

On the range of reputational issues, I suggest that the first precept should surely be the old adage: “Let the punishment fit the crime”. I am not sure that we have all that in perspective at present, but I will allude to it later.

On the formal subject of the debate, if we are to make progress on this issue, our line of travel must have two prongs. First and foremost, we need to turn the tap down on the numbers coming in, as well as encouraging Members to go out. The two must be included together. I did not hear the noble Baroness the Leader of the House say that, and I trust that my noble friend the Leader of the Opposition might acknowledge that it is a fact.

The noble Baroness appeared to imply that the numbers coming in had nothing to do with it. I may have missed it, but I do not think she acknowledged that. The necessity for this twin track, if I may make a statistical point, is pellucidly clear if one looks at the numbers, as set out in a succession of excellent Library Notes. We are very well served by the House of Lords Library on these questions. Since 2000, 472 new Peers have come in and 289 have gone out, for one reason or another. In passing, I also draw attention to the fact that it is a bit rich for the Prime Minister—who is cutting every penny in sight, in local government, social services, et cetera ad infinitum—to imagine that we can ignore the additional costs of 45 new Members. In November 2010, in response to a Question from my noble friend Lord Bassam, the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon of Tara, who was Chairman of Committees at the time, said that the average cost per Member was £156,000 a year, including a share of the overheads. Over 10 years, that is a cost of £1.56 million per Member: £15 million for 10 Members—I stand to be corrected—or £60 million for 40 Members.

Secondly, the number of Members leaving the House, far from having diminished, much less dried up, has hovered around 20 more or less every year for the past 15 years. Again, I draw on the Library Notes as the fount of all wisdom on this. I remember asking my noble friend Lord Grocott for this number when he was a Whip and he confirmed it. It was always about 20 and it is still about 20. The big change has not been the number going out but the escalation of people coming in. The announcement of 45 new Members on 27 August this year was not a record, but—despite all the talk along the lines of “It can’t go on like this”, which we have heard in this House and in the press for a long, long time—it is right at the top of the range, the outrider being 82 in 2010.

So our starting point as a matter of balanced public policy must surely be a self-denying ordinance that only about 20 Members come in each year. Of course, this could be done more readily in practice by averaging over a spread of years—the arithmetic would mean 40 over two years, 60 over three years, et cetera—if that is more convenient administratively. Before anybody says that this will never be accepted by any Prime Minister, I say, “Hang on a minute, we live in a democracy”. Surely the fatal flaw in the present system of appointments, which must change as the first priority, is that alone among western democracies we allow the Prime Minister of the day to decide unilaterally on appointing new Members, with no attempt to hide the motive, which is normally to bring changes to the party composition of this House and to spread the Danegeld uneasily between the other party leaders.

If one steps back from it, it becomes all the more self-evident that this is an absurd and indefensible system—just try defending it in public. A few months ago, I was in Maputo in Mozambique, chairing a seminar for the Westminster Foundation for Democracy and the Labour Party’s sister parties in Africa. It was a session on good governance and, indeed, bad governance. We put words on blackboards for discussion and for question and answer sessions, based on suggestions from the floor. They were all pretty basic issues. For example, if you are the Finance Minister you do not make your brother-in-law the auditor-general. You obviously do not act like a bunch of kleptocrats, stealing money from the public purse to buy up houses in South Audley Street—although one of them said, “Why not?”. I am not sure whether that was a joke. I was keenly aware that if I had written on the board that, in an advanced democracy, not only could there be no written constitution but the Prime Minister could simply change the composition of one of the legislative Houses of Parliament to suit their political advantage, it would be laughed out of court, even—I might say particularly—in Maputo. I add that I did not have time to explain the concept of elected hereditaries.

While I am being diplomatic about last month’s announcement, the facile rhetoric that the Government do not have a majority here, as they do in the Commons, begs every question in sight, even though it is endlessly regurgitated by lazy political journalists as though it is sensible analysis. Going back 100 years, the Labour Party lived with that lack of a majority when they had a majority in the Commons, not only more recently from 1997 to 2010—despite the big reforms in 1999—but from 1945 to 1979. The Labour Party never said that that was something it could not operate with. It is a pretty thin argument.

The additional, technical reason why this idea of a lack of a majority is a nonsense is that, apart from anything else, we have some 200 Cross-Benchers. An overall majority is patently impossible, yet we see this nonsense regurgitated. Talking of Cross-Benchers, a former Member of this House—a field-marshal who also lives in Crondall, if that helps to identify him—mentioned to me only last week that he had retired in part because the House was getting too crowded. “But”, he said, “Look what happened: those spaces were filled up almost overnight”. This is a key point: if, as I trust, we are to adhere to voluntarism in this matter, as the Life Peerages Act implies, what sort of an incentive is there if we see that that is the result?

My Motion refers to a new statutory appointments commission. I want briefly to mention its two key functions as I see them. I do not think it is game, set and match to say that Prime Ministers will not accept it. I accept that we probably need a mini constitutional convention. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Steel of Aikwood, for whom I have the greatest respect: is it really a fact that we cannot have a mini constitutional convention to deal with this without waiting for an all-singing, all-dancing maxi-convention for everything in the United Kingdom?

There seem to be, inter alia, two important legs to the statutory appointments commission. One concerns agreeing the formula for the balance of new appointments between the parties, which could correspond to what I would call a three general election moving average, based on seats rather than votes, given the electoral system.

I refer in the Motion to the reputation of the House. We all know that cash for peerages is often talked about. Therefore, I also propose that the political parties lodge with the SAC their own processes and criteria for their internal party selections. However, for the avoidance of doubt, it would not be for the SAC to choose between individuals A, B and C from the party list. That would be down to the parties.

I said at the start that reform will work only if it has these two prongs. The noble Lord, Lord Steel, would not wish, I think, for his Motion to stand in isolation, since, apart from anything else, it would do nothing to curb the flow of new appointments. He is nodding; I am glad. Incidentally, he and I happen to be the same age: 77. The new leader of the Labour Party is 66. I would say that 77 is the new 66; otherwise I would, no doubt, be consigned to the knacker’s yard in three or four years. I think the noble Lord, Lord Steel, might be one of the chosen few. However, I doubt he would find consensus that there are only 12 distinguished and active colleagues among the 133 in this House who are more than 80 years old. The point has already been made that people’s lifespans are, on average, extending. I hope that the Front Benches will acknowledge later in this debate that the twin-track approach is therefore the sine qua non for a reform that will go the distance.

Palace of Westminster Committee

Lord Lea of Crondall Excerpts

Thursday 9th July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, returning to the subject of the debate, I urge my noble friend the Leader to carefully consider the need for full debate in your Lordships’ House before the committee does too much work.

[Lord Lea of Crondall (Lab)]

My Lords, is the logic of what is being said not so much whether or not this or that decision is the correct one but that this needs to be a two-tier consultation exercise? The noble Baroness the Leader may care to say a bit more about the process of selecting who goes on to the Joint Committee, as has been said, but there are also some leading questions about the 40-year impact and so on that surely need to be brought back to the House for people to be able to comment on, when they have been considered more systematically by the Joint Committee, before final decisions are taken. It should not just be a question of saying yes or no to a report from a Joint Committee.

[The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Stowell of Beeston) (Con)]

I am grateful to all noble Lords for the points that have been made in this short debate. I shall address the questions that have been put. First, on the membership of the committee, the Motion today sets the wheels in motion for a committee to be established. Membership of the committee is not yet finalised. I take on board the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Richard, about the quality of representation from this House and indeed its equality. We will put together a strong team to represent the interests of this House. Clearly, once I have had confirmation from the Commons of which people it intends to field on the committee, that will be reflected on before we finalise the membership of the committee as regards its representation from here.

On the way in which we proceed, there will certainly be equality in numbers on that committee, which will be a Joint Committee of both Houses. The intention is that the Joint Committee will be co-chaired by myself and the Leader of the House of Commons, primarily so that we ensure—as I said when this matter was raised here a few months ago—that this House is in no way considered in any way subordinate when we discuss matters of this kind. I very much see it as my responsibility as Leader of this House to ensure that the situation that the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, referred to with regard to the education centre is not repeated.

Once the committee is established, clearly we will want to interrogate very thoroughly the report that was produced by the independent consultants and published a couple of weeks ago. Ultimately, it will be for both Houses of Parliament to take the decision on the way forward on restoration and renewal, and I will certainly want to consider carefully the process between the committee being set up and its work starting, to the point at which we make a decision by way of a full debate and Division in each House. It is of course important that I and all others who sit on that committee from this House can properly understand and are able to take into account the views of Members as we carry out our work. Therefore I hope that I can give noble Lords the reassurance they are looking for in responding to those points.

On the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, on English votes for English laws, I do not intend to divert from the topic of this Motion, but I refer him to the Statement I repeated in your Lordships’ House last Thursday, and to the points I made in response to the questions in that debate. The key point was that with regard to any decisions made in the House of Commons to change their procedures, whatever happens down there will not affect the authority or the processes in this House. However, the noble Lord, Lord Butler, has secured a Question for Short Debate next Thursday, and no doubt we will be able to discuss this matter further at that time.

G7

Lord Lea of Crondall Excerpts

Wednesday 10th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

On the noble Lord’s first point, I am not in a position to extend what we have already done in this area, but we are very much at the forefront of this agenda, which the Prime Minister started back in Lough Erne. However, I note the noble Lord’s proposal.

The situation in Syria is very concerning and continues to worsen. We are doing a great deal in terms of supporting the action by ensuring that we are providing reconnoitre-type services and supporting the humanitarian situation on the ground. However, we are not involved in military action.

[Lord Lea of Crondall (Lab)]

My Lords, many of the issues covered by the Statement seem soluble, at least in principle. What worries some of us is that the refugee crisis in the Mediterranean is not in the same category—it looks insoluble. Is the difficulty about finding a more credible process involving north Africa and the Middle East with Europe to reduce the number of refugees that no one has thought intellectually, as it were, of what is needed, or is it that some of the countries where people are coming from do not want to co-operate? I find what is going on very shocking, as do people all around the country. It is absolutely dreadful. Is it for Europe or is it for our own Foreign Office to give a really big push to think of ways in which we can find a credible process?

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

The noble Lord gives a stark illustration of the seriousness of the desperate state of some countries, whether they are in north Africa or the Middle East. I will try to be brief while at the same time doing justice to this serious issue. We are doing everything we can to save lives, as one would expect from a moral and upstanding nation. I refer to what HMS “Bulwark” has been doing as part of the rescue operation. The misery of the people who are being rescued from the Mediterranean does not start there; they need security and stability in the countries they are fleeing from. We have to tackle the cause of this problem, and whether it is through our aid programmes or the political agenda, we must make sure that there is no reason for people to flee in this way in the first place.

BBC Royal Charter

Lord Lea of Crondall Excerpts

Thursday 4th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

My Lords, war has not been declared on the BBC. The BBC makes an enormous and valuable contribution to many people’s lives as the nation’s broadcaster and in its overseas services, with 308 million people around the world and 96% of the UK population watching it each week. It is also a very well-understood and supported cultural institution, which I know is important to this House. The arrangements will be looked at fully and from every perspective in the charter review. I think the process starts today with the kind of comments that I know will be made in this House.

[Lord Lea of Crondall (Lab)]

My Lords, is the Minister aware that it is a bit rich for many members of the Conservative Party to complain when the BBC does not reflect everything said by the Daily Mail, when, as far as I can see, it is compelled each morning to regurgitate everything said by the Daily Mail, the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Express, the Sun et cetera on “What the Papers Say”?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

My Lords, the underlying point is about impartiality. The BBC is required by the royal charter and agreement to deliver impartial news. Under the terms of the agreement, the BBC must do all it can to ensure that controversial subjects are treated with due accuracy and due impartiality. This is, of course, one of the issues for the charter review. I think there has been some long-standing suspicion that the views are sometimes skewed, and not in a way favourable to our party.

European Council

Lord Lea of Crondall Excerpts

Monday 23rd March 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Stowell of Beeston) (Con)]

My Lords, with the leave of the House, I will now repeat a Statement given by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister in the other place. The Statement is as follows:

“I know that the whole House will join me in welcoming David Natzler as the new Clerk of the House. Mr Speaker, you went to the ends of the earth in search for the best candidate, but I am glad that we found the answer right here in Britain.

Before turning to the main focus of the Council, which was the situation in the eurozone, let me say a word about the discussions on Tunisia and Libya, on the situation in Ukraine, and on the nuclear talks with Iran.

I am sure that the whole House will join me in sending our deepest condolences to the friends and family of Sally Adey, a British holidaymaker who was among at least 20 tourists and two Tunisians brutally murdered in the terrorist attack at the Bardo museum last week. I have written to President Essebsi to assure him that Britain will stand with the people of Tunisia as they seek to defeat the terrorists and build a peaceful and prosperous future. The EU has agreed to offer practical assistance, and Britain will play its part, deploying SO15 and military counterterrorism experts and continuing to provide assistance in aviation security and tourist resort protection.

The suggestion that some of the terrorists involved had been trained in Libya is the latest evidence of the very difficult situation in that country. The Council agreed on the need for a political solution, supporting UN-led efforts to bring the different parties in Libya together to agree a national unity Government. Britain has provided Libya with aid and military training, and we will continue to do all we can to assist.

I know that some people are looking at this situation and asking whether Britain, France and America were right to act to stop Colonel Gaddafi when we did. We should be clear that the answer is yes. Gaddafi was on the brink of massacring his own people in Benghazi. We prevented what would have been a wide-scale, brutal, murderous assault. It was the right thing to do, and we should be very proud of the British service men and women who carried out this vital task.

Turning to the situation in eastern Ukraine, the Council welcomed the significant reduction in fighting and the progress on the withdrawal of heavy weapons. But, as President Obama, President Hollande, Chancellor Merkel and I agreed earlier this month, it is essential to send a clear signal that sanctions will not be eased until Russia delivers on its promises and the Minsk agreements are fully implemented. This European Council did exactly that. The conclusions state that,

‘the duration of the restrictive measures … should be clearly linked to the complete implementation of the Minsk agreements’.

They also underline our readiness to take further measures if required.

One of the best things we can do to help Russia’s neighbours is to help them fight corruption and strengthen their democracy. Just as the Know-How Fund set up by Margaret Thatcher did a great job of helping Eastern European countries after the fall of the Berlin Wall, so we need the same approach today. At the Council, I announced a new good governance fund with an initial £20 million to support reforms in countries in the eastern neighbourhood and western Balkans. This will complement support from other donors. It will accelerate efforts to fight corruption, strengthening the rule of law, reforming the police and justice system and supporting free markets by liberalising key sectors such as energy and banking. The fund will be up and running by the summer. As well as Ukraine, it will initially cover Georgia, Moldova, Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Turning to Iran, I met Chancellor Merkel and President Hollande in the margins of the Council to discuss progress in the vital talks on Iran’s nuclear programme. We are absolutely clear and united in our purpose. Iran must never be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon, but there is a peaceful path to civil nuclear energy. We believe that a comprehensive, durable and verifiable deal is possible, but only if Iran shows greater flexibility and takes some tough decisions during the talks this week.

We also discussed proposals co-ordinating Europe’s energy policy, ensuring transparency of gas supply agreements and that Europe’s energy policies are consistent with reaching the vital deal at the climate change summit in Paris this December.

Turning to the eurozone, the Council welcomed the agreement between Greece and the euro area to extend their programme. Let me say again: this is the last of these Statements of this Parliament, and I think I have uttered this sentence probably 11 times, but Britain is not in the eurozone and we are not going to join the eurozone. But we need the eurozone to work properly. A disorderly Greek exit from the euro remains a major threat to Europe’s economic stability, and it could be very damaging to the British economy. Protecting our economy from these wider risks in the eurozone means sticking to this Government’s long-term economic plan.

Five years ago, Britain’s economy was close to the edge. We had the biggest budget deficit in our peacetime history: a deficit that was forecast to be bigger than that of Greece or any other developed country on the planet. Five years on, the deficit has been halved and our national debt is falling as a share of GDP. We have the fastest growth of any major western economy. We have 1.8 million more people in work, more jobs created in Yorkshire than in the whole of France, and more jobs created in the UK than in the rest of the European Union”.

[Lord Lea of Crondall (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

My Lords, I am repeating a Statement. This is not a debate.

“We need to stay on this path, not abandon it just as it is leading our country to prosperity.

Just as we are acting in our national interest at home, so we have acted to protect our national interest in Europe, too. We have cut the EU budget for the first time in history, we have got Britain out of the euro bailout schemes, we have vetoed a treaty that was not in our national interest, and we have stopped attempts to discriminate against EU countries outside the eurozone, not least with our successful legal challenge last month. We have made vital progress on cutting red tape and completing the single market.

At our G8 in Lough Erne, we kick-started the talks on what will be the biggest bilateral trade deal in history between the EU and the US. We have put power back in the hands of our fishermen so they can sell what they catch. We have negotiated a new single European patent that will reduce costs for entrepreneurs, and part of the patent court will be based right here in London. We have ensured new safeguards to protect our vital financial services industry, and we have returned over 100 powers from Brussels to Britain, giving us more control over our borders, policing and security.

We have clamped down on benefit tourism, and in foreign policy we have worked with European partners to get things done and keep our people safe—from sanctions on Russia and Iran and practical assistance to help countries in north Africa fight terrorism, to international action to help those in desperate need around the world, including in west Africa, where British aid workers are risking their lives helping to stop the spread of Ebola.

In the coming two years, we have the opportunity to reform the EU and fundamentally change Britain’s relationship with it. We have the opportunity to build a European Union that is more competitive, more flexible, more accountable to the people, where powers flow back to member states, not just away from them, and where freedom of movement is not an unqualified right. For the first time in 40 years, we have the opportunity to give the British people their say on Britain’s place in Europe with an in/out referendum. If I am Prime Minister, that is what I will do. Those who would refuse to give the British people their say should explain themselves to this House and to the country. I commend this Statement to the House”.

My Lords, that concludes the Statement.

EU Council

Lord Lea of Crondall Excerpts

Monday 27th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

My noble friend is absolutely right on every point. I would add that we should remember that it is not clear for what purpose the European Union needs this extra money, and that this is an organisation whose accounts have been qualified for many years.

[Lord Lea of Crondall (Lab)]

My Lords, the big peanuts in this—

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Bates) (Con)]

The noble Lord was not here for the beginning of the Statement.

[Lord Tomlinson]

He came in during the Statement.

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

I got the thing from the office.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

My noble friend was not in the Chamber. It is not appropriate for him to speak.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

It is a bit ratty to say that—goodness gracious.

[A noble Lord]

It is not ratty to say it. It is the truth.

Iraq

Lord Lea of Crondall Excerpts

Friday 26th September 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lea of Crondall (Lab)]

My Lords, the basic question in my mind is exactly that posed by the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby. To summarise it, unless we are to have a war of all against all, as in Hobbes, what is the basis on which there can be a new paradigm between the religions? It is very difficult, but at the moment it could not be more startlingly obvious, with the Saudis playing it both ways as always, with Danegeld being distributed quite widely. I hope that the revolutionary idea of the caliphate, or Boko Haram, or what is going on in parts of Indonesia, and so on, is not one that we simply think can be dealt with in the way that we have, haplessly, to do now.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, said, charity begins at home. I suspect that there is massive support for this in Britain because it involves British citizens and because of the absolutely medieval beheadings that are more or less on our TV sets. We have more urgently to look at why part of our youth feel so radicalised in a revolutionary way that they think that British society has nothing to do with them.

I was interested in the comment made by my noble friend Lord Desai about the comparison with the Spanish Civil War. Only two weeks ago, I had a conversation with two friends, who happen to be in the Labour Party. I said, “We really can’t have people going backwards and forwards to Iraq to carry out these atrocities”. The question came back to me: “Why did you think it was such a good idea that we allowed this in the Spanish Civil War?”. I did not give a very good answer at that time. The answer is to do with the legitimacy of the Spanish Republican Government and so on, but it is more to do with what you might call the tradition of western philosophy and all its offshoots, which meant that the Spanish Civil War was an issue that we could understand in our terms. The caliphate is not like that. It is different from the Spanish Civil War in legitimising people going there.

I have two questions. First, has Qatar, which is part of the alliance, changed its mind about financing ISIL? Otherwise, how on earth is it part of the alliance? Secondly, did I hear the noble Lord, Lord Dannatt, who is not now in his place, say that unmanned aerial vehicles in Syria are a different legal category from manned aerial vehicles? Am I the only one who has not heard that doctrine before? Is it accepted by international law?

In conclusion, we have to bear in mind the principle that has been hinted at by many noble Lords: we must not allow this to become a successful provocation. I am quite sure that the strategists, not of al-Qaeda but of ISIL, want this to be a successful provocation, but how do we prevent it from being to them a successful provocation?

European Council

Lord Lea of Crondall Excerpts

Monday 10th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

My noble friend makes, as one would expect, a number of extremely pertinent and wise remarks which underline the fact that the importance of financial and trade sanctions should not be underestimated. There are those who seem to suggest that this is some kind of empty threat, but as my noble friend has illustrated forcefully, it is not an empty threat at all. That is why those options are all being considered. At the European Council meeting the member countries made it clear that those options would be considered if we needed to turn to them.

[Lord Lea of Crondall (Lab)]

On the question of elections, is it not the case that if a country is divided very much on communal lines and identities itself in terms of nationalism, religion or, indeed, history and geography, as it does, elections which have been taking place under the present constitution—whether it is Tymoshenko or Yanukovych, whereby a result of 51% to 49% means winner takes all—do not work? I know enough about Ukraine to know that this has been coming for some time, because it does not work. Not only does it not solve problems, it exacerbates them. The United Kingdom has experience of something analogous, and I am talking about Northern Ireland. We all know that there are no easy answers but we found that instead of just having elections at 51% to 49%, along with Dublin—which is the equivalent of Moscow in this analogy—we brought people along, step by step, to power sharing. I do not know whether I can ascertain from the Leader of the House whether our experience here would be rather useful in discussions with our colleagues, and indeed with the people, in Ukraine. Can he say whether that experience has been brought to bear, and if not, would it be useful to do so?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

The focus of the discussions last week was on prior questions about the need to set up a contact group, the legitimacy of the referendum, the steps that the EU would take and all the rest of it, rather than the minutiae—it is not minutiae, it is an important point—of how Ukraine would organise its own electoral system. I take the noble Lord’s point about some of our own experience, but I do not think that it is our task to try to prescribe how Ukraine carries out its own elections. The most important thing at the moment is that its constitution should be respected and its people should be able to make a decision themselves about the kind of future they want.

European Union (Referendum) Bill

Lord Lea of Crondall Excerpts

Friday 31st January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shipley]

I am speaking to both of them, because they are about the Government and the movers of the Bill explaining their intentions. The Bill cannot be passed in its current state. The noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, called it a “dog’s dinner”; I agree entirely with that. We have to be clear about these matters, otherwise we are not doing our job as a revising and scrutinising House properly.

Those who wish for less regulation and believe that we can get less regulation by leaving the European Union should explain the implications of having to apply the rules of origin. There is a rising tide of concern about this. We could end up with more bureaucracy and regulation rather than less. Mention has been made this morning of trade agreements. What will the implications be for our trade agreements? If our intended relationship is not clear, where do we lie with the 46 trade agreements that the EU has with other countries—and, I understand, a further 78 trade agreements pending? If we left the EU, we would lose access to every EU trade agreement with a third party and each of those would have to be renegotiated, a long and time-consuming process that would damage exports in the interim.

In conclusion, Amendments 50A and 72 make it clear that the Government have to explain what our intended relationship would be with the EU if we withdrew. It is an absolutely fundamental matter, it seems to me. I look forward to hearing from my noble friend Lady Warsi, the Minister, when she speaks on this matter, and from my noble friend Lord Dobbs, when he replies to the debate. The British people have a right to understand this matter and that needs to be done at this point in the debate rather than at some later stage.

[Lord Lea of Crondall (Lab)]

My Lords, it is incumbent on this occasion—it was not done with the previous group of amendments—that we have some substantive replies from the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, to the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, and subsequent speakers. It is of vital importance that the British people have information and that they do not vote in ignorance of the consequences of the different potential results of the referendum. It may well be that as part of the noble Lord’s cunning plot, if I can use that expression, the Daily Mail, the Sun and the Daily Telegraph—indeed, all the press bar a couple of numerically small exceptions—would be very happy to provide all the information that the British people need, but it would not exactly be balanced.

When Harold Wilson decided to have a referendum in 1975, most noble Lords in this House will remember very clearly that there was information of exactly the type that the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, referred to. Therefore in reply, it is incumbent on the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, to remove any impression that the people who want the referendum do so with the motive of making sure that we get out. They are not interested in having a referendum on a level playing field; that does not motivate the movers of the Bill. Perhaps when the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, comes to reply, he can respond to the question: what can possibly be said in support of the idea that no such assessment should be placed before the British people if there is a referendum?

[Lord Sherbourne of Didsbury (Con)]

My Lords, I will intervene very briefly in response to my noble friend Lord Shipley, who had called in aid the Electoral Commission’s report on the importance of providing information to voters. It is very important that information is provided, but the commission did not say that it should be given before the Act comes into force. It could have said that, but it did not.

G8 Summit

Lord Lea of Crondall Excerpts

Wednesday 19th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I am sure that that advice from my noble friend is extremely wise. I know how closely involved he has been over the years with many of these negotiations. It is clear that this issue was given a great deal of importance at the highest level, during the conversations between our Prime Minister and the President of the United States at the G8. Obviously we are at the beginning of the negotiations; I think the first meeting is due to start next month. However, I am sure that all those charged with the responsibility of trying to bring about this extremely important deal will know of the history. If they do not, they will have been reminded of it by my noble friend and will bear that in mind as they try to secure this important deal.

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

Does the Minister agree that the question of regime change now bandied around in our newspapers gives people a sense of déjà vu, when at the same time we are looking at a peace conference? The idea on the Arab street that the West can be involved in regime change will possibly only have the result that the dispute between Alawites and Shia and Sunni Muslims will not be left to them but will also become our dispute.

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I understand the point the noble Lord makes. It was said at the G8 that if we can get the G8 and other countries working together to bring about a political situation by bringing their different pressures to bear—whether it is the Russians, the Americans, or whoever—that must be worth trying.