The unelected Chamber has been electrified by the prospect of an election of its own. The Lord Speaker, Norman Fowler, shocked the Lords by announcing his decision to stand down ahead of schedule. “I am only 83 and, unless I am careful, I will not have time to start my next career,” he told peers. The former Tory health secretary has been a hugely popular holder of the relatively powerless role, perceived as behaving as completely apolitically as the job requires.
But the gossip is of a political stitch-up over his successor. It seems that there has been an agreement between the Conservatives and Labour that the latter’s Lady Hayter should have the job next and, in return, the Tories will get to choose her deputy. In practice that means Lib Dem and Crossbench peers don’t get a look in. This is a bit rich, given the regular posturing from all sides of the House about the importance of democracy and free elections in remote parts of the world but, at home, pragmatism triumphs.
“The usual channels,” as the behind-the-scenes negotiations between government and opposition are coyly referred to, can engineer some extraordinary deals elsewhere too. “I hope that the usual channels are hanging their heads in shame this morning,” thundered Lord Forsyth of Drumlean, a sentiment which conjures a very odd vision for the uninitiated. He, like many others, was furious that the allotted speaking time for most individual backbenchers in the debate on the Budget was a meagre two minutes. Forsyth took some of his precious seconds to point out that “Not even the late Nicholas Parsons would have expected the profound questions facing our country to be dealt with in ‘Just a Minute,’ although our new imposed procedures ensure that ministerial replies are delivered without interruption.”
It is quite true that while peers can now pontificate from the comfort of their own homes via Zoom, they are prevented from challenging the ministerial responses, which tend to range from bland to total brush-offs.
Theodore Agnew, Treasury and Cabinet Office minister, is a master of the art. The opening speaker for Labour had been the highly inappropriately named Lord Eatwell, an elegantly chiselled academic economist, who addressed the Chamber as he would his students. “I will focus on the inspiration and what the Budget tells us about the Chancellor’s thinking—his economic philosophy if you like.” Rishi Sunak’s philosophy was, apparently “fiscal resilience, the heartbeat of austerity.” It takes an academic to see through the record levels of government spending and castigate the Chancellor for being stingy. Lord Agnew trotted out a few numbers in response and moved on.
He didn’t even acknowledge the most constructive suggestion made in the entire debate. The former cabinet secretary, Lord Butler of Brockwell, had an answer to the problem of NHS pay. Now a grandee of the Crossbench, he had even done the sums. Give every NHS worker a £1,000 tax-free bonus, he suggested. That would cost £1.3bn, but a temporary 1 per cent rise in the 40 per cent higher rate income tax band would raise something over £1bn, which would be well on the way to the sum needed. Lord Butler said he would be willing to take the hit and he thought others would too. Alas, Lord Agnew didn’t even acknowledge the suggestion.
Five new members of the Lords were granted an extra minute to make their maiden speeches in the Chamber during the Budget debate and all were rewarded with flowing tributes to their eloquence and expectations of the great contributions they would make in future. However, one newcomer had already made his debut in the less glamorous setting of a committee room and to a rather less unctuous reception. Lord Frost, Boris Johnson’s Brexit chief, had been deputed to lead a debate on the space industry.
Lord Adonis was lying in wait. “It is good that we have the noble Lord, Lord Frost, with us to be accountable for Brexit because he has a lot to be accountable for,” he declared. “His UK/EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement is the most damaging treaty negotiated by a British government for more than 50 years.”
This was but a hint of things to come. Andrew Adonis is an unreformed Remainer. Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb, one of two Green Party members in the Lords and always a passionate speaker, no matter what the subject, has said admiringly of Adonis that “He shouts at the government even more than I do, which I welcome.” Lord Frost may not be so enthusiastic.
But perhaps he should be grateful that he has Baroness Noakes on his side. The doughty Tory, almost as committed to the vision of an independent Britain as Lord Adonis is to EU membership, is the Boadicea of the Conservative benches. So to hear her say: “I am not prepared to be erased as a woman” inevitably prompts the thought that it would be a brave individual indeed who would attempt such an erasure.
Yet, as far as Sheila Noakes was concerned, the Ministerial and other Maternity Allowances Bill attempts to do just that. A rushed effort to ensure that the Attorney General, Suella Braverman, can receive maternity pay during her imminent confinement, the Bill ludicrously refers to the “person” who is pregnant or has given birth. It prompted Lord Cormack to remark in his usual resounding tone: “Personhood and apple pie—how wonderfully and trippingly it comes off the tongue.”
The minister, Lord True, was unmoved. “The government do not… propose to amend this Bill,” he intoned. Three days later, the government accepted that the word “person” should be replaced by “mother or expectant mother.” Lord True’s masters know better than to try to erase Boadicea.
