Trade Union Bill

Debate between Lord Lea of Crondall and Lord Deben

Wednesday 10th February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

I go back to Ted Heath and 1971 and 1972, as the noble Lord does. I think it is unnecessary to use over-the-top language such as “striking against the public”. Take the present dispute of junior hospital doctors. If you meet any of them, do they think that they are striking against the public? No, of course not. There is obviously a nuance—to put it mildly—between whether you are talking about the Secretary of State being the public or somebody else being the employer, or the issue of how many hours a week are being worked or whether you work on Saturdays and so on and so forth. It is not helpful to have this characterisation. Even though the metaphor of the two sides of industry is a well-known one, it is open to interpretation.

[Lord Deben]

It would obviously be unsuitable for me to make any comment whatsoever about the current strike, given my relationships. Therefore, I will keep away from that. However, I will take on very clearly the point that the noble Lord has made. One cannot possibly suggest that a railway strike is effective if it does not affect the railway passengers. To say, “I am striking but I do not mean to upset the passengers” is really a metaphor without meaning. The staff are striking because they do mean to upset the passengers, because that is the only way they think they can bring their case properly to the eyes of whichever British transport company is concerned. I do not in any way want to make the noble Lord unhappy, but one of the problems is that we pretend. We should not pretend: the purpose of a strike is to cause inconvenience in order that the management of whatever it is should give way.

Succession to the Crown Bill

Debate between Lord Lea of Crondall and Lord Deben

Monday 22nd April 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

My Lords, is it not the case that when the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Guildford made his statement previously, one or two of us asked whether that could somehow be put on the record in a more secure form? Is this not exactly the sort of way in which it could be put on record? Surely that sort of gloss, understanding or undertaking—however one wants to express it—by the Roman Catholic Church is worth more than an amendment, and I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, will perhaps consider that to be the case.

[Lord Deben]

My Lords, I hope that my noble friend Lord Cormack will think again about this amendment. It is a very difficult situation—we are where we are—but if you read the Act of Succession, you see words which none of us in this House would like to see applied today to Her Majesty’s Roman Catholic subjects, all of whom pray for Her Majesty every Sunday and every Mass. It is very difficult for us to take what is a piece of rampant discrimination. Frankly, for many of us, particularly the ex-Anglicans, the whole concept of a secular monarch being Supreme Governor of the Church of England is very odd, but we are where we are.

I merely ask my noble friend not to rub this in by adding yet more to it. Let us accept that both sides have come to what is an uneasy compromise in a world which thinks utterly differently. If you read the Act of Settlement, you have to wonder what the rest of the world must think about us tinkering with something that frankly ought not to be part of the constitution of the United Kingdom because it does not have anything to do with our view about equality and difference in a society such as ours. It is because of our history and we understand that and do not want to raise that, but please let us accept where the Government are.

I urge my noble friend not to press this. It is bad enough anyway. This merely makes it worse, and it would be helpful for my noble friend to recognise the degree of reticence on the Roman Catholic side on this issue, for many years and again now. Following the great wisdom that we have heard from the right reverend Prelate, this seems to be the moment to let it lie and to withdraw this amendment.

Growth and Infrastructure Bill

Debate between Lord Lea of Crondall and Lord Deben

Monday 28th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. I used to dabble in this myself some years ago and I know how unenthusiastic the Treasury generally is about hypothecation. In so far as the proposition in this case is that that Treasury likes hypothecation, I suppose that the question could be posed—and it would be very interesting to know the answer: who are these other people in the rest of society who should be paying this if they are not in category A or category B under this supposed hypothecation?

[Lord Deben]

I am not sure that I entirely follow the noble Lord’s point, but it is true that the Treasury is keen on hypothecation when it suits it and against it when it does not, and this is one of those occasions. The trouble is that hypothecation ought to be between the payment of the bill and the advantages from the bill, but in this case it is not that, and many of those who have to pay the cost of Section 106 agreements are only just above the level of benefiting from them. It is because this is a fundamental flaw in the whole system that I come to be extremely disappointed in the Growth and Infrastructure Bill. As I have said previously, it is a pretentious title for a series of very small alterations, some of which are not terribly helpful.

However, there is a big alteration that we ought to make if we really want people to have housing, which is to say seriously that the cost should not be a tax on a small number and those who are most vulnerable; the cost should be a tax that we all bear for a proper social end. In case the Opposition say that I am moving in their direction, I say that they are as guilty as anyone else. They have imposed taxes in this area that are just as large and always excuse it as a tax on the developer. The developer does not pay taxes; he charges the cost to the people who buy his houses. That is the nature of the market; there is no way of avoiding it. I am very happy to support the drive of the amendment, which suggests that, if we are going to do this, we may as well make sure that we get bang for our buck by tightening it and toughening it. But, my goodness, what a disappointment it is that yet another Bill comes before this House masquerading behind this fraudulent concept that supported housing should not be supported by the nation as a whole but should be a price borne largely on the shoulders of first-time buyers. It is not right, it should not be and we ought to find a different way of dealing with it.

Justice and Security Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Lea of Crondall and Lord Deben

Monday 9th July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

The noble Lord, Lord Butler, is correcting something that I did not say. I said Labour Members of the Lords. There are no Labour Members of the Lords on this committee.

The information flow should be the subject of a much more substantive statement by the Minister when he responds than is normal on these occasions. I was interested in the remark made as an aside by my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours on the fact that this question en principe has never been discussed in the past 14 years. I rather suspect that if we were setting up a constitution for a new member of the United Nations, we would be a little worried if that were the case. Although I am not saying that this amendment is the right thing, I will support it because I believe that it opens up a very important question. We know that the noble Lord, Lord King of Bridgwater, is a typical, reputable, outstanding and well respected member of the circle in which this sort of activity takes place. It used to be called the Establishment. I do not know whether that was a compliment or an insult; it was half way between. However, we do not need to be so scared of the idea that we are always playing into the hands of enemies of the country, whether it is al-Qaeda or anybody else, if we have a more adult approach to these matters. Political balance is needed by those who have been involved in the agencies—I see a couple on the Front Bench—where people find it perhaps difficult to understand the world where other people come from. It would be much better if the normal rules of political balance and openness were observed.

Finally, as regards the remark of the previous speaker, we had the example last week of members of the Treasury Select Committee not covering themselves in glory when asking questions about LIBOR because they did not really understand what they were talking about. I can see the objection that ordinary souls on a committee like this would be of no use because they would not know what they were talking about. Obviously, by definition, they would not know what they were talking about as they would not have been serving in one of the agencies or been on this intelligence committee for a number of years or been Secretary of State for Defence or whatever. I wonder whether that is going to inspire public confidence.

[Lord Deben]

My Lords, I intervene as somebody who has not been a member of this committee. I have now managed to get papers from the noble Lord who sits next to me. Unusually I find myself wishing to ask my noble friend to listen carefully to the words of the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, for the following reason. The issue is the confidence of the public in this committee. I have a difficulty of inventing a committee of a particular kind in order to meet that confidence requirement because it seems to start from a grave disadvantage of looking as if you have an artefact here. People complain about the fact that nobody seems to know too much about what goes on, so let us invent something that seems to meet their requirements. That is what it will look like if we make the alterations suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Butler, although I am entirely in favour of them.

The advantage of a Select Committee is primarily that it is something that people know and it has, over the years, established a position, as a concept, of independence. It clearly is not the creature of the Prime Minister or of the political parties. It is manifestly, and increasingly, with the election of its chairman, an independent form of investigation. Therefore, prima facie, it would be much more sensible to use that mechanism and to make such changes as are necessary for the particularities of such a Select Committee so that at least when it is referred to as a Select Committee people immediately catch on—in so far as they know about anything in Parliament—that this is an independent, non-party parliamentary committee that is treated by its members as a place where they work in the national interest and not in their party-political interest.

I think there is an important advantage in using the Select Committee structure. My worry is that my noble friend will be led by all sorts of officials—I have been in this position and I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Butler, will excuse me when I try to describe it—of the “better not Minister”, “it would be safer to do something slightly different”, “you never know what might happen” kind. That attitude is endemic in the giving of advice because advisers would prefer not to have given advice that turned out not to be quite right, so it is better to give the most negative advice.

I hope my noble friend the Minister will be prepared to say that we can create a construct that is a Select Committee and sits naturally in the parliamentary structure but is specifically designed to deal with security matters and will be what everyone outside will recognise is different from a Select Committee on the environment or a Select Committee concerned with trade and industry. Is it not better to use the strength of the Select Committee process and procedure and, above all, of public understanding rather than to try to create something special?

I very much respect my noble friend Lord Lothian and I understand his fear that the Select Committee will be expected to have public hearings. I agree that a public hearing in which every answer is, “I am afraid I can’t answer that” will be an embarrassment and not helpful, but it seems to me not impossible that, before any such hearings are started, this Select Committee should publicly be said to be a Select Committee that does not have public hearings, except in unusual circumstances. You start off as you mean to go on. No one would misunderstand that. Indeed, I think if it were stated like that, it would be much easier for the committee to proceed, and I would like to see it. But to say that because it is different from other Select Committees in that sense, it ought to be set up in an entirely different way is a mistake because it is more similar to a Select Committee in every other manner. What people want to know is that it is independent and all-party, that its members take things seriously as parliamentarians and that its secrecy is only the secrecy that is necessary because of the nature of the things that it discusses.

I hope my noble friend will not be led astray by the siren voices of those for whom this is a step too far. We have been a long time discussing this issue. The noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, reminded us of how long and there was time before even he came on the scene in which this discussion was taking place. I hope we will not step back now. We ought to do the thing properly and set down the terms of the Select Committee in advance.

Energy Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Lea of Crondall and Lord Deben

Tuesday 8th February 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

My Lords, I rather cut short my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, but she will perhaps forgive me for that. I think I thanked the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, and was addressing some remarks to the noble Lord, Lord Deben. I made one remark about this being a great cost to the Treasury. I do not think it is a great cost, but I think it is a challenge, and I make no apology for mentioning Burton upon Trent once again because we have to keep in mind the audience that we have to get to if it is not going to revolt. It is not just a statistical bulletin. Statistics unfortunately do not speak for themselves. That is where spin comes in. I would rather there was a stakeholder body that agreed on certain things that needed to be done or were self-evidently true. We cannot afford to be elitist. That is a statement of the obvious. There is a huge increase in taxation in these tables.

The second point on which I would very respectfully part company with the noble Lord, Lord Deben, is about his remark that this is the wrong Bill. When two or three years ago, my noble friend Lord Rooker was summing up on the Climate Change Bill, which was not a million miles different from this Bill, he said that his job was to get the Bill through, but he was not sure that it was the right Bill. I can foresee the next 10 energy Bills never being the right Bill, so I have got my teeth into the backside of this particular elephant.

[Lord Deben]

I said a number of things, but I do not think I said that this is the wrong Bill. It seems perfectly reasonable to put it in; I just think it is the wrong amendment, which is rather different.

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

I am pleased about that. It may have been the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, and as he is not here, he cannot deny it.

I thank my noble friend Lord Whitty for his broad support. I totally take his point about the need to make some adjustment. I say to my noble friend Lord Judd that rationing by price is a rather crude but accurate way of describing the world we live in. Whether it is capitalism or socialism, rationing by price is a fact of life in the middle of India or anywhere else. We also have to bear in mind that if we cannot change the income distribution in this country to be more reasonable than the outrageous distribution at the moment, we will have to fiddle around with a lot of discounts, exceptions and adjustments. Unfortunately, the question would then be whether so many people would be excluded from the heavy incidences of some of those price rises that we would not raise the revenue or have the carbon effect that we wished. That is the moral hazard that we are into, and it requires a lot of thought.

My penultimate point is that I do not think that today is the day when Treasury officials in the Room are going to stand up and say, “We’ve fallen in love with hypothecation”. What I am suggesting is in the Treasury’s interest. The priesthood in the Treasury is not separate from the rest of society, and we want to encourage it to be part of fronting up some of these matters. The consultative body and all the stakeholders have got to be able to communicate with Burton upon Trent. I think that community needs to be brought together.

Finally, my noble friend Lord Davies of Oldham was very kind in what he said. I can assure him that we are at one in wanting to get this in a form that does not have all the teething points. I do not think the amendment as it stands states as crudely as he implied that we put all these taxes into one bundle and redistribute them in energy. I go halfway to that to make sure that the quantum is clearly identified. I recognise that this is mainly for general taxation, but in Burton upon Trent, it is a huge selling point to be able to say, “This is what we are doing with some of the money”. I want to be a bit pedantic about that distinction. I hope that it is acceptable for me to say that one bundle does not quite sum up what I was trying to say. I will conclude on that note. Although I hope that we can come back to this on Report with a slightly different amendment, I would like to withdraw the amendment.