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Democracy: POWER Inquiry

rose to call attention to the report of the Power inquiry Power to the People; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I shall start by making a few remarks that are entirely out of order but appropriate today. I am delighted by the introduction to your Lordships’ House today of my noble friend Lady Thomas of Winchester. I spent some eight years under her leadership receiving my orders and instructions from her, and I am delighted that she has now been reduced to the same level as the rest of us. I also look forward to the maiden speeches of the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach, and my noble friend Lord Lee of Trafford. The Government, to their credit, have introduced many important constitutional reforms in the past nine years. They include devolution for Scotland and Wales, the Human Rights Act 1998, the House of Lords Act 1999, the Freedom of Information Act 2000, the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 and, last year, the Constitutional Reform Act. Some of those Acts are unfinished business, particularly the government of Wales, which is now receiving further attention, House of Lords reform and the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act, which is now being looked at again by the committee of Sir Hayden Phillips. We now have the Power report by a commission set up by the Joseph Rowntree trusts. We owe a great debt to the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, as chair of the commission, and her team for their work. They have taken up this unfinished business and gone beyond it, especially in taking up the important issue of the disengagement of ordinary people from politics. I do not agree with everything in the report—when I disagree I will say so—but I agree with the great majority of its recommendations. Let me start with disengagement, which, I feel, is an absolutely crucial problem for us. Disengagement has happened; low turnouts prove that. I suspect that disengagement may have diminished even further than the turnout figures show because of the increasing number of those eligible to vote who are not on the register. The causes of lower turnout are not all bad by any means. For a long period—roughly from the 1920s to the 1980s—a high proportion of the electorate felt that either the Conservatives or the Labour Party represented their team, to which they owed a class loyalty. It is absurd to say that class divisions no longer exist but they are plainly far less important than they were when most Members of your Lordships’ House were young. That, I believe unequivocally, is a good thing. With the collapse of what I would describe as Clause IV socialism as a credible economic theory and the implosion of the Soviet Union, ideology has become far less important. There is a wide agreement on economic issues nowadays and a wide degree of consensus on the need for—and what are—appropriate public services. Again, this is a positive change. But even if these changes are positive, the decline in participation in politics is bad and we need to find ways to correct this. The report says that there needs to be:"““A re-balancing of power between the constituent elements of the political system: a shift of power away from the Executive to Parliament and from central to local government””." I agree profoundly with both those conclusions. The greatest defect which now exists in the British constitution is what was memorably described by the late Lord Hailsham as ““elective dictatorship””; that is, the ability of the executive backed by a working majority in the House of Commons to enact whatever legislation they choose. The two most important checks that exist on elective dictatorship nowadays are the judiciary and your Lordships’ House. Of these the judiciary is at present the most important—here I am stepping a bit outside what was considered by the Power commission. Fifty years ago, the judiciary was complacent and rarely interfered with government decisions. For a number of reasons, that has changed radically since the 1960s and there is now a great deal more tension between the executive and the judiciary. That tension is a healthy thing if it does not go too far. We do not want a complacent judiciary who are, in Chancellor Bacon’s words, ““lions under the throne””. But judges need to exercise restraint and so do politicians. As I pointed out at Question Time on Monday, Ministers have a statutory obligation to defend the independence of the judiciary. That obligation is breached by Ministers who describe the decision of a judge as ““an abuse of common sense””, especially when that Minister is the Prime Minister and the decision is under appeal. I welcome the efforts of the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor to cool down the overheated statements from some of his colleagues. He clearly recognises the problems that are arising. The second check on elective dictatorship is your Lordships’ House. I will touch only briefly on the question of further reform of this House. It is a subject which this House discusses frequently, and from time to time, I fear, almost ad nauseam. I agree with the Power commission that, for your Lordships’ House to be a more effective check on the executive than it is now, it needs to contain a majority of elected Members. In the words of Edward Gibbon in Decline andFall of the Roman Empire:"““The principles of a free constitution are irrevocably lost when the legislative power is nominated by the Executive””." I agree with most of the Power commission’s recommendations on your Lordships’ House, although not with the idea that it should have a compulsory minimum age of 40. We need some younger Members in this House. We are very short of them at present. I agree that your Lordships’ House should not be used as a stepping stone to the House of Commons by ambitious young politicians, but there are other ways of achieving that than by having a minimum age of 40. We also need—and this is even more important—to strengthen the powers of the House of Commons over the executive. There is one way—and I believe only one—of achieving this: a change in the electoral system to make the House of Commons more representative of the views of people as a whole. The idea that a party with 35 per cent of the popular vote has a mandate to carry out its manifesto is, frankly, absurd. With a proportional representational system we usually get a coalition or minority government; that, I believe, is a good thing and not a bad thing. A strong government can be dangerous if they are not supported by the wishes of the people and if they confer on themselves powers they should not have. A government elected by a proper system of election would genuinely need to have the support of the majority behind their policies before they could implement them.