Lobbying Transparency (In-house Lobbyists) Bill [HL]

Viscount Stansgate Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 3rd July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, I am very pleased to contribute to today’s debate and it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness. Like many Members, I occasionally show visitors, including Americans, around the House. I take them to Central Lobby and I say, “Here it is. It is a place; it is a noun. Of course, it is also a verb. It is the place where people come to meet their Members of Parliament, as they have every right to do”. There is nothing wrong with lobbying: it is an integral part of our system of parliament and government, and indeed all Members of Parliament themselves—including humble Back-Benchers on the Government’s side in this House—are lobbying and lobbyists. The dangers begin to emerge only when financial benefit arises and when money is involved. I want to concentrate on the benefits of lobbying for influence, which goes on all the time.

This is a Bill about transparency and accountability, which I would like to think are two principles that commend themselves to all sides of this House. I mentioned Americans, and tomorrow is of course the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and the foundation of the United States. I quote one of the most famous justices of the American Supreme Court, Mr Justice Brandeis:

“Sunlight is … the best of disinfectants”.


This phrase remains very relevant when discussing the subject of the Bill.

My noble friend has argued that the rules, as they currently are under the 2014 Act, leave a large loophole and that the Bill provides the remedy, although it does involve some considerable administrative consequences. Previous Governments have argued—perhaps my noble friend the Minister will argue the same today—that there is already a regime in place whereby Government Ministers and Permanent Secretaries of government departments voluntarily disclose information about whom they meet on a quarterly basis, but is this enough? I do not think so.

The Committee on Standards in Public Life produced a report in 2021—not long after I arrived here—which specifically argued for the Cabinet Office to collate all departmental transparency information and publish it in an accessible and, above all, searchable database. It also advocated an expansion of the register to include contact between lobbying companies, spads and senior director-level civil servants. Perhaps my noble friend the Minister has something to say on this point. That committee stopped short of calling for the register to be expanded to include in-house lobbyists.

As the House knows, the post-legislative scrutiny of the Act by PACAC, the committee of the other place, also stopped short of recommending the extension to cover in-house lobbyists. However, it referred to “loopholes” that should be closed. The March 2026 Rycroft Review specifically drew attention to the current VAT exemption under the 2014 Act which, in effect, now allows lobbying firms of foreign-based subsidiaries of UK lobbying companies not to register. This is an error, and I hope my noble friend the Minister will address it.

As has been mentioned already, in March our outgoing Prime Minister commissioned the new Ethics and Integrity Commission to review, among other things,

“whether the current arrangements for transparency around lobbying are sufficient”.

If the report is being published next week, we look forward to reading what the answer will be. Maybe the Minister could also say something about that.

The Chartered Institute of Public Relations has already been referred to; its survey found that two-thirds wanted the lobbying register to include both consultants and in-house lobbyists.

If the House wants to know why I take a close interest in this Private Member’s Bill, it is this: my own experience. Before I was elected to serve in this House, I worked on behalf of and for the science community. As I knew a little about how Parliament works—indeed, in the family in which I grew up, it was impossible not to know a little—I was called upon to help represent the science community to both Parliament and government. I did so in various ways, such as organising events and arranging meetings. I suppose one could say that I did this work in-house. I organised on behalf of the science community—year after year, and decade after decade—the biggest science events ever held in the House. I hope the House will not mind if I give a couple of examples.

Parliamentary Links Day brought together the whole scientific community on a single day each summer. It comprised a huge meeting in the Commons, with standing room only, and another major event here in this House. You had to look only at the invitation cards to see what I mean: all the major sectoral science societies were represented—biology, maths, physics, chemistry, engineering—as well as many of our national academies, such as the Royal Society. The event was all about educating Members on science and technology issues and making the case for science and technology and the resources needed to fund them. We got speakers year after year from the Cabinet: the Foreign Secretary; the Environment Secretary; the Health Secretary; the International Development Secretary; the Science Minister, who was not always in the Cabinet but was crucial; and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Twenty-one years ago this year, the then Prime Minister himself addressed Parliamentary Links Day and I can well remember the frisson in the room. People were astonished to find a Prime Minister walking in to address them.

In 2001, I brought together a wide range of science organisations to produce the first ever Charter for Science and Engineering, to which the then Chancellor subsequently responded point by point, when he launched the 10-year investment strategy for science.

The Voice of the Future is another event that is still going. It brings young scientists and engineers to Parliament, who sit around the horseshoe questioning the Minister, the shadow Minister, the Chief Scientific Adviser, and members of both Houses’ Select Committees on Science and Technology, who sit at the witness table. It used to be launched by the Speaker himself.

I also organised parliamentary receptions—not just the Christmas reception at which we gave awards for outstanding contributions to the cause of science but others. Indeed, my noble friend Lord Anderson, who is in his seat, will remember the reception we organised to welcome back Helen Sharman, the first British person in space. That was quite a long time ago.

About 10 years ago, I arranged for Tim Peake—a name your Lordships may also remember—to give the first ever evidence from space to a Select Committee, in the Boothroyd Room. I remember meeting the parliamentary engineers, who worked in the basement at Millbank, and they were thrilled when the first signals conveying Tim Peake came through from NASA. The now noble Baroness, Lady Blackwood—sadly, not in her place at the moment—was the chair of the committee at the time so, if you do not believe me, ask her all about it. It was really quite an event.

Working in parallel to all this is the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee—of which, as it happens, I am now president—which organises the annual STEM for Britain event, in the other place. It brings early-career scientists and engineers here to meet their local Members of Parliament and exhibit their work. It is highly competitive. My purpose in giving these examples is to illustrate that lobbying activity of this kind goes on all the time. It is about seeking influence.

I have run out of time. Parliament is not a museum, it is a workshop, and this type of activity is to be encouraged. Expanding the 2014 Act register will do no harm and may well increase the sunlight we can shine on the whole area of lobbying. When it comes to this Bill, I will be voting for sunlight.

Local Plans (Burial Space) Bill [HL]

Viscount Stansgate Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 3rd July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, tomorrow, we will commemorate 250 years since the Declaration of Independence, which established the United States as a republic—it is still, as far as I am aware, supposed to be a republic. I mention that because one of its founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin, as the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed, alluded to, was famous for having said that there are only two things in life that are certain: death and taxes. This is a Bill about death, or more particularly about where our dead bodies are put to rest.

Throughout human history, the way we deal with our dead bodies has a great deal to say about our humanity. I read recently that there is now archaeological evidence that the Neanderthals had burial practices, and of course we know a great deal about civilizations such as the Egyptians and the Chinese. More recently, HS2 unearthed a great deal of knowledge about the way in which people were buried in the 17th century, when the line was built through central London.

This is a Bill that the House should very much take seriously, even if it is not everybody’s cup of tea. I commend the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed of Tinsley, for sponsoring the Bill. He was kind enough to draw it to my attention, for which I thank him, and he adroitly made his case for the Bill today. I congratulated him on having been successful in the lottery for Private Members’ Bills. As someone who has myself piloted a Private Member’s Bill through on to the statute book, I wish him every success.

If you read the Bill carefully, you will find several references to the cultural practices of communities. I will return to this aspect later, because the Bill tackles issues of growing concern to people of all communities. Reference has already been made to the recent Law Commission report of March this year on burial and cremation, which concluded not only that the last serious survey of burial spaces is already 20 years old and out of date but that the burial space in Church of England and local authority burial grounds might run out within the coming decades. I rather regret the fact that the Bishops’ Bench is not contributing to today’s debate.

It may be a short debate, and I am sure we will hear some very interesting speeches, but before I say a bit more about the Bill itself, I hope the House will allow me to make a few general comments, because the Bill is best approached with some understanding of the recent history of burial in this country.

Suppose we were holding this debate 200 years ago today. What would it be about? There was widespread concern about body-snatching. It is 200 years since the great private cemeteries of London were being planned: Kensal Green, Nunhead, West Norwood, Highgate and so on. They were built by joint-stock companies, and their whole design was about security. It is no coincidence that they were built with high walls and imposing gates, because the whole point of them was to provide the emerging middle class with a safe and secure burial environment. Planned in the 1820s—literally 200 years ago now—and built in the 1830s, they were known as the “magnificent seven”. Incidentally, they no longer felt obliged to bury in the Christian east-west orientation of sunrise to sunset; they could be planned according to a more elaborate layout, hence you see the beautiful cemeteries that we have today.

Of course, on the whole, the aristocracy had provision for their burials in their own vaults and lands, but the poorest in society, by contrast, were most vulnerable to body-snatching, which was a very successful business that fulfilled a need for medical colleges as well as providing a lucrative living for the body snatchers. People were murdered for body-snatching and their bodies were sold to the anatomy schools. In the infamous case of Burke and Hare in Edinburgh, they murdered 16 people in the 1820s. That provided the impetus for Parliament to pass the Anatomy Act 1832. The murders raised public awareness of the need for bodies for medical research and contributed to the passing of the Act. Intervening in that way, Parliament sought to deal with the body-snatching problem.

Incidentally, that Bill made its way through Parliament at the same time as the Great Reform Bill. It was known as the “midnight Bill”, because it passed late at night when people were not as interested. The main business of Parliament, carried on during the day, became the Great Reform Act 1832, which most of us learn about in history at school. The Anatomy Act provided sufficient bodies for medical schools, and the pauper institutions were used as a means of furnishing the dead bodies required for them. Basically, if you qualified for a pauper funeral, you certainly qualified for dissection.

Other developments in the 19th century included the creation of Brookwood Cemetery. Some Members may know it. It was designed to deal with the rapidly expanding population of London. A special train service was set up, which ran from London Necropolis station in Waterloo and transported the bodies down to the cemetery near Woking. Bombing in the Second World War blew up the station; otherwise, you would still be able to see it today.

Cremation, as a means of dealing with death, started to appear only in the 1890s and began to take off after the Great War—perhaps, and this is only a guess, because the colossal death toll of that war and a natural fear of decomposition changed people in the Christian community’s perceptions of burial.

But the fact is that the growing trend towards cremation in the Christian community did not erode the pressures on burial space. Over the decades, churches and local authorities have had to make increasing provision for burial space. By the way, there is quite a market in burial spaces. One colleague in this House told me a couple of days ago that the going price for a space in his particular hoped-for cemetery is £24,000. That is not inconsiderable.

Perhaps this is a good moment to declare that a few years ago I was part of an Opposed Private Bill Committee. There are not many of them; they are something of a specialism. I am not sure whether many Members here have ever had experience of one, but I am glad to say that we have some clerks in this House who are great specialists. It was a Bill promoted by Bishop’s Stortford Town Council—known, I am sure, to my noble friend the Minister—which sought permission to reuse burial space in its cemetery because space was running out. Proposals such as these can arouse great emotion and depth of feeling. The proceedings were quasi-judicial and eventually the House granted permission for the proposal to proceed. I believe it was the first such Bill to succeed outside London.

The point I am making is that the pressure for increased burial space is growing, and the issues we are discussing today, whether or not this particular Bill succeeds, will not be going away, so we may as well tackle the underlying issues head on. No London borough could possibly afford burial space within its boundaries at the moment. It may be that my noble friend the Minister will agree that there is a real issue here and tell the House that it must be addressed but that perhaps this Bill is not the vehicle to do it. But the Bill seeks to meet those needs in the context of local authority planning, and we should closely debate what effects this may have up and down the country when we reach Committee.

Before we reach the Minister’s speech, I return to the phrase

“all faith and cultural communities”,

which appears in the Bill. Different communities have different burial traditions. For example, as has been mentioned, Jewish and Muslim communities have a strong preference for burial as soon as possible. That is hardly surprising as those religions originated in the Middle East when a quick burial was a health necessity. It is fair to observe that both communities still broadly prefer burial to cremation, although that is a generalisation, but some communities prefer an individual grave and dislike multiple graves, and people are entitled to have their own views. The effect of changing times on our many and varied communities is producing an explicit demand for more burial space.

I have run out of time. I need hardly add that I am very much looking forward to hearing what my noble friend the Minister has to say and, whatever approach the Government take to the Bill, to taking part in further proceedings on it.

English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Viscount Stansgate Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 13th April 2026 Lords Chamber

Post-legislative review is core to ensuring that law is good law and that any deficiencies can be identified and addressed. I trust that even at this late stage, and indeed late hour, the Minister, having had the opportunity to reflect, will recognise the merit not only of reiterating the Government’s commitment to post-legislative scrutiny through words but also by deed, by putting provision for such scrutiny on the face of the Bill. The Government have nothing to lose by doing so but have a great deal to gain. I beg to move.

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, one of the advantages of having volunteered to stay beyond the Whip issued to these Benches tonight—and it is 12.50 am—is that it gives me the opportunity briefly to comment on Amendment 318B, moved by the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth. There is great merit in the idea that post-legislative review should be conducted. It is a principle that applies not solely to the Bill under consideration tonight but more generally.

If I can draw this brief comparison—I have no intention of speaking for more than 60 seconds—we encourage the committees of this House to look at issues that they have previously dealt with, with a view to following up to see what has happened. I have been a member of a committee that looked at a particular issue that it had considered five years previously and, incidentally, came to the conclusion that things were no better.

In principle, the idea behind the amendment moved by the noble Lord has some merit. I do not know what my noble friend the Minister will say in response but, having spent the entire day here until now in great part listening to the debates on this Bill, I am pleased to have the opportunity to invite my noble friend the Minister to say whether or not the Government accept the amendment, and I hope that the principles behind it will be taken very seriously.

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, this is an important contribution, and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, for proposing it. I support it, but I think the Government will want to do things more quickly than five years. What is being proposed is a review of the impact of the whole Bill over a five-year period, which means you are, in effect, starting after three years to do the research work required. That work may or may not be done by the Government; it might actually be done by university research departments or somebody else. I believe there are a number of errors in the Bill that the Government may find do not work well when we get the Act. Therefore, the Government will need room to effect change more quickly than five years on a number of aspects of the Bill. With that comment, these Benches will support the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth.

Representation of the People (England and Wales and Northern Ireland) (Amendment) Regulations 2024

Viscount Stansgate Excerpts

Monday 13th May 2024 Grand Committee

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, I take advantage of the fact that I have been relieved of the chairing of this Committee by my noble friend Lady Fookes to make one point. It follows the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, with which I wholly agree.

Last Thursday, I went to the Electoral Commission and had a discussion with the chief executive, with other colleagues. We were talking about various aspects of the preparations that they are making for the next general election. However, it will come as no surprise to anyone, and I rise only to make it clear to the Committee, that arising from that discussion was that there is bipartisan support for the point that I am making and which the noble Lord made. There is a crying need for the consolidation of electoral law. I very much hope that in a modest way, the Hansard record of this Grand Committee can be used as further proof of that, and that a future Government will find the legislative time to do this. It will be widely supported when it comes.

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, has once again demonstrated the essential truth of one of his major campaign pledges during the 1993 Christchurch by-election—that he would be very good at scrutinising secondary legislation. It is always a pleasure to work with him on such matters.

I am tempted to ask the Minister how often the Government have had to bring forward measures such as this, as a tidying-up and housekeeping exercise, since the Elections Act of 2022 became law. I will resist. However, the current measure is one of numerous examples of the Government appearing not quite to understand what they were doing in seeking to implement a Brexit deal which lacked details when it was agreed.

In considering what is before us today, the Shadow Minister in the House of Commons, Florence Eshalomi, explained that understanding this measure required understanding five or six different Acts and regulations spanning over 40 years of legislation. To correct the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, it was in answer to a Question of mine in this place some time ago that it was revealed that at that stage there had been 16 statutory instruments involved in implementing the Elections Act 2022, running to 803 pages, all of which have been added to since then by one, two or three further statutory instruments. This is simply the latest of them. The scale of the statutory instruments required by the Elections Act has presented a significant problem, not just for Ministers but particularly for those responsible for the conduct of our elections. I believe that the burden may have become intolerable and the risk of mistakes in the conduct of our elections has been increased significantly by this complexity.



First, can the Minister update us on government thinking about what we are all asking for—the proper consolidation of all our election laws, as recommended by the Law Commission, which has done much work on this subject?

Secondly, does the Minister accept that the Government’s explanation of the difference in voting rights between EU citizens from Ireland, Cyprus and Malta and those from the 19 EU countries with which we do not have voting and candidacy treaties is an anomaly that requires a fundamental review of the franchises for all our UK elections? In particular, does she accept that the principle of residency would be a good basis for the local election franchise, as those who pay for and receive services from local government should be able to vote for the people in charge of those local authorities? The principle of no taxation without representation is a good one. The Government seem obsessed with removing people from the electoral rolls, making it unnecessarily hard to register and then harder to vote if you are among the categories of people without acceptable photo ID from the very tightly drawn list.

Thirdly, what steps will the Government take to ensure that the different levels of voting rights applying to different EU citizens will be explained to them all?

Finally, what progress is being made with the 19 EU member states with which we do not have treaties concerning voting and candidacy rights to agree such treaties, bringing EU citizens in those countries into line with those from Spain, Portugal, Luxembourg, Poland and Denmark?

That said, the measure has our support as it provides some clarification and corrects mistakes that were inadvertently made.

Recall Petitions: Voter ID

Viscount Stansgate Excerpts

Monday 10th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

Can the Minister reassure the House that the Government will take steps to make a record of electors who go to sign their name at a recall petition and are refused for lack of voter identification?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, the Government have made it very clear that they will look at all the data from any petition or election, as they did in May this year.

Elections: Voter ID

Viscount Stansgate Excerpts

Tuesday 13th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

A national identification card is a totally different subject; it is much wider and further than this. That debate is perhaps for another day.

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, the integrity of our electoral system is important. In the light of what the Minister has told the House about the Government’s review, will she now undertake in advance to raise with her noble friend the Leader of the House that we should have an opportunity to debate that review in government time in the autumn?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I do believe that it was agreed in the legislation that when the review came out it would be discussed by both Houses. If that is not correct, I will correct it in a letter in the Library—but I am pretty sure that that is what was agreed.

International Women’s Day

Viscount Stansgate Excerpts

Friday 10th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord and to take part in this interesting debate. I welcome the chance to make a short contribution. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Lampard, on her maiden speech. I am sure we all look forward to hearing many more of them, and I am sure she will now have the same sense of relief having made it that we all in our time have had ourselves.

The Motion that we are debating refers to the education of women and girls, and I want to speak today about women and science. It is a good week to do this because on Monday this week we had a major science event in the other place called STEM for Britain, about which I will say more in a moment, and next Monday we have another major science event called Voice of the Future where, to put it bluntly, there is a role reversal: members of the Science and Technology Select Committee and the major spokespeople for science for the major parties appear before a group of younger scientists and engineers sitting around the horseshoe.

I declare an interest: I am president of the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee. My colleague in another place, the Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock, is the chair, and between us we do a great deal to help to improve the extent to which Parliament has the opportunity to debate and discuss science.

In a debate such as this, I need hardly say that we need to celebrate the achievement of women in science to consider some of the barriers that still exist to their making their full contribution. Over recent years there have been plenty of reasons why the opportunities for women to study science have not been as great as they could have been. By the way, I thank the Campaign for Science and Engineering, the House of Commons Library and other scientific societies for providing far more statistics than I could ever get into this speech today.

There are many strategies that the science community could adopt to address what is known as the leaky pipeline. In particular, we must do more to encourage women taking career breaks to keep in touch with their science, to make it easier for them to return as soon they want to and not to positions less senior than those they occupied before taking a maternity break, for example.

It is a well-known fact that female scientists frequently fail to get proper credit for their research. Rosalind Franklin, whose name is now rather more historical than current, was the X-ray crystallographer who made possible the discoveries of Watson and Crick—who got the Nobel prize. I am not saying that they did not deserve it—after all, we have the world-famous Crick Institute by St Pancras now—but Rosalind was not even referred to in their paper, which is a scandal. The problem of undercrediting women in science remains.

We must not forget that people still suffer from a great deal of sexism. I read in the Evening Standard this week about the first woman Tube driver, who started in 1978. Well, 11 years earlier, in 1967, Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, probably Britain’s most distinguished living astrophysicist, personally discovered pulsars, a remarkable discovery for which she did not get sufficient credit. She has it now but did not then. She was left off the paper, and other people—men—got the Nobel prize. She has gone on to win almost every scientific prize you can think of. I was at the Royal Society last week to see her get another one, but she should have been properly recognised from the beginning. I hope that noble Lords will forgive me for reminding them that when she made her historic discovery in 1967, it was her male colleagues who were asked about the astrophysical significance of the discovery. Guess what she was asked about? I am sorry to have to tell your Lordships that it was her bust size, her hip size and how many boyfriends she had. You could not make it up.

I like to think that things have changed since then, but many Members of this House will be wondering whether they are quite so sure. We have a lot of women active in science. Anyone who listened the other day to Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock, who presents “The Sky at Night”, will know how inspirational she is. I was interested to hear that they have now manufactured a new Barbie doll based on her. I have only seen the photo in newspapers, but the doll has a dress that looks like the night sky. I hope that this will get people interested in astronomy because, whether you are male or female, it is nothing short of amazing.

My time is running out, so I ought to get in a couple of other references. The first Briton in space was a woman, not a man. A few years ago, Tim Peake got a lot of publicity. That is fine, but the first Briton in space was Helen Sharman, more than 30 years ago. There are other women scientists, such as Sarah Gilbert, who developed the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine and who has been recognised, I am glad to say, and Catherine Green. Others have also in their time been given a Barbie doll in their image.

I want to say a word about an event that took place in the other part of this building on Monday, STEM for Britain. It is a competition for early career researchers who bring their papers to display and discuss them. Their local Members of Parliament are invited to meet them. Others, including some Members of this House, came along to support them, and very welcome they were too. The proportion of women in the five major categories this year was heartening. Some 60% of the physicists were female, as were 55% of those in chemistry, 60% in the biosciences and 50% in maths but only 40% in engineering, which remains an area where there could be more equality.

My time is up, but these are the future. I welcome any support that this House can give to the promotion of women and girls in STEM subjects. I like to think that this House will have many other occasions on which we can discuss such an important subject.

The Union (Constitution Committee Report)

Viscount Stansgate Excerpts

Friday 20th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, I and the whole House look forward to the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame—I apologise for my pronunciation. Mind you, as the immediately preceding speaker, I can imagine how nervous he will be, so I say that he will feel a lot better once it is over. That will not make him feel any better.

I am pleased to take part in this debate even though I was not one of the members of the committee, although I wish I had been. It is a tremendously interesting committee that has had the opportunity to explore and probe some of the most profound issues at the heart of what is still our unwritten constitution, with all the benefits and drawbacks that being unwritten can bring. I congratulate my noble friend Lady Taylor on chairing the committee and on having introduced the debate today, and I congratulate the clerks and all the other members who have made it a very important and timely report.

Why do I say timely? After all, I agree with my noble friend that it is a great regret that reports take so long to be debated in this House. However, when it comes to timeliness, you have to admit that to have the debate on a Friday when Section 35 was triggered on the Monday is about as timely as you could possibly get. I know that today’s debate is not about the events of this week—the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill and so on—but the fact is that the Bill was passed, and it opens up an aspect of the debate about the future of the union that was not there when the committee was undertaking its discussions, deliberations and report. As was said by the noble Lord, Lord Dunlop, and others, some issues are devolved and others are not. I am sure the current clash will be discussed in the courts, and I cannot predict what the outcome will be, but what does it tell us about the strength of the union and the basis of what it will be like over the next 25 years, given the way that it has evolved over the last 25?

The starting point for many of your Lordships is that we live in this unique union of four nations, which has developed over the centuries, and many would like to find a way to continue to do so. I ought to point out at this stage that I am one of those who hope that the union remains. In many families, people have relations all over the country and across borders. I do not know how many do but, in my own case, one of my grandmothers was born and bred in Scotland. For her entire life, she was identifiably Scottish to the end. My Dad, as a result, was half-Scottish and tremendously proud of his Scottish ancestry. It was a great privilege for him to be invited to address the Scottish Parliament in one of his pre-session moments of reflection. He was of course very concerned at the thought that Scotland would vote for independence, although that did not turn out to be the case.

Turning to the committee’s report, it is tremendously good analysis. It outlines the pressures that have built up over the years, including the financial crash, the information and technology revolution, the effects of climate change, the impact of Brexit—which is not by any means yet at an end—and the Covid pandemic and, of course, the new and emerging threats that we are now living through as a result of the invasion of Ukraine. It also draws wonderful parallels between constitutions and poetry and plumbing. I do find that a wonderful analogy.

The report has many excellent features and I have time to mention only two, which have almost been mentioned by others. First, there is the codification of the occasional practice whereby UK Ministers can and do appear before committees of devolved legislatures. That would be an excellent idea and it could be incorporated into the next edition of the Cabinet Manual, which we were discussing only a short time ago. The committee also calls for a new interparliamentary forum, which would bring Members of the legislatures of the UK Parliament and the devolved Parliaments together on an equal basis. That would also be an extremely good thing; the EU Bill coming towards us has been mentioned and that is a very good basis for it. Perhaps the Minister could tell the House whether there are, as I understand it, plans for such an initial meeting to take place in this House before very long.

I want to mention one thing very briefly, which was understandably not in the report: the consequences for the union if it were to be dissolved. I think of the international consequence for the UK. It just seems unthinkable that whatever remained—the rump—would be able, for example, to retain its seat on the Security Council as a permanent member. Although these wider considerations do not often play a part in our discussions, it would also be a tremendous loss of what we call soft power were we to find ourselves in that position.

My time is up but I commend the committee on its excellent report. Had I had longer to do so, I would have continued to commend it in further ways than I have been able to do.

United Kingdom: The Union

Viscount Stansgate Excerpts

Thursday 23rd June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome the debate and congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, on securing it. It is very timely, because it enables us to step back from the day-to-day business of Parliament and government and take a view on what may be happening and what may be going wrong. I agree with him, and it was said also by the previous speaker, that the stresses and strains are, if anything, getting worse. I congratulate the noble Lord on the way in which he introduced the debate. I know that there are many distinguished speakers still to come. I wish the right reverend Prelate all the very best in his valedictory speech and I hope he has enjoyed the time that he has had in this House.

About 30 years ago, a historian called Francis Fukuyama wrote a book called The End of History and the Last Man, in which he argued, as Members will know, that the progression of human history as a struggle between ideologies was largely at an end and the world was settling on liberal democracy after the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall. However, like reports of Mark Twain’s death, this was very premature, and the debate today takes place against a backdrop of global tensions between democratic and autocratic states, and it is by no means certain how things will play out. I mention that because I have the same feeling about the future of the United Kingdom. I am not at all clear yet how it will turn out.

I welcome the report by the Select Committee and congratulate its chair, members and staff on producing it, because it is a very important source as background for this debate.

Nations are capable of self-harm. I do not want to be too provocative, but it may be that in the future people will come to look back on the referendum of 2016 in that light. In the context of today’s debate, it strikes me as interesting that this is a Government and a Prime Minister who say that they got Brexit done, but I am not at all clear that that is the case. It is somewhat ironic that the party whose official name is the Conservative and Unionist Party should be presiding over the stresses and strains already identified by the two previous speakers and which, as I have said, are getting worse.

There are other aspects too. I want to mention just one. Every day, I submit a Question in the hope that I will be selected, and each day I fail. I will never be selected for the England cricket team on the basis of my batting average. The Question that I have been submitting is about the future of Horizon Europe and the extent to which our scientific community can co-operate internationally, which is at risk at the moment, as Members may know. I worry that if we are excluded, the shared scientific venture that helps bind the union together will also be at risk and may disappear—that is just one element of what I might call the collateral damage of current government policy. Of course, we know that the Government’s proposed Northern Ireland legislation to deal with the Northern Ireland protocol, which to some extent is unsolvable, contributes to these tensions.

To take Northern Ireland for a moment, the stresses on the union caused by the unresolved Northern Ireland protocol are plain to see. Only this week in this House, we had a debate about access to medical services for women in Northern Ireland. What was interesting about that debate was that a lot of Members—including those who supported the amendment to the Motion—argued that devolution was not being allowed to work properly and that the Government were imposing their view. That was the tension. I also looked into the Grand Committee yesterday to catch a glimpse of the Identity and Language (Northern Ireland) Bill being discussed. I heard more than one noble Lord regret the fact that it was not the Northern Ireland Executive who were discussing the Bill.

I can understand that point of view, but we all know why, despite the recent elections, the Northern Ireland Assembly has not yet even been able to elect a Speaker and get itself established as a working Assembly. The apparently intractable issues of the Northern Ireland protocol—which, in fairness, were foreseen when John Major and Tony Blair went together to Northern Ireland in 2016 to warn against the possible difficulties of a certain outcome—are still with us. I do not yet claim to know how things will turn out, but the House will be aware of the possibility that, over time, the views of the people in Northern Ireland might change so that, one day, unification with the Republic may seem preferable to a problematic life within the UK. We will have to see.

To take Scotland, which has already been mentioned, the stresses put on the union by the outcome of the referendum are very clear. We know that Scotland voted to remain in the EU, and the Scottish National Party has been able to use that result ever since as the single biggest reason why Scotland should have another independence referendum and vote to secede from the UK. We know that the current Government have stated that they have no intention of allowing indyref2 but I do not know how much longer their position can be sustained, and it may go ahead anyway in one form or another. If there is another referendum, it would be good to have a really honest debate about the realities of the choice.

As for Wales, the history is different. I have often been to the Senedd myself and I think it has established its own method of devolution, which was emphasised by the Covid experience that we all lived through. The leader of the Welsh Assembly emerged as a figure who had perhaps not previously been appreciated. References have been made to the Independent Commission on the Constitutional Future of Wales, and we will wait to see what the outcome of that is.

In the short time I have left, I am not sure that I can suggest any long-term solutions, although I find myself agreeing with the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, that imperial condescension by the centre is unlikely ever to be the solution to anything. Our constitution has of course grown in a very different way from that of other countries—such as when a politically motivated group of people gathered together in Philadelphia in 1787 to create a new constitution. Ours is strengthened by its flexibility, but one problem—I must finish now—is that the form of devolution that we have is what you might call asymmetric.

I end by saying that my fear for the long-term future of the UK is partly about the UK’s standing in the world. If we ever did break apart, our position would be for ever and fatally weakened, as indeed would our self-esteem. In those circumstances, if we were to break up as a country, could we imagine retaining a seat on the Security Council of the United Nations? I do not think so.

I do not think that history has ended. We still have our future in our hands, but this Government have to take the future of the union a lot more seriously than they are doing now. The Prime Minister in particular needs to live up to the responsibilities that he has.

Private Rented Sector

Viscount Stansgate Excerpts

Monday 20th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness asks a difficult question. However, I have been encouraged, whenever I cannot directly answer a question, to say that my honourable friend the Minister in the other place will be conducting a drop-in session on 12 July between 11.30 am and 12.30 pm in Room W3, off Westminster Hall. Doing my best as someone who is not the lead Minister for private rental reform, as the noble Baroness realises, I can say that it is about the architecture. The important way of ensuring that landlords are not gaming the system around no-fault evictions is to have transparency through the property portal, so we collect all the available data rather than just relying on renters essentially having to get themselves legal representation and raise the issues themselves. Therefore the property portal is key. We also need to ensure that we get an ombudsman with teeth, with the right powers, and to ensure that the local authorities are resourced in the right way to step in if necessary as well. It is around getting that architecture which will turn the rhetoric into reality.

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, in the light of the Minister’s previous answer, do I take it that the Government have undertaken a study of the potential effect of the growth of Airbnb on the proposals outlined in this White Paper? If it was felt that that was adversely affecting the rented sector, what action might the Government be minded to take?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

I am not aware that we have undertaken a specific study on the impact of Airbnb on the private rented sector. However, we have a clear mission within the levelling-up White Paper to reduce the number of non-decent homes by 50% and therefore see equality of supply. We are looking at whether there is an erosion in the private rented sector through the annual English Housing Survey, which gives some indication of whether there is a need to dig deeper. So far, all indications are that the sector is robust; 4.4 million households are renting privately and it seems to work well. However, we are keeping that matter under review.