House of Lords Reform Bill

Debate between Lord Brady of Altrincham and Anne McGuire

Monday 9th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Brady]

The right hon. Gentleman should be patient.

Let me turn to the most important pillar of the Deputy Prime Minister’s case: that those who legislate for the people should be chosen by the people. Many of the opponents of the Bill, on both sides of the House, reject that. They rightly point to the expertise of the upper House. They highlight the obvious truth that an elected or part-elected upper House would be more inclined to challenge the primacy of the House of Commons. I accept both assertions, but unlike many of my hon. Friends, I would support an elected upper House in spite of them. However, that is not what the Bill delivers. We do not have time today to analyse the strengths and weaknesses of the United States constitution. There can certainly be gridlock between the Houses in the United States, but the legislation it produces is at least as effective as ours, and Congress is certainly far better able to hold the Executive to account than we are. However, is the Bill before us today one that would excite Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Paine? Is it a great clarion call for government of the people, by the people? It is not.

[Mrs Anne McGuire (Stirling) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Brady]

No, I cannot give way again.

Let us look at the reality of the Bill and some of the reasons why it should be rejected by any true advocate of reform. Even if the Bill were enacted unamended and even if all the electoral cycles it envisages were allowed to take place and the reformed House foreshadowed by the Bill were implemented in full, we would have a bizarre and opaque arrangement—a House of indeterminate size, with an unknown number of Members appointed as Ministers by prime ministerial patronage; an appointments commission for the unelected Members responsible for vetting appointees for propriety, but not if they were appointed as Ministers; and a number of bishops, as has already been said.

Instead of a simple, transparent democratic process, the Bill proposes an absurdly complex hybrid assembly: elections by not one but two different systems of proportional representation; and party lists to help to maintain the central powers of the political parties over who will sit in the newly constituted Chamber. Far from the high principle of an elected Chamber, we have a ridiculous fudge, justified by the Deputy Prime Minister as a gradual move towards a wholly elected Senate, although he, like the Prime Minister on previous occasions, has suggested with a nod and a wink that the second and third cycles may never happen, and that that will be open to this House or indeed to the public in a referendum to decide.

As an advocate both of reforming the Lords and of introducing more democracy to our institutions, I shall oppose this appalling Bill because if those are its aims, I believe it will fail utterly to achieve them. The Bill fails to address the real problem in our democracy—a Commons that is so greatly dominated by the Government that it fails to perform its core functions of holding Ministers to account and of scrutinising legislation effectively. I urge the House to vote against a Bill that is complex where it should be simple, that preserves patronage instead of providing real democracy, and that yet again allows this House to avoid confronting the truth about its own shortcomings.