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Sir Patrick Cormack (South Staffordshire): I hope that the hon. Member for Swansea, East (Mr. Anderson) feels a lot better for getting that off his chest. It was a peroration reminiscent of John of Gaunt on his deathbed. I shall not attempt to follow him, but I wish him an extremely happy holiday.
I direct the House's attention to a matter that I consider to be of particular concern. I refer to a headline in yesterday's edition of The Daily Telegraph, which said, "Backwoodsmen save asylum Bill".
Mr. Dennis Skinner (Bolsover):
Do you still read The Daily Telegraph?
Sir Patrick Cormack:
Of course I do. I emulate the hon. Gentleman's wonderful example. However, I shall not allow him to distract me.
I refer to the headline because I think that it highlights a matter that ought to be of acute concern to all parliamentarians: the relationship between the two Houses, especially the future of the House of Lords. It is a great pity that we are adjourning for the summer recess and returning for a brief spillover session without provision for a debate on the constitution. The other week, the other place had a very fine two-day debate on the constitution, in which many admirable speeches were made--not on both sides of the argument but on every side of it, since it is a many-sided and multi-faceted argument.
We trifle with the delicate balance of our constitution at our peril. The Labour party's proposals are fraught with danger. However, my main reason for addressing the House is that I do not believe that one can defend the automatic right of every hereditary peer to sit, speak and vote in the House of Lords.
I speak as one who basically believes in the composition and powers of the House of Lords--the powers are about right. It is a revising Chamber, a Chamber with the power to delay and to tell us to think again. It has been an extremely good institution over the past 17 years. On a number of occasions, particularly in the days when we enjoyed a very large majority in this House, the House of Lords told us to think again. In doing so, it often exercised collective wisdom of a high degree of excellence.
I think in particular of the House of Lords' rejection of the War Crimes Bill. We were most unwise to override it on that occasion. Nevertheless, when we overrode their lordships, we were doing what was constitutionally proper. It was entirely legitimate for the Government of the day to override the Lords' decision on the basis that the will of the elected House should not be superseded. That is an admirable constitutional doctrine, to which I subscribe.
However, I do not subscribe--the Leader of the House will not be surprised to hear me say this as I have said it to him privately--to using so-called backwoodsmen to vote down what is manifestly the desire of a majority of the active, participating peers in the other place. I do not want to debate the merits of the Asylum and Immigration Bill this morning. Those who were present for the debate know that I am sympathetic to the three-day amendment that came from the House of Lords. Again, I do not question the constitutional propriety of the Government's
attempt to overturn that amendment. Had the Lords inserted another amendment on Monday of this week, and had we debated it today, it would also have been entirely legitimate for the Government to try to persuade their supporters here to disagree with the Lords in their amendment.
However, it is most unwise, although constitutionally perfectly proper, to bring into the Division Lobbies in the other place peers who rarely attend or take part in the deliberations there and who come up specifically to vote after a debate in which they have taken no part. Of course they have the right to vote, just as Her Majesty the Queen has the right to refuse the Royal Assent to any Act of Parliament that we pass. No monarch since Queen Anne has exercised that right, and it would provoke a constitutional crisis of the utmost magnitude if Her Majesty ever did so. I believe that a similar reticence ought to possess many of the hereditary peers.
I happen to believe also that the House of Lords as constituted now has a great deal to commend it. I should hate to see it become the creature of placemen and party. The Cross-Bench element contributes enormously to our constitution, consisting as it does of men and women of great eminence and distinction debating issues on their merits without feeling that they have to look over their shoulders to party bosses or constituents. That has a great deal to commend it, too.
The active, regularly attending hereditary element in the other place, who include some extremely able young men and women, make a real contribution as well. By way of reform, and following the precedent of the Acts of Union of 1707 and 1801, I should like the hereditary peers to be confined to a certain number, selected on a basis to be agreed--perhaps elected by themselves. They include, as I say, many who are diligent in their attendance, eloquent in their contributions and emphatic in the mark that they make.
I must tell the Leader of the House, at a time when the whole future balance of Parliament is at issue, that it is unwise in the extreme to call out these "backwoodsmen" for particular votes such as the recent one.
Mr. Donald Anderson:
The same happened with nursery vouchers.
Sir Patrick Cormack:
Quite so. Again, I do not intend to discuss the merits of that argument. Suffice it to say that, in respect of the asylum arrangements, I was on the side of the Lords; on nursery vouchers I suspect that I would not be. That is neither here nor there. Using constitutional mechanisms that are in place is one thing; bringing out the backwoodsmen is quite another. By dint of those two recent unwise actions the Government have inflicted a wound--I sincerely hope not a fatal one--on the House of Lords.
I want the hereditary element to remain--in a monarchy it is important that it should--but I do not want every hereditary peer automatically to have the right to vote and speak in the House of Lords. I certainly do not want those who rarely exercise that right to be called in to rescue the Government from time to time.
Mr. Tam Dalyell (Linlithgow):
Like the hon. Member for South Staffordshire (Sir P. Cormack), who had the guts to put his vote where his mouth was, I thought the rejection by this House of the three-day Lords amendment was a disgrace to our country. Meanwhile, I should like to ask five succinct questions.
My first question relates to the United Nations resolution on the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands. As the Leader of the House will know, the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, of which I am not a member, is being taken by its Chairman to Buenos Aires in the recess. I hope that there will be serious discussions with our colleagues on the matter of what they can say there about the question of sovereignty. There is a real opportunity to listen to what is being said in Argentina about this delicate subject. Judging by what we heard from Guido Di Tella, this morning on the radio and in person about two months ago, it appears that there is some kind of constructive solution to be had. So, before the whole thing goes sour, let the Government take action.
My second question relates to Iraq. Are the Government entirely happy with the seemingly unending mission led by Rolf Ekeus? In the Whitsun recess, the hon. Member for South Staffordshire led an all-party heritage delegation to Stockholm, where we naturally spent time talking to our Swedish colleagues. It emerged that people in the know in Stockholm--to put it at its very gentlest--entertain doubts about their colleague Ekeus and believe that the time is ripe for a change. It is certainly clear that his personal relations with the Iraqis, not just with the inner leadership, have become appalling. It is also beyond dispute that infant mortality in the Tigris and Euphrates valleys is so dreadful that it shames humanity. We are almost as far from the Gulf war now as we were from the second world war when we put Germany back on its feet. I therefore hope that the Government will take another look at that appalling human tragedy.
My third question concerns Cuba. It is perfectly clear to some of us that any pressure to stop trading with Cuba has nothing to do with the merits of the case and everything to do with internal American politics. I draw the attention of the House to Sunday's talk by Alistair Cooke. There is also a great deal of other evidence pointing to the idea that attitudes to Cuba reflect the internal situation in the United States. I do not see why British industry and trade should be disadvantaged.
The fourth issue concerns Libya, a subject on which I have had so many Adjournment debates. During the recess, can thought be given to a matter raised by President Mandela's delegation, which concerns the whole of Africa? Would not the situation be brought to a head by a trial in The Hague or, as has been offered, in South Africa itself? Otherwise, it will go on for a lifetime.
I am not in any way anti-American, but one does notice that Iraq and Libya were traditionally British markets, and that decision-makers in those countries were educated at British, not American, universities. However, it is British,
and not American, industry that is losing out in those Arab countries. I hope that the Government will no longer act on the instructions--I think that that is the right word--on Libya given by Washington. Otherwise, the present situation will continue. The sanctions will be maintained--sanctions which, incidentally, are totally ignored by the Germans, the Greeks, the Italians and the French, while Britain and British industry lose out.
Finally, I wish to raise the matter of airport and aircraft security. Throughout this Session, I have endlessly raised the subject of the Lockerbie disaster of 1988, which led to major reviews in aviation security by both the British and American Governments. Eight years on, experts and campaigners for improved safety agree that it is still possible for bombs to be smuggled on board aircraft.
Among the specific measures that feature in post-Lockerbie reports, and which will now be readdressed by the investigation into the TWA flight if a bomb was to blame, is baggage reconciliation, as recommended by the International Civil Aviation Organisation in 1987. Its implementation is mandatory in the United Kingdom from this year, but is limited elsewhere. The rather grandiose term for the vital process of ensuring that every bag loaded on board is matched with a passenger is still a long way from being carried out around the world. Airlines are particularly vulnerable to baggage being transferred from connecting flights, and the bomb may make the whole journey while the passenger does not. Eight thousand bags a day are lost worldwide--yes, 8,000 a day. Is that not proof that reconciliation is just not working? How can people talk about baggage reconciliation and safety in those circumstances?
The second recommendation was made in the 1989 report "The Lessons of Lockerbie" by Paul Wilkinson, security expert from St. Andrews university. There is no worldwide watchdog organisation on air travel that has teeth. The UN's International Civil Aviation Organisation can make recommendations but has no power to enforce them. Wilkinson and his colleagues say that that does not have to be the case, and see the same organisation's International Atomic Energy Agency as a working model. Critics in the US highlight the fact that the body responsible for enforcing safety, the Federal Aviation Authority, also has the job of promoting air travel. It may be a little difficult to do both, and the Government should think about that.
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