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Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to welcome back the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury, and to congratulate him on what I suppose we might describe as his second-act maiden speech. It is many years since I followed the noble Lord in a debate which included House of Lords reform. It takes me back to a time when we were young, or at least younger, and very enthusiastic about constitutional reform. Turning to today’s business, I very much welcome most of the content of the Bill, but, like many other noble Lords who have spoken from all around the House, I very much regret its timing. None the less, it is worth stating briefly what in my view should be vigorously pursued in the Bill and, if necessary, be taken into the next Parliament. Whatever the niceties of potential Committee stages in a formal sense, none of us know how much or what will survive the lottery of the wash-up. I am very pleased that at last we have the clauses in Part 1 putting the Civil Service and Diplomatic Service on a statutory footing. I particularly welcome the proposals to make the Civil Service Commission a statutory corporate body, and the specific measures to remove existing nationality restrictions on employment and office-holders, as well as those measures which create a separate code for special advisers. I agree with my noble friend Lord Howarth of Newport, who is not in his place at the moment, that if these and some of the other important provisions in Part 1 are enacted, we should be able in future to avoid some of the political controversies about advice to Governments which have plagued Ministers and officials in recent history. I hope that when the deals are done at the end of this Parliament, Part 1 will be relatively uncontroversial. Turning to Part 3, on balance, I support the proposed referendum on adopting the alternative vote system for the House of Commons. I would have preferred to legislate for a referendum which offers a choice between AV and other systems, but a simple question should at least produce a clear answer on AV. I am a member of your Lordships’ Constitution Committee which, apart from the much-quoted assessment that it has made of this Bill, has just completed a rather sceptical report on the general value of referendums. None the less, our findings support the potential use of referendums on constitutional matters, and changing the voting system for Westminster would certainly qualify. However, it is highly unlikely, given the opposition of the Conservative Party, that Part 3 will make it, because of the 11th-hour appearance of the Bill. However, I hope that your Lordships will return to the different voting systems and referendums at another stage. I have to say that my greatest disappointment is with Parts 5 and 6, dealing with the House of Lords. Let me say immediately that I have no argument with the proposed reforms—although I sympathise with the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Steel, on a statutory appointments commission—but my disappointment, indeed my sadness, is that the Bill has come so late and that the Government have not taken all the earlier opportunities that there have been to get these changes onto the statute book. It is no good for the Government to say now that the Bill has broken the decade-long stalemate on Lords reform. This stalemate could have been broken one year ago or two years ago if the Government had, as several speakers have emphasised, either picked up the Private Member’s Bills introduced by the noble Lords, Lord Steel and Lord Oakeshott, or, as the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, trenchantly pointed out, moved more rapidly on their own legislation. I would even agree with the noble Lord, Lord McNally, that we could have made progress on these or similar measures nearly 10 years ago if we had followed the Royal Commission report of the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham. We are now in a position where these very sensible measures in Parts 5 and 6, which almost exactly reflect those in the second Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Steel, and those in the 2009 Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Oakeshott, on taxation, will now almost certainly be part of what we can all understand is frantic horse trading in the wash-up. It is worth reminding your Lordships—the noble Lord, Lord Steel, has done so already—that this time last year his Bill was properly considered in a Committee of the whole House. Although there were no votes in Committee, significantly his Bill was supported at Second Reading all around the House. I noted from the record that by the end of that debate, there had been 27 speakers in favour of that Bill and five against, but on that occasion the Bill did not find favour with the Government. My noble friends on the Front Bench, notably my noble friend Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, who has passed this chalice to my noble friend Lord Bach, have always previously argued that accepting the limited and possibly interim measures suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Steel, would threaten more substantial and long-term change. My noble friend Lord Hunt of Kings Heath on 27 February 2009 said that the measures would be inconsistent with the Government’s intention to legislate for long-term reform. But today, just a year later, we have the Government themselves introducing these types of provisions and, at the same time, my right honourable friend Jack Straw is shortly to produce clauses to create an elected second Chamber. I have to agree with my noble friend Lord Gordon of Strathblane that, without being entirely cynical, it is hard to understand the legislative or political logic behind this. On the proceedings today in your Lordships’ House I, perhaps surprisingly, agree with the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, on the important question that us Back-Benchers should ask the Front-Bench spokesman when the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, winds up for the Opposition. What exactly will they support out of Parts 5 and 6 during wash-up? In spite of the opaqueness of that procedure, I understand it will largely depend on Opposition co-operation whether particular clauses go through. Considering the substance of Parts 5 and 6, I imagine the clauses which relate to our disciplinary regime in this House will be generally agreed. I am glad to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Henley, that the same will be true of the tax and residency measures in Part 6. We have already heard that the plan to abolish by-elections for hereditary Peers is opposed by the Conservative Party and presumably will not survive. To repeat what the noble Lord, Lord Steel, said, in the new Parliament we will continue to have what he described as the bizarre arrangement whereby the elections of Old Sarum seem positively democratic. Like my noble friends Lord Howarth of Newport, Lord Lea of Crondall and many others, I am in favour of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Steel, on the appointments commission, for reasons I do not need to repeat which he eloquently advanced, as did my noble kinsman Lord Jay of Ewelme. I was particularly impressed by the recitation by the noble Lord, Lord Steel, of the nine previous occasions on which the proposal for a statutory appointments commission had been put. I re-emphasise to my noble friend the Minister that this was a commitment in the last two Labour Party manifestos. If the Government are now prepared to take forward some measures which they had previously criticised as piecemeal, I cannot understand why we cannot extend that inconsistency to the important question of the appointments commission. In conclusion, as I said earlier, my overall feeling about this Bill is sadness that so many opportunities to make these kinds of important changes have been missed and concern that, because of the timing, some of those proposed today will not now happen. After the general election, I expect to be sitting exactly where I am today. My gloom this afternoon and evening may well be lifted when I see a radical reform Bill in the Queen’s Speech. Given some of the abandoned manifesto promises of the last years, and Mr Cameron’s stated preference for delay on House of Lords reform, those of us who genuinely want to continue change in your Lordships’ House will probably need to go on in the new Parliament pressing for the kinds of incremental measures which I welcome today. I hope the momentum that my noble friend the Minister referred to in opening the debate will, in the next decade, be much greater than in the last.