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Review of the Functioning of Tynwald Lord Lisvane Kcb Dl REVIEW OF THE FUNCTIONING OF TYNWALD LORD LISVANE KCB DL HANSARD Douglas, Wednesday, 18th May 2016 LLR, No. 3 All published Hansard Reports for the Lord Lisvane Review can be found on the Isle of Man Government website: https://www.gov.im/about-the-government/offices/cabinet-office/ review-of-the-functioning-of-tynwald/ All ‘Listen Again’ audio files can be found on the Tynwald website: http://www.tynwald.org.im/business/listen/Pages/default.aspx Published by the Office of the Clerk of Tynwald, Legislative Buildings, Finch Road, Douglas, Isle of Man, IM1 3PW. © High Court of Tynwald, 2016 TYNWALD REVIEW, WEDNESDAY, 18th MAY 2016 Present: Chairman: Lord Lisvane KCB DL Secretary: Miss Michelle Norman [Senior Legal Officer (Advisory), Civil Division, Attorney General’s Chambers] Contents EVIDENCE OF Mr Roger Rawcliffe .................................................................................................. 71 EVIDENCE OF Hon. Allan R Bell MHK, The Chief Minister and Member for Ramsey ................................................................................. 78 EVIDENCE OF Hon. R Howard Quayle MHK, Minister for Health and Social Care and Member for Middle ....................................................... 95 EVIDENCE OF Mr David M Anderson MLC ................................................................................... 106 __________________________________________________________________ 70 LLR TYNWALD REVIEW, WEDNESDAY, 18th MAY 2016 Review of the functioning of Tynwald The hearing of oral evidence was held in public at 10.00 a.m. in the Legislative Council Chamber, Legislative Buildings, Douglas [LORD LISVANE in the Chair] EVIDENCE OF Mr Roger Rawcliffe 5 Q194. The Chairman (Lord Lisvane): Good morning, Mr Rawcliffe, and welcome. The terms of trade, as it were, are that our discussions are live-streamed on the web and Hansard produces a transcript which, when it is finalised, will also go on the Tynwald webpages. If I can start by thanking you very much for your concise memorandum. I wonder if you could 10 say something about your experience and background in constitutional matters. Mr Rawcliffe: There are two parts of it. Firstly, as far as the Isle of Man is concerned, I was one of the Government auditors from about 1980 to about 1992 or 1993, when we ceased to be the auditors. So I had a lot to do with the old system, which was the Boards of Tynwald. I was 15 there for the introduction of the ministerial system, which has been much criticised by all sorts of people, but was an enormous improvement on the previous arrangement. I think, in order to get some sort of consistent government, you have to have a system of that kind somewhere. That is one of the things which I know a lot of people have been uncomfortable with and it may be that the Council of Ministers is too dominant in numbers in the proportions of Tynwald. 20 And, of course, the Council of Ministers also has the Members of Tynwald who are Members of Departments. So to a large extent, the whole of Tynwald is the Government. Q195. Lord Lisvane: We might explore that in a bit more detail later on. And your wider constitutional interests? 25 Mr Rawcliffe: Well, I am a classicist and in between qualifying as a chartered accountant and actually doing something much about it, I taught at Stowe for 20 years. I was taught by, perhaps, your headmaster, McCrum, at one time – 30 Lord Lisvane: Indeed, yes! Mr Rawcliffe: – when I was at Cambridge. When I taught at Stowe I was teaching mostly classics, but I rather accidently inherited the ancient history teaching and developed an enormous interest in constitutions – much more than 35 I had at Cambridge, perhaps – particularly the fall of the Roman constitution and the Athenian constitution, which in peculiar little ways illustrate the sorts of problems that all constitutions have. How do you run a government which does not get subverted by undue pressures, by collapsing, as the Roman one did or being neatly subverted into an autocracy? 40 Q196. Lord Lisvane: There are a lot of very close similarities because the dynamics are the same across the centuries. If I might say, mutato nomine de te fabula narratur! (Laughter) __________________________________________________________________ 71 LLR TYNWALD REVIEW, WEDNESDAY, 18th MAY 2016 Mr Rawcliffe: Anyway, apart from teaching Richard Branson – who was one of my star A- level pupils, in the sense that no one expected him to pass anything! – I had 20 years doing that, 45 so there is a lot of time for reflection. Coming here, I was in the firm of accountants which did the Government audit and I was, at one stage, after I had retired, put up for the Legislative Council, but at that time Tynwald or the House of Keys was not predisposed to accept people from outside. It is not a terribly satisfactory system anyway. 50 It seemed to me that to get some new blood in from people who were time-expired Members of the House of Keys could be useful, if you got people who had the right sort of interest and knowledge and who were independent enough. But the House of Keys does not particularly like independent people outside the House of Keys, and that, I think, has been one of our problems. You see it in the House of Commons, don’t you? 55 Q197. Lord Lisvane: Well, shall we look at that in rather more detail, both in terms of the relationship between the Keys and LegCo and in terms of the settling of the membership of LegCo? You say in your memorandum, the operation of the Keys as an electoral college has – and I 60 quote: recently been an embarrassing shambles. Could you enlarge on that for a moment? Mr Rawcliffe: Well, all the Members have to vote, to be seen to be voting, and for anybody to be elected they have to have more than 12 votes. I suppose they have to have 13 votes for 65 someone to be elected, and the last two or three elections to the Council have failed to do this in any rapid and satisfactory manner. Q198. Lord Lisvane: I have been reading the Hansards! 70 Mr Rawcliffe: It is in a way laughable to the public outside that they cannot actually do it. It looks like petty jealousies and it also looks like the Keys protecting themselves. Q199. Lord Lisvane: Let us take that point on. The recycling of Members of the Keys into LegCo is a pretty constant process. I have been told it is quite useful because you get people 75 with political experience going into LegCo. I am not sure that I find that a decisive argument. Mr Rawcliffe: No, I am not sure I do either. It is difficult and the people from outside have not, on the whole, inspired confidence, I don’t think – that is the last five, six, seven years perhaps, that we have a number in. Some have done 80 one term and been quite good contributors. There is a chap called David Callister who was a journalist and broadcaster on Manx Radio, and he made quite a useful contribution and was well-known and widely trusted. But he said he would do one term and he did one term. Others, we do not really know. We have Mr Wild, who has got himself in some difficulty with a drink-driving thing, which could happen to anybody. But I do not think many people knew him. 85 He was a manager, I think, of Lloyds – a respectable senior position. But somehow or other, I do not think it has worked as well as I had hoped it might. The people they have put up from the Keys have, in a few cases, been people of distinction, like Don Gelling, who was the Chief Minister and was in the Council for a while and indeed was Chief Minister again in the Council when there was a bit of a crisis: somebody had to resign as Chief 90 Minister. __________________________________________________________________ 72 LLR TYNWALD REVIEW, WEDNESDAY, 18th MAY 2016 But some of them do look as if they were really not going to contribute very much and they were just put up there because they were well-controlled by their experience in the Keys and they were not going to upset the Keys by doing anything that the Keys would not approve of. 95 Q200. Lord Lisvane: Taking that a little further, do you think there is a case for popular election of LegCo? Mr Rawcliffe: Yes, definitely. I think it has to happen. You will no doubt see the same arguments in the House of Lords, and that I dare say will have to happen at some stage. 100 Q201. Lord Lisvane: You are very decisive in your memorandum about that. You also say that if the tasks of LegCo were very clearly delineated and it were made distinct from that of the Keys, there would not be the problem of the clash of democratic mandates, as it were. 105 Mr Rawcliffe: Well, they are going to perceive that there is a problem, but I do not see that there should be if their role is different. It seems to me that any constitution has to provide a government, it has to pass the laws and do what it needs, but the people need protection from the government and at the moment the Council is too mingled up with the functions of 110 government. I know they cannot now be ministers – well, I think one is at the moment, but that is transitional. So the distinction of the importance of the Council in the new arrangement is lost, to a certain extent. We have these slightly arcane voting systems in Tynwald as a whole and in the two parts, but I do not think that seems at the moment to signify very much and most people just do not 115 understand it, including me! Q202.
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