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Coalition Government

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, for her truly outstanding speech at the beginning of this debate, and for initiating and launching a debate on this crucial subject at this stage. It is helping the House to think ahead and, I hope, to come to rational conclusions. She and I have been colleagues in the European-Atlantic Group for some time, and it has been a pleasure to see how other countries have conducted their own constitutional relationships, and to take the good examples from some while avoiding the bad examples from others. This is a difficult time, as the noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davies, said. It is a time when this House should come together. However, I appreciate that that sounds pompous from someone who has been here only since 2004. One needs to be here a long time to understand the amazing subtleties of the House of Lords, which are much more considerable and tangible—occasionally you can get hold of them—than those of the House of Commons, where I was 27 years. I was sad to be defeated at the 1997 election and subsequently changed parties, as small numbers of people in our system have done, with justification. I did not feel that I had changed my basic ideas about the political priorities of our programme formations, in the old days and perhaps in the future, because I had a set of beliefs. The cruelties and barbarities of the House of Commons affected all of us Members over a long period. Although the times were interesting and amusing, and provided a great political game and an excitement that is unforgettable, it was a tremendous relief and honour to come to this place and find the rational parliamentary Chamber par excellence—the kind of thing that, surprisingly, one still finds in the lower House equivalents in other countries, where they have regular coalition politics and regard it as a good rather than a bad thing. That is why I was very excited when the new coalition started. I thought that it was a great opportunity for this country to have, as Nick Clegg said, new politics. I am afraid that, having said that, he slipped rather rapidly back into the old politics when he and others immediately criticised the Labour Government for having left an economic and financial mess. Leaving some of the detail at the margin outside that argument, my impression was that the Gordon Brown Government had been praised by the famous international institutions governing these matters for having dealt with the financial and economic crisis—the world crisis, not the British crisis—very successfully. I do not think that one loses any political power by saying that if you are a member and representative of another party. That is what I think the public prefer in this country. They still do not like the old yah-boo politics and the artificial adversarial struggle. Therefore, I believe that the public, too, in this country were very excited about the formation of the new coalition. One can understand that inevitably mistakes will arise, and I make no criticism at all of colleagues in my own party and those in the Conservative Party who were involved in these very difficult processes, which were all done at great speed, as they apparently had to be under our system. However, I am not sure that I agree with that. I rather like the idea of careful coalition formations—giving information not only before an election but also afterwards if complicated and difficult negotiations are needed on certain problematical high-profile and leading areas of policy formation. Therefore, it was a great opportunity for this country to get away from the old yah-boo politics—the stuff that made visitors to the House of Commons go tense when they heard the shouting. By the way, they still do that at Prime Minister’s Question Time. It is a great spectacle but it is also very depressing for all observers, including politicians. When mistakes were made, they were natural mistakes made by new colleagues forming the coalition Government. They did so with great excitement, and I can understand that too. I can understand Cameron being literally quite desperate to be in power after spending so many years rescuing a party which a few years ago was regarded as totally written off. The change came remarkably quickly under his skilful leadership. Equally, I can understand Nick Clegg being absolutely desperate—I use that word in praise, not in criticism—to become Deputy Prime Minister and to bring his party into government for the first time after so many years that, due to senescence and the passing of the years, many Liberals and Liberal Democrats cannot remember the last time. It was therefore a great opportunity and there was a lot to be done. The difficulty arose in putting the coalition agreement into such a complicated and extensive framework, with far too much detail and too many offerings of what was going to be presented by way of legislation, first in the Commons and then here, with one or two Bills starting here and then going to the Commons. This being a rational, sensible and pragmatic Chamber, where tolerance of other people’s views is much higher than in the House of Commons, means that we have to pay attention to the details of these matters. The ironical mistake that has come out of this accidentally—it was no one’s fault; it has just happened because it was all new territory and no one knew how it was going to work out—is that the provocative nature of some of the contents of some Bills has now inevitably meant that, once again, the new politics have been replaced by the old. The noble Lord, Lord Owen, mentioned the Health and Social Care Bill, which is now being promulgated, and it is certainly a Bill that we will have to look at very carefully. Voltaire, when talking about political action and political legislation in any country, always made a distinction between superstition, as he called it, and philosophy—or perhaps we would say superstition and wisdom. When Bills are based on superstition and ideology, you may be heading for trouble if you have a guaranteed majority and can ride roughshod over everyone else because of the numbers game involved in a coalition. Incidentally, on our side we need to remember that there is no weakness in that. Labour had 29 per cent of the vote, whereas we had 23 per cent. There is no harm in remembering that and bearing in mind that the party which was recently in government and is now in opposition also has some ideas about what this country needs to do to get out of its difficulties. Youth unemployment is probably one of the most serious ones, and on that, I am sure, we need consensus. Therefore, superstition in Bills needs to be replaced by wisdom in other Bills, but that will come from realising the mistakes that have been made unwittingly by the people who form the coalition Government. Therefore, I believe that it is right to carry on supporting this coalition and I do so very strongly. I think that I have voted with it on all occasions with the possible exception of one vote on student fees. Incidentally, that, too, is a matter that needs very sober reflection. If a Government—even a single-party Government, let alone a coalition one—have civic disorder and rioting several months after their formation, they have to pause for thought about the background to that civil disorder and the riots and so on. You cannot just brush it aside and say, ““There are troublemakers in society. We will go on with what we are planning””. You have to think again. That happened with Mrs Thatcher on the poll tax as well, when my friends in Paris phoned me up in amazement and said, ““You must be making this up. The British papers are talking about the poll tax—the capitation—which is one of the 10 things that caused the French Revolution””. Look what happened in those days too. We need to return now to the new politics that we promised—David Cameron used a similar phrase; the involvement of civic society in these processes is also of crucial importance—and produce absolutely first-class legislation from now on. The main opportunity, unfortunately, will take some time to come, because it will be from the next Queen’s Speech onwards, which I assume will be in October or November 2012. That is the chance for the coalition Government—who, as we discussed, will continue the distance, because they have a guaranteed majority effective in both Houses. The Government must then produce a list of measures to restore the confidence of the public. There is a lot of work to be done in the mean time, including, I hope, winning the AV referendum. The old politics must go. There are too many Bills whenever a new Government come into power, but there is not enough thought about them, with the Whips saying that passage is automatic. There is the testosterone that comes out of the mostly male leaders saying, ““We will make no concessions or changes at all to this wonderful Bill. It is written down so you cannot change it at all””. There needs to be much more pre-legislative scrutiny with careful examination. The committees of this House are excellent in that field and need to be used more and more. Life is too complicated, so bring out the simplicity in Bills. Do not make them long just because it makes them look more impressive. I have great concerns that if that attitude does not change and if we do not make sure that we genuinely embrace the new politics, there will be continuous trouble—indeed, even disorder—in our society.