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House of Lords Bill [HL]

My Lords, anybody who listened to this debate will know that it has been a good debate, at times even a good-humoured debate, which always helps us along on a Friday. It has also been a surprisingly divisive debate, rather more so than was the case in July. That is evident from the feeling on both sides of the argument today. So let me cut straight to the quick. I understand the concerns driving the promoters of this Bill. They feel that this House is performing well—as I do—and it is performing well. Overwhelmingly, they feel it should be established on an appointed basis. It does not need this Bill to make that point. No one is under any illusion: not the Liberal Democrats, whose view we have just heard, not Mr Straw and certainly not me. Repeated votes and debates here show that the majority in this place want an appointed House, not only because they would like to stay, which is an understandable human feeling, but because, in all sincerity, they think an appointed House is best. It does not need this Bill to show that, nor is this Bill the best advocate of that cause. There is a third feeling: a feeling among many noble Lords that they are being excluded from some big plan in the making on the future of this House. That feeling must be addressed, but it cannot be addressed in Committee on a Private Member’s Bill. It needs to be addressed by setting up systems that enable your Lordships to feed in detailed views before and after the White Paper that we are now told may be published some time in the next year. I know that the noble Baroness the Leader of the House had various thoughts about how that could be done, and perhaps the Minister will tells us how that is continuing. As noble Lords have pointed out, many questions are left unanswered in this Bill. Its core is a powerful new statutory Appointments Commission, yet little has been said about how effective the present non-statutory commission has been and what appraisal has been done on it. If there is to be a statutory Appointments Commission, should this House not determine the guidelines and criteria by which Peers will be chosen by that new magic circle? What would those guidelines be, beyond merit and diversity? How will gender, or region, or religion have a role? Why is the other place given such a say in the criteria? What has happened to the principle that one House does not hold decisive influence over who comes to the other? How will the commission decide on numbers in the House? Will it be in relation to seats won at the previous election, votes cast or what? Of course I am not surprised that the noble Lord, Lord Steel, in Clause 8(2)(c) suggests that no Labour or Conservative Government should ever have a majority over the other of, if my maths is right, more than 19. After all, that is a recipe for permanent Liberal Democrat control of this Chamber. Those are only examples of areas in the Bill that need far more consideration. If such a Bill goes to another place, having been agreed by this House, we must remember that the other place is not over-stuffed with friends of this House. What is to stop it being amended to expel the 90 elected hereditary Peers, breaking even more glaringly the 1999 parliamentary undertaking? I can think of Members of another place who would find that attractive. Or they could raise the bar for attendance needed to avoid expulsion under Clause 12(1) from 0 per cent to, say, 10 per cent of days, or impose quotas on membership or even age limits or term limits on life Peers, or amend the Bill in any other way. I would be very wary of sending a half-built ship—indeed, any ship—down that Corridor. It could go down as a stately barge and come back as a fire ship. I am delighted to have the support of the noble Lord, Lord Graham of Edmonton, on that.