The Lib Dems in the Lords: the Chief Whip reports

• [Aug 01] David Shutt* (Lord Shutt of Greetland) writes: THIS is an unusual report in that it covers the activities of the Lords group in the final days of the Labour government until Spring 2010. This includes the period of 'wash-up' when decisions were made on the future of several bills that had not completed the normal scrutiny, and deals were done to get important but perhaps less contentious bills on to the statute book. The report then covers the first couple of months until mid-July of our activities in the coalition government

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• Last Session 2009-2010

• Bribery Bill

The main concern on this Bill, which was handled by Martin Thomas and Willie Goodhart and which began in the Lords, was the clause which provided a defence for the armed services and intelligence services when faced with a bribery charge. However, a satisfactory concessionary amendment was agreed at 'wash-up'and the Bill received Royal Assent.

• Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill : Tom McNally, Paul Tyler, David Steel, Bob Maclennan, Chris Rennard, Andrew Phillips and Sue Miller all spoke in this Bill, of which we were largely supportive. Our criticisms were reserved for the failure of the Labour party in promoting a radical constitutional reform agenda during their time in government. During 'wash-up' negotiations, only the following (out of a very large number of important issues) were retained:

• Civil service reform • Ratification of treaties • Parliamentary Standards • Taxation status of MPs and Lords • Transparency of government financial reporting to parliament Public records and : freedom of information

• Child Poverty Bill : The Child Poverty Bill, of which our team of Celia Thomas and Archy Kirkwood were largely supportive, managed to escape the Parliamentary wash-up and became law before the General Election date was announced.

Children, Schools and Families Bill : Joan Walmsley, Sue Garden and Margaret Sharp led on this Bill, which included a range of measures. We opposed a set of "pupil and parent guarantees" and teacher licences as creating unnecessary bureaucracy for schools. We also opposed extra powers of intervention for the Secretary of State, and proposals to regulate home education. All of these were dropped by the Government in 'wash up'.

We were unsuccessful, however, in attempts to remove the wide powers given to Local Safeguarding Children's Boards. We also argued unsuccessfully to retain one section which the Government dropped, which would have introduced a statutory duty for the schools to teach Personal, Social, Health and Economic education. We will push for this in the forthcoming curriculum review.

• Crime and Security Bill : Sally Hamwee, Angie Harris and Navnit Dholakia spoke in this Bill We were very supportive of some measures in the Bill, such as the provisions on domestic violence and compensation for victims of overseas terrorism. During the 'wash-up' negotiations, the Conservatives and the Government agreed to retain the whole of this Bill during the wash-up negotiations, including the retention of DNA samples, which are likely to be found to be illegal by the European courts.

Digital Economy Bill (HL) Tim Clement-Jones, Tim Razzall, Jane Bonham-Carter, Sue Miller and Brian Cotter : were our team in the Government's controversial Digital Economy Bill. : Liberal Democrats, with Tory support defeated clause 17. This was an all encompassing Henry VIII power to enable the Government to amend copyright law at will.. It was replaced with a new (somewhat controversial) clause enabling courts to impose injunctions on websites to stop internet service providers hosting copyright material without permission. We strongly supported the deletion of clause 42 which created bodies to licence these orphan works in exchange for payment, which was conceded during 'wash-up'.

• Energy Bill : Robin Teverson and William Wallace led on this Bill, which we supported overall, and specifically on issues like Carbon Capture and Storage and social tariffs. As a result of the 'wash up' process taking over, we had very little time, and although we pressed to strengthen it, for example by introducing emissions performance standards for power plants, we were unsuccessful.
• Equality Bill : During Committee and Report Stages of this Bill our frontbench team, consisting of Anthony Lester, Lindsay Northover, Eric Avebury and Jim Wallace, secured a number of concessions from the Labour Government - especially on the issues of caste discrimination and pregnancy discrimination in schools. As well, a number of changes were made to equal pay provisions, broadcasting measures, equality between spouses, positive action and proportionality,
• Financial Services Bill : Dick Newby led for us on this Bill. During 'wash-up' we were pleased that the clauses on a financial education remit and the establishment of a consumer financial advice body, executive remuneration, short selling, a consumer redress scheme and restrictions on credit card cheques were retained.
• Flood and Water Management Bill : Tony Greaves, Dominic Addington, Rupert Redesdale and Graham Tope took part in this Bill, which was largely uncontroversial and received Royal Assent with only minor amendment.
• Live Music Bill: Tim Clement-Jones's Live Music Private Members Bill received a second reading in the Lords on 15th January and passed all stages. The Bill, which aimed to stop the bureaucracy surrounding the performance of small scale live music, ran out of Parliamentary time before the election and failed to make progress in the Commons. The Coalition Government's programme for Government contains a commitment to cut red tape for live music and Tim Clement-Jones plans to relaunch his Bill during the current Parliamentary session.
• Personal Care at Home Bill : Liz Barker led on this Bill, which allocated a small amount of money to provide free personal care for elderly people with the greatest need. We opposed it on the basis that it undercut the Green Paper process on personal care, that it required Local Authorities to find a large proportion of the funding from spurious "efficiency savings", and that there were better ways to spend the resources available. We proposed a "respite care" fund to allow carers a break from their responsibilities.

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• This Session 2010-2011

Following the General Election we have been playing our part in government, as well as having a significant backbench role, mainly involving leadership of those who had previously been Liberal Democrat opposition spokespeople. In government, Tom McNally, remaining as our Leader, has also become Deputy Government Leader of the House and Justice Minister. Jim Wallace has become Advocate General for Scotland and the senior law officer in the Lords. I, remaining as our Chief Whip, also became Deputy Government Chief Whip. Lindsay Northover, William Wallace, and latterly, Sue Garden, have been appointed Government Whips, and between the six of us, we have the role of being the Liberal Democrats in and speaking for government on most departments of state in the House of Lords. We have retained our system of having Party whips led by my deputy, Dominic Addington, assisted by John Lee, Diana Maddock and Roger Roberts. We have also elected a Convener of the Liberal Democrat peers, John Alderdice, with Jane Bonham-Carter as his deputy, to assist in the cohesion of our group whether in government or serving on the backbenches.

• Academies Bill : Joan Walmsley, Sue Garden, Margaret Sharp, Shirley Williams, Tony Greaves and Andrew Phillips have all been working on this Bill, which at the time of writing is about to pass from the Lords to the Commons.

The Bill has two principle functions: to allow schools which wish to become Academies to apply to the Secretary of State for permission, and to allow the Secretary of State to make an order to convert a school eligible for intervention into an Academy.

We have worked to amend a number of areas of the Bill. We were successful in getting Government concessions to ensure that a school's governing body consults with appropriate people before applying to become an Academy, for an annual report to Parliament on the progress and effect of the Bill, and a duty on the Secretary of State to consider the effect of making an Academy Order on other schools in an area.

• Local Government Bill : Graham Tope, Ros Scott and Chris Rennard have worked on this Bill, which at the time of writing is still before the Lords and which we support. The Bill revokes the structural changes which were passed late in the last Parliament to create unitary authorities in Exeter and Norwich. We opposed these as they were rushed and badly thought through, a view which was later confirmed by a judicial review which struck down the orders.

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• . . FINALLY

It has been a time of great change. We have welcomed new additions to our ranks, taking our number to 80. By the end of July Richard Allan, Floella Benjamin, Meral Hussein-Ece, Mike German, Ken Macdonald, Kate Parminter, John Shipley, Matthew Taylor and Phil Willis will have been introduced as new Liberal Democrat peers. But there is a downside - one consequence for the party of entry into government is the loss of the government funding for opposition parties in the House of Lords, the loss of nearly £250,000 'Cranborne money'. This has meant that we have had to reduce the staffing of our Liberal Democrat office from 6 to 3 and say farewell to Anne-Marie Christoffersen-Deb, Matthew Hindle and Natasha Kirwan. We thank them sincerely for the considerable service to our cause and wish them well in the future. We continue to be well served by our Head of Office Carolyn Rampton and our experienced Parliamentary and legislative Advisers, Elizabeth Hanna and Tom Kiehl. Their continuing employment is only possible thanks to the serious generosity of Liberal Democrat peers and we are reliant on a continuation of that generosity. I give grateful thanks to all involved in our House of Lords team at this time of transition.

• Chief Whip (Lords)