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Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

My Lords, first, I thank my noble friend for responding to my earlier question about the precedents for wash-up and the way in which that might work out in the next couple of weeks. I still think that he could say a bit more about the transparencies of its modalities—in other words, is it not in the modernising context necessary to hear a little more about how the wash-up takes place? Does it produce minutes, how does it work and so on? To take the example of hereditary by-elections, I would think it rather outrageous if the matter were not subject to any logical objection in the House. The noble Lord, Lord Steel of Aikwood, to whom I pay full tribute for both his assiduousness and his command of the material, has pointed out that there is no rational case, even though it keeps being mentioned in passing, for opposing the suspension of by-elections. I support the overall thrust of the Bill with a couple of reservations. The main point that I wish to make in support of the noble Lord, Lord Steel, is that it is not just in the abstract that we want a statutory Appointments Commission. Following directly from what the noble Lord, Lord Jay of Ewelme, said, the Bill lacks coherence because there is no reference to a statutory Appointments Commission. My noble friend mentioned in his opening speech that he wants to reduce the size of the House. There is no way at the moment that anybody has the authority to agree what the number of new entrants to this House should be. Even the committee chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Jay of Ewelme, cannot invent the numbers as it goes along. He will perhaps correct me if I am wrong but that would appear to be the prerogative of the Prime Minister, the other parties and so on. We cannot seriously keep paying lip service to reducing the size of the House. There is an old saying that hypocrisy is the honour paid by vice to virtue. The more we say we want to reduce it the more we know we will do nothing about it. We would need to have some idea of the numbers. In that connection there is no democratic deficit on the balance of the parties. Taking the 20-year average we have around 210 Labour, 200 Conservative and 75 Liberal Peers, or thereabouts. That is a sort of proportional representation. In what sense is there a democratic deficit? There is a democratic deficit in the way that the parties lack transparency over how people get here, and the way in which the ownership of how people get here—in the Labour Party, for example—leaves something to be desired. The Labour Party is not unique in that. There is an element of something done by the Liberal Democrats which other parties could look to, while having regard to their own constitutional backgrounds and history. What we cannot do is accept from Mr Jack Straw the idea that we can somehow legitimise the second Chamber by election and then castrate it. If the idea of legitimisation is to give us a certain authority in constitutional form, but we then want to rely on the primacy of the Commons, I repeat that the slogan on which we are going forward is, "Legitimise it and then castrate it". I do not suppose that there would be much support for that hypothesis if it was spelt out in that way, if that is the truth, which I think it is. The statutory Appointments Commission has been dealt with many times. I have only one point to make in connection with it, just so that there is no misunderstanding with our own Front Bench. The amendment to the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Steel, moved in Committee on 29 April last year in my name and those of the noble Lords, Lord Steel and Lord Norton of Louth, inserted a clause—adopted unanimously—that set out the procedure to be followed by the commission in respect of party-political nominated Members. The clause stated: ""(1) A political party, having been given an indication by the Commission that it is invited to propose a certain number of new life peers"—" let me call it X— ""shall submit to the Commission a list comprising that number of names.""(2) Provided that the proposed names meet the test of probity, the Commission shall then make these recommendations to the Crown"." We then had an exchange of correspondence with the predecessor of the noble Lord, Lord Bach, namely the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath. He said: ""The proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Steel, embraces a statutory Appointments Commission that would decide which party-political appointments could be made. I have to say that that is entirely unacceptable to the Government".—[Official Report, 27/4/09; col. 3.]" I labour this point because no more should we hear the repetition of that deliberate canard. That is most demeaning for Members of this House. I support the AV proposal. I do not think it will work out quite as the noble Lord, Lord Henley, thinks. The geographical dispersion of the Liberal Democrat vote has changed in the last 50 years. We are, perhaps, looking at a world of the past if we suppose that there will be one result or another. The extra democratic dimension would be self-evident to people in a pub in Burton-on-Trent—namely, that someone has to get 50 per cent. That is game, set and match. I might have my hesitations about the logic if I thought it would damage the Labour Party, but I do not think it would. The proposal should be supported on its merits. I will say a word on taxation and then conclude. I very much support the general idea but, having regard to my knowledge of the case of my noble friend Lord Grenfell, I am surprised that—to use a cliché—in this day and age European residence is somehow the same as residence in Belize or the Virgin Islands. In the next 20 or 30 years there will be more and more people in the world who may spend part of their year in Dusseldorf or some place. Certainly, this would not work if you lived in Luxembourg, Holland or Belgium. It does not work in the world of industry, or even that of trade unions. My great friend John Monks, the general secretary of the TUC for 10 years, is now general secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation. I imagine that if he came into this House he would, at the same time, leave his job in Brussels. People accumulate commitments around Europe a lot more than they did, and we could ring-fence the European Union in some way in seeing how this would be implemented.