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House of Lords: Reform

My Lords, I welcome the spirit in which the Lord Chancellor opened this debate and the courage with which the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, has announced to his Back-Benchers how he intends to vote. I thought that he left all Benches in this House with a very important message, which I hope will carry through to Wednesday’s vote; that is, this House should not lift the drawbridge on reform. We have a long debate ahead of us, so perhaps it would be useful if I start by saying that my Chief Whip, in his usual gentle but persuasive manner, has invited colleagues on these Benches to vote, as did our colleagues in the Commons, for the 80 per cent and 100 per cent elected options, and for no other. We do so because voting on those lines fulfils the pledge made in our last manifesto, which is in line with that of our predecessor Liberal Party. That pledge has stood for nearly 100 years and its intent is to substitute for the House of Lords as it presently exists a second Chamber constituted on a popular instead of a hereditary basis. Seeing that near100 year-old pledge and realising that I would have to persuade colleagues on my Benches, I thought I would consult Lord Crewe, the Leader of the Liberals in the House of Lords when that 1911 Bill went through. It is an interesting read, and this quote is about the Liberal Benches. He said: "““this small team was neither easy to control, nor always dependable. Some peers would suddenly fall ill before a big debate; others begged off on the plea of seasonal country occupations; others again would quixotically embark on lengthy Mediterranean cruises without so much as warning the … Chief Whip. And in a situation where every vote counted, the Liberal peers continued to act with all the freedom and personal eccentricity which in the past had reduced the party to a state of anarchy””." It makes me feel how fortunate I am today. But of course I realise that not all colleagues will be with me. I understand, for example, that my noble friend Lord Steel is going to do a kind of St Augustine in reverse. Having lived a life of unblemished sanctity on this matter, he has decided in the autumn of his years to give sin a twirl. The headlines in the national newspapers, not to mention the cartoons, suggest that Lords reform has been settled once and for all by the votes last week in the other place, but those of us who know how Parliament works know that that is far from the reality. Given a constructive response from this House, as the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, indicated, we are at the beginning, not the end of a process. I hope I can persuade noble Lords that this House has survived for 800 years because it has known when to bend and not to break. I have brought with me today the three documents which, together with the votes last Wednesday in the other place, show us the way forward. They are the Wakeham royal commission report, the Cunningham committee report on conventions and the Straw White Paper. Within their pages there are answers to the very legitimate concerns held in both Houses and among the wider public outside about the future powers and composition of this House. The Cunningham committee report demonstrates that it is possible to work out the conventions between the Houses in a way that ensures the continuing primacy of the House of Commons. Indeed, we would argue from these Benches that there could be a permanent conventions committee which would also act as a resolutions committee as an alternative to ping-pong in order to resolve differences between the two Houses. I agree with Mr Straw that the Cunningham conventions provide the template for relations between the two Houses for many years to come, and to suggest otherwise is just an attempt by the opponents of reform to frighten the horses. I believe in the primacy of the House of Commons and I find it slightly bizarre that those in the Cunningham committee who argued most fervently for that primacy will argue over the next two days that we should now ignore the opinion of the Commons. Primacy can and will be protected. The other great concern is that this House will lose the quality and expertise which comes through nomination, particularly to the Cross Benches. Here I believe we find our solution in both Wakeham and Straw. Both accept the wisdom of what I would call a glide path to reform. The elected element would enter this House over a period of three elections and a Cross Bench element would be retained and refreshed by a statutory appointments commission. As colleagues know, I am not an unalloyed supported of the concept of Cross-Benchers. I am a strong supporter of people joining political parties. It is the joiners who make our democracy work, and indeed I am like Elizabeth Taylor and marriage: I am so enthusiastic about the institution that I have tried it more than once. However, we should retain a Cross Bench representation of about 20 per cent of the reformed House by nomination via a statutory appointments commission, and I do not think we should underestimate the ability of independents of quality being elected if the method of election adopted is by proportional representation, especially if it is by the single transferable vote. So let us be clear. What is on offer at the moment is a decisive view from the House of Commons and an invitation from Mr Straw, repeated by the Lord Chancellor today, to negotiate next steps. It is, of course, open to this House over the next couple of days to organise a train wreck, but to do so would be the most pyrrhic of pyrrhic victories. I ask noble Lords to give pause for thought before they take that course. I agree with the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor that the views of both Houses are worthy of respect, but the House of Lords cannot have the veto on this matter. The Commons vote changes the nature of the debate, as the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, indicated. The vote of the House of Commons makes it abundantly clear that the status quo, or anything close to it, is simply not an option. All three parties had specific commitments to Lords reform in their most recent manifesto—as has been pointed out, the Conservative Party’s was even more specific than that of the Labour Party. The leader of the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords and the Labour Party leader-in-waiting all voted for 80 per cent elected. If noble Lords opt to wreck this process in the face of those realities, the best they will achieve is a delay until after the next general election. I hope that in that event, all three parties will put in their manifesto a specific commitment to Lords reform, coupled with an equally specific commitment to use the Parliament Act to get it through. Of course delaying tactics are an option. But those who argue that delay is better than constructive negotiation should ponder on what has happened in the past seven years to the offer on Lords reform. We started with the Prime Minister committed to 100 per cent nomination; Wakeham proposed 20 per cent elected; Straw suggested 50 per cent; now the Commons has voted for 80 per cent and 100 per cent elected. The other place is becoming more radical in its demands, not less. I believe that those who argue for defiance of the Commons will lead us down a very dangerous path and miss the chance to negotiate from relative strength. As the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, indicated, your Lordships have much to be proud about when it comes to how this House has worked, particularly since the first stage of reform in 1998. I agree with the writer in the Guardian who recently said that one of the great paradoxes of our time was that whereas in the 20th century, the two great reforming Governments—Liberal in 1906 and Labour in 1945—had to face a recalcitrant House of Lords, in the21st century, it is this House which has been the defender of civil liberties and human rights against an increasingly authoritarian Government. The ““if it works don’t try and fix it”” argument does not wash, any more than the ploy of calling for Commons reform first. The reality, which we have to face, is that we are a House of patronage and appointment. Patronage and appointment have become linked in the public mind with sleaze and corruption. That is a major reason why the other place acted so decisively last week. There was a strong desire on its part to draw a line under the whole grubby business of cash for peerages. I think that the other place is right to do so. One way that such a line can be drawn is for the Government to announce that there will be no further nominations to this House until after the next stage of the reform is agreed and thereafter, only via a statutory appointments commission to the Cross Benches. Dealing with existing life Peers in a fair and honourable way while phasing in the elected Peers will be difficult enough without adding to the problem. If they bother to read the White Paper, noble Lords will see that the Straw proposals are exceedingly fair to existing life Peers. More than 380 life Peers have been created over the Blair years. They will all get older and it will be difficult to manage. What better way for Mr Blair to demonstrate his personal commitment to reform than by forgoing his resignation honours list? In this country, the battle to replace patronage and corruption with democratic accountability has been a long one. One hundred and eighty years ago, the Times newspaper won its accolade of ““the Thunderer”” because it thundered for reform. Indeed, 40 years ago my noble friend Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank and the noble Lord, Lord Donoughue, wrote a book called The People into Parliament. I believe that once again this is a debate about the extension of the franchise. It is interesting that the arguments are the old ones. The arguments against trusting the people have always been the same—that people of quality would not submit themselves to the democratic process and that, even if they did, the electorate are ill suited and ill qualified to make the right choices. If those arguments had prevailed, the Member for Old Sarum would still be sitting in the House of Commons. But they have not prevailed. The task before this House during the next two days is to consider our response to a clear and settled view from the House of Commons. I urge noble Lords to reject options which will bring us into open conflict with the other place and instead adopt responses which will allow for constructive negotiations. I urge noble Lords to listen carefully. There is a noise coming down that Corridor. It is a noise which this House has heard before. It heard it in 1832; it heard it in 1911. It is the thunder of reform, and this House ignores it at its peril.