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House of Lords: Reform

My Lords, we have had a marvellous debate both today and yesterday. I apologise to noble Lords who spoke when I was not in the Chamber as I was hosting a function in the Cholmondeley Room and could not get here. I agree with my noble friend Lord Waddington that by now everything must have been said. Nearly everything probably has been said, which is why I asked to speak on the second day. I wanted everything to have been said so that I could change the tempo for a moment and talk about what the House of Lords means to me, to all of you and, indeed, to the public at large. Unlike most noble Lords, I speak about the House of Lords twice a week, and have done so for years. I speak to Conservative constituencies, to Rotary clubs, where I am very popular, and to Soroptimist clubs. I do not even charge. I talk about what we are and what we do for this country. Wherever I go, people say that if they have any complaints at all about Parliament, they are about the other place, not this place. When the House of Lords reform debate was initiated a few years ago, I sat on the Conservative Front Bench, next to my noble friend Lord Strathclyde, and cried my eyes out. Nobody could understand why. I told all those around me that I had hay fever—as if you could have hay fever in November. The truth is that I loved this place from the day I came in right up until now. It represents the best of British history and tradition and a job well done. Every time that we interfere with it, we take away a little bit of something that is valuable. I became a government Whip within about six weeks of coming into the House. Before that I was chairman of the London Conservatives, so I knew what it was to be bossy. Life Peers ran away from me if they knew that I expected them to vote. But asking a hereditary Peer to vote was an entirely different thing if he did not think it was right for his country. They used to say, ““It may be good for the Tory Party but my family have supported this country for years and years and I intend to continue to do so. I do not intend to vote as you wish just because you are telling me off””. I used to reply, ““Then stay at home; just don’t come””. That was the very best that I could hope for. I wondered afterwards why it was that history, tradition and all these things meant so much to me. I have explained it once before in the House so I shall not do so again in detail. However, my grandparents were immigrants. When they came to this country there was no such thing as benefits. They had to work for every single thing that they had. They were not well off and neither were my parents, but the one thing that they gained was a love of Britain. That has stayed with us and my children right the way through. I am not a dinosaur. I am certainly not saying that there cannot be change of some sort or another. However, it grieved me greatly when we lost so many of our hereditary brethren. I hope that if we go for an all-appointed Chamber—which I shall support—the remaining hereditary Peers will all be made Life Peers. The Commons walked blindly into an accident. They thought that a vote for an all-elected Chamber would be a tactical move. However, yesterday I heard many noble Lords on the other side of the House say, ““Nobody on this side is listening to what the Commons said””. The Commons could never in a million years have intended to produce the rubbish that it came up with. It is not possible. Never mind the general feeling, we should consider the individual feeling of a constituency MP. Why would he want another MP—representing a bigger area than himself with more people having elected him—in his part of the woods? He would not. The Commons has not thought the matter through. But this House thinks everything through. The bottom line is that we get legislation coming in from the other place which has not been looked at. Whole swathes of it have not even had the pages opened, if you ask me. They just have the guillotining, which many noble Lords have mentioned, and consequently they are not doing their job. Now, they are trying to stop us doing our job by making us just like them. It just will not do, and I am not prepared to stand by while it is happening. Too much has already happened to our constitution on our watch. It is time to say, ““No further””. We do not want an elected Chamber. We would lose, as so many other noble Lords have said, the abilities of people such as all those vice-chancellors, Bishops and Law Lords who have come here. They—the great and the good—are not going to stand for election. I am sure that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, realises that they are not going to stand. I would love to have stood years ago if I had been selected for the other place; but not now. Good heavens above, I would be one of the first out the door if I had to stand for election. I beg noble Lords to please think very carefully when they vote tomorrow. Yesterday, a noble Lord said that probably everyone had made up their mind. They may very well have done; but one has no idea what one’s children and grandchildren will say in years to come and we have lost the jewel in the parliamentary crown. They may ask, ““What were you doing when that happened?””. We amend, and we are a great revising Chamber. I cannot remember who said today that it is not such a great Chamber. It is a great Chamber. There are all those amendments that we make and send to the Commons; they keep 40 per cent of them. Where would they have been without us? Think very carefully before you cast your vote tomorrow.