House of Lords: Labour Peers’ Working Group Report

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Thursday 19th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)]

My Lords, it can sometimes feel as though the House of Lords spends more time talking about itself than about any other topic. I do not say that that is a good or a bad thing; I simply observe that it can feel that way. Whether the same could be said of another place I do not know, but given how much time it has been obliged to spend talking about us, it is worth wondering, for the following reason. Many people—I am one of them—believe that our constitutional arrangements are not perfect, but the debate on how they might be improved, both within and outside Parliament, is too often conducted on the premise that the House of Lords is the problem—not part of the problem, which it certainly is, but the problem itself. That is a view that I do not share.

I do not usually participate in debates on this topic, taking the view that there are many more expert and considered views than mine that the House would rather hear. The debate today has made that clear. The views have been very diverse, sometimes very passionately expressed and always interesting. This occasion is different: I was a member of the working group and I welcome the opportunity to add my voice to the tributes to my colleagues, from whom I learnt a huge amount, and in particular to the excellent chairmanship of my much missed friend Lord Grenfell—retired—and my noble friend Lady Taylor of Bolton, to whom we are also grateful for securing this debate.

To the noble Lord, Lord Stephen, I will say one thing, although I see that he is not in his place. This is not a report of the Labour Party; it is a report of a group of Labour Peers to the Labour Party and should be read in that light.

I suspect that a number of people were surprised, and perhaps disappointed, that the working group chose not to take a view on the question that has dominated discussion of parliamentary reform—whether the House of Lords should be elected. Personally, I do not believe that election is the only measure of democratic legitimacy, but I also take the view, which I realise some will regard as heretical, that it is a second-order question. There are, of course, powerful arguments for and against elected second Chambers; elections of all kinds can be put into that category.

There are also strong arguments for appointment and, indeed, for unicameralism, but their resolution should grow out of a properly informed and widespread consensus—I use the word recognising that some people think that consensus is impossible to achieve and not worth having when you get it—about the larger issue of what kind of Parliament or, indeed, Parliaments, we should be aspiring to, in a rapidly evolving political environment which will certainly look different in five years’ time, whatever the outcome of Scotland’s referendum or any subsequent referendum on our place in Europe. As part of securing that consensus, we must reconsider what part, if any, a second Chamber has to play and then how it should be made up.

That is why I believe that a constitutional commission, as proposed in section 10 of the working group’s report and also in the alternative report presented by members of the Joint Committee on the Bill, is the right next step if we are serious about modernising our democracy. I was very taken with the words of the noble Lord, Lord Norton, when he talked about making sense of where we are. That is an extremely valuable perception in my view, and one to which we should pay proper attention.

The House of Lords cannot sensibly be considered in isolation. We must review and refresh Parliament as a whole, and we must find a way to engage the whole UK population, to the extent that this is possible, in thinking about how it can be achieved. That has never been more important than it is now, when we know every day with greater certainty how increasingly disengaged the electorate, and those who will soon become the electorate, are from the way that politics is conducted in the UK. The reviewing and refreshing should be done with all possible speed—certainly before the end of the next Parliament—and should not wind up in the long grass, whether or not that grass can be mowed.

However, this House should not do nothing in the mean time. The noble Lord, Lord Steel, won a famous victory in the last Session with his Bill, and I also welcome the Bill tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman—who I believe is not in her place—which I hope will also secure a safe passage. The working group has set out a number of proposals for further incremental changes, many of which would not need legislation. Some of them are undoubtedly contentious, as today’s debate has revealed, but none of them is outlandish, and none would prevent major reform of Parliament following a constitutional commission. Collectively, they would allow significant improvement to how we manage our arrangements. Such change is badly needed.

The House of Lords is a formidable institution with an extraordinary history. We are all privileged to be part of it. It is full of extraordinary people. The work it does is always diligent, often effective and sometimes transformative, but its value as part of a healthy parliamentary democracy is not well understood, as we have heard from, among others, my noble friend Lady Bakewell. Its perceived demerits—an opaque appointments system largely dependent on political patronage, and an apparent fondness for the trappings of title and privilege, including robes—are leading to the gradual erosion of its credibility.

Let us not make the best the enemy of the good by refusing to do whatever lies in our own power to prevent this decline. I hope that all of us in this House, despite our differences, can work together to bring about some short-term improvements while keeping our eyes on the big prize of wider constitutional change.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I have in my notes that I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Richard, that further progress in Lords reform does not have to wait for the conclusions of any constitutional convention. However, I would just make the point that we are moving into a situation where various dimensions of British politics are changing, and we need to discuss how they relate to each other.

Public engagement very much concerns us. The decline in the reputation of the House of Commons should also concern us. I love listening to the noble Lord, Lord Rooker. He is a romantic for the House of Commons as it should be, and he was one of the best House of Commons men that we had. I fear that the new generation does not produce as many House of Commons men who are as good as he was.

We have the decline of the two-party system and of parties as such. All political parties now are small compared with where we were some 20 years ago. It is quite possible that the outcome of this coming election, as has been suggested, will not be a two or three-party system but a four or five-party system. With the Northern Irish and Scottish parties, there are already multiple parties in the House of Commons. We could have an awkward situation after the next election in which Labour emerges with the most seats and the Conservatives emerge with the most votes, and no two parties alone would be able to form a majority. That is getting into very uncharted territory as to how we would then proceed. I read the New Statesman and listen to Labour people talking about a Labour mandate and how Labour could form a minority Government with a clear mandate. A mandate on, say, 33% of a 60% turnout is not exactly clear.

The case for a commission or convention is out there. There was an excellent report by the House of Commons Political and Constitutional Reform Committee last year which suggested that the Government have no view on this issue at present. However, personally and as a Minister, this is a question that we ought to be debating in the last year of this Parliament. I welcome what the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, and others are doing. It is one that we all need to consider because we need to look at how all of this runs together.

Recommendation 1 of this proposal is that we need to think about a constitutional commission or convention. There is not time within the next three months or even nine months to define exactly what we want, but it is precisely the sort of thing to which we might return in future debates between now and the election.

On Lords reform, we have been here for a long time. The noble Lord, Lord Richard, after all, chaired the Joint Committee and the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, reminded us that he was on the Wakeham commission. The Government remain committed to comprehensive reform, as indeed does the Labour Party officially. The noble Lord, Lord Stephen, remarked that the 2012 Bill, criticised sharply from the Labour Benches, closely followed Jack Straw’s White Paper.

The Byles/Steel Act has now introduced some useful interim reforms, and if we accept the proposals in this report as interim and not intended to avoid more comprehensive reform, there are a number of useful and constructive proposals for the interim, some of which are familiar and some of which are relatively new. Quite a number of them can be agreed by this House without requiring further legislation through the normal procedures and usual channels. We are of course open to further discussion on that. On the proposals in the report—

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall]

Since the Minister has been good enough to acknowledge that these proposals could be brought forward and agreed by the House without the need for legislation, would he be prepared to say whether the Government would support such a move?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

The House has a structure of committees that regularly discuss House procedures. I am not able to give any commitment. We have already discussed within this Parliament the question of the role of the Lord Speaker, for example, and the House decided at that point that it did not wish to move further. It is unlikely between now and the next election that major changes will be agreed and made, but it is certainly quite appropriate that further discussions should continue.

On the question of the size of the House, the figure of 450 Members suggested in this report was in the Government’s Bill. In the long run, we might also have a smaller House of Commons if more power is devolved to the regions and the nations. Indeed, the Conservative proposals that fell saw a House of Commons of 600 rather than 650. How to move from here to there is of course the most difficult issue. Do we go for an age limit or for a time limit—or, as the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, suggested, a post-election weeding out within each group, which would be a wonderful series of bloodlettings within each of the two groups?

A member of the Supreme Court talked to me some months ago about the statutory age of senility. It is a wonderful concept which, for judges, is slowly being reduced from 75 to 70. The suggestion is made here for the Lords’ statutory age of senility to be 80. I realised the last time we debated this that I will hit 25 years of service in this House within a couple of months of reaching the age of 80—and that, clearly, is the point at which I should do what Lord Grenfell did so gracefully and retire. We should all accept that we cannot move from where we are to where we would like to be without a number of us retiring. The suggestion that I think I got from the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, that those of us who are here already should somehow be exempt from the changes, is not possible.

The reason I will not give any commitment about future lists, although I am not aware of any list at the present, is that we need to keep renewing and refreshing the House. As the noble Lord, Lord Gordon of Strathblane, said, experience and expertise go stale. When I joined the House, it had an average age of 67. It now has an average age of 70—I have just passed it. It has 139 Members over the age of 80 and only 131 under 60. That House is a little difficult to defend.