Draft House of Lords Reform Bill

Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve Excerpts

Monday 30th April 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve]

My Lords, I do not think that I can add much to that, so I shall go off in a different direction. I think that we are now galloping towards the Becher’s Brook of constitutional reform, and matters are, unsurprisingly, pretty confused. Perhaps this is inevitable. The confusion and discomfort arise because many noble Lords and many others want an elected House of Lords because it will have greater legitimacy. However, they do not want it to have too much legitimacy because that might challenge the primacy of the Commons. This ambivalence, to which there is no very easy solution—perhaps no solution—has been with us for a century, and it is manifest in the fact that we have not one but two illuminating reports on the draft Bill, with a near even split of members of the scrutiny committee supporting each.

Of course, we are not alone in this confusion; I fear that the public are with us. I have often asked members of the public whether they would prefer an elected House of Lords. Typically—although a good deal less often recently—the answer has been, “Yes, it would be more democratic”. I then ask, “So more like the House of Commons?”, to which I get the answer, “Oh, no. Not like that!”.

A point that I do not think has received sufficient attention in the discussion of reform of your Lordships’ House is that, as party-political loyalties and affiliations have waned in the country, people have increasing ambivalence about the parliamentary results of democracy. I think we need to pay much more attention to the reality that the public may want more democracy in the abstract but they do not want more party politics—certainly not as they see it on television.

From that perspective, the fact that this House actually discusses legislation, with some courtesy and some care for the most part, is pretty important. Scrutiny is, after all, about reasoning, challenging, listening and keeping an open mind, and, whatever else we do, we need to make sure that a future House is genuinely designed to continue and to carry these tasks. However, the draft Bill concentrates on the process by which people arrive as Members of your Lordships’ House but not on the powers and functions for which they are responsible when they get here. It deals with the abstract question of the process of arrival but says little about how changing that process is likely to alter the membership.

It is less than clear that there would be as wide a range of experience and expertise on the party-political Benches of an elected House. Campaigning for election places great strains on any career, and I expect that a number of distinguished noble Lords on the political Benches might not have taken the electoral route to your Lordships’ House if it had been available. At this moment, I catch the eye of the noble Lord, Lord Winston. I think that he might be one of them, together with many other distinguished medical colleagues. If we come to debate the Bill, we must therefore try to gauge whether future elected Members will in fact still be eager to engage in scrutiny in the way that the process of this House demands, assuming that its role is unchanged.

It may be said that the draft Bill takes account of these demands in considering the retention of a proportion of appointed but non-party-political Peers, selected, it is often said, for their expertise—in effect, supposedly successors to the independent Cross-Bench Peers. No doubt like other noble Lords, current Cross Benchers bring such experience and expertise as we can muster to the task. However, our role depends fundamentally on something different—not on experience and expertise but on the fact that we are unwhipped. There is plenty of experience and expertise on the party-political Benches but they are in a different position because they are whipped, and although they do not always vote the party line, that is nevertheless the default position. While there are sufficient numbers of unwhipped Members Governments obviously have to attend to the reality that they might lose an amendment. They have genuinely to engage and to think, and scrutiny then is possible.

So I think that the unwhipped Members will remain important, if there are any. However, it will be said, “The problem is that they will not be elected”. Again, that is not obvious to me. It is not obvious to me that it is impossible to have independents who are elected. Would it not be possible—it is not considered by either report from the scrutiny committee, but I think that it has some parallels perhaps with suggestions made earlier today by the noble Lord, Lord Low of Dalston—for a statutory independent commission, and I do not say Appointments Commission for a reason, to nominate a list of potential independent Peers which was then presented to the electorate? Of course such Peers would not be elected for constituencies; and their election would be on a closed list basis, which the scrutiny committee—rightly, I think—rejected as a basis for constituency elections.

Election of independents would, however, have to meet two conditions. Those nominated would—this is the easy condition—have to be demonstrably free of party-political connections, and have been free for a considerable period, using the criteria currently used to distinguish independent Cross-Bench Peers—as noble Lords know, not all who sit on the Cross Benches are independent Cross-Bench Peers—or perhaps stronger versions of those criteria. Secondly, it would have to be open to the public to cast a vote for any political candidates who were candidates in their constituencies or for the independent list. The electorate would have to have a choice. This would have the effect that the proportion of independents elected could vary, and it would have the effect that the House could be wholly elected.

I hope that those noble Lords who are keen on an all-elected House might take up this thought, and that they will not let themselves be deterred by fears that the party-political proportion of the membership of the House might fall below 80 per cent if the electorate were so minded. That would surely be the proper test of commitment to democracy, rather than to party politicisation. A test of this proposition: would those noble Lords who are campaigning for a wholly elected second Chamber balk if it does not guarantee a party-politicised Chamber?

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Northbrook, for allowing me to intervene before he starts his speech. Noble Lords may find it helpful if I remind the House of the guidance time of seven minutes. If all noble Lords were able to stick to that time, we should be able to conclude the speakers list well before 1 o’clock this morning.