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House of Lords: Reform

My Lords, today’s New York Times headlines its report: "““British Lords Defend Their Seats, Like Junkyard Bulldogs””." This is some junkyard and some bulldogs. During the debate, I have listened to 115 speeches and read a number of others. The prevailing atmosphere seems to be one of complacency and self-congratulation. With a few notable exceptions—especially the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, and my noble friend Lord Smith of Clifton—most speakers seem to be echoing Dr Pangloss: "““All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds””." For them, the only cloud in the sky is the failure of MPs to appreciate just how wonderful this House is. I suggest that our mood should be one of frustration. Unlike most of the other speakers, from the Front Benches as well as from the Back Benches, I have spent many hours on the Front Benches in the Commons, arguing with Ministers that their Lordships’ House is doing an excellent job in improving, revising and amending legislation. From the opposition Front Benches in the Commons I have been able to say that the job that this House does is excellent. But, of course, Conservative and Labour Ministers dismiss all the solid work done in this House as worthless because the House is unelected—I have heard that refrain so often from Ministers that it is ingrained in my memory. That surely is the core of the problem that we should address in this House. The reason why MPs, even very senior MPs, do not understand and appreciate the quality of the work that is done here is that they do not need to know. They believe that when the chips are down, we do not matter. Unfamiliarity breeds contempt and contempt breeds unfamiliarity. I shall illustrate the point. When amendments to a Bill from this House return to the Commons, the Government of the day may accept some minor changes, but almost invariably, except in the end-of-Session ping-pong, they will use their built-in majority to revert to the original drafting. The Lords amendments are voted down and replaced. Then a small reasons committee is constituted and meets immediately in a room behind the Speaker’s Chair. The Government have a majority on that committee. The Minister pulls out of his pocket a succinct list of reasons why the Government do not like the Lords’ improvements—of course written before any debate—which sometimes is little more than a bland, ““We are right; they are wrong””, and then they vote. In a matter of a few minutes, the whole Bill will have been kicked back along the Corridor with the added insult of totally inadequate reasoning—a rejection of all the hard work that is so rightly celebrated in this House. On one famous occasion, the then Secretary of State for Transport, Mr John MacGregor, as he was then, was bulldozing through the Commons the ill fated Conservative privatisation of the railways. The reasons committee that evening took rather longer than usual. One of my Liberal Democrat colleagues, now the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, discovered that the chairmanship of the committee was debatable. He and a Labour MP on that committee held the committee in session long enough for your Lordships’ House to resume, to realise that your Lordships would not receive the Bill that evening and to go home. An extra 24 hours was all that elapsed as a result, but at least the point was made. The Government have now altered the rules and the reasons committee now has to accept the chairmanship of the Minister of the Crown responsible. That is why we should be frustrated. All the valuable work that is done here—which has been rightly referred to in speech after speech over the past two days and which impressed me with its quality for many years before I came to this House—has little long-term benefit because the government majority in the other place can always dismiss it as being based on illegitimacy.