House of Lords Reform Bill [HL]

Baroness Boothroyd Excerpts

Friday 3rd December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Boothroyd]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Steel, on his tenacious efforts to reform this House. His Bill does so in a way that would improve our role as a revising Chamber without tearing up the constitution and turning us into a second rate version of the House of Commons. Unfortunately, the noble Lord’s party leader, the Deputy Prime Minister, favours the destruction of this House and his Cabinet remit includes the complex subject of constitutional change.

On taking office, Mr Clegg expressed his irritation at our continued existence. Indeed, he admitted his impatience at his first appearance as a coalition Minister at the Dispatch Box in June. He said then that Lords reform was more than,

“100 years overdue”,

and that,

“People have been talking about Lords reform for more than a century”.

He went on to say:

“The time for talk is over”.—[Official Report, Commons, 7/6/10; col. 48.]

I do not wish to be uncharitable. Mr Clegg has heavy responsibilities and was propelled into high office, in unusual circumstances, at a time of economic crisis. Even so, he should know better than to declare that time is up on Lords reform before we have seen a word of the draft legislation to replace this House from the cross-party committee that he chairs.

In June, he promised we would see the committee’s proposals by the end of the year; now we hear we must wait until the spring. Until then, Parliament is denied access to his committee’s agenda and minutes and we on the Cross Benches, those on the Back Benches of the three main parties and the bishops are excluded from its deliberations. As far as I am concerned, it is a cabal. So let us hear no more about the Government’s determination to “push through” the reform of this House. “Push through” are Mr Clegg’s words, not mine; they come from his statement in June. He may push as hard as he likes but there are many in your Lordships’ House who will not be pushed into submission.

The Deputy Prime Minister talks as if this House has been set in aspic since Mr Asquith was Prime Minister. Does he not realise that it has been in a state of continual change for many decades, as we have already heard? Also, does he not understand that we are eager to accept further changes provided they make sense, as the noble Lord, Lord Steel, and many of your Lordships throughout these debates have made clear? This Bill offers an excellent way forward; an elected Chamber rivalling the Commons does not. The longer the debate about our future continues, the stronger our case becomes.

This weekend, the Parliament Channel will broadcast a televised debate on Lords reform, which I and many of your Lordships attended. To my delight, Shami Chakrabarti, the director of the human rights body Liberty, gave us a ringing endorsement. She said that the Government should not tinker with part of the constitution without regard to what happens to the rest of it. Those are wise words. She believes that the courts would become more powerful without us, and I agree. We already have a Supreme Court across the way; if we want an American-style Supreme Court, the Government are going the right way about it. Mrs Chakrabarti also praised this House for protecting vulnerable minorities and fundamental rights and freedoms. Britain, she said, would be “a lot less free today” without us. Does Mr Clegg seriously dispute it? Does the Prime Minister not understand the damage that the destruction of this House would cause under the spurious guise of greater democracy?

The Americans have an apt phrase for my advice to the Government: they should “get real” about this place. We do not live in another world as our blinkered critics would have us believe; we do not hanker for the faded aristocratic glories of past centuries—when I leave here, I get the No. 11 bus home. Mr Clegg, not us, is out of date when he talks about 1911. It is a smokescreen for packing this House with new Peers on a scale never before known.

Let us consider the recent intakes that have been referred to. The three main parties have gained 105 new Peers in the past six months, with the coalition taking the lion’s share. It will not stop there unless better counsels prevail. Meg Russell of the UCL’s constitution unit reckons that the Conservatives need another 86 new Peers and the Liberal Democrats another 99 before this House fully reflects the way people voted in the last election—and that is conditional on Labour’s strength being frozen for the remainder of this Parliament.

The scale of what is happening is astonishing. When the latest intake has taken the oath, this House will have more than 800 Members—assuming that those of us who are already here survive this winter. That is our biggest membership since hereditary Peers lost their right to sit here 11 years ago. It is already an absurd number. Meg Russell estimates that the Government will need to increase our numbers to nearly 1,000 if they want to get control of this place before the next election. It will be unmanageable. It will cost more and we shall lose the country’s respect. When families in our country are called upon to make sacrifices to pay off the national debt, surely the last thing we need is a Chamber of 1,000 Peers or anywhere near that number.

I urge the Government to think again. Forget party dogmas. Britain’s freedoms are at stake. I warmly support the Bill as a more responsible way forward for us all.