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House of Lords Reform

If he wishes, the noble Lord can take the view that that is a massive justification for a non-elected legislative Chamber; I am bound to say that I do not. I have a simple view on this, and I have persisted in it for many years now: if you are a legislator, you should be elected by the people who are going to be affected by your legislation. It is a simple proposition. I am pleased that the Government, with the extraordinary coalition that they now have, seem to have come to the conclusion that a mainly elected second Chamber is desirable. I share that. What we need in our constitution is a predominantly but not exclusively elected second Chamber. I am fortified in that, because that is almost the wording that John Smith used to describe what Labour Party policy was supposed to be when he was leader of the party, and that is going back a very long time. The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, is now in exactly the same position on this issue as he was in 1997 and 1998. His position has not moved on, but it has to. I support the idea that there needs to be legislation, but I have one or two reservations. The first concerns the powers of this Joint Committee. For the life of me, I do not see how it is going to produce a Bill. I do not see how you could conceivably instruct parliamentary draftsmen when there may be opposition on that committee. If we get a piece of paper in our hands that says, ““This is the Bill””, I shall be extraordinarily surprised. I shall make just two further points, because I am anxious to sit down within my seven minutes. It is easy to see the ends that one wants. Very often we get to this stage of the negotiations: you agree what you want to achieve, but how on earth do you get there? We had this the other day on the Barnett formula—everyone on the committee agreed that it ought to be reformed and what we ought to see, but how on earth did we move from were we were now to where we wanted to be? I emphasise that the transition provisions will be crucial to this enterprise. I follow the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, on that. Many of the people in this House are life Peers who came here on the basis that they were here for life. Maybe they will not be—I do not know—but it was a legitimate aspiration on their part, given the way that they were approached and introduced. Personally, I had a fond notion that I would be staggering into the House on my Zimmer frame at the age of 85, and I sincerely hope that that will still be the position. I do not know how the grandfather concept is going to work, but I look forward with great interest to hearing about it. The transition is very important. The second thing that is important is the system by which Members will be elected to the House. I am sure that this will shock the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe, and many other Members of this House, but I am totally heretical about this: it should be an election on the basis of constituencies, rather like the present European constituencies, and it should be done by PR. Elections to this House should be fixed and they should not be coterminous with elections down the other end. In terms of the health of British democracy, the situation in which this House can provide a better check upon the Executive because of the way in which it has been elected, and because of the composition of this House compared with the composition of the other House, is a greater check on the power of the Executive than the glorious speeches that we make in this Chamber and the glorious debates that we have. If you want to check the Executive you have to have power, and in order to have power you have to earn it—it has to come from an election. It has to have a legitimacy that arises from the people. I hope that this venture moves, although perhaps not too quickly, towards fruition. I will give it my support. I hope that at the end of the day this House will be more efficient and effective, it will be heard more and it will be more democratic and more justified.