House of Lords (Members’ Taxation Status) Bill [HL]

I find myself in an extraordinary position of considerable nervousness, having recently with the noble Lord, Lord Oakeshott, done a "windy p". I find myself sitting where I started in the House behind the Liberal Democrats. Therefore, today I wear a yellow tie with a little bit of blue in the form of an aster and a little bit of red. I begin here for a historic reason which goes back to my grandfather, who stood as a tariff reformer and a unionist in north-west Lanark, initially in 1903 and then in 1906, when he was elected. Your Lordships will recall that in those days a deal was done between Liberals and Conservatives and Unionists, or whatever they were called, that they would not stand against each other because the union was the most important thing. My grandfather went on to be MP for North Down. He never made it to Wales, but he came down to Croydon and spent 26 years in the House of Commons before coming here. I shall now explain some of the reasons why I am speaking. I feel very moved about the importance of the House of Lords and the House of Commons, and of every one of our realms and territories for which Her Majesty the Queen is responsible. This is in part why I am moving my amendment. It is to inform, but I want, first, to clear the air. Your Lordships will know that we are midway between the ides and the nones of March and it was 510 years ago that Shakespeare wrote "Julius Caesar". For me, it is slightly difficult, because I am superstitious and I have a gift from God knows where of being able to divine water and other things. I have certain feelings at the moment, and I go back to the days of the raven and the fox. Both were superstitious and worrying characters of the gods—normally the Celtic gods of the Irish, the Scots and the Welsh. It was said that the raven was a sign of doom or good. I must ask the noble Lords in front of me not to turn to look over their shoulders at me at this moment, because if you looked over your right shoulder and saw a raven over the left shoulder or the right shoulder, one represented doom and death, and the other represented gain and glory. The ravens always formed an important part in battles. As those of Welsh extraction will know, the Welsh historically used to play chess with ravens. The other creature of superstition is the fox, but this time it depends on whether the fox looks at you over his right or left shoulder. One is doom and death, and the other is gain and glory. These superstitions are carried throughout history, and that is one reason for the Tower of London, which is meant to have a Welsh saint buried beneath it. I raise this just to show that some of the histories and traditions of your Lordships’ House are not written in tablets of stone, but are procedures that have grown up over time and are based now, I suppose, upon various conditions, as we call them. I looked up what I shall call the rules and regulations, the code of conduct, and went through them in great detail over the past few weeks. I also went over the codes of conduct for the Civil Service, which are equally strong. In your Lordships’ House one of the worst things that you can possibly do is, I think, to criticise individual Members. I wish to refer to two texts, which I then shall dismiss in a rather light-hearted way. They are not light-hearted, but to show that I was not behaving badly, I went as a member of the Information Committee and asked if I could look up, while attacks on your Lordships’ House were being levied from the outside world, how they originated, whether they were misrepresented, and what they stemmed from. How could we correct them? That is why I have tried to include a code of conduct in the Steel Bill. I turn to comments in various newspapers. There were some things in the Times but what hurt me most were the comments in Australia. My grandfather was an MP in Scotland, my great-grandfather was provost of Edinburgh and another great-grandfather was the first lord mayor of Melbourne and one of the first Members of the Australian Parliament. The Australian stated: ""‘Tax-dodgers, bung-takers, fraudsters and perjurers must be cleared out of parliament now,’ Oakeshott said"." A similar comment appeared in the Times. I thought that I would have a look at the Telegraph as well; last year, it referred to a certain Michael Brown, who gave, "" a record £2.4 million … to the Lib Dems’ 2005 General Election war chest … Following the donation he flew in a private plane with then leader Charles Kennedy and dined with other senior Lib Dem figures.""The crooked businessman—who will not be sentenced until he is caught—channelled the gift through a company called 5th Avenue Partners"." We seem to have heard about that from all sides of the House. The noble Lord, Lord Oakeshott, will remember that, after he first commented on the Bill, I spoke to him, wrote him a very friendly letter and circulated that letter. I said that he should possibly try to understand because he has not been here so long. However, I realised that he has done a lot of good, I suppose, for the Liberal Democrat party by promoting this worldwide. I am told once again by the information sources available to me that almost all these issues started with a telephone call, a press release or some sort of statement. Was the noble Lord, Lord Oakeshott, responsible for that? In particular, to which persons, peoples or others was he referring? Perhaps we could get that out of the way by calling it overt enthusiasm. Throughout the world, we are being attacked. That is of considerable importance because the value of this House lies in the respect that it commands outside. It is not an expensive body—it costs £127 million a year. I have asked noble Lords to tell me which Members of this House have positions on non-governmental public bodies. Only two people have so far replied; 92,000 people are employed in those bodies, which incur an expenditure of £45 billion a year. I do not know how many times the total cost of the House of Lords and the House of Commons that is; they are meant to be able to advise the Government. In that regard, I wrote to the noble Lord, Lord Oakeshott, and said that perhaps there was something else at which he could direct his energies by asking who those people are. The Leader of the House responded and gave me the information. The Minister also responded by saying, in relation to the Forestry Commission, "None". I thought that that was rather unfortunate. Many noble Lords have forests, and forestry is one of their areas of knowledge.