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House of Lords Bill [HL]

I hope noble Lords will forgive me if I intervene early in the debate to indicate the views of the promoters of the Bill, not only on this amendment but on a whole raft of the amendments which are before us. The point that I want to dwell on very heavily is that there have been two significant events since Second Reading which I believe the House should take into account. The first has already been referred to—that is, the publication, just before we rose for the Christmas Recess, of the report of the House of Commons Select Committee on Public Administration. This report originated from concern about the cash for peerages question. I wish to quote two parts of the summary at the beginning of this 85-page report to indicate how important it is to our deliberations. The report states: "““Our main proposal is for an immediate House of Lords reform measure, clearly defined in scale and scope””." I repeat, ““clearly defined in scale and scope””. It continues: "““Its primary purpose would be to put the independent House of Lords Appointments Commission onto a statutory footing, and empower it to take decisions on the size, balance and composition of the House against agreed and explicit criteria. A mechanism is also needed for peers to resign from the House””." In other words, the Select Committee of the other place is commending two of the three basic principles contained in the Bill. It further goes on to say: "““Our recommendations build on principles to which the major parties have already signed up. We hope that the experience of the last two years will provide the impetus to make them happen, and with a proper urgency””." I think that puts the whole of our debate today in a completely different context from that which we discussed at Second Reading because a Select Committee in the House of Commons, which has already voted to have an elected upper Chamber, is unanimously saying that we need to do something now to sort out the current House long before we ever get to the debates on a second Chamber. The other point of interest is that the Prime Minister himself appeared before the Liaison Committee in the other place and was asked a direct question about his attitude to the Bill. He repeated that he and the Justice Minister, Mr Straw, would look at it. He expressed concern over the legislative timetable in the other place, which is quite natural, but said that the measures in the Bill are not so contentious. So here we have a Select Committee of the other place urging that these reforms take place and the Prime Minister indicating that the Government would at least be open to considering these proposals if we were to present them to the other place. It is therefore my contention today that, while we are perfectly willing to accept many of the amendments without the need for much debate and to discuss others with their promoters and debate them on Report, there are none the less a raft of amendments—of which this is one—that fall quite wide of the narrow purpose of the Bill. They are what I call extraneous amendments. Of course, we could debate those amendments ad infinitum. If we were having a debate on the name of the House, I would agree with the noble Earl that it should be called a senate. However, the Bill does not attempt to deal with all these issues. It does not attempt to de-link serving in the House from an honour, nor to deal with the number of Bishops in the House or with those issues covered by some of the amendments on today’s Marshalled List. Given the time constraints in the House, we must decide at the beginning whether we are going to proceed though all the amendments, including those that have nothing to do with the Bill as it is narrowly drawn, or whether we are going to stick to those that relate to the Bill itself and meet the wishes of the Select Committee in the other place. It is my great hope that we will agree to do the latter. I do not think we will see the debate on an elected or unelected House for many years to come. I am reinforced in that view—we dwelt on this on Second Reading—by the report of the Conservative Party’s task force under Mr Kenneth Clarke. He is a senior and well respected parliamentarian and a strong advocate of an elected upper Chamber, and yet he reported that they would wish to have a statutory appointments commission. When asked why he would do that when he believed in an elected upper House, he said, ““Because I don’t expect to see that in my lifetime””. Now, I wish him an enjoyable, cigar-laden lifetime, but I think he may be right. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Richard, that if and when I come to his memorial service—which is going to be less interesting than if he had all those other attributes in his life—I very much doubt that we will have an elected House by then. We are faced with the decision today on whether to go through all these amendments—we will not get through very many of them—and therefore in effect kill off the Bill, because that will be what happens. I would not expect the Government to mess up their legislative programme with endless days on the Bill with all these extraneous amendments. Nor would it be fair to those other Members of the House who have their own Private Member’s Bills if we were to occupy our Fridays with this Bill. I plead with the noble Earl and others to withdraw these amendments so that we may confine ourselves to those that relate to the three main purposes of the Bill. If we did that, we would be doing a service to this House, to the other place and to the country at large.