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Constitutional Renewal

My Lords, I am in awe of the psychic powers of the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, who was able to put down a Motion that is being debated the day after the Government made a Statement on the same subject. Obviously, it could not have come at a better time. Perhaps he can put his skills to the service of us all by giving us advance notice of government statements in future. I shall use my time to make three general and two specific points about constitutional reform. It will not surprise the House to know that the two specific ones relate to electoral and to Lords reform. My general points are the framework within which I would look at proposals for constitutional reform, and a number of speakers have touched upon them already. The first for me, and in many ways perhaps the most urgent, is that on this, of all subjects, we must move in step with the public. It is no use conjuring schemes for constitutional reform that bear no relation whatever to the issues that interest the public. We suffer from the same condition as any institution that I have ever had anything to do with, in that we are much more interested in talking among ourselves about ourselves than we necessarily are in talking about our responsibilities outside the structure of our own institution. There is a very good and simple illustration of that in today’s proceedings of the House. There are two debates down for discussion; this one, on constitutional renewal, and another on, ""the quality and cost of public transport and the level of crime"." Does it surprise anyone that there are twice as many people down to speak on this debate as on the other? If we asked the people outside this House which of those two subjects they think should attract the most attention—and to which we should devote the most time—there would be absolutely no doubt whatever about the response. It would be the latter. We know that from opinion polls. I am wary of them, but I checked a fairly regular MORI poll that comes out on the issues that concern the British public, which they list in order of the subjects that the public raised in a poll of 1,000 people. Again, there were no surprises there: 59 per cent raised the economy, 30 per cent raised race relations and related matters of immigration and asylum, 30 per cent crime and law and order, and 20 per cent unemployment, factory closures and lack of industry. The only point at which any reference that could in any way be considered as constitutional reform comes is 26th on the list, at 1 per cent—just behind bird flu. Now, that should be a sobering thought to us when we debate these issues. I am not saying that we can never do anything that the public are not demanding instantly, but it should put these discussions into perspective. On the same subject, salutary lessons come from the European Union which, time and again, seems to spend far more time talking about its structures and modes of operations than in dealing with the issues that the people in Europe seem to want it to discuss. I am very wary, then, when there is a disconnect between the things that we are discussing and those which people in this country think are important. I will give one last bit of evidence on this particular theme. It is well known to anyone who has been a Member of Parliament that there are a number of occasions when, during the week, both Houses are debating particular issues that seem to be of monumental significance when you are taking part in them. You discuss them with colleagues then go home at the weekend where you do your advice bureaux, go to schools and factories and you find that people there are raising issues totally unconnected with the things that you thought were so important during the week. That is a salutary lesson. This is addressed perhaps more to the Conservative Front Bench than anywhere else, but because of the fundamental importance of the link between politicians and the public—the link between the individual Member of Parliament and the public—I am sceptical about suggestions for reducing the number of MPs. It is a nice little headline, but I do not see how you enrich our democracy and get closer contact between people and MPs in Parliament by reducing the number of MPs, and I am not so sure that it would be so popular if suggested in individual parts of the country. We must keep in touch with the public. The second thing that I want to say at a general level, and it might sound rather conservative, is that I am not one of those who take the view that the British system of government and our constitution is something that we should be ashamed of or is beyond repair. I do not think there is any serious evidence for that. There are numerous things that need to be done and I am happy to participate in them, but does it sound too much like "Land of Hope and Glory" to say that ours is a constitutional system that has been copied, usually in the Commonwealth, by many other countries in the world and has operated successfully in many other countries? For all the day-to-day complaints, on any international comparison we are one of the freest countries in the world for freedom of expression and we have one of the easiest mechanisms of access to the people in power—through our MPs returning each weekend to constituents and connecting them to the Government. There is a level of intimacy and access in our country which we should be proud of and we should cherish. I have come across that in my own experience on a number of occasions. When you talk to parliamentarians abroad, they are amazed at the extent to which the lives of MPs in this country are dominated—quite rightly—by the needs of their constituents. MPs need to ensure that meetings are held regularly in constituencies, which is never the same in other countries, particularly those that have systems of proportional representation, to which I will return in a moment. My third general principle is this: in all aspects of constitutional reform, and this is certainly true of Lords reform, we should beware of what the right reverend Prelate referred to—the law of unintended consequences. That applies to Lords reform. I find it difficult to take seriously the argument that you can have a massive change in the way that this House operates that has no real significance in relation to the rest of the constitution. Perhaps this is mildly insulting to this House, but my concern throughout with Lords reform has had less to do with the effect on this House than on the whole of the constitution, particularly in the way that it would inevitably diminish the power and authority of the House of Commons. Coupled with that, any change in this House would look to the relationship between the two Houses. I would be very wary of any system that led to adjudications between the two Houses being made by the courts or that kind of development. Those are the things that concern me most and the framework within which we should view constitutional reform. I now come to the two specifics, and one of those may not be supported by colleagues and friends of mine in the Liberal Democrat Party, although others may be more sympathetic—the issue of voting reform. Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord McNally, will remedy this when he comes to speak, but we have had three Liberal speakers so far and not one of them has referred in any size, shape or form and certainly not with any real acclamation to the one real example we have of proportional representation in this country—elections to the European Parliament. That is from a party that is passionate about proportional representation. That is a system that is already in existence. I do not like proportional representation. The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, suggested that self-interest motivated all the actions on this issue of the two big parties, as he described them. I can only plead in mitigation that I have had the same view throughout my political life. Within the Labour Party, it has sometimes been very popular to advocate electoral reform, and at other times less so, but that has always been my view. The noble Lord needs to acknowledge that when the Liberal Party advocates electoral reform, it could be argued that it is not entirely without party self-interest being somewhere in the background. As far as I know, the various mechanisms that are recommended would all probably result in increased representation for the Liberal Party. There are elements of self-interest, but we should not dismiss arguments on the basis of whether they are self-interested or not. What makes me so worried about the prospect of electoral reform, certainly for the House of Commons, is the fact that it destroys the link, which is fundamental to our democracy, between a Member of Parliament and the constituency. I know that I will be told that there are lots of other forms of electoral reform. That is why it is such a difficult argument to have from my perspective. If you say that a system is wrong it is like saying that the wrong kind of leaves are on the line and that there are lots of alternatives to deal with the various problems. But we should be honest. As far as Europe is concerned, the system there has not delivered on some of the things that its proponents said that it would. I had these arguments long before the European PR system was introduced, but we were told that electoral reform would increase voter interest and turnout because it would liberate all the Conservatives in the north-east and all the Labour voters in the south-east who never had any possibility of representation under first-past-the-post. There is no shred of evidence for that. The turnout at European elections has certainly not improved since we moved from first-past-the-post to proportional representation. Without going into any further detail, if we are to have a debate on electoral reform, please let us have it with our eyes wide open and include in it an honest appraisal of whether the system as it exists for the European elections has been a success. I am well aware that there were many criticisms at the time, and that it was my Government, a Labour Government, who introduced the system, which came as a result of a manifesto commitment. But let us compare like with like—systems actually in operation with other systems in operation—and see what conclusion we come to.