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Constitutional Renewal

My Lords, in moving this Motion, I must first congratulate the Minister, who is now in his place. He is obviously a man of great influence and power. When preparing for a debate of this sort, Ministers normally rely entirely on officials in their departments, but in his case he persuaded the Prime Minister to produce the briefing that was published yesterday. What amazing timing. In this debate, we shall be touching on issues of considerable concern not just to Members of your Lordships’ House but to the public at large, and therefore it is very timely. The Government have been talking about constitutional reform and renewal ever since they took office. Indeed, the Prime Minister was talking about it again yesterday. Yet Ministers seem to use the reform agenda as a sort of rhetorical JCB; when in a hole, they dig even further down. Talk is cheap, and yesterday we had yet more from the Prime Minister, but the present House of Commons is on course for five more years of illegitimacy if the present system is allowed to continue. Why should people trust in a Parliament any more than they trust in this one if, just as happened at the last general election, not one single Member of Parliament enjoyed majority support among his or her constituents? That is a dire prospectus for democracy. The Prime Minister has now promised, again, a constitutional renewal Bill. From what he said yesterday, it will do little of any substance whatever. Your Lordships will recall that, at the end of March, I brought before the House and obtained a First Reading of my own Constitutional Renewal Bill, so Mr Brown’s version will rightly be known as the "Constitutional Renewal (No. 2) Bill"—how apt for a Bill which promises to be second choice and second-rate. I published my Bill because I gave up on the long, long period when we were awaiting the Government’s proposals. Their first draft dodged the big issues and mainly sought to enshrine outdated conventions in modern statute. Ministers promised improvements; none came, and it looks like none will. So today, I want to address some of the issues that are in my Bill—the real thing—rather than the Government’s likely pale imitation. My Bill deliberately does not refer to the two big issues on which the Government have made some progress—Lords reform and party funding. The agreed package across the parties on the former will, I hope, come forward, and the Government will implement that in the next few months. Meanwhile, we will be voting next week on the issues that are raised by party funding. My noble friends will deal with specific issues of reform, but my Bill concentrates on those issues on which the Prime Minister has made promises, as have many other Members of the Government, but failed to deliver. There is nothing in my Bill that Labour has not itself suggested should happen, and now is an opportunity to investigate the delivery. The first is the engine of democracy—the electoral system. The arguments about the defects and the features of the present system are well rehearsed and have been for many years. It is an absolute subversion of democracy for any Government to win a majority in the House of Commons with such a small minority of the vote in the country. The present Government enjoy just 35 per cent support among those who voted and only 22 per cent among those entitled to vote. That scarcely gives them legitimacy. There is therefore an unanswerable case for change. I defy anyone to tell me that the system is fair or that it gives the voter real power. It is not and it does not. Indeed, the current first-past-the-post system offers the elector party lists, each with only one name on it—no real choice whatever. The solution is surely too important to be left to self-interested parties and politicians: the public must have a role in the decision-making. My Bill would pave the way for electoral reform, first, by fixing the dates on which elections could be held at strictly four-year intervals and then by providing for a citizens’ assembly to determine the voting system that should be used for elections to the House of Commons. It would not be just another committee or commission of the great and good, but a genuinely public process effectively subjecting our present system and the alternatives to a real jury trial. It would be a public choice and the assembly’s conclusion could then be put to a national referendum so that any new system would have broad support from the population at large. The process could be swift. If we willed it, reforms could be in place in this Parliament, but clearly we would have to start now. I am confident that, like the Power inquiry, which was chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, citizens would choose the system that gave them the most choice among candidates not just between parties; namely, the single transferable vote. There is the fundamental issue. How do we elect our House of Commons and thereby choose and give our confidence to a Prime Minister. What then? What powers should the Prime Minister enjoy? Members of your Lordships' House will be well aware of the comments made by Andrew Rawnsley, a respected commentator. He said: ""Within his own universe, no democratic leader is potentially more powerful than a British Prime Minister with a reliable parliamentary majority and an obedient Cabinet"." The present Prime Minister may not remember what it is like to have a reliable parliamentary majority let alone an obedient Cabinet, but the point stands. Gordon Brown promised to surrender or limit many of the powers at his disposal. He has not: my Bill would. It would put on a statutory basis the right of this House and the other place to ratify international treaties and other important international agreements such as the star wars deal between this country and our partners. Then there is the right to go to war—the gravest of decisions for any Government or nation to take—which should surely be firmly on the statute book. Ministers should have to have the support of MPs to commit the nation's troops to armed conflict. Noble Lords will doubtless have in mind that critical vote in the other place that took this country to war in Iraq. I was there. It was a genuine time of debate and an agonising one for all sides the House, particularly on the Government side. However, we learnt subsequently that the case for war was found wanting and advice confirming the legality of that action was altered at the last minute. The Attorney-General, who gave the advice, was a Member of the Government and it was his final opinion that suited the political case that enabled the Government to make war. It seems that he who appoints the piper plays the tune. These are serious allegations but they come from the highest level in the Attorney-General’s office. The only answer is transparency. My Bill would bring to an end a system of advice permeated with political prejudice, riddled with secrecy and rightly discredited as a result. Any legal advice used in support of a political case put to both Houses of Parliament should be published for MPs and Members of your Lordships’ House to see and address. Meanwhile, the role of the Attorney-General clearly needs to change. The Prime Minister himself said so in July 2007. He was right then and he is right now. Yet the Government’s own proposals are feeble. They contradict the views of the two cross-party Commons Select Committees, with their Labour majorities. My Bill tackles this issue head on, separating the office of Attorney-General entirely from any ministerial position or responsibility. Next there is the issue of the Civil Service. In July 2007, the Prime Minister said that, ""this Government has finally responded to the central recommendation of the Northcote-Trevelyan report on the Civil Service made over 150 years ago in 1854"." The only problem is that they have not. He spoke in the past tense about something that he has yet to do. My Bill would put these measures in place and would cap the number of Damian McBrides—the special advisers—that taxpayers fund for their political radars rather than for their expertise. I know that my noble friend Lord Lester of Herne Hill has additional proposals in his executive powers and Civil Service Bill. I hope he will be able to contribute to our debate today. Surely the Government should be listening to his suggestions now. Finally, my Bill addresses the issue of the moment: the conduct of parliamentarians and the public’s loss of trust in our politicians. Some may say that constitutional reform is being used as a shield for a political class which claims that it is the system, rather than individuals, that is at fault. The truth is that it is both. There are a few unscrupulous individuals in British politics—precious few—but the whole way we do British politics is itself unscrupulous. It would be unsatisfactory in and of itself, even if every politician was an angel. My Bill addresses the latter point with root-and-branch reform as well as putting in place effective discipline for Members of both Houses when they fall below strict codes of conduct. We heard from the Prime Minister yesterday a vapid, delusional Statement promising yet more debate, consideration and consultation. Yet the Government have the lightest legislative programme in modern times.