House of Lords: Lord Speaker’s Committee Report

Baroness O'Cathain Excerpts

Tuesday 19th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Steel of Aikwood. The first sentence of the summary of the report lays out the challenge that the noble Lord, Lord Burns, and his committee faced:

“exploring methods for reducing the size of the House”.

I do not know who the genius on the committee was who came up with the proposal, but he must have been creative with the use of figures, because the document is quite clear about how it can be done. The proposals themselves are clear, incremental and achievable. This further movement does without the need for legislation and, importantly, without any perceived threat to existing Members—although that might change when it comes to implementation. In so far as the proposals will reduce the size of the House, they will work; but how they may affect the functionality of the House will depend on the working practices of the new Peers.

I found the back-testing of the Burns proposals in a bar-chart construct most interesting. Going back to 1959 and working forward to 2017, it shows what the party composition would look like reflecting public opinion at general elections and that the proposal would work in a fair way, as stated in the report. The challenge of the report is mainly at the point of implementation, as many noble Lords have mentioned, but it is doable and a House of 600 can be achieved.

I turn to say a few words about the Cross-Bench component. The report says that the new Cross-Bench Members would number 134. This is not 20% of 600, which would be 120, but 23.3%, as it is now. Who are the Cross-Benchers? They may be appointed by the House of Lords Appointments Commission or from the judiciary; there are also 30 hereditaries. They may also be appointed by the Prime Minister at various times. But not insignificant are the numbers of those who leave their political party for whatever reasons—mostly because they do not agree with its principles—and join the Cross Benches. Initially, they sit on the Cross Benches; subsequently, they become Cross-Benchers. As this number is not insignificant, particularly in the recent past, whose numbers would they be counted among? If it is to be the number allocated to the Cross Benches, the Appointments Commission will have that many fewer to appoint. If they are to be non-affiliates, then the problem of how to deal with non-affiliates and those who move from their political party needs to be addressed. In my view, if you leave your political party and were appointed by that party then you must leave the House. That would be the obvious solution but it may hold problems.

I support the solution proposed and the House’s membership becoming 600. I note that by 2022 the Cross Benches will have to lose about 35 Peers, either through retirement or death. Looking at the past figure, that number is achievable and I shall do my bit to contribute.

[Baroness O'Cathain (Con)]

A doctor speaks.

[Lord Patel]

My Lords, I was not referring to death but more to longevity and retiring. I support the proposals.

Aircraft: Laser Pointers

Baroness O'Cathain Excerpts

Tuesday 8th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Naseby]

My Lords—

[Baroness O'Cathain (Con)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

I think that my noble friend Lord Naseby has given way to my noble friend, who was the chair of the Select Committee that looked into this matter.

[Baroness O'Cathain]

Thank you. The real problem is that although the Government reacted very positively when the Select Committee made its report on drones and an action plan was created, nothing has happened. While nothing is happening here, we may be sure that everything is happening in those other countries that are manufacturing drones. Will the Minister try to get some oomph into this, otherwise we really will be in a sad situation?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

My Lords, I always like a challenge and I will certainly take that challenge back. Of course, it is important in these areas to work at an EU and global level because there are now no boundaries and safety has to go beyond the UK.

Broadband

Baroness O'Cathain Excerpts

Wednesday 25th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

My Lords, nearly 80% of homes and businesses have superfast broadband, yet only 22% of all broadband connections are superfast.

[Baroness O'Cathain (Con)]

My Lords, is the Minister aware of how great a social exclusion issue this is becoming? Only today the Carnegie UK Trust and Ipsos MORI brought out research showing that it is now a serious issue, particularly in Scotland. What are we going to do? It is not the speed of broadband that matters in this case but the actual access to it.

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

I completely agree with my noble friend. As I said, a bare minimum of two megabits per second will be in place by the end of this year and in Scotland by the end of 2017. As I said to my noble friend Lord Holmes, we, too, regard this as an essential service today.

Death of a Member: Baroness Thatcher

Baroness O'Cathain Excerpts

Wednesday 10th April 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness O'Cathain]

My Lords, this has been a remarkable day—one that none of us who has sat through it will ever forget. Of course, it is also a very sad day. It is a day of finality—a day when we know that we will never have Margaret Thatcher in our midst again.

Having said that, we of course send our condolences to the family. As I do that, I am convinced that once the raw effects of bereavement—and they can be pretty raw—lessen, they will realise just how blessed they have been to have had such a woman as a mother and grandmother. I think that in a few years’ time those grandchildren will read something and say, “Gosh, that was my grandmother. She was one of the most historic women of the second part of the 20th century”.

I am speaking because, of 49 speakers, only six are women. That is okay; it does not really matter and we should not feel that we have to speak. However, I want to speak especially for those who do not belong to the political Westminster village. I felt very honoured to come here. It was never on my radar. In fact, when I was asked to come to the House of Lords, I thought that I was being asked to have dinner here. What I mean is that I feel I should not be here, but I hope that I have contributed something.

I will not use the glass ceiling analogy but when Margaret Thatcher was elected as Prime Minister, there was a frisson among every woman in my peer group who, with qualifications, had been struggling to get up the ladder a bit, to do a bit more development study and to work that bit harder. We asked ourselves, “Will we ever get there?”. Suddenly we saw this lady who was perfect in every way. No human being is perfect but she seemed to be perfect in every way and she was a role model for many of us. I am now going back to the 1970s, when quite an interesting thing happened. Suddenly—I am sure that the noble Baroness, Lady Dean, also experienced this—there was a burgeoning of women’s networks. I am referring not necessarily to networks in which it was said, “You know somebody in that company. Do you think I can get a job?”, but to networks in which women tried to see how they could, in turn, take their rightful place in this country.

I was president of the Women in Banking and Finance network for about four years. In fact, I took over from another Member of this House—my noble friend Lady Platt. She is the wonderful woman who, ever since the 1940s, always had a screwdriver in her bag. She was an aeronautical engineer and a role model for me—not that I could do engineering, physics or chemistry. She set up the Women in Banking and Finance network, whose members are remarkable people. A lot of them have senior positions in accountancy and consultancy firms, and they have done very well. How do they do it? They do it by meeting frequently, networking, going on development courses and playing golf together. It is not equivalent to a men’s club—it is nothing like that—nor is it a sorority, as they have in the States. There are groups in all sorts of industries. The retail sector has them, and there are professional groups such as lawyers. Just because the word “Women” is in the title, men say, “Oh, you’re off doing this”, but men have been doing it for years. We have a lot of catching up to do.

I have been listening avidly for the past four or five hours—I am not sure how long we have been speaking; time passes quickly when you are interested—and it has been a marvellous history lesson. I know that history is becoming more and more fashionable. In fact, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education is trying to highlight history as part of the curriculum, and that is very important. This is a zany idea but in about four or five weeks’ time, or perhaps in the new term in September, why can we not have a copy of today’s Hansard placed in every school so that they can learn from it? I have taken that idea from one put forward by Michael Gove—that of putting the King James Bible in every school. As I am a Bible follower, I do not want to suggest that there is an equivalence between the Bible and today’s Hansard and that your Lordships are all evangelists or prophets, but I think that it is an idea to bear in mind. We have history here today which is alive. It is compelling and I think that people out there of any age would be prepared to listen to it.

I am speaking in this debate from my personal experience outside the Westminster village. I believe that, following the election of Margaret Thatcher, women suddenly got more spring in their step. We have a lot more to do, and we have had several debates in this House about women on boards, women in industry and women in the political sector. All I am saying is that we will miss her. We should benefit from her. We are all so grateful to have known her.

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, I did explain a little earlier that there were two additions. I hesitate to call the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Dinton, an addition, but we now turn to the Cross Benches before we go to my noble friend.

House of Lords: Working Practices

Baroness O'Cathain Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness O'Cathain]

My Lords, it is very gratifying to have had support, so far, for this report. All of it is due to the able and excellent chairmanship of my noble friend Lord Goodlad and his 11 soldiers. I thank the Leader of the House because in setting up this group we have been able to face some challenging, demanding and quite intellectually robust issues and it was very enjoyable. My observations about the running of the committee are twofold: first, I miss the weekly Wednesday mornings and, secondly, there are an awful lot of human beings off the Floor of the House.

The introduction to our report gives the reasons the Leader deemed it right to have this inquiry, and all are valid. However, the big elephant in the room is not actually listed, and I appreciate why not. There has been a marked deterioration in the general behaviour of the House, in the Chamber—not in Select Committees or the constant ongoing discourse in the corridors, the Peers’ Guest Room or at the Long Table. However, the only chance for the general public to see the House of Lords at work is on TV or visiting the Chamber. Radio broadcasts do extend the reach, and the amusing, trenchant and somewhat biased political commentators in the press supposedly extend information of the workings of this House to the general public. The elephant in the room is that the reputation of this House has suffered severely during the last couple of years, both by the extension of the opprobrium resulting from the expenses scandal in the other place and by some decidedly less than acceptable behaviour here. Whether we acknowledge or deny it, our reputation among the general public has suffered a knock. All of us are mired in it and feel diminished by it. Now is the opportunity to restore that confidence, built up over so many years. The Leader’s Group quite rightly decided to eliminate this factor from our deliberations because it was viewed as a one-off or something that would right itself. I hope so.

Now that we are some months removed from the publication of the report, I have looked again at all the recommendations in chapter 6. All are pertinent; all were subjected to both evidence and forensic scrutiny. Inevitably, some are more urgent than others. Some, of course, have been greeted by some fairly negative comments from Members of the House away from the Chamber. As a member of the group, I am not going to push hard for all of the recommendations, although I agree with all of them. I guess we will not get them all. However, I will push very hard for those that I think are more important and in particular will resonate with all Members of the House.

The recommendations that truly—and rapidly—need to be implemented fall into six categories. The first concerns recommendations 1 to 3, on Oral Questions. The current situation gives very little credence to our claim of being a Chamber full of people with experience and expertise. Sadly, too often the session is hijacked by Members with good basic general knowledge on many issues and/or the ability to digest press comments on topical issues rather than giving space to those who are all recognised as having great experience and detailed expertise in certain fields. A bit of self-denying ordinance is called for and the three recommendations would probably do the trick. The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, has already spoken forcibly on this point.

Secondly, recommendations 14 and 15 concern pre-legislative scrutiny. The noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, who is not in her place, has already given all the reasons why these could be so valuable.

My third recommendation concerns post-legislative scrutiny. This recommendation would be so useful in improving the overall business of legislation. It would grow in importance and impact, in that those who drew up the original legislation would have to think very carefully of how it could look a few years hence. Of course things change and even with all the pre-legislative scrutiny and threats of post-legislative scrutiny in the world, mistakes will be made. However, the likelihood of mistakes would be lessened substantially if they did go through proper post-legislative scrutiny. My experience in post-investment scrutiny leads me to believe that implementing this recommendation could be very worthwhile indeed.

My fourth category has not been mentioned so far tonight: simple language, which is covered by recommendations 39 to 41. Oh, for a lucid, easy-to-read successor to the Companion—I am averting my gaze from the clerks at the Table.

Fifthly, recommendations 45 to 48 deal with committees, committee chairmen, the mode of appointment and the Chairman of Committees and Principal Deputy Chairman of Committees. All these recommendations are so important and should be implemented as soon as possible. They are of fundamental importance to Members of the House who want to feel included and that they have a say.

Sixthly and finally, business management and self-regulation are covered by recommendations 51 to 55. Again, these are all very important, but if I had to choose the one that I would go to the stake for it would be recommendation 52, on making the work of the usual channels more accessible to the House as a whole. The oldest trick in the book is to ensure that management knowledge remains in the hands of the favoured few, and here there is a feeling that there are some who are very favoured and very few. We have to encourage every Member of this House to give of their best. If they feel excluded they will probably exclude themselves physically. We must not give up on our task of holding the Government to account, scrutinising all legislation and giving advice based on our experience and expertise—not that of just the loudest people. I hope that this report will be accepted in full.

House of Lords: Reform

Baroness O'Cathain Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness O'Cathain]

My Lords, yesterday’s debate—plus all the debates that we have had since I joined the House—confirms my view that some things never change, and highlighted the old adage, “If it is not necessary to change, it is not necessary to change”. As I am 63rd in the list and after some truly amazing speeches, it is difficult to say anything novel on this subject. It is particularly difficult if one goes back through the literature on previous attempts in the 20th century to reform the House of Lords. Not one of these attempts was put forward with the claim that it would in any way improve the House of Lords. Surely the purpose of reform—particularly political reform—is to improve something so as to benefit the community at large. Improvement must be well thought out and not just an exercise in change for change’s sake.

Many of the speeches yesterday and today, together with many of the speeches in previous debates, dealt with—or purported to deal with—the demand for greater legitimacy and/or repairing the democratic deficit of the House of Lords. We have been told that there is a demand for change. Where is the demand coming from? Where is the evidence of a great swell of concern? What is negative in our operational efficiency now? If we accept that scrutiny is our most important task, is this affected by the lack of legitimacy or by the democratic deficit?

Last weekend I tried to distance myself from the rather frenetic and fetid mood in the House as I prepared for the debate this week. I decided to try to ascertain what the political atmosphere was in which the arguments and processes of the Parliament (No. 2) Bill in 1968-69 were undertaken.

There is a riveting description in the biography of Enoch Powell by Simon Heffer, Like the Roman. When the Bill was introduced, it was apparent that the Government had not made clear their detailed intentions because, according to the author, the Government “did not itself know”. According to Simon Heffer, the Bill was so poorly drafted and such a provocation to the Back-Benchers that even after three days in Committee hardly any progress had been made; and the Government, embarrassed and angered by this, and not least by the guerrilla tactics operating from their own side, began to show the first signs of cracking.

That is a relevant warning from the past to the Government as the similarities between the two Bills, 43 years apart, are striking, although one is in draft. Both are of similar length. Both are very badly drafted; and both were produced on the back of cross-party parliamentary discussions that were discontinued. It did not work then; does the Minister think it will work now?

The end of the Parliament (No. 2) Bill was a devastating defeat for the Wilson Government. After 13 days in Committee, only five clauses had been dealt with. It was jamming up the legislative programme and was, finally, dumped. Not only was the other place disaffected, it was clear that there was neither demand nor desire from the public for House of Lords reform. I defy anyone to put up a good argument to defeat my assertion that there is no more public demand or desire now than there was then for House of Lords reform.

In the closing section of this contribution, I wish to move from an historical analysis to the issue of the experience and expertise available in this House, which is greatly appreciated by the selfsame public and, markedly so, by academics, EU member states and further afield. There is an office in this building—and I am sure it is not unique—which houses 10 noble Lords, 10 desks, each with a two-drawer integral filing cabinet and 15 stand-alone two-drawer filing cabinets. The office is a model of political correctness as it has an equal gender balance. Prior to entering the House of Lords, each of the 10 occupants had individual offices, secretaries, assistants et cetera. There has never been a complaint about our working conditions. Why is that? It is because each of us is so absorbed in the work of the House, particularly scrutiny, so busy in preparing for Committee sessions, so involved in attending various meetings and in working in the Chamber that we have no time to think about being caged up in a cramped office, 96 steps from the entrance with a dodgy lift. The lights are normally on at 8 o’clock in the morning—and they were on earlier this morning—and are never off before 10 pm. They went off at 11.15 pm last night. The occupants have never complained about the working hours. Why would they? They are honoured to have the opportunity to work very hard for this country in scrutinising legislation and ensuring that, using their experience and expertise, they can influence such legislation for the better.

In this case, the experience and expertise of the Peers is quite astonishing. Where would one get a group of 10 elected Members—call them what you will—who between them have: combined membership of the House of Commons totalling 85 years: held a position as a professor of government and acknowledged constitution expert and have well over 30 years of academic teaching: served as a Treasury Minister; served as a Health Minister; served as an Education Minister; served as Paymaster-General; served as a Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons; served as local government leaders, as two have done; operated in the charity sector as administrators and fundraising experts, as four have done; and hands-on business experience of agriculture, food, retailing, air transport, communications and utilities? I reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, who unfortunately is not in her place, that that experience and expertise resides in a Conservative office, not a Cross-Bench office, and I suspect there are plenty of offices like that in all parts of the House.

Do the Government think that if this draft Bill succeeds in its present form those 10 Peers could, or would, be replaced by others with such varied experience and expertise, all of which is used in the important work of this House? Would they work as hard? Would they achieve as much? Those who would stand for election to this House, almost certainly as their second option, having been defeated in attempts to be elected to the House of primacy, are hardly likely to possess such a range of skills, or does the Minister think they might, and how much does he think it might cost?

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Baroness O'Cathain Excerpts

Tuesday 25th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

My Lords, I, too, support the amendment in the name of my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer and my noble friend Lord Bach. It is important in bringing together those parts of the country that believe that they are exceptional and should be added to the two exceptions that were already in the Bill and the Isle of Wight, which has subsequently been added by your Lordships. At the root of that is the argument, as we have just heard from my noble friend Lord Myners, that some parts of the country have a particular character and are fiercely proud of it, and that they think that that should be recognised in their parliamentary boundaries.

[Baroness O'Cathain]

My Lords, I have listened avidly to the discussion about Cornwall. As somebody who came to this country about 46 years ago, I have always thought that it is wonderful to have local involvement in politics, but that has been on the basis of local people getting involved in local or parish councils. Representatives from those local areas have had a wider vision of the contribution that their area could make to the national situation. That is how we came to vote for our MPs. It is wonderful to visit every part of this United Kingdom and to walk around looking at local cathedrals et cetera.

[A noble Lord]

This is a speech.

[Baroness O'Cathain]

However, I fear that if you bring everything local to representation in the national, economic, political and social government of this country, you might lose sight of the big picture. It is wonderful to have representatives from these areas, but they should concentrate just on Westminster and not on local issues which can be dealt with locally. I do not think that that point has been made. I have come in, looked at this matter and thought that. It is a strength, not a weakness.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Myners]

I add my voice in agreement with the observation made by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson. The soundings that I have taken indicate that the people of Cornwall do not wish to share a constituency with Devon; they would rather have five representatives in the other place than a sixth if it involved going across the Tamar.

[Baroness O'Cathain]

I make one observation again. There are the examples of Liverpool and Everton and of Celtic and Rangers. It is a situation where we are actually having tensions within an area, where we are all supposed to be part of—dare I say it?—a big society, and where we help one another irrespective of boundaries.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

My Lords, I am delighted and slightly stunned to have stimulated such debate on day 13 of this Committee that I managed to get four interventions on the trot without being able to respond to them—and here comes another.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Baroness O'Cathain Excerpts

Monday 17th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Morgan]

I am most indebted for that very interesting intervention by my noble friend. Very often those who claim to be localisers are actually centralisers. No Government rolled forward the frontiers of the state more than that of the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, in the 1980s. Hers was one of the most centralist Governments in our history. The present Government claim to advocate localism. Mr Pickles says that he advocates localism and the big society. He does that by telling councils what their policies should be on lighting, on the emptying of bins, on the number of local employees, on the stipends of local government officers and so on.

Localism is shot through the history of this country. It is an honoured tradition of the Liberal Party, which was pluralist. Lloyd George spoke of assizes of the people being set up in different parts of Britain. He was a radical liberal and I hope that his spirit still has resonance in the ranks of his mutated successors. The Labour Party used to claim that, but it lost its way. In the era of Keir Hardie and George Lansbury, Labour was committed to localism and local government. It then became a party of centralisers. That was one reason why it lost the last election and why the Conservatives’ spurious claims to be localisers made some headway. I was very pleased on Saturday to hear Ed Miliband reclaim localism for the Labour Party.

The Conservatives used to be a localist party. They used to claim as their patron saint Edmund Burke, who saw localism and varieties of identities and localities as the key to what he called prescription: the evolutionary historical character of a nation.

[Baroness O'Cathain]

I always love listening to the noble Lord, Lord Morgan. I have been to some of his lectures and there is no historian like him. Perhaps I may ask him a simple question. What has all that to do with this amendment?

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness O’Cathain]

I wish to ask the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, whether he is prepared to offer an apology for the personal abuse that he levelled at the noble Lord, Lord Greaves. We have listened to Members of the House and the problem is that the noble and learned Lord deliberately made fun of the noble Lord, Lord Greaves. Not only was it abusive to him and upsetting to us, it did nothing for the conduct and behaviour of this House. I trust that the noble and learned Lord will feel duly ashamed when he reads Hansard tomorrow.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

Of course, I apologise immediately to the noble Lord, Lord Greaves. I did not mean to cause him any upset. I agree completely with the noble Baroness, Lady O’Cathain. I was teasing and mocking him and I went too far. I unreservedly apologise.

House of Lords Reform

Baroness O'Cathain Excerpts

Tuesday 29th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness O'Cathain]

My Lords, I must apologise for being absent for most of this debate. Unfortunately, I had to go to a meeting of the EU Select Committee, but at least I have truncated my speech. I hope that what I will say will not be too repetitious. The Motion on the Order Paper is:

“Lord Strathclyde to move that this House takes note of the case for reform of the House of Lords”,

and we seem to be going through all sorts of options of how we will reform. But we ought to decide whether this House needs to be reformed.

I believe that there are three options. The first is to leave this House as it is. The second is to make some changes to structural procedures, such as reform of an evolutionary nature. The noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, is right that we should go for an evolutionary process. Reform implies evolution in terms of reforming something which exists and making it better, and we hope not to make it worse. When you chuck out everything and change the whole basis of the constitution—what it does and its relationship with other things—that is revolution. It is not reform.

Looking at the three options, I refer first to the option for leaving the House as it is: that the tasks undertaken add value, not least because of the body of experience and expertise. Moreover, as others have probably said, we have more time to consider issues because Members of the other place have serious constituency duties which do not permit them to undertake the same level of scrutiny as we can. In the last Parliament, there was an appalling situation of a House of Commons Bill where in only three of its seven stages had it been scrutinised even marginally before it came to us. That is one of the things we do, but I am not about to back this option.

We are in danger of being seen to be wasting time considering all sorts of options when people in the world outside this place are horribly burdened with managing their finances and wondering if their jobs are going to disappear. The amount of time we have already spent on this issue and the amount we are going to spend on it will, I suspect, be far greater than the 700 hours we wasted on the Hunting Bill. Is that what the people out there really want, and is that what they are going to be told it is all about?

I turn to the second point, that of evolutionary reform. The burgeoning size of this House is clearly a cause for concern. Although we have recently lost some very distinguished Members, their number has been more than offset by the creation of more than 50 Peers, with talk of more and more coming through. There are practical resource implications, not least in terms of accommodation, and political implications in terms of how we are seen by those outside the Westminster village. We are caught between a rock and a hard place. If Peers do not attend, they cannot claim allowances, so there is no burden on the public purse, but none the less it conveys a poor impression if we operate on the basis of a certain proportion of our membership being able to come here or stay away willy-nilly whenever they want.

We now have a dedicated and transparent House of Lords Appointments Commission. I support my noble friend Lord Steel and I firmly believe that it should be put on a statutory basis. That would bring us into line with what electors expect in terms of the appointments process, and in effect would guarantee independence for the process. Perception is all, and as a matter of principle we need to enhance our powers to deal with Members who break the law, or indeed who break the spirit of the law. Our powers are far too limited. I also favour changes to some of our existing practices and procedures for the purpose of strengthening what it is that we do. We should make greater use of evidence-taking committees when a Bill originates in this House, we should play to our strengths in establishing a committee for post-legislative scrutiny, and we should press further for the greater use of pre-legislative scrutiny. In short, we could, should and must build on strength as an evolutionary process.

What I am totally opposed to is the third option, which constitutes the exact opposite of building on strength. The Government’s proposals for an elected House are a recipe for wiping out the strengths of this House. Why would elected Members of a second Chamber devote their time to detailed scrutiny that has little potential to attract the attention of the media and their constituents? I do not think that I have ever heard of a Member of this House issuing a press notice when he or she is about to make a particular point in a speech, or has done so. That is a feature of what happens in the other place.

Moreover, what would elected Members in this House bring to bear to enable them to engage in these tasks? They would be here primarily because of their political skills and not because they have a particular expertise that is likely to be of value to the House. Despite some of the claims of the previous Government, an elected House would not be a House of Lords in a different guise. The reality of who would stand for election to a second Chamber was conceded in the last Government’s White Paper. After serving a single fixed term, Members of the second Chamber would, for a period of five years, be debarred from seeking election to the House of Commons. In other words, the group established by Jack Straw conceded that people coming to the second Chamber would be those who would rather be in the other place. We would be their number two choice.

Who would vote for the Members of a Second Chamber? The Government appear to believe that an elected Chamber would not have any more powers than the current House. However, turnout in elections is likely to be low—one suspects it might be lower than that for elections to the European Parliament, which now has considerably more powers than this House. Again, the Government appear to concede this by wanting to hold such elections on the same day as those for the House of Commons. In short, the Government’s proposals effectively concede that the new House would lack popular legitimacy.

I fail to see that the case has been made for the third option. They need to go away and think about it, not rush ahead with ill considered legislation. In fact, they should not even consider it. If they really want to see reform, they should take what we have got and go part of the way I have suggested in an evolutionary process.

House of Lords: Post-legislative Scrutiny

Baroness O'Cathain Excerpts

Monday 14th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, there is no reason why any noble Lord should not make the case for post-legislative scrutiny on an Act of Parliament and put that forward to the Liaison Committee for discussion of whether an ad hoc committee should be set up.

[Baroness O'Cathain]

My Lords, would it not be better following this discussion to make it imperative that every bit of legislation that we pass is subject to post-legislative scrutiny? That would mean that people could not slide out from under but would be held to account. One of the awful allegations levelled against us is that we are not held to account, but this is one way in which we could be. Indeed, we could show the other place how to do it.

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, that is the nub of a decision that was taken in March 2008 by the Leader of the House of Commons, committing the then Government to enable post-legislative scrutiny for all Acts of Parliament passed during and after the calendar year of 2005. Since then, six or seven of these memoranda have been published, although many are left in the pipeline. We wait to see what attitude the Select Committees in another place or, indeed, in your Lordships’ House will take to these memoranda.