European Parliament (House of Lords Disqualification) Regulations 2008

My Lords, I, too, begin by welcoming the noble Lord, Lord Bach, to his position. That exhausts the positive comments I shall make this evening. I support my noble friend Lord Trefgarne in praying against the regulations. The Government have got themselves into a mess by agreeing to something that they should not have agreed to, and have now sought to correct the situation as it affects this House by bringing forward regulations that are palpably deficient. When the 2004 regulations giving effect to the ban on the dual mandate were going through the House, I was the only person to rise, albeit briefly, and question the justification for them. The ban on the dual mandate is, to my mind, an infringement of the freedom of choice of electors. It is for electors to decide who they wish to represent them. If they wish to send the same person as their representative to Westminster and to Brussels, then it is a matter for them. It may be that the person is not able to do both jobs, but that is a matter for electors, not for the Council of Ministers. If the electors of Northern Ireland, for example, did not wish Ian Paisley to sit in the House of Commons and the European Parliament, the remedy was in their hands. I therefore object to the ban—but we now have it. However, as we have heard, it creates a problem that is peculiar to this House. The Government have sought to address the problem through these regulations. However, as my noble friend has explained—and is abundantly clear from the report of the Merits Committee—they are deficient. They are deficient in three respects. First, as we have heard, they apply only to life Peers. I looked at the Explanatory Memorandum to find a justification for confining the regulations to life Peers. The only justification appears to be in paragraph 7, which refers to life Peers and states in parenthesis, "““who are unable to resign their peerage””." The hereditary Peers sitting in the House are unable to resign their peerages. Why, then, the discrimination? It appears that the regulations may have been drafted by someone who is unaware of the provisions of the Peerage Act 1963 as they affect hereditary Peers. Secondly, the regulations inject a subsection which appears to be superfluous. Paragraph 4(1)(a) disqualifies a life Peer who is elected as an MEP from sitting or voting in the House of Lords. Paragraph 4(1)(b) then extends the disqualification to sitting or voting in a committee of the House of Lords, or a Joint Committee of both Houses of Parliament. Perhaps the Minister could explain how, if one is disqualified from sitting in the House of Lords, one could be considered for serving on a committee of the House. Thirdly, as we have heard, the regulations are deficient in respect of the writ of summons. If one is elected as an MEP a year or so after the start of a new Parliament, one is already in receipt of a writ and paragraph 4(2) can only take effect two or three years later when a new Parliament is summoned. In short, there are few parts of the regulations which are not deficient. Regulation 5 appears to raise no problems, but Regulations 3 and 4 are fundamentally flawed. I trust that the Minister will therefore withdraw the regulations and come back with one that, following consultation with the relevant authorities as recommended by the Merits Committee, is drafted in such a way as to pass muster.