The Government Chief Whip in the House of Lords is the Baroness Anelay of St Johns and she was wearing her best Steel Magnolia visage this afternoon when she moved that the Welfare Reform Bill should be committed to a Grand Committee. 

I should explain that committal to a Grand Committee means that the Committee Stage of a Bill is not taken in the Chamber on the floor of the House and that the detailed line by line consideration of the Bill takes place in a Lords’ Committee Room (usually the Moses Room – so named after the rather magnificent picture in it of Moses handing down the tablets of the law).  Procedurally, it also means that there can be no votes on amendments during the Committee Stage and the Grand Committee procedure is usually only used for comparatively non-controversial or highly technical Bills.

However, the Welfare Reform Bill is hardly uncontroversial.

And Grand Committee proceedings are less high profile than sessions in the Chamber of the Lords.

But there is an equally important access point as Baroness Campbell of Surbiton, herself a wheelchair user, pointed out:

“My Lords, normally I would not come in on the next day after participating in a very lengthy and big debate the night before. I generally need 24 hours at home to recover. However, this morning I was woken by several phone calls from disabled people who told me of this proposal and urged me to come in to speak to you. I feel compelled to be here. I am deeply concerned at the noble Lord’s proposal. I had understood that the technical parts of the Bill would happen outside the Chamber—and we can live with that. However, the new proposal that takes us completely away from the Chamber unfortunately makes it tremendously difficult to have access, not just for disabled Peers to participate effectively—it is much easier in here—but for disabled people who are following this debate online or on the TV and who come here to brief us. It will be almost impossible for them to do this. Yes, a few can come into the room, but it will be more difficult.

Perhaps more importantly, not to be able to test the opinion of the House—I know it is not often done in Committee—on one of the most significant pieces of legislation for disabled people in my adult life is deeply disturbing. I ask the noble Baroness the Chief Whip please to reconsider.”

The problem for the Government is that they have got into a frightful mess with their legislative programme.  Most of their Bills are deeply controversial and, despite having the longest Parliamentary Session since the Great Reform Act of 1832, the Government is running out of legislative days to deal with all of them before the Session ends next Spring and Bills that haven’t been through all their stages fall.

Negotiations through “the usual channels” between the Government and the Opposition on how to manage the Bill had broken down – the first time in at least a decade that it has not been possible to reach an agreement.  As a result, the Chief Whip was bringing a motion to the House to refer the Bill to a Grand Committee that would have to be voted on, whereas normally such procedural questions are approved without dissent because there has been an agreement on the procedure to be followed.

During the course of the debate it transpired that there had been some serious negotiations.  It had been agreed in principle that the Bill could be split into two parts with one part being considered on the floor of the House and the rest being considered in a Grand Committee – this in itself would have been pretty unusual.  However, while the Government was prepared to concede four days of debate on the floor of the House before moving into Grand Committee for perhaps another twelve days of consideration there, the Opposition was seeking eight days on the floor of the House.

Most people would have thought that maybe a compromise might have been possible – like six days on the floor of the House.

However, the Government Chief Whip broke off negotiations, withdrew her offer and ploughed ahead with a proposal for the whole Bill to go into Grand Committee.

Her negotiation style is clearly based on that of a traditional mafiosi school: “If you don’t do as I say, the baby gets it”.

In this case, the baby did get it and the Government won the day with a majority of 52: 263 votes in favour (159 Conservatives, 74 LibDems and 30 Cross-benchers and others) and 211 against (167 Labour, 4 Bishops and 40 Cross-benchers and others).

I understand that Home Office Ministers in the House of Commons will tomorrow table eleventh hour amendments to the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill.

Having spent the last few months arguing that no changes were possible, I am told that the changes will be major and that they will involve postponing the first elections for Policing and Crime Commissioners outside London until November 2012.

This is a major u-turn by Ministers and an expensive one.  Elections in November will cost a lot more than holding them in May 2012 or May 2013 when they would at least coincide with some other local elections.  And, of course,  turnout in a potentially wintry Autumn is likely to be much lower…..

It is not yet clear whether there are to be any other concessions, in particular, to require PCCs to act in a more collegiate fashion with a Board holding them in check.

Nor is it clear what this means for the timing of the changes in London, where the Mayoral elections are in May 2012 – just weeks before the Olympics – and where there were originally plans to implement the changes and create the new MOPC this autumn.

Either way this is an indication that the many long hours of debate in the House of Lords DID have an impact ….

The four candidates* to be the next Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis are being interviewed by a Panel of members of the Metropolitan Police Authority tomorrow.  This will be the second interview that the candidates have had – last week a Panel of Home Office mandarins led by the Permanent Secretary, Dame Helen Ghosh, put them through their paces. 

The purpose of these first two interviews is to whittle the number of candidates down to, perhaps, two who will then be interviewed by that marriage-made-in-heaven, the Home Secretary Theresa May and Mayor Boris Johnson (the two are rumoured not to like each other) next week.

After that, the Home Secretary will formulate a recommendation to The Queen who will formally make the appointment.

So whose fault will it be if the wrong candidate is selected?

The answer is simple:  Keith Vaz MP.

The astute reader of this blog (I know who you are) will already have realised that the Chair of the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee does not have a formal role in this convoluted appointment process.  So how does he get the blame, I hear you ask.

Keith Vaz has scheduled a hearing of the Home Affairs Committee for tomorrow morning and has summoned before him, not only Deputy Mayor Kit Malthouse AM, Chair of the Metropolitan Police Authority, who would have been chairing the MPA interview panel, but also two of the Commissioner candidates (Tim Godwin and Sir Hugh Orde).

When asked whether these witnesses could be heard on Thursday morning, when the Home Affairs Committee is also holding a hearing, the answer from Keith Vaz was that such a change would not be possible.

The result: the start time of the interviews has been postponed; Kit Malthouse will arrive hot and sticky (do not dwell too long on this image) at the MPA offices having given his evidence and chair the interviews of the two candidates not required by Keith Vaz; and Tim Godwin and Hugh Orde will rush direct from their grilling by the Select Committee to their respective interrogations at the MPA (not necessarily the calm preparation time that people up for one of the most important jobs in the country would normally hope to have).

And, if that doesn’t potentially skew the outcome, the most damaging consequence of the Vaz intervention in the process, is that I will no longer be able to participate in the MPA interviews because of the changed timings.

So, if it all goes wrong, blame Keith Vaz.

*     The four candidates are:

Tim Godwin, the current Acting Commissioner, substantive Deputy Commissioner and former Assistant Commissioner for Territorial Policing.

Bernard Hogan-Howe, the current Acting Deputy Commissioner, substantive HM Inspector of Constabulary and formerly Chief Constable of Merseyside and before that an Assistant Commissioner in the Met.

Steve House, currently Chief Constable of Strathclyde, putative Chief Constable of the proposed all-Scotland Police Service, and before that an Assistant Commissioner in the Met.

Sir Hugh Orde, currently President of the Association of Chief Police Officers, former Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, and before that a Deputy Assistant Commissioner in the met.

The House of Lords sat today and the Leader of the House (Lord Strathclyde) repeated a statement made in the House of Commons by the Prime Minister on the riots over the last week.  The Prime Minister’s speech was carefully tailored with soundbites for the televison news, but it was notable for what it missed out or skated around.

The Prime Minister stressed how important it had been to flood London with extra police officers.  However, there was no mention of the fact that the Government is cutting the police budget by 20 per cent, that police numbers have already fallen by 4,600 since the General Election, and are set to fall even further (Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary estimates that there will be over 16,200 fewer officers by 2015).  When in the Lords, Lord Strathclyde suggested that these cuts would “not affect the police’s ability to get policemen on the streets” he was greeted by a chorus of disbelief (or “Oh!” as Hansard puts it) on all sides.

The Prime Minister praised the role of CCTV in catching those responsible for the violence and looting.  However, he didn’t mention that as part of the Coalition agreement the Government was now putting large bureaucratic hurdles in the way of local councils installing CCTV to reduce crime.

The Prime Minister talked of a robust approach to tackling gang violence, but he failed to mention that in opposition the Conservatives had voted against measures to extend the powers to obtain injunctions to stem such gang-related violence and Dominic Grieve, the Attorney General, who was then Shadow Home Secretary, had described the use of injunctions as a “legally dubious gimmick”.

The statement was light on substance and where what sounded like practical measures were mentioned they often seemed to mean very little in practice.  For example, the Prime Minister said that the Government would be supporting local communities affected and that ”the Bellwin scheme to support local authorities will be operational”.  This, of course, only means that local councils get some support from central government when additional – approved - spending for a specific cause exceeds two per cent of their annual expenditure.  This is a very high hurdle indeed – and even then the help only extends to the spending over the two per cent threshhold.

When I got my chance to ask a question, this is what I said:

“Lord Harris of Haringey: My Lords, I declare an interest as a member of the Metropolitan Police Authority and a former leader of Haringey Council, where I spent about 12 years of my life trying to secure the sustainable regeneration of the area of Tottenham. One of the tragedies of what has happened in the past few days is that the stigma of an area of riot has again fallen on that community, and that the efforts built up over many years are now being undermined, with businesses no longer being able to survive.

Do the Government believe that the Bellwin formula will be a sufficient response to ensure the reconstruction that will be needed? This will be of communities after the damage that has been done, and must also tackle underlying problems. Will they review the resources being made available to local government for regeneration in such areas? Will they also review the way in which the Riot (Damages) Act operates? If it would drain funds from police forces to compensate people who have been hit and damaged by the riots, that would be extremely damaging to the sustaining of police numbers in future. Finally, what advice was taken from the police service about the decision that water cannon should be made available on the mainland? It is used usually for the dispersal of large crowds, but the problem in this case was caused by small groups of people acting opportunistically.”

The point about the Riot (Damages) Act is important because it means that compensation to individuals or businesses adversely affected by a riot has to be paid from the police budget – so budgets already cut as a result of Government policy will be drained further to pay compensation.

And then there was the Prime Minister’s soundbite about water cannon.  Water cannon have been used in Northern Ireland – not without controversy – but their effectiveness is in dispersing large hostile crowds.  The problems that there have been with looters in London and other cities have been with small opportunistic groups.  They are already dispersed.  Water cannon would not help deal with such small fast-moving groups.

This – like the soundbite about authorising the use of plastic bullets or baton rounds – seems to be more about pandering to excitable back-bench Tory MPs rather than addressing the serious issues that affect our cities.

Am I surprised?

Well, no ….

Yesterday, I reported that, despite what the Prime Minister had said, Parliament was not being recalled – only the House of Commons.  Apparently, the Leader of the House of Lords had not seen the need for the Upper House to be recalled.

Overnight, there was a change of heart and this morning it was announced that the House of Lords would after all sit at noon tomorrow.

Was it something I said?

Earlier today the Prime Minister announced that Parliament was being recalled on Thursday to discuss the disturbances in London and elsewhere.

It turns out that this is not true. 

Only the House of Commons is being recalled.  Unusually, the House of Lords is not going to be sitting as well. 

Apparently, Thomas Galloway Dunlop du Roy de Blicquy Galbraith, 2nd Baron Strathclyde, Leader of the House of Lords, was not keen ……

I gather that the Total Politics Blog Awards are now in progress.  I want to make it quite clear that I will not be in the least bit affronted should you chose to vote for this blog by clicking here.

Theresa May is flying back from her holiday for urgent meetings to discuss the response to the London disturbances with senior police officers.
She understands that this is an important part of her role as Home Secretary.
(It of course demonstrates how much confidence she has in Mayor Boris Johnson to get it right in her absence and she must regret leaving Lynne Featherstone in charge of the Home Office for even ten minutes.)
What it also highlights is the decision of George Osborne and David Cameron to stay put on their expensive foreign trips while the world economy goes into meltdown.
She increasingly looks like the next Leader of the Conservative Party…..

Along with twelve MPs (six Labour and six Conservative), I have written to David Cameron about Cyprus.

The letter is as follows:

“Nearly four decades after the illegal invasion of Cyprus, Turkish troops continue to occupy approximately 38% of the island’s territory. For 37 years, the world has condemned the occupation and Turkey’s intransigence in efforts to find a solution to reunite Cyprus.

In that same time, apartheid came to an end in South Africa, the USSR disintegrated, the Berlin Wall fell, former eastern bloc countries joined the European Union, and the people’s calls for democracy have triumphed over dictatorship in some Arab countries in the Middle East. During the same period, British troops have been engaged in conflicts around the world, fighting injustice, protecting British sovereignty and safeguarding or seeking to deliver democracy.

Since signing the 1959 Treaty of Guarantee, the United Kingdom has been a guarantor power of the independence and territorial integrity of Cyprus, with the full weight of responsibility that such status entails. But against the backdrop of the UK’s active role in international political progress around the world, the problem of Cyprus remains virtually at a standstill. While successive UK Governments have paid lip service to delivering justice in Cyprus, these same governments have effectively allowed the Cyprus problem to be downgraded as a foreign policy priority. In addition to the Treaty of Guarantee, Cyprus is a member of, and this country’s partner in, the European Union, Council of Europe and the Commonwealth, as well as a country on which Britain maintains sovereign military bases: these facts alone demand the focus and attention of the British Government to help reunite the island.

Since Turkey’s invasion in 1974, hundreds of thousands of Cypriots have remained refugees, unable to return to their rightful homes, while their properties have been appropriated and exploited by the unlawful regime in the occupied north. In the last 37 years, tens of thousands of Turkish nationals have been moved to the occupied areas by Turkey, as part of an orchestrated policy to change the island’s demography. What is more, cultural and religious sites in the occupied area have been deliberately desecrated. Ignoring relatives’ desperate pleas to respond on a deeply humanitarian issue, Turkey has stubbornly refused to investigate the fate of hundreds of Cypriot men, women and children who disappeared without trace during its military invasion. On top of all this, Turkey has been allowed to disregard numerous UN Security Council resolutions and the decisions of international courts with complete impunity.

Such a situation raises serious questions about the UK’s own role and responsibilities in this continuing tragedy. It is not only on behalf of the sizeable Cypriot community in the UK that we write to you, but on behalf of all other Britons who believe that their country should work, on the international stage, in order to defend justice and human rights.

We are writing to remind you of the clear and irrefutable responsibilities that the British Government holds with regard to Cyprus. We call upon you, as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, to demand unequivocally that Turkey works sincerely for the reunification of Cyprus and that it fulfils its obligations to the EU in relation to Cyprus. Further, we urge you to use Britain’s diplomatic leverage with the United States of America and through the UN, the EU and NATO to press Turkey to end its unacceptable military occupation of Cyprus and the island’s unlawful and unjust division.

To that end, and as a first step in that direction, we, the undersigned, call upon you to extend an urgent invitation to Cyprus President Demetris Christofias to meet with you, in an official capacity, so that he can inform you on the latest political developments regarding Cyprus and so that you can explore with him ways in which the United Kingdom can actively contribute to efforts to bring to an end this continuing injustice.”

I have previously reported my frustration with the answers I have received to Parliamentary Questions from the Home Office, saying that I had received:

“the sort of answer that gives non-answers a bad name.”

Pointing out that:

“A request under the Freedom of Information Act would, I am sure, have elicited a fuller answer”

and in a shorter time.

So I wrote to the Leader of the House of Lords to complain.

I have now received his reply, which says:

“I agree that the answers given to the examples you have supplied are not adequate and fall considerably short of providing you with the information you seek.  If that information is not available for whatever reason, I would expect the answer to reflect why that is the case.  These do not and that is not appropriate in response to a Peer.”

He has asked the Home Office to supply me with the information requested and also to respond more fully to future Parliamentary Questions and to respond within the ten working-day target.

We will see what happens ….