Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40-59)
LORD JAY
OF EWELME
22 JULY 2008
Q40 Paul Rowen: Would you publish
or make available, and not necessarily the names, the fact that
that is what you have actually done?
Lord Jay of Ewelme: I am afraid
I do not know exactly what the rules at the moment are, or what
the convention is about what goes into the report or not. It certainly
would be important that it be known that the Commission is standing
up to the political authorities.
Q41 Mr Prentice: Can I go back to
something the Chairman said at the very beginning which was picked
up by Paul—the distinction between suitability and propriety.
You have been around for a long time, do you think there are time-servers
in the House of Lords?
Lord Jay of Ewelme: The House
of Lords has no retirement age. There are clearly people who are
much less active than others.
Q42 Mr Prentice: Let me try this
another way. Would you be surprised if, weeks before the next
General Election, a significant number of Labour MPs discovered
they had a health complaint and gave notice that they wanted to
stand down from the House of Commons and were subsequently put
forward for a peerage by the Prime Minister? Would that surprise
you? Would that shock you?
Lord Jay of Ewelme: I cannot comment
on that.
Q43 Mr Prentice: You are not aware
that this is a practice that has happened for as long as anyone
can remember; that MPs in effect retire and sell their seats—sell
their seats—for a place in the House of Lords? You are unaware
of this?
Lord Jay of Ewelme: I did not
know that people sold their seats for a place in the House of
Lords.
Q44 Mr Prentice: It is all done with
nods and winks, of course, but you are unaware of that?
Lord Jay of Ewelme: Of course
I am aware that people give up their seats and other people are
appointed to them, and some of those people who give them up are
appointed to the House of Lords. Exactly what the tractations
and negotiations go on behind that I am not aware; that is the
sort of thing which the civil servants are spared.
Q45 Mr Prentice: I do shock and outrage
quite well and I want to test you on that front. Are you shocked
and outraged that people serve in the House of Lords who do not
pay UK taxes? Does that anger you?
Lord Jay of Ewelme: As I understand,
they should pay UK taxes. I think they should pay UK taxes. As
I understand it, at least as far as the Appointments Commission
is concerned, that is one of the conditions now.
Q46 Mr Prentice: But it was not always
the case, was it? You are familiar with the case of Lord Laidlaw
who was elevated in 2004 after he gave a solemn undertaking (and
that is what they say) that he would bring his tax affairs onshore;
and he told your predecessor Lord Stevenson, that he would do
that and he subsequently reneged on his promise and he is living
in Monaco now as a tax exile, and that you find outrageous?
Lord Jay of Ewelme: I do find
that shocking, yes. I think anybody who is appointed to the House
of Lords should be paying taxes in this country and, in addition,
should be playing an active part in the House of Lords. I am aware
of that case, but I do not know the details of that case and I
would not want to comment on the details of a particular case.
Q47 Mr Prentice: Your predecessor
commented on the details of a particular case, in fact it is in
the Annual Report of the House of Lords Appointments Commission
2006-07.
Lord Jay of Ewelme: He was the
Chairman—he is the Chairman—he was dealing
with it. I have not yet been approved for the job.
Q48 Mr Prentice: I am interested
in your approach—that is what I am interested in. The Lords
Appointments Commission drew the Prime Minister's attention to
Lord Laidlaw, and now they will not recommend anyone for the Lords
unless they are resident in the UK for tax purposes. Would you
have handled this any differently? Would you have made a public
statement as Chair of the Commission, had this happened on your
watch? You would publicly have called on Lord Laidlaw to hang
up his ermine cloak and leave the House of Lords, because he is
still there?
Lord Jay of Ewelme: I cannot comment
on exactly what I would have done in those circumstances. It seems
to me that people should be resident, they should be paying taxes
in this country, they should be playing an active part in the
House of Lords; and if it turns out afterwards they have, as it
were, misled the Appointments Commission then I think that is
something which the Appointments Commission should follow up.
Exactly how it would follow that up, how far it would make that
public, I think would depend on the case. I certainly think it
would be wrong if somebody is appointed to the House of Lords
on the understanding that he or she will do something and then
quite clearly does not.
Q49 Mr Prentice: On that point, we
have Michael Ashcroft, now Lord Ashcroft, and he was ennobled
in the year 2000 after having been turned down twice beforehand.
We are told by Number 10 in a press release in March 2000 that
he gave an undertaking that he would bring his tax affairs onshore.
I have a Freedom of Information request in at the moment to find
out a) the nature of that undertaking and b) to whom that undertaking
was given. That would seem perfectly reasonable to you, would
it not, that I and members of the public should have that information?
Lord Jay of Ewelme: I am not aware
of the case. I really do think it would be wrong to comment on
cases of which I am not aware.
Q50 Mr Prentice: Fair enough. Will
you assess the performance of the peers that you put into the
House of Lords; and, if so, how would you go about doing that?
Lord Jay of Ewelme: I think that
is a really difficult question. I am not sure it would be terribly
welcome in any part of the House of Lords, the thought that there
was some kind of body or person monitoring their performance.
I would rather approach it from the other end I think—upstream
rather than downstream: how do we ensure that peers who are appointed
do play an effective role? We have talked about some aspects of
that already. I think another aspect is, it does strike me that
when you arrive in the House of Lords, as Julie Morgan was saying,
it is not always the most obviously welcoming and easily understandable
place. I think there is a case, for example, for having some arrangement
with the convenor of the cross-bench peers that there would be
one or two peers who are known to or who share interests with
the nominee, to act as a kind of mentor and help them through
some of the arcane procedures, and to try and ensure they did
not feel that this was such an alien place that they immediately
went back home. In that way I think one could encourage active
participation, which could be an advantage.
Q51 Mr Prentice: Just picking up
on a point that Paul made earlier, your predecessor, Lord Stevenson,
famously said early on (and I admit he did not think it through
but just shot from the hip) that people like hairdressers could
not cut it in the House of Lords. There were people out there
who just could not do it. You have been talking about diversity,
and we had the usual list: more women; ethnic minorities. What
about working-class people: is "class" a diversity issue?
Lord Jay of Ewelme: All aspects
of British society need to be represented.
Q52 Mr Prentice: Could hairdressers
cut it in the House of Lords then?
Lord Jay of Ewelme: I cannot see
why not. Why should they not?
Q53 Mr Prentice: Are you thinking
in terms of having quotas for this diverse House of Lords? Would
you want a reformed House of Lords to be a kind of mirror of the
nation, or what? What is success in terms of a diverse House of
Lords?
Lord Jay of Ewelme: I do not think
there can ever be any kind of quantitative approach to that. I
think it has got to be a matter of judgement; an element of judgment.
What do people think? What does this Committee think? What do
others think? Do they think in five years' time, when the mandate
of the next Commission will come to an end, that the House of
Lords is more representative than it was; is better representative
of Britain—whether one is talking about the nations, ethnicity,
faith or class—than it was? It seems to me those are matters
of judgment, but it is certainly an issue which should be on the
minds of the Commission.
Q54 Mr Prentice: It may be open to
the Appointments Commission depending on the nature of the legislation,
but do you think there is a role in the House of Lords for all
the faiths—Islam, the Jewish religion, as well as the Church
of England?
Lord Jay of Ewelme: My personal
view is that all the faiths should feel represented in the House
of Lords. Whether they do so by the leaders of their faiths, or
in some other way, I do not know. This is an issue which I would
want to discuss with the new Commission. I think it is a very
important issue. It is very important in Britain today that both
Houses of Parliament should represent the different faiths and
the different ethnic minorities in Britain.
Q55 Mr Prentice: Would there be a
place for the British Humanist Society, for example?
Lord Jay of Ewelme: Again, I do
not want to get into specifics. I think the general point is one
where I would stick for now.
Q56 Kelvin Hopkins: I understand
there were five nominees or names put forward for your post according
to the papers, is that right?
Lord Jay of Ewelme: I do not know?
Q57 Kelvin Hopkins: The Prime Minister
obviously chose you above other people and put his blue pencil
through those other names. Do you know who the other candidates
were?
Lord Jay of Ewelme: No. I knew
there were others because I am told but I have no idea how many
and I have no idea who they were.
Chairman: I do not think we know whether
it was five or not.
Q58 Kelvin Hopkins: Clearly there
must have been other names considered. There has been a lot of
talk about diversity in the House of Lords with almost all my
colleagues, and we have talked about religion, faith, humanism
and even social class, and ethnicity obviously; but one thing
that has not been talked about is diversity of political view.
Is it not very unhealthy in our democracy now that we seem to
be appointing people in all sorts of spheres who have a particular
view which is shared by all three frontbenches now, and that the
diversity of political view is being squeezed out of politics,
particularly in the House of Lords?
Lord Jay of Ewelme: I do not get
a sense that the political view is getting squeezed out of the
House of Lords. Political views are expressed in a slightly different
way in the House of Lords than they are in the House of Commons,
but I do not get a sense that political views are not expressed.
Q59 Kelvin Hopkins: No-one from the
orthodox Left of the Labour Party has been appointed, as far as
I know, since 1994 to the House of Lords; either they are quiescent
or people who actively support the new Labour regime. This is
on the Labour side, and new Labour is, these days, fairly indistinguishable
in its ideology from the Conservative frontbench: is that not
unhealthy?
Lord Jay of Ewelme: This is an
issue I think for the parties themselves to decide who they should
put forward. As far as I am aware that is not an issue for the
Commission as to what the balance of tendencies within the different
parties is. I am certainly not conscious that there is not good,
healthy political debate in the Lords.
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