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House of Lords: Reform

My Lords, like many noble Lords in this House, I have had my say on Lords reform many times in the past. It is 10 years since my royal commission reported, and I still think it was probably the best way forward. At the time, the then Government referred to it with approbation in their election manifesto, and slightly embarrassed me by actually using my name in their election manifesto. I think the Conservative Party would have accepted it, but I accept that the Liberal party did not think it was a sensible way forward. Our difficulty was that what we proposed then was a compromise, and nobody wanted to make any efforts at all at compromising. We proposed a partly appointed, partly elected House with the appointed part considerably larger than the elected. It was essentially a compromise, and nobody was prepared to make that sort of compromise. That is one of the lessons that the all-party committee ought to bear in mind when it considers this. One curious fact about the royal commission was that I did not ask any of the leaders of the parties to give evidence, but I waited upon them all and asked them what they thought. I will not recount what they thought. I could not get Ted Heath the slightest bit interested in the subject, but I had a very interesting talk with Roy Jenkins before the royal commission report, and he said he was very happy with the way the House of Lords was working and did not favour any great reform. I pressed him. I said that that was what the royal commission was there to propose and that he must give me some idea. Hard pressed, he did say that he would like there to be a senate; I hope Nick Clegg can take some comfort from that view. Roy Jenkins believed that it should be of 120 Members, but I am afraid that I came away from the meeting convinced that he had put forward that proposal because he thought it was the least likely that Parliament would ever accept. A number of important things in this draft Bill find an echo in what we said 10 years ago. First, it separates the peerage from membership of the upper House. That is what we said then and I still think that it is probably the only way that we will ever get proper reform of this House. Secondly, it recommends 15-year terms with no re- election, as we recommended. However, we made the quite important point that the House should have the power to reappoint someone who had been elected if it thought that they would be valuable for a further term in the House. If you think of some of the expertise, that ought to be considered. There was also, on the face of it, no great dispute about the powers of a reformed House and the supremacy of the Commons. The most worrying feature about the Bill, as has already been said eloquently by a number of noble Lords, is the question of whether that will survive in the sort of reform that this draft Bill implies. The fundamental question is—