National Security Council Leak

Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts

Thursday 2nd May 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

What is serious is the forum from which the leak emanated. The contributions of individual members of the NSC were also leaked, and both of those are very serious offences.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)]

My Lords, this was a breach of the Ministerial Code, but it also appears to have been a breach of the Official Secrets Act. Would not civil servants who have been dismissed or prosecuted for breaching the Official Secrets Act now feel aggrieved?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

The issue of whether the Official Secrets Act has been breached is a matter for the police and, ultimately, the courts. As I repeated in the Statement, the view of the Cabinet Secretary is that it is not necessary to refer the matter to the police. However, if the police want to investigate, we will co-operate fully.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) (Abolition of By-Elections) Bill [HL]

Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts

Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 15th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde]

I was just about to come to that. My amendment is small and humble but it deals with an important issue. As it is unlikely to become law, we now have time to study it in some detail—if the principle behind it is accepted today, as I hope it will be—before Third Reading, when we can add detail to it. I am grateful to my noble friend for allowing me to clarify that.

What is the most difficult part of this Bill? It is the third and fourth lines of Clause 1, which say,

“thereby making the House of Lords a wholly appointed Second Chamber”.

This is the central part of the legislation, to which I would like to add the words,

“and create a statutory House of Lords Appointments Commission”.

I have nothing but the greatest respect for the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, and for his integrity and tenacity in coming back time after time with this legislation. However, it is a profoundly political Bill. In Committee, my noble friend Lord True explained why that was. By doing this, we will remove the ability of 40-plus Conservative Members of this House to replace themselves without a guarantee that they would be replaced in any other shape. I wholly understand why the noble Lord thinks that is a desirable outcome, and I hope he will understand why I think it is an undesirable outcome. He certainly does not duck the issue. The noble Lord is completely up front about his objective.

The lacuna at the heart of the Bill is that it removes the ability to have hereditary by-elections but does absolutely nothing to improve the way others are appointed to this House. I want to put that right. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, will agree with me that it is something we need to tackle, and why not tackle it in this Bill? It has been promised for more than 20 years by the party that the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, supported so ably in government. It appeared in several White Papers in the early part of the century. Now is the opportunity to debate it further and, I hope, to put it in this Bill. I have said that it is a humble amendment but it deals with a big issue, and I hope very much that the House will accept at least the principle behind it.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)]

My Lords, has the noble Lord been advised that his amendment is within the purposes of the Bill?

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I went to the Public Bill Office to put the amendment down, and it took the clerk about 10 seconds to agree that it was entirely in order. It might also be worth flagging up that my noble friend Lord Caithness, after Clause 3, has a very substantial amendment, Amendment 59, which seeks to amend the Bill to include a fully thought through appointments commission. I think it is in order but if the noble Lord feels that it is out of order in any way, I will certainly listen to his argument.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) (Abolition of By-Elections) Bill [HL]

Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts

Friday 23rd March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

My Lords, I oppose the amendment. The word “idiosyncrasies”, which was just used, springs to mind rather powerfully. Earlier this week, we paid tribute rightly to the late Lord Ivor Richard, who I knew as a member of the Cabinet in 1997. The compromise that was reached in 1999 has been referred to, the Wetherill amendment included. It was intended to ensure that progress could be made on a modest way of modernising this second Chamber. Today, we are trying to take a very modest step in that direction as well.

I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Grocott. When I heard him speak at Second Reading, I thought it was a masterpiece in forensic analysis and humour—humour, because the situation he was addressing sadly leads to us believing that we have to put aside something that, outside this House, is seen as a complete anachronism. I have heard many forensic speeches in my time from my own side—from John Smith and Robin Cook included, who I counted as friends—and I think they would have been proud to have heard my noble friend’s speech and the case that he has made.

I want to be timorous today, in an unusual fashion. I would like to persuade the Conservative Benches and the Government that it is in their best interest to take this very modest step. We have the Burns recommendations and the restoration and renewal of the House, leading to the decanting of both Houses of Parliament, both Houses having voted for it. A combination of these measures requires us to take steps now which will then lead to a logical and rational balancing of the political and non-political interests in this House.

It is not just about those who are nominated by the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition or the Liberal Democrat party; it is also about the balance with the Cross Benches and the Bishops’ Benches. Unless we get it right on the anomaly of having by-elections for hereditary Peers, and unless we move now—I am opposing the amendment so that we can make progress—it will make it extraordinarily difficult to maintain that balance as we move towards implementing the Burns committee recommendations, which I hope we will rapidly do, combined with the prospect of decanting. When this House decants, there will be Members who logically choose that moment to retire, and there will be people who choose to leave in advance of it. In the lead up to the decant, if not handled very carefully, that will completely distort the balance of the different parties and Cross-Bench Peers in the House.

To continue the by-elections in that run-up period, and during the implementation of Burns, we would distort the balance between the nominated, those who go through the commission and those who are elected by this bizarre medieval process, which retains only one section—those who are here because their grandfathers or great-grandfathers or great-great-grandfathers were in favour with the monarch or managed to get their hands on sufficient property and land.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)]

My noble friend omitted one category: those who paid Lloyd George and Maundy Gregory for a certain favour.

[Lord Blunkett]

I had better not go into the payment of favours in your Lordships’ House—it might be a difficult road to travel.

It is odd for a Labour Member to say this, but if noble Lords think it through, they will appreciate it. The historic mission of the Conservative Benches and the Government has been to be sufficiently willing to bend and move with the times, which has been of historic benefit to them. Therefore, I am surprised to hear that the mover of the amendment is in favour of very radical change: namely, a wholly elected House or a substantially elected House. It is odd to advocate a substantially elected House but to want to retain by-elections or inherited peerages. If you had this debate anywhere in the United Kingdom in any forum—from traditional media to social media, in colleges or schools, where many Members of this House attend and make a positive contribution in explaining how our democracy works—people would think that you had lost your marbles if you argued not for the immediate abolition of the hereditary Peers but to continue to have by-elections to fulfil those vacancies.

In doing so, whatever else happens around us, whatever we do with Burns and the lead up to decanting, whatever happens in terms of the natural processes of noble Lords leaving this House either under the 2014 Act or by death, the hereditary Peers would retain their numbers. That is illogical, irrational and would cause extreme difficulties as we move over the next seven years to decanting to other premises with noble Lords rationally looking to reduce the numbers in this House. That is why we should wholeheartedly back my noble friend Lord Grocott’s Bill.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) (Abolition of By-Elections) Bill [HL]

Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 8th September 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)]

My Lords, I only wish that other noble Lords were prepared to give that same assurance. We might then indeed make some progress. As the wags say, this is déjà vu all over again. I was surprised when my noble friend Lord Grocott told me earlier that it is only the second time that he has introduced this Bill, as it seems to have recurred a number of times. I looked at what I said last time and, to my surprise, I adopt all I said at that time.

In my view, the case for the Bill is overwhelming. The status quo is indefensible—but of course, that does not stop a handful of noble Lords from opposing it. To choose members of the legislature simply by accident of birth is surely absurd, as absurd as going on to the top deck of an omnibus and choosing men—as the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, said, it is only men. It would perhaps be better to go into the dining room of the Athenaeum and choose just the men who happened to be there. I make no comment on the quality of the existing hereditaries, save to say that I am very impressed by them, but we do not know whether the sons of those same hereditaries will be as competent and as diligent as them.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

Surely the effect of an election is that you sort out the best candidates.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

I am not wholly sure that that is always the position in the House of Commons, and, given the smallness of the electorate, it is unlikely to be the case in the House of Lords.

It is rumoured that there is in Whitehall an official book—a number of Members of your Lordships’ House have been officials—from which civil servants draw when they wish to block an initiative and prevent necessary change. There are many devices set out in this book. One is, “This is not the appropriate time”. If not now, when? Another is, “This is not the appropriate vehicle”. If not, what is the appropriate vehicle? Then there is, “There should only be a comprehensive package of reform”. How comprehensive is comprehensive? Clearly, only incremental steps are feasible in practice. “We agree in principle, but the drafting is deficient”. Well, accept the principle of the Bill. “A deal was done”. Are we to say that the deal was cast in stone for all time, whatever happens? Surely, the drafters did not imagine that 18 years on, we would still be in the same position.

I look forward eagerly to hearing what particular devices the Minister will draw on in his reply from the same litany of excuses for inaction—perhaps it will be a whole mixture of these—but the best argument which has been used, the only one of any substance, is that a committee is sitting whose recommendations we await. I hope that the remit of the Lord Speaker’s committee is sufficiently wide to include the hereditaries. However, if it is not, as my noble friend Lord Grocott pointed out, the 90 hereditary Members who are here would increase their numbers proportionally, and therefore the whole position would be even more anomalous. Perhaps we can be enlightened on that.

We know that the Lord Speaker’s committee will make its recommendation next month, but generally we do not know what the Government’s position is on the Bill, save that almost certainly they will oppose it. We know we have had the threat that a certain very limited number of Members will move amendments and presumably filibuster with the object of killing the Bill, and that should not be so. We go around the world trying to teach colleagues in other countries about democracy. Surely, this is an area in which we are mightily deficient, and we should change it as soon as practicable. I support the Bill.