David Nuttall
Main Page: David Nuttall (Conservative - Bury North)Department Debates - View all David Nuttall's debates with the Cabinet Office
(10 years, 2 months ago)
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Jacob Rees-Mogg
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. The return of the hereditary peerage is the sort of reform that would improve the quality of the House considerably. I do think that there are opportunities for reform but, as I said on Second Reading—I had better not go through this all again, Mr Speaker—I have concerns about this process for reforming the second Chamber. I think that reform ought to have been proposed in a Government Bill and considered in a Committee of the whole House.
Although the Bill is simple, it would fundamentally change the nature of the House of Lords. Removing the absolute certainty that a peerage is for life would allow people appointed to the House to remain there for a term. That change in structure would allow Governments that are not necessarily as benign as this one—I will talk about this further in relation to some of my other amendments—to ensure that peers are in the House for only a certain period, and possibly to get them post-dated cheques for when they might resign. I think that that reform should have been handled differently, but there are certainly reforms that could be made to the House of Lords.
Amendment 2 ties in with amendment 3. The point of amendment 3 is to insert a minimum age for retirement, whereby no peer under 65 could retire. Being a peer—a legislator in the upper House—should not be a marker in somebody’s career. It should not be a point on their CV so that when they apply for jobs in merchant banks, or wherever, they can say “I was a peer for 10 years.” People who take it on should commit to do so for an extended period, so that if a peer is raised to that rank, style and dignity at the age of 40, there will be an expectation that the major part of their future life and career will be a commitment to serve the House—this country—in the second Chamber.
These two amendments, in essence, offer the House the choice of saying that there ought to be a minimum period and that it ought to be longer than a single Parliament. Ten years obviously equates to two Parliaments under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011. That gets away from the risk that people might use the House of Lords as a means of advancing their political career in relation to the Commons, a point to which we will return in a subsequent group of amendments. The amendments are about expecting people to follow through on the commitment they have given, so that when their letters patent are issued they will be doing this for life.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
What is my hon. Friend’s preference between amendments 2 and 3?
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. My preference is for amendment 3, as it would ensure that people retired from Parliament when they were coming to the end of their working career. It is wrong for people to use membership of the House of Lords as a point on their CV. It is not an internship that people do for a little while to get a bit of work experience before taking on another job. It is such an exciting and great honour to have—why would these people wish to give it up? I recall that when Disraeli went to the House of Lords, he said that he was not dead
“but in the Elysian fields.”
Who, having entered the Elysian fields, wants to come back down to earth? It seems extraordinary in the first place that anyone would want to leave those glorious red Benches and the gilt around the throne—the magnificence that the House of Lords shows to the world—and trot out into the humdrum life in front of them. [Interruption.] My hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire (Dan Byles) asks whether this is a job application. I am by no means grand enough to enter their lordships’ House. I like representing the British people—vox populi, vox Dei—through this illustrious Chamber rather than in their lordships’ noble House. Given the question of why anybody would want to leave, they ought to live up to the commitment they have made. Ten years seems reasonable; I would have been happy with 15 or 20 years.
Moreover, crucially, when Ministers go into the House of Lords they may want to be there only while they are in ministerial office. That is not a proper way of treating the constitution. Ministers who go into the House of Lords ought to stay there for an extended period to show a commitment to the legislature, not just to being appointees of the Executive who are here today, gone tomorrow. These amendments are important and would improve the Bill. Had we been debating them in a Committee of the whole House, it is likely that some of these changes would have been made.
Amendment 4 is about the witnessing of the peer’s statement that he wishes to retire or resign. The statement may be witnessed by anybody, but I think that it should be witnessed by two people, both of whom must be peers of the same degree. Is that because I think that lots of fraudulent certificates will be issued by random people wandering around signing things and pretending to be witnesses to statements that peers have not made? No, I do not think that, but these resignations are essentially proceedings in Parliament, and they should be a formal parliamentary proceeding registered by people who are also Members of Parliament. This would be a safeguard to ensure that somebody did not resign in a light moment and then regret it, or have the statement signed in their office and send it in having been pushed into doing it by offers of who knows what—perhaps an offer of becoming a European commissioner or something grand and fancy such as that, although I know that there is a special way for such people to stay in the House of Lords with a formal leave of absence. We should ensure that the grave and important decision to leave the upper Chamber is made properly and thoughtfully and that there is a formal process by which to register that decision.
That ties in with amendment 6, which says:
“after the date specified in 2(a) above”.
The problem with reading out amendments without reading out the relevant part of the Bill is that they sound rather obscure, so it may be sensible to explain. The Bill says that if somebody signs a form resigning from the House of Lords, that notice is irrevocable from the point at which it has been signed, even if it is a long-post-dated cheque. So if a peer entered the House of Lords and said that he intended to resign in eight years’ time, the document would be irrevocable, even though all sorts of things may change. That person would then be ineligible to be a peer again in future. I think that that is a mistake. There should be an ability to withdraw the notice prior to its becoming effective; otherwise, appointments to the House of Lords are opened up to abuse.
I have heard former Leaders of the House of Lords—noble Lords themselves—talk about what happens when people ask for peerages. It may shock you, Mr Speaker, that people ask for peerages. I would have thought it was an enormous impertinence for anybody to say to the Prime Minister or to the Leader of the House of Lords that they would like a peerage, but people do. Apparently, they knock on their doors to ask to be given a peerage; they queue up outside their offices as though they were waiting for an omnibus. When they do so—I really have heard Leaders of the House of Lords make speeches along these lines—they say anything that the people dishing the peerage out may wish to hear. They say, “I’ll always vote with the Government line, I’ll never disobey, I’ll do what I’m told”, and so on and so forth.
Dan Byles (North Warwickshire) (Con)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) for the way he expressed his concerns about the Bill, and for tabling the amendments, because that has given us the opportunity to discuss some very important issues. It is crucial to get such a Bill right, and I am pleased that we can discuss the amendments, but I urge the House to resist supporting them for the reasons that I shall give.
Amendments 2 and 3 would require peers to serve a minimum of 10 years before they can retire or resign, and amendment 3 would also impose an age restriction of 65. We all hope that Members of the House of Lords will want to undertake an active and lengthy role in the House, but my Bill introduces a straightforward, honourable statutory provision that allows those who no longer feel able to serve in the House to resign.
Other hon. Members have already mentioned the reasons why Members may think that they are unable to serve in the House. I do not want to go over the subject again, but on Second Reading we discussed at length the very real distress that some noble Members feel when, because of personal circumstances, they are unable to give the full service that they themselves think membership of the Lords deserves. It would be unfair to remove for non-attendance a Member who had been in the House for less than 10 years, but suffered a terrible health problem or had become a full-time carer for a family member. Such a Member would seem to have been naughty, rather than to have been allowed to make a dignified and honourable resignation. It is not therefore appropriate to prevent somebody from resigning if they make the difficult decision to do so, even though they have not served for a minimum period. Peers may wish to resign for a variety of very personal reasons, and I believe that it would be arbitrary and unfair to put in place such a limitation.
Amendment 4 would require two fellow peers to witness a resigning peer’s notice. The normal legal practice is for most documents to be witnessed by one person, and I do not see how a fellow peer is better equipped to witness a notice than any responsible individual. I note that the disclaimer of an hereditary peerage under the Peerage Act 1963 requires only one signature, which I am sure my hon. Friend pondered at length before he tabled his amendment.
Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend refers to the witness being any responsible person. With the greatest respect, the Bill does not say that; it simply says “a witness”.
Dan Byles
My understanding of the Bill is that the witness would be a responsible person in the same manner as for other legal documents, which usually means a Member of Parliament, a doctor and so on. I do not believe that the Bill needs additional safeguards to ensure the effectiveness of resignation notices. Many very important legal documents and other matters involving this House take such an approach, and there is no reason for a stricter requirement on this matter.
Amendment 6 would confirm that once resignation has taken effect, it cannot be rescinded. I am a little hazy, but that implies that peers could change their mind until the resignation takes effect. Submitting a signed and properly witnessed notice is a significant step, and peers would be fully aware of the effect of doing so. It would not be right to enable peers to submit such a notice lightly, safe in the knowledge that they could withdraw it up until it takes effect. My Bill aims to be straightforward and simple, and adding such a nuance would over-complicate it.
Mr Nuttall
The amendments that have been tabled for today’s debate and in Committee have demonstrated that, as I said on Second Reading, the Bill would have benefited from being dealt with as a constitutional Bill, as I believe it is, and debated on the Floor of the House at every stage. Nevertheless, we are where we are and I rise to support the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg).
Having said that, amendments 2 and 3 are alternatives, so I express my preference for amendment 3. I do so because the average age of a peer, as of August last year, was 70 so most peers are over the age of 65 and would meet that qualification. As my hon. Friend said in proposing the amendment, when someone is appointed as a life peer, it is reasonable to assume that they will take on that responsibility for the rest of their life. It is therefore entirely reasonable to expect them not to want to retire during the first 10 years—a fairly modest period that is equivalent to two fixed-term Parliaments.
I listened carefully to what my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire (Dan Byles), the promoter of the Bill, said about the situations that might arise. I accept that there might be occasions when, sadly, someone wishes to leave the other place because they have caring responsibilities. However, my hon. Friend will be aware that there is already a voluntary retirement scheme in the other place, which allows Members to write to the Clerk of the Parliaments to indicate their wish permanently to retire. Indeed, some Members of the other House have taken advantage of that scheme, so methods already exist that enable Members to leave the other House before 10 years have elapsed.
Amendment 4 relates to witnesses. My hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire said that he would expect a witness to be a doctor or a solicitor. I submit that unless the Bill states that a specific qualification is expected of a witness, a court will not impose such a restriction. A court might expect a witness to be an adult, although even that is debatable, but it would place no other special requirement on who could or should be a witness.
I think that, as a minimum, the witness should know the peer in question. The great advantage of amendment 4 is that, by specifying that the notice must be witnessed by two other peers, one could reasonably expect that they would know the peer who has signed the document. The reason we specify in legislation that a document must be witnessed is so that, if the document is questioned, a court can be reassured that the person who signed it did so of their own free will and was of sound mind. A witness could give evidence as to the person’s state of mind when they signed the document.
As the Bill is drafted, the peer could get anyone they wanted to witness the document. The problem with witnesses is that, when a document is called into question, it is very often because there is some doubt about the intention of the person who signed it. Usually that is because there has been foul play and somebody has put forward a document that is not what it purports to be. In such a case, if there is a squiggle from the witness, how can the person who made that squiggle of a signature be called to give evidence?
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I wonder whether my hon. Friend recalls the Agatha Christie book “Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?”, in which the heart of the matter is who the witness was.
Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend makes a good point. Without being able to find the witness and ascertain who they are, the existence of their signature is not much help to a court.
Dan Byles
The idea that there would be an illegible squiggle and that nobody would know whose it was is a bit fanciful. There are not many other legal documents for which we set out in primary legislation a requirement to include a name, address, social security number and so on. It needs to be properly witnessed, but I am not convinced that a big problem with the Bill will be that we will end up with false witnesses and people trying to squeeze out other peers. I accept the spirit in which my hon. Friend makes his point, but it is not likely to be a particularly major problem.
On whether a peer might be of sound mind when making the statement, we are talking about people who at the moment are entitled to vote on legislation for this country. I do not think we should call into question whether they might be able to indicate legitimately that they wish to resign or retire.
Mr Nuttall
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention, but the Bill’s draftsmen included a requirement for a witness so they must have intended that witness to have a purpose, so what is that purpose? Surely the purpose of the witness, if there is a purpose, must be to give evidence to a court as to the identity of the person who executed the document, and about their state of mind and their position when they signed it. I accept that it may be the will of the House that such evidence can be given properly by someone without their having a special qualification. However, given the importance of such a document in the constitutional affairs of this country, I would have thought it reasonable to require witnesses at the very least to have some form of legal training in order to assess these matters and properly give evidence in court.
Leaving that aside, the amendment would go some way to dealing with the matter. Two peers would indeed be able to give good evidence to a court about the identity of the person who signed the document, and state that the person was who they purported to be, but whenever a witness is required to sign a document, there should be a requirement—as an absolute minimum—not just to sign it but to state legibly their full name and present address. They can then be found if necessary, and contacted to give evidence to a court about the circumstances in which that document was signed.
Amendment 7 demonstrates the great dangers in tinkering with the unwritten British constitution. I often describe the constitution as a delicate flower, and when we start to unpick it and tinker with one aspect of it, unintended consequences inevitably flow from the proposed changes. We saw that some years ago when it was proposed that the office of Lord Chancellor be abolished. It suddenly became apparent, after a relatively short time, that it was not quite that simple, and the office remains to this day. For that reason, I support the remaining amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset, and I commend them to the House.
The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Greg Clark)
It is a pleasure to respond to the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg). He is in the happy difficulty that his contributions undermine his arguments. He purports that it is necessary to have wisdom, learning and erudition, or to be possessed of a grey beard, or at least flowing grey locks. I do not know whether he would fit his own description of a scribbling youth, but he is a youthful Member of the House, yet every time he speaks he does so with a depth of wisdom, learning and reflection on these matters that rather undermines his case. However, it is a delight to have him move these amendments this morning. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire (Dan Byles) for his skill in steering the Bill to this stage of proceedings, which is relatively unusual for a private Member’s Bill, especially in this area. My hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) brought the usual stringent scrutiny to these matters that we always count on him for, and it is right for these issues to be closely examined.
Amendments 2 and 3 would require a peer to serve 10 years in the House before they can retire, and amendment 3 adds an age requirement of 65. I completely understand and agree with the desire of my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset to ensure that noble Lords in the upper Chamber play a full and lengthy role—indeed, the term “life peerage” is, as he correctly pointed out, significant in that respect. Peers should not come into Parliament for the legislative equivalent of a weekend break; they are here to serve the country for the remainder of their life, and I am concerned that they should take their commitment to the House seriously.
The purpose of clause 1 is to ensure a mechanism that entitles peers, who take seriously their responsibilities, to act with honesty and honour by reflecting the circumstances in which they may no longer find it possible to answer the summons, and to discharge that responsibility. My hon. Friends the Members for North East Somerset and for Bury North were right to point out that mechanisms such as leave of absence or simply not turning up are available to people who find themselves unable to attend and respond to the summons, but the essence of the Bill is to recognise that, in some circumstances, such mechanisms are deficient and do not provide an accurate reflection of reality. For some people, a leave of absence is not temporary but involves, in effect, a permanent inability to perform the duties that are entailed in membership of the upper House.
As my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire said, such circumstances can be deeply personal or the result of poor health that is unlikely to improve. Members of the other place could be in the service of others, or have family circumstances that require them to move away permanently. To recognise that, there should not be any device; a straightforward declaration that someone’s service is no longer possible to be discharged is right and appropriate.
The Government’s view is that an arbitrary 10-year period during which resignation or retirement could not be tendered is inappropriate and could cause distress to peers who find themselves in the circumstances that I have described during that initial 10 years. Like the shadow Minister, I do not believe that it is likely that a great flood of Members will avail themselves of this option in the first 10 years, but it may be appropriate and necessary in some circumstances.
Amendment 4 would require two fellow peers to witness a peer’s notice of resignation. Admirably, the Bill is as simple as it is possible to be in its drafting and its promotion by my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire. To have a signature witnessed seems a proportionate requirement of the legislation. My hon. Friend the Member for Bury North is a scourge of the Government on over-regulating, gold-plating or other excesses in legislation, but his support for the amendment takes him in a different direction. There is no particular reason to suppose that the witness chosen by a peer should be suspected of incompetence so that they require another witness to witness the witness to the signature. In fact, it is possible to see an infinite regress, with further witnesses being necessary in case the reliability of the earlier witnesses is not sufficiently established. It would be disproportionate, and Occam’s razor should be applied to this theoretical problem, so that we take the simpler solution.
Mr Nuttall
I do not think it has been suggested that the second peer is witnessing the signature of the first peer: it is simply that both peers are witnessing the event. It is not a continuum of peers. We are not trying to suggest that the second witnessing peer authenticates the first witnessing peer. Both of them are simply witnessing the first peer. Perhaps my right hon. Friend would care to comment on the point that I made about including the address and printed name of the witnesses, because that would be very useful.
Greg Clark
I take my hon. Friend’s point, but the need for the second witness—if they are to have any purpose at all—must be something to do with the first witness not being sufficient. If one witness is not sufficient, why should two witnesses be sufficient? We could be drawn in that direction.
In order to witness a document, it is necessary that the witness—through the case law that has been established—should be identifiable. They will need to disclose their identity, and that means that they should be capable of being found if recourse to them is needed in the event of any proceedings or challenge. So there is no requirement for any additional safeguard in this case.
Mr Nuttall
The hon. Gentleman will be aware of the report of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee that looked into these matters. It was happy with the proposal as it stands, and there was no suggestion that the period should be six months. Would he like to comment on that?
Thomas Docherty
Indeed, and I have had a brief chat with the Committee Chair, my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen). As I recall, the report that the hon. Gentleman is referring to addressed the broader context of the recall of MPs, and from what I can ascertain from the newspapers, I think it is fair to say that that option is now off the table. If we were having a broader debate about recall, I could see the argument for keeping the period at a year and a day.
Mr Nuttall
I just want to make it clear that the report I was referring to was the Committee’s ninth report of the current Session entitled “House of Lords reform: what next?”
Thomas Docherty
I was referring to the previous look at the issue in the Committee’s recall report.
Sometimes in our debates on a Friday Members say “We haven’t had many letters about this,” but I can truly say that I have had a large amount of correspondence on the issue of what is an appropriate disqualification period. On this occasion, I disagree with my hon. Friend the Committee Chairman. I think there is genuine public disquiet at the idea that someone can receive what is frankly quite a lengthy jail sentence yet continue to serve in Parliament, creating laws.
There is an obvious question which I am sure will be posed to me: why do I propose to make the situation for the House of Lords different from that for the House of Commons? If a Member of the House of Commons receives a jail sentence—of nine months, let us say—and tries to tough it out, the electorate still has an opportunity at the next general election to remove them from office. As things currently stand, however, in the House of Lords there is no term limit and therefore no other mechanism for recall. I believe there is merit in exploring whether the period set should be shorter, because the people of Britain do not have an opportunity to remove a Member of the House of Lords who tries to tough it out.
Regrettably, a small number of Members of the House of Lords, on both sides of the political divide, have gone to prison in recent years, and each time it happened there was genuine anger and people said, “Why is there nothing we can do to remove them?” I hope that today we will tease out the Government’s thinking on whether these rules are appropriate and whether there is merit in asking, “Due to the unique nature of the House of Lords—there is no democratic mechanism—should there be the same procedure?”
Turning to the broader issue, it appears that the hon. Members for North Warwickshire and for North East Somerset take slightly different approaches. The hon. Member for North Warwickshire has, I think, managed to achieve all that the hon. Member for North East Somerset wants, but does it in a single amendment. Far be it for me to get in the middle of an argument in the workers party about what is the correct approach, but it seems to me that this is a debate about whether it is appropriate to have to take a positive step following a conviction in a foreign court or whether our starting point should be that we regard foreign courts as having sensible judicial processes and only in exceptional circumstances would we seek not to abide by their recommendations. I hope that this is a rare technical argument.
I have to say that I have more sympathy with the original view of the hon. Member for North Warwickshire. I would find it slightly disconcerting if our starting point were, “We don’t believe a court in Germany, or in Canada or Australia, has due legal process.” Of course there are countries around the world that do not have the same legal history as us, but I have more sympathy with the view put forward originally by the hon. Member for North Warwickshire than I do with the view proposed by the hon. Member for North East Somerset. I look forward to hearing from the hon. Member for North Warwickshire shortly, and I am sure the Minister will set out the Government’s thinking.
May I again congratulate the hon. Member for North Warwickshire on introducing this Bill? There appears to be some noble interest in our debate today, and it is perhaps worth placing on the record the fact that the Bill is supported on both sides of the House. Lord Steel deserves a great deal of credit for championing the issue in recent years. It is possibly not as contentious as legislation he previously introduced when he was a Member of this House, but it is certainly an important Bill and I hope it makes it through both Houses and becomes law.