---

House of Lords: Reform

My Lords, I am often amazed at this House. I listened with great attention to what is being said, but a number of speeches completely ignored what happened last week. One cannot ignore what happened last week. I am sorry about that, my Lords, but we now have a different situation. When there is talk of democracy, I am reminded very much of the Reform Act 1832, in which talk of the dangers that lurked if one went for democracy. That was about introducing democracy to the House of Commons. That seems to be repeated here again. The other thing that puzzles me is the number of Members of this House, including me, who have always depended for their career on being elected and being part of a democracy who, when they enter here, turned their back on democracy and argue what a bad thing it is when it is applied to this House. Yet the whole of their career has depended on the will of the people. I say again that there is nothing better than trusting the people. I am quite certain of that. I believe in a democratic House. Whether it is properly elected, 80 per cent elected or any percentage elected, there must be legitimacy. I agree that once you have introduced democracy to the House at whatever level, the demand for it will begin to grow. I have heard costs mentioned. It is not a question of cost; it is a question of having a democratic Chamber. That is what it is about. If you have a Chamber based on di amica, of course it will cost less. We must think about the situation in which we now find ourselves. This House can speak from a position of strength. We can say, ““Yes, we recognise what the Commons has said. Let us see what agreement can be reached between the two Houses””. Or we can go on ignoring what has happened there and, at some time, face the consequences of that action. Many things need to be decided. If it is to be a democratic House—if there are to be elections—what sort of House do we want? If we want a reforming House, should Ministers be in this House or should they all be in the other place? Should we be completely a reforming House looking at legislation pre and post its passing? There is a lot of work to be done. In a real democracy, that work must be done. Just burying our heads in the sand is not an answer to the problems that we must face. If we go for elections, we must consider what kind of elections we want. I believe that they should be based on regions. As one who has always been for first past the post, I think that there is a case here for PR. That would lead to not only to a different Chamber but to a different kind of Member elected to it. On a regional base, there will be no conflict between Members of the Commons and Members of the Lords in elections. They would be completely different animals, as they are in European elections. We must also decide when they want the elections to take place. Do we want them when there is a European election or should we not have them when there is a general election, when more people are likely to partake in it? If we adopted a different, open-list system—I say open-list because the electorate has the right to select the people of their choice—we would get different results. There is also a case to be made that smaller parties would be elected through that kind of system. We would be getting to the root of democracy if we went down that road. There is much to be decided and much to be done. If we turn our backs on what was decided last week in the House, we will not get much further forward. This House might suddenly find that it is not the perfect House that it imagines itself to be. If I took some of the people here into the bar of my local pub, they would be amazed at what the locals had to say about what they believe they do. It is simply that people very often do not consider what is being done. That is why we need to look again at where we are going. I do not think that the Cross-Benchers are perfect, either. I think that they provide a valuable service, but they come from a narrow section of society. Is that really the way in which we want to go in the future? I can think of a lot of people who could be real independents and who could sit on the Benches and contribute to the work of this House. And where are the ethnic minorities represented on the Cross Benches? There is just the odd one. I am glad that the noble Lord put his hand up; there are not many more. When we talk about numbers in the House and how many of us there are, how many people actually run this House? If we look, we find that the House is run by about 380 people—give or take a few. The number is just below 400, in any case. There is a way in which we could almost immediately reduce the numbers of the House. Could we not look at those who do not attend? Why should they not be struck off the list? There are many ways in which we can move forward. All I am suggesting are one or two things that we should be thinking about. I hope in the vote on Wednesday that we recognise the step that was taken last week and agree with it. I have always said to the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, that only the two of us believe in proper democracy. Not many people on the Benches around him do so. One rarely hears a speech from the Benches opposite that actually supports the position that he has taken when he talks of voting for 80 per cent. How many of his colleagues will join him? Noble Lords might say six. Well, there we are; that is rather more than I thought. Nevertheless, we at last have a chance to deal with an eccentric anachronism and to get rid of the amateur from our society once and for all by having a Chamber with a majority of elected Members. Let those who denounce democracy not forget that many of them are here because of democracy. Many of the others will turn around and say that we will have only people who have been elected. I know that many of them have tried to be selected for election and have ended up here. That does not make them second-class citizens, either.