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House of Lords: Reform

My Lords, I apologise to all noble Lords for coming late to the House today. It was due to illness in my family. Four years ago, troops were pouring into Iraq and we were debating the pressing issue of Lords reform. And here we are again. We all know that, sadly, this will not be the last time. I register my disappointment with the votes last week, as I shall in the Lobby. It may have appeared to have been a clear majority, but it was muddied by tactical voting and showed a bewildering lack of understanding among MPs of what we do. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor: if a few more could take the trouble to visit us, and not wait to be summoned by Black Rod, we might have a fairer result. The probability of disagreement at every stage, even in the Commons, seems certain to run the Bill into the sand again. My guess is that the three sticking points will be the form of elections, the number of independents and the timing of the departure of the hereditary Peers. Those issues alone will cloudthe whole debate and prevent any consensus between the two Houses. On the other hand, Mr Brown, as a practical politician, whose ideals are positioned somewhere above and beyond the future of our House, may yet see the light. He will have calculated the amount of parliamentary time available; and he will have taken in the cost implications because that is his job. He could have the common sense to adopt a modest set of proposals for reform that really does have the hope of passing into law because they have the elements of agreement between the Houses. Those proposals are set out in what we call the Norton Bill, and I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Norton, for all that he has done. His group has demonstrated that a growing number of Peers are genuinely concerned to move on, to remove the residual rights of hereditary Peers, to ensure the survival of independents and to make the sort of reforms that are both feasible and urgently needed. Let us examine Conservative motives. Some Conservatives profess democratic ideals for this House and they actually believe in elections. But for Members like Douglas Hogg, who is a very old friend of mine, and his colleagues, including my own MP, Oliver Letwin, there is another agenda. They want us to strengthen their opposition to an overbearing Executive. They seem to have given up on the Commons altogether. The Lords are seen as the new democrats, galloping over the hill to the rescue. That is surely absurd, wishful thinking. They should be talking of reform of the whole of Parliament, not of the Lords. Democratically elected Lords would be bound to challenge the present conventions, as has been said so many times. As for the Government, who originally had their money on 50 per cent, I can think only that the excitement of getting such a deceptively clear result has blinded them from all the unforeseen consequences that lie ahead. One such consequence will be that a radical constitutional change could not possibly be achieved in one or two moves and will require further interim stages of reform. The balance between the Houses is bound to alter. The more representative the Lords become, the more representative they will want to be. I wonder whether some of you heard Mr Alan Williams putting it very well last week when he said: "““hybridity is not a solution. It is a holding position and a stalling of the inevitable””.—[Official Report, Commons, 6/3/07; col. 1427.]" I foresee every sort of problem for the Commons, and delays in their own legislation. That is why the Prime Minister opposed elections in the first place. I am also concerned about the disregard for the Cross Benches, expressed through the 100 per cent and 80 per cent solutions. After nearly 12 years in the House, I respect the role of the Cross Benches, not just as individuals, but as a political force, and I think many people have recognised that outside the House. They have often made all the difference in many of those critical Divisions, for example, on human rights, which have attracted public interest. I doubt that the Government, after so many assurances and protestations of faith in the Cross Benches, from the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, to the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, to our present administration, really want to throw them out, but anything is possible in the present climate. Preserving only 20 per cent of the present House would be the thin end of the wedge, because it would exclude the Bishops and the Law Lords. I favour a much more independent Appointments Commission, and a re-examination of gender, diversity and regional balance—a point that has been made very well—but neither of those is possible with just 20 per cent. Some MPs even argued last week that there is enough expertise in the Commons already, although they admitted that generals and admirals were hard to reproduce. However, I quote from our excellent new booklet on the work of the House: "““Debates about the environment... involved former chairs of electricity boards and oil companies, scientists, former secretaries of state … farmers””," and so on. The Second Reading debate on 12 May last year on the Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill attracted 90 speakers including lawyers, judges, doctors, scientists and members of charities and religious bodies. How on earth could an elected House ever achieve that level of expertise or have the time to achieve it? Are we to throw all that away? As a hereditary Peer, I recognise that our time is up again, and I have said before that I am ready to vote for abolition if the Government are serious about reform. I have supported many of the Government’s reforms over the past decade. However, the 100 per cent solution belongs to a make-believe world and will never happen. Until the Government fulfil their undertaking to the Cross Benches, think more seriously about the consequences of elections and recognise the value of what we already have, I will be unwilling to support them in the lobbies.