Lords of the Blog

Yesterday a Private Members Bill was introduced in the House of Lords by Lord Archer of Sandwell QC, former Labour Solicitor-General. The bill was drafted by a human rights organisation REDRESS (www.redress.org) which has worked for 20 years to eradicate torture and force governments to carry out their obligations as a signatory to the UN Convention against Torture.

Briefly, the bill sets out an exception to the 1978 State Immunity Act. This Act stipulates that no country has the right to interfere with the jurisdiction of another country. However there are a few exception mostly to do with commercial law. The Torture Damages Bill argues that there must also be an exception for the intolerable practice of torture. Thus any torture survivor (of which there are many thousands in the UK alone), who has access to the UK lawcourts should be able to bring a case  for damages against a state and its agents who have been responsible for torture and who hitherto have refused to consider the case within their own legal systems.

ALL peers spoke in favour of the bill and many harrowing testimonies were repeated in various speeches (www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200708/ldhansard/index/080516.html) . However, the Minister - Lord Hunt of King’s Heath- who wound up the debate while not opposing the bill went on to spell out some of its drawbacks: even if a State were judged guilty in a UK court of law it would be impossible to enforce the judgement - seizure of assets might result in retaliatory action. In additon since State Immunity is a fundamental principle of International Law even if this bill were to be enacted in the UK there might be further difficulties.

Our answer to this is extensive research shows that torture survivors have a desparate need for the awful wrong done to them to be acknowledged publicly. Compensation in the form of money is a far lesser priority. These victims have a right to justice and part of this is a formal statement of their torturers’ actions and culpability.

We would further argue that International Law is a living, changing animal - constantly evolving to meet the demands of ever more complex societies. It is by no means inconceivable that the principle of State Immunity would in due course admit the exemption of torture. If the UK were to take this courageous step -who knows what could follow.

We will fight on.

In a previous post, I argued the value of undertaking comparative analysis.  Yesterday I chaired a seminar at the Lords addressed by Keizo Takemi, who has served as a Government Minister in Japan and was a member of the country’s elected second chamber, the House of Councillors, from 1995 to 2007.  Though he argued that election increases legitimacy, he explained that achieving a second chamber that fulfilled its functions effectively had proved difficult.  There had been two major reforms since an elected House was established after the Second World War.   Without agreement between the two Houses, legislation falls.  There were obvious problems resulting from opposition parties having gained control of the second chamber.  Looking at the UK, he argued that if one tried to create a part-elected chamber, the pressures for it to be wholly elected would be irresitible.

His talk tended to reinforce the findings of Meg Russell of University College London.  Her research of various second chambers found that it was common for the second chamber to be the subject of political controversy. 

I had a quick look at the statistics for the blog early this morning.  By that stage, as is usual, it had only attracted a small number of visitors.  By chance, I looked again at lunchtime and the line on the graph had suddenly shot up, way beyond the normal daily traffic.  I kept checking - the figure reached four-figures and continued climbing.  By this evening, we had the largest numbers of visitors since the record first day.

What could have caused this sudden popularity?  Had Lord Soley’s comments on China elicited a sudden interest in Asia?  Had my question on the number of hereditary peers sitting in the Commons attracted the attention of pub quizmasters up and down the country?  In fact, the increase is attributable to coverage of the blog in Germany on Spiegel Online:

http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/0,1518,553379,00.html

It is perhaps appropriate that we should attract interest from Germany given that it also has a distinctive second chamber, the Bundesrat (pictured).  It is a powerful second chamber, though not directly elected.  It comprises representatives from the sixteen state governments and is a significant actor in protecting their interests.  It is also notable that when legislative chambers in EU countries are mentioned for producing some influential work on EU matters, it is often second chambers that are to the fore; among those variously singled out are the House of Lords and the Bundesrat.

When there was trouble in Tibet China stopped the worlds media from seeing what was happening. They paid a high price and eventually ended up in some form of talks with the Dalai Lama - although I am not wildly optimistic about the outcome.

Then the earthquake strikes and China opens up to the world in a way that they were previously very reluctant to do. Media coverage is dangerous for the government of China because the population knows that modern buildings should be able to withstand even severe quakes of this type. We are already hearing the population complaining about corruption and poor building standards.

What we are witnessing is a China that is struggling between the old authoritarian and secretive mode and the modern and open system of government that is necessary if the country really is to be able to complete the modernisation process.

Sometimes this is about an internal struggle. I am reminded of a visit to the Labour party by a senior Chinese Communist party (which means government) delegation in the 1990’s who wanted to know how a modern political party works. At the end of the visit I took the group onto the terrace of the House of Commons for a drink. Their leader asked me how I thought China was doing. A big question! I replied that I thought they were doing very well on the economy, and that I was impressed by the efforts they were making to introduce the rule of law even though they had some way to go. I then said that I was worried about their inability to deal with a crisis of leadership because they had no democratic way of changing leaders and China’s history is very problematic in this respect. His reply was wonderful. He leaned forward and said “You may be worried Mr Soley, but not as worried as we are”! So I knew they were aware of the critical importance of this issue. Other members of the leadership in China would not have said this and would have tried to reassure me that the Communist Party would always do the right thing.

Finally my visitor asked me what advice I could give them on governing China! I pointed out that we had difficulty governing Britain at times and we only had a population of 60 million, so I wanted to be a bit cautious in my advice! We had a long and interesting conversation!

How many hereditary peers sit in Parliament?  If you think the answer is 92 - the number prescribed by the House of Lords Act 1999 - you would be wrong. 

There are indeed 92 hereditary peers who sit in the Lords by virtue of the 1999 Act.  However, there are other hereditary peers who also sit. 

First, there are hereditary peers who sit by virtue of having life peerages conferred on them.  At the time of the 1999 Act, life peerages were offered to those hereditaries, such as Lord Carrington, who had previously served as Leaders of the House.  Since 1999, a number of Labour and Liberal Democrat hereditary peers have been brought back by their parties as life peers.  Indeed, more Labour hereditaries sit as life peers than Labour peers who sit as hereditaries under the provisions of the 1999 Act.

Second, it is a bit of a trick question: I asked how many hereditary peers sit in Parliament, not how many sit in the House of Lords.   Since the 1999 Act, it has been possible for hereditary peers excluded under the Act to seek election to the House of Commons.  The passage of the Act has also meant that heirs to hereditary peerages who sit in the Commons no longer have to disclaim their titles in order to remain in the Commons.   There are now three hereditary peers sitting in the House of Commons, one who has previously sat in the Lords and two sitting MPs who succeeded on the death of their fathers.  Given that one is a Marquess and two are Viscounts, the body of hereditary peers sitting in the House of Commons is grander than the body of peers (mostly Barons) sitting in the Lords!

The quiz question is: can you name the three hereditary peers sitting in the House of Commons?  I should add that none of the three uses his title.

I spent most of today chairing an interview panel for posts at the History of Parliament.  I am a Trustee of the History.  It is one of the largest and most comprehensive research projects in British history, presently employing 25 research staff.  It began formally in 1951 and has published eight sets of volumes covering different periods of the history of the House of Commons.  More recently, it has begun work on the House of Lords and next year will begin looking at the House of Commons after 1832.  

The result is a remarkable and indeed essential resource for any serious scholar of the history of Parliament.   The intention is to make greater use of the Internet in order to ensure that material is made available to a wider audience.

More details can be found on the History website: http://www.histparl.ac.uk

Fortunately, the interviews finished on time, enabling me to get back to the House in time for the Joint Committee on the Draft Constitutional Renewal Bill.  We are now meeting on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.   The Bill is designed to affect the relationship between Parliament and Government, a relationship that has been a matter of uncertainty, adjustment and conflict throughout the history of Parliament.  Given that we have to report before the end of July, I have not suggested to my colleagues that they read all volumes produced by the History!

Many years have passed since Roy Plomley first introduced Desert Island Discs on the BBC. The sound of breaking waves, with seagulls in the background, has always remained in my memory.
Imagine my surprise when Ann & I were invited by Ravi Mehotra CBE on his Indian Ocean cruise as a guest lecturer. It was a journey of a life-time, cruising to Lakshadweep islands which lie in the hub of the Arabian - African - Asian trade routes.
How many of us can identify the location of these islands on a map?
Most of us have heard of the Maldives but few realise that there are a series of islands in the Indian Ocean. They provide the quintessential uninhabited paradise with sun drenched coral sand beaches, coconut palms swaying in the wind, lapped by the gentle waters of naturally formed lagoons. These are the worlds most spectacular tropical island systems, tucked away about 180 miles off the Malabar Coast of India. There are 36 Islands and each one is fringed by white coral sands. The water is crystal clear and the rich marine life is a joy to watch.
The 14 day cruise began in Goa with stops at Mangalore, the island of Suheli, Cochin, Colombo in Sri Lanka, Trivandrum and the island of Cheriyam before finishing back in Goa. Suheli and Cheriyam are uninhabited islands in the Lakshadweep system. Darwin theorised that the base of the islands below the reef is volcanic over which the coral settled. In 1799 the islands were annexed to the British East India Company but they became Indian Union territory in 1956. The only commercial crop is coconuts. Slow-moving sea cucumbers, shelled molluscs, hermit crabs, shrimp and lobsters inhabit the reefs with dolphins, turtles, rays and even flying fish making occasional appearances.
The islands were a magnet for a care free life. Almost all the facilities including a beach barbecue and cold drink containers were transported from the ship to shore. It was a real treat to sit and drink and relax amongst this stunning and largely untouched splendour.
But then it wasn’t simply the islands. To and fro we went down India’s coastline touching wonderful places like Cochin in Kerala
Old Cochin centres around Mattancherry Palace, where the nearby fort lies in ruins. Mattancherry Palace was presented to the Raja of Kochi by the Portuguese in 1557 in exchange for trading rights and it served as a backdrop for coronations of the Cochin Rajas.
We stayed in Colombo, Sri Lanka for two days. It is a beautiful and diverse city. Rather than visiting the Elephant Orphanage, a wonderful tour that we have done before, we enjoyed the hospitality at the Mt Lavinia Hotel. Many cameras have clicked here to photograph the stunning sunset for which the hotel is famous.
The cruise was full of other activities. Visiting Captain Mirko Vranicic on the bridge and being guided into port by Dolphins will remain lasting memories.
Then there were Indian cooking classes, bridge playing and matinee movies, as well as the usual casino, spa and beauty salon and dancing to the ship’s band. On this day I sang for my supper, giving two speeches. The first, ‘From Pier to Peer’, was about my life in politics. The second, ‘An Audience with Lord Dholakia’ was a more general opportunity for guests to talk with me and ask any questions they had.
We very much enjoyed this opportunity to spend our recess in such a relaxing way. It was a pleasure to be on a ship with an informal atmosphere, no dress code, and a friendly, and relatively small, group of other guests. It was also a joy to be able to visit wonderful places with, unusually for us, the time to actually enjoy them.
The world is changing fast. Climate change may mean that some of these islands will disappear over a period of time. To see the vastness of the ocean with the abundance of marine life made me realise how important it is to protect what is left.
This is a legacy we must leave for our children.

For further details contact
www.indianoceancruises.net

 Lord Tyler’s post touches upon a question variously raised in class discussions on the Lords: why do members need to have expertise in a particular field when you can call experts to give evidence?  There are several fairly straightforward reasons.  They apply with particular force to committee work but are relevant also to debate in the chamber.

The value of having members who have some knowledge or expertise in a particular subject is that they know what questions to ask, know the value of the answers and know how to assimilate the evidence for the purpose of reaching conclusions.   They can engage in a proper dialogue with those who are called to provide evidence.  Otherwise, the danger is that the experts will be on top rather than on tap and that there will be capture by a particular interest represented by one or two experts. 

Apart from drawing on research, I speak as someone who not only serves on committees but has also appeared as a witness before committees in both Houses (and in other parliamentary assemblies).  It is fairly obvious when members of a committee are the creatures of their specialist advisers, reading out prepared questions, unable to follow-up with informed supplementaries, and either haven’t read or haven’t understood the written submissions.   Having a number of members with expertise in different aspects of the committee’s work makes for informed inquiries and avoids capture. 

Witnesses may be a little daunted by the membership of a committee but it ensures that they take the committee seriously and an informed committee may be a somewhat more friendly environment than one where members may feel they have to prove themselves.

Being an expert on one topic, of course, does not make you an expert on other topics.  You can thus serve as an intellegent layperson for the purpose of discussing most issues.  There is value in having those who take a detached view, though one has to be able to distinguish between common sense, prejudice and an inability or unwillingness to engage with research.  For my own part, I often find debates in the Lords highly educative: I sometimes go into the chamber expecting to be there for only a few minutes and end up staying for two or three hours because of the quality of the debate.  I have certainly been swayed in my voting behaviour by listening to informed argument. 

I would argue that the need for the Lords to be a House of experience and expertise is greater now than ever before for two reasons.  One is that there has been a growth not only in the volume but also the complexity of legislation.  Some regulatory measures are extraordinarily complex and one needs members with a good knowledge of the subject matter for the purpose of detailed scrutiny.   The second reason is the growth of the career politician in the Commons (as so ably chronicled by Peter Riddell in his book Honest Opportunism).   They enter Parliament earlier than their predecessors and make a career in the House.  That, coupled with the growing demands of constituency work, make them full-time politicians.   As members of the elected chamber, they engage in the grand debate and the battle between the parties.  They don’t necessarily have the time or the political will to engage in sometimes detailed, highly technical scrutiny.  That is where the Lords comes in.   It complements the work of the elected House in a way that I think is effective.  We could do even better but what we do we do well.  I would like us to build on strength.

The independent crossbench peers number about 200 and include about 30 hereditary peers. As some will remember the reforms of 1999 threw out the vast majority of hereditary peers (about 700) but a last minute deal allowed 92 to remain in the House of Lords until the second phase of reform (more about this another time - watch this space).

Sadly a much respected peer, who was wheelchair bound, died a couple of months ago leading to arrangements to elect a replacement hereditary peer, over 150 of whom have been waiting in the wings since 1999.

The competition is fierce - something like 30 peers have put their names forward for election. This will take place on 22nd May and is conducted under the strictest possible rules supervised by the Electoral Reform Services. Those eligible to vote are the existing hereditary peers in the Crossbench grouping.

Meanwhile I have invited the contenders to an informal meeting tomorrow morning in order to give them a chance to say why they want to return to the HoL and what they will contribute. This will also give us, the Independent Crossbenchers, an opportunity to ask some searching questions. We will be interested in finding out what kind of time commitment potential candidates are willing to set aside for parliamentary business, what specialist knowledge would they be able to offer, and most of all how far are they able to demonstrate a degree of political independence.

It is easy to assert a lack of political bias - but if the candidates have previously applied for vacancies arising on the Tory, Labour or LibDem benches - then we are entitled to be a little sceptical? And many, so anxious to return to this Chamber, have indeed previously registered as Tory or LibDem supporters.

We are also keen that someone below the age of 80 elected! The average age of peers in the HoL is 68 years and it would be great to have a youngster of let us say 50?

The hereditary principle may be unpopular and outdated and the 1999 reforms certainly addressed this. But this is not to say that individual hereditary peers elected by fair and free means cannot bring to the House of Lords some specialist professional competence and genuine impartiality. This is what keeps the Indpendent Crossbench Peers going.

The first meetings of the Joint Committee which is going to examine the Draft Constitutional Renewal Bill took place last week, as Lord Norton has already reported. The team undertaking this “pre-legislative scrutiny” is formidable indeed. Looking round the table and noting a bevy of professors, distinguished lawyers and former very senior civil servants - not to mention some very clever MPs from all three parties - I was again struck by a dilemma : do we want legislators to be experts themselves, or do we want them to have broad judgement to be able to decide which experts to trust?

I often hear people (and not always Peers themselves) saying how wonderful it is that the Lords contains so many experts. The problem with this is that we are mostly, by definition “ex-experts”. By the time a lawyer, general, doctor or any other professional has reached the top of that tree, and has been appointed to sit in the Lords, he or she will probably have retired and will soon be out of touch. After five or ten years they certainly will be less likely to have kept up-to-date.

Yet when a Committee like this one invites evidence from serving academics, civil servants or campaigners they may well feel intimidated by the ranks of “Great & Good” around the table.

I don’t claim any specialist expertise, but (I hope) I have acquired some commonsense through a range of jobs and experience in the real world, outside as well as inside politics. The most impressive Peers, to my mind, are those who use their judgement based on what they see today, rather than rely on the crutch of outdated “expertise” to support their preconceptions!