The procedural truce in the House of Lords looks likely to break down big time next week.

Thomas Galloway Dunlop du Roy de Blicquy Galbraith, 2nd Baron Strathclyde and Leader of the House of Lords, has tabled the Report Stage of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of next week. 

Those who thought that it was all over bar the shouting when the Committee Stage consideration finally finished after seventeen days (and nights) of discussion last Wednesday are in for a rude awakening (if that is the right word).

With a cavalier disregard for the conventions of the House, Lord Strathclyde has pressed ahead with the Report Stage immediately.  He has also announced that the Third Reading is scheduled to take place on Monday 14th February.

The Companion to the Standing Orders is very clear on the conventions that should have been followed:

“8.03  The following minimum intervals between stages of public bills should be observed:

(a)  two weekends between the first reading (whether of a new bill or one brought from the Commons) and the debate on second reading;

(b)  fourteen days between second reading and the start of the committee stage;

(c)  on all bills of considerable length and complexity, fourteen days between the end of the committee stage and the start of the report stage;

(d)  three sitting days between the end of the report stage and third reading.”

There is no doubt that, at 305 pages and dealing with the kind of constitutional issues which are at its heart, the PVSC Bill meets the test of ‘considerable length and complexity’.

The purpose of these rules is not to delay governments trying to get legislation through the House. The purpose of these rules is to give Members of the House, as well as all sides of the House and all Members particularly interested in a piece of legislation, time to consider the issues raised at the committee stage, and to draw up amendments to bring issues to closure at report stage.

So that is TWO breaches of the conventions and rules of the House.

In addition, it is customary not to schedule business on a particular Bill on consecutive days without the agreement of the Opposition – particularly if the sessions concerned are likely to be lengthy.

And there is still a lot to do on this Bill.

Again the normal custom is that a Bill’s Report stage takes around half the length of the Committee stage (reflecting the fact that some issues will have been resoved during the Committee stage or because the Government has agreed to take on board some of the concerns about the Bill).  On that analysis, it might have been expected that at least six (and probably eight) days would have been scheduled for the Report stage – yet only three days are planned.

It has been estimated that between twenty or thirty substantive issues still need to be resolved.

These include such matters as:

• the date of the AV referendum (is it right that it should coincide with local government elections in some parts of England, but not all, and should it take place on the same day as elections to the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly elections – all scheduled for 5th May this year);
• what limits should there be on spending by the “Yes” and “No” campaigns;
• should there be a threshold in the turnout required for a valid “yes” vote (as Mayor Boris Johnson is proposing for strike ballots);
• should the referendum be compulsory or advisory (previous referenda have always been advisory – allowing Parliament to legislate after a “Yes” vote on the details of Scottish and Welsh devolution, the powers of the London Mayor etc – this one would be compulsory, so a “Yes” vote will mean that the system will automatically change without further discussion on the detail);
• what flexibility (if any) should the Boundary Commission have on the strict numerical size of electoral constituencies for the House of Commons;
• what is the correct size of the House of Commons (it is currently 650, the Conservative manifesto proposed 585, the LibDem manifesto suggested 500, the Bill fixes the number at 600 without any rationale – leaving the Government open to the accusation that the number has been chosen because it inflicts more net damage on the Labour Party than any of the other options);
• should constituency boundaries cross county boundaries;
• should the same rules apply in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland as in England;
• what should be done about those areas of the country where there is clear evidence that the electoral register under records those eligible to vote;
• should there be an adjustment in the number of Ministers in the House of Commons to avoid the Executive having even greater domination there with a reduced number of back-bench MPs;
• when should the first boundary review on the new rules be completed;
• will there be a proper provision for public inquiries into contested boundary reviews (the Government has promised that there will be some changes to the Bill to allow this, but the draft amendment has not yet been tabled – this was the concession that helped produce an armistice between the Government and Opposition at the end of the Committee stage); and
• what should be the frequency of constituency boundary reviews (the Bill proposes that this should happen every five years or once each Parliament – meaning that MPs will continually be fighting each other for the right to contest particular seats).

These are all substantive and serious issues.  They will all take time for debate.  Even if each of the issues identified was debated for only an hour and a half (and it is unlikely to be any less) and then voted on (which takes another fifteen minutes or so), twenty to thirty substantive issues will take around 40  to 60 hours to deal with – suggesting that each of the three days business will continue till around 4am (if there are only twenty issues) or 11am (for thirty issues).

And that is without anyone trying to waste time or delay the progress of the Bill.

This is not a sensible way of carrying out the proper scrutiny that a constitutional Bill such as this deserves.

And this Bill needs such scrutiny.  After all this Bill has had no green paper preceding it, no white paper preceding it, no pre-legislative scrutiny, and no public consultation – yet it is a piece of legislation which will decisively change some of the fundamental elements of our constitutional and Parliamentary arrangements.

People go in to public life for many reasons.

A few simply want to BE something – to be called “Councillor” or have “AM” or “MP” after their name.

Most in my experience want to make a difference – to improve public services or make them more accountable; to help those who are disadvantaged; or to promote other interests they regard as important (I will resist the temptation to talk about ex-Bullingdon Club members promoting their class interests).

The rewards and gratification for most public service are pretty small.

I was interested therefore to hear one of my MPA colleagues (a Member of the London Assembly as it happens) purring by the coffee machine just before the start of an MPA Sub-Committee.  I realised this could not be in anticipation of a riveting discussion on a particularly technical business case that was the main item on the agenda of the meeting, nor was it likely to be the prospect of the machine-generated coffee.

What had produced this reaction?

She told me it was the “sexually suggestive” description of the Sumatran coffee option – “dark roast, sweet and chocolatey”.

She had a happy smile on her face ….

…. whatever floats your boat.

Having been around during the time of rate-capping and the advent of the Poll Tax, Luke Akehurst’s warning/reminder, “Exposing the Far Left”, should be taken seriously.

As he puts it:

“There are people who really want to mess up the campaign against the Tory-led government’s cuts. They aren’t all in the Tory and Lib Dem parties. Some of them are pretending to be on our side. …

The canary in the coal mine that always tells you the far left are up to something is the student movement. Why? Because it’s full of idealistic young people who are enthusiastic about politics and naive about the motives of people selling them political newspapers. That makes it the ideal recruiting ground for the 57 varieties of ultra-left faction. …

This reached its logical conclusion with the obscene spectacle in Manchester on Saturday of Socialist Workers’ Party and other far-left students throwing eggs at Labour’s Tony Lloyd MP when he tried to speak in support of students, and chasing moderate NUS President Aaron Porter down the street having interrupted his speech with chants of ‘you’re a Tory too…’ and according to the Union of Jewish Students, the anti-Semitic variant ‘Tory Jew Scum…’. Pause for a moment and digest this. What kind of leftwinger shouts antisemitic abuse at anyone? What kind of leftwinger throws eggs and shouts abuse at the people on the same side as them in the campaign against the tuition fee hike and the EMA cuts because they are not revolutionary enough? …

The student movement is just the start though. Local government is the next key target, as it was in the 1980s, as councils are about to set their budgets. Activists were dishing out leaflets outside Hackney town hall (where I’m a councillor) on Wednesday night, three quarters of the text of which attacked in aggressive and personally vitriolic terms not David Cameron, Nick Clegg, George Osborne or Eric Pickles but Labour mayor of Hackney Jules Pipe.

In the ‘through the looking glass’ world of the ultra-left, Labour councils are not the victims of Eric Pickles’ massive cuts; we are the villains ‘implementing’ them. We are to be harangued, insulted and abused until we agree to replicate the 1985 ratecapping rebellion by setting illegal unbalanced budgets. That won’t stop any cuts – they’ll just be made by officials instead, but with no Labour input into deciding which services to protect. But the people campaigning for it think it would ‘send a signal’ to government. Actually the signal it would send is that we were completely irresponsible. Eric Pickles is laughing all the way to the polling station about this because his strategy of localising the blame for cuts on councils is being implemented by the far left. It’s a classic Trotskyite transitional demand – call for councils to do something they can’t – spend money the government hasn’t given them – then when this doesn’t happen tell people revolution is the only solution. A tactical objective for the far left is to get left Labour councillors to break the whip and get themselves expelled from their Labour groups – thereby fracturing the unity of the Labour party and creating political martyrs.

On Saturday in Hackney as Labour members used street stalls to promote the 26 March TUC national demo against the cuts and explain their impact on one of the UK’s most deprived areas, the SWP counter-leafleted the people our members were talking to, attacking the Labour council and saying there was no difference between Labour’s deficit-reduction plans and the Tories’ (surely halving the deficit not eliminating it is a difference of 50 per cent, quite aside from the difference in emphasis between the parties on the balance of cuts versus tax increases?). Another unachievable transitional demand – call for Labour to support having no cuts at all.

In weeks to come the SWP have announced they will be turning up en masse at individual Labour councillors’ advice surgeries, effectively stopping residents with real problems seeing their councillors, and creating a very intimidating atmosphere.”

It is Day 13 of the Committee Stage of the Parliamentary Voting Systems and Constituencies Bill.

Here is my contribution to a debate on whether constituency boundaries should cross rivers like the Thames, the Mersey or the Tyne:

“Lord Harris of Haringey: My Lords, we owe my noble friend Lady Morgan of Huyton a debt of gratitude for introducing this group of amendments which are extremely important in the context of this Bill. First, they raise the issue of geography, and we have already had some debate on that on the amendment that was passed in respect of the Isle of Wight. Secondly, they raise the question of the way in which communities are divided. This group of amendments is about division by rivers. I heard what the noble Lord, Lord Swinfen, said about rivers uniting and driving communities, but the reality is that rivers do divide communities, and communities on one side or other of a river feel very differently from those on the other side. My noble friend Lady Armstrong of Hill Top has just articulated it supremely well. If we believe in the principle of representation whereby individuals are elected to the other place on the basis of a community of feeling and are able to represent that community of feeling, that should be taken into account as part of these discussions.

I know that the Government are committed to the concept of fairness. There are other ways of achieving fairness. For example, I fail to understand why it is a given that when Members of the House of Commons go through the Division Lobby and are ticked off in the way that we are familiar with in this House, they each count for one vote. If you really want to have equality of representation, have them have a statistic associated with them so that one gets 1.1 votes and one gets 0.9 votes and, at a stroke, you have solved the problem that the Government claim they are trying to deal with. I am not suggesting that that is a solution that we should follow, but it is a much easier way than the many hours that this House has debated this issue.

Lord Elystan-Morgan: Does the noble Lord recollect the myth that when the Habeas Corpus Act was passed, it did not achieve a majority but fat men were counted as two? Some of us would have served the cause of liberty magnificently. 

Lord Harris of Haringey: I am particularly grateful for that intervention because I can see the value of such an analysis, though I must admit that I was not previously aware of that historical fact.

What is it that creates a community? Do we value community in terms of representation? I should have thought that for the quality of our democracy we want to value the quality of representation and the way in which there is a link between the community that elects a representative and that representative. It is interesting that if you look at constituencies and the history of where there has been division by a river, you see this problem. For example, my noble friend Lady Morgan of Huyton talked about the Mersey. I have a report from a Boundary Commission inquiry into that issue. The Boundary Commission clearly wished to cross the Mersey on that occasion but was overwhelmed by the nature of the representations. It stated that,

“local opposition is a factor to be weighed, but it cannot of itself be decisive”.

It went on to say that,

“the unusual factor in this case, is this: opposition to the proposed cross-Mersey constituency is voiced by all political interests as well as a number of individuals without any party political affiliation. The Commission will know whether such practically universal opposition to an aspect of their Provisional Recommendations is unique. However, if not unique, I suspect it is something which is rarely found”.

Another inquiry report looked at crossing the Clyde. The inspector concluded,

“that strong feeling exists on this issue on both sides of the Clyde and that none of it is supportive of the Boundary Commission’s proposal for a river-spanning constituency … It is I think significant that their opposition does not appear to have a connection with any party political advantage that might be derived from having or not having a cross-river constituency but it is based purely on a conviction from their local understanding that an attempt to span the Clyde is quite simply wrong for the area”.

The report went on to talk about the differences between the communities.

That is why we should recognise those considerations regarding the Bill. I particularly want to speak, but shall not speak at length, about Amendment 75ZB, which deals with constituencies not crossing the Thames. I appreciate that those who are not part of London may not realise that there are such strong feelings between the north and south of the city. I speak as someone who, although an unabashed north Londoner, has had the privilege of representing the whole of the city when I chaired the Association of London Government, now London Councils. I was very well aware of the strong feelings between the north and the south. It goes into every aspect of community life. A study published just a few weeks ago demonstrates—I think this is fascinating—that 54 per cent of Londoners living north of the River Thames never, not occasionally, but never, venture south for work or cultural pursuits. It is interesting that south Londoners are more likely to go north. I make no comments about the quality of life in south London or about whether anyone would wish to travel south. I have travelled south of the river on many occasions for cultural pursuits. However, it is interesting that more than half of north Londoners have never done so. If that does not indicate that there is a difference in terms of community feeling, then nothing does.

The same survey demonstrates some quite interesting findings about the different interests of north Londoners and south Londoners. I am a north Londoner, and 55 per cent of north Londoners rated eating out as one of their top three interests, followed by the visual arts and popular music. While eating out and visual arts also ranked highly for south Londoners, they were more likely to enjoy the capital’s performing arts, heritage, classical music and markets. Again, I make no judgment about that. The indication is that on these issues alone there is a distinction in the approach of north Londoners and south Londoners.

Where does this come from? In the 1850s, London was already the world’s wealthiest city, but that success had come at the expense of many of the people of London. Population growth and overcrowding had created a divided city, with Londoners living in separate worlds of rich and poor. Up to half of those born in the capital’s slums did not survive their first year. However, not only the poor died young; tuberculosis, smallpox, cholera and typhoid also killed the rich. The significant point was that London had failed to provide clean water, basic sanitation and housing for its growing population. In its analysis, the People’s City, the Museum of London stated:

“The deadly River Thames flowed like an open sewer through the heart of the city”.

That open sewer feeling is the reason why the divide is so deep and cultural between the different parts of the city.

Even more modern literature reflects this. Wise Children, the novel by Angela Carter, centres on a particular family and focuses on the distinctions between members of the family as represented by the physical divide of the River Thames. A very deep-seated difference exists between north Londoners and south Londoners.

If we are to have any concern whatever about the importance of geography and community to representation in Parliament, we have to take these issues into account. If the Government say that that would wreck the central purpose of the Bill of fair representation, I would ask two questions: first, will they consider an alternative which changes the value of the votes of Members at the other end of the Corridor; and, secondly, what is the value of fairer representation if you destroy the basis on which it rests in the communities that elect Members of Parliament?”

Lord Fowler has brought about a Government defeat in the Committee Stage of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill.  He moved an amendment that would add the Isle of Wight to the list of exemptions from the provisions of the Bill that redraw all the other constituency boundaries (the two exceptions in the Bill are the constituencies of Orkney and Shetland and of Na h-Eileanan an Iar).  He is a resident of the Isle of Wight and attracted support from a number of other Government supporters, including Lord Forsyth of Drumlean and Lord Oakeshott of Seagrove Bay.

The argument for the amendment was that under the terms of the Bill the electorate of the Isle of Wight was too large to remain a single constituency as at present and would have to be split with at least one of the parts being linked to a section of the mainland of Southern England to make up two constituencies with the right  size of population.

Lord Fowler clearly had had discussions with the Government front-bench and, as a result, had expected the Government to offer to consider the matter positively.  In his opening speech he indicated that he would withdraw his amendment, if such an offer was forthcoming.  In the event, the Government realised that it had to stand firm.  If the principle of equal-sized constituencies is breached for the Isle of Wight, it will be difficult to avoid other areas getting treated differently.  So in his reply for the Government, Lord Wallace of Tankerness did not go anything like as far as Lord Fowler had expected.  A clearly irritated Lord Fowler then forced a division and the Government was defeated by 196 to 122.

This will present some problems for the Government ….

It is 10.45pm and Day 11 of the Committee of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill has been under way for seven hours.  We are now on amendment 66ZB – the fourth amendment debated today.

The mood is better than during the all-night session earlier in the year and the average time spent per amendment has fallen as the Government hint at more flexibility both on the timetable and on one or two of the substantive issues.

However, the improved mood was nearly wrecked by Lord Thomas of Gresford who moved a closure motion on the first amendment being debated after a little more than ninety minutes of discussion.  Closure motions are normally extremely rare – the one used during the all-night session was the first time the procedure had been used for twenty years.  So the second use – less than forty-eight hours later – provoked a substantial discussion and debate.  The net result was an hour of voting (a closure motion, if pressed, automatically requires a division and, if passed, another division on the substantive issue follows immediately) and debate on whether the procedure had been righly used.  As the debate that was forcibly closed was drawing to an end anyway, the effect was probably to prolong rather than shorten proceedings.

Another own goal by the Government?

The Bill proposes to cut the number of seats in the House of Commons from 650 to 600.  So far, no real explanation has been given as to why the number of 600 has been chosen.  One of the amendments we have debated in the last few hours suggested that the number of seats in the Commons should be 630 instead.

Here is my contribution:

“Lord Harris of Haringey: My Lords, when I saw the amendment on the Marshalled List, I thought that we would have a very different debate from the one that has emerged. Until the speeches of my noble friends Lady Nye and Lord Brooke, I thought that we were not going to touch on what I understood was the essence of the amendment that my noble friend Lady McDonagh has moved.

I had assumed that the amendment represented not a real belief on the part of my noble friend that 630 should be the proper size of the House of Commons but what, in a traditional Committee stage of a Bill, we would regard as a probing amendment. The reality is that we have yet to have exposed to us any rationale for the size of the House of Commons that the Bill proposes. My noble friend Lord Brooke referred to the words of the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, who talked about plucking a nice round number out of the air. I remember also the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, telling us with enormous earnestness—and, I assume, absolute honesty—that no political considerations were contained in the figure that emerged. So what were the reasons for choosing 600 as opposed to 650, 630, 575 or 585?

I was tempted to say that there was some sort of arcane numerology about this. Noble Lords will be aware that 650 is the product of three prime numbers: two, five squaredand 13; 630 is of course the product of four prime numbers: two, three squared, five and seven. I defy anyone to find a similar formulation or number that involves five prime numbers. Maybe my noble friend Lord Winston, or some such person could come up with something.

Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke: Perhaps I could postulate another figure, given the nature of the debate. Could we maybe go for 666?

Lord Harris of Haringey: It is interesting that the noble Baroness suggests that. When I looked in more detail at the combinations of prime numbers, I was going to say that perhaps the figure of 600 was chosen because it was a round number and that it would be very different from choosing 666, which is the mark of the beast, which no doubt noble Lords opposite would not have wished to use.

Lord Snape: As the mover of the next amendment, let me just assure my noble friend that there will be no fancy mathematics from me.

Lord Harris of Haringey: I would expect nothing less.

However, 640 has the virtue of being the product of only two prime numbers: two to the power of seven and five, as I am sure the noble Lord is well aware. Actually, it is interesting that you could choose a number that is simply one prime number—I have not done the analysis of to which they will be—but there is a comparatively small number of options that we have considered that are the product of two prime numbers.

I do not believe that that was the motivating factor in the Government choosing that figure, but the people of this country have a right to know what were the determining factors for the choice. Essentially, we have two options. One is that it is a political fix, as a number of noble Lords have suggested, but the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, has assured us that that is not the case. What is the answer? Has the number been entirely been plucked out of the air, as the noble Lord, Lord McNally perhaps suggested? If so, that is an extraordinary way of choosing the size of the elected House of Commons. It is bizarre. Are we being told that the only two possible reasons why 600 has emerged as the figure is either a crude political fix or a random number plucked out of the air?

I do not believe that the noble Lord, Lord McNally, would not be party to a crude political fix, nor do I believe that he would treat the country with such contempt as simply to allow a number to be plucked out of the air. There must be a rationale, so why is that not being shared with your Lordships in this House or with the country? What exactly are the arguments? In the absence of being given a convincing explanation that is not numerology or a number that seemed nice—a number that is less than 650 but a bit more than any number that we have previously mentioned in the run-up to the election, which may be the way that these things were done—I begin to believe that perhaps there was some political undercurrent in choosing the number 600.

I want to hear the noble Lord, Lord McNally, reaffirm that there have been no political calculations of that sort. I want him to say that none of the special advisers supporting Ministers involved in the decision have been exchanging e-mails on the subject of what will be the political consequence of choosing 600 as opposed to 585 or 650. Let the noble Lord make the assurance that there are no e-mails between special advisers, that there have been no conversations with Ministers and that work in the political parties has not been done—or, if it has been done, that it has not been shared with those who have been making the decisions.

It cuts no ice if we are being told that the number of 600 has been arrived at for no reason whatsoever. Frankly, we will believe that it was political chicanery. The noble Lord, Lord McNally, will have to work very hard to convince us otherwise and that there are not smoking e-mails or smoking correspondence somewhere that demonstrate that that was the motivation driving the Government to the figure that has been chosen.”

It is 5.45am and the House of Lords has been sitting since 2.15pm yesterday.  It is still Monday here.

The House is now debating the fourth amendment on today’s (Monday’s) marshalled list.  There have been four votes so far.  Two on motions from the Opposition to adjourn (the Conservatives and the LibDems voted to carry on). 

One was on a closure motion – an extremely rarely used procedure – which required the Lord Speaker to say:

“I am instructed by order of the House to say that the motion ‘That the Question be now put’ is considered to be a most exceptional procedure and the House will not accept it save in circumstances where it is felt to be the only means of ensuring the proper conduct of the business of the House; further, if a member who seeks to move it persists in his intention, the practice of the House is that the Question on the motion is put without debate”.

This had the effect of curtailing the debate on that amendment leading to a vote on the amendment, which the Government won.  However, the inevitable consequence of the procedural manouevre was that the debate on the following amendment took much longer.

The Government have not yet learned that every time they use bullying tactics to restrict debate, Opposition peers will redouble their efforts to scrutinise the Bill properly.

It is 10.15pm and the House of Lords has been sitting since 2.15pm (fifteen minutes earlier than usual to facilitate the admission of three new Coalition Peers).

Most of the day has been devoted to the ninth day of the Committee Stage of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill.  This is the Bill that spatchcocks together two quite separate, but major, constitutional changes: the first would require a referendum on 5th May on whether the voting system for the election of members of the House of Commons should be changed to the Alternative Vote (if the referendum vote is in favour the system would then be automatically introduced – again an unusual procedure, the referenda creating the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and the London Mayoralty were followed by the substantive legislation to create the bodies concerned); and the second would reduce the number of MPs in the House of Commons from 650 to 600, would change the criteria used by the Boundary Commission in setting constituency boundaries and would abolish local inquiries into recommended boundaries.

The Bill itself is massive: 301 pages, 19 clauses, and 11 schedules.  The changes proposed are major and are designed in many instances to undermine one Party and favour other Parties. 

The Government have rejected offers to consider the two parts of the Bill separately – had the offers been accepted the AV Referendum part would now have been well on the way to becoming law.

Six days were spent in Committee on the first part of the Bill – not unusual for a proposal of such complexity and importance.  And it was assumed that a similar amount of time would be spent on the second part of the Bill.  Suddenly, the Government has worked out that this would mean that the Bill might not have completed all its stages by 17th February, the date the Electoral Commission has said is the latest to allow all the preparations to be made for a referendum to take place on 5th May.

Now any rational Government would then have reverted to the Opposition’s offer to split the Bill.  Or agreed to accept the one amendment so far passed by the House of Lords which would allow the referendum to take place at any time from 5th May to 31st October.

Instead, however, they decided to accuse Opposition Peers of mounting a filibuster and to announce that the House would sit through the night to make more progress on the Bill. (What has been happening has not been a filibuster, but the proper scrutiny of the details of the Bill – the function of the House of Lords, particularly in those cases – like this one – where the Bill passed the Commons without all sections of it being considered fully.)

So what has been the response to the threat?

Opposition Peers have responded as anyone should respond to those who try to bully them into not carrying out their proper responsibilities. 

They have taken their responsibilities even more seriously. 

So the first amendment today nearly four hours to consider and, so far, the second amendment has taken two hours – with plenty more speakers to come.

Talk about a Government own goal.

In House of Lords Question Time earlier today Baroness Neville-Jones, the Minister of State for Security, was asked what discussions the Government have had with the police about the use of undercover operations in relation to environmental protest groups.  Her initial answer was:

“My Lords, decisions on intelligence gathering are operational matters for chief officers working within the relevant legal framework. The Government do not discuss with the police the use of undercover operations in relation to environmental protest groups. The Home Office has spoken to Nottinghamshire Police about the next steps in this case, which has been referred to the Independent Police Complaints Commission. It is talking to ACPO and HMIC about which body is in the best position to undertake a review of the wider lessons to be learnt.”

Later, however, I asked:

“Can the noble Baroness confirm that all such operations would require RIPA authorisation, and what level of authorisation is required? Can she also tell us whether there is an expectation that such operations would be subject to regular internal review at a senior level regarding whether they were still appropriate and proportionate in the light of circumstances?”

This elicited the following response:

“RIPA—the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act—specifies how that should be done. The authorisation has to be by a senior officer. There has to be a regular instruction and record kept and there are various other procedures in the Act which are designed to manage and control the operation. I do not think that it is the framework that is lacking.”

So the message was clear: the Government sees no need to change the rules governing such operations.

Footnote:

It is interesting how Baroness Neville-Jones seems to try the patience of the House.  The answer to another supplementary question was interrupted by cries – from the Government benches – of  “Too long”.  This was recorded by Hansard as follows:

“Baroness Neville-Jones: My noble and learned friend makes a very important point. As I mentioned, governance in this area is a very important element. I must say that the police agree. The chief constable of West Midlands himself has said that the line is not to be crossed between infiltration to gather intelligence and the agent provocateur. He is quite right.

As to the codes of practice, the legal framework is provided for by regulations contained in the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. There is also a code of conduct and practice, which has been published by the Home Office under the previous Government, on how covert human intelligence sources should operate. The independent Office of Surveillance Commissioners has also provided procedural and interpretational advice.

Noble Lords: Too long!

Baroness Neville-Jones: I am telling the House what I think that it would like to know: what the governance arrangements are.”

This follows an earlier incident on 21st December when the House was so dissatisfied with her answer to points made in debate that it agreed by 156 votes to 112 to adjourn “to allow the noble Baroness the Minister to seek further advice so that the House may be allowed to hear the response that she should have given to noble Lords”