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Constitutional Renewal

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, on choosing this subject for debate this afternoon. He is, perhaps, luckier than he expected. It is indeed timely. With two right reverend Prelates taking part in today’s debate, perhaps I may be forgiven for taking a text for my contribution. My text will be the contribution to yesterday afternoon’s discussion by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill of Bengarve. It was wise and brief; I only wish that I could match it, both in wisdom and brevity. The restoration of trust in our parliamentary institutions, and particularly—but not only—in Members of the other place, requires us to deal urgently with Members’ expenses and allowances. It is sad that Members can no longer be trusted to police their expenses themselves. Members of both Houses of Parliament should be able to be trusted to act responsibly and with integrity on their expenses and allowances, as well as on other matters. As it is, not only should we embrace transparency; we also have to accept independent scrutiny and supervision. However, I suggest that the membership of the body that is set up for this purpose should include a minority of representatives from your Lordships’ House and from the other place. It should not be difficult to identify one or two Members from each House who could be trusted as having the integrity to take an unbiased part in the work of the body and who would have the knowledge and experience to contribute an understanding of the legitimate needs and concerns of the two Houses and of their Members. For the rest, as is already clear from the earlier speeches in this debate, in the wake of the furore over Members’ expenses and allowances, many ideas for wider constitutional reform are already swirling around. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, that the necessity for wider constitutional reform does not follow logically from the argument about Members’ expenses and allowances, but it has created the furore and it is right that we should use the opportunity to consider seriously what we should do about it. There is not now time to legislate on all the ideas swirling around about constitutional reform; indeed, there may not be time to legislate on any in this Parliament. It is more important to get it right than to get it written, so we should not rush into a change, but use the interval for a mature and considered public discussion of the ideas and suggestions, the merits and demerits of each, and how they relate to each other. I respond sympathetically to the plea for intellectual coherence made by the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth. I suggest that this public discussion should not, and perhaps even cannot, be led or co-ordinated by the Government at a time when it will inevitably be overshadowed by the prospect of an imminent general election. Constitutional reform that is to be widely accepted needs to be founded on a degree of consensus which is above and beyond any narrow party policy. I understand the view of the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, that not all party politicians are angles. Of course, the political parties should have a large input into the discussion. After all, it is the politicians who work the system and who have to make it work for the public good. However, it seems to me, as it evidently seems to the noble Lord, Lord Norton, that this big, complicated and diverse task needs to be drawn together by a small, high-grade, high-level, well staffed and independent royal commission or some such body that can pursue with determination and dispatch an orderly programme of collecting and collating the ideas, assessing their strengths and weaknesses and their capacity to command widespread public support, undertaking the consultation which modern technology makes possible, setting the ideas in a coherent framework or pattern and producing a set of recommendations for an articulated and prioritised programme of measures to be taken up in legislation and otherwise in the new Parliament after an election. They say that royal commissions take minutes and last years. They need not last years, if we do not want them to and if they are businesslike and well organised. And we have at any rate, since the election is not likely to take place immediately, a little time to make a very good start on that process before it comes. I am sure that political parties should be represented on the body that undertakes this work because of the input they have to make to it, but they should not dominate it or constitute a majority of its members. I am not one who thinks—