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House of Lords: Reform

My Lords, at this stage of the debate, when everything that might be said has been said and probably will be said again, I start by saying that I agree with the right honourable Member for Blackburn, the Leader of the House of Commons, that, in order to resolve the current debate about the composition of the second Chamber, we must seek compromise. We need to do that because it matters to the country that there is general support for constitutional change of this kind. Equally, we need to be clear that compromise is not necessarily achieved by triangulation. Triangulation can achieve something quite different which is not compromise at all. In the debate in another place, the right honourable Member for Manchester Gorton, unlike his neighbour, the noble Lord, Lord Barnett, disparaged most of his Members of the European Parliament—I had the good fortune to be one between 1999 and 2004. But he was not entirely wrong on everything; he rightly commented that there are only three logical ways to get us from where we are now—that is, to abolish the second Chamber, to have an all-elected Chamber or to have an all-nominated Chamber. Despite the few remarks that I heard earlier this evening, I believe that unicameralism is now, rightly, off the agenda. The proper choice in principle, I believe, is between a nominated or appointed Chamber, for each of which I can see perfectly respectable arguments. Of course, both cannot be the best answer or, indeed, the answer that we achieve. As part of the background to this constitutional debate, one of the givens, put forward by both the Government and the other place, is that the powers of the House of Commons will remain as they are now vis-à-vis this House; but in a paraphrase of the celebrated words of Mandy Rice-Davies, ““They would, wouldn’t they?””. Of course, as we are a revising and amending Chamber, I think that one is at least allowed to raise the possibility of questioning that. No doubt, that will be the position at the start, possibly entrenched by statute and convention, but, over time, it is inevitable that that may change, and it certainly would change with an elected Chamber. After all, conventions and the Parliament Acts have strengthened the House of Commons on the back of popular support and, if there were a change of allegiance in that popular support, it could be reversed. During my 10 years, over a 15-year period, in the European Parliament, I have seen that elected Chamber flex its muscles. Incrementally and inexorably, it has acquired more political power in the system of EU governance. I believe that any election to this place will get that process under way, but I am not sure that that would be a bad thing. After all, why not? Parliament not the House of Commons is sovereign in this country, and it is politics that has given the House of Commons its current pre-eminence. For my part, I see no sacramental significance in that position. Times can change things and that might even strengthen Parliament. It is all a matter of ““Events, dear boy””. It is possible to envisage membership of an elected second Chamber becoming a more and more attractive option than membership of the House of Commons, dominated by the party Whips and shackled down by constituency duties. In my own case, many years ago I was approached by a Conservative constituency chairman about a safe seat, where I would have been a strong candidate for nomination. But he said to me, ““If you go forward, you must make it clear that you would renounce the peerage you would inherit on your father’s death””. I thought about that and I declined. I think that, on balance, that has been one of the best decisions that I have made in my life. I have had a much more rewarding and, I hope, constructive life as a result. However, in the case of an elected Chamber, we do not know enough about the constituencies proposed or the relationship that constituents might expect with those who represent them. When I was a Member of the European Parliament, my constituency in north-west England was the size of a small country. On that scale, it is absolutely impossible to enlarge the traditional relationship that exists between a Member of the House of Commons and his constituents. If we are to have constituencies and election, how will the relationship between the electors and the elected work? We need to know that kind of answer. Equally, having exercised a dual mandate, it seems to me that politicians with constituents conduct politics very differently from the way those without constituents do. It is a case of oil and water, and, as is well known, the two do not go well together. Therefore, I believe that any significant hybridity will erode the effectiveness of the second Chamber. Mention has also been made of conflict between elected representatives in the same or overlapping constituencies. I can vouch for that from first-hand experience. It is especially bad with those in one’s own party. I speak with feeling about that as an ex-leader of five Conservative Members of the European Parliament in north-west England between 1999 and 2004, which was not a happy time to be a Tory Euro-politician. I do not believe that the current round of debate about reforming the second Chamber of our Parliament will bring any form of closure. There is no ““best answer””, and all change inevitably brings loss as well as gain. The composition and character of Parliament have always depended, as they do now and will in the future, on circumstances. Indeed, I feel a bit like an observer of the massed armies locked together in a titanic struggle on the Western Front in the first half of 1918. Many have forgotten how and why we got there, but in front of us a massive conflict is raging and it is now in intellectual stalemate in the nation as a whole. Neither side can mount a knockout breakthrough, but, at some point, it will come. We need a lot more concrete material to work with and think about, and we need to move the debate away from generalisations, which I believe are one of the causes of this stalemate, to specifics, which I suspect will be the way to break it. In the mean time, I shall vote, as I did on the previous occasion, in a spirit of compromise for both the wholly elected second Chamber and the wholly nominated House, and I shall eschew the third way—the hybrid options, which offer something quite different and not a compromise at all.