Queen’s Speech

Baroness Miller of Hendon Excerpts

Thursday 10th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Miller of Hendon]

My Lords, before I begin, it is my duty to apologise for the fact that I was not here when my noble friend Lord Strathclyde, the Leader of the House, opened the debate this morning. Indeed, I missed a tiny bit of the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, who is sitting in his place, but I shall read Hansard. I am afraid that my absence was absolutely beyond my control. I was stuck not in traffic but in a position that prevented me from being here. I hope that the House will forgive me.

I now ask forgiveness for something else. I shall return to the subject of the House of Lords, of which I think we must all have had enough today, and I have been rushing through my notes to see whether I can take out the bits that have already been covered.

Yesterday, Her Majesty announced:

“A Bill will be brought forward to reform the composition of the House of Lords”.

My noble friend has already mentioned the use of the word “composition” and my noble friend Lord Cope of Berkeley, in his excellent speech yesterday proposing the Motion for the Loyal Address, described this cryptic term as “opaque”. The noble Baroness, Lady Royall of Blaisdon, made a similar complaint in her speech on the same Motion, and I, too, have no idea what the Government, or the coalition, have in mind. I felt very bad about that until I heard my noble friend Lady Shephard say that she did not know what it meant, and then I thought, “Well, if she doesn’t know, it’s not quite so bad if I don’t know either”.

Nor do I understand, considering all the publicity that there has been on the subject in the past few weeks and the forest of conflicting kites that have been flown, why the Government have been so coy about spelling out their plans in a little more detail for the purposes of the Queen’s Speech. As we have been left to speculate on the Government’s intentions on this important constitutional topic, I am going to make just a few points of my own in the hope that when the Bill finally emerges I will not need to address your Lordships in any detail at its Second Reading.

First, perhaps I may point out that, contrary to the mantra repeated by numerous speakers in debates in your Lordships’ House and the other place, as well as in talk shows and discussions on television, reform of the House of Lords was not—I repeat emphatically, was not—in the manifestos of all three parties at the last general election. The Conservative manifesto, which I shall quote precisely, said:

“We will work to build a consensus for a mainly-elected second chamber”.

In producing a draft Bill that was thoroughly examined by a Joint Committee of both Houses and rejected by it, and then by the alternative report written by half of that committee, and effectively demolished by the 74 speakers on the debate on the reports, the Conservative Party has fully and effectively honoured its election promise. It has established beyond question that whatever number of votes constitutes consensus, one is not even on the horizon on this subject. Moral obligation met: move on.

Why is this veiled threat about the constitution of your Lordships’ House still hanging over our heads? Is it because of the pact with the Liberal Democrats in the programme for government,

“to establish a Committee to bring forward proposals for a wholly or mainly elected upper chamber on the basis of proportional representation”?

As I have pointed out, a draft Bill was published and the Committee was established. It has duly reported and it rejected the coalition’s manifesto-based proposals. I repeat: moral obligation met, so we should move on, especially as the electorate was not even invited to vote on it. More than that, last year the electorate, in an entirely democratic referendum, roundly rejected the idea of introducing proportional representation into elections for one branch of Parliament. Why, if it is not suitable for the House of Commons, should it be suitable for the House of Lords?

I remind the leaders of my party, in case hidden in the enigmatic announcement in the Queen’s Speech there is some intention to agree with the Liberal Democrat request for a PR election, that our 2010 manifesto said:

“We support the first-past-the-post system for Westminster elections”.

I believe that we are entitled to expect the Government to adhere to this and to honour what they promised.

In a television interview last Sunday, the Chancellor proclaimed the need to focus on what is relevant, and on Monday the Prime Minister, in an article in the Daily Telegraph, repeated that. In the Daily Mail published yesterday, only hours before the Queen’s Speech, he said:

“I must focus on what can be done, what must be done now”.

I say with all the respect in the world to the leaders of my party, what the country does not need now, and what does not need to be done now, is to tie up both Houses of Parliament in hours, days and weeks of a long drawn out sterile argument about an elected Chamber, for which it is clear that this Government have absolutely no mandate, and for which there is absolutely no consensus among the parties, or between the two Houses, or even within the parties themselves.

Furthermore, there is absolutely no call for it by the public. If your Lordships were to ask the next thousand persons walking past the front of the Houses of Parliament, “What are your political concerns?”, we can be sure that it would be the economy, unemployment, housing, immigration, and the cost of fuel. It would not be the composition of the House of Lords.

Let me make it clear that I am not implacably opposed to any change in the composition of your Lordships’ House. I believe that the process of electing replacement hereditary Peers now has to cease. It was intended as a temporary measure after the 1999 Act, during the final stages of which I wept in this Chamber—I am doing it again; noble Lords must not laugh at me as that will make it worse—at the wanton and partisan destruction of more than 800 years of our history. The present hereditary Peers have earned their places for life at least as much as some Members whose qualification for membership has been that they are chums of one of the Prime Ministers—the present one or one that went before. That is not very satisfactory.

I agree with the rejected draft Bill and with the Joint Committee that there is a case for limiting the size of your Lordships’ House. In recent times, under the successive leaderships of the major parties, like Topsy “it just growed”. It is clear from the difficulty in finding space on these Benches in the Chamber, or in the car park or the Peers’ Guest Room, that we must limit our numbers. Some anomalies were recently resolved by the Bill introduced by my noble friend Lord Steel of Aikwood, to which I trust the Government will now give fair passage in the other place—despite the mysterious proposed new Bill that they are talking about. This will allow Members to retire.

The United Kingdom is not the only country with a legislature that includes an appointed second Chamber. The Canadian Senate—sometimes called the Red Chamber—is wholly appointed, but with a term limit based on age. I declare an interest here. I know that I am not as young as I was, but fortunately, in my opinion, I am in possession of all my marbles. Black Rod and his staff would have a very hard job pushing me out of the door if it were decided that in future age was the criterion instead of the ability to do the job and contribute to the working of the House.

Finally, I turn to the future problems that any act of purposeless political correctness would create. At the time of the campaign to eject the hereditary Peers, I warned that it was one step on the slippery slope to salami-slicing our constitution and electing the second Chamber. I looked at my speech to make sure that that was what I said. I was right, and here we are. Therefore, I now warn any of those gullible enough to swallow the specious, pseudo-idealistic argument in favour of such a Chamber that the road on which the Bill is embarking will inevitably lead to calls for an elected head of state. Why would we risk unleashing anything like that? We should think carefully before taking forward any of these dreadful proposals.