David Waddington Memoirs (33 page)

I continued:

Finally I reminded the House that the Prime Minister himself signed the foreword to the dossier which contained the words ‘His (Saddam’s) military planning allows for some of the weapons of mass destruction to be ready within forty-five minutes of an order to use them.’ The Prime Minister knew perfectly well, from the intelligence reports, that this did not mean that Saddam had
long-range
weapons at his disposal; but when newspapers took those words of his to mean that there was a threat to Britain from
long-range
weapons – when there was a headline in
The Sun
reading: ‘45
MINUTES TO DOOM’
and the
Evening Standard
wrote ‘45
MINUTES TO ATTACK’
alongside a photograph of a London street – Tony Blair did absolutely nothing to correct the false impression he had given.

There must have been thousands of people wanting to say what they thought about the government, Alastair Campbell, poor Dr Kelly and the Hutton Report. I
could
say what I thought and
realised
as never before how lucky I was to be a member of the Lords and able to debate great issues.

I was off work for quite a long time having a new knee; and on my return introduced a debate on immigration and asylum. I pointed out that by the latter part of the 1980s, with firm and fair immigration control established, immigration policy had ceased to be a very contentious matter, but Labour had allowed what was to all intents and purposes a free-for-all – with work permits handed
out in ever increasing numbers. And with most immigrants going to the same parts of the country, an intolerable strain was being put on public services. Sham marriages, bogus students and fraudulent visa applications had made matters worse. Total net immigration to the UK, which in 1997 was 46,000, had over the previous five years averaged 157,000 a year. And it was estimated that over five million of the six million increase in population expected in the next thirty years would be due to new immigrants and their offspring. That was enough to populate six cities the size of Birmingham.

It does not seem that on this occasion my oratory was very persuasive, for in the years that followed things got even worse. When Brown got into office he proudly talked of his
determination
to cover great tracts of the country with concrete to house the growing population. Some were brave enough to point out that if we could limit immigration so that there were no more people entering the country than leaving, there would be no need for any of this massive housing development; but they, of course, were branded racists.

In the 2005 general election Michael Howard fought valiantly. The Tories won a number of seats but Blair was still left with a thumping majority. In the summer of that year my great friend Mark Carlisle died. For a long time he had suffered from ill-health but he never lost his zest for life. He was the most gregarious of men and my only complaint is that he liked drinking standing up. Because of the difference in height this used to give me a stiff neck. I felt it a great honour to be invited to give the address at his memorial service in St Margaret’s.

I will spare the reader an account of all I was up to in the next year or two but one matter is worth mentioning. A Bill to give effect to an agreement on European finance does not usually hit the headlines but in January 2008 I had the chance to put on record one of the most extraordinary betrayals of our country’s interests.
The rebate on the UK’s contribution to the EU, hard-won by Margaret Thatcher, was protected by our veto and could not be taken from us without our consent, but Tony Blair surrendered a part of it for precisely nothing. It all started honourably enough with Blair championing the expansion of the EU into eastern Europe; and he seems to have convinced himself that the French would be prepared to agree to reform of the farm budget to pay for expansion if Britain sacrificed at least part of the rebate. That was inherently unlikely, Blair himself in 2002 having signed up to a CAP settlement to last through to 2013, but when the French gave the inevitable ‘
non
’, there was not the slightest need for the Prime Minister to do what he did which was, with great alacrity, to
abandon
his call for a budget freeze, abandon his call for a fundamental reform of Europe’s finances and hand over part of our rebate on a plate. What he ought to have done was take the rebate off the table, pack his bags and return home. The tale told of course was that all this was necessary to secure enlargement and we could not ‘will’ enlargement without being prepared to pay for it, but that is simply not what happened. When enlargement was already a done deal Blair had told the Commons: ‘the UK rebate will remain and we will not negotiate it away.’ That was the promise; and the promise was broken. We had by then got used to surrenders and with each one came the same lame excuse: ‘We had to surrender; failure to do so would have precipitated a crisis and, even worse, shown our lack of commitment to the EU.’ We can only hope that a new government has really learned a few lessons from Blair’s deceit over Lisbon and from this particularly dismal story about EU finance.

The Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill which arrived in the Lords in January 2008 contained a clause which made it an offence to incite hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation. It seemed clear to many of us that if there was to be this new offence, it was
important
that it did not damage free speech; and in due course I moved
an amendment to ensure that the police did not construe criticism as threats or confuse strong criticism of a person’s conduct with incitement to hatred. There was, I said, nothing in recent history to show that the police were good at distinguishing between legitimate comment and language calculated or intended to stir up hatred. I cited the case of the Bishop of Chester who was the subject of
investigation
by the Cheshire Police after he had made some comments about research showing that some homosexuals could be reoriented to heterosexuality. I also cited the case of the Fleetwood couple
interrogated
by the police after doing no more than complaining about their council’s gay rights policy and the case of Lynette Burrows who was questioned after saying on the radio that homosexual men might not be the right people to bring up children.

The amendment was reached very late in the day but we won by eighty-one to fifty-seven. The decision was reversed in the Commons but when the matter came back to the Lords we won by 174 to 164 and the government did not make another attempt to reverse the decision.

One might have expected that to be the end of the story but, to my astonishment, into the next session’s Coroners and Justice Bill the government slipped a clause repealing the free speech provision. Lord Bach, in moving the second reading of the Bill, sought to justify the government’s strange behaviour, suggesting that in allowing the free speech safeguard to reach the statute book in the previous session the government had made clear its intention to return to the issue when circumstances allowed. In fact the government had not said anything of the sort and had merely intimated that if Parliament at any time wanted to return to the issue it would be able to do so.

In July 2009, my motion that the clause repealing the free speech safeguard should not remain part of the Bill was carried by a
majority
of fifty-three, but the decision was reversed by the Commons, and did not come back to us until 11 November. Lord Bach argued
that we should not take our disagreement with the Commons any further and should bow to the will of the elected House, but rather overdid it when he referred to the ‘clear and unambiguous view of the Commons’. That gave me the opportunity to point out that not a single Labour member supported the government’s case, except of course the minister speaking from the front bench.

We won the division by a majority of forty-four, but then had an anxious night and an early start in the morning preparing ourselves against the possibility of the decision being reversed in the Commons and our having to debate the matter yet again. But when the Commons met, a government motion that the House should not insist on its disagreement with the Lords was agreed without debate. Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Conservative) did, however, rise and say:

Not surprisingly the Deputy Speaker said it was no point of order and that was that.

After we had successfully amended the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill in April 2008 I had been astonished to receive a telephone call from one of our shadow ministers in the Commons saying that they were not going to support our amendment, but were going to put down their own amendment in lieu – the terms of which, I then discovered, would completely undermine the case I had been deploying. It was only after furious protests from Detta and myself and threats to resign the whip that these shadow ministers were eventually prevailed upon to change their minds. I thought it monstrous that they should think for one moment that it was right not to support colleagues in the Lords who had inflicted a very significant and wounding defeat on the government. But what I suppose was even more monstrous was that people who
considered
themselves Tories should not think it important to protect free speech and guard against people being prosecuted as a result of the authorities assuming that any criticism of sexual behavior must be motivated by hatred.

It was a notable victory achieved because of the marvellous support I received from the Christian Institute and Simon Calvert, in particular, and the heroic help I had from Detta O’Cathain.

T
he House of Lords is not always the place to go to for polite and well-informed debate. There was an occasion recently when Lord McNally from the Liberal Democrat benches accused Lord Pearson of Rannoch of being a ranter with militant tendencies and that he was using tactics drawn from a Trotskyite handbook. Lord McNally is a Europhile and Lord Pearson a member of UKIP, and it has to be said that Lord Pearson’s frequent exposures of the goings-on in Brussels often give great offence to the apologists for the EU who seem to form a majority of members of the House. I do not know how it has happened but peers of a Europhile persuasion dominate the committees
dealing
with European business and have often shown little respect for the views of others who do not feel as they do. I witnessed the proceedings in the committee which heard evidence from Marta Andreasen, the brave woman sacked for criticising the EU’s accounting system and the way in which it was exposed to fraud. She was listened to with scant respect. Neil Kinnock, who had had a hand in her dismissal, then gave evidence and was treated like a conquering hero.

All this has caused me much irritation, but I still view it as a great privilege to be a member of the place and be able, when the spirit moves me, to take part in debate.

A few years ago Miles, the late Duke of Norfolk, was attending
a ceremony with me for members of the Royal Victoria Order. ‘Tell me, old boy,’ he said, ‘have you had your first stroke yet?’ With some surprise at such a delicate subject being raised so early in our conversation I answered in the negative. But not long afterwards my first stroke did arrive, and it has slowed me down a bit. But I still attend the House from time to time, and I am then greatly rewarded by being able to travel home and be greeted by a wife ready to listen patiently to my account of what is going on in the Palace of Westminster. I am a lucky man and am often reminded of those lines of Dryden: