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Constitutional Renewal

My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the right reverend Prelate and then to discover that I am to be followed by another right reverend Prelate. A circle of sanctity is being put around my presence here. I express appreciation to my noble friend for the timeliness of this debate. I very much agree with his sentiments. Consequently, I will not need to repeat every word that he said. I broadly accept the thrust of his arguments, but I should like to draw attention to some other general questions. In some quarters, notably in government circles, there has been a propensity to say that we are faced with such crises of management, in relation to the international financial situation in particular, that we are effectively required to postpone the important issues of constitutional reform with which we are engaged. I resist that argument because to me the financial crisis is at least in part due to bad government. By that, I do not mean bad Ministers so much as a bad system, which has not allowed real debate to take place about some of the issues with which this country has been faced for some time. There was a kind of consensus between the main party of government and the main party of opposition that we should live in a largely deregulated economy. That kind of consensus has contributed to the banking sector’s extraordinary difficulty with billions of pounds being spent by the taxpayer to tackle this situation. It is not the case that we are living in a fixed constitutional situation. As the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, said, the change is incremental; he appeared to be quite content with that. Some of the changes take place quite without deliberation, but they have a significant impact on the way in which we achieve our aims of government. For example, in recent weeks, the Prime Minister decided to parachute into this House from outside three extraordinarily significant Ministers: the noble Lords, Lord Mandelson, Lord Malloch-Brown and Lord Myners. That action was not totally consistent with the expressed intention of reforming this House to make it more electorally accountable. Furthermore, the establishment of the new ministry under the noble Lord, Lord Mandelson, has translated a number of departments into one with almost half the Ministers—I think, five of the 11 Ministers in this gargantuan department—being Members of this House, which has the consequence of depriving the elected Members of the possibility of directly addressing these people. I make that point not wholly critically but simply to indicate that I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Norton, is right to say that there is a conspicuous lack of coherence of view in addressing these constitutional changes. I have mentioned the three noble Lords, for each of whom I have the highest admiration, who have become Ministers. The question is not whether they should be here but whether they should be in the Government. If they are bringing things to the Government, another theoretical constitutional issue is raised. Do we need to have these Ministers as Members of either House in order to be Ministers? They certainly could be required by Parliament to come and give an account of themselves. If they are seen to be offering such major contributions, it is worth asking ourselves that question. I am not advocating a policy. I am just trying to illustrate the need for the kind of overall coherence of philosophical approach about which the noble Lord, Lord Norton, spoke. It seems to me that our incremental approach has serious drawbacks, the main one being that it is not speedy enough to respond to the situations that we are faced with as a nation. For some time, there has been discussion about whether the prerogative powers of the Crown, for example, were appropriate in the modern world. Many people felt that the arrangements for scrutiny and decision-making on the war in Iraq were 18th century at best, which accounted in no small measure for the division of the public over that major, central issue. It cannot be said that what we have is satisfactory or what has been proposed will address that problem. In the constitutional renewal Bill that we considered in the Joint Committee last year, there were proposals for the scrutiny of these decisions to involve the country in armed conflict, but they were so watered down that it was quite clear that Parliament would be given no serious authority over the decision-making of the Government in the event of a national or international emergency that might lead to the commitment of troops. We have to recognise that we are not the great constitutional thinkers that we have imagined, certainly in respect of ourselves, although we have written remarkably strong constitutions for other people. I think particularly of the Labour Government’s skill in providing a constitution for that great country India and of how well it has lasted, how strongly it has stood up to the ravages of communalism and poverty and how it has been built on. I do not believe that the Prime Minister’s sympathy for a written constitution, which he expressed in his Statement yesterday, is other than a very wise instinct. However, it cannot be achieved overnight and groundwork needs to be done. If we are going to involve the public, it cannot be done too quickly or just by a group of wise men, as the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong, suggested constitutional reform might best be done. I am not clear that his historical picture of how constitutional change has come about is very accurate. With the greatest respect, it seems to me that the great leaps forward have often come about as a result of a radical movement, which has led to a party riding that wave of reform and delivering. Certainly, some things can be done without legislation. I do not doubt that it would be possible to make the Select Committees on departmental matters more accountable to Members of Parliament and less to the Whips. That sort of thing could and should be done before the next election. I was glad to see references to this possibility in yesterday’s Statement, but there are other matters involving interaction between the Executive and the two branches of the legislature that cannot be done on the back of an envelope. Consideration is required not only of the composition of the two branches, how they are to become more democratically accountable and how the public are to be involved, but perhaps also of a division of functions. What are their roles? They are not supposed to replicate each other. But if they are both legitimately elected, why should one have a hierarchical superiority to the other? Do we think that we have to stick with the notion of the primacy of the House of Commons, a body that is patently in the Executive’s power and only exceptionally calls the Executive effectively to account? Is it enough to say that, when a general election is held, the Government must govern and therefore may go on doing anything they like for up to five years? That is not the modern appreciation of how a parliamentary system should work. It ought to be much more responsive to minority opinions, taking into consideration points that may not be thought of in advance by the mainstream parties. These, I admit, are philosophical considerations, but they lead me to the view that certain things that need to be done could be done now. I wholly accept the urgency of doing something about parliamentary expenses and I am not at all unhappy about the fact that this is related in the public mind to the need to restore confidence in Parliament by wider changes. There may be no logical connection, but there is a bubbling debate and it is therefore an apt moment to address some of these questions. The great risk facing this country is that we will go into a general election with our electoral system unchanged. As my noble friend said, this has produced a Parliament in which no Member enjoys the support of 50 per cent of the electorate. There is a serious need to have an ad hoc arrangement for the next Parliament that would ensure that at least 50 per cent of the voters supported their own Member. That would be a proper and immediate response to the crisis over the expenses of Members of Parliament. The new system would not require the boundaries of the constituencies to be changed. It would be simply understood and could be given effect by Act of Parliament. It would not be a permanent change. At the same time as the Act was going through, it would be possible to establish a referendum on alternative systems and leave that decision to the public. Preferably, it would be done not at the time of the election—that would focus the election too narrowly, and elections are often decided on matters that are not put directly to the public—but before. A very workable alternative was put forward by the government commission chaired by Lord Jenkins of Hillhead. It has been the subject of debate and its merits have been widely considered. I hope that some of these thoughts may be of some influence and attract the attention of the Minister.