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House of Lords Reform

My Lords, I was interested to hear the quotation of Abbé Sieyés. The only one I know is that he was asked at the end what he did during the French Revolution and he said, ““I survived””. That is a good lesson for everyone in politics. I was looking at the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and I thought that he looked fit and happy and 10 years younger, and then I suddenly realised why. For many a day in the previous Parliament, when we sat over there on the Liberal Democrat Benches, we used to initiate debates on reforms of this Chamber, and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, used to sit here, tense and flipping through his notes, waiting to reply. It is a lot more difficult on this side than it is on the other and I wish him good health. I immediately take up the noble Lord’s point on grandfathering rights. If this excellent legislation will have his imprimatur on it, I shall certainly bring it to the attention of the Deputy Prime Minister. On the matter of the voting record, as he knows well, the record for this Government so far is that we have lost every vote in this House. This is going to be difficult. I know that if I am too firm, clear and decisive then noble Lords will be up on their feet and saying that I am bouncing the House, not consulting it, and they will ask where all this came from. If I say we are listening and will consult, noble Lords will say that it is all wishy-washy. I can assure the House that the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, I and indeed the Deputy Prime Minister are in listening mode. We are simply trying, with the best of intentions, to set out a road map for this House and for Parliament so that they can deal with an issue that some would say has bedevilled it for 100 years. Certainly those who have been around for the past 10 years have seen it being dealt with without much progress. In 1909 the then Prime Minister, Mr Asquith, received the following assessment of prospects of reform of the House of Lords from his Parliamentary Private Secretary, Edwin Montagu. He wrote: "““The history of all former attempts at coming to close quarters with the House of Lords Question shows a record of disorder, dissipation of energy, of words and solemn exhortation, of individual rhetoric … without any definite scheme of action””." In some ways, try as they did, that could be the description of the previous Government between the reforms of 1999 and the cascade of deathbed repentances which ended up in the CRAG Bill. We are desperately trying, perhaps in time for the 100th anniversary of the first passing of the Reform Act, to make some progress. I want to make a correction. Noble Lords will know that the 1911 Act was passed on 10 August, and I said in an earlier debate that we all know why they managed to pass it then—their Lordships wanted to go off and slaughter grouse. Not at all, it turns out. The noble Lord, Lord Willoughby de Broke, immediately brought me his grandfather’s memoirs. His grandfather was the leader of the last-ditchers, and he explains in graphic terms that the reason why they failed to derail the 1911 Bill was that the bishops ratted. When the last-ditchers needed their votes, they were inexplicably absent. Those noble Lords who are relying on the bishops this time around, remember that precedent. Quite seriously, I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. I know how much work he and Jack Straw put into attempts to make progress on this. That is one of the reasons why the Clegg committee is able to get off to a flying start; as the members will know, we are using quite a lot of that work. Some of the officials and experts have been on this topic for 10 years so they are not new to the issue, and the work that has been done, I should say to the noble Lord, Lord Richard, includes some drafting of parts of a Bill that was commissioned by Jack Straw. As I have said before, some of the building blocks are there. Yesterday, when we were talking about the expenses regime, the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, pointed out that this House has not been slow in bringing reforms forward. She said: "““In the space of less than a year we now have a stringent code of conduct, an active sub-committee on privileges and standards and greater financial transparency””.—[Official Report, 28/6/10; col. 1515.]" That is backed up by an officer of the House who is going to police those reforms. So we have carried reforms forward and we continue to do so. I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham. As I have said before, I sometimes think that we missed an enormous chance by not taking up the Wakeham recommendations; we would have been almost halfway through his transition period by now. That is a lesson sometimes in politics. I have said to the Deputy Prime Minister that he could well with profit read the Wakeham report as part of his reading on this subject. I pay tribute to the noble Lords, Lord Butler and Lord Filkin, and the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, for their initiative on the other matter of trying to parallel the Wright committee’s report. There are things that we could and should be doing as we approach the issue of major reform. Let me take head-on the structure of the committee. Lots of people have asked, ““Why are the Cross Benchers not on it?””. I put it quite bluntly to the Cross Benchers: they can be one of two things. They can be the fourth political party in this House or they can be what they all take pride in—individuals who come as independents to put an independent view to this House. Their strength is their individuality, which makes them separate from the political parties but does not make it easy for them then to be on a committee made up of three political parties which, in their manifestos, have just taken a case to the country. Having had the experience of the past 10 years—this is something that always happens with these debates in the House—I know that there are colleagues who couch their speeches in notes of surprise as though some of the issues that have been raised have never been put to them before; this is all a matter of shock, goodness gracious, we must start from first principles and it will take at least five years. But if you start in the first few weeks of the Parliament, you are then accused of rushing them. Then, if you leave it, as the previous Government did, to the last few weeks of the Parliament, you are told, ““This can’t be done in the last few weeks of a Parliament””. I know Catch-22 when I see it. We are trying to produce what we have not had in the last century—a Bill which we can focus on. All the issues can be considered. It was said that Cross-Benchers were not being consulted. I assure your Lordships that not only will the Hansard of this debate be put before the Deputy Prime Minister, the Prime Minister and the other members of the Clegg committee, but so will a paper analysing the major themes that have come out of it. This is part of a consultation that we want. It is not matter of just going through the motions; it is a matter, at this stage, of having a committee of the willing to try to draw up a Bill to make progress. I have in my notes a line—it is all mine—that says that if the Member for Old Sarum had been on the committee for the 1832 Reform Bill, he might still be in the House of Commons. I was going to leave that out of my speech so as not to be provocative, because my noble friend Lord Strathclyde said, ““Don’t provoke them. Be conciliatory””. I really resent the attack of the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, on my noble friend, whom he implied was trying to lure the House in directions that it would not otherwise wish to go, which is again far from the truth. We are trying to set out the Government’s strategy, listen to the views of the House and then try to resolve the differences such as we can. However, if I believe in a directly elected House and my noble and learned friend Lord Howe of Aberavon believes in a wholly nominated House, I have with all respect to ask him what alchemy will provide a solution. The late Liberal MP David Penhaligon used to say, ““If you believe in something, write it on a piece of paper, stick it through a letterbox and persuade people to vote for it””. That is how democracy works—I assure my noble and learned friend that I am not telling him how to suck eggs. I cannot see a way of resolving a dilemma such as this other than by the political parties taking their case to the country and then bringing it back to Parliament. That is the process that we are undertaking at the moment. We have taken our case to the country; we are bringing it back to Parliament for a full debate, for full scrutiny, on the basis of a draft Bill. I cannot for the life of me see any other way forward. The noble Lord, Lord Norton, asked why the Parliament Acts exist. I have always understood that the Parliament Acts are there to underpin the supremacy of the Commons. It was asked what the new reformed House would do and how it would challenge Parliament. There are many bicameral regimes around the world that manage to work out the relationship between Houses and do not end up with gridlock. I say in response to the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, that I see this as an advisory and a revisory House. I was on the Cunningham committee. I remember the debates, and I remember why the refuseniks were so determined to write in to the Cunningham committee to say that its proposals should apply only to an unreformed House. They want to do exactly what they are doing now, which is to raise the spectre of some great constitutional battle between the two Houses. I signed the Cunningham committee in the end, not, as the noble Lord, Lord Wright, implied, on the basis that at the point of reform there would be a great constitutional crisis; I signed it on the basis that it would apply to a new House, but that at the point of reform it would have to be looked at again. Noble Lords can read the Cunningham committee report, and that is what it says. That is absolute common sense. My belief, which was confirmed in many discussions in the Cunningham committee, was that the Cunningham committee conventions would still work and operate in a reformed House. If there was a transitional period, there is no doubt that it would give the opportunity for a proper look at where and what part of the Cunningham conventions would need to be looked at again. I do not see them as the great crisis point implied in the debate. A number of noble Lords said that we should not be looking at this because there was a great economic crisis. As I said during the Queen’s Speech, the Churchill coalition brought in the Beveridge report and the Butler Act and won a war. I do not believe that Governments are one-trick ponies; they should be able to bring forward other reforms at the same time as dealing with the economy. I have no doubt that if a pre-legislative scrutiny committee of both Houses was set up to look at a subject as important as this one, whatever I say from this Dispatch Box, those Members will not be bullied or railroaded. They will do a proper, thorough job. Every one of them will know that it will be one of the most important pieces of pre-legislative scrutiny that anyone has ever considered, and I do not believe that it would be a problem. I am sure that I have missed some other questions. On the attitude towards the Steel reforms, I am a little worried, as the Minister responsible for freedom of information, that the noble Lord, Lord Steel, breached the Act by revealing our e-mails. I have always said that we should let the Steel reforms be part of the mix, and the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, has already indicated that one particular reform will be taken forward in a study group. The other elements will certainly be reported to the Clegg committee. On the question put by the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, on working practices, I am assured that the usual channels are looking to make an announcement very, very shortly—and that means very, very, very shortly, within the next few days—about how to go forward with a full debate on that issue. The noble Lord, Lord Jopling, asked what would happen if a party came from nowhere to amass an overall majority. There is ample precedent for that. Labour was the junior partner in the war coalition but won a landslide at the 1945 election. I like to tell the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, that on a regular basis. Again, that shows you how the House deals with such things. That is where the Salisbury convention came from. One of the great things about our Parliament is its ability to adjust to new circumstances, and that is a good example of it. We all want now to go to our beds—