Coalition Government: Constitution Committee Report

Debate between Baroness Grender and Lord Strathclyde

Tuesday 13th May 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to be speaking immediately after the noble Baroness, Lady Jay. Perhaps I may be the first publicly to pay tribute to her time as chairman of such a distinguished committee as the House of Lords Constitution Committee. She has served with distinction, but she has also served at a most fascinating and interesting time. The noble Baroness reminded us that she has served for four years, which is a long time. In those four years we have seen constitutional innovation, to which the report alludes several times over.

As the noble Baroness explained, I gave evidence to the committee and read its report. One of the reasons I wanted to speak in this debate was to say how good I thought its conclusions were. It is extremely clear and well-written, and therefore effective. I am sorry to hear that the Government were unable to give a written response but I have great faith that my noble friend Lord Wallace of Saltaire will be able to say that he, too, on behalf of the Government, thinks this a very positive report. There is much to take away, not just by politicians but by senior members of the Civil Service, particularly the Cabinet Office, if this thing—this coalition—ever happens again.

It was useful for the noble Baroness to remind us, as is written in the first paragraph of the report, what my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth said about this being the first coalition to come about because of the arithmetic calculation after a general election. That demonstrates just how rare a coalition is in the United Kingdom. We have no reason to believe that it will necessarily happen again in the near future. It probably will not happen again, but I dare say that we ought, like the boy scouts, to be ever ready and ever prepared for it to happen again.

In May 2010 I was one of those who were initially sceptical about the desirability of having a coalition. I felt that my right honourable friend David Cameron probably could have carried on a minority Government, but that was not the prevailing view. It was said that people generally liked the idea of politicians sorting out their differences in private before coming to Parliament with an agreed set of proposals. Whether that is true in practice remains to be seen, but it is true that people like that idea. What else is true is that this coalition has been remarkably successful, particularly in barring the noises off, and has had huge success in reform of some of the most important parts of the public sector—education, welfare and health. What Government, within 12 months of a general election, would not be delighted to hear that the United Kingdom now has the fastest-growing economy in the G7; that there are more people in work today in Britain than ever before; that unemployment is falling; that the twin scourges of inflation and interest rates, which most of us have lived with for most of our lives, are at rock bottom; and that month by month, year by year, the deficit is being cut and we can see, over the horizon, a time when it will be eradicated? That is a success for the coalition.

I have no idea whether there will be another coalition Government. If there is, the only point with which I took minor issue was on the formation of a Government. It is important for the nation to have a Prime Minister and to know who that Prime Minister is as quickly as possible. We should not create a system that allows for a Prime Minister to linger on in 10 Downing Street for too long. If there is no pressure to come to an agreement on who the new Prime Minister should be, it could drag on for a very long time indeed. I cannot imagine that it was a pleasant experience for Mr Brown as Prime Minister to be twiddling his thumbs among the packing cases, waiting for the Liberal Democrats and the Conservative Party to reach some sort of agreement. There is all the difference between the parties agreeing that there should be a coalition and that therefore there should be a Prime Minister, which should be announced as soon as possible, and for the Palace to do the all-important ceremony with which it needs to be involved, and the final troth being made on a coalition agreement and, most importantly, on what the terms of the first Queen’s Speech should be. I agree with the idea that there should be a longer time-lag between the general election and the Queen’s Speech. A period of 12 days was mentioned, which is perfectly sensible.

I want to make four observations on the report with regard to the House of Lords. The first relates to paragraph 145 and the Salisbury convention. The report admirably says and the noble Baroness repeated it:

“We recognise that a practice has evolved that the House of Lords does not normally block government bills, whether they are in a manifesto or not. There is no reason why this practice should not apply when there is a coalition government”.

I quite agree. In fact, that is my understanding of what the Salisbury convention has become and how it has developed over many years. There is a faint absurdity in this unelected Chamber denying ourselves the right to debate a Bill which has already been passed by the elected Chamber and we should not do it. One can imagine the truly appalling circumstances in which the House of Lords needs to reserve that right, but as a matter of course that should be part of the Salisbury convention. That is why I very much regret that in this Parliament it was the Official Opposition who supported the wrecking amendments on the Health and Social Care Bill. That was an extremely foolish and dangerous thing to do and should not have been done. When the Labour Party eventually gets back into government it should beware that an irresponsible group in the House of Lords does not hang that around its neck.

The second issue that I want to draw attention to is that of collective responsibility and the boundaries issue, which is eminently well described in paragraph 71. The paragraph refers to the evidence that I gave. I said that it was a “dirty trick”. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, said that it was,

“a flagrant breach of an agreement”,

although he happily conceded that he was delighted that the Liberal Democrats had done so.

Either way—and I stand by what I said—what I dislike intensely in paragraph 71 is how David Laws MP prays in aid the collapse of the House of Lords Bill in the House of Commons. I just want to say that this is a desperate rewriting of history. The House of Lord Bill was passed in the Commons on a huge majority at Second Reading. Nearly 80% of MPs voted in favour of it. What happened thereafter was a failure of the Government and of the Minister who was responsible for it, the Deputy Prime Minister, to reach an agreement, particularly with the Opposition, on the programme motion. That was not the fault of a few dozen Conservative Members of Parliament. As we all know in this House, this issue was always going to be controversial and could never have been passed by one party acting on its own. It could have been passed only by agreement. If the Deputy Prime Minister had spent more time early on in the Parliament working with the shadow Cabinet and the Labour Party, he might have got that agreement.

I cannot help thinking that the issue of House of Lords reform became a convenient argument, and that is all, and that even if House of Lords reform had gone through, the Liberal Democrats would have found a different excuse for reneging on the deal that they had struck in the coalition agreement.

[Baroness Grender (LD)]

May I clarify something with the noble Lord? Is it not the case that the Prime Minister took the decision to withdraw from pushing ahead with the vote on the programme motion?

[Lord Strathclyde]

I am sure that is the case, but only on the basis that he knew it was going to be lost. He knew that the Minister responsible for the Bill could not guarantee that they had support from Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition. That is why it collapsed.