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House of Lords Bill [HL]

My Lords, with constitutional reform it is a reliable maxim that the best is the enemy of the good. We can have our grand dreams of reform, but one person’s dream is another person’s nightmare. Experience tells us that comprehensive reforms do not work. We do not have a Jacobinical tradition in this country. Lord Holland was asked by the Neapolitan liberals if he would supply them with a new constitution to replace the arrangements under the Bourbon regime. He replied that they might as well ask him to design a tree. Whether you consider that the British constitution develops organically or providentially, the observable fact is that it develops gradually. Largely undefined, our constitution adapts to new circumstances. That is why this Bill is so useful. It seizes the opportunity presented by immediate political pressures and sufficiently wide consensus. It addresses limited but important issues that everyone agrees need early remedy, and it offers sensible solutions. We cannot respectably carry on with the present Appointments Commission. In their 2001 White Paper the Government accepted the case for a statutory appointments commission. In the 2003 Queen’s Speech they said that they would legislate to create one. The present Appointments Commission was created in 2000, avowedly as a transitional arrangement, not by Parliament but by the Prime Minister. It has now been reappointed, the Library tells me, three times. For all the good work it has done, it lacks authority. Its terms of reference do not permit it to determine the size, balance and proportionality of membership of this House, which remain at the determination of the Prime Minister. The last reappointment—last January—was for just 18 months. We need to legislate in this Session. The Government are exercised, rightly, about legitimacy of the second Chamber. This Bill is well designed to confer legitimacy upon the procedures for appointment to the second Chamber. The Bill would place a new appointments commission on the basis of statute. Its membership would be proposed by the Speaker of the House of Commons, together with the Lord Speaker, and would be approved by a vote of the elected House. The Commons would also approve the criteria and guidelines for the commission. The Bill provides the assurance that the public want that all Members newly appointed to the House of Lords would be people fit for the purposes of scrutinising legislation and advising the elected House of Commons and the Government. The procedures for party nominations would be transparent. Only people of conspicuous merit who were committed to doing a proper job would be appointed. There are provisions for disqualification and retirement. The size of the House would be contained, while the continuation of a strong element of independent Cross-Bench Peers would be assured. Diversity would be encouraged. It would be assured that experienced politicians would continue to be appointed, which is important for the good functioning of the House. The Government party would be the largest, but there would be a balance of the political parties. No party would have an absolute majority in the second Chamber. That has effectively become a constitutional principle in recent years, in one of those decisive developments of opinion that characterise the process of constitutional change in our country. Dr Russell has made a strong case that the membership of one Chamber should be on a proportionate basis if the membership of the other, the House of Commons, is on a majoritarian basis, and she notes that proportionality can be achieved by appointment. Among the virtues of this Bill is that it does not foreclose more radical options, such as elections, for the future. Many of us will have our own ideas about further reform. Personally, I do not think membership for life of an appointed House can now be justified. But those debates are for later on. The Bill deals also, meanwhile, with a second absurdity: the by-elections to this House of hereditary Peers. The noble Lord, Lord Steel, has pointed out that at present we have elections in which there are fewer voters than in the pre-1832 rotten boroughs. Hardly anyone now attempts to make a serious case for the retention of the hereditary principle for entry to the legislature. The specific measures in this Bill are widely viewed as necessary. If we do nothing until we have genuine consensus on comprehensive reform we shall wait, on the Government’s admission, until the next Parliament, which must mean five to seven years. More likely, we shall wait for ever. David Cameron has said that for a Conservative Government Lords reform would be a third-term issue. That will not do. We should proceed, incrementally, and the time is now ripe for the reforms in this Bill.