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House of Lords: Reform

My Lords, it has been a fascinating debate, with every possible shade of opinion expressed. When lower down the batting order—I think that I am speaker no. 106—you are faced with the situation that allegedly confronted a Minister who, in an aside to his civil servant, said: ““What can I say? Everything that can possibly be said on this subject has already been said””. To which the Sir Humphrey reply was, as has already been mentioned by my noble friend Lord Anderson, ““But not by everyone””. I hope I will not fit the ““everyone””, and I will endeavour to follow the Chief Whip’s advice and avoid reiteration. That is probably an impossible objective. My noble and learned friend Lord Falconer in his opening address invited us to accept at face value the other place’s decision. Normally I would be willing to accept his recommendations, but I find this proposition difficult to accept once you examine the voting record of last Wednesday’s decisions. When the tectonic plates of the other place started to shift last week, the tide went out, leaving Motions calling for ““a fully appointed House””, a 20 per cent elected, 40 per cent, 50 per cent or 60 per cent elected, like stranded whales on a deserted beach. When the tide came back it delivered a veritable tsunami of votes for a fully elected House. I might have been prepared to accept that decision at face value if it had not come to light that a number of those who voted for a fully appointed second Chamber also voted for a fully elected second Chamber. You could say that they believed in the polar extremes, but you cannot blame me for having a scintilla of scepticism on the matter. I next want to address the allegations of a democratic deficit. The British Parliament has evolved over hundreds of years to its present state, not in a logical straight line—going through a civil war, that would have been difficult—with a constitutional monarchy now and a link between Church and state. It is a curious hybrid that works. Does it work perfectly? No, I doubt that it does. But it recognises in the final analysis the primacy of the other place. Of course if you put it under some kind of microscope and examine the constitutional parts you can identify an unelected, unaccountable second Chamber, but the democratic whole is greater than the sum of the parts, because the role of our House is to scrutinise and revise, not to challenge the primacy of the other place. As no party has an absolute majority as a result of previous reforms, it is a role which recent history shows the House performs well. A fully elected second Chamber will inevitably challenge the current conventions and impinge on the primacy of the other place, creating an unintended democratic deficit. I do not want to comment on the current situation about allegations on the appointment of Peers, except to say that the current Appointments Commission instituted by this Government successfully challenged the validity of some nominations. I will support a fully appointed second Chamber, recognising that that will mean the removal of the remaining hereditaries, but I would support their conversion to life Peers, although sometimes the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, stretches that generosity. He did say that he was ““the grit””. However, I feel that we cannot totally ignore the tide of change. Despite the view of the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, that it is dead in the water—I hope that he is wrong—I would be prepared to vote for a 50 per cent hybrid. I believe that would retain many of the strengths of our current Chamber—its richness and diversity—and combine experience with a new elected element. Inevitably, we would have to redefine the conventions with that kind of hybrid Chamber to ensure that the primacy of the Commons was not challenged. If noble Lords do not like much in the White Paper—and I gather from some of the contributions we have heard during this lengthy debate that many do not—I believe the point made that in going for the best you can sometimes end up with the worst. So I think that this House has to accept that at some point in this democratic process, there will be a need to compromise. If we are asking the other place to listen, then we have to heed that advice. As my noble friend Lord Anderson said, this is going to be a long process. There are many other aspects that we will need to look at. For example, the size of the House will have to be addressed, probably over a period of time. As a number of noble Lords have said, we are in a 21st century multi-faith society. I have no desire to see the abolition of the church’s representation, but we need a more ecumenical representation than we currently have. Unlike one comment I heard, it would be unwise if we sought to somehow say that this Chamber had the right to challenge the validity of the Parliament Acts in a situation where there has been a genuine attempt to reach consensus between the two Houses.