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Constitutional Reform

My Lords, this is a good time for us to be taking stock of political and constitutional reform. Therefore, we should be very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, for providing us with this opportunity. We have discussed the question of reform against the background of what this Government have achieved in areas such as devolution, the Lords reform of 1999 and the Freedom of Information Act. Notwithstanding those changes, and whatever our view of them, there has been a steady, ineluctable decline in trust in the Government and in Parliament. One can attribute that to many reasons—partly Iraq and the breakdown in trust in the Government about that, partly the manner in which Governments have taken decisions, and, not least, the expenses issue in Parliament. All that is reflected in lower voter turnout. Moreover, if we take into account worldwide evidence from organisations such as Transparency International and Freedom House, we have seen a serious decline in liberal democracy in the past few years compared to the early 1990s, and greater instability worldwide. We in this country, along with our democratic colleagues in other countries, need to put across very strongly the arguments in favour of democracy. It becomes much more difficult to do so if we do not have sufficient confidence in the management of our own democratic system. We cannot afford to be complacent on this matter. Against that background, what should our attitude be? There have been endless ideas today about reform. If we try to implement all those ideas, nothing will happen at all. In my view, we need to be more focused, as the noble Lord, Lord Norton, said. I suggest that the overwhelming need is to strengthen the parliamentary system to enable us to scrutinise and hold Governments to account more effectively, while identifying the public more fully with the process, and accepting and recognising that elected Governments have a right to govern. To achieve that, we need an overall strategic framework. If we are to bring about coherent, consistent change, it will have to be incremental, pragmatic, continuous and over a long period. It must not be populist; for if it is, we will achieve nothing. Improvements must be justified on their merit. Of course, the Commons—the other House—and the Lords are different and need different treatment, but what happens in one House affects the other. For example, if a new Government decide to reduce the size of the other House, that will affect the overall relationship between the Commons and the Lords. If the Wright proposals on Select Committees are introduced, there will be a strong read-across to this Chamber. Therefore, my main remarks will, for the moment, be on the Lords. If we assume that the choice between an elected House and an appointed House will come a bit further down the road, we ought to concentrate on making the present system as effective and efficient as possible. We had the Wakeham report, the Steel committee and other considerations in the past, but we now have the Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill, which deals with only part of this problem. It deals with hereditary by-elections, expulsions and disclaiming peerages, but it does not deal with statutory provisions for the Appointments Commission, the length of service we should do in this House, the retirement policy and the size of the House; so there are many things that need dealing with. There is also the question of Select Committees and the Wright proposals in the other Chamber. They are designed to strengthen Select Committees, which are one of the ways in which we can strengthen the legislature in challenging the Executive. There is a big read-across there, and I agree with everything that my noble friend Lord Butler said about them. There is the scrutiny of legislation. I think there is far too much legislation, but whatever legislation there is, we ought to scrutinise it better. We do not do it badly here, but it needs to be better done in the other place and better done here as well. We then come to procedures. This is an ongoing process here. It is interesting to note the number of changes that have been made—there have been adjustments to the way in which we manage Question Time—but we have to examine the powers of the Lord Speaker before the five-year term is up in July 2011. There is internal governance, which my noble friend Lady Murphy raised. We are handling the expenses situation and the code of conduct, but there is the structure of the House and whether it has the right system of accountability and lines of responsibility. They always need examining and improving. Finally, there is the relationship between the two Houses. We work in considerable ignorance of each other and each other’s affairs. There is a remarkable lack of mutual understanding. I hope that the Speakers in the new Parliament will take a lead in trying to get the two Houses to work more closely together. All this needs to be done against a background of buttressing the communications and link between Parliament and the public, which is needed more than ever and can be effective only if this Chamber and the other House are more effective.