She also spoke about the work she undertakes in fostering good parliamentary relations with Commonwealth, European and other democracies across the world.
About the Lord Speaker
Baroness D’Souza joined the House of Lords as a Crossbench peer in 2004, having worked in the field of human rights and development throughout her career.
She was elected Convenor of the Crossbench Peers in 2007 and as the second Lord Speaker in 2011.
Lecture Transcript
The Lord Speaker, the Rt Hon Baroness D’Souza: Good morning all of you. Thank you for coming today, despite the rain and despite also a demonstration outside which you have had to fight your way through; but many of you are students, so I’m sure you are in sympathy.
My theme today is 'the Lord Speaker and International Relations'. Before getting on to 'International Relations', I thought I ought to say a few words about the 'Lord Speaker' part of the title.
The Lord Speaker is the presiding officer of the House of Lords. The House of Commons is chaired by Mr Speaker and the House of Lords by me. My role is largely domestic: I sit on the Woolsack in the Chamber, but I have a less active role than Mr Speaker with no powers to call order or to rule on procedure.
I play a larger part within the governance structure of the House of Lords, for example, I chair the House Committee, which is the key strategic committee and I represent the House. It is in this last context, the representation part, that I have an international role.
Until 2006 the Lord Chancellor was the speaker of the Lords. At that time the Lord Chancellor wore three hats: as well as being the speaker of the House of Lords, he was a senior member of the Cabinet, and he was also the head of the judiciary in England and Wales. Many people thought this to be a serious confusion about the separation of powers between the executive, the judiciary and the legislature.
Another consequence of this system was that the Lord Chancellor had so many roles to fulfil that he had little time for representing the House of Lords to other parliaments. Where representation was essential, the function was usually delegated to the Chairman of Committees or the Chairman of the European Union Committee, about which more later.
However, once the role of Lord Speaker became distinct from the position of Lord Chancellor in 2006, the House of Lords' involvement in inter-parliamentary affairs began to grow steadily. This was predicted before the role was established.
The committee set up to define the Lord Speaker's role took evidence from Lord Grenfell – who was then the chairman of the European Union Committee. He said that the demand for the House’s speaker overseas would increase once there was someone other parliaments could identify "as the embodiment of the House of Lords". With his three-part role, this was not something that the Lord Chancellor could easily do. However, I am able to be the embodiment of the House of Lords – and that’s really why I’m here today.
There are three ways in which I represent the House in an international context. And in order of the frequency with which they occur in my diary they are as follows.
I receive visitors from overseas parliaments – usually these are the speakers of other parliaments. I attend speakers conferences whenever they may take place. And I visit other parliaments on a bilateral basis.
Taking each in turn: the nature of visits from other parliaments can vary. In the main, I meet delegations that include the speakers of other upper chambers. In recent times these have included the Thai Senate, the Batswanan House of Chiefs and the Canadian and Australian Senates. However, from time to time I also meet speakers from lower chambers, the Moroccan House of Representatives for example, or from unicameral parliaments like the Vietnamese National Assembly or the Macedonian Parliament.
These are usually quite formal affairs and are part of a programme that will include all sorts of other political and official meetings for the delegations. Ambassadors also pay courtesy calls from time to time.
The conferences I go to are usually aimed specifically at speakers. For example, there are meetings of speakers of upper chambers - the Association of European Senates; the conference of EU speakers; the Conference of Speakers and Presiding Officers of the Commonwealth, known as CSPOC; and the Council of Europe Speakers’ Conference.
These focus on broad themes potentially applicable to all parliaments – to take some recent examples, the themes have been challenges facing representative democracy today, how parliaments can engage with the public, and the impact of minority or coalition governments on parliamentary business.
The House of Lords receives invitations to a variety of other conferences. Many of these are convened to discuss particular policy areas and I, as Lord Speaker, would not routinely attend these occasions as I have no policy remit, my role is to be politically neutral because I represent all members and parties within the House. That is not to say, however, that the House of Lords is left unrepresented. Together with advisors, I decide whether a conference is of sufficient use – and sufficiently parliamentary – to justify our presence. Frequently, other members of the House will go if they have an interest in or responsibility for the given policy area.
Likewise, there are conferences aimed directly at those committees that scrutinise EU legislation and are convened by the parliament of the country currently holding the EU Presidency or by the European Parliament itself. The House of Lords has one of the most comprehensive committee structures in Europe for scrutinising European Union activity.
Since 1974 the House has had a select committee on European matters and currently that committee has six further sub-committees so I automatically refer such invitations to the EU Committee and indeed sub-committees.
As you might imagine, there are all sorts of inter-parliamentary conferences that bring together parliamentarians to scrutinise EU affairs and the House of Lords is more often than not very well represented. So, next time you hear that the EU rides roughshod over national legislation, I do recommend you look at the work of the Lords EU committees to see the level of scrutiny to which proposed legislation is actually subjected.
I visit other parliaments; but only once or twice a year - for two main reasons. The first is to do with the non-political nature of my role. In many other countries the speaker of a parliamentary chamber will be a prominent national politician.
For example, last month I went to Russia at the invitation of the Chairman of the Russian Federation’s upper chamber, the Federation Council. The Chairman of the Russian Federation’s upper chamber is listed third in Russia’s constitution, after the President and the Prime Minister.
The current Chair, Mrs Matvienko, who is third in terms of power in Russia was previously the Governor of St Petersburg. This is by no means unusual; there are many countries where being the speaker of a chamber is one step on a longer political career path. But, this is not the way it is done in the UK.
Speaker Bercow of the House of Commons, for example, held some shadow front bench positions and was certainly an active backbencher before becoming Speaker of the House of Commons but it would be a notable break with tradition if he were to take a senior government position when he steps down as Speaker.
Similarly, I came into the House of Lords from an entirely non-political background and I have no plans at all to become a high-flying political career after my speakership ends! This means that the agendas for bi-lateral speaker meetings can be a little asymmetrical.
To use the Russian example again, many of the people I met in Russia wanted to talk to me about the UK’s visa regime for Russians – not something that the Lord Speaker is involved in at all. I, on the other hand, wanted to talk about matters such as the relations between the Federation Council and the State Duma and what we might learn from that for the Westminster context – not something as politically topical as why we let so many oligarchs live in London and buy up our football clubs. They are very cross about that!
A way round this is to repeat what members of my chamber are saying about an issue – but without expressing a personal political view. Despite these asymmetries, there is still value to be gained, I think, from these meetings, which I will return to in a minute.
The second reason why I don’t visit other parliaments more often is purely one to do with timetabling. The primary duty of myself and Mr Speaker is to preside over the business in our chambers, where the majority of parliamentary business is conducted. Both Houses sit at least four days a week, with around 140 to 150 sitting days per year.
Other parliaments work very differently. The Austrian National Council, for example, has plenary sittings only two or three days every month, with the rest of its work being conducted in committees. The Australian Senate sits around 60 days per year. The upshot of this is that I have far less time to travel than is the case with other speakers – I am scrupulous about being in the Chamber, and about sitting on the Woolsack, every sitting day. So far, I have only missed one sitting day and that was to attend an inter-parliamentary conference.
Another way that I am involved in international relations is the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association UK branch and the British Group Inter-parliamentary Union, for both of which I am the joint President, together with Mr Speaker. These two organisations seek to foster and improve links and understanding between parliaments.
They do this by organising visits by UK parliamentarians to overseas parliaments and by arranging similar inbound visits. For example, before becoming Lord Speaker I was a member of CPA delegations to Swaziland, Namibia, Rwanda, Mozambique and an IPU delegation to Senegal. Also, I have a role as joint President of both organisations to approve outward delegations formally.
In addition to visits, both the CPA and IPU hold conferences and put together thematic programmes to discuss and promote shared parliamentary issues. The CPA and IPU collaborated on an international conference on Gender and Politics the week before last. This conference involved parliamentarians from around 60 countries.
It covered themes such as how women are represented in politics and what the barriers are to political engagement for both genders. I chaired the opening plenary session of this conference, in this room actually, and am always willing to take part in such events.
There is one final international aspect of my role: I represent the House during ceremonial events including state visits. For example, when the President of Indonesia visited the week before last I, together with Mr Speaker, officially welcomed him to Parliament – and we will do the same when the Emir of Kuwait visits next week.
So, what is the point of all this contact? What do we get out of it and what do other parliaments get out of it? First, international engagement helps to share best practice between parliaments. In the case of the Gender and Politics example, the conference was as I said a fascinating series of seminars in which parliamentarians discussed how best to ensure that barriers to political engagement based on gender could be overcome and how parliaments could become more representative of their countries’ populations. These are issues that affect parliaments the world over.
These get-togethers promote the sharing of best practice and experience between long standing parliamentary democracies and with emerging ones. For example, I recently met the President of the Assembly of Kosovo. Kosovo is not just an emerging democracy, it is an emerging nation. Parliamentarians from both Houses have worked closely with their counterparts in Kosovo to help establish their parliament, to share with them our experiences and solutions to common parliamentary problems.
In fact, in the case of Kosovo, the House of Lords, together with the parliaments of Hungary and Denmark, is a member of a twinning project funded by the EU Commission which has involved the House providing 6 clerks to work closely with the Kosovans in the establishment of their parliamentary Assembly.
This is not by any means untypical of the international work that parliaments do through their overseas offices or through the CPA and IPU. In recent years delegations have come to the Lords from Iraq – definitely an emerging democracy!; from Bhutan – a new parliament in a country surrounded by giants like China and India; Kenya – where a unicameral parliament system is being slowly and with some difficulty transformed into a bicameral one. The list goes on. And, I hope the coming years will include visits from parliamentarians and links with parliamentarians from Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and the other countries of the Arab Spring.
Another aspect of inter-parliamentary dialogue is being part of the wider diplomatic relations between countries. I said earlier that there was value in speaker-to-speaker meetings despite the asymmetry of the dialogue at times. My visit to Russia exemplified this. As you may know, the relations between the governments of the UK and Russia are not as cordial as might be wished.
The murder of Alexander Litvinenko in London, Britain’s refusal to extradite Boris Berezovsky to Russia, the disagreements between Russia and Britain over Iraq and Syria have, among other matters, profoundly soured relations. A consequence of this is that the Russian Parliament, as opposed to the government, has been keen to encourage good relations between our parliaments. This is something that we have been very happy to participate in.
Strong parliamentary relations mean that even when inter-government links break down, all is not lost. And in that context, perhaps I could mention that earlier today, just before I arrived here, the speaker of the Israeli Knesset called in order to discuss the situation between Gaza and Israel and, I suspect very strongly, in order to convey the views of the Israeli parliament but also perhaps to learn something more about the results of the debate we had in the House of Lords on the situation in the Middle East yesterday. And in a way this also exemplifies the fact that it is always good to talk.
Sometimes people don't want to listen, they just want to talk; but nevertheless it is good to have those sorts of relationships because one never quite knows when you might be able to use them and in what particular way.
A further benefit comes from the fact that so many issues today cut across national boundaries. Such issues require international action at government level and therefore frequently require inter-parliamentary scrutiny. An example of this would be defence. Much of the UK’s defence policy is formulated in the context of commitments to international organisations such as NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation).
In order to ensure that parliaments can scrutinise defence policy at both the national and international level, inter-parliamentary cooperation is needed. In the case of NATO, this is done via the NATO Parliamentary Assembly which brings together parliamentarians from the NATO signatory countries.
Another example of the need for inter-parliamentary scrutiny would be the human rights work carried out by the Council of Europe, which is scrutinised by the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly. However, as political issues become increasingly global, with governments sometimes, though not always, working together through formalised arrangements, it is increasingly important for parliamentarians to have a collective, global voice. The House of Lords works to contribute to this global voice by means of the activities that I have already spoken about.
I hope I have given you an idea of the range and variety of inter-parliamentary work that goes on. I hope too I have given you an impression of the value of this work. It may not always be clear – there is not always an immediate outcome to certain kinds of parliamentary dialogue. The impact of much parliamentary work is usually very difficult to assess. Such work is so often part of a movement or tide of influence rather than a single, measurable action.
Before I became a member of the House of Lords, I saw firsthand the influence of parliaments and parliamentarians working together. For example, when I was involved in the International Committee for the Defence of Salman Rushdie we worked closely with parliamentarians throughout the world and with bodies like the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly to ensure that governments did not re-establish full relations with Iran, despite the many political, diplomatic and economic pressures to do so.
So, I do believe that by working together parliaments can better influence and scrutinise their own governments and can learn from one another. My role representing the House abroad, I do hope, plays a part in fostering such cooperation.
Thank you.
END
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