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I would be grateful if the Minister could either repeat his assurance that along with the business plan the framework agreement will also shortly be laid before both Houses of Parliament; or, if he has no intention of doing so, perhaps he could explain to the House why he cannot do so? I beg to move.
Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving me this opportunity to return to this issue. The amendment rather sharpens up the perspective of the Opposition of what should be in the Bill. The idea that we would be able, at the same time as we were making the order, to produce the business plan in the way in which the noble Lord envisages—
Lord De Mauley: My Lords, I am asking about the framework agreement, not the business plan.
Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, I am sorry. I misrepresented that point. The idea that we would be able, on the same day that we are making the order, to produce the framework agreement underestimates the nature of the emergency with which we would be likely to be confronted. The House will appreciate that, in this whole discussion on the amendments that were tabled this morning relating to this issue, we are talking about an emergency provision called into action in the direst circumstances. The noble Lord is suggesting that we can both make the order and have an agreed framework to present at that time. I accept entirely the point he is emphasising, that the framework agreement is important, and we have said that we will produce that agreement. However, the noble Lord’s amendment would give a very limited time for that framework agreement to be presented. I
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I reassert what I said this morning in responding to these issues: we are seeking to get a framework agreement for Northern Rock in the very near future, and we intend to place copies in the House. I have made it abundantly clear that we regard the framework agreement as an important point for public consideration and we will present it before Parliament as soon as possible. But we would have the greatest difficulty in accepting what the noble Lord suggests, whereby any order would necessarily have the framework agreement involved with it and that agreement would have to be published—while disagreeing with neither the importance of the framework agreement nor the importance of laying such a framework agreement before Parliament as soon as possible and making it public. We intend to honour the commitment that I made earlier today. Although it may not have been made as assertively as the noble Lord would have wished, I welcome this opportunity of assuring him that that is what we intend to do.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean: My Lords, I can hardly believe my ears.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: Order, my Lords. We are on Report. The Minister has responded.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean: My Lords, I understood that on Report it was perfectly in order to ask the Minister a question.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean: My Lords, I can hardly believe my ears. The Minister has responded to this by indicating that this was an emergency procedure for an emergency. All along we have been told that this legislation was general but was related to Northern Rock. We have known about the circumstances of Northern Rock for some time—the Government have been negotiating for five months—so why do they have difficulty with this amendment, which would simply require the framework document to be laid before the House at the same time as the order was made? I would have thought that was perfectly reasonable. The argument that this is some kind of emergency procedure takes us way beyond what the Minister has been telling us at the earlier stages of the Bill.
Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, the noble Lord is perfectly in order to ask me a question. I will do my best to answer him. I want him to accept that, in fact, there is no dispute at all between us and the Official Opposition and the amendment that is before us on the desirability of the framework agreement being
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Lord De Mauley: My Lords, like this whole process, this is extremely disheartening. The order has clearly not been prepared since last Sunday. A framework agreement could, I suggest, have been prepared in the same timescale as the order. I came away from this particular debate in Committee feeling that we had made some progress, not only in gaining some clearer understanding of the Government’s intentions, but also in persuading the Government of the wisdom of involving your Lordships and other colleagues in another place more fully. We now discover that this is not the case. Instead of the assurance I was hoping for, I discover that the Government are still unable to be as open and transparent about their dealings with Northern Rock as they should be. While I will not press the amendment, I am afraid that this does nothing to reassure your Lordships or the public at large as to what the management arrangements will be. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 15 [Orders and regulations: general]:
Lord Hunt of Wirral moved Amendment No. 2:
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I make no apologies for returning to this subject. I just want to make three points. The first is that our protest about the speed with which the Government are rushing these proceedings through is against the Government. I would just like to say how much we all appreciate the strenuous efforts of the staff of the House and all those involved in producing so quickly the documentation. It is quite remarkable that we have public servants of the quality we have and I am very grateful to them. If we criticise the speed, it is not in any way critical of those who have done such hard work; it is the speed with which the Government are trying to rush through procedures. My second point is that we have here a very important move by the Government to ignore the recommendations of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. That is, as I understand it, the first time that the Government have decided to ignore such recommendations. When I press further on these amendments, it might be right for the Government to set out their policy on the committee.
Lord Goodhart: My Lords, I am sorry to say, in my capacity as chairman of the Delegated Powers Committee, that this is by no means the first occasion on which our recommendations have been rejected.
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Lord Hunt of Wirral: My Lords, it is the first important occasion. It might be—when we are faced with such a key issue—that the Government might just indicate in a little more detail why they have taken this step. The recommendations of the committee, which have been very well set out in the report it produced so quickly, contained a number of really important recommendations. I would like to hear from the Government why they are refusing to accept them.
The third reason involves a question that has run through all of our debates; namely, why the rush? I can well understand the other place—it is used to being asked to omit the detailed debate that is necessary on legislative provisions. In my experience—I have been in this place only for just over 10 years—
Lord Hunt of Wirral: My Lords, I thought that that was going to be a counterbid.
I have been in this place for only 10 years but I cannot recall being placed under this sort of time pressure before. We are now rushing into the Report stage. Normally, one would have time to reflect on what the Minister had said. I might want to say, “I have heard what the Minister said but I may want to return to this at Third Reading”; that is perfectly possible under the rules and procedures in certain limited circumstances. How on earth will that be possible here?
I register the strongest possible protest about the way in which this House is being treated. The other place can make its own case on this but we should register, from all sides of the House, the view that the Government might perhaps think again before proceeding with this sort of haste. The shares are suspended in Northern Rock; there is time for careful scrutiny of whatever the Government are proposing. That is why I return to this amendment and Amendment No. 3. It is perfectly possible for us to adopt the procedure that was used under the provisions affecting Northern Ireland; that would give the Government all that they need. However, the Government have not—so far—accepted that.
Finally, today’s message to the public has been that the public and parliamentarians in both Houses are not really being given the information that they need. That goes considerably against all the democratic principles that I have been brought up with—that Governments have to explain what they are seeking to do. May we please now at last have a more detailed explanation of why the rush is necessary and why this amendment cannot be accepted? I beg to move.
Lord Newby: My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord’s final point. The House and the country still find several aspects of the situation facing Northern Rock pretty obscure. Despite what seems like many hours of discussion of Granite, we are not much clearer than we were when the issue first broke on to the scene.
For reasons that I gave less than two hours ago, I do not believe that any great purpose is served in this case by having affirmative resolutions. There are
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Lord Forsyth of Drumlean: My Lords, I rise briefly to support my noble friend’s amendment. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Newby, will permit me to make one observation: in so far as he shares our concern about the way in which Parliament is once more being ridden over by the Executive, I cannot help but point out that had his party been a little less reluctant to join in the dance, we might have had an opportunity for more careful scrutiny of the Bill. In this respect, the Government are their own worst enemy. We have seen how this Government have progressively destroyed Cabinet government in our country and marginalised Cabinet Ministers, who discover from the newspapers what policy is. Now we are seeing the same thing happening to Parliament with this kind of roughshod procedure. It results, in the end, in governments making mistakes and in weak government.
I am sure that because this House has not had a proper opportunity to scrutinise and consider the legislation and that there will be no proper opportunity to scrutinise the secondary legislation, the sweeping powers that are provided will result in the Government making mistakes that will damage them. It is no part of my brief to try to save the Government from themselves. Unfortunately, the taxpayers and the people of this country will pay the price.
Lord Desai: My Lords, I remind the House that we sat for 36 hours when there was urgency on the Prevention of Terrorism Bill and that this is not the first time that we have been made to sit for long hours. I am perfectly willing to sit for another 36 hours if that is what will satisfy the party opposite.
The Earl of Onslow: My Lords, I would like to seriously support—I am sorry: I split an infinitive. I would very much like to support my noble friend on the question of the Government’s abuse of Parliament and all the rest of it. Time and again in the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill, chunks of things have gone wrong. The House of Commons is guillotined, guillotined and guillotined—Robespierre would be proud. I remember when I was first here the row when Michael Foot introduced a fifth guillotine in one Session and it was considered to be appalling. This Government do not pay attention to Parliament and anything that we can do in this House to make
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Lord Trimble: My Lords, I urge the noble Lord, Lord Newby, to reconsider the position that he stated a few moments ago. I speak with some hesitation having not been in this House for as long as he has, but I find myself amazed at his proposition. I understood his argument to be that we should not have an affirmative resolution because it did not give any serious opportunity for scrutiny. If that is his view, surely that must be a view of general application. If that is the view that he takes, he must surely take the view that there is no point ever having an affirmative resolution procedure in this House. I find that an astonishing proposition.
The noble Lord says that he does not think it is worth having an affirmative resolution procedure because you cannot amend the order. I agree that that is a serious defect in procedure. It would be a good thing if that defect was remedied and the opportunity was there to amend affirmative resolutions. But one surely cannot use that limitation in our procedure as a reason for throwing out affirmative resolutions as desirable things.
Furthermore, I remind the noble Lord that the conventions committee, in its consideration of this matter, recommended that this House should be prepared more often to use its power to reject affirmative resolution orders. The House has been properly cautious in approaching that matter, but who is to say that that caution will remain at its present level? I am sure that at some point in the future, cautiously no doubt, the recommendation of the conventions committee will be followed and that orders subject to affirmative resolutions will be rejected.
We should consider those factors plus the importance in this situation of ensuring that there is some debate. On a negative resolution, there is no debate. There is no doubt about the importance of this matter and ensuring that parliamentary accountability goes a little further than dropping a piece of paper onto the Table in front of us. A proper debate is surely desirable.
Lord Newby: My Lords, I am sorry to rise again, but I do not think that the noble Lord was here when I made my points earlier. The main one was in respect of Northern Rock. We have spent far more parliamentary time in detailed consideration of all aspects of the nationalisation of Northern Rock this week than we would have had regardless of whether there had been an affirmative or a negative resolution to consider. The argument for an affirmative resolution on Northern Rock, where urgency is of the essence, therefore does not hold as it would in normal circumstances. As for the generality, like the noble Lord, I agree that we should be able to amend affirmative resolutions. The view of the House ought to be that rejecting an affirmative resolution is anything but the nuclear option. Rejecting an affirmative resolution within your own party or more generally in the House is not seen as an acceptable way of proceeding except in the most extreme circumstances. I am very happy to
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Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, I will address the import of the amendment in a moment, although most of the arguments that I have against it I rather exhausted this morning; but first let me deal with some of these extraneous matters. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, seems to predicate that a Labour Government foreshadow the death of parliamentary democracy. The noble Earl, Lord Onslow, has one supreme advantage over many of us here in that if he was not here in 1971 someone connected with the family certainly was, and in 1971 the Upper House permitted the Government to nationalise an important company in a single day. The outcome of that development, as was attested by the Opposition earlier, was regarded as wholly beneficial by the nation and enabled Rolls-Royce to succeed subsequently.
Lord Hunt of Wirral: My Lords, the Rolls-Royce (Purchase) Act 1971 was a single-paragraph Bill. Does the Minister not think that was a different situation from the one we are faced with today?
Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, it might have been a single-paragraph Bill but the significance of that decision was such as to engage the nation in very great debate. The Upper House at that time delivered within the space of 24 hours. I am therefore not going to receive lectures about it being a decline of parliamentary democracy to ask this House to consider this Bill which has emergency provisions within the timescale that we have put forward. As for the contentions put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Trimble, with regard to affirmative resolutions, that is easily said but there are issues with regard to this House being able to negative or even amend affirmative resolutions. That would represent quite a shift in the balance of power between the two Houses. That may well be broadly accepted, but let the noble Lord not think that that decision would apply to this House alone. Elected Members of the other House would look askance at the regular arrival of negative action against affirmative resolutions, and rightly so. Anyone would think that it is only a Labour Government who use such devices. I know it is a long time since noble Lords opposite have been in government but they are lively and have green and verdant memories and they can surely recall the fact that they have used these instruments many times and certainly would not have tolerated regular rejection by the Upper House at that stage. If they say, “We would not have anticipated rejection of our instruments in such circumstances”, then a real issue of democracy arises—that when one party is in power at the other end, certain conduct is acceptable in this place, but when another party is in power, a rather different strategy is pursued. I give way to the noble Earl.
The Earl of Onslow: My Lords, I can assuage some of the noble Lord’s doubts about what will happen when there is a Conservative Government. I sincerely
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The Earl of Onslow: Yes, my Lords; that has been the case, and I hope it will continue because I regard this House as a body that makes life difficult for all Governments, including my own.
Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, I regret that the former Chief Whip is not sitting next to me because he would give me the document here and now showing the extent to which opposition to Labour measures in the Upper House occurs now and the contrasting exceedingly lower levels of opposition during the previous Conservative Administration over the 18 years that they were in power. The noble Earl is a very good historian and, if he is fair, he will not challenge those statistics.
But enough of this banter; we are, after all, here to discuss immediate and serious issues. This issue before us in the amendment is a serious one. It derives also from the serious report of the Delegated Powers Committee, which, as I said earlier today, the Government respect fully. We discussed the issues with some members of that committee. Earlier this afternoon—I nearly said this morning, but it was earlier this afternoon—the House recognised that the Government had made considerable movement. I tabled amendments that showed we had accepted certain parts of the committee’s report.
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