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Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord. The reason I have not argued the merits is not because I am not capable of arguing them, but because I do not think that this is the occasion on which we should argue them. That is all. I think that they should be argued on another occasion. In any event, my noble friend Lord Kingsland has put up a pretty good argument on them. At this hour of night nobody wants to hear too much argument on the merits when this is not the occasion on which we are supposed to be arguing them. Frankly, I do not accept the criticism, but it does not worry me overmuch.
It worries me that the noble and learned Lord does not seem to understand that I wish to ask the leave of the House to withdraw the amendment and that I wholly accept that the schedule is consequential. By withdrawing the one amendment, I would then formally ask leave not to move the other.
I would naturally like to thank the noble Lord on the Liberal Democrat Benches for his kind speech, and for their indulgence for my error and their understanding of the reasons. They may not agree on the merits, but we are not considering them. All I want to do is to remove this clause so that we may on another occasion debate the merits, but not in primary legislation. That derogates from the privileges of this House and probably—although we are not supposed to speak of them—from the privileges of the other place. Each House has its own privilege and neither House should have them removed or amended by primary legislation unless there is an overall Bill which attacks the privilege of the House. I suppose that anything can happen, but we do not have such a Bill yet.
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I respectfully beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord Goodhart moved Amendment No. 30:
"SALARY AND PENSION
Schedule (Salary and pension of the Lord Chancellor) contains amendments relating to the salary and pension of the Lord Chancellor."
The noble Lord said: My Lords, in speaking to Amendment No. 30, I shall speak also to Amendment No. 32. These are new amendments. Under the original Bill, the Lord Chancellor would have transmuted into a Secretary of State with a consequential right to a statutory salary under the Ministerial and other Salaries Act 1975. That consequence would be automatic and does not need to be spelled out in the Bill.
Following the vote in Committee to retain the office of Lord Chancellor, there is a need to consider what should be the salary of the Lord Chancellor. One possibility would be to retain the existing statutory salary, which is linked to the salary of the Lord Chief Justice. Under the 1975 Act the Lord Chancellor gets £2,500 more than the Lord Chief Justice. That salary is somewhat higher than that of the Prime Minister. That seems inappropriate when the Lord Chancellor no longer holds judicial office, which is the basis on which the link to the Lord Chief Justice's salary was based.
Another possibility is to go back to what would have been the consequence of that Bill as originally drafted and to treat the Lord Chancellor as being entitled to the same salary as a Secretary of State. Indeed, I understand that that is the salary that the noble and learned Lord in fact draws. I proposed that in a Private Member's Bill introduced in the 2002-03 Session. Having obtained a Second Reading of that Bill, I took no steps to take it any further.
However, simply to link the salary of the Lord Chancellor to that of a Secretary of State would fail to take into account the effect of the vote in your Lordships' House to retain the office, which requires some continued recognition of the separate status of the Lord Chancellor. It is therefore necessary to decide what the Lord Chancellor should get and to legislate for it in the Bill. Our proposal is that the Lord Chancellor's salary should be linked to the ministerial salary of the Prime Minister and should be £10,000 a year less than that salary. That means that the Lord Chancellor would continue to be entitled to a higher ministerial salary than a Secretary of State or the Attorney-General, although significantly less than he is at present entitled to receive and would receive if he were to draw the full salary.
Under my amendment, the Lord Chancellor, if in the House of Lords, would also receive the allowance under the Ministerial and Other Pensions and Salaries Act 1991 for Ministers in the House of Lords. On pensions, the effect of my amendment is that the Lord
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Chancellor would continue to receive a pension equal to half his salary on leaving office, although the pension would of course be based on a lower salary. The salary of the pension would continue to be paid from the Consolidated Fund.
That pension would be received whatever the length of service, as is the case at present. That is a privilege shared only with the Prime Minister and the Speaker of the House of Commons. I believe that that is appropriate because the rejection of the Lord Chancellor's advice on the rule of law would, more than likely, lead to his resignation and he should at least have the cushion of a pension of a fixed amount, irrespective of his length of service.
Salaries and public expenditure are plainly a matter for the other place, rather than your Lordships' House, but I have made these proposals because I want to hear whether the Government have considered the issue; if so, what are their proposals; and, if they have not yet finalised those proposals, when we are likely to receive them. Our proposals strike a reasonable balance and I hope that the Government will produce something similar, either at Third Reading or when the Bill reaches the other place. I beg to move.
Lord Kingsland: My Lords, broadly speaking, I support the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, on the question of both salary and pensions. On salary, the Lord Chancellor should receive a salary that is slightly less than the salary received by the Prime Minister but more than all other members of the Cabinet. On his pension, I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, that it should be half of the salary, payable immediately on leaving office.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton: My Lords, this is an important issue. We touched on it briefly on 11 October. We agreed that we needed to consider the salary and pension rights of the ministerial post in the Bill, whether or not it carried the title Lord Chancellor. The effect of what the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, said is that if the office of Lord Chancellor remains, there should be some particular pay and pension arrangement relating to it.
The view was expressed on 11 October that it would be hard to justify continuing the present arrangements where the Lord Chancellor is required to be paid more than the Lord Chief Justice when he, the Lord Chancellor, is no longer at the head of the judiciary. That appears to be obviously right. There appeared to be a general view that special arrangements are needed but there was no agreement on what those arrangements would be.
We must bear in mind that we are considering the salary and pension rights of a different ministerial post from the existing office of Lord Chancellor. Even though this House has decided that the post should have the title of Lord Chancellor, it does not necessarily follow that the new rights accruing to it should be considered only in the context of the existing office. That is broadly the point that the noble Lord makes.
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The amendments are an attempt to address some of the core issues. They do not yet provide a coherent package. Of particular concern is the unfortunate—and, I am certain, unintended—omission of provisions protecting the position of former Lord Chancellors—I am looking across at one—or their widows. They might legitimately be upset about that. Provision to protect the position of the widows and dependents of future holders of the new office was also omitted. Both our families may not be happy about the arrangements. I suspect that the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, was not intended to provide for the complete package.
I have listened with interest to the arguments that the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, and other noble Lords have contributed to the debate. Of course the new ministerial figure must have appropriate salary and pension arrangements. I am not clear what exactly the noble Lord proposes regarding pay. I understood him as saying that it would be the Prime Minister's ministerial salary, not his salary as a Member of Parliament on top, and also what he described as the ministerial "allowance" which a Minister in the Lords would get. It appeared that the noble Lord was referring to both; I do not think that there are both, so I am not entirely clear what is proposed.
Lord Goodhart: My Lords, when I referred to the Prime Minister's ministerial salary, I meant exactly that. In calculating the Lord Chancellor's salary, there should be no linkage to the salary that the Prime Minster receives as a Member of Parliament. As I understand it, the 1991 Act provides for allowances to be payable to Ministers in the House of Lords. Those are quite small; they are around £5,000 a year. As they are payable to Ministers in the House of Lords, so long as the Lord Chancellor is in the House—he is required to be as a result of today's vote—it seemed appropriate that he receive that allowance. In any event, if the Lord Chancellor was in the House of Lords as a result of the exercise of the Prime Minister's discretion, he should be entitled to draw that allowance as well as his ministerial salary.
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