Liaison Committee

Lord Higgins Excerpts

Monday 3rd April 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord opposite who spoke about how sometimes excellent and well-researched reports fall on fallow ground as far as publicity is concerned, but I disagree with his conclusion that it is up to the authorities to do something about these reports. It is very much up to those of us who sit on these committees to work hard to get these reports out into the public domain. We are the people who can talk these reports up and get them out among the different constituencies which we have direct lines into. I encourage all of your Lordships to work very hard in making sure that the great work of these committees actually gets out there.

[Lord Higgins (Con)]

My Lords, the ad hoc committees are an excellent innovation, but as the noble Lord and the Liaison Committee know, the committee on which I happen to have the honour of serving, on personal service companies, did not receive co-operation from the Treasury Minister concerned, who did not allow his officials to appear and give evidence to us. I am sure that is completely wrong. Can I be assured that the House authorities will make it clear that we expect government officials to co-operate in our inquiries, not least because in this particular case the Government then adopted in a Budget many of the ideas we put forward but gave us absolutely no acknowledgement?

[The Senior Deputy Speaker]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their comments, in particular the noble Baroness for her very positive ones.

The noble Lord, Lord Naseby, made the point about communication, but I have to disagree with him. If we had been looking at the press for the past three or four months, we would have seen the coverage that the many reports the House of Lords produced, not least on the EU, have had. I remember leaders in the Financial Times, the Guardian and the Telegraph on those reports. Is there more that we can do in this area? Yes, but we are looking at the communications strategy for getting this out, and a lot of hard work has been undertaken by staff in that area, which I would like to build on. I reassure the noble Lord that a lot of good work has been going on in that area.

The noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, and the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, put recommendations in which were not accepted, but I recognise the point that the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, made about officials co-operating with the committee. The Liaison Committee will certainly look at that issue.

The noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, mentioned the issue of a Member being abroad at the time of a meeting. That Member spoke to me before the meeting and I said to them that they should put their point of view into the committee. I incorporated that in the report I gave to the Liaison Committee.

To give your Lordships a bit more understanding of how we went about our business, there were 33 proposals, so we decided we would have two meetings. The first would look at all the proposals and condense them down to about 10 or 12. In that process, we combined a number of proposals. For example, the proposal of the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, whom I see in her place, was combined with the citizenship proposal, and the staff engaged with the individuals who had contributed these suggestions to get that number down. The result of those three weeks of intense negotiation was that we had nine proposals to consider at our second meeting.

I say very strongly that there was no political bias in the Liaison Committee report—no hint whatever. That must be a matter of public record. The Leader of the House was mentioned. It is not for me to decide whether the Leader of the House is on the committee or not, but I can say on reflection that the Leader of the House wanted one proposal to be considered for one of the ad hoc committees and it failed to be selected. So there was no influence from anyone, whether Liberal Democrats or the Leader of the House, and I can say today that, as long as I am chairing a committee of the House of Lords, I will not allow any political influence at all. That is a guarantee to noble Lords, and I hope that they take that on board.

Let us remind people that this is a very difficult exercise. The issue of staff capacity has to be taken into consideration. Noble Lords should remember that a review of committee staff is taking place in 2017-18, which I shall be chairing. I should like Members to contribute their points of view to the review, because with us exiting the EU and the EU committees eventually dissolving, there is an opportunity for us to consider that again. I will be taking that on board as we go along. So, yes, I want more engagement from Members.

When I got this job, I mentioned three themes: transparency, accountability and engagement. That applies with force to my chairmanship of the Liaison Committee and adopting any further enhancements of committee work, which I think we in the House of Lords should all be proud of. I commend the Motion.