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House of Lords Reform

My Lords, I do not have a prepared speech, but I made a few jottings and shall try to deal with them in relation to what has been said. At this stage of the debate, it is just as well that I did not try to make a speech, because I could never have matched the quality of the speeches that were against setting up an elected second Chamber. Perhaps I may say a word or two on due process. I am extremely grateful not only to my noble friend Lord Higgins but to the noble Baroness, Lady Royall of Blaisdon, who immediately got hold of the importance of the point. This is crucial, because if you are to start a process, you really ought to start at the beginning. No one yet has taken that point, which is crucial. We should debate whether we want a second Chamber. Once we have said yes—we probably will, or perhaps we will not; I do not know—the committee that has been appointed can get to work. If we say no, it cannot. What is the committee doing now? I do not know of course, but I suspect that it is very little. I think that it has had one meeting, but it may be meeting in vain. At the moment the committee should not be doing anything. One has to consider not only its remit but its composition. Why is there no Back-Bencher from any of the three main parties of our House on the committee? I do not know. If I asked the Leader of the House, I would not get a direct answer, because even if he knew he could not tell me. This is a very important question because the whole process could collapse if a court were to hold that there had been no due process. It is not only Back-Benchers from the three main parties. It is crucial to include the party in opposition, whatever it thinks, because we are supposed to be a sort of democracy. As the noble Lady, Lady Saltoun, said, we should also have someone who knows something about the House. Most of the people in the other place know nothing about the House. They do not want to know anything about the House. They do not like the House very much. They think that we are an awful nuisance. I do not blame them, but they are not ideal candidates for a committee to improve our work. Those two aspects have to be dealt with. There is no prospect of a compromise. I hoped that there might be, but I made some inquiries and was informed by people who are more knowledgeable than I am that there is no prospect. Well, these questions will be dealt with at Question Time next Tuesday. The noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, dealt with this next point in a remarkable fashion. What about the people? What do they think? Do they want a change in the House? Has anybody asked them? Does anybody know? The feeling is that the people are really rather satisfied with the way in which we deal with things in a moment of difficulty. I argued this point from the other side of the Chamber some time ago, when we debated the Eames report. The day after that debate, the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Eames, said to me outside, ““You were right. What we wrote in the report could not have been the right reason””. However, there were other reasons. The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, who was not the Leader of the House then, said, ““Well, times have changed and that is the reason””. However, there is no evidence that the people are dissatisfied. Let us not forget that, as the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury said on 8 June, the ““historic role”” of our House is to represent ““non-partisan civil society””. This is not only about elections; it is about the nation. Before we debate, we want to know what the people think. Some time ago, polls showed that the people supported our House. Perhaps the papers or someone else could arrange for us to have some evidence, of whatever quality, of what the people think before we have this essential debate.