---

Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

My Lords, I very much agree with the points that have by now been made again and again from all sides of the House; that the process in the Bill for the considerable degree of change in the constitution, which has been embarked upon at the fag end of this Parliament, is quite wrong. Inadequate scrutiny is bad for any Bill but it is, surely, particularly bad for a Bill of constitutional significance. I felt that the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, spoke for—I had better not say all—a great many of us on all sides of the House when she expressed herself in very clear, forthright and condemnatory terms about what is happening. To quote the noble Lord, Lord Henley—the beginning of the debate is now some time ago, so perhaps he will forgive me if I have not quite got it right—some parts of the Bill may not be objectionable but they still need scrutiny. That is a good general point. I would apply it to the only part of the Bill I shall speak on, which is Part 5 on the House of Lords. Despite the words of the noble Lord, Lord Denham, who is not now in his place, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham, there surely must be very wide agreement on the principle embodied in the Bill for ending the arrangements, in operation since 1999, for by-elections to fill vacancies for hereditary Peers when one of them dies. It was notable for me that the noble Lord, Lord Cobbold, himself an hereditary Peer, took the same view. There is no merit in continuing with these by-elections. I can agree with the Lord Chancellor, Mr Jack Straw, who said at Second Reading in the other place that the arrangements were "utterly risible", particularly when there were sometimes more candidates in those by-elections than there are electors. I can also agree with the Conservative spokesman, Mr Dominic Grieve, who, speaking in a very measured way as he normally does, said that the present arrangement for elections of hereditary Peers was a "peculiar anomaly". As the noble Lord, Lord Steel, and others have said, nobody anticipated 10 or 11 years ago that these arrangements would still continue. They can be got rid of only by legislation, so here is legislation. It cannot be done by mutual agreement or something of that sort. Of course, it may take a few decades for all current hereditary Peers literally to die off, but so what? The principle that being in this House is a result of heredity will have been banished. That will gradually take effect and—as I think that the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, said earlier—it is indeed a more civilised way if it is done by the Grim Reaper than by some other method. There seemed to my mind to be a certain amount of general agreement that people who are guilty of serious criminal offences should not be Members of this House and that there should be expulsion as well as suspension powers for this House when Peers bring it into disrepute in some way; that is in Clauses 54 and 55. On the first part of that, I will express some doubt. I suppose there is a certain logic that a legislative body whose Members help to make laws should not itself include anyone who has committed a serious breach of the law. Yet the House could lose something by the very absolute nature of Clause 54, which is not discretionary. I recall that, in the 1980s, the late Lord Spens was convicted of a serious offence and on completing his sentence was of course able to return to this House, where it so happened that there was an interesting debate about prisons. He took an impressive part in that debate. He spoke from rather more experience than most other Peers attending on that day, and his speech was obviously enhanced by that experience. I also note that if only as a result of pressure from the European Court of Human Rights, plus the pressure from the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, it may be that the UK will be obliged in the near future to allow all convicted persons to exercise the right to vote for the other place. If persons convicted of a serious offence, and even those still serving a prison sentence, can take part in the electoral process, it seems to me that the case for automatically depriving convicted Peers of a right to return to the House after they have served their sentence—a right enjoyed for hundreds of years—is reduced. Clause 55 is a discretionary clause to expel people who bring the House into disrepute, but surely that could be used because of the offence of which they have been convicted. The only point of talking about such things in a Second Reading debate is to put down a marker for the Committee stage. I am afraid we all know that there will not be a Committee stage, and I fully understand the Cross Bench irritation, expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong of Ilminster, that the Cross Benches do not have a role.