House of Lords Reform (Hansard, 24 January 2000)

§ Lord Goodhart
asked Her Majesty's Government:
When they will propose to Parliament that a Joint Committee to consider the report of the Royal Commission on reform of the House of Lords should be appointed.

§ The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Jay of Paddington)
My Lords, as the House is well aware, the Royal Commission report was published just four days ago. In common, I expect, with many other Members of the House, over the weekend I spent some interesting hours reading it. It contains a wide-ranging and complex set of recommendations which deserve and will receive from the Government proper consideration.
We have said that a Joint Committee will be appointed to consider the parliamentary aspects of implementing any proposed reform. We expect to set that up once more detailed positions have been reached. I hope that those detailed positions may be reached in conjunction with other political parties on the policies and procedures for achieving the next stage of change.

§ Lord Goodhart
My Lords, in thanking the Leader of the House for her somewhat uninformative reply, I ask for three undertakings: first, that this House will shortly have an opportunity to debate the Wakeham Commission report; secondly, that the Joint Committee will be set up and start work within a reasonable time—by that I mean certainly not later than the end of March—and, thirdly, that the remit of the Joint Committee will not be restricted simply to considering the proposals in the report, which many of us regard as deeply flawed?

§ Baroness Jay of Paddington
My Lords, I can certainly give an absolutely categorical assurance about the debate. I believe that my noble friend the Chief Whip, through the usual channels, has already discussed the possibility of such a debate. Last week, before the report was published, I wrote to the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition, who has specifically requested a debate, saying that that would follow the report of the Royal Commission.
On the timing of the setting up of the Joint Committee, I can go no further than my original reply. I am sorry that the noble Lord regards it as uninformative. It was intended to set an appropriate context for the establishment of the Joint Committee. That refers to the third point raised by the noble Lord about the agenda for the Joint Committee. We said in our White Paper on House of Lords reform, published approximately a year ago, that the Joint Committee would be established in order to consider the parliamentary aspects of any reform. We stand by that. The noble Lord's understanding of "reasonable time" being by the end of next month is perhaps slightly more optimistic than my own.

§ Lord Shore of Stepney
My Lords, does my noble friend agree that it is important to read the report? Am I correct in thinking that volume two will contain a lot of interesting suggestions and evidence that are not yet in printed form? When I collected volume one it contained a disk at the back, which is useful, but not entirely so for my purposes.

§ Baroness Jay of Paddington
My Lords, I cannot answer for the mechanisms of the Royal Commission on the printing or publishing of its evidence and findings. As I understand it, the CD-ROM to which my noble friend refers is intended to be the basis for public consumption of the report.

§ Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, I cannot be the only one who found it difficult to understand what the noble Baroness the Leader of the House meant in her first reply. It was my understanding that the Joint Committee of both Houses, announced in the White Paper as long as a year ago, would automatically follow the publication of the Royal Commission's report. What strikes me this afternoon is that the noble Baroness is saying that it will only deal with the parliamentary aspects of the conclusions and not the wider issue of reform of this House.
1320 Secondly, while I am on my feet, may I ask the noble Baroness what happened to the appointments commission? That was announced a year ago and in November the noble Baroness said that it was to be set up imminently. May I ask also whether there has been discussion of these matters in the Cabinet?

§ Baroness Jay of Paddington
My Lords, the answer to the third question is yes. Perhaps I can go backwards. I believe one of the conventions of this House is that one does not normally answer more than two supplementary questions but as they are relatively straightforward in the noble Lord's case, I am happy to do so. On the question of the appointments commission, the noble Lord may have noticed the announcement by the Cabinet Office last week that PriceWaterhouseCoopers was appointed as a result of the tendering exercise to assist the Cabinet Office in the appointment and recruitment of the independent members of the appointments commission. The Secretary of the Cabinet is even now finalising the advertisements for the positions, which will soon be made public.
As to the nature of the Joint Committee following the Royal Commission, I am sure the noble Lord will recall our many debates during the passage of the House of Lords Bill on precisely what form the committee might take in the light of the report of the Royal Commission. I am sure he will also recall that in our White Paper we made specific reference to the committee looking at the parliamentary aspects of any reform. That is what I referred to in my original Answer.

§ Lord Barnett
My Lords, does my noble friend agree that it is important that, whenever the Joint Committee is set up, there will be need for its representatives to know the views of your Lordships? Should we have a debate before it is set up?

§ Baroness Jay of Paddington
My Lords, my noble friend makes reference to a point about which I was obviously somewhat obscure in my original reply, given the nature of the two supplementary questions. Of course, there should be a debate. I thought I had made that clear in my response to the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart. On the question of your Lordships' views, that is precisely what I meant when I said it would be helpful to take the discussion of the Royal Commission forward in the context, as the Government have always said, of trying to achieve some basic consensus of an agenda for a Joint Committee.

§ Lord Craig of Radley
My Lords, the noble Baroness has been good enough to explain how the independent members of the appointments commission will be found by PriceWaterhouse. Is she able to tell the House what guidance PriceWaterhouse has been given in relation to the type of member and whether any can be found from this House or all found from this House?

§ Baroness Jay of Paddington
My Lords, I did not say that the process had been handed over to PriceWaterhouse. What I said, and I repeat, is that that company has been appointed to assist in the recruitment of the chairman and independent members of the House of Lords appointments commission. In colloquial language, it is acting as a professional headhunter in this area, which will be extremely useful. It is important to remember that it is looking at the independent members of the commission. They will be joined by those nominated by the political parties.

§ Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank
My Lords, will the noble Baroness clarify something she said regarding the circumstances which will lead to the setting up of the Joint Committee of both Houses. In the first instance, the noble Baroness referred to policies and procedures: later, she referred to an "agenda". Those are very different things. I am a little concerned by her suggestion, if I understand her right, that there may be some object in getting common ground before the committee meets. The noble Baroness shakes her head. I took for granted that the terms of reference of the Joint Committee were stage two reform of the House—nothing narrower than that.

§ Baroness Jay of Paddington
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Rodgers, is obviously not aware of what is said in the White Paper. As I tried to outline in my response to the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, it is that, given the establishment of the wide-ranging review of House of Lords reform that the Royal Commission undertook, it is not appropriate, in the Government's view, to invite a subsequent approach on that wide basis. That is why we said in the White Paper that we would ask the Joint Committee to look at the parliamentary aspects of implementing any reform. The Government do not feel that it would be appropriate to invite another, new type of Royal Commission drawn from within the Palace of Westminster to look at precisely the same issues as the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, and his colleagues usefully spent the past year doing.

§ Lord Cocks of Hartcliffe
My Lords, does my noble friend the Minister agree that it is very kind and considerate of the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, to give such advance notice of the new targets and aspirations of Charter 88 and the chattering classes?

§ Baroness Jay of Paddington
My Lords, my noble friend characterises the position of the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, in slightly acerbic terms, but perhaps they do derive from that particular environment.

§ Baroness Trumpington
My Lords, can the noble Baroness tell me why this particular firm has been appointed? My understanding is that it consists of accountants, not headhunters.

§ Baroness Jay of Paddington
My Lords, I am afraid the noble Baroness is slightly misinformed. It is indeed 1322 a firm of accountants, but a very important part of its business focuses on recruitment consultancy. After a tendering exercise, in which I as a Minister was not involved, this firm is the one that has been invited by the Cabinet Office to offer its professional advice in the area.

§ Lord Phillips of Sudbury
My Lords, given the fact that we are talking about reform of the people's Parliament, the fact that the noble Baroness the Leader of the House said a year ago in answer to my question that she would ensure that there was, a campaign of public information and consultation", around the reform issue and the fact that there were only seven meetings held by the commission out of London none of which was advertised—drawing attendances below 100, can the noble Baroness give any indication as to whether the Government plan, even now, to engage in a thorough-going, public consultation and information exercise?

§ Baroness Jay of Paddington
My Lords, I am surprised by the noble Lord's question and the assumptions on which he bases it in relation to the activities of the Royal Commission. From reading the report and the interviews and bearing in mind the context in which the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, expresses the findings, I understand that he feels there was very good public consultation. Indeed, I know for a fact that local commission meetings were publicised. I believe that the Government were the only political party that had a very structured consultation procedure within the party to produce the evidence that we submitted to the Royal Commission.

§ Lord Pilkington of Oxenford
My Lords, does the noble Baroness not feel that it is a reflection on the dignity and sovereignty of Parliament to ask a commercial firm to choose people for a constitutional commission? Does that worry her?

§ Baroness Jay of Paddington
My Lords, if I may say so, I believe that the noble Lord and others who have raised points on the relationship of PriceWaterhouseCoopers have misunderstood the position. I shall be a little clearer about it. The Cabinet Office was very concerned about the nature and breadth of the recruitment process for this very important constitutional role, which the noble Lord quite rightly identified. In addition to the normal processes of going through the public appointments lists and the list of the Cabinet Office, it seemed sensible to invite a more positive approach in terms of going out to recruit people in the headhunting sense—which, I have to say, is not unconventional in relation to public appointments of many kinds—to see whether a wider trawl could be achieved. Had the Cabinet Office or the Government said, "We have appointed X to be the chairman of this committee", without any reference to a wider body, I suspect that we would no doubt have been accused of "cronyism", if I may use that word.