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Coalition Government

My Lords, some time between 5.30 and 6.30 yesterday afternoon, it became apparent to me that your Lordships' House had entered a serious constitutional crisis, and I have decided to make that the centre of my speech today. What has happened is that it has become apparent that a minority of the Members of your Lordships' House can use their power to block legislation that has been introduced by the Government and has been supported by a majority of your Lordships' House. The minority can do this by a large number of Members making speeches that are of great length and repetitive and by not accepting groupings. The only weapon now available to the majority of your Lordships' House in the battle that seems to be happening is closure, but that weapon was designed for other purposes and is not very efficient in stopping the tactics of the minority. In the long run, the House of Commons can, of course, overcome the blocking of Bills in your Lordships' House, but only by the use of the Parliament Act, and that means a delay of a year or more. The Parliament Act was created to allow the House of Commons to override decisions taken by the majority in your Lordships' House, not to deal with the actions of a minority. Having separate actions by a minority was, no doubt, hardly foreseen in 1911. The use of minority blocking has not previously been seen in your Lordships’ House, at least during the 13 years during which I have been a Member. At the time of the debate on the House of Lords Bill in 1999, it was rumoured that the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury—then Lord Cranborne and the Conservative Leader—had persuaded the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, to agree to the retention of 92 hereditary Peers by a threat to upset future government timetables in your Lordships’ House. Whether that would have happened if there had been no retention of hereditary Peers, I do not know, but that was a case that involved a majority and not a minority of the Members of your Lordships’ House. The problem now is that the powers of a minority in the House have been displayed to all who may become interested. That could well apply to other legislation at a later date, and particularly to legislation for the reform of your Lordships’ House, where some Members may well wish to frustrate or delay reform in all or some of its steps. Of course, the powers of minority decisions could go much wider than that. There could be frustration of almost anything. To my mind, the use of delaying tactics by a minority, whatever that minority may be, is damaging to the constitution and to the future of your Lordships’ House. The Motion of the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, calls, "““attention to the constitutional and Parliamentary effect of coalition government””." I believe that this is not in fact the issue. The problems have been created by Labour-Party delaying tactics. Those delaying tactics could arise whether the majority was a single party or a coalition, so it is not the coalition that is the significant issue here—it is the Opposition, the Labour Party itself. The real issue is the behaviour of a minority Opposition. Some of the speeches made during the debate yesterday after the closure vote think that the problem can be settled for good by friendly negotiation. Negotiation is now undoubtedly desirable, but it is not enough for the future as a whole. The action of the Labour Party has, I believe, opened up possibilities which may well reappear later, perhaps to its own detriment. What can we do to meet this problem? For the present, it looks as if we have to leave the matters to negotiation, but for the longer term we are going to need legislation, which may have to be passed under the Parliament Act. We need that in your Lordships’ House. I would hope that any such legislation would act in a way that prevents anything like we have been facing for the last couple of weeks happening again. It must not allow for the guillotine because it is central that we do not have a guillotine in your Lordships’ House, and it must also prevent the misuse of time for debates. What has happened over the last two days is seriously damaging to the future of your Lordships’ House and is something that is going to concern this House not just for the next few weeks, but for a very considerable time.