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House of Lords: Reform

My Lords, unlike the previous speaker, whose dedication I admire, I have not recently spent many hours considering House of Lords reform, perhaps because the irreverent side of my nature says that reform is a bit like buses—if you miss one, there will be another one along in a while. However, I found it educational to read the Official Report of the proceedings of the two days last week in the other place. Like the noble Lord, Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank, and other noble Lords, I was struck by the antiquated views that seemed to be held by some Members there. It struck me how many Members of another place seemed to think that this House was made of belted Earls, or something similar—hence the embarrassment of the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker. I confess to myself being a belted Earl, among other things, but the number of Divisions on which Earls have swung the vote recently would not go beyond the fingers of one hand. Anyone spending any time looking at this place would realise that being an Earl is far from the qualification that has brought most of your Lordships here. Until the creation of the Appointments Commission, life Peers were all appointed by their very own politicians. The Library tells me that we have 13 here who took their seats under Harold Wilson, three under Heath and so on in increasing numbers until we reach336 under Tony Blair. The noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor mentioned that the tension that we create makes us unpopular with some in the other place. I have heard it said that every young man who goes for officer training likes to think that he has a field marshal’s baton in his knapsack. By the same token, there is always a danger that every young man or woman elected to the other place thinks that he has an autocrat’s baton in his or her briefcase. One role of this place is to ensure that those who begin as democrats never become those autocrats. Paragraph 6.25 of the White Paper makes the point that the Government would like representation of the regions and nations to be ““inbuilt””, but wishful thinking to that extent might not be enough. Noble Lords may understand if I go back to our deliberations in 1999 on reforming this House, when we considered certain things to do with Scotland. Amendments were debated to establish if there were restrictions based on Scottish membership of the House laid down by the Treaty of Union. When the Government had rejected these, in a final exercise my friend Lord Gray of Contin had a Motion passed in the House to refer the issue to the Committee for Privileges to see whether the Treaty of Union was likely to be breached. The three noble and learned Lords who sat in judgment were all of the opinion that there was no conflict as long as Scotland received adequate representation in Parliament, but listening to the reasoning in their case, as it was presented to them, makes interesting reading. The outstanding comment of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, is that the implication of the then House of Lords Bill, as opposed to any Acts that preceded it, is that there is no longer any guarantee that a Scottish Peer resident in Scotland will be a Member of the House. It was agreed that the treaty, with its conditions, existed even though the legislation that referred to the appointment of Scottish Peers in the two Acts from which it had been constituted had been annulled, but that apparently cannot take away what is in the treaty. I raise the issue merely to alert those so keenly promoting election to this House that it may be all very well to say that we believe that all Peers should be elected, but triggering an elected system that does not guarantee an element for regions, or particularly for Scotland, could run into trouble with the Treaty of Union. The idea of hereditary Peers is, of course, completely counterintuitive to modern society. Our philosophy has become the disposable society: use once and consign to the rubbish bin. But I should like to dwell briefly on the contribution of the hereditaries. I am sure it is not so long ago that being British was not just about accepting certain concepts and philosophies for today but was also to do with owing allegiance to a whole history, good and bad. I get the feeling that some would like the history to which they claim allegiance to reach back to a point only about 50 years ago when, in their mind, they would feel they were always on the side of the angels. Speaking in this Chamber, one feels there can be no doubt that the Victorians wished future generations to be conscious of a vast array of history so that even the barons of Runnymede and Magna Carta continually look down on our deliberations. The presence of hereditary Peers in this House has also ensured that history was a living tradition, because there were people walking about not just supporting the names that conjured up both the fame and the infamy of the past, but contributing the view that that particular background gave them. I venture to suggest that it added an extra dimension to our considerations. If the noble Lord, Lord Steel of Aikwood, finds the method of re-election and replacement of hereditary Peers irksome, dare I suggest that it might be possible to change the method of election? Judging from the deliberations in another place, one might think that a hereditary component has no place in the minds of our present-day politicians, whatever solution they eventually consider they have found. But whenever they do, if it really does mean that there are no hereditary Members, I hope that at least the barons of Runnymede will still look down on this House. But there will be increased responsibility on the academics and historians to remind politicians—as Lord Russell did so frequently—of the road we have travelled and the lessons we have learnt along the way.