---

House of Lords Bill [HL]

My Lords, on behalf of the other members of the Bill team, the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard, the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, the noble Lord, Lord Corbett of Castle Vale, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Steel of Aikwood, on his exemplary leadership on the Bill. Perhaps I may reinforce one point and urge my noble friend the Minister not to repeat on this occasion the mantra that he used in July, that our Bill is not fully ““comprehensive””. Surely that begs every question in sight. What does ““comprehensive”” mean in practice? Translated, it means putting all your eggs in the basket of one Big Bang in the next Parliament—not very wise, I would have thought. In any case, I have no doubt that if the choice were put to both Houses, a majority in each—I challenge the Government to test this—would prefer ““incrementalism””; in other words, ““Take steps A and B now, without prejudice to future measures””. In advocating this approach, I am speaking for the consensus of the Labour Peers group. The approach was set out in a letter to the Prime Minister a year ago and adopted by general consensus after a well attended meeting with him. It is not of course inconsistent with people disagreeing about future measures. People may say that something has changed now that we have a new Prime Minister. Well, as the noble Lord, Lord Steel, pointed out, one thing that has changed is Gordon Brown stating that the ““appointment-versus-election”” question will have to wait until after the general election. Another thing that has changed is that it is now as plain as a pikestaff that the so-called ““consensus between the leaders of the parties”” on anything like a Big Bang approach is a mirage. The leader of the Opposition has apparently said that he might get round to it in his third or fourth term. We could have a sweepstake on how many of us will be alive by then. Are there any other straws in the wind, to coin a phrase? Perhaps we should not read too much into it, but we are told that Ministers are now adopting ““the normal stance of neutrality towards a Private Member’s Bill””. If I were the Prime Minister, I would now say to myself, ““Here I have a window of opportunity to transform the appointments system by making it totally transparent and removing all patronage. Secondly, I would finally be ending the hereditary principle after 1,000 years, and, incidentally, exactly 50 years after the first life Peers were appointed—an experiment which has worked rather well. These are measures which will go down in the history books, and we would take the credit for introducing them on my watch. What I may not say—even to myself—is that if we do not make these changes in this Parliament, we will, despite all the hoo-hah about reform of the House of Lords, have achieved absolutely nothing, and of course no one knows about the balance of forces in the next Parliament. So let’s go for it. In any case, it is not as dangerous as the Big Bang””. Certainly, we do not need to wait for another White Paper, as the noble Lord, Lord Steel, said, for the points in the Bill to move forward with all due speed, because the analysis of these matters in the earlier White Paper in February this year still stands. However, it is for us and the political parties now to put some further flesh on the bones and for the Ministry of Justice to get involved with us rather than remain exclusively engaged in giving birth to its own baby some time later next year. In the short time still available to me, I shall draw attention to some of the issues behind Clause 9, on the relationship between the statutory Appointments Commission and the political parties so far as whipped Members are concerned. The political parties’ constitutional bodies will need to balance the first stage of the trawl, where there will be a degree of transparency about how people are put on preliminary lists, with the second stage, when small, separate party panels, drawn from different hinterlands, do the selection, on the basis that we still wind up with 200 Labour Members and 200 Conservative Members, or an equivalent number in a smaller House. The Liberal Democrats will have to propose their own number over a run of years. I think that this will lead to a code of practice, agreed between the SAC and the political parties, on the modus operandi in relation to appointments. Voluntary changes would then be made to the party rule books. The code should also define a firewall—to use the latest vernacular—between nomination of candidates and any donations to the relevant party. This exercise will also demonstrate that, although it will be for the SAC to look into any questions of probity, it cannot be for that small group of men and women to choose Members of our legislature by selecting from longer party lists. From my knowledge of the Labour Party, I think that that would be an impossible situation and that the same would be true for the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats. We ask the Prime Minister and the Lord Chancellor not to look this gift horse in the mouth. I repeat for Jack Straw’s benefit that this is a gift horse and not a Trojan horse. I believe that our approach can and will, after further reflection, be taken up by this reforming Prime Minister and reforming Lord Chancellor when the Bill goes to the Commons and seeks sponsors early in the New Year.