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House of Lords: Reform

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, is in for a second shock, because I agree with him too. That is most unusual. To some extent, we have only ourselves to blame for last week’s substantial vote in the other place. We all know that there are things in this House that require reform, yet we have done very little about it. Let me mention three things. First, there is no doubt in my mind that the cash-for-peerages issue, however it turns out, has done great damage to the body politic as a whole and, in passing, to this House. There is a growing consensus in all parts of the House in favour of a statutory appointments commission, but we have not advanced it. Secondly, we could dispose of the last of the hereditary element simply by ending the by-elections for hereditary Peers, thus at a stroke turning the existing hereditary Peers into de facto life Peers. These by-elections are particularly ridiculous on the Labour and Liberal Democrat Benches, where there have been more candidates than voters. It is impossible to defend that system. Thirdly, as my noble friend Lord Mackie pointed out, we have 740 Members of this place; about a third hardly ever turn up, largely because of reasons of increasing age and infirmity. We ought by now to have had some decent arrangement in place for some 200 or so to be able to leave with dignity. If we pressed ahead with these three reforms, we would be in a better position to argue for the continuation of the House of Lords rather than its abolition and replacement by an elected Chamber. For a House with very limited powers, these three reforms would make it more acceptable and popular in the country than it already is. Since so many Members have harked back toMr Asquith, I would like to quote from the preamble to the Parliament Act 1911, which said that, "““it is intended to substitute for the House of Lords as it at present exists a Second Chamber constituted on a popular instead of hereditary basis””." As my noble friend Lord Rodgers pointed out, the House of Lords has changed substantially—out of all recognition—since that commitment was made. It is no longer anything like the House that Mr Asquith faced. But it is not even the same House that existed when I was Leader of the Liberal Party. In response to my leader, who had some gentle fun at my expense, during the 12 years in which I led the party, I did regard myself as the hereditary keeper of the Asquith promise. The Ark of the Covenant was safe in my hands, you could be assured of that. What has changed, then? The simple answer is that the House of Lords has changed. The hereditaries have all but gone and could easily go completely. The primacy of the House of Commons has been accepted in a way that was not accepted even in my time as leader of the Liberal Party. We had an inbuilt majority of one party in the House of Lords. More importantly, the lack of clearly defined primacy was evident in the fact that during my time as a Member of Parliament, a Foreign Secretary, a Defence Secretary and two Secretaries of State for Trade and Industry sat in the House of Lords. I do not believe that any Government would do that today. The primacy of the House of Commons has been accepted fully. The third change is more recent. It has been agreed that no one party should have an overall majority in this place. That is a new development and it is an agreement. The irony is that the last of those two gains will be lost if we go for an elected Chamber, because there could be no guarantee that the fine balance of the parties would be maintained by an election. That would be up to the electorate, not an agreement among the parties in this House. The primacy of the Commons would be more difficult to defend. In fact, it could not be put better than it was by the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, last year when we were dealing with ping-pong. He said: "““We have concluded that, in our judgment, it would be wrong for us as an unelected House, having faced two repudiations from the elected House, to send this back one more time. If we were an elected House, I am sure that our decision would be different””.—[Official Report, 7/11/06; col. 654.]" Precisely so. The noble Lord had it absolutely right. When colleagues of mine in the other place say that I have gone native, and if they mean by that that I have learnt from my 10 years’ experience in this place, I plead guilty. One of the problems we have is image. Members of the House of Commons, among whom I include myself, do not know very much about what goes on here and how the place works, until they arrive here themselves, when it is quite a revelation. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, referred to what one Member of Parliament said. Let me quote another, although I had better not name him. He said that, "““all the people who inhabit that place are, first, incredibly wealthy””" You could have fooled me. He went on: "““I believe that the House of Lords is an unnecessary, underworked, overpriced institution””.—[Official Report, Commons, 6/3/07; cols. 1459-60.]" Overpriced institution? There is no need to argue about the theoretical figures of the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, which have been bandied about; the figures are in the new book which has just been published about working in the House of Lords. The figures from last year showed that each Member of the House of Commons cost the taxpayer £726,000 and that each Member of the House of Lords cost £149,000. In other words, the taxpayer is getting a revising Chamber at a very low cost, and the proof is in the annual accounts approved by Comptroller and Auditor-General. We also have enormous expertise—much has been said about this—but I could not understand the argument of my noble friend the leader of the Liberal Democrats. In the other House, the person who is most mentioned as an expert is the noble Lord, Lord Winston. He is not a Cross-Bencher; he happens to sit on the Labour Benches. It is one of the glories of this House that it does not really matter which Bench one sits on; people are respected for what they have to contribute to the debates. That is one of the House’s great distinctions from the other place. My noble friend, who made such a powerful speech in favour of an elected Chamber, then said, ““Oh, but we must keep the Cross-Benchers””. Why? If we are going to have an elected Chamber, let us have an elected Chamber. If there is something wrong with an elected Chamber, let us not have an elected Chamber. The idea that we have some sort of hybrid is an abomination. If we are going to press ahead with an elected Chamber, let the other place and this place do so with their eyes open. I think that there will be five consequences. First, the careful party balance here that has been agreed will not be guaranteed. Secondly, the primacy of the Commons will be less able to be defended clearly. Thirdly, this place will become a refuge for those who do not get elected to the other place, the Scottish Parliament or the European Parliament, especially in the party list system. Fourthly, there will be elected Members who interfere with constituency Members—we thought that that would not happen in the Scottish Parliament, but I am sorry to tell noble Lords that it does, and that I spend a lot of my time as Presiding Officer dealing with complaints from Members of the Scottish Parliament, constituency MPs in Westminster and local authorities about the activities of regional Members. We never thought that we would have offices for regional Members scattered throughout Scotland at great public expense. That has happened, and I am afraid that it will happen if we have an elected Chamber here, whether one believes it or not. The fifth consequence will be the extra cost of an elected Chamber—not just the cost of running it, but the cost of the elections as well. All of these issues need to be taken into account. It would be preferable to go ahead with a reform package for this place on the basis on which there is such widespread agreement already.