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House of Lords: Reform

My Lords, the noble and learned Lord has made a powerful speech. We waited for it for a long time and it was worth waiting for. I guess his only regret is that he will not be able to sit there with that wise smile on his face for the next few months without making further contributions to our debates. We would all welcome that. I am a great admirer of Jack Straw, who was a good Foreign Secretary. He should not have been moved, but he was, and as a result faced the problem of Lords reform. The problem, as we all recognise, seems to be becoming more difficult, not easier. He knows that no one will get just what they want. He also knows that proposing a compromise, which is what he has done, will not get him many brownie points. However, he was right to try, and I certainly support his efforts. He had three broad choices before him. First, he could have proposed a wholly appointed House. I suspect that that might have been his first choice and that of the Prime Minister. That would certainly have secured my support and, I suspect, that of a good majority in this House. However, we know that that would not have won the support of anything like a majority in another place. Secondly, he could have done what he has done—to produce a White Paper that indicated a way forward that would certainly not give many of us what we wanted but that might be a basis for a compromise. The third alternative was to do nothing, or at most to deal with only a few matters on which all seem to agree. Whatever conclusion we come to at the end, his starting position was a perfectly reasonable place from which to start to explore the possibilities. I submit that there must be a proper and sincere attempt to secure agreement between the Houses and between the parties. So I support the White Paper and believe it is important that we all examine it, not to determine whether it is ideal, which it certainly is not, but whether it has some concepts with which we can live. There are some good proposals which could and should command universal support; namely, to have a statutory and independent Appointments Commission, to keep the Cross-Benchers and the Bishops, and to leave the existing life Peers in place, but to produce a scheme for retirement forthose who want to. I would also leave existinghereditary Peers in place and end the system of by-elections. However, I have serious worries about some ofMr Straw’s proposals. Let me set out some of my concerns. I accept that an elected element is part of the compromise, but a 50 per cent elected element is too high, certainly for the initial period. I would start with 25 per cent, possibly increasing to 50 per cent after15 years, which would greatly help the size of this House while existing Peers gradually slide away. Whatever the number of elected Peers ultimately, I believe that it is right to start gradually and over a longer period than 15 years. I can see the case for a single term for elected Members—it is essential—but I can see no case for appointed Members not being eligible for reappointment by a genuinely independent Appointments Commission. I also think that retiring elected Members should be considered by the Appointments Commission for appointment. Without that, the quality of the candidates will be far too low. For example, a QC aged 45 is brought into the House. At 60 years old, you say ““Thank you very much. Off you go””. A QC would simply not be interested in coming on that basis, would find better things to do and the House would lose. I gather that the proposal to disregard the existing and remaining Members of the House in the political balance is also totally unacceptable. It seems likely that if we follow the White Paper, one party will, for a number of years, end up with a majority of political Peers, if not of the House overall. It is politically naive to think that the Appointments Commission should not have the power to appoint a new Member at the request of a Prime Minister to, say, become the Leader of the House or a Minister. It must be in the interests of the House that he should. I would go further and give the same facility to the Appointments Commission in respect of opposition parties in suitable cases. It is essential that a revising House should not have among its number people who still have political ambitions. There is enough evidence of past difficulties between Members of the Commons and Members of the European Parliament—certainly when I was Chief Whip in the Commons—to make Members of the Commons very wary of these problems. In this respect, five years restriction on ex-Members of this House standing for the Commons is far too short. My royal commission proposed 10 years, but I would prefer a permanent restriction. I would like to put down a marker to say that in my view it would be totally unacceptable for one class of Peer to bepaid for his services to the House that is denied to others. Finally, the elected element in Mr Straw’s proposals is not like other elected representatives. These Members would not be responsible to their electorate like normal elected Members. They are in effect appointed Members, but they are appointed by the people. They quite rightly will never have to go back to their electors to account for their actions, which is why I can support the idea and can tolerate a list system for party nominees. But there will be required a great leap of faith by those who favour—in my view, wrongly—a truly elected element in the upper House. These are my principal worries about the White Paper. It has a number of good points, but the shortcomings are significant. Ultimately, Jack Straw and his colleagues will have to weigh up all the factors in deciding whether he can get a compromise that will stick. I have already said that he is right to try. But he will have to be satisfied that a reformed House will be a better revising House than the existing one; that it will not seek to rival the House of Commons; and, most important, that a concerted effort can be made to get across the message that a reformed House of Lords is part of making Parliament work better in the best interests of democracy. If he can achieve a measure of agreement, he will have done Parliament a great service. However, itwill also be a perfectly honourable position if he concludes that this is not the moment to proceed. So far as the voting is concerned, I will vote for the first two options and against the remainder.