House of Lords Reform

Baroness Lawlor Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lawlor (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Lord Privy Seal for her introduction and for the opportunity to consider House of Lords reform. There are many matters to which a new Government might apply reformist zeal: the public services, the public finances and the UK immigration and asylum system could all do with structural reform, as people from across the political divide agree. But the arrangements for Britain’s separate constitutional powers are not of the same order. They have evolved over time, like a tapestry reworked and mended to fulfil a clear purpose—a function, as has been mentioned—and, in doing so, to protect the democratic freedoms of this country and the liberty of its people.

As we have heard today, there are three powers. There is the legislature, a Parliament of two Houses, of which this House is one and the other is a directly elected Chamber. There is a judiciary recognised for its independence and expertise. It, with this Chamber, is the watchdog of the third power, the Executive—the Government of the day, accountable to the electorate, through the ballot box, and indirectly through Parliament, under arrangements for each House, which, with their functions, have also evolved. Innocuous as they may seem, these arrangements ensure not only that people are governed under laws they have a say in making, by a Parliament and representatives they elect, but that those who govern are accountable and the laws are properly made. Changing the composition of this Chamber, removing certain categories of Peer without simultaneous plans for the alternative, opens the way for a House of Lords packed by the Government and unlikely to hold them to account. We would be back full circle to the cry of Lloyd George and the Liberals when they described the House of Lords as “Mr Balfour’s poodle” only this time it will be Sir Keir’s, and we have had a flavour of how executive power will be used.

This country has slipped into each century as if by accident, evolving gradually and, from the 18th century, without the violence, civil war or bloody revolutions to which our European neighbours have too often been victim. Nor has it suffered totalitarian rule, to which some neighbours have been subject in our own hundred years. The costs of that were great, not only to ordered government but in the assault on liberty and property rights. By contrast, this country, through its separate constitutional powers, extended the franchise, moved to religious and democratic arrangements and accommodated the replacement of the main opposition party, the Liberals, with the Labour Party as one of the main parties of government. When it came to govern, the Labour Party put country before ideology, accepted the arrangements under which it was governed and sought to work with the constitution, guaranteeing freedoms and liberty, not against it.

The Prime Minister has already mentioned regret at some of the failings evident in his first 100 days. Let him now turn the corner and be true to a better Labour tradition, rather than make an assault without due process on how we are governed and why. I hope he will think again before making this reckless move.