(HANSARD)
in the fifth session of the fifty-first parliament of the united kingdom of great britain and northern ireland commencing on the twenty-seventh day of april in the forty-first year of the reign of
HER MAJESTY QUEEN ELIZABETH II
FIFTH SERIES
VOLUME DLXXVII
THIRD VOLUME OF SESSION 1996--97
House of Lords
Monday, 13th January 1997.
Reassembling after the Christmas Recess, the House met at half-past two of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers--Read by the Lord Bishop of Norwich.
Clerk of the Parliaments
On consideration of the letter from Sir Michael Addison John Wheeler-Booth, KCB, announcing his retirement from the office of Clerk of the Parliaments:
The Lord Privy Seal (Viscount Cranborne): My Lords, before I pay a well deserved and no doubt inadequate tribute to the last Clerk of the Parliaments, perhaps I may say on behalf of the whole House how very pleased indeed we are to see the noble Lord, Lord Richard, in his place. From his demeanour, I hope I can conclude that he has made a full recovery.
On 31st October last year I had the sad duty of reading to your Lordships the letter in which Sir Michael Wheeler-Booth announced his intention of retiring from the office of Clerk of the Parliaments with effect from 4th January this year. On that occasion I said that, in accordance with the customs of your Lordships' House, your Lordships would in due course have an opportunity to pay tribute to Sir Michael. To that end I now rise to move:
- That this House has received with sincere regret the announcement of the retirement of Sir Michael Addison John Wheeler-Booth, KCB, from the office of Clerk of the Parliaments and thinks it right to record the just sense which it entertains of the zeal, ability, diligence, and integrity with which the said Sir Michael Addison John Wheeler-Booth executed the important duties of his office.
On the two most recent occasions when the Leader of the House has moved such a Motion, he has done so within a few weeks of appointment to his own office.
My predecessors have thus been able to plead diffidence in honouring the wisdom and experience of the retiring Clerk of the Parliaments. I can claim no such indulgence but I am nevertheless sure that the whole House will agree with me that it is indeed a heavy responsibility to lead your Lordships' House in tributes to such a figure as Sir Michael. I feel this most acutely because so many of your Lordships have known Sir Michael and benefited from his experience for much longer than I have. I am sure that others of your Lordships, from all sides of the House, will accordingly wish to say a few brief words today.We should recall that Sir Michael's service to your Lordships' House has been a long and extremely distinguished one. He entered the service of your Lordships' House as long ago as 1960. As with many of our Clerks, he came from one of our great universities. Unlike more recent arrivals however, he preceded his time in academia with a period of National Service as a midshipman in the Royal Navy. He has, I think I am right in saying, never forgotten that period of his life and it has, I have particularly noticed, formed a more than useful bond with others around your Lordships' House with similar experience.
After serving five years in the various posts allotted to junior Clerks, Sir Michael was seconded to be Private Secretary to the Leader of the House and the Government Chief Whip. I know from experience that Leaders of your Lordships' House are fortunate indeed to be served in their private offices by some of the ablest of an able group of Clerks. But I am sure that, for instance, the noble Earl, Lord Longford, will agree with me that he was perhaps more than usually fortunate to have had Sir Michael as a private secretary and I am certain that Lord Shackleton would have echoed those sentiments had he still been with us today.
In 1967 Sir Michael was assigned to what might be described as a "special operations" unit. He was seconded to be the joint secretary to the inter-party conference on Lords reform. His diligence and ability, for which your Lordships' Motion rightly commends him today, were perhaps nowhere more evident than in
the vast amounts of detailed work that he undertook on Lords reform at that time. It may not have escaped your Lordships' attention that reform is once again a topic on the minds of at least some of your Lordships. I am sure that those studying these questions will benefit from a careful scrutiny of the work done by Sir Michael all those years ago.In the early 1970s Sir Michael was intimately involved in the work that your Lordships undertook to establish a means of scrutiny for European Community legislation. It is perhaps the greatest tribute that we can pay to his work that we can observe that that work continues with undiminished vigour today. Other member states of the European Union and, indeed, dare I say it, another place, are only now beginning to attempt to match the work that your Lordships have been quietly doing for over 20 years. I do believe that this House will recognise that this continuing scrutiny will serve as perhaps one of the more lasting memorials to Sir Michael's efforts on behalf of the whole of this House.
In more recent years, during his period as Clerk of the Parliaments since 1991, Sir Michael has continued to devote himself tirelessly to improving the efficiency and effectiveness of your Lordships' House. It was under his leadership that the Ibbs reforms to financial administration were carried through, with relatively little pain and with the result of both substantial savings and an expansion of services without an increase of expenditure in real terms, a virtuous circle which has not always been imitated by those who have benefited from government expenditure in other directions.
Sir Michael also saw the establishment of the Jellicoe Committee which has led to so many valuable developments in the Committee work of your Lordships' House. He has also advised informal procedural working groups designed to shorten the hours sat by your Lordships. We are all grateful to Sir Michael for what he has done to square the circle of improved scrutiny within shorter sitting hours. That was something which some of us thought was an impossible task, but which he showed was not nearly as impossible as we thought.
Sir Michael's record of service in your Lordships' House is an impressive one. He can look back with pride on the many improvements and achievements he has caused, or at least encouraged and facilitated. He will be remembered as a most amiable and generous man: his staff parties in Oxfordshire were, I understand, great occasions. He will be warmly remembered by his many friends here and around the Commonwealth.
On a more personal note, I know that Sir Michael has a clear view of the dignity and purpose of this House. It informed all aspects of his work and it informed in particular the way in which he introduced new Members to this place. I should like to record my own appreciation of the way in which he introduced me to your Lordships' ways and for the frank but tactful approach with which he has helped me during the past five years, and the past two-and-a-half in particular. He has an enjoyment of life that is infectious and which
has much enlivened our exchanges. It enabled me to anticipate my meetings with him with a heightened sense of pleasure.I am not convinced that Sir Michael does in fact intend to retire in the traditional sense of that word: for example, I know that he has agreed to continue with some valuable work on the Parliament volume of Halsbury's Laws. It would thus perhaps be a little premature for me to wish him a happy retirement just yet. But as he leaves the service of your Lordships' House, I know your Lordships will join with me to wish Sir Michael and Lady Wheeler-Booth, and their family, many happy and peaceful years together, and to record our appreciation of the great service he has rendered to our House, which we will remember with pride and affection.
Moved to resolve, That this House has received with sincere regret the announcement of the retirement of Sir Michael Addison John Wheeler-Booth, KCB, from the office of Clerk of the Parliaments and thinks it right to record the just sense which it entertains of the zeal, ability, diligence, and integrity with which the said Sir Michael Addison John Wheeler-Booth executed the important duties of his office.--(Viscount Cranborne).
Lord Richard: My Lords, I begin by thanking the Leader of the House for his kind words. I come back not inspirited or totally reinvigorated, but recovered, and hope that I shall be able to play a modest part in the workings of this House in the next three or four months.
It gives me great pleasure on behalf of the Opposition to second the Motion moved so ably by the Leader of the House this afternoon. He started by telling us that on two or three previous occasions it had been moved by a Leader of the House within weeks of that Leader attaining office. He will understand me totally if I express the hope that on this occasion it has been moved by a Leader of the House within weeks of his leaving office.
To turn to the subject matter of the Motion itself, Sir Michael Wheeler-Booth was a remarkable man and a remarkable servant of this House. The Leader of the House set out his career. It was long and it was distinguished. He played a large part--I echo what the Leader said--in relation to the setting up of the European Communities Scrutiny Committee. That committee, as those of us who have been in Brussels at any time will know, has a reputation which is frankly enviable and unmatched by any House and any other Parliament in the European Communities. Its reports were read with care, certainly within the Commission. I remember being grilled at one of the meetings of the sub-committees. I can only say that it was a cross-examination which I remember, if not for the comfort it gave me, certainly for the vigour with which it was pursued. That stands very much as a monument to Sir Michael Wheeler-Booth.
In relation to Sir Michael's work in the House, it is fair to say that everything he did, he did in order to try to improve the functioning of this House and to establish better ways in which we could function properly. I think particularly of his attempts to take more business off the
Floor of the House and into Committee. That was a subject close to his heart and one which we followed with great interest.The qualities of the man spoke for themselves. He was scrupulously fair and non-partisan. I speak as an Opposition Member in this House, but I think I can say that the advice we received from Sir Michael throughout my time in the job was clear, undoubtedly objective, fair and non-partisan. He was an open-minded man--he is an open-minded man: we should not treat this as if it is an obituary, because it is not. He was colourful and, as some of your Lordships will know, he was sometimes delightfully outspoken. He was kind and considerate. Nothing was too much trouble for him.
He was an innovator as far as this House was concerned and his roots were in precedent and in practice. He was very careful to build upon what the House had achieved in the past and tried to make sure that the ways in which the House was now moving were consonant with what had gone before and would be consonant with what was to come after. He was a great believer in this House and he was a great believer--he is a great believer--in the need for co-operation between the two Houses.
I hope that we have not seen the last of Sir Michael Wheeler-Booth. I am sure that he is not retiring in the conventional sense of the word. I hope that in some form or another it will be possible to maintain his connection with the House. I echo what the Leader of the House said about conveying our good wishes to him and his family in their temporary and partial retirement.
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