Imprisonment for Public Protection Scheme

Lord McNally Excerpts

Thursday 13th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally (LD)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friends Lady Burt and Lady Hamwee for securing this debate and pay warm tribute to Sir Bob Neill and his committee. Sir Bob has been a constant supporter of prison reform and that is reflected in this report. I also send my good wishes to the new Prisons Minister, Rob Butler MP, who was an assiduous and thoughtful member of the Youth Justice Board during my tenure between 2014 and 2017.

My locus in this debate is that I was the Minister who took the LASPO Bill through the Lords and abolished IPPs—as we thought. I made it clear that good existing IPPs would be dealt with by various means, including prisoners being able to earn their release through various training schemes and rehabilitation programmes, to which the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, just referred. The truth was that that idea was foiled by the various Catch-22s to which the noble Lord referred, including a lack of resources.

No one has claimed that LASPO denied judges the opportunity to hand down strict sentences—I was pleased to hear the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, refer to this—and the LASPO regime has stood the list of time. What remains is a hangover, which both the Minister who introduced IPPs, the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, and the Minister who thought he had abolished IPPs, have said does not work as we thought it would and remains a stain on our justice system.

Let me put one shade of doubt into our debate. Throughout my time in the Ministry of Justice, attempts at prison reform were knocked back by 10 Downing Street with the simple message “not politically deliverable”. Throughout this time, we have had to face the problem that both Front Benches have been keen to avoid being outflanked on the right by being seen to be soft on prison reform. I fear that this is still the problem and it will need a great deal of courage to overcome it. This is not a plan to set free dangerous criminals but what a civilised country would do. I hope the Minister has come with a brief accepting the report and committing the Government to legislative action to right this wrong.

As I came into the Chamber, I received an email from the British Psychological Society, from which I shall read only one sentence:

“A resentencing exercise would restore a sense of certainty, hope and fairness: three vital ingredients to behavioural change, engagement with psychological support and compliance with the law.”


This has been an overwhelming message to Ministers. I hope they are listening.

Bribery Act 2010: Post-legislative Scrutiny (Select Committee Report)

Lord McNally Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd February 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord McNally (LD) [V]]

My Lords, it is always an honour and pleasure to follow the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, with all his wisdom and experience.

On 13 May 2010, I became Minster of State for Justice in the coalition Government, as deputy to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Clarke of Nottingham, who was then Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor. In my in-tray when I arrived at the department was a gift from the departing Labour Government in the shape of the Bribery Act. The noble Lord, Lord Bach, had done much of the heavy lifting in this House in delivering the Bill to the statute book and had been supported from these Benches by the late and sadly missed Lord Goodhart and my noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford who, happily, is with us today and from whom we will hear later.

It is perhaps not surprising that those who opposed the Act saw the change of Government as an opportunity to push back on bringing the Act into force. This meant a delay in implementation, for which we were criticised at the time. The Secretary of State and I carried out a consultation with a variety of interested parties. We heard all the familiar objections: how burdensome it would be on business, particularly SMEs; how it would inhibit the use of legitimate corporate hospitality; how many grey areas there were between a tip and a bribe; and, of course, the plea that we would lose out to the dastardly French, who would steal all our business by ignoring such Anglo-Saxon sensitivities to the greasing of palms.

That second round of consultation by the incoming Government emphasised the cross-party support for the legislation and its greater acceptance. We took the flak about the delay, and the Act reached commencement on 1 July 2011. I took some satisfaction from reading in the Select Committee’s report that it had received no “major” criticisms of the legislation and that, overall,

“the structure of the Act, the offences it created, its deterrent effect, and its interaction with deferred prosecution agreements, are only some of the aspects which have been almost universally praised”.

We are entitled to ask whether the Conservative Government elected in 2019 would have been as willing as the coalition to pick up the Bribery Act and guide it to commencement. The noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, asked some pertinent questions about the role of the anti-corruption champion and rightly questioned whether the Government have the stomach for the fight against bribery. This is, after all, the Government who champion the global buccaneers who will swashbuckle their way around the world with scant regard for the niceties and who are only too willing to act as money launderers to the world, as the noble Lords, Lord Hain and Lord Empey, pointed out.

So we will listen carefully to the Minister’s response. The Committee has rightly pointed to the slow progress of bribery investigations and prosecutions and rightly asks how the Government intend to bring a sense of urgency to implementation and enforcement. It is encouraging that in Transparency International’s 2020 report, Exporting Corruption, the UK is one of only four countries, along with the USA, Switzerland and Israel, cited as active enforcers of anti-bribery measures, but the report also finds that active enforcement has fallen off since 2018 and there is real danger of us falling out of the top group—as my noble friend Lord Stunell indicated. Key to avoiding that slide will be ensuring the availability of funding for the Serious Fraud Office to pursue serious cases and ending the delay in bringing forward prosecutions.

There is also the general responsibility to prevent economic crime. The review that we are considering today states that

“the new offence of corporate failure to prevent bribery is regarded as particularly effective”,

and Transparency International UK has called for the Government to extend the “failure to prevent” approach used in Section 7 of the Bribery Act to corporate criminal offending in economic crimes such as fraud and money laundering—I was pleased to see the noble Lords, Lord Hodgson and Lord Gold, lend their weight to that, as well as my noble friend Lord Stunell.

Bribery is often seen as a victimless crime where one man’s bribe is simply another’s facilitation of the wheels of commerce. It is not. It is corrupting to both ends of the transaction. It distorts the benefits of the free market by preventing the best product or service being provided for the best price. It diverts resources from the needy to the criminal and inflates the cost of development. The Select Committee is in our debt for pointing the Government in the right direction in updating the Bribery Act for the new circumstances we face in the decades ahead. We are grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Saville, and his colleagues for their work.

Northern Ireland: Defamation Act 2013

Lord McNally Excerpts

Monday 11th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)]

My Lords, as I say, the matter is a priority for the Northern Ireland Assembly. There are discussions between it and the UK Government, albeit that I am not aware of their specific focus regarding defamation. It is a pleasure to reply to the noble Lord; I followed him in this place as I followed him at the Scots Bar, and it seems not too long ago that he and I were sweating over our books in Parliament Hall in preparation for our exams.

[Lord McNally (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I declare the interest that I was the Minister who carried through the 2013 legislation as Minister of State at the Ministry of Justice. I am pleased to have heard how well it has worked, and I pay tribute to Simon Singh and the late Lord Lester of Herne Hill in helping me to get that legislation through. I want to put a thought to the Minister. As he rightly says, this is a devolved matter but, remembering that it was the DUP that blocked the legislation last time, does he not think those who are most committed to the union would have a really vested interest in demonstrating that Northern Ireland was in step with the rest of the United Kingdom in important legislation such as this?

[Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)]

In my view, my Lords, commitment to the union is not best expressed by railroading the devolved Assembly into a particular course of action.

Probation Services

Lord McNally Excerpts

Monday 15th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Keen of Elie [V]]

The dynamic framework anticipates that we will be seeking the provision of rehabilitation and resettlement services from the voluntary and charitable sector, with the other services brought within the National Probation Service.

[Lord McNally (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I am sure the Minister would agree that one man’s U-turn is another’s development of policy. I welcome the proposals from the Government. I am very proud that I was part of helping to create the National Probation Service, but, going forward, we have to give the service parity of esteem with other parts of the criminal justice system; it has never had that parity. Along with that, I would press the Minister, particularly at the present time, to consider a strong recruitment drive for the probation service among black and ethnic minorities to deal with the overrepresentation we have in the criminal justice and prison system, particularly among young people; they badly need mentors whom they can recognise and work with.

Covid-19: Prisons and Offender Rehabilitation

Lord McNally Excerpts

Thursday 23rd April 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally (LD)]

My Lords, between 2010 and 2017 I spent seven years at the Ministry of Justice, first as Minister of State and then as chair of the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales. I visited many prisons and young offender institutions and never left any of those bodies without a sense of awe for those who work in them, doing a difficult and sometimes dangerous job on behalf of us all.

A month ago Sir Bob Neill, the chairman of the Justice Committee in the other place, called for the immediate publication of contingency plans to deal with what he called the

“potential hotbed for viral transmission”

in our prisons. The reason we are having this debate today—and that the noble Lords, Lord German, Lord Naseby and Lord Harris, have opened with such passion—is that there is a growing feeling that Ministers in the Ministry of Justice are not up to responding to that call for action. The Minister will be aware of the briefings that noble Lords have received from Nacro, the Prison Reform Trust, the Howard League, the Quakers and others. It is impossible to cover all their concerns in a two-minute speech, so will the Minister deposit in the Library a comprehensive response to the concerns raised in those briefings by these expert organisations?

Will prison staff and prisoners now be given the testing and safety equipment to manage the threats of the coronavirus safely, as is happening in hospitals and care homes? Will the Secretary of State take one of the Downing Street press conferences, accompanied by the head of the Prison Service, so that he can explain to the media and the British public what is happening in our prisons on his watch? Unless we hear an “action this day” response from the Minister, there is a very real danger of prisons being added to the list of too-little-too-late responses that have blighted this Government’s record in response to this pandemic.

Queen’s Speech

Lord McNally Excerpts

Wednesday 8th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally (LD)]

My Lords, one of the great traditions of this House that the noble Lords, Lord Parkinson and Lord Davies, will quickly become aware of is that when the Government plan to do something ever so slightly dodgy, they send along the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, like the village policeman, to give one of his, “Move along: nothing interesting to see here” speeches. That only underlines a worry I have which was brilliantly exposed by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, my noble friends Lord Tyler and Lord Wallace of Saltaire, and the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham. It is It is the grave suspicion that a Government who campaigned on “taking back control” will use the proposals for a constitution, democracy and human rights commission to claw back to the Executive the powers they have lost in recent years to Parliament, the courts and the individual citizen. Indeed, the Conservative manifesto was very clear about its intention to clip the wings of individuals or institutions who frustrate or slow down the revolution on which we are about to embark. This House has a special duty to safeguard our democratic freedoms and civil liberties from the abuses of what the late Lord Hailsham described so magnificently as our “elective dictatorship”.

Today I will concentrate on another matter, which the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, has prepared for me. Another of our great institutional bulwarks against political abuse and one of 19th century liberalism’s greatest gifts to our 21st century democracy is a Civil Service that is recruited on merit and politically neutral. I was one of the early political appointments when the system of political advisers was introduced by the Labour Government in 1974. My own experience of public servants during five years in the Foreign Office and No. 10 from 1974 to 1979 and during the seven years I spent in the Ministry of Justice between 2010 and 2017 was of their dedication and commitment, which I held in the highest regard.

Of course it is necessary to bring in new skills and fresh thinking to our public services, but we should not have to find out the hard way that simply rubbishing the Civil Service and bringing in “weirdos and misfits” is not a solution to the challenges that face us. We will not get the response we want from our public servants by belittling them or claiming that there is some miracle cure for real or imagined shortcomings that is ready to be applied. The truth is that many of Dominic Cummings’s saner aspirations can be found in the 1968 Fulton report, yet in No. 10 we seem to have reached a stage similar to that depicted in “Little Shop of Horrors,” where Dominic Cummings is ready to gobble up the Northcote-Trevelyan principles and 150 years of good governance.

I hope that Mr Cummings has read and digested the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010, which puts strict limitations on the role of political appointees such as himself in relation to civil servants and that he understands and respects the specific protections and safeguards for public servants contained in that Act. Certainly, it is the duty of both Houses of Parliament to scrutinise proposals for Civil Service reform and that must include Mr Cummings appearing in person before the responsible committees of both Houses. Prior to that, the Prime Minister, as Minister for the Civil Service, should make a Statement to the House of Commons explaining the extent of the powers Mr Cummings enjoys and their compatibility with the existing rules covering the powers of political appointees.

For those of us who were hoping for a period of tranquillity following the recent turmoil, I fear that the gracious Speech contains too many threats to our freedoms for that to happen. As for Mr Cummings, I recommend a reading of the lives of Robespierre and Trotsky, with their reminder that revolutions have a habit of devouring the revolutionaries.

Cairncross Review

Lord McNally Excerpts

Tuesday 12th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port]

Now your Lordships are rising to the bait, which I appreciate. It was, of course, the same newspaper in Llanelli—and in Llangennech and Llwchwr—but the front page was different. When somebody had moved out of a house, a boat had sunk, somebody had passed the 11-plus or there was to be a flower-arranging display in one of the local chapels, it was my job to tell the community about it.

Community cohesion is undergirded by an active press. None of us should simply take for granted that its disappearance will not have effects. How can the Government address this? The BBC has embedded reporters into local areas, which is brilliant. How much more of this can we hope to do? What about the idea of a regulator, which was picked out from the report by the press this morning? How effective will such a regulator be? What will his or her terms of reference be? Will there be teeth to the job that that person is asked to do?

There are so many questions, but above and beyond them is a very real concern. This is a matter which belongs to Parliament as a whole—and to bipartisan approaches—and is a real problem at a local level. I conclude my remarks by emphasising once again the levels of concern, the health of communities and the need for instruments such as a local newspaper to forge an identity for a locality. Burry Port was never Llangennech, and Llwchwr was never Llanelli, because the press helped us give expression to a real sense of identity. How on behalf of the Government will the Minister—and how will we as a Parliament—make practical proposals to achieve these noble ends?

[Lord McNally (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, paints a romantic and nostalgic picture of the local press, and he is right to do so. But, in trying to solve the problems that face us in somehow helping the Burry Port Star, we must beware. The press owners have come with a begging bowl. They earlier proclaimed their resistance to any government interference, but quite ready to dip their hands into the public purse are very large and rich companies, many of which have delivered redundancy after redundancy to local papers in favour of their shareholders.

That is one of the reasons why local journalism is in the state that it is in. I also suggest that the National Union of Journalists might be added to the list of people to consult that the Minister read out. There is a serious challenge to local media. Dame Frances set it out very bleakly in her report and the Minister repeated it. There is massive technological change and that impacts on how news is received and—particularly with the under-25s—how it is digested.

I welcome some of the actions announced by the Minister to refer some of the recommendations to relevant bodies. However, the ambitions of the Government and newspaper proprietors would be more credible if they had not been so eager to bury the Leveson report and ignore its call for the establishment of a regulator set up by royal charter which could do many of the tasks called for in this report.

As I said, freedom from Government does not seem to stop the press barons from dipping into the public purse. Therefore, although I welcome the recommendations on digital and media literacy, online advertising and news quality obligations, we should be hard-nosed about how and where tax relief and innovation fund money is spent. It is not there simply to line the pockets of Newsquest, JPI Media and Reach, which are all big, profitable companies that have taken the lion’s share of the existing Local Democracy Reporting Service, which costs the BBC £8 million.

Some of the powers advocated in this report could be taken on by the Press Recognition Panel, the independent body established by Parliament under royal charter. The recommendations on how to bring the FANGs within the rule of law go wider than the issues covered by this report but its recommendations on new codes of conduct for online platforms are to be welcomed.

But what do we find in the report? As usual, it is a quick dive to try to weaken the BBC. In almost 40 years of being involved in this I have explained to various media proprietors that 90 years ago a Conservative Government had the common sense to nationalise the BBC as a public service broadcaster with a mandate that consciously distorted the market in favour of public service broadcasting. They want to have a go at the BBC online because it carries the same credibility and weight as the broadcast BBC. I hope that although the Minister has asked Ofcom to look at this, Ofcom will be very sceptical about trying to weaken one of the strongest public service journalism outlets in this country, one which should be defended.

I hope also that the Minster will use his good influence to secure a full day’s debate in this House. This is an important report; so is the one published today by the Press Recognition Panel. This is an ongoing debate and the knowledge that exists in this House would be of benefit in taking a very wide agenda forward.

[Lord Keen of Elie]

I thank the noble Lords. I entirely concur with the observations of the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths of Burry Port, and the emphasis that he laid on local journalism and its impact on and importance to local democracy and indeed to wider societal issues that arise at a local level. To that extent, I believe that we are all pleased with the steps taken by the BBC with regard to the Local Democracy Reporting Service, which has been effective. The conundrum now is how to redress the balance. I believe that a starting point is for the CMA, which has experience and expertise in this area, to look at how the market is working. That will not be a solution in itself but it will give us a starting point from which we can work. As regards a regulator, that is a medium-term or longer-term ambition. Again, we will have to look at how we can develop that, but we are conscious of its importance.

The noble Lord, Lord McNally, made the perfectly valid point that many of our printed press corporations remain profitable. The difficulty is the disparity between the profitability in some areas and the poverty in others, as illustrated recently by the demise of one of the largest publishers of local newspapers in the country. In so far as the press industry seeks to, as the noble Lord put it, put its fingers into the tax pot, it is fair to say that he can anticipate that the Treasury will be pretty hard-nosed about that. We will seek to ensure that any benefits that can be provided go to the right place for the development of public-interest journalism.

I do not see this as an attempt to weaken the BBC, although there might be issues there that we will look at. I appreciate the importance of the BBC as a source of reliable journalism, but perhaps there are areas where it goes where it would not have gone before. I am not sure that it is necessarily in the public interest to have “Love Island” news online—although I may be corrected by some. It seems to me that these are areas where, for example, more commercial enterprises might be allowed into the market. I will just raise that as an issue.

I welcome the comments that have been made. We will want to review matters. The noble Lord raised the question of a debate. Of course, we have the forthcoming White Paper as well, and it may be that, in the light of that, a wider debate will be appropriate.

Central Courts IT System

Lord McNally Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Keen of Elie]

With respect to the noble and learned Lord, it is important to distinguish between two entirely separate systems: the existing system, which suffered the corruption of the routing server, and the proposed new common platform system which is in its testing phase. That is entirely unrelated to the existing system, but is of course connected to the modernisation of the courts system and the case management system, which has been allocated considerable funding at the present time.

With regard to the existing contracts, we are engaging with the provider over this issue. We regret the outage that occurred. Back-up systems did operate. Certainly, I am not aware of thousands of criminal cases being disrupted. I am advised that there is no evidence of cases being adjourned due to the IT issue.

[Lord McNally (LD)]

My Lords, it a fairly easy strike to suggest, as the Labour Front Bench did, that this was all the fault of Chris Grayling. I was also the Minister of State in the Ministry of Justice when we set out to reform court IT. Throughout my political life we have had, periodically, Ministers coming to explain some disaster in an IT system. What I wonder is: what happens next? As he rightly said, the comprehensive view of reform is not affected by this particular malfunction, but I do remember visiting courts and asking, “Have you got any problems with your IT system?” and they would say, “Well, our fax system doesn’t work”. This was long after the rest of the world had sent their fax systems to museums. The original idea is still valid: to invest in technology to make our court systems efficient. Where does the buck stop? I understood that the Cabinet Office also has responsibility for oversight of the efficiency of bringing in these new systems. Who is overseeing this? Who is keeping their eye on it? Or will we wait for another few years, and somebody coming along to explain why that system has not worked.

[Lord Keen of Elie]

I am obliged to the noble Lord for his observations, drawing upon his own experiences in the ministry when we began the introduction of the common platform system. Clearly, we want to move on to that platform fully and as soon as possible. We have already seen some success in the digital approach that has been taken to some forms of casework—such as debt actions and undefended divorce actions—and we want to roll that out further. With regard to the existing system: it is not perfect. If it was perfect, we would not be seeking to replace it. There are back-ups, but they are of limited operability because of the availability of wi-fi in courts in circumstances where it has not been possible for those working there to access their desktop computers. That has been the case in some courts recently, and in the ministry itself, because of this particular problem.

At the end of the day, the Ministry of Justice must consider the effectiveness and efficiency of the computer system that it relies upon, not only as a ministry but also for its attendant agencies and arm’s-length bodies. We accept that we have a responsibility in that matter.

Brexit: Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration

Lord McNally Excerpts

Monday 14th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally (LD)]

My Lords, listening to this debate criss-crossing the Chamber, with not all the speeches on one side going one way or the other, has reminded me of a story that Denis Healey used to tell in the 1960s when he was Minister for Defence. A man came to him saying that he had the answer to the Russian submarines patrolling undetected in the North Sea. His solution was to boil the North Sea and, when the water evaporated, the Russian submarines would be left high and dry for all to see. “But how do I boil the sea?”, asked Denis. “Look here, Mr Healey”, said the man, “I have given you the solution. It is up to the Government to work out its implementation”.

After three Brexit Secretaries and the abandonment of numerous red lines, we are left with a compromise which no one defends as anything but the least worst solution. As the noble Lord, Lord Wilson, indicated, what the Prime Minister has been trying to do so valiantly over the last two and a half years is to boil the sea. The mandate which the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, and others have claimed because of the impressive 17.4 million votes ignores the fact that the vote was spread across a wide range of opinions. It goes from Sir John Redwood’s plans for a light-touch, small-state, buccaneering free-trade country to the socialist utopia that those such as Len McCluskey want. It was not a single mandate to achieve a single objective—hence the problem that the Prime Minister now faces.

It is becoming abundantly clear that the Prime Minister’s compromise offers only the prospect of us stumbling out of Europe with jagged edges and a mass of unfinished business, satisfying no one and ensuring—let us have no doubt—that the civil war in the Conservative Party will continue. In the circumstances in which we find ourselves, I do not see it as an outrage to give the people an opportunity to take stock in the light of the realities that have been exposed over the last two and a half years. The great benefit of living in a democracy is that there are mechanisms which enable people to change their mind. This is not the Charge of the Light Brigade, where we follow orders regardless of the knowledge that someone has blundered. Nor are we, like Macbeth,

“in blood Stepp’d … so far … that Returning were as tedious as”,

going back. We are a parliamentary democracy, with all the freedoms and maturity that that term implies. If ever there was a time to take back control, now is the moment.

I will be followed in this debate by the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, and I am sure that we will once again be presented with his particularly dystopian view of the European Union. I have been in here for nearly 25 years and I will give him full marks for consistency. What would worry me if I were a Conservative is how, over those nearly 25 years, the views of the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, have moved from being those of a rather eccentric voice on the Back Benches to being at the heart of the Conservative argument for where we go next. So let me repeat the view that has motivated me since my student days, reinforced by 50 years of working with and in the European Union. The European Union is the most successful example of multinational co-operation that the world has yet seen. It has set an example to the world of how old enmities can be replaced by fruitful joint endeavours, and it has massively helped to increase Britain’s influence and prosperity.

Recovering from the last two years will be no easy task. It will need Parliament and parliamentarians to regain the confidence to make decisions in the national interest. If, as I hope, that means giving the people the opportunity to have their own meaningful vote, those of us who will be campaigning to remain will have to address the fears that the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, and others drew attention to, which were so successfully exploited in 2016. We will have to renew our commitment to a Europe of peace and prosperity, underpinned by human rights and the rule of law. This is a once in a generation decision which every parliamentarian must take individually. It is the Corn Laws; it is the Norway debate; it is our opportunity to learn the lessons from this ghastly episode and say to the young people who will have to live with the consequences of it, “Here is your European future. The hope lives on, the dream will never die”. I will be voting for the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, when the House divides.

Scotland: European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord McNally Excerpts

Thursday 14th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally (LD)]

My Lords, I rise for two reasons. First, there is every danger that the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, will intervene again if any time is left. Secondly, I put to the Minister a saying that was beloved of an old mentor of mine, Joe Gormley of the miners’ union. He said, “Don’t build platforms for malcontents to stand on”—but I fear that that is exactly what the Government are doing. It has been mentioned a couple of times that there were cleverer ways of doing this than the way used by the Government. If we are to get through this properly, they have to avoid the elephant traps which those who have no wish to see this union preserved will put in their way.

[Lord Duncan of Springbank]

My Lords—

[Lord McNally]

I am still within the time limit and I think that the Minister will have time to answer, so he should take no notice of those sitting to his left. I will leave him with one thought that worries me. It is the Conservative and Unionist Party that is overseeing the greatest threat to this union—and that should give some pause for thought.

[Lord Duncan of Springbank]

It seems I have a wee bit of time to answer. The one thing that I will note is that it is always disturbing to go into negotiations to which people have brought with them elephant traps. You would rather hope they were going into them in a much more evolved and sensitive manner to try to reach some sort of consensus. Anybody going into negotiations packing an elephant trap is probably not there for the healthiest of outcomes. I think we have managed thus far to try as best we can to deliver an outcome that will work—indeed, we have done so for Wales. I think we did so for Scotland, too: it is the Scottish National Party and the Scottish Government who decided that that was not the case.