§ 3.16 p.m.
§ Lord Williams of MostynMy Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall repeat a Statement made earlier by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister in another place.
"Mr Speaker, on Thursday we announced changes to the office of Lord Chancellor and changes in respect of the posts of Secretary of State for Scotland and for Wales.
"At present, judges are effectively selected by the Lord Chancellor. It is increasingly anomalous for a Minister, an unelected one at that, to choose judges in this way. Following the Human Rights Act, such a system is particularly outdated.
"The selection of judges should be by a transparent process, independently conducted. We propose to establish an independent judicial appointments commission to recommend candidates for appointment as judges on an open basis—something long advocated by many inside and outside the legal profession. There is already such an independent commission in place for selecting judges in Scotland, and one forms part of the agreed settlement in Northern Ireland.
810 "The Lord Chancellor will also cease to sit as a judge, and the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords will become a fully independent supreme court.
"As we said on Thursday, all these proposals will be subject to extensive consultation processes, with consultation papers issued prior to the Summer Recess. Both require legislation to pass through both Houses, so there will be ample time to debate them.
"There is one further change. Again, virtually uniquely in any major democracy, the Speaker of the upper Chamber is a member of the Cabinet appointed by the Prime Minister. We are inviting the House of Lords to choose its own Speaker by a process that the House itself should determine. That will enable the speakership to be independent of the executive, as is the Speaker in the House of Commons.
"It will have a further consequence. At present, the Lord Chancellor spends many hours in every working week fulfilling official and ceremonial duties as Speaker. But, following the changes introduced in the 1971 Courts Act, he is also the head of an extremely important department of government. He is in charge of our courts system, criminal and civil. He manages a large part of the tribunal system, including asylum and immigration appeals. He is in charge of a legal aid budget of £1.9 billion.
"There are major changes we need to see in our courts. The judiciary has made heroic efforts to run the courts more effectively in recent years. The former Lord Chancellor also made important and lasting improvements to each part of the system. But the continuing task of reform is immense. Thousands of trials each year collapse because defendants or witnesses do not appear, and far too much police time is wasted waiting in court for cases that cannot be heard. We still do not have a proper information technology system that links courts, prisons, the Crown Prosecution Service and the police. We need hugely improved co-ordination between all parts of the system. There are real problems with the way victims and witnesses are treated, still in too many parts of the country put in the same waiting areas as the accused.
"The department is a major public service department with nearly 12,000 civil servants. Yet, because of his duties in the House of Lords. the Lord Chancellor did not until last Friday even have his private office and Permanent Secretary in the department, but rather in the Palace of Westminster.
"For all those reasons, it is surely better that the Minister responsible for this department concentrates on running the department rather than on being Speaker of the House of Lords, sitting as a judge and selecting the judges. The size of his task will expand with the creation of a unified courts administration and a unified tribunal service. He will continue to ensure the independence of the 811 judiciary and will also work to ensure that the court system provides an increasingly efficient service to the public.
"As for the posts of Secretary of State for Scotland and Wales, following devolution, there is no longer a requirement for there to be Secretaries of State for Scotland and Wales who hold only those offices. Their roles can be combined with other posts. The civil servants in the Scotland Office and the Wales Office will be part of the Department for Constitutional Affairs, so as to ensure they do not move, should Cabinet members change. The new department has responsibility for the devolution settlement and the new Secretary of State, like the Lord Chancellor before him, will remain chairing the main Cabinet Constitutional Reform Committee. Oral and Written Questions will continue, as now, to be answered by the Secretaries of State for Scotland and Wales.
"The reforms I have outlined today are essential acts of constitutional modernisation. They follow on from the success of devolution to Scotland and Wales, the Human Rights Act, the Freedom of Information Act and the removal of 90 per cent of the hereditary Peers from the House of Lords. All those reforms are now seen as welcome and permanent changes to our system of government. I am confident that the changes I have set out today will in time be regarded in the same light. I do not believe that any party in this House will reverse any of these changes, and I commend them to the House."
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
§ 3.21 p.m.
§ Lord StrathclydeMy Lords, I thank the noble and learned Lord the Leader of the House for repeating the Statement today. I hope that it will not embarrass him if I start by saying that if the Prime Minister had followed the example of the noble and learned Lord and volunteered a Statement on Monday, he would not have had to be dragged to another place by the Speaker today. If he took more advice more often from his Cabinet colleagues, perhaps he might have avoided some of the damaging criticism that has been raining on his head over the last few days.
When asked to do so, the Leader of the House apologised for the way in which Parliament was treated by the Prime Minister. But, sadly, the Prime Minister made no such apology for his discourtesy in the Statement that we have just heard. Refusal ever to acknowledge a mistake is invariably a sign of a poor government, and one heading for a fall. This is not just an Opposition view—it is a general view. The Financial Times today referred to a "shocking lack of consultation". Can the noble and learned Lord not see what is meant by that?
As Leader of the House, will the noble and learned Lord tell his colleague, Mr Hain, the new part-time Leader of another place, that before he complains about and threatens this House, he might care to look 812 at why we are sent, time after time, poorly drafted Bills that another place has not even bothered to examine in full?
We dealt on Monday with the issue of the Lord Chancellorship and the presiding officer of this House. If it is convenient for the House, I should like to leave it there until we return to it on another day. Can the noble and learned Lord confirm that it is still his intention to make a Statement on this subject next Wednesday?
Today the Prime Minister said a great deal but explained very little. We are still left in the dark about what has been called a Whitehall reorganisation that baffles most observers. Exactly what are the roles of the Scottish Secretary, the Welsh Secretary arid the Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs? Do Wales Office and Scotland Office officials report to the Lord Chancellor as well as being part of the Lord Chancellor's Department? The noble and learned Lord's affection for Wales is well known. So perhaps he can explain why Mr Hain wrote in his foreword to his 2003 departmental report about his crucial,
full-time responsibilities as Secretary of State for Wales".Does the noble and learned Lord agree that this important job is now better conducted on a part-time basis?The Prime Minister totally ignored the West Lothian question. The trouble is that, like letters from the bank manager, awkward questions will not go away. How will Mr Darling argue the case for adjusting the Barnett formula to allow more money for transport in England when he has the duty of putting the case for Scotland? How can Dr Reid, who represents part of a country where foundation hospitals have been rejected, impose foundation hospitals on England, whose people and MPs have no say over Scottish health policy? The questions will not go away just because the Prime Minister pretends they do not exist. Will the Lord Chancellor, if he is responsible for devolution, have responsibility for regional assemblies, and by what logic should he not do so?
Turning to the supreme court, we await the papers to be published by the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor. Perhaps the noble and learned Lord the Leader of the House can shed light on when that will be. Will he, as Leader, provide time for full debates on issues which so directly affect us all in the House?
The Prime Minister is said to have considered all this carefully. So can the noble and learned Lord say if the supreme court will be an entirely separate creation, designed to serve Scotland and Northern Ireland as well as England? Does he agree that that would mean the Lord Chief Justice could not preside over it? What would happen in the event of a dispute between. say, the Home Secretary and the new court, and could Parliament overrule a judgment of the court? How will the new appointments commission be appointed and be made independent of those who appoint it?
Does the Prime Minister's proclamation last week mean that no more Peers will be created under the Appellate Jurisdiction Act 1876? Do the Government intend to repeal that Act? What will happen to former 813 Lords of Appeal who sit here? The House hugely gains from their wisdom. Will they be excluded? Would others like them come to the House in future? If so, who would decide which ones would come here? Might the commission of the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Coddenham, do that work? Within the package, these are important matters affecting the nature of this House which the House will expect the noble and learned Lord to be able to clarify.
This has been a sorry episode. The Statement leaves more questions in the air than it answers. But it also leaves a sour sense that the Prime Minister frankly could not care very much about this place and what we think, and a worrying sense that the Government are making it all up on their own. There is no worse way to go about constitutional change.
The noble and learned Lord seemed to suggest that the Government plan to plunge ahead on legislation next Session on the basis of as yet half-baked plans. Surely, in our hospitals and schools, there are far more urgent matters affecting this country and better deserving the attention of the Prime Minister and the time of this House.
§ 3.27 p.m.
§ Lord McNallyMy Lords, I do not intend to follow the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, with a barrage of detailed questions about the legal changes, because I know that there are many in this House who are more qualified than Ito do so. Indeed, we may even get some penetrating questions from the Government Back Benches.
I draw the attention of the Leader of the House to the headline in today's Evening Standard:
Blunkett admits: The reshuffle was bungled".I put it to the Lord President that it would have been a better and more efficient use of the time of both Houses if the Prime Minister had simply admitted that.I believe that this episode over the past five days highlights a piece of wisdom from the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, who, it will be recalled, said, "Every Prime Minister needs a Willie". It is abundantly clear that this Prime Minister lacks somebody with empathy and sympathy for how Parliament works to help him in his dealings.
It was said to me many years ago, when I worked on the Cook-Maclennan committee, "the problem is that Tony is not interested in these matters". There is every sign that since Robin Cook left the Government nobody is really interested in this. Does the noble and learned Lord agree that since the Government pretty well worked through the agenda that Cook-Maclennan supplied, they have become increasingly accident-prone in dealing with constitutional matters.
The Prime Minister surely has to learn that government by a No. 10 cabal is not the most effective form of government. The noble Lord, Lord Butler, gave a very pointed lecture some time ago about the weakness of Cabinet government under this Prime Minister. It 814 shows in activities such as this. The Prime Minister must realise that the handling of constitutional reform needs cross-party co-operation and a great deal more consultation than has been revealed today. Will the Lord President accept the heartfelt message from these Benches that we are the Liberal Democrats, and we are here to help you?
§ Lord McNallyMy Lords, I have only to list my noble friends Lord Holme, Lord Tordoff, Lord Goodhart—our very own Willie—Lord Lester, Lord Phillips, Lord Carlile, and Lord Thomas. any one of whom could have given the Prime Minister better advice than was available to him last Thursday when he wandered into this disastrous minefield, this self-inflicted shambles.
We welcome the splitting of the triple role of the Lord Chancellor. Is this the end of the matter? Does the Home Secretary now have a permanent veto on the setting up of a department of justice? As regards the Scottish and Welsh responsibilities, does the Lord President agree that eventually this would be far better handled by a department of the nations and regions—another good Liberal Democrat idea?
The whole package of reform is needed for direction, not least for the urgent reform of this House. I watched the Prime Minister's performance today, and instead of running rings around Mr Ian Duncan Smith—which he did, and which is very easily done—he might have done better to take a leaf out of Lord Whitelaw's book. He would have said "sorry chaps; bit of a horlicks; learnt the lessons; will consult better in the future—and meanwhile, I have asked Jonathan Powell to get all the Liberal Democrat policy documents on constitutional reform, and I will read them".
§ 3.32 p.m.
§ Lord Williams of MostynMy Lords, even déjà vu is not what it used to be. I always listen carefully to everything said to me by any member of the Liberal Democrat Party. I found interesting the catalogue of grace and honour that the noble Lord, Lord McNally, read out as those who might be useful advisers to the Prime Minister: the one missing name was the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Crosby.
Was Mr Blunkett right?
Mr Blunkett maintained that the fundamental decision—to replace the Lord Chancellor with a new constitutional affairs minister and a supreme court at the top of the legal tree—was right".I agree with Mr Blunkett. Your Lordships will not want me to waste too much time; I recognise, as the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, demonstrated. that the old jokes are always the best, but in this House, above all, I suggest that we concentrate on substance, not surface.I also witnessed the Prime Minister demonstrate his superiority in the House of Commons at Question Time. These are the questions he put. Three discrete 815 reforms are offered; first, the setting up of a supreme court, seen to be and wholly separate from this House; secondly, the voluntary abdication of political ministerial power to appoint—and to discipline—the judiciary; and thirdly, to invite this House to consider proposals which it may come to in its own way, in its own time, about appointing a presiding officer or Speaker. Throughout none of our debate have I heard any suggestion that those first two discrete policy proposals were wrong. I imagine that we shall he waiting a long time before we hear a reasoned objection to them. It was a rhetorical question in the Prime Minister's Statement that he doubted whether any political party likely to come to power would ever seek to reverse these charges.
§ Lord Williams of MostynMy Lords, I am grateful for that correction.
We do not really want any more knockabout about the Secretaries of State for Scotland and Wales, do we? If we do. I will be tempted to bring out some quotations that I prepared earlier. After the 1997 elections—noble Lords on the Benches opposite will remember that—the Tories were left with no Scottish and Welsh MPs, and Mr Hague, the then leader, abolished the separate Shadow Cabinet posts of Scottish and Welsh Secretaries. Later, the post was merged with the role of Leader of the Commons, and held by Sir George Young and then by Angela Browning: so can we stop having silly jokes about "part-time leader"? It is interesting and amusing the first 12 times, but not after that. I have another quotation:
It is clear that there is a requirement to retain the post of Secretary of State for Scotland but that it is a much reduced role".That was Sir Malcolm Rifkind.Now for the supreme court.
I must accept that we would need a supreme court of the kind that the United States has. 1 believe that the Supreme Court has served the US extraordinarily well … I would have thought that something akin to the US Supreme Court would be a necessary adjunct to an elected upper Chamber".—[Official Report, Commons,1/2/99; col.653.]That was Mr Eric Forth.
§ 3.36 p.m.
§ Lord WaddingtonMy Lords, I could hardly believe my ears, but am I right that there was no plain reference in the Prime Minister's Statement today that last Thursday, without any consultation, he announced his intention to abolish the historic office of Lord Chancellor? Of course Prime Ministers are entitled to make decisions designed to improve the machinery of government, but does the noble and learned Lord really think it proper for a Prime Minister to claim the right to announce the abolition of a great office of state without any prior consultation whatsoever?
§ Lord Williams of MostynMy Lords, what the Prime Minister said—and it was worth listening to him in the 816 House of Commons earlier, for he repeated it—was that he was bringing forward proposals that would require statutory approval. The noble Lord, Lord Waddington, knows as well as I do, because we were both at the Bar, that none of these changes to the Lord Chancellorship, and the supreme court and the appointment of judges—
§ Lord WaddingtonThis was my question. Why did the Prime Minister say last Thursday that he was going to see abolished the office of Lord Chancellor without any prior consultation?
§ Lord Williams of MostynMy Lords, what the Prime Minister said was that that was his proposal. The noble Lord, Lord Waddington, and I, and many other lawyers in the House, and those who are not lawyers, know perfectly well that the changes to the Lord Chancellorship, the setting-up of an independent supreme court, and the devolution of political power for the appointment of judges cannot be brought about without legislative change. As the Prime Minister repeated today, they cannot go through without going through both Houses of Parliament.
I invited your Lordships to look at substance, not surface. Let us attend to the principle of whether these two reforms in the legal context are good. In due time, although we may be waiting a long time, we will have the defined view of the Opposition about these changes. We have heard the defined view, plainly expressed, of the noble Lord, Lord McNally, on behalf of his party. We, as a separate and important House of Parliament, are entitled to know the Opposition view in principle, and the country is entitled to know it also.
§ Lord Lloyd of BerwickMy Lords—
§ Lord NasebyMy Lords—
§ The Earl of OnslowMy Lords—
§ Earl RussellMy Lords—
§ Lord Maclennan of RogartMy Lords—
§ Baroness Symons of Vernham DeanMy Lords, let us be sensible. Perhaps we can start with the Cross Benches.
§ Lord Lloyd of BerwickMy Lords, it is a very short question. In the Statement, if I heard it correctly, it is said that the Lords of Appeal will become a fully independent supreme court. I wonder whether the noble and learned Lord will say in what respect the current Law Lords of Appeal are not fully independent? If it is because the Lord Chancellor is entitled to sit as a Lord of Appeal, which in my 817 experience he hardly ever does, would it not have been simpler to say that in future he should not so sit, in which case everything could have continued as before?
§ Lord Williams of MostynMy Lords, I am most obliged to the noble and learned Lord. I am so sorry that he is suffering from what I am suffering from, I think—
§ Lord Lloyd of BerwickMy voice has just come back.
§ Lord Williams of MostynI am just about to lose mine.
Of course, the sitting of the Lord Chancellor, which is anomalous in the view of many of us as a matter of principle, leads to the view that we have not an apparently independent supreme court. I entirely accept the thrust of what the noble and learned Lord said. There still remains the fact that judges who sit in the House of Lords judicially can vote on legislation in this Chamber and speak about legislation in this Chamber. Therefore, they are engaging themselves in political activity. I accept that a number of the noble and learned Lord's colleagues—the noble and learned Lords, Lord Steyn, I think, and the Master of the Rolls—have specifically said that they will not use their rights. However, it is better, I believe, to have a principled constitutional settlement on these matters.
§ Lord NasebyMy Lords, the Leader of the House suggested that this was all planned and thought about. Why was it not in the Queen's Speech? What emergency has transpired in the past week that ensures that we have to decide all these matters within the four weeks left to us for sitting, subject to progress of business, plus the two weeks in September? First, what is it that drives that degree of speed in ensuring that the Lord Chancellor's role is dramatically changed? Secondly, how long is the present Lord Chancellor to do the job of the current Lord Chancellor and of the new Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs?
§ Lord Williams of MostynMy Lords, I do not think that these matters were in the Queen's Speech. However, the necessary corollary of that—it is the trap which the noble Lord has laid for himself, and I am just observing that he has fallen into it—is that no government policy would ever be brought forward following a Queen's Speech. That is a manifest, self-evident absurdity.
§ Lord NasebyWhat is the emergency?
§ Lord Williams of MostynThere is no emergency, my Lords. It is the fact that these proposals have been intensely debated and discussed by lawyers for at least the past 10 years. It is not necessary for there to be an emergency to bring about reform. I have never heard 818 such a proposition before. I think that, on reflection, the noble Lord will think that he made rather a poor point.
§ Lord Maclennan of RogartMy Lords—
§ Lord CrickhowellMy Lords—
§ Earl RussellMy Lords—
§ Baroness Symons of Vernham DeanMy Lords, I think that we should take a Liberal Democrat Back-Bencher. I suggest the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan.
§ Lord Maclennan of RogartMy Lords, the noble and learned Lord the Lord President may have been at some risk of confusing substance with surface when he referred to the opinion of Mr Eric Forth and prayed it in evidence in support of the Government's view that there should be a supreme court. I am not aware that the Government are advocating anything like the United States Supreme Court where the membership is subjected to bitter cross-party criticism and where a serious attack is currently under way on the political complexion of the court. I hope that he will make it absolutely plain that the Government have no such thought in mind.
Will the noble and learned Lord also please recognise that although the proposals for the future of the judiciary and the separation of powers may enjoy a strong lineage in the policy of the Liberal Democrat Party and in the opinion of judges in this country, to embark upon political reforms of this kind requires the consent of a much wider section of public opinion and to make these announcements without trailing them as government policy, never mind in any kind of pre-election manifesto, is to seek to bounce some of the most important constitutional changes and to put at risk their acceptance?
§ Lord Williams of MostynNo, my Lords. First, what I pointed out was that such material as is available about the thinking of the current Conservative Front Bench is to be found in the words of Mr Forth; other than that I have heard nothing. We are not suggesting that there should be a supreme court on the United States model. For my own part I entirely agree with the noble Lord's observations about the supreme court.
What we have done is perfectly reasonable. We have set out elements of government policy. I confine myself, as the noble Lord did, to the legal reforms. We have said that we shall publish before the recess, which is only a matter of a few weeks away, consultative documents, one for each topic. Following a substantial period of consultation, we shall reflect on what the advice has been from various quarters, including all sections of public opinion. We would then propose to bring forward legislation. I repeat: it cannot be put into effect without both Chambers having been consulted on it carefully. I still await from the Conservative Party an answer to the question of what 819 is its attitude to the principle of the changes. I hear the noble Baroness saying from a seated position, "What does it matter?" I cannot improve on that.
§ Lord DesaiMy Lords, is my noble and learned friend aware that this Chamber has twice had discussions, initiated by the noble Lords, Lord Lester and Lord Patten, about the appropriate role of the Lord Chancellor and the necessity of a supreme court? I myself tabled a Question arising from the Guernsey case about the Lord Chancellor's independence in these matters. Does my noble and learned friend therefore agree that the Members of this House have had our own discussions? By and large, in the light of those discussions, we should welcome the changes, which are consequent upon the Human Rights Act.
§ Lord Williams of MostynMy Lords, my noble friend is quite right. We have discussed these issues on many occasions. I agree with his recollection that often they have been at the request of the Liberal Democrats, in particular the noble Lords, Lord Goodhart and Lord Lester. Many of us thought that many of the submissions they put forward had a good deal of merit.
§ Lord CrickhowellMy Lords, last week the Government issued a list of ministerial responsibilities under the new regime, putting the junior Wales Minister in the Department for Constitutional Affairs, but made no reference at all to the continuation of the Wales Office. The Scotland Office took down the brass plate, then put it up again. We now have an interesting and novel statement by the Prime Minister that the civil servants in those departments will continue as part of the Department for Constitutional Affairs, apparently solely to ensure that they do not move should the Cabinet Ministers change.
However, there is a more important and serious issue. Probably the most significant responsibility remaining with the Secretary of State for Wales after the devolution settlement is to fight for proper resources for Wales where that is not provided for automatically under the Barnett formula, and, secondly, to ensure that the legislative interests of Wales are properly looked after. May I have clarification? Is the responsibility of the Lord Chancellor and his department solely to ensure that the civil servants do not have the inconvenience of moving, or does he have a role in these matters? In other words, is the junior Minister for Wales answerable only to the Leader of the House of Commons, or does he have a dual responsibility? What exactly is the division of responsibilities? I think it rather important that we should know exactly where responsibilities lie.
§ Lord Williams of MostynWell, my Lords, it is not difficult. The noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, defines two of the important aspects of Mr Hain's work. The question of whether the civil servants report directly to the Minister but are nevertheless for administrative purposes attached to the new Department for Constitutional Affairs is by no means novel; there are many precedents for it. There is no difficulty at all. 820 Indeed, it is a necessary and desirable consequence of a successful devolution settlement in Wales that—as as time continues and the Assembly becomes more confident, more trusted and better regarded by public opinion—the residual roles of the Secretary of State for Wales and the Secretary of State for Scotland should be reviewed. There is nothing odd about that. It would have been a manifest absurdity following devolution to allow two Secretaries of State to occupy full-time posts in the Cabinet.
§ The Earl of OnslowMy Lords—
§ Baroness Symons of Vernham DeanMy Lords, we have had three Conservative interventions and only one Liberal Democrat, so perhaps we may hear from the noble Earl, Lord Russell.
§ Earl RussellMy Lords, I draw the attention of the noble and learned Lord the Lord President to the government of Scotland with no knockabout purpose. Will he remember that the existence of separate governments in London and Edinburgh has happened before? When it did, their relationship was managed through a very close personal relationship between the Earl of Mar, the Lord Treasurer of Scotland, and the Earl of Kellie, head of the King's personal staff in Whitehall. It was a relationship less close only than that which unites their successor. That type of relationship, though not full-time, was clearly identified, worked well and had a lot to commend it.
Will the noble and learned Lord also instruct the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, a little further on the West Lothian question? I once had the strange privilege of leading on a Higher Education (Scotland) Bill, which was never going to affect me. I said this gave rise to a West London question. Would the noble and learned Lord agree that so long as we have a Union and two separate systems of law, there must be either a West Lothian question or a West London question? Only those who have complained about the West London question are now entitled to complain about the West Lothian question.
§ Lord Williams of MostynMy Lords, I think the noble Earl is a better pedagogue than I should ever seek to be and I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, has learnt and inwardly digested the lesson that has been put. It occurs to me that if there was once an Earl of Mar and once an Earl of Kellie, their relationship must have been very close.
§ Lord EltonMy Lords, in his summary of the Prime Minister's statement in another place, the Leader of the House said that the House of Lords is invited in its own way and in its own time to come to a conclusion on the question of speakership. Can we therefore take it that we will no longer be required to get all our comments on this proposal to the Leader by the end of this week, as he said originally?
Secondly, in that earlier statement he made, the Leader of the House said that people who talked about anything outside the question of the speakership 821 would be wasting their time. However, the issues are inextricably inter-related, because by abolishing the post of Lord Chancellor and taking away his powers, the Government will remove one of the two ex officio voices that this House has in Cabinet. That is a serious matter, which brings us into the whole of the rest. If we have to have the answers in by the weekend, we shall be like a patient on the operating table consulting with the surgeon as he has the knife poised. Could we not have had proper consultation before?
§ Lord Williams of MostynMy Lords, I tried to make this plain, but I failed. I think the noble Lord, Lord Elton, is worrying and troubling in vain. I suggested that my door would be open. It has been a rapidly revolving door. I had the most helpful submissions from your Lordships from all over the House—some in writing and some face-to-face. All of them, without exception, were well worth listening to.
I suggested on the last occasion that I would take soundings to see if there was a consensus for a way forward. It would have been absurd to suggest that everyone had to put their ideas forward by Friday. It would never have been accepted or put forward by me.
Because I knew that your Lordships wanted to be kept fully in the picture, I asked whether we could find a consensus about a way forward—in other words, process. I am most obliged to the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, who put it better than I have.
I was hoping, if circumstances allowed—to use the words I used earlier—to be able to come back to your Lordships' House next Wednesday. I hope that reassures the noble Lord.
§ Lord DubsMy Lords, is my noble and learned friend aware how welcome the thrust of the Government's policies is? If he made a single error in what he said, it was when he referred to the fact that the issues have been discussed for the past 10 years. I would suggest it has been a lot longer than that. Many of us are absolutely delighted.
Does my noble and learned friend further agree that of course the opposition parties, particularly the Conservatives, are entitled to have a bit of political point scoring? That is all they have. Some of us are waiting to see what constructive views will be expressed by the opposition parties on these proposals. We want them and we want them quickly.
§ Lord Williams of MostynMy Lords, my noble friend Lord Dubs put it admirably well.
§ The Earl of OnslowMy Lords—
§ The Countess of MarMy Lords—
§ The Countess of MarMy Lords, I speak as somebody who is totally neutral politically and who is well known to he. In view of the fact that I could not 822 be in the House last week and I got all my information from the radio and newspapers, perhaps I may ask the Leader of the House, whether he accepts that there was a terrible hiatus over Thursday and Friday.
Now that the dust has settled and information is coming out, that is ok. However, he must admit that there was a very bad presentation of the changes on Thursday and that we deserve to have that acknowledged instead of denied.
§ Lord Williams of MostynMy Lords, I am so sorry that the noble Countess was not here when I made my Statement. On two occasions I said—I think I am quoting myself accurately—that there were feelings of "mortification", "disappointment" and anger and a feeling that we have not been treated with proper courtesy, and that if that were the position, I regretted it and I apologise. I do not think I can be more straightforward than that.