House of Lords Reform Bill

Lord Tomlinson Excerpts

Tuesday 17th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I cannot say whether or not the Government have taken legal advice on this specifically, but my reading of that judgment and my understanding of the constitutional position is that the Parliament Act would apply to a Bill brought similarly along the lines of the draft Bill published today.

[Lord Tomlinson]

My Lords, will the noble Lord accept that the part of his Statement in which he referred to Mr Clegg’s committee and that—as I think my noble friend the Leader of the Opposition said—it last met in November, is little short of scandalous, given that it purports to be representing different points of view? Based on the number of options that we have, what has Mr Clegg been doing since November —working out permutations of possibility?

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, the Joint Committee—on which the noble Baroness sat and was such a distinguished and senior member—met, I think, on seven occasions. I cannot remember whether the last time was in November or December, but it is true that there has been a gap of several months before we have been able to publish this today. There is nothing in the White Paper with which the leadership of the Labour Party, the shadow Cabinet or indeed the noble Baroness would seriously disagree. It is a pretty good distillation of the consensus or, in some instances, the lack of consensus that was reached in that Joint Committee.

European Council

Lord Tomlinson Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde]

It is immensely interesting to hear of my noble friend’s dining partners and the conversations that he had. I hope that he will update us regularly.

[Lord Tomlinson]

My Lords, the Statement is in two parts. Might I ask a question about each? On the terrorist incident, perhaps the noble Lord could explain why the Prime Minister was not informed about the terrorist threat at East Midlands Airport until lunchtime on Saturday, when it became quite clear yesterday, in the answers given by the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones, that other Ministers in the Cabinet knew some hours earlier. I hope that he can explain that to us.

Turning to the European Council, I noticed with great interest that the noble Lord read over it very quickly, without his customary emphasis. He was, of course, trying to divert us from some of its content. First, we have it quite clearly in the Statement that,

“we voted for a freeze seeking to block the 2.9 per cent”.

But then a few sentences later, it says:

“So before the Council started we began building an alliance to take a different approach and insist on 2.9”.

We had the spectacle of our Prime Minister almost trying to deceive the people of this country by standing on the steps of the Council and claiming that he was going in there to fight for a zero increase when, as we now know from his Statement, he had before going into the Council meeting tried to build an alliance for 2.9 per cent. Does he think it an honest way of dealing with Parliament and the British people to try to pretend that he was fighting for a freeze on the one hand when, before he went in to fight for it, he was already seeking an alliance to support 2.9 per cent?

Will the noble Lord concede that if he really wants to get to grips with budget discipline, he should not be arguing just about the size of the budget? It would be helpful if he and his Government took a lead in supporting some of the ideas that came from members of the budgetary control committee—including me when I was there—to start introducing a serious attempt at zero-based budgeting, so that you look at budget lines afresh each year rather than just looking at the budget as it was and adding a bit more to it. That would be a serious attempt at budget discipline.

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I cannot help the noble Lord on his question about the terrorist incident. I am sorry that he did not have the opportunity to ask my noble friend yesterday when she made the Statement.

I do not know what the noble Lord has been dreaming about on the role of the Prime Minister, the 2.9 per cent, when it was agreed and so on. I am utterly clear that unless the Prime Minister had taken a firm stand on the 2.9 per cent, we could well have seen what happened before—it happened last year when the Labour Government were in charge—where the negotiation between the Council and the Parliament ended up with a middle way, a sort of halfway house between the two figures. We wanted to avoid that; we wanted to ensure that not one extra pound should be spent, and that is what has happened. I also note that the noble Lord would have been perfectly happy to have signed up to 6 per cent. That is what most of his colleagues did in the European Council, and it is of course the cost that has increased exponentially over the past few years.

As for the question on budget discipline, we are trying to give direction and budget discipline to the European Union by sticking out for the agreement of 2.9 per cent.

Agriculture: CAP Direct Payments

Lord Tomlinson Excerpts

Tuesday 27th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord De Mauley]

My Lords, I acknowledge the first half of my noble friend’s contention, but in my initial Answer I explained that the report data are somewhat out of date and that there have been fairly substantial changes in the economic position for farmers since then. My noble friend is right that the financial perspective for 2014 to 2020 will be negotiated in a scenario of much more limited financial resources being available than before. The Government’s view is that Pillar 2 represents a more effective use of those limited resources. However, I am really not expecting direct payments to disappear immediately under the next financial perspective.

[Lord Tomlinson]

As the noble Lord is a member of a Government who are more and more committed to the role of market forces but is not committing himself imminently to change, what plans do he and the Government have for introducing market forces to agriculture, thus contributing to the savings that they are looking for in every other area of public expenditure?

[Lord De Mauley]

My Lords, no one thinks that this is going to be easy. In my experience, however, there are very few farms that can claim that they have exhausted all potential for making more efficiencies, so I take the noble Lord’s point. Many would benefit from training to improve skills, especially in business management, cost reduction and better marketing strategies, such as through producer organisations. As a whole, the EU has been falling badly behind its global competitors in productivity growth over the past 30 years and the Government are working hard on how this can be reversed.

House of Lords: Allowances

Lord Tomlinson Excerpts

Tuesday 20th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wakeham]

My Lords, I support the Motions.

As noble Lords will be aware, I chaired the ad hoc group of Members which was established to consider the recommendations of the SSRB review and advise the House Committee on how they might be implemented. It may be of assistance to the House if I say a few words about that process.

However, I first thank the Members of that committee who worked with me. It was not what some people might refer to as a patsy board. We had a series of vigorous discussions and reached conclusions, but I would not pretend that the group had an easy task, and I hope that our report has made a useful contribution to the debate. I am pleased that most of the group’s recommendations have been accepted by the House Committee and by the Government. We placed great value on conducting as thorough and wide-ranging a consultation of noble Lords as possible, and we were rewarded—if that is the right word—with a wealth of views, diverse though they inevitably were.

If I was not aware at the beginning of the process, I was certainly aware by the end of it that no one would be able to design a system of financial support which would meet with universal support. Inevitably, any change to the current system would create winners and losers.

In carrying out our report, the group stuck to the principles and structure of the SSRB review. That was our remit from the House and it was right to do so. I believe that the recommendations in the group report represented a much needed adjustment, simplifying to an extent the SSRB proposals while keeping their core and remaining cost-neutral to the current scheme.

Yet the further we went in preparing our report, the more I was convinced that, in an ideal world, we should put in place a still simpler scheme rather than increasing the existing scheme’s complexity and attendant bureaucracy. The case for a simpler scheme grew stronger with the coalition Government’s announcement of their intention to reform your Lordships’ House for the start of the next Parliament. It seemed to me less and less sensible to overhaul the current scheme with more complex arrangements, possibly on a very temporary basis, particularly when the political consensus appeared to be that a reformed House would in fact be a salaried House. For this combination of reasons the group, with one Member dissenting, decided to invite the House Committee to consider the possibility of,

“a simplified allowance, to replace the daily allowance … recommended by the SSRB”.

We thought that such an allowance,

“might operate for the life-time of the … Parliament”,

until the “reform of the House” and that such a scheme would be “simple”, easy to operate and,

“easy to explain to the public”.

On publication of the group’s report, the Leader of the House put forward his proposals endorsing such an approach.

I shall mention one further point, which is on taxation. I welcome and agree with the opening remarks made by my noble friend the Leader of the House. The SSRB suggested in its report that,

“in principle fees for attending the House of Lords should be taxable”,

and that,

“until legislation is amended to bring … the House of Lords into the tax system, the fee should be set at a lower level so as to make an approximate allowance for the absence of tax”.

I understand that officials from the House authorities met officials at HMRC to confirm that it was their view that, in the absence of legislation, the fee or allowance would not be subject to tax. The level of the allowance is set on the assumption that it is not taxed. If it were to be so as a result of new legislation, the level would have to be looked at again. Speaking entirely personally, I do not think that the Inland Revenue has the slightest desire to get involved in the complications of taxing at all. It does not think that it is losing a penny piece by these present arrangements.

As I have said, I believe that there is no perfect solution; my noble friend’s proposal is, however, a fair solution. It is straightforward and sweeps away the expenses system as it stood. It will be cheap to administer and easy to explain. While I regret that some noble Lords will be worse off, I believe that the proposed level, combined with the reimbursement of travel costs, will mean that all noble Lords will have sufficient support to enable them to contribute to the important work of this House. On that basis, I agree entirely with my noble friend’s proposals.

[Lord Tomlinson]

My Lords—

[Lord Davies of Coity]

My Lords, I want to ask a very simple—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Tomlinson]

My Lords, the Statement of the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, on 28 June was in my opinion deficient in a number of respects. It was not fully accurate. Today’s resolution tabled by the noble Lord rests on that, which I believe is a weak foundation. I shall give three examples of where his Statement of 28 June was inaccurate. The noble Lord said that,

“Lord Wakeham was invited to lead an ad hoc group to consider, consult and advise on the implementation of a new system of financial support”.

That is not what we were asked to do. The remit for the ad hoc group established following the Motion agreed by the House on 14 December—as is shown at paragraph 3.6 of the ad hoc committee’s report—was that it should,

“consider and consult on issues in the SSRB report and advise on their implementation”.

On 14 December 2009, the House also agreed that the principles and architecture of the SSRB should be part of our mandate.

Secondly, the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, said that,

“the group suggests an alternative option, a simplification of the SSRB’s approach to overnight allowances”.—[Official Report, 28/6/10; col. 1512.]

In fact, the ad hoc group had completed its report and was persuaded to reopen it following certain discussions that took place in the House Committee involving the Leader of the House. The genesis of the new idea was not in the ad hoc committee but elsewhere, and it was that which led to the paragraphs in the report to which I added my note of dissent—in particular, my dissent to recommendation 17 in the ad hoc committee’s report. That arose from a reopening of the report after the committee had finished its deliberations. Recommendation 17, however, did not suggest an alternative system. It said that,

“consideration might also”—

three very important words—

“be given to … putting in place a simplified allowance to replace the daily allowance and the overnight allowance”.

That brought into play the very views that the Leader of the House had been discussing with the House Committee, on which the ad hoc committee never had a formal paper. However, there was a majority view that perhaps we should leave the matter open in the recommendation, which led us to say that,

“consideration might also be given”.

Thirdly, the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, also claimed that the proposal was broadly cost-neutral compared with the existing scheme. However, the extension of what has been seen as a payment for the legitimately incurred costs of overnight stay in London and extending it to all Members of the House destroys the pretence of cost-neutrality. On my estimation—and I have checked this with the Finance Department—it adds possibly £1.5 million to the cost of the scheme. If we really think that the proposal for a payment of £150 is going to recoup that £1.5 million, I suggest we are living in cloud-cuckoo-land, but that is what will need to happen in order to achieve cost-neutrality.

Perhaps I may also say, more in sorrow than in anger, that when on 28 June I raised my reservations, in less detail than I am doing today, the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, rather disingenuously, said to me, a member of the ad hoc committee—I assume still compos mentis, following its proposals and making some contribution to its work—

“If the noble Lord reads the document, as I have done”.—[Official Report, 28/6/10; col. 1518.]

I not only read it; I helped to prepare it. I hope that I have demonstrated that I have read our report accurately and not in the rather inaccurate way in which the noble Lord did.

I turn to my specific objections to the new system. The first one is on grounds of equity. It is not a demonstration of equity to say that you treat everyone the same when the costs of attending your Lordships’ House are vastly different. A noble Lord who lives around the corner and can walk to the House is being treated in exactly the same way as another who lives in the furthest reaches of the country and who, in order to attend here, is forced, having no option whatever, to get accommodation in London. That is not equity; it makes a mockery of the word. In mocking equity, it also produces a potential threat to the regional balance in this House—a regional balance that Members of this House hold to be important and which was part of the remit given to the SSRB.

Those are two fundamental questions, and there is the question of costs which I have already mentioned. There are still taxation implications but I shall not go into them further. We have seen in this resolution a concern about a problem with our expenses regime but as far as I can tell from reading the press, in each and every instance there was an allegation of somebody claiming a London overnight allowance to which they were not entitled. And so what do we do? We give everybody the London overnight allowance, wrap it all up together and call it a single per diem. I do not think that that is either fair or right. I am also very fearful that those who tell us that that will satisfy public opinion and the press will live to regret their optimism. I can see no basis on which this system will or should satisfy public opinion, and there is no basis on which this system should or will satisfy the media. It is the antithesis of the transparency that we were talking about. We will regret it and the system will not have my support.

[Baroness Harris of Richmond]

My Lords, it may be appropriate at this juncture to speak to the amendment in my name to which we will come later. In doing so, I declare an interest as one who travels weekly to your Lordships’ House. I am also a recipient of a senior railcard.

My amendment refers to paragraph 30 on page 8 of the report and I shall speak to it for two specific reasons. First, like the noble Lord, Lord Tomlinson, I believe that it discriminates against those of us who travel from the far reaches of the United Kingdom to participate in the work of your Lordships’ House. For those of us who are old enough to use a senior railcard it is possible to purchase a first-class flexible ticket for just below the cost of a walk-on standard fare. That is fine for those who have a senior railcard. However, for younger Members of this House who live in the far reaches of this country and who do not have the advantage of age, the difference between the cost of the two tickets is enormous.

That is unfair and ageist. It takes no account of those younger Members who might have disabilities so it is discriminatory. The House Travel Office advises me that anyone without a railcard who wishes to purchase a first-class ticket would have to book well in advance and keep to that date and time to be within the guidelines. As your Lordships know, it is impossible to say when the House will finish its business, so it would be extremely difficult to book ahead. Other Members may wish to address that issue. If, for instance there is a difficulty on the day of travel, for whatever reason, and a pre-booked advance ticket has been purchased that ticket will be invalid if it is not used and the new ticket will have to be purchased at the cost of the full walk-on standard fare. It will then be a battle to try to persuade IPSA to refund the original fare. That moves me on to my second point.

I was perturbed that it was IPSA’s solution to travel for Members of the House of Commons that prevailed with the House Committee for your Lordships' House. I had understood that this House generally accepted the SSRB rulings, not those of IPSA, which was set up to deal with arrangements in another place. Indeed, on page 7 of the report, it is the SSRB which advises on all other parts of our travel expenses, and the House Committee concurs with its proposals in those parts of the report. I find it strange, therefore, that we should suddenly find it introducing IPSA into the mix. Paragraph 30 is the only part of the report in which IPSA appears. I find it invidious that its proposals are preferred to those of the SSRB. That creates a two-tier membership of the House.

I thought long and hard about seeking the House’s endorsement for my amendment. In the almost 11 very happy years that I have spent working in this House, I have never once challenged the will of the House Committee, and I do so today with great sadness. I know that many hours of work went into the report, the main conclusions of which I am very happy to endorse—except paragraph 30. It is that simple but important change that I wish to revisit, and I sincerely hope that the House Committee will feel able to do so.

Climate Change

Lord Tomlinson Excerpts

Tuesday 6th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marland]

I thank the noble Lord for that. The electric vehicle charging network is a very key and fundamental part of the coalition’s policy, but it cannot be done by magic. It needs detailed planning and a lot of work needs to be done, including assessing what it will cost the taxpayer and what incentives are needed to establish it. As I said, we shall look at that in the recess to establish what is required.

[Lord Tomlinson]

My Lords, is the Minister aware that the Government’s own adviser, Mr Bob Wigley, has added his recommendations to those of the Committee on Climate Change? Included in his recommendations are increased rates for companies that do not take energy conservation measures and penalising householders who fail to undertake insulation measures. Are the Government telling us that we will have to wait till October to hear their view on their own adviser’s supplementary recommendations?

[Lord Marland]

My Lords, I have to point out that Mr Bob Wigley is not a government adviser. He was set up to deliver—

Energy: Renewables

Lord Tomlinson Excerpts

Monday 5th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marland]

I am not sure I thank the noble Lord for his question, but his party’s views are well known and, I am afraid, do not coincide with ours. We think that climate change is one of the biggest issues to confront the nation. We are putting green awareness on the front of our agenda. We are going to be the greenest Government who have existed and we intend to deliver policies to show so.

[Lord Tomlinson]

Does the noble Lord regard nuclear-generated electricity as being renewable?

[Lord Marland]

Nuclear-generated electricity is a fundamental part of our party’s coalition policy but I am not sure that it is relevant to the Question in hand.

Financial Provision for Members

Lord Tomlinson Excerpts

Monday 28th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde]

I have already said how grateful the House should be to my noble friend. He has come up with an immensely useful and helpful report. It is now in the Printed Paper Office and I hope that noble Lords will take the trouble to read it.

[Lord Tomlinson]

My Lords—

[Lord Dholakia]

My Lords—

[Lord Tomlinson]

No, this side!

[Lord McNally]

I hope that we can be sensible about this.

[Lord Tomlinson]

My Lords—

[Noble Lords]

Order!

[Lord McNally]

Clearly the noble Lord is not going to be sensible about it. Let him go on.

[Lord Tomlinson]

Is the noble Lord aware that there was unanimity in the Wakeham committee right up to the point of our last meeting? At that meeting, the idea of a flat-rate allowance was introduced. As a result of that discussion, I entered a footnote of reservation to the Wakeham committee report, because I do not think that considering that flat-rate allowance fitted with the mandate of the House, which was to work within the structure and architecture of the SSRB report. There was no such reference in the SSRB report, hence my note of reservation. The particular reasons for there being dissent also in the detail will come out in the debate, but let it not be said that the idea fitted in with the architecture and the principles of the SSRB report. That is why there is a note of reservation.