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Coalition Government

My Lords, I join in thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, for introducing this extremely timely debate and enabling this House again to reflect in particular on the possible impact of coalition government on its deliberations. However, I take some issue with two assertions that she made, the first being that the coalition Government have a stranglehold on this House. It is very apparent from the proceedings on the Public Bodies Bill that the coalition has been able to dictate neither the content nor the timing of that deliberation. Indeed, there have been significant amendments passed by this House, against the wishes of the coalition, for the improvement and revision of the Bill. The second issue that the noble Baroness raised, which is also questionable, is that legislation of Government is legitimate—and I think that she was speaking here about constitutional legislation—only in so far as it is reflected in advance by the manifestos of the parties putting it forward. She admitted the exception to that rule, which occurred in the lifetime of her own Government—the Constitution Act, which dispensed with the role of the Lord Chancellor historically, separated the Judicial Committee from this House and set up the new Supreme Court. That cannot be an absolute rule, and it is not a desirable rule. Manifestos by their nature express broad goals and certainly not detailed methods of implementation of those goals. Furthermore, there are occasions when Parliament must move with a degree of rapidity to respond to situations. I think, for example, of the embarrassment of this House when certain of its Members were considered to have behaved in a manner totally inappropriate to their positions of responsibility. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, gave his advice on the responsibilities and capabilities of this House, but it was by no means an open-and-shut case, and it required a response to the circumstances. Some of the matters being considered for constitutional reform at this time would have been strengthened by prelegislative scrutiny. In that respect, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hart. It is not impossible for this House to express its views on these measures as they are presented to us. The second point that I would wish to make about the history of the coalition Government is that it is very easy to overlook, when one is concerned with what is admittedly a new situation in modern terms, the extent to which Cabinet Governments have not been monolithic, although they may have been single-party Governments. I go back as far as I can recall, to the Attlee Government. The Bevanites and Gaitskillites were in constant tension with each other. They were not reflecting on the manifesto; they were reflecting different ideologies and practical approaches to the achievement of their respective goals. There was always a tension. Similarly, there was a tension—and the Government of the day did not speak with one voice—when Barbara Castle published her document, In Place of Strife. A minority of the Cabinet, including the Prime Minister and Roy Jenkins, supported her. Within single-party Governments there are shifting alliances. Perhaps it may be considered that there is some attractiveness in the fact that in a coalition the differences of opinion are sometimes rather more clearly recognisable and understood and made more explicit. I hope that will be so. The coalition partnership agreement refers to that point in its foreword, written by the two leaders. It says: "““So we will extend transparency to every area of public life””." I very much hope that that includes transparency in respect of the work of the coalition Cabinet and of the two leaders themselves. Their position as a coalition will command greater public trust if it is recognised that the differences of opinion are real and that the contribution to debate is not one of parties entrenched and firing against each other but a genuine part of the democratic debate. We have had other examples of Government in which differences of opinion have been recognised in modern times—perhaps most notably in respect of the referendum on our membership of the European Union in which Tony Benn and his colleagues were permitted to speak out against the view of the majority of the Cabinet. That was a coalition in all but name. I prefer the version that we have now. The major issue raised by the coalition’s existence is whether it will confront what was recognised before the election as the biggest problem about the British constitutional arrangements—the overmighty power of the Executive. The Better Government Initiative, created by a number of former civil servants, focused clearly on all that. To my mind, there is some opportunity here again to address those problems more easily in a coalition than in the autocratic single-party leadership that we have faced over quite a long period of the last generation. What will reinforce the public’s trust is the sense of the Government being more deliberative and seeking properly to consult. That does mean having prelegislative scrutiny in constitutional Bills and putting out Green Papers to give the public a proper opportunity to debate and contribute their informed evidence on the issues under discussion. There have been good examples of this from the coalition, noticeably in the Green Paper that has come out about electricity, brought out by Mr Chris Huhne, which sets out what the issues are and how the Government’s mind is moving and gives a proper timetable to enable reactions to come in. Similarly, the Minister of Justice, Mr Kenneth Clarke, brought out a first-class paper on penal matters. That allows the transparency that we require to know what the Government’s thinking is about these issues and the opportunity to participate in the decision-making. The foreword to the coalition manifesto spoke of the time having come, "““to disperse power more widely in Britain today””." I am very much in agreement with that overriding rubric, but I hope that the agreement includes recognition of the power of Parliament in respect of the coalition, and that Parliament’s dialogue with the Government will become more than advisory and will, indeed, be informative and creative.