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House of Lords: Reform

My Lords, it is a very great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay. This has been a quite remarkable debate. I begin by apologising to the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, and my noble friend Lord Younger of Leckie, as theirs are the only two speeches that I did not hear. However, I am told that they were both excellent. In opening the debate, my noble friend used the word ““consensus””, as he has done so often. Consensus has been defined as a disparate group of people coming to a high degree of agreement. We have had consensus today because from all parts of the House we have had eloquent pleas for your Lordships’ House. We have had abrupt dismissal of the inadequacies of the White Paper, particularly in the brilliant, scintillating speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd. Even those who have given grudging support to the White Paper, such as the noble Lord, Lord Hoyle—I think that only three have given it total support—have dismissed it as an inadequate document. No system is perfect, and our parliamentary system is not perfect, but it has some remarkable features. In terms of the distribution of power, it is, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Exeter said, close to a unicameral assembly because the real unambiguous power and democratic mandate are held at the other end of the Corridor by the elected House of Commons, and so it should be. As I said in my maiden speech, I believe that there is a great deal to be said for unambiguous holding of the democratic mandate. Your Lordships’ House has many distinct and distinguished Members. The expertise encompassed in this place has been referred to many times in this debate. I will not repeat what has been said for fear of incurring the sort of wrath that I once heard from a doorkeeper in another place. When the doorkeeper was asked, ““Has everything been said?””, he replied, ““Yes, but not yet by everybody””. Therefore, I shall not repeat at length the admirable points that have been made about the composition of this place, nor do I want to rehearse—as has been done—the number of reforms that this House has gone through in the 100 years since the Parliament Act 1911. However, we are not debating another stage of House of Lords reform; we are debating abolition of the House of Lords and its replacement by a totally different assembly. It is a disingenuous use of the words ““House of Lords”” to call this House of Lords reform in the White Paper. It is also disingenuous to refer to it as the House of Lords in the paper when what is being proposed is a senate. We should talk in those unambiguous terms. We would be replaced by a senate. As one who before the end of the previous century was briefly a constitutional affairs spokesman for my party, I am deeply saddened that my party, which should be the prime defender of the constitution, should have got itself into this mess supporting such absurd proposals. The underlying theme of the White Paper is a reluctant acknowledgment and praising of your Lordships' House for what it does and how it does it and assurances that the senate that would replace it would preserve our merits, our detachment from party domination and our powers. But that could not be. My noble friend accepted that the relationship between the new Chamber and the other place would inevitably be different. Some, such as the President of the Liberal Democrats—I referred to this in an earlier intervention—have said that an elected second Chamber would, if elected on PR, be more legitimate than the other place. Even if the actual powers were no different, as has been said several times, those powers would be used. My noble friend Lord Dobbs, in his extremely entertaining and amusing speech, made that point with real vigour and force. He was right to do so. One thing that has not been said today is that the White Paper proposes a House with four categories of membership—the elected, the appointed, the Bishops, and the placemen, who would be an unspecified number of Prime Ministerial nominees and be Members only as long as they held office. It is not impossible to imagine a close vote in which the Government of the day were defeated by the 20 per cent or sustained by the placemen. The 20 per cent—the Bishops and the placemen—demolish the logic of the argument that only election confers legitimacy. If the Government concede that illogicality and go for the Deputy Prime Minister’s preferred option of 100 per cent being elected, we would create an expensive second Chamber of paid party politicians with no Cross-Bench element or expertise. If election is then held to be the only legitimacy, where does that leave those in our society who hold high office without election? It may not be the intention, but the passing of this Bill would isolate the monarchy and make it vulnerable to future Cleggery. Almost as dangerous—this has also been referred to—is that the Bill would separate elections from accountability, because Members of the senate would have a single 15-year term, which would be a deterrent to any man or woman wishing to offer the state some service after a lifetime of achievement. Who at 65 wants to stand for a 15-year term, with all the answerability that a paid salary means they would have? When a Government are legislating, especially on constitutional matters, they should eschew gimmickry, pseudo-populism and tokenism. This document smacks of all three. Far worse, it threatens that durable, priceless but fragile settlement that is the British constitution. It contains no coherent and well thought-out blueprint for a new settlement. Still less does it respond to public clamour. Every so often in our history, those in power have an urge to tear down or to tear up, such as when they sacked the monasteries or when they abolished county boroughs. I remind my noble friend the Leader of the House that destruction is the easy bit. Destroying a unique forum for public service, where those who have held high office in government can sit with those who have achieved distinction in their various callings, may be within his power. But does he really want to have the epitaph, ““He promised progress and created chaos””?