Tributes: Lord Laming
Lord True Excerpts(6 days, 22 hours ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Smith of Basildon) (Lab)
My Lords, today I pay tribute to Lord Laming. His lifetime of public service has left an indelible mark on the whole fabric of British social work, public management and the very conscience of our nation. Herbert’s journey into the public sphere began with a deeply practical grounding, dedicating 20 years to Hertfordshire County Council and ultimately serving as director of social services, before rising to become Chief Inspector of the Social Services Inspectorate from 1991 to 1998.
However, it was his subsequent work on the national stage that elevated him into the public consciousness as a fearless seeker of accountability. Following the tragic death of eight year-old Victoria Climbié, the Government turned to Lord Laming to chair the landmark inquiry, in which he diagnosed a yawning gap between policy aspiration and front-line delivery. He famously observed that protecting a child
“needed nothing more than a manager doing their job by asking pertinent questions”.
His work directly laid the foundations for the Every Child Matters framework in the Children Act 2004. Years later, following the tragedy of baby P, he was called on once more to deliver an urgent national review, demonstrating a steadfast commitment to ensuring that the child’s welfare remains paramount.
Since entering this House in 1998, Herbert Laming was a pillar of the Cross Benches. His parliamentary peers recognised his fairness and integrity by electing him Convener of the Cross Benches from 2011 to 2015, followed by a distinguished tenure as Chairman of Committees. He spent decades reminding us that policies are only as good as their front-line execution. He combined a razor-sharp administrative intellect with a deeply compassionate heart. We owe him a debt of gratitude for forcing our country to look closer, to act more quickly and to better protect some of the most innocent and vulnerable in society. His legacy will endure for generations, and we remember him as a man of great generosity, spirit and decency—and as good company. We had many chats in my office, and I will always remember him first and foremost as a great friend. I know he is going to be sorely missed across your Lordships’ House, but weren’t we lucky to have him here with us? We send our deepest and most heartfelt condolences to all his family and friends.
Lord True (Con)
I thank the noble Baroness the Leader for her marvellous tribute. Like her, I convey our sincerest sympathy to Herbert’s family and friends.
I never heard Herbert raise his voice. Perhaps he did if he ever had a recalcitrant dog, but I doubt that, because Herbert would have calmed the dog, as he calmed every situation, however difficult—and there were quite a few in his life. As the Leader said, he has left a legacy that goes far beyond anything that most of us could ever even aspire to. As she said in her notable tribute, he did outstanding service in chairing two of the most harrowing and important inquiries and reports ever undertaken in the United Kingdom, in the Climbié and the baby P cases. In his typically painstaking, ever-listening and ever-giving to others way, his work revolutionised child care. I can only underline everything that the Leader said about those reports and recommendations. They have come to define the best of modern, professional and inter-agency standards.
He was a consummate professional, though he believed, and said so, that career paths could be closed because of too tightly prescribed routes in life. Much of Herbert’s career actually happened by accident, as he acknowledged. He said:
“We are writing off a huge amount of human potential”,
telling young professionals that
“qualifications had got us through the door, but from now on it was what we did that mattered”.
He was a practical man, with an every-open ear and eye. What you did for others was what he saw.
Some of his greatest insights into the need for inter-agency co-operation came from a very varied career. He started work as a probation officer in Nottinghamshire, near Stanton Ironworks, where my parents met—something we used to joke about quite often. In probation, he went on to study mental health, becoming a psychiatric social worker, and that informed his long, magnificent service in Hertfordshire, which the Leader referred to.
I first met Herbert in No. 10, in the early 1990s, when John Major was pushing through a programme of public service reform, which was aimed at placing greater emphasis on the needs of the user, transparency of outcomes and public accountability. Herbert was made Chief Inspector of Social Services in 1991, and he remained so until 1998. He was an enormous ally in all those efforts to improve public services for users. He was always, as I found then, an inspiration to talk to and a breath of fresh air. He was not a softy. He was hard-headed but kindly-hearted, as the Leader said.
Constant learning was something he applied to himself throughout his life:
“We must … never allow ourselves to think that we know everything”,
he said in an interview late in his life. Amen to that. And how much we learned from his great service in this House, not least as the Convenor of the Cross Benches. He was uniquely considerate of others. I must place on record my personal gratitude to him, as the Leader has in her case, for his sound advice in my many roles in this place.
Perhaps I might end by quoting what was said to me earlier by a younger Conservative colleague, more than 40 years Herbert’s junior: “I do not intend to speak”, she wrote, “But I wanted to let you know of Herbert’s kindness. I turned to him privately many times, as he was so generous with his time and his wise words. I will miss him so much”. We could all say the same of this dear man, who was a giant of public service and who will go on touching the lives of people at risk for generations to come. We will all miss him.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord True, and the Leader, and their very eloquent and emotional tributes to Herbert. Herbert was Convenor of the Cross Benches when I entered this House in 2013. He was always helpful, courteous and polite. For the whole of the duration that it was my pleasure to know him, he never passed, in many of our many corridors, without an inquiry as to how I was, referring to me by my name. After an early occasion in the Chamber having come into this House, when I was characteristically verbose, I got a polite note asking me for a chat. I dutifully went along to the Convener of the Cross Benches’ office and sat down. After receiving a very kind review of what I had said, he even more kindly suggested that I needed not have said it so much and for so long. I got a taste of how he approached his professional and parliamentary life: supportive, kind and, when necessary, firm.
Business of the House
Lord True Excerpts(1 week ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord True
That Standing Order 38(4) (Arrangement of the order paper) be dispensed with on Wednesday 22 July to enable the motion standing in the name of Lord True to be taken before the motion to approve the draft Infected Blood Compensation Scheme (Amendment) Regulations 2026.
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, this is an unusual Motion. The last example—which was much more far-reaching and prescriptive—was a Motion personally introduced by the Leader of the House in 2019. Frankly, in many ways, this is an undesirable Motion. It should not be left to any other party in this House to ensure that time is given for a Government to be held to account—a point made vehemently by my noble friend Lord Deben. It is the duty of a Leader of the House—who, we are all very pleased to see, survived a vicious night of the long knives in the Labour Party—to enable scrutiny of government policies. While the noble Baroness has survived, may I say how sad we are to see so many outstanding Ministers in this House—the noble Lord, Lord Timpson; the noble Lord, Lord Livermore; the noble Lord, Lord Vallance, who, as we have just heard, was felled with his whole department; the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman; and so many others—leaving the Government? We thank them all for their service to the House and to this country.
Before anyone gets too excited about all this, let me tell the House that all this Motion asks for is that the new Government should allow a short take-note debate tomorrow to answer to Parliament on their policies. There will be no vote and nobody’s holiday will be interfered with, whatever the Captain of the Gentlemen-at-Arms might tell people afterwards. It would be an opportunity for the Government to set out the policies of which the noble Baroness, Lady Anderson, has just said they are so proud. If the Leader of the House tells the House that she will give adequate time for debate and scrutiny in Parliament on the new Government’s strategy and all their new announcements tomorrow, and indeed all this week, then I can withdraw my Motion.
These are unprecedented circumstances. Only once before in the whole of British history, in 1963, has a Prime Minister taken office having not put himself before the British people at the previous general election—and, what is more, during a recess of the House of Commons. All recent Prime Ministers taking office in similar circumstances have made themselves available to Parliament. Contrast that with the new Prime Minister’s convenient entry to No. 10 on the first working day after the Commons had adjourned for the Summer Recess, and the unseemly finagling of changing Commons business to deprive the Opposition of our scheduled Opposition day debate, for fear that we might vote for the House of Commons to sit this week and hold the Prime Minister to account. Having suppressed scrutiny by the Commons last week, is this now to be followed by imposing a Whip—I thought we had heard that Mr Burnham did not like Whips—to suppress scrutiny of the Government in this place? It looks as though the Prime Minister is bending over backwards to avoid telling Parliament what his plans are.
However, yesterday, outside Parliament, while Parliament was sitting here, he declared grandiloquently that he would be
“a circuit breaker for Britain, bringing forward the biggest changes in the last forty years … A new political model”—
one that, incidentally, includes putting someone who resigned on a propriety and ethics issue in charge of propriety and ethics, and putting someone who resigned over a housing issue in charge of housing. I have heard of thumbing the nose at the so-called establishment, but there are points when it can look a little rich.
The Cabinet met earlier today to discuss the Government’s new ideas. The noble Baroness the Leader was there. So can your Lordships’ House—can this Parliament, sitting here in this place—not be told the barest outline of this new political model, the new economic model and the 10-year plan? For example, will tax overall go up or will it come down? Will welfare spending rise or will it be cut? What is the fiscal strategy? Already, the Government have talked or briefed outside Parliament about cutting energy bills, lifting the personal tax allowance, nationalising Thames Water, the biggest council house programme since the war, giving mayors more funding, creating a national care service, more overseas aid, cutting student loan repayments, more employment support and ending homelessness.
Lord True (Con)
Yes, but where is the money coming from? Noble Lords opposite are not so noisy now. Can the Leader shed any light on all this? Can she say which of this list are commitments and which are just backstairs smooching of the media and, it seems, some Back-Benchers? After all, she was there in Cabinet this morning.
The Ministerial Code is unequivocal. It states:
“When Parliament is in session, the most important announcements of government policy should be made in the first instance in Parliament”.
Why has that not been happening? We need Statements here and we need answers. I ask the Leader, on behalf of the whole House, to ensure that that happens. Where, for example, is a Statement on ending rough sleeping, which has actually risen in Manchester in the last few years? The media were told this morning that the Government will pause VAT on electricity—ironically, by using our Brexit freedoms. I thought Mr Burnham wanted to end those freedoms. Why was this not announced in Parliament before the media were briefed? We have not seen even Written Statements on these announcements. I gather that one on VAT was issued moments ago, while we were considering the PNQ. I wonder how many Members of this House have had the opportunity to see it. I echo what my noble friend Lord Deben said.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
The Chief Whip, who is back in his place, or the Opposition Chief Whip might be able to confirm to the House whether the Motion had been tabled before the noble Baroness informed those she claims were consulted. No—there is silence. I think that confirms that matter. So, we are now debating a complaint about announcements being made outside Parliament first, which itself was an announcement made outside Parliament first.
Setting aside the nature of this for one moment, it is probably worth noting that when there were three Conservative Prime Ministers in three years—I checked Hansard—there were no debates in this House on the political priorities and legislative agenda of each Prime Minister when they took office. In 2022, when Liz Truss took office, she appointed the noble Lord, Lord True, to be Leader of this House, and there was no debate. I do not blame him for not scheduling a debate, because there was not enough time in her period of office for us to debate this fully.
Lord True (Con)
If it cuts short the noble Lord’s speech, which seems to be an attack on this side rather than any kind of examination of the other, in the case of Mr Johnson, he went immediately to Parliament and answered questions at great length on his programme. In the case of Liz Truss, she did Prime Minister’s Questions within two days and gave a full account to Parliament in the proper way. The same thing happened in the case of Rishi Sunak. What is different in this case—the noble Lord can tell me if it is not—is that there is no mechanism by which Mr Burnham has allowed himself to be examined by the House of Commons or to be properly accountable to Parliament.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
My Lords, as Hansard will show and as I indicated very clearly, there was no debate on the Government’s priorities, political or legislative, in this House, as the noble Lord is seeking that we have. It is his right not to be consistent—I understand that—but when it comes to Prime Ministers seeking to avoid scrutiny, all of us remember that it was Prime Minister Johnson who prorogued Parliament specifically to avoid parliamentary scrutiny, which was deemed illegal.
In pre-issuing the letter about the debate, I do not think the noble Lord had been consulting some of his colleagues in the Commons, because much of this Motion now seems to be a bit out of date. The Conservative-chaired Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee conducted an inquiry into government announcements made outside Parliament. It reported and gave its considerations on 9 January. It said that the code was out of date, given modern media considerations, and needed clarity. In paragraph 40, it said that
“the media environment has changed significantly in recent years, and the provisions on the need to make the most important statements of government policy to Parliament first have remained substantively the same since the Code was introduced in 1997. It may well be the case that this section of the Code needs to be modernised to reflect the ‘Parliament first’ principle while also recognising that governments must seek to communicate their policies effectively to the public they serve”.
It was a Select Committee in the Commons chaired by a Conservative MP which made that recommendation. The Government published their response on 4 June accepting the recommendation and have stated that the code will be revised. The noble Lord’s Motion is out of date. The Conservative chair, Simon Hoare MP, said that he welcomed the Government’s acceptance to amend the code to be more flexible on announcements given the new media environment:
“It has been clear for some time that the current situation regarding the Ministerial Code and major policy announcements is untenable. It is refreshing to see that the Government have shown they are willing to adapt the code in a way which ensures it is fit-for-purpose”.
The letter that colleagues received this morning is substantively out of date. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord True, will wish to speak to his Commons Conservative colleagues to have an ongoing debate about how the code will be amended.
Notwithstanding that we seek an opportunity for there to be proper consideration of the political priorities and legislative agenda of the Burnham premiership, so far, we have noted that the new Prime Minister has said that he regrets that there have been major omissions, such as real action to fix the crisis in social care and to reduce the crippling burden on businesses, which is wrapped up in Brexit bureaucracy. We need a clear direction on major reforms to our body politic, and tinkering at the edges will not do.
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
My Lords, first, I concur with the noble Lord, Lord True, and thank those Ministers who have served in government and have now left government. Their service has been exemplary, they have all been dedicated and hard-working and we are grateful for their continued support and wish them well. I welcome the fact that my noble friend the Chief Whip has been reappointed. It is not necessarily the greatest secret of the House at the moment, but we look forward to working with him. I look forward to working with him as well, and I thank him for his comments about my reappointment to the Cabinet.
At the start of this Session, in the King’s Speech, we, as group leaders, pledged and spoke of a reset, returning to our usual ways of working in a collegiate and productive way that best benefits this House and the work that we are entrusted to undertake. As a matter of clarity—I know that the Chief Whips have spoken outside—yesterday’s Motion was tabled at around 5 pm. I later went down to see the Leader of the Opposition. When I first tried to speak to him, I was told that he was unavailable to speak to me, although he realised within a few minutes that that was not a good idea and came down. I am grateful to him for that, although it was not, as the noble Lord knows, the most productive conversation.
Lord True (Con)
For clarity, I had no knowledge that the Leader of the House had been told that. Of course, as soon as I heard that she had been told that, I came immediately down to the corridor, as she has just acknowledged. There was no question whatever of my refusing to see the Leader of the House on any occasion.
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
Okay, 9 pm. I have to say, given what was said—we all agreed on how we would say this when we had the King’s Speech—I was a bit surprised and, as I say, disappointed that there was no consultation, discussion, engagement or even notice from the noble Lord. There was no request for a Statement. There was no discussion to say, “Have we got any plans this week for a debate? Would we like to do that?” The first we knew about it was a Motion being tabled. There was no attempt at all to seek to address the concerns raised by the noble Lord in any of the ways to which we committed when we had the debate on the King’s Speech. I must say to the noble Lord that I really thought that we had made some progress then.
As the noble Lord said, business Motions moved by the Opposition are not unprecedented, but they are extremely rare. Only twice in recent history have the Opposition attempted to take control of the Order Paper in this way, and doing so was very much opposed then by the noble Lord opposite. Lord Richard did it in 1996, about 30 years ago, in response to the Scott report. I did something similar in 2019, reflecting a Motion that had been tabled in the House of Commons in relation to Brexit; I hope that none of us would want to return to those bad-tempered days of debate. Fortunately—particularly for the party opposite, including the noble Lord and his predecessors—this has never happened before with a change of Prime Minister.
I completely agree with, and have always committed to, the idea that the House should be given ample opportunity to scrutinise the Government. However, in politics, as in life, patience is a virtue. This is day 2 of a new Prime Minister. The Government are still being formed; we saw an appointment just now. Of course, we will welcome scrutiny—Ministers will come to this House and Parliament will do its job in scrutinising the work of the new Government—but this Motion is unnecessary. It is not the way this House does business. There have not been any extensive policy changes at this point, and the Prime Minister has committed to move forward on the basis of the manifesto on which this party was elected at the 2024 election.
On an issue raised by the Leader of the Opposition, this morning, the Prime Minister announced a targeted intervention on VAT to help with the cost of living. Today, a Written Ministerial Statement was laid to update the House on these matters, and a topical Oral Question on Thursday relates to these matters. Further, in the autumn, noble Lords will have to scrutinise the regulations that give effect to the policy. That is hardly dodging scrutiny.
I have also laid a Written Ministerial Statement today to inform Parliament of the machinery of government changes that have taken place, and my noble friend Lady Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent has answered a PNQ on the topic. My point is that the scrutiny of government is continuing. We have a number of Bills before us which also deserve scrutiny, Oral Questions to be asked, Statements to be repeated and replied to, and yesterday 10 Private Notice Questions were tabled—an exceptional number. General debates will take place on Thursday, and we will continue to lay Written Ministerial Statements as required. If this Motion were carried, it would be put at risk a full day of business tomorrow and continued scrutiny of legislation that this House presumably considers important.
The Prime Minister has been very clear: he takes Parliament seriously. I can tell the noble Lord—[Interruption.] It is no good the party opposite making those comments. It is day two of a new Prime Minister, and I would like to have a considered response from him and for the House fully and properly to debate proposals when he brings them forward. As a parliamentarian of nearly 30 years who has been on the Front Bench—in government and in opposition—for over 25 years, I hope that noble Lords recognise my commitment to the work of this House and to scrutiny of government. Rest assured, we will not seek to evade or avoid scrutiny of our Government’s policies, because we will be proud of those policies as they are drafted and brought forward for further discussion.
This Prime Minister did not set the timing for the change of leadership. The Prime Minister did not set the timing for the recess dates. The noble Lord tabled his Motion yesterday. He has known for some time now—it has not exactly been a state secret—when the new Prime Minister was taking office. Procedures such as this should be used only in rare and unprecedented times. The party opposite has ensured that a change of party leader between elections is certainly not unprecedented. I urge noble Lords not to accept this Motion. But, whatever the outcome, can we rise above some of the rancour today, which was unnecessary? I wish all noble Lords a restful Summer Recess, and I look forward to further scrutiny in September.
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, I reciprocate the noble Baroness’s last words and wish that to all Members of this House. This House works extremely hard and certainly merits the time off it will have. I also agree with her—I said this at the outset of my speech—that these things are exceptional. The noble Baroness put forward a Motion of this kind at the time of the debate over prorogation, which was pretty well unprecedented. As I explained in my speech, it is unprecedented—apart from in 1963—for a change of this kind to take place when the House of Commons is not sitting. That is the case for your Lordships’ House being given the opportunity to debate these questions. I do value good relations with the noble Baroness, and if by that incident or anything else—by sin of commission or omission—she has been disobliged, I apologise for that.
Returning to the debate, we had 10 minutes from the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed. I do not really know what he was on about for most of that time. He certainly was not relentless for accountability: he was as relentless as a limp rag when it came to criticism of the Government. He certainly fell below the standard of the time. As far as the party opposite are concerned, what are they so worried about? A short three-hour debate tomorrow would not interfere with any holiday plans. Mr Burnham says that he wants to bring back hope. That must be more than an admission of the hopelessness of two years of Keir Starmer, his Government and their huge toll on business and jobs. It must be an expression of confidence, as we have heard from others, that his policies are better. So why are they so afraid to debate them here, in Parliament, now, when the time is right?
This House is a House of scrutiny, and I believe we should assert our right to be informed and to be heard. Therefore, I beg to test the opinion of the House.
Tributes: Lord Mackay of Clashfern
Lord True Excerpts(2 weeks, 5 days ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Smith of Basildon) (Lab)
My Lords, it is with a profound sense of sadness, shared across the House, that I pay tribute today to one of the truly monumental figures of our nation’s legal and parliamentary heritage. The news of the passing of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, shortly before his 100th birthday, is deeply felt by us all.
James Mackay was a man of towering intellect, yet he was defined equally by his quiet humility, his deep faith, an unwavering commitment to public service and great generosity of spirit. Born the son of a railway signalman in Edinburgh, his journey to the highest legal offices of state is a testament to his extraordinary talent, rising to become dean of the Faculty of Advocates before serving with distinction as Lord Advocate. His deep grounding in Scottish law brought a rigorous, analytical clarity to everything he did—a perspective that enriched the entire jurisprudence of the United Kingdom.
In 1987, Margaret Thatcher broke with centuries of tradition by appointing a Scottish lawyer as Lord Chancellor of Great Britain. For a decade, serving in both the Margaret Thatcher and John Major Governments, Lord Mackay occupied the Woolsack with a quiet, revolutionary authority. He was an historic, modernising Lord Chancellor. He shepherded the Children Act 1989 through this House and on to the statute book. It was a piece of legislation that radically reshaped family law, firmly establishing that a child’s welfare is the courts’ paramount consideration. That has stood the test of time.
Although Lord Mackay never sought conflict, he was never afraid of controversy, if he believed it served the public good. He introduced pioneering reforms to the legal profession that expanded access to justice for millions. Yet for all his grand achievements on the national stage, he retained that gentle humanity and his characteristic warmth and friendliness. Whether it was a word in passing in the corridors of your Lordships’ House or pulling up a chair for lunch in the Long Room, you would welcome his company. Like many others, I would listen in admiration, and often awe, when he spoke in the Chamber or in Committee. He would speak without notes, always making insightful and pertinent comments, perfectly crafted—and delightfully concise.
When Lord Mackay retired from this House in July 2022, after more than four decades of dedicated service, it said so much about his character that he did not use his final remarks to dwell solely on the great offices of state or the complex legislation he had championed. Instead, he drew our attention to the Prayers that begin our proceedings each day, stating:
“I believe that I have been sustained until now by answers to what we pray for at our opening every day”.—[Official Report, 20/7/22; col. 1984.]
That was the essence of James Mackay. He possessed a mind capable of mastering the most intricate complexities of constitutional law, with a heart that saw, valued and respected every individual who contributed to the life of Parliament.
Lord Mackay was a giant of the law, a faithful servant of the Crown and a deeply cherished Member of this House. We send our deepest, most heartfelt condolences to his family—his wife Bett and his son and daughters—his friends, his colleagues and all those who knew and loved him. He will be sorely missed.
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, I thank the Lord Privy Seal for her warm tribute to our late beloved friend and colleague, Lord Mackay of Clashfern. When I say “our” beloved colleague, I mean all of us—all here who knew him and heard him for over 40 years as a Member of this House. I can think of few, if any, Peers who were so sincerely liked and admired on all sides as was James Mackay.
The noble Baroness set out some of his extraordinary achievements: dean of the Faculty of Advocates, Lord Advocate, a Scottish Law Lord, Lord of Appeal in Ordinary, Lord Chancellor for 10 years, a Knight of the Thistle and latterly honoured by his Queen as Lord Clerk Register of Scotland. Never were such a string of great garlands laid on the brow of a more humble man—not only humble in origin, though he was that, but a man of abiding humility, as our Leader said. Pomposity and pride were utterly alien to him, in the being or seeing of them.
The core of Lord Mackay’s life was the Bible and that higher power on which he long and regularly reflected. He observed the Lord’s day. When I was new in No. 10, I remember Switch explaining to me not only that you should not ring the Lord Chancellor on a Sunday but that you could not—the line would stay dead. His deep Christian faith moulded a bedrock of principle. As our Leader said, he never sought conflict, but he did not flinch from difficulties if the cause was just. As she said, as the first member of the Scottish Bar ever to sit on the Woolsack he set out to break restrictive practices in the law and open access to justice to more people. It did not make him popular, but he saw it through. Among his many legislative achievements were not only the Children Act, to which the noble Baroness rightly referred, but the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act, which brought clarity—like the Children Act—in difficult fields of morality and law.
Lord Mackay never intended to be a lawyer. He had the rare distinction of first class degrees in maths from both Edinburgh and Cambridge, where he was the senior wrangler—which was an achievement—and he taught maths before reading for the Bar. This was testament to the extraordinary clarity and precision of James Mackay’s mind, and his unerring ability to discern the truth of arguments and determine solutions: the very essence of a good judge. Yet how lightly he carried his great wisdom and learning, always expressed in the simplest language, spoken softly, as the noble Baroness said, and with the most beguiling humour. He had unimpeachable integrity and a fierce independence of mind which, perhaps, was his highland character. He graced that great office of Lord Chancellor, speaking truth and justice to power in the Cabinet, defending the rule of law and presiding in this House.
Lord Mackay was a kindly man, generous in his advice to others, courteous to a fault, with a twinkle in his eye and a quizzical air that made you feel, perhaps, that he was puzzled that others could not see the solutions as swiftly as he did. After he went to the Back Benches, he used to sit on the second row, behind the Minister. When you were at the Dispatch Box and you saw by your shoulder that hand creeping over the back of the Bench to haul himself to his feet, you knew you were in for either the most testing challenge to your arguments from one of your friends, or else the most simple and compelling exposition of the case that you had been floundering for an hour to try to explain to the House.
James Mackay was a great parliamentarian, a lover of this place and loved by it. Let us remember our brother as a righteous man. He was never judgmental, but nor was he afraid to judge between good and evil. He was a great reformer and a loving family man, buoyed for 68 years by his remarkable wife and three children, to whom our prayers and sympathy go out. This polity, this House, this United Kingdom will never see the like of Lord Chancellor Mackay again.
G7 Summit
Lord True Excerpts(1 month ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, I thank the Lord Privy Seal for being here to answer questions on this Statement. In these uncertain times, I wish her well for continuation in office—and the Captain of the Gentlemen-at-Arms, who has run away but I hope will be back.
Lord True (Con)
The Statement was made by someone who did not attend the summit and in the absence of the Prime Minister—a decent man forced from office by self-interested colleagues who owed their place in Parliament to him. As someone else once said at that same podium in Downing Street, “them’s the breaks”. Many unkind things were said back then about my right honourable friend Boris Johnson, not least in this House. It was “a good day”, one allegedly impartial former official deplorably gloated. I will not follow the road of rejoicing in another’s downfall. I place on record my thanks to Sir Keir Starmer for his service to our country, even if the results were not always quite as perfect as this Statement claimed. Indeed, can the Minister tell us why on earth he is going if everything is as amazing as the Statement says?
At the summit, Sir Keir maintained the unflinching support that he has given to Ukraine, so vigorously begun by the reviled Mr Johnson. We support that stand and will uphold the unity of this House on it. Conduct of foreign policy will now fall to the first Prime Minister since Lord Home to assume office without facing the electorate at the preceding general election. If we do not have a clue what he thinks, heaven help our allies. If he fails to make a dispassionate assessment of the poor choices that led to Sir Keir’s resignation, he risks repeating those mistakes and leaving us in a doom loop of lost opportunity. The same old Labour, with tax and spend policies that were out of date even in the 1970s, will deliver the same dismal outcomes.
We are told in the Statement that the Prime Minister made Britain safer and rebuilt Britain’s reputation around the world. Really? Endless delays to the defence investment plan have not made us safer. With continued instability in the Middle East, war in Europe and an increasingly reckless Russia, any further delay in the defence investment plan is unacceptable. Can the noble Baroness tell us today when it will be published?
The stunning resignations of the Defence Secretary and the Veterans Minister did not enhance our reputation in the world. Two principled men, actually the best of the Labour Party, laid bare a bitter truth—their view, not ours—that a Government overdosing on welfare spending were unable or unwilling to find money for defence. It is a shambles. What on earth will the Prime Minister tell NATO on 7 July?
Mr Carns in his statement was also devastating about the injustice of the legal pursuit of our Northern Ireland Army veterans and the folly of the so-called remedial order. That was being rushed forward so the Prime Minister could offer up our compliance with the ECHR at the so-called EU reset summit. That has now been delayed, so can the noble Baroness tell the House that that vindictive order will also be shelved?
We welcome good news in the Statement on foreign direct investment from France, India and Japan. We welcome the free trade agreement with India. This is the Britain we want, opening to the wider world. But foreign direct investment cannot offset the devastating impact of Labour’s domestic policies. If we want real growth, the next Prime Minister must change course.
Change in terms of security is needed too to Mr Miliband’s obsessive pursuit of net zero. Did the House notice the outcome of the election in Aberdeen South? Working people want our North Sea open. Working people want to exploit our own energy resources and the jobs the oil and gas industry brings. We have heard it here from the noble Lord, Lord Woodley, and others. We have heard it from the secretary-general of Unite. For once, they and we are united in a common-sense cause: we must open the North Sea.
Speaking of common sense, I think the noble Baroness knows how pleased we are that this House stopped the disastrous Chagos deal. Did the Prime Minister try to resurrect this in any way at the summit, or is this turkey now dead?
We hope progress in the US-Iran talks will end barriers to free navigation in the Strait of Hormuz. We all want peace in the Middle East, but we must not soften our stance on the murderous regime in Tehran. We have been far too slow to take action on the IRGC, although I welcome steps now being undertaken. Will the noble Baroness confirm that we will remain in lockstep with our US allies in ensuring Iran never has a nuclear weapon? Can she tell us when the Franco-British action in the Gulf and the strait will begin?
We agree that more should be done to ensure civilian aid gets through in Gaza and indeed Lebanon; it must flow more smoothly. But we are also clear in our view that Israel had and has a right to defend itself. Was I alone in thinking it truly astonishing that, in 360 words on the Middle East in this Statement, there was not a single word of condemnation of terrorist Hezbollah and terrorist Hamas? Instead, the Deputy Prime Minister said that Israel must tone down what he called “inflammatory language”. What are they supposed to say of the butchers of Jewish babies?
On illegal immigration, the Deputy Prime Minister promised to build on our 2018 Sandhurst agreement with France, and we welcome that. In contrast, this Government’s so-called one-in, one-out policy had to be rewritten after illegal migrants once removed returned to the UK. Can the noble Baroness tell us how many criminal gangs have been smashed?
Finally, the Statement referred with regret to the 10th anniversary of Brexit. Some people, it seems, will never accept the verdict of the British people or own that the fast first Covid vaccine, the free trade deal with India we have just heard about, the summer holidays VAT measure and so much else would never have been possible without that vote. I must test the tolerance of the House by declaring I voted for our freedom to choose our own destiny 10 years ago, and I would do so again. We need to look to the future, not plunge back to past battles. I wish the next Prime Minister well, but it is not a change of Prime Minister that this country needs, it is a change of Government.
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, I thank the Lord Privy Seal for allowing this Statement to be repeated in your Lordships’ House. Self-evidently, I am standing in for the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, and it is a great—and unusual—pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord True. It is, in fact, somewhat appropriate that a stand-in should be making this speech, as the original speech was also made by a stand-in in the other place. As a result, this Statement is unusually suffused with praise for Sir Keir. With respect, I will avoid those sections and try to pick the bones out of the bits that actually refer to the G7 meeting.
Starting with Ukraine, all of us join in the condemnation of the hit on the 11th-century Pechersk Lavra, but the greater cost is the hundreds of thousands of deaths and injuries sustained by the Ukrainian people since the full invasion started. What this hit on the church underlines, however, is the very poor guidance of many Russian ballistic missiles. Hundreds of missiles are being projected in the direction of Ukraine, with no sense of limiting civilian casualties. The Statement is, however, right to characterise the battlefield as one where the fortunes seem to be turning. The Ukrainian mastery of drone warfare has established a 25 kilometre-plus wide kill zone, through which the Russians are finding progress has been halted in a very deadly way. But when I met the Ukrainian parliamentarians last month, they were at pains to spell out the danger they face from ballistic missiles and the need for more anti-ballistic defence. Russia has thousands of missiles that have yet to be fired. Europe has responded to some extent to that plea for help, but following the Iran conflict, defence systems are at a premium. It was clear from my visit 10 days ago to the factory in the USA where Patriot missiles are manufactured that the global shortage of such defensive weapons will be only very slowly filled—too slow for the Ukrainian people.
That is why anything we do in Europe to work together to design and manufacture alternative defence systems is really important. In the short term, it would help Ukraine; in the medium term, it would help the Baltic states and the rest of Europe. Can the Lord Privy Seal tell your Lordships’ House what progress has been made in sourcing European anti-ballistic weapons? She may need to write to me with that answer.
Sanctions also remain important. Given the seeming changes to the Middle East, when will the Government hurry up and apply sanctions to Russian-refined jet fuel? Also, did the Government raise at the G7 the proposal of using frozen Russian assets around the world to support Ukraine? If not, why not?
Turning to the Middle East, the Statement offers no new information. The key question is how any international coalition with the French can possibly operate safely when we are only a Truth Social posting away from a deadly flare-up. What is the government thinking on that? I am sure fellow Peers will have noted comments from the Iranians about tolls through the Strait of Hormuz. That was to be expected, but President Trump has been publicly musing on levying fees to protect tankers. Both options are equally unacceptable and have been reinforced overnight. Can the Minister assure your Lordships that the US ambassador has been made aware that we do not support any such protection racket as that proposed by President Trump?
It is clear that the situations in Lebanon and Gaza remain unacceptable to the people living there, and destabilising to any possible settlement with Iran. The Statement says that bringing all partners together is the Government’s aim. Can the Minister please update your Lordships House on any actions that have been taken to bring people together in the last few months?
It is disappointing but typical that the terrible conflict in Sudan seems to have been ignored again.
On illegal migration, I would only note that, were we once again to have full access to all the policing and immigration data we used to have before Brexit, the number of boats would more likely fall to their low level before we left the European Union.
That swiftly moves us on to the final part of the Statement, on growth and investment. Speaking nine months ago, before he was burdened with any realistic chance of leadership, Andy Burnham openly referred to Brexit as a disaster and blamed it for making aspirations harder to achieve in Britain. He revealed his wish to see the UK rejoin at some point, but it was reported that he remained pragmatic about how long this would take.
Once Andy Burnham moves his bandwagon into No. 10 Downing Street and opens the books, he will see the full extent of the damage done to the life chances of ordinary people thanks to Brexit. At that point, I suggest his truly pragmatic action would be to accelerate things. I invite him to adopt the Liberal Democrats’ plan for the UK to join the customs union and re-enter the single market. We would be very willing to help him if he wishes to do that. Instead of urgency, however, everything is on hold. Yesterday’s events have caused the UK-EU summit planned for 22 July to be postponed. Does the Lord Privy Seal share my disappointment that even the partial progress expected from that summit is now delayed? Does she agree that the sooner we act to get closer to our real allies in the EU, the better the chances for growth and the more secure the United Kingdom will be?
Senior Deputy Speaker
Lord True Excerpts(2 months, 2 weeks ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Smith of Basildon) (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede, on his appointment.
In doing so, I would like to take a few moments to pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner of Kimble. His has been dedicated work and service to this House to fulfil the role of Senior Deputy Speaker. His thoughtfulness and natural courtesy have meant that he has fulfilled his responsibility with great judgment and fairness. All of us across the House have felt valued and supported by him, and we all greatly appreciate the work he has done: from carrying out his duties on the Woolsack and supporting the dedicated group of Deputy Speakers, to overseeing the vital work of this House and its committees with a clear mission. Noble Lords across the House will remember his work in answering Written Questions, indeed all questions, on a wide range of topics, including fire safety, the Victoria Tower project, R&R and the use of cats to catch House of Lords mice—a frequent point of interest.
The noble Lord, Lord Gardiner, has chaired the Procedure and Privileges Committee with sensitivity and ensured that updates to the Companion reflect the current world in which we work. I think I am correct in saying we never had to vote on an issue; he always sought to reach consensus. He has provided invaluable contributions to the House of Lords Commission and the R&R committee—he might miss one less than the other—and has been a source of calm and clarity on complex matters, bringing the voices of noble Lords from across the House to these important platforms. On a personal level, I have valued his wisdom, his judgment and his friendship. I am sure the whole House will join me in expressing our warmest and best wishes for the future as he returns to the Back Benches.
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, I am absolutely delighted to support the Motion from the noble Baroness the Lord Privy Seal in respect of the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby. I think I can genuinely say that everybody on this side is absolutely delighted to welcome him to his place, for many reasons: not just because he is actually a pioneer in the art of having been a hereditary Peer and coming back here, which he is, but because of that charm, grace and attention to detail which he has displayed both in service in government and in so many other ways. I think we can all agree that he will be a successful follower to a really hard act to follow, that of my noble friend Lord Gardiner. I do not know, is he my noble friend again? Well, he always was my noble friend and he has been an absolutely outstanding Senior Deputy Speaker.
I am slightly disappointed that some of our colleagues were unable to stay for just five minutes to express their appreciation of somebody who has served the House so loyally over several years, and I know from the reaction of people around the House that they share my opinion. I think that the noble Lord needs to know the universal appreciation of the way in which he conducted what is actually a very difficult office. I do not think that many people realise the difficult issues that the Senior Deputy Speaker has to deal with, managing not just the whole business of Deputy Speakers but the business that comes through the committees that he chairs and on which he serves. My noble friend is a man of absolutely unimpeachable dignity, decency, kindness and diligence, and the House will miss him.
I think it is quite possible that, when he returns to a greater degree of freedom, he will also return to being what he once was, one of the most doughty defenders of the countryside in your Lordships’ House. At the moment, it is all peace and amity, and let us hope it stays that way, but I gently say to the opposite side that, should the banning of trail hunting come forward, I am not so sure that my noble friend will be quite as irenic and pacific as he is and has been as Senior Deputy Speaker. It is a great privilege to join the noble Baroness the Lord Privy Seal in welcoming and supporting the appointment of the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, and saying farewell and thank you to my noble friend Lord Gardiner.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
My Lords, on behalf of these Benches, I add to the unanimity of the House in offering our appreciation of the work of the noble Lord. Much was said in the previous debate about our House operating efficiently and professionally, and we have been helped enormously in that endeavour by the work of the noble Lord. As the noble Lord, Lord True, said, many of the functions that the SDS carries out are almost literally thankless, but this is a very good opportunity for us to thank him for the very calm, warm, considered and courteous approach with which he has dedicated his service to our House. We are very grateful.
Select Committees have such an important role in this House, and there has been no stronger champion than the noble Lord with regard to what I consider to be the heart of the ability of all Members, Back-Benchers in particular, to contribute to this House’s reputation. The House’s reputation has been strengthened by his work and we are extremely grateful.
We also give very warm congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, as he takes up his office. We know from his experience, both in government and in this House, that he will bring empathy and professionalism to this role, and we wish him the very best as he carries it out.
King’s Speech
Lord True Excerpts(2 months, 2 weeks ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, how nice it is to see our House without those railings today. It is an absolute pleasure to follow the wise and witty speeches of the noble Baroness, Lady Crawley, and the noble Lord, Lord Roe of West Wickham. The noble Lord, Lord Roe, has had a brave and remarkable career of public service, which he was too modest to speak about, but his words only reinforce the great respect in which he is already held here. He was, among other things, a distinguished boxing champion. Perhaps if there is the risk of too many rounds of ping-pong this Session, the noble Baroness the Leader might send him to sort us out or maybe lift us out.
As for the noble Baroness, Lady Crawley, I had the honour of serving with her on your Lordships’ Intergenerational Fairness and Provision Committee. She mentioned some differences that we occasionally have, but frankly I have been puzzled that no Government have ever picked up our joint recommendation to scrap the triple lock. However, it was good to hear in her speech today a little bit more about apprenticeships. The noble Baroness is the very model of sound sense and good reason, worn with wit, lightness and charm, as we heard today—and that is what your Lordships’ House is all about.
On the previous of these occasions, I began by congratulating the party opposite on its historic electoral success. I might leave that bit out this time. It is stormy weather today. I noticed that it was hailing this morning. It only rained on Rishi Sunak. What I can tell your Lordships is that I have paid my council tax, I never worked for the Red Cross, I never worked for the Ministry of Justice, and could not afford a Lamborghini to rev up fossil fuel in the faces of my Green electors. I have also never taken a £5 million cheque from a dodgy foreign donor over a fag and a pint.
To be serious for a moment, as Leader of the Opposition I cannot ignore the large gaps left on these Benches and the Cross Benches by the expulsion of dozens of our colleagues. We do miss them. Although we have welcome news that a minority will return, 1,784 years of experience have been lost to our House. It was a mighty rent and, in many ways, hurtful. It will be hard to forget, particularly with the huge threat of further expulsions hanging over the older Members in our House. We really must think very carefully about how far we let this process of expulsions go. We now have a Bill to remove peerages in the gracious Speech. I suppose we will have to call it “Peter’s law”. We will need to look very carefully at the details of that Bill too—its scope, its criteria and who decides, lest it ever become a licence for the social media lynch mob.
The heart rather sinks at No. 10 boasting about 37 Bills and draft Bills this Session. This is quite unbelievable. Too much legislation equates directly to too many demands on this House and long days that nobody wants on either side of this Chamber. Can the Leader confirm, when she winds up, how many of these Bills will start in this House?
I want to say something about procedure, because the great principle of our constitution is that the King’s Government must be carried on, if not quite like the “Carry On” film it has been in the last few days. The last Session was sometimes fractious, although the genuine good will in the usual channels, led by the noble Baroness, which I greatly appreciate, generally helped us through. However great the turnover of our Members, we must all try to preserve the ancient courtesies of this House. We are a House of self-regulation, and with that must go a high degree of self-restraint. The House values not the quantity of speeches but rather their quality, like the two we have heard today. Less is often more, except when it comes to good humour and focused, non-repetitive argument. The Companion must always be respected, and I support the initiative of our Leader in sending out what we hope will be a useful aide-memoire on some key points of behaviour.
I started the last Session by saying that having been on the receiving end of a record pounding in the number of defeats and amount of ping-pong from the party opposite, I hoped that the era of repetitive ping-pong would be over. Well, I confess that it did not always quite work out that way in the last Session, but I recommit to that objective, and this must be a reciprocal effort. Governments are entitled to legislation in due time—always via agreement, one hopes—but we need fewer, shorter, better-drafted Bills from all Governments. Massive, sprawling Bills inevitably spawn sprawling Committee stages. We also need, in other parts of the House, careful thought as to the range of amendments and restraint from all in repeating at length arguments made in detail in Committee or, for heaven’s sake, summing up at length what we have already heard.
We could also, and we dedicate ourselves to this, improve engagement in this House to settle lesser issues here, perhaps, in my submission, by better use of Third Reading and the time between Report and Third Reading. Far too often in recent years, minor issues have gone to ping-pong but could have been settled here earlier, and were settled. It is also important, I must tell my colleagues, that we adhere to the long-held principles of the Salisbury/Addison convention and, where we can, reinforce them. A manifesto Bill, however ludicrous or damaging it may seem to others, has a special status and should not be wrecked or voted down in this House. We on this side pledge to continue constructive discussions in the usual channels on these and related topics, but I will always fiercely defend the unique freedoms of this House—it is these that have made it the best revising Chamber in the world.
The gracious Speech was a bit disappointing. A good point is that there was no Chagos Bill. The bad points were more borrowing, no savings and—two serious points—no provision for defence, on which the noble Lord opposite was quite right, and no welfare reform, where we on this side have offered to work cross-party together. Those offers still remain. What an extraordinary time it is in politics when we have moved in under two years from the most crushing electoral victory to the most devastating political defeat. Even the noble Lord, Lord Livermore, cannot blame that on his predecessors. I see that the noble Lord is getting his old boss, Gordon Brown, back to help him. I thought our global envoy to the markets was called the Chancellor of the Exchequer; I wonder what she has done wrong.
I am always encouraged when a Prime Minister in trouble sends for people even older than me, but where is the future here? Instead, the Prime Minister wants to take us back to the past with a Bill that will be a massive Henry VIII power to reverse the decision of the British people to choose freedom from Brussels. He says that doing this will be the defining measure of his time in office. Did he perhaps not notice the repeated verdict of people in the north, the Midlands, and the east of England in the recent elections? I do not think that the hopes of the people of Barnsley were for more freedom of movement or more wrangling with unelected civil servants in Brussels about what can be called marmalade or Yorkshire pudding. The future of Britain is in trading in the wider, fast-growing world, not going backwards to tight linkage to the weakest and slowest-growing part of the world economy.
The gracious Speech promised a criminal justice Bill. Oh dear—yet another Home Office Bill for the noble Lord, Lord Hanson. At least he is being paid now, but my heart sinks. This Bill will
“deliver services the British people expect”.
This is the spin. I can firmly say that there is one service in criminal justice that the free people of this country have expected since the time of Magna Carta, and it is the right to trial by jury. Blocking jury trial was never threatened in any manifesto, and this side will exercise the full freedoms of the House to defend it.
We are also promised an energy independence Bill. We support the wider use of nuclear power, but the Bill promises more spending, more regulation and more pylons. That is not what people want. How can we be independent without the use of fossil fuels? We will seek to amend the Bill to open up drilling in the North Sea, support the Scottish economy and save the jobs of thousands of skilled workers.
We are also promised steel nationalisation—another blast from the past. That will not change the brutal economics of this great industry. Instead of pouring more and more borrowed billions into this, should we not be helping it and other vital heavy industries by stopping the crazed levies and taxes that have given the UK the highest energy costs in the world and destroyed jobs?
The gracious Speech talks of using
“the power of an active State”
to intervene in business, but the truth of the matter is that business and small businesses up and down the land are already reeling from misguided government regulation and bludgeoning taxes. Far too many of the measures in the Speech go back to the past. We on this side have put forward a costed set of serious alternative proposals on which we would have acted. We will try to inject their spirit into every measure in this programme.
The Government talk of answering the hopes of the British people. The British people said what they hoped for last Thursday, and it was an end to more of the same under a divided party and a floundering leadership. On one thing, however, I most vehemently agree: we need the “values of decency” and we need the lamp of faith. I trust that we all agree on the most urgent, condign action to eliminate the scourge of antisemitism that is a stain on our free society. I promise the noble Baroness that, on this and other things, wherever we can, we will work together across the Chamber. I beg to move that this debate be adjourned until tomorrow.
House of Lords: Legislative Procedures
Lord True Excerpts(3 months, 1 week ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
My Lords, before answering this Question I looked with some care at the recommendations from the Goodlad committee, and a number were not accepted at the time, including that Ministers should be able to answer Questions in either House, that the Lord Privy Seal should have a dedicated Question Time, and that there should be a more proactive role for the Lord Speaker. Those did not find favour with the House at that time—I hesitate to look at the Lord Speaker’s face at this point.
The issue of how we use our time is really important, and I draw the noble Baroness’s attention to the next report from the Procedure and Privileges Committee—which I think is coming to the House on Thursday—about using time. The committee is recommending from all parties that we look at the time we spend debating SIs and that some extra time be available in Grand Committee, including, where required, a sitting that would start on Tuesday mornings. It is not about curtailing or extending time; let us use the time we have as effectively as we possibly can. The other thing I am keen to do is give certainty to Members about when business is happening and how long business will take, because that helps Members participate.
Lord True (Con)
I understand the principle behind the Question; there is too much repetitive talk in this House, often between different stages. But that is a matter for restraint on all sides. Will the noble Baroness opposite accept that I welcome very much the initiatives that she has been taking in the usual channels, and I support them in all defined ways to make our proceedings more expedient and work well for everybody? Will she also support the principle that I held to when I was Leader: not to seek in any way to limit the freedoms of individual Members in this House to exercise their rights? It is through those freedoms, not shared by MPs, that this House has become the great revising Chamber that it is.
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
I do not seek to curtail freedoms. I do not know whether there is anything specific the noble Lord has in mind. In a House that is self-regulating, we also seek self-restraint. That self-restraint is something that the whole House wants. The certainty for Members that the House is run in an orderly way—which was part of the point of our discussions in the usual channels this morning—is important. It is beholden on the whole House, as well as the leadership of the House, to ensure that Members abide by the conventions and do not feel they are something we can bypass when we feel like it.
Security Vetting
Lord True Excerpts(3 months, 1 week ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, this is a tortuous and, frankly, somewhat embarrassing Statement—stable door after stable door pushed shut long after the obvious national security risk had bolted through them. The Prime Minister is still answering questions on the Statement in the other place; it would surely have been better if it had been repeated here in prime time, at a time when your Lordships had had a chance to digest the Prime Minister’s words, the reactions to them, and the response of Sir Olly Robbins tomorrow. We made that reasonable request, and the Government rejected it. Will the noble Baroness, our Leader, give an assurance that, if asked, she will come back to this House tomorrow to answer questions on Sir Olly Robbins’s response to today’s account of events?
The noble Baroness must know what everybody knew—apart from, it seems, the Prime Minister—that Peter Mandelson was totally unsuitable to be our ambassador to the USA. The Statement’s repeated defence, as we have just heard, is that the Prime Minister would not have appointed Mandelson if he had known his vetting had failed. But you did not need vetting to see that Mandelson was a proven liar. You did not need vetting to see that he was twice forced to resign in disgrace from government. You did not need vetting to hear that he revelled in the company of what he called the “filthy rich”, from whatever dubious nation that might be. You did not need vetting to know that he was a known associate and defender of the convicted paedophile, Epstein. You did not need vetting or process—you needed gumption, judgment and common sense, and you cannot subcontract those things to a Whitehall committee. Was there no one at any stage in this who asked the simple question, “Is this wise?”
The Prime Minister says that Mandelson lied in the course of his vetting. Should we be surprised? Well, no, though it seems the Prime Minister was. That is the crux of the matter. What is absolutely staggering is the truly spectacular scale of the failure of judgment of the Prime Minister in appointing such a man. It embarrasses the Labour movement, which does not deserve to be embarrassed in such a way. No amount of casuistical argument, such as we have just heard, can efface that personal responsibility. One man picked Mandelson, one man pushed him, and the issue is not the “who knew what when” about Mandelson’s vetting, but what everybody knew about Mandelson before he was appointed, all of which the Prime Minister ignored.
This is a Prime Minister on his third Cabinet Secretary—three in under two years. A legion of advisers has been selected, then shoved out of No. 10 as scapegoats for some panic or crisis of confidence. Is not the truth that it is always someone else to blame? I valued the old conventions that Ministers took responsibility. Civil servants were rarely named in this place and never blamed. Whatever happened to those conventions? Why was an outstanding ambassador shoved out of Washington to make way for the likes of Mandelson? It is because the Prime Minister wanted it, and wanted it quick. Why was the Permanent Secretary at the Foreign Office, Sir Olly Robbins, sacked? It is because the Prime Minister wanted a scapegoat, and wanted it quick. Is not the fact of the matter that the Prime Minister wanted his man Mandelson, come hell or high water, and the Civil Service sought to accommodate his instructions?
Can the noble Baroness tell the House this: did Sir Olly Robbins act against the law, against the Civil Service Code or outside proper process in any way in enabling Mandelson to go forward, despite vetting advice? If so, will she tell the House his specific offences? If not, can she say on what grounds Sir Olly has been fairly dismissed?
The Prime Minister has admitted that he was aware that vetting had not been done on Mandelson when he named him. We know that the then Cabinet Secretary, the noble Lord, Lord Case, advised him to wait for that to be done. Why did the Prime Minister ignore that advice? Can the noble Baroness say whether the Prime Minister or No. 10 at any stage asked about the vetting and Mandelson’s links to China or Russia? Is it true that the National Security Adviser warned that the process was “weirdly rushed”? Is it true, as the Deputy Prime Minister said just this weekend, that there were “time pressures” to get Mandelson cleared? Is it true, as the Foreign Secretary said at the weekend, that officials were instructed to give “priority clearance” to Mandelson?
It looks as if, on the Prime Minister’s wishes, the process for Mandelson’s clearance was put in what was called—how was it in the Covid era?—the VIP lane, and we all know what became of that. Due process was followed by Sir Olly; that has not been challenged. All the problems arose from the undue haste of the Prime Minister to force through his man and glad-hand it with him in No. 10.
The Statement reveals a world beyond “Yes, Prime Minister”—a bureaucracy of bizarre complexity, in which you cannot see the wood for the legalese, where people have to seek legal advice before they talk to each other, where there are inquiries into inquiries into inquiries, where the Prime Minister sits staggered, unbelieving and unknowing the heart of a system over which he has presided for two years, processing and reprocessing process, for all the world like Sir Humphrey Appleby.
We have not had time to assess in detail the minutiae of this Statement. We have not been permitted to hear Sir Olly’s side of the case before being asked to consider it. We will come back to those things, but what must be clear to all is the astonishing lack of judgment by the Prime Minister in making this appointment, the dire consequences of his undue haste, and the rank smell of the blame game and dumping on senior civil servants—things which should have no place in the conduct of good government.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
My Lords, one thing I agree with in this Statement is the recognition of the victims of the crime of Jeffrey Epstein. We are able to know what we know about an appointment which should never have been made only because of the patience and the persistence of the victims, and they should be at the forefront of all our minds.
At the start of this, on 11 November 2024, the then Cabinet Secretary, Simon Case—now the noble Lord, Lord Case—gave very clear and appointment-specific advice to the Prime Minister if he chose to make a political appointment for the ambassador in Washington. I quote from the advice published in the first release of documents on 11 March this year:
“If this is the route that you wish to take you should give us the name of the person you would like to appoint and we will develop a plan for them to acquire the necessary security clearances and do due diligence on any potential Conflicts of Interest or issues of which you should be aware before confirming your choice”.
This advice was specific. It was not about seeking clearance after the appointment; it was about seeking security clearances before confirming the choice.
In the House of Commons, Ed Davey asked the Prime Minister why this advice was disregarded and Peter Mandelson’s appointment was confirmed, approved by the King and announced prior to necessary security clearances being acquired. The Prime Minister replied that the subsequent review of the process had confirmed that it was followed. This was a non-answer, because the process was the Cabinet Secretary providing advice, which he did, that the Prime Minister chose to disregard. In the bundle of papers released in March, there was missing a minute between this advice and a reference on 12 December, a month later, to Peter Mandelson being referred to as the lead candidate. Can the Leader confirm that Parliament has been presented with all the information between the advice from the Cabinet Secretary in November and 12 December, when it was indicated that Peter Mandelson was now the lead candidate? Why is there no record of what the Prime Minister did with the advice issued on 11 November?
Just a few days later, on 18 December, the Palace was informed of the decision to appoint Mandelson, contrary to the advice that necessary security clearances should be acquired. What is all the more concerning is that we were told that the Prime Minister subsequently regretted making the appointment as a result of Mandelson’s lies in the due diligence process. But that an appointment was made in the first place, when the Prime Minister had been given the advice on 11 November on due diligence in respect of Peter Mandelson, is staggering. I remind the House of what that advice on the due diligence process was, and I remind the House that this was the lead candidate for appointment. It stated:
“After Epstein was first convicted of procuring an underage girl in 2008, their relationship continued across 2009-2011, beginning when Lord Mandelson was Business Minister and continuing after the end of the Labour government. Mandelson reportedly stayed in Epstein's House while he was in jail in June 2009 … In 2014 Mandelson also agreed to be a ‘founding citizen’ of an ocean conservation group founded by Ghislaine Maxwell, and funded by Epstein”.
Surely this information alone should have been the basis on which, prior to any announcement, the Prime Minister should have decided that the reputational risk was too high, given the ongoing legal and congressional actions in the US at the time. He did not. The Prime Minister made a decision to set aside advice on acquiring vetting approval prior to making the announcement on 20 December and to set aside the reputational risk linked with Epstein’s crimes. Can the Leader confirm that the Foreign Secretary had seen the due diligence checklist report, as on business conflicts and the Epstein links, when he said in the government press release on 20 December:
“It is wonderful to welcome Peter back to the team”?
The Statement today puts all the blame on FCDO officials and none on accountability of Ministers. The Prime Minister stated today that
“given the seriousness of these issues and the significance of the appointment, I simply do not accept that Foreign Office officials could not have informed me of UKSV’s recommendations”
after Mandelson had been announced and his name had gone to the Palace two days before the press release. Given the seriousness and significance of the appointment, I simply do not accept the Prime Minister’s rationale for disregarding the advice given to him on 11 November that vetting should be acquired before the appointment, not before taking post. But quite astonishingly, the Prime Minister says
“if I had known before Peter Mandelson took up his post that the UKSV recommendation was that developed vetting clearance should be denied, I would not have gone ahead with the appointment”.
But the appointment had already been made. Now, we must assume that there are questions on the accountability to Parliament.
The Prime Minister’s Statement today refers to the letter that the Foreign Secretary, alongside the Permanent Secretary, Sir Olly Robbins, provided to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, which said that vetting
“concluded with the DV clearance being granted by the FCDO in advance of Lord Mandelson taking up the post”.
This misled Parliament, and the Government are saying that those who are accountable for that should not be the Ministers but officials—dismissed. We will hear from the sacked official, but the Prime Minister’s Statement alludes to other officials prior to Sir Olly taking up his post, and we are left with the uncomfortable position where only people who cannot answer to Parliament will be blamed, and no Ministers who are accountable to Parliament will be held to account. We await the work of parliamentary committees and the ISC, and I suspect we will also await the ministerial adviser report. Other Ministers have been held to account for what they have told Parliament; surely it must be the case that the Prime Minister and Ministers in this Government are held to account also.
Middle East
Lord True Excerpts(3 months, 2 weeks ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, in thanking the Government for laying this Statement, I begin by paying tribute to our brave service men and women who are serving in this conflict right now. They are the very best of Britain, and they have this House’s unequivocal support.
I remember well 16 October 1964, the day the murderous regime of Chairman Mao announced that China had exploded a nuclear bomb. I will not forget the shiver this sent round the world. How would we have felt if we had heard a similar announcement that the murderous regime of the IRGC and the ayatollahs, steeped in the blood of their own young people, tens of thousands of them, had exploded a nuclear bomb?
Amid the chorus of attacks we heard in the other place yesterday on the US and Israel, some people are forgetting some uncomfortable realities. For decades, the world has said no to an Iranian bomb, but diplomacy did not prevent those who chant “Death to Israel, death to America” pursuing their unlawful nuclear programme. The Iranian regime had all the weapons that it needed to deal death and destruction to civilians in Israel and in neighbouring Arab countries, as it so shamefully has lately. Why did it need to enrich uranium to 60%? Why did it need intercontinental ballistic missiles? There is only one answer, and the mist of misplaced relativism should not hide that truth. A nuclear-armed Iran intended to offer an existential threat to Europe, the UK and the United States.
We could have had peace last weekend after the helpful intervention of our friends in Pakistan if the Iranian regime had been willing to give up its nuclear weapons programme—but it was not. Let us still hope that renewed efforts at negotiation will succeed, but not peace at any price. Of course, we also fervently hope to see peace in Lebanon, a beautiful land caught in the poisonous grip of Hezbollah. But Israel had the right to defend itself against the violence of Iran’s proxies, who have even now rejected peace talks.
Britain did not start this war, as many have said, but we should be in no doubt whose side we are on: our allies in the Middle East, and the United States. Yesterday, in the other place, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, who had not a single word of criticism for the Iranian regime, called the elected United States President “immoral” and a “dangerous and corrupt gangster”. We may deplore the language of others, but we should remember our own tongues. Will the noble Baroness join me in repudiating such language about an allied Head of State?
I thought the Prime Minister was judicious in reminding some in his party of the importance of the relationship with the US, and we welcome his meeting our dearly valued allies in the Gulf, who were disappointed by our initial response. We support his diplomatic efforts and military planning to restore freedom of navigation in the region.
The Iranian attacks on shipping and the blocking of the Strait of Hormuz are an outrage against international law. While no one welcomes blockade, it has been a tactic used by belligerent nations for years, including the UK, not least in two world wars. Can the noble Baroness confirm that the US has said it will apply only to ships using Iranian ports and will not affect other traffic in the strait? What proposals will the UK put to the conference that the Prime Minister is convening? What resources we will commit to that effort, and when? The Prime Minister said yesterday that we would act only when conflict ends.
We hear a lot about a reset with Brussels. Would not a good start be for Britain to follow at least one EU regulation and proscribe the brutal IRGC as a terrorist organisation, as the EU already has? What does the IRGC have to do to meet that response from the British Government?
We agree that we must take rapid action to increase our energy security and keep bills down, but can the noble Baroness appreciate that Labour’s deliberate policy of more expensive energy, which is accelerating the destruction of vital heavy industry, is dangerous and irresponsible? Does she agree with the trade unions, as we do, that we must drill for more oil and gas in the North Sea, grant licences for drilling in the Jackdaw and Rosebank fields and rebuild British production and jobs? Will the Government cancel the proposed rise in fuel duty? They talk of more subsidies, but financed from where? Is not the real answer to end the artificial increase in fuel prices by domestic taxation and levies that have given us the highest energy prices in the developed world?
On defence, for too long all parties in politics, including my own, basked—as the noble Lord, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, rightly warned us—in the complacency of a so-called peace dividend while evil was on the move. Every serious person, including in the military, agrees that Britain must now find a way to spend 3% of GDP on defence by the end of this Parliament. Yesterday, the Prime Minister rejected a call from my right honourable friend the leader of the Opposition to seek a joint cross-party plan, which the Liberal Democrats have also spoken of, to address unsustainable welfare spending and commit resources to defence. That was regrettable. We live in a new world of harsh realities and the first and greatest social security is defence security. Yet sometimes this Government have seemed to have a plan for welfare but not for warfare. Where is the long-promised defence investment plan? The question is not whether we need to increase defence spending, but what tough choices we must make to do so. Surely, we are far better making those choices together, as my right honourable friend suggested.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
My Lords, this is an unlawful war and has an unclear justification, with contradictory messages already from the Trump White House, State Department and Defense Department. That is how I started my response to the Statement on 2 March. I went on to say that
“the civilian death toll is likely to grow significantly. This is yet another conflict where protection of civilians is being set aside, and this is deplorable”.—[Official Report, 2/3/26; col. 1080.]
From the Conservative Opposition, the approach was different. We were told that, when Trump called, we should have answered and been in it all the way: a strategic error. Yesterday in the House of Commons, with quite astonishing hubris, the leader of the Conservative Party said:
“I am sure the Prime Minister … will … misrepresent my position and pretend that I demanded he join in the initial strikes”.—[Official Report, Commons, 13/4/26; col. 553.]
We all know the truth. It was obvious, given the untruthfulness, unreliability and mendacious approach of the Trump Administration that what they had initially called for—regime change of that homicidal regime in Iran—they are now saying they never claimed should happen in the first place. They said Iran should never have a nuclear programme; now they are saying that there should be a moratorium on the programme. I do not know how that fits with what the noble Lord, Lord True, said.
With regard to the most effective way of reducing the possibility of Iran having nuclear capability for weapons, we supported the Government of the noble Lord, Lord True, when they criticised the Trump Administration and said that withdrawing from the JCPOA was an error. We disagreed with his Government when they denied the case for proscribing the IRGC as a terrorist organisation. I hope the Government and the Leader can update us on where we will see the legislative changes with regard to the IRGC that we have been promised.
Now the focus from America is on reopening the Strait of Hormuz, which had been open. That will be complex and costly. In his criticism of Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli opposition leader and former Prime Minister Yair Lapid summed it up:
“For the thousandth time, it has been proven: military force without a diplomatic plan does not lead to a decisive victory”.
We agree with him.
On 2 March I also said:
“There is likely to be continuous economic instability for the trade routes and for energy, especially in our key economic areas”.—[Official Report, 2/3/26; col. 1081.]
I also said there would be economic consequences and costs to the United Kingdom. These were obvious. The impact on the economy requires an immediate response. It is likely that the surge in fuel prices will mean a potential £2 billion in extra tax revenue to the Government. That should be spent on cutting fuel duty by 10p, bringing down prices at the pump by 12p per litre, to bring immediate relief to individuals and businesses. But we will need to do more, because these economic repercussions will last months at the very least.
The Statement is on the Middle East and there are wider consequences that have not been referred to so far. In Gaza, 700,000 displaced people are still living in emergency shelters and being denied the vital food and medical assistance they require. Just in recent weeks, 5,000 children have been screened for malnutrition. In the West Bank, settler and outpost violence against civilians is being conducted with impunity. The UK Government must finally say that there are repercussions for our relationship with the Israeli Government as a result. Continuing restrictions on food and humanitarian assistance is a perpetuation of breaches of international humanitarian law.
On Lebanon, the humanitarian toll is extreme. I have been to Lebanon frequently and have been checking in with friends who are living in extreme worry. It is chilling that 1 million people—one in six of the population—are displaced and the IDF is targeting civilian infrastructure and bombing heavily populated areas without targeted munitions, which is a clear tactic of collective punishment. That is a flagrant breach of international humanitarian law. Over the last 15 years, the UK has committed over £100 million, including an extra £17 million under the last year of the previous Government, which I welcomed, to train the Lebanese army. Last autumn, the UK and the Lebanese army opened a training centre in Zahrani, an area now seeing forced evacuation and attacks by the IDF. What is our ongoing relationship with the Lebanese army, especially in areas where we are seeing military action from the IDF?
The fundamental strategic consequence is that the erratic and untruthful US President and his Administration are now a strategic risk to the UK’s interests. All this leads to an undeniable economic, security and social case for working much more closely with our EU allies.
Finally, not mentioned in the Statement or so far today are the wider consequences of what is happening in this region. We are now entering the fourth year of the war in Sudan: the three-year anniversary was just this week. It is three years and one week since I was in Khartoum and it is heartbreaking to see the human toll on a country I love. I am glad that there was a Berlin conference on humanitarian assistance and I would like an update from the Leader on the UK offer for that conference, but we need to do more. We need to restrict the blood gold trade, we need more on protection of civilians and we need to see no-drone zones. For some young civilians from Sudan, the UK could offer hope. They will be wanting to study in the UK, and it is deeply regrettable that a Labour Government have decided to ban visa applications from those young civilians who wish a better life for themselves.
We kept it for Ukraine, but we are banning it for Sudan. Why is that? I hope the Leader will agree with me that the future of Sudan—one Sudan, united—will be one that is led by civilians and protects civilians, especially women and girls, who have suffered far too great a toll. The legitimate future of Sudan is one that is civilian and representative. I hope that the UK, as penholder, will give a clear statement that that is our intention.
Ministerial Salaries (Amendment) Bill
Lord True ExcerptsTuesday 14th April 2026
(3 months, 2 weeks ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Ministerial Salaries (Amendment) Act 2026 View all Ministerial Salaries (Amendment) Act 2026 Debates Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Baroness the Leader of the House for her introduction to this Bill and for her very clear explanation of it; I can confirm that I support it and I can therefore be brief.
As most of the House who have followed this will know—the noble Baroness alluded to this—I have form on the matter. When I became Leader of the House in 2022, I found it absolutely astonishing that in the 21st century we had a statutory position where, practically, in one of our Houses of Parliament in many circumstances people had to have private means to become a Minister. There have always been wealthy people who have been willing to do this signal public service for nothing. They still exist, and I of course salute them for their public spirit in doing that. Some on my side, when I was Leader, made great personal sacrifices, for which I once told the House I was ashamed to ask them, and for which I was beyond appreciation when I saw them ready to make those sacrifices.
However, the converse of that appreciation is that it cannot ever be right that those who do not have the means cannot serve this country as a Minister because a post is unpaid. I said from the Front Bench, both in office and in opposition, that I believe this matter must be addressed. Whenever we discussed it, there was widespread support for the principle, and I think that was found when my predecessors also tried to address the matter. But there was always a reason not to act, and not only in my time but before.
I think I have told the House that, when I tried to get something in a Bill such as this when I was Leader in the 2023-24 Session, I was told by my own very senior colleagues that it would “cause comment”—perhaps we were approaching an election or something. When I tried to address the matter by different means, ensuring at least that senior unpaid figures on both the Government and Opposition Front Benches, such as a Foreign Office Minister and leading shadow spokesman, might be allowed deemed attendance when they were out of London, perhaps on related business, this was disagreed to by senior figures then in the Labour Party on the basis, as I was told, that Labour would have fewer Ministers and so it would not be necessary. It has not quite worked out that way and it was never really going to. As the noble Baroness explained, this position has grown and persisted for decades.
The number of unpaid Lords Front-Benchers, which rose as high as 13—or maybe even 14—in my time is still at least 11, as advertised currently on the GOV.UK list of Ministers. It would be invidious to list those names, but they include some of the most hard-working and respected Members on the Front Bench opposite, just as they did under our Government.
This Bill could bring that inherent unfairness in public life to a close. I hope that, when the noble Baroness responds, she will undertake that it will do precisely that—she said it would largely do it; I understand there may be transitional reasons why that might not be possible. But I affirm that public office in the 21st century must be open to all.
The Bill allows the total number of paid Ministers, as the noble Baroness explained, to rise to 120 against the current 109. The existing limit on the scale of patronage in the other place set by the House of Commons Disqualification Act 1975, as she explained, remains unchanged at 95. So if the Commons end, if I may put it thus—or the other place, or the patronage secretary—still decides that the House of Commons Members should take up all their potential places, the number of Lords Ministers allowed to be paid by statute will rise from 14 under the present system to 25 under the revised system brought in by the Bill.
The noble Baroness alluded to the fact that that is still a ratio of nearly four to one between this House and the other place. I do not wish to disparage anyone, because I had an uphill struggle with my own colleagues, and I make no disparagement of the Government because they are addressing the point, but over the years I have sometimes wondered whether some of our colleagues at the other end actually know the burdens on Ministers in this House, the revising Chamber, and the amount of continuous work that arises, for example, from our less regimented system of organising Questions and the clear and penetrating scrutiny of Bills.
I said I would not name names, but I look at people such as the noble Lord, Lord Hanson of Flint, who carries out what I think we would all acknowledge is one of the hardest jobs in government, carrying the Home Office brief in your Lordships’ House, and I remember my noble friend Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, whom the House was praising not long ago, and who was a truly outstanding Minister of State in the Foreign Office and an indefatigable traveller in service of his country. Those people need to be properly recognised. Many might and could contend that the real answer would of course be to restrain the growing size of the payroll in the other place. It does not need to be 95—it has not always been 95—but that is not on offer currently, and therefore I feel that in the interests of the whole House we should proceed as the noble Baroness suggests in the Bill.
I was very grateful for the support that Members across the House, as the noble Baroness reminded us, gave to an amendment which I moved during the passage of the House of Lords Act earlier this Session. I recognise that it was not actually practical in its explicit effect, but it was designed to allow this House to express a view and perhaps force the other place to consider this issue. That has been done, and I am grateful for the constructive discussions that I have had on this with the noble Baroness the Leader of the House, both when I was in government and now in opposition. I hope that we can continue to give positive consideration to issues that arise from the burdens on various Front Benches in this House.
However, setting that aside, for the interim I welcome the Bill. It ends a long-standing injustice, it opens doors that should never have been closed, and I ask my colleagues on this side to give it a fair wind in the full spirit of respect and sensible co-operation across this Chamber for which I will always stand.