argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 (Exit Day) (Amendment) Regulations 2019 — House of Lords, 2019-03-27
Topic: International Affairs
Dianne Hayter (Labour, Centre-left): That is not fair. How can I follow that? I will say two things to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen. He mentioned Robert Peston; of course, when I first came here, his father Lord Peston was sitting behind me. I think he would have enjoyed today’s proceedings, maybe for all the wrong reasons I should also say to the noble and learned Lord that using the example of the Baron amendment, which called for a no-deal exit, does not come across well from a Government who have been threatening that we would leave with no deal the day after tomorrow. New paragraph (b) in Regulation 2(2) of the statutory instrument still says that we could leave without a deal at 11 pm on 12 April. That was probably the wrong example to use. We had some interesting interventions on my amendment from the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, and the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, who reminded us that this was an ideological choice at the beginning. The noble Lord, Lord Hannay, reminded us about the cost of all this, as did the noble Lords, Lord Hamilton and Lord Robathan. From the feed coming through, I understand that the Prime Minister’s resignation will be dependent on getting the deal through, in which case the Conservative Party leadership contest will start on 22 May. I am already hearing about all sorts of cabals going on, but that is not for us There were interventions on the SI itself, rather than my amendment, from the noble Lords, Lord Forsyth, Lord Pannick, Lord Warner and Lord Cormack, the noble Viscounts, Lord Ridley and Lord Waverley, and my noble friend Lord Adonis. The noble Lord, Lord Framlingham, also spoke. He told us that he is normally an optimist, but is now nearing despair. In an earlier debate—I think it was when we were doing the Bill—we had Hope, Pannick and Judge. As the hope is rather fading, we are closer to the panic than we were at that stage I think my amendment has provided an opportunity for the House to express its concern about the chaotic way we got here and where the blame lies. Even if there was not complete agreement on the last bit of the amendment, I think it served its purpose in allowing the House to express its views, without having to divide. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) (Abolition of By-Elections) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2019-03-15
Topic: Government Operations
Bruce Joseph Grocott (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I fear that we may already be losing the dozen people I understand to be following this discussion in the country at large. I will try to expedite things. The retention of these two positions is completely anachronistic. Two hereditary positions remaining in perpetuity when they do not take part in events here is odd, particularly when we are trying to reduce the size of the House to 600. However, it is not germane to the Bill’s central purpose, which is to end by-elections, as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, said. On those terms, I accept the amendment and hope that we can get on to Amendment 2A.
House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) (Abolition of By-Elections) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2019-03-15
Topic: Government Operations
Andrew Adonis (Labour, Centre-left): I hope the noble Lord will forgive me. Would his statutory commission apply just to Cross-Bench Peers, as now, or does he see it applying to party Peers too? He will know that there was a big debate when the commission was set up on a non-statutory basis about whether it would apply party Peers. Indeed, there was a radical idea that the commission itself, rather than the party leaders, should nominate the party Peers. Has the noble Lord given any thought to this idea, because the scope of his commission is an important question?
House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) (Abolition of By-Elections) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2019-03-15
Topic: Government Operations
Bruce Joseph Grocott (Labour, Centre-left): That is absolutely right. This Report stage is scheduled to finish at 1.30 pm. That is ample time to deal with any reasonable amendments that anyone might wish to put down. It is generous time—but I am losing track of my desire to get to my noble friend Lord Adonis’s amendment. It would provide that, when the next by-election takes place, which we know will be on 27 March, when there are 28 electors, as I pointed out, the vacancy would be filled by a vote of the whole of the electorate of the United Kingdom. I will say that again because I do not think it has quite sunk in; the electorate would be the whole electorate of the United Kingdom. I cannot tot that up off the top of my head, but the electorate is about 40 million, so I suggest gently to my noble friend, who is known for his hyperbole, that to substitute 40 million electors for 28 electors to elect a hereditary Peer is overdoing it, so I hope my noble friend will have enough sense not to press that amendment This is all serious as far as I am concerned, but there is a real test here, particularly for the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, and the noble Earl, Lord Caithness. It is this: they can decide to expedite these amendments, and move them if they must, to conclude this Report stage by 1.30 pm. The House would then be orderly, it would have given the Bill more than enough time—more than anyone could reasonably expect a Bill of this length to have given to it—or they will be in grave danger of bringing the whole proceedings of this House into serious disrepute if they do not withdraw the vast majority of the amendments.
House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) (Abolition of By-Elections) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2019-03-15
Topic: Government Operations
Andrew Adonis (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, that is a completely absurd intervention from the Liberal Democrat Benches. Of course democracy comes with a cost. The question is whether we are prepared to meet it. That is the whole issue. Of course I recognise that my amendment is absurd, but this is the key point. We are talking about amendments that the noble Lord tells us have to be minor changes to the current Bill. It is less absurd than the status quo, which is that the only people who will have a say are these 40 hereditary Peers. It is significantly preferable that the people of the country should have a say What I wanted to do was move to a fully elected House in the Bill. I wanted to do what I think is actually Lib Dem policy. I was told by the clerks that was beyond the Long Title. That is why I tabled the amendment. The only amendment that was acceptable was one that would make the election of hereditary Peers subject to the whole electorate. I could not do the really radical thing that I wanted to do, which is to have the election of Members of this House by members of the public from among members of the public—a revolutionary idea, but one we should be implementing.
House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) (Abolition of By-Elections) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2019-03-15
Topic: Government Operations
Andrew Adonis (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, the noble Earl is very much into these high-tech solutions. Being old-fashioned and believing that people vote by putting crosses on ballot papers, I do not necessarily go the full way with these revolutionary suggestions, but that might be possible I come back to the point about this issue being fundamental, not peripheral. I can tell your Lordships that this issue was considered when the reforms of 1999 were considered. I was in No. 10 when we considered it. The obvious vulnerability to which we were open when we removed the hereditary Peers was that we would be creating a wholly nominated House, and how could we justify the only source of nominations to that House being the Prime Minister? What we did was a classic English compromise. Remember that before the independent Appointments Commission came, the Cross-Benchers were nominated by the Prime Minister too. Let me tell your Lordships, if I may choose my words euphemistically, that the selection was not always uninfluenced by what line those nominees might take in your Lordships’ House on matters of state. Noble Lords might be scandalised by that idea—I can see scandal written on the face of the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde—but I am afraid these considerations took place. That is why a compromise was reached whereby the independent Members would be appointed by the Appointments Commission, but it was too much for my then boss, Tony Blair, to agree that the party Members should be. There were very big debates about it, particularly about whether there should at least be a role for an independent commission in reviewing the bona fides of those nominated by the party leaders because, again, if I may choose my words euphemistically, sometimes—
House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) (Abolition of By-Elections) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2019-03-15
Topic: Government Operations
Andrew Adonis (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, what we have seen today is a serious abuse of the procedures of the House by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, to stifle debate on a matter of significant public moment. That is what we have seen. I never thought, having been in this House for 15 years now, that I would see this abuse of procedure in the House. The issue of how people are appointed to this House is not a side or minor issue, it is fundamental to the working of our Parliament. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, on putting this issue before the House and I completely agree with him that we should continue to raise these matters, because this squalid Bill that the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, has promoted to perpetuate a nominated House of Lords is fundamentally against the interests of the people.
House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) (Abolition of By-Elections) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2019-03-15
Topic: Government Operations
Andrew Adonis (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, this is not a sensible amendment. We have one absurd system for electing hereditary Peers at the moment, which it is proposed be replaced by another. While I could not begin to justify the system of elections that takes place at the moment, I could no more justify the establishment of a commission to do it. The only justification for the status quo is that it is the status quo, and it is best to leave that until we do a radical reform of the House of Lords, which should of course end the election of hereditary Peers entirely There are a whole lot of problems in Amendment 32 and the construction of the commission which one could go into, but I am not sure that it is necessary. Rather, I make the point that the best thing to do—this is my fundamental objection to the Bill of my noble friend Lord Grocott—is nothing in respect of the existing House of Lords until there is a sufficient consensus or a Government who are capable of leading towards a radical reform of the Lords, which should fundamentally replace this House with an elected or federal second Chamber. To tinker with the precise way that hereditary Members of this House are appointed, whether it is by some absurd system of election, to be replaced by some equally absurd commission, seems entirely beside the point, playing the game of my noble friend Lord Grocott, which is to make tinkering changes to essentially preserve the status quo. I am not in favour of preserving the status quo—I want radical reform. The Brexit crisis we are going through at the moment and the huge public discontent in the country mean that we can no longer duck this issue of a fundamental reform of this House, and we should put paid to all these tinkering changes.
House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) (Abolition of By-Elections) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2019-03-15
Topic: Government Operations
Bruce Joseph Grocott (Labour, Centre-left): It obviously does not even begin to solve the problem, because the elephant in the room is that the only people eligible to fill these vacancies will continue to be those who have inherited titles. The noble Lord, Lord Colgrain, said that if you happen to have inherited a title, that gives you a dispassionate view of the world. Let me put it in more personal terms. The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, is an hereditary Peer. The noble Lord, Lord Howard, is a life Peer. Explain to me the crucial difference. I thought that they were both Tories who normally voted Tory and are indistinguishable from one another in that respect, but according to the noble Lord, Lord Colgrain, there is a fundamental difference between people who inherited the title and others How can it possibly continue to be right that 900 people, in this country of 60 million plus, who happened to have inherited a title have a one in 900 chance of becoming a Member of Parliament by being successful in an hereditary Peers’ by-election; whereas the rest of us—not us life Peers, but the remaining millions—have a roughly one in 75,000 chance of being a Member of Parliament? They have to get elected to do it. Why on earth should the descendants of Messrs Trefgarne, Colgrain, Caithness and Strathclyde have this assisted places scheme, as it has been referred to, which is denied to the rest of the population? Unless someone can give me a sensible answer to that, we will have to agree to disagree and, I hope, vote very soon.
House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) (Abolition of By-Elections) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2019-03-15
Topic: Government Operations
Peter Snape (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I did not intend to speak on this group of amendments but I was provoked to do so by the intervention from the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde. He was around in 1999; indeed, I am pretty sure that he played a major role in what took place then. It is all very well for the likes of the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, to pray in aid the agreement that came about then and use it as an excuse to say that it was a solemn and binding—he did not use that particular phrase—way to reform the House, that it was at only an initial stage and that he intended to continue that reform later, but the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, knows full well how the 1999 agreement came about. It was accepted by the Labour Government because the Conservative majority in the House of Lords at the time was enormous. Despite the equally enormous Labour majority down the corridor as a result of the 1997 election, that Conservative majority, in which the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, played a major role, made it quite plain that it was either this particular deal or no reform of the House of Lords at all. So let us not have any nonsense that this was merely stage one and talk of solemn and binding promises Indeed, that agreement came about without the knowledge and permission of the leader of the Conservative Party in the House of Commons. The leader of the Labour Peers in the House of Lords lost his job as a result of the agreement. He was a descendant of Lord Salisbury. I would have thought that it takes a lot to shift a Salisbury from your Lordships’ House, but that is exactly what happened. The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, knows not only where the bodies are buried but I suspect wielded a shovel himself.
House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) (Abolition of By-Elections) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2019-03-15
Topic: Government Operations
Andrew Adonis (Labour, Centre-left): I have read this amendment twice, and I do not understand how it works. However, I shall address the big issue underlying it, which is the size of the House. Being today in the business of calling a spade a spade, I might as well carry on doing it because it is in my nature. This obsession with reducing the size of the House is entirely beside the point. If we are to have a large appointed House and its purpose is to function at least reasonably effectively and to keep its membership up to date, it is sensible to make new appointments. Choking off new appointments is basically a preservation activity by existing Members to see that the House is not increased in size by new Members, which would create a greater sense of illegitimacy because the number will be large. To be completely frank, that is not pursued out of any great constitutional principle. It is purely an act of preservation by existing life Peers who do not want to make this House look any more illegitimate than it does at the moment. The best thing to do is against the interests of the House in the short term because it would deprive us of new Members who might—how can I phrase this delicately?—be of an age where they would participate actively and fully in the work of the House, which some noble Lords tend not to as they—I probably ought not to pursue that line of argument because it will not be popular with some noble Lords The point is that the Burns report is being, and has been, used—it is the latest in-vogue thing in your Lordships’ House—to pretend that reform is being done while in fact no reform is being done. That idea is as old as the hills. In this House it is always important, to pursue a sense of legitimacy and progress, that some reform is sponsored. The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, has a special working group looking at very modest, tinkering reforms for this House so that he can pretend that he is in favour of progress, although, when he is present, he opposes substantial reforms.
House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) (Abolition of By-Elections) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2019-03-15
Topic: Government Operations
Andrew Adonis (Labour, Centre-left): I entirely agree. In so far as I understand what the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Northbrook, does, I would not make any concessions to the Burns commission. While the House of Lords exists in its current absurd state, it is clearly sensible that new Members be appointed to it, and, frankly, more younger Members would be a good thing, as that would bring the House more into contact with life outside What is being engaged in at the moment is displacement activity. The real issue is not whether this House has 600, 700 or 800 Members; it is whether it is appointed and hereditary, and therefore fundamentally illegitimate, or whether it is elected, either directly or, if we had a proper federal system, perhaps like the Bundesrat in Germany, indirectly, and therefore directly relates to the people and/or the devolved institutions of the country, which are themselves elected. All this displacement activity, talking about Burns, about removing the hereditary Peers, about by-elections and, if I may say so to the noble Lord, about hereditary Peers commissions—that was a new idea to me; the latest one today—or about all the other tokenistic reforms that are put forward, is entirely beside the point.
House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) (Abolition of By-Elections) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2019-03-15
Topic: Government Operations
Andrew Adonis (Labour, Centre-left): I am very grateful to the noble Lord for explaining the amendment. I now understand it and will hold in my mind the complex formula that he has just set out. However, my fundamental point is that it does not matter one whit whether this House has 600, 700 or 800 Members; it will be equally legitimate or illegitimate, whatever your view on how many it should have. Those are still very large numbers. I think it will function more effectively with its existing remit if it has a larger number of Members. That will mean that we have a steady flow of new appointments to the House, rather than drying up the appointments. However, all that is fundamentally beside the point. The current House of Lords is illegitimate. It will be just as illegitimate as the existing House, and arguably more so, if it is wholly nominated. The right thing is not to do any tinkering—either of the sort proposed by my noble friend Lord Grocott or any other variant—but to set up a constitutional convention and get to grips with fundamental reform, which, in the context of Brexit and the governance crisis across the United Kingdom at the moment, is long overdue.
Brexit: Date of Exit — House of Lords, 2019-03-14
Topic: International Affairs
Questions: To ask Her Majesty’s Government, in the light of the resolutions of the House of Commons to reject both the negotiated withdrawal agreement titled Agreement on the withdrawal of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland from the European Union and the European Atomic Energy Community and leaving the European Union without a negotiated withdrawal agreement, what steps they will take to amend the date of exit as set out in the EU (Withdrawal) Act 2018.
Angela Smith (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, we are back to that parallel universe I referred to a few minutes ago. I ask the Minister about a no-deal Brexit and his answer is about the extension of Article 50 This has been an extraordinary parliamentary week. On Tuesday, the Prime Minister was again defeated on her unchanged agreement with the EU. Last night, MPs rejected leaving the EU without a deal, and the Prime Minister has now to accept that she does not have the full support of her Government, or even her Cabinet. This House has also emphatically rejected no deal. Yet, in an extraordinary, intransigent speech which followed the defeat in the Commons, Mrs May appeared to want to ignore Parliament We are spending a great deal of time, energy and money—millions, if not billions of pounds—on preparing for a no-deal failure. One parliamentary recess has already been cancelled, and there is serious talk of longer, later and more sittings—including on Saturdays. There are even reports that the Prime Minister intends to run down the clock further to try and get her twice-rejected deal through. She is acting like the cruel parent who, when the child will not eat its dinner, serves up the same plate of cold food day after day until they are forced to accept the unwanted, the unpalatable and the dangerous My question, which I would have expected the noble Baroness the Leader of the House to answer, but which I put to the Minister, is: in order to give effect to what Parliament has now agreed, and to end this dreadful waste of resources and the irresponsibility that goes with it, when will the Government bring forward the necessary legislation to prevent a no-deal exit?
Brexit: Date of Exit — House of Lords, 2019-03-14
Topic: International Affairs
Questions: To ask Her Majesty’s Government, in the light of the resolutions of the House of Commons to reject both the negotiated withdrawal agreement titled Agreement on the withdrawal of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland from the European Union and the European Atomic Energy Community and leaving the European Union without a negotiated withdrawal agreement, what steps they will take to amend the date of exit as set out in the EU (Withdrawal) Act 2018.
George Foulkes (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I am surprised that the Leader of the House is not replying to this Question, since it covers a wide variety of things. Can the Minister confirm that he and other Ministers speaking from the Dispatch Box speak on behalf of the whole Government, not just whichever department they are associated with? Is it not clear to him, the Leader of the House, the Chief Whip and everyone concerned that there is absolutely no way that we are going to exit the European Union at the end of this month? Irrespective of what happens in the other place, there is no way that the legislation can get through. Will the Minister at last admit that and accept reality—and accept the financial penalty that he is going to incur?
Supply and Appropriation (Anticipation and Adjustments) (No. 2) Bill — House of Lords, 2019-03-14
Topic: Government Operations
Bryan Davies (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, it is not customary for the Opposition to make any comments on the appropriations Bill and, in normal circumstances, we would not. There is no question of us seeking to delay the Bill as this is, appropriately, a House of Commons issue. But I ought to congratulate the Government in this week when their whole strategy has been an utter and total failure; I ought to congratulate the Minister on finding a Bill on which there is unanimous support.