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Privileges Committee: First Report

My Lords, I participated in this business with a heavy heart, as many noble Lords have expressed today. But one thing I am absolutely clear about is that all in the Privileges Committee and the sub-committee wanted to be fair to our colleagues in every possible respect. The noble and learned Baroness the Attorney-General knows that I have the utmost respect for her and that in the past I have shown some small but tangible evidence of that. She pointed out that there was a respectable argument the opposite way and I did my duty for the Privileges Committee to explore it. I think she would accept that the argument presented in my memorandum is sufficiently respectable to command a good deal of support in this House. But I am not at all dismissive of the opinion of the Attorney-General and of course I spoke to her before I submitted anything to the Committee for Privileges. I said that I was minded to do something like this and we had a conversation, the content of which is between us. On the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, the House will wish to be fair in every respect to our colleagues. The position that has to be kept in mind is that the Committee for Privileges had no power to impose the sanction of suspension. That sanction, if it is to be imposed, is imposed for the first time in this House. By the time we come, if we do, to impose a suspension, it should be noted that the noble Lords in question had been clearly warned that the House, on the advice of the Committee for Privileges, considers that it has the power to suspend. The noble Lords have been warned that these resolutions are going down today and that if they have anything to say in respect of the treatment they have received or can suggest that what they did would have been different if they had realised that, after all, the House has this power, this is their opportunity to do so. It has been made abundantly clear to them that they may speak in these debates and in respect of the resolutions which are to be moved separately from the reports.