House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) (Abolition of By-Elections) Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Adonis and Earl of Erroll

Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 15th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Adonis]

I think Brenda from Bristol might be keen to take part in this election, because she currently has no say over any Member of this House. For the first time, Brenda from Bristol would have the opportunity to nominate and vote for somebody to sit alongside the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth. She would give thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, and to me for making it possible, because under the independent Appointments Commission that the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, is proposing, Brenda from Bristol might well be nominated, whereas she stands very little chance of Mrs May noticing her, which is the only way to get into this place at the moment.

[The Earl of Erroll]

If I may assist the noble Lord, funnily enough, a countrywide election could be handled online electronically. That would be quite an interesting prospect.

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, the noble Earl is very much into these high-tech solutions. Being old-fashioned and believing that people vote by putting crosses on ballot papers, I do not necessarily go the full way with these revolutionary suggestions, but that might be possible.

I come back to the point about this issue being fundamental, not peripheral. I can tell your Lordships that this issue was considered when the reforms of 1999 were considered. I was in No. 10 when we considered it. The obvious vulnerability to which we were open when we removed the hereditary Peers was that we would be creating a wholly nominated House, and how could we justify the only source of nominations to that House being the Prime Minister? What we did was a classic English compromise. Remember that before the independent Appointments Commission came, the Cross-Benchers were nominated by the Prime Minister too. Let me tell your Lordships, if I may choose my words euphemistically, that the selection was not always uninfluenced by what line those nominees might take in your Lordships’ House on matters of state. Noble Lords might be scandalised by that idea—I can see scandal written on the face of the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde—but I am afraid these considerations took place. That is why a compromise was reached whereby the independent Members would be appointed by the Appointments Commission, but it was too much for my then boss, Tony Blair, to agree that the party Members should be. There were very big debates about it, particularly about whether there should at least be a role for an independent commission in reviewing the bona fides of those nominated by the party leaders because, again, if I may choose my words euphemistically, sometimes—

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) (Abolition of By-Elections) Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Adonis and Earl of Erroll

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 7th September 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, this is such a well-crafted amendment that it would make a fundamental reform of this House unavoidable, which was the original purpose of the undertakings given by my noble and learned friend Lord Irvine of Lairg during the passage of the 1999 Act. He saw at the time, and we agreed, that this would be a poisoned pill in the composition of the current House of Lords that would make the creation of a democratic House unavoidable. That, alas, has not happened in the last 20 years. I greatly regret it and I accept some measure of responsibility for the fact that the Government of which I was apart did not succeed in carrying through its proposals for a fully elected House. But I am afraid that the party opposite did not succeed in it, and that the noble Lords on the Liberal Democrat Benches, who claim to be most powerfully in favour of these reforms, also failed when they were in government. So in different ways, all the parties in this House have failed.

That failure, and the failure of wider constitutional reform of which it is a part, is a substantial part of the reason why we are going through the current Brexit crisis. We need to address it, and I would much rather do so by fundamental changes and improvements to the constitution of the United Kingdom than by wrenching this country out of the European Union.

These issues cannot be ducked, and we certainly cannot sweep them under the carpet with tiny, incremental changes of the kind which my noble friend Lord Grocott is proposing, so I beg to move.

[The Earl of Erroll]

My Lords, I rise to support this amendment because it introduces the concept of democracy. As I have said, I would like to see democratic reform of the House of Lords. As for the practicality of it—as has just been raised by my noble friend Lord Low—with online voting coming, I am sure, and with modern electronic methods, we do not need a sort of general election set-up with lots of voting polls. Things will be handled electronically online, and this is an interesting way of introducing some democracy and accountability. I support the amendment.