Chilcot Inquiry

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon Excerpts

Wednesday 28th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Trimble (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon (LD)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Trimble; he may not be, but I am. Will the Minister reassure the House that the Government understand that the delays in publishing Chilcot—whether justified or not—are eroding public confidence in the report and in the inquiry process itself? Even allowing for the fact that this is an independent report, is there really nothing that the Government can do to impart some urgency and immediacy to this matter?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I have no doubt that the members of the inquiry are fully aware of the urgency. If I had been advising them, I would have put a limit on the amount of time to be taken to respond to these Maxwellisation letters. That is one of the issues that remains. But certainly one of the lessons learnt will be that we need to ensure that inquiries do not take as long as a number of inquiries—not just this one—have taken in recent years.

Afghanistan

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon Excerpts

Thursday 30th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, there will be an associated event for representatives of civil society at the London conference, and another associated event for private sector investors. We are very much aware of how much effort we need to make to strengthen relatively weak civil society organisations in Afghanistan.

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon (LD)]

My Lords, 450 British soldiers dead; thousands of Afghans lying alongside them; probably £100 billion overall spent on this campaign; a “short war” that lasted 13 years, during which we have written the textbook on how not to conduct these kinds of operations—surely my noble friend will agree that the case is made for a proper inquiry into the conduct of the Afghan war and the lessons we should learn from it?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, it may well be the case that we need a proper inquiry, although I am not sure that we need one of the length of the Chilcot inquiry.

Syria: Refugees

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon Excerpts

Wednesday 6th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I have already announced that the Government are giving specific aid to the Jordanians to support a number of activities. We are well aware that drinking water is a particular problem. As the noble Lord rightly points out, a number of refugees in Lebanon and Turkey, as well as in Jordan, are not in refugee camps but have been taken in by local families. That is a good thing in many ways but it does of course increase the strain on local communities.

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon (LD)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as the president of UNICEF UK and in that capacity I thank the Government for their generosity, not just to UNICEF but also to many other charities in helping with the terrible suffering of children, who of course suffer most in these circumstances. The last case of polio in Syria was 14 years ago, in 1999, but this terrible disease is now taking hold, especially among the children of the refugee population. In past conflicts it has been possible to arrange agreements for immunisation between the warring parties. I wonder whether the Government have pursued this matter with both the Syrian Government, who seem perfectly prepared to do this, and the rebels. Are the Government pursuing this opportunity?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, as my noble friend will be aware, alongside the United Nations Security Council resolution on chemical weapons there was a United Nations Security Council presidential statement on humanitarian access. That has not yet been fully accepted by the Syrian regime. There are many difficulties for humanitarian agencies and their staff in getting visas to enter the country and, as he rightly said, there are also difficulties in some of the rebel-held areas.

Syria and the Use of Chemical Weapons

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon Excerpts

Thursday 29th August 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon]

My Lords, yes, we need to be careful with the powder keg, and the question before us is whether an ingredient of that powder keg is going to be chemical weapons and gas. There is one mistake that we make with baleful constancy when we consider warfare action, and that is always to judge what we do in the next war by the lessons we thought we learnt from the last. That is almost always wrong. I well remember trying to persuade Parliament that we needed to intervene in Bosnia. The shadow that hung over us then was that of Vietnam, and I was constantly told, “We can’t do this. What we’ll get is body bags”. And so it is now. We are living under the shadow, sadly, of Iraq, but this is not Iraq. We are not putting boots on the ground, we are not invading, we are not seeking to govern someone else’s country, and above all this is not George W Bush, this is Barack Obama. You need only to look at what this American President has done to see how nervous, hesitant and cautious he is about taking action. Of all the arguments that are used, particularly the one that the Americans are hell bent on expanding this into some new war in the Middle East, every piece of evidence that we have about the current American Administration points in the opposite direction. That is simply an irrational argument.

This matter turns on a single question: do you take more of a risk through acting or do you run a greater risk through lack of action? That is the central question, and it was asked not least by the noble Lord who spoke previously. The aim is easily stated: it is to act as a bulwark for international law, and above all to protect one of the few pillars of international law that has been in existence for 100 years and more—against the use of chemical weapons and gas—and to act in support of international law while at the same time seeking to diminish the capacity of President Assad to continue to use such weapons. That is the aim.

So what is the strategy? It is the same as the aim. If you have a law against murder and you enforce it, you enforce it in order to reduce murder. Do you remove the possibility of murder completely? Of course not; it will continue to be committed. However, the question is: if you did not enforce it—if that law had become a dead letter—would murder increase in frequency? Of course it would. So that is the aim, and that is the strategy.

I heard the noble Lord, Lord West, talk about uncertainties. Of course there are uncertainties. You cannot take actions without having uncertainties. I would have thought that as a man who made his career in the armed services he would understand that. Every action that you take has consequences. Some of those consequences are predictable, some of them are rationally likely, some you do not know. If you do not accept that as a judgment, you do not have Armed Forces, you do not launch ships, you do not fire torpedoes, you do not drop bombs. You cannot tell exactly what is going to happen. You cannot have certainty in this, you have to have judgment. It seems to me that that is the central question here.

I cannot give certainty that this will achieve what we want. I cannot even give certainty that it will not have a widening effect. I cannot give certainty that it will not do anything—it probably will—to increase the possibility, which the noble Lord, Lord Wright, described, of a widening religious war in the Middle East. I do not think that that is stoppable now. We might be able to make sure that the damage caused to the local citizens and to the world by such a war is not increased by allowing chemical weapons to be in commonplace usage. That is what it is possible to achieve.

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton]

My Lords—

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon]

If you will excuse me, my time is very limited.

I come back to the central proposition. Yes, you can have certainty about the outcome. Uncertainty is attached to this, but if you want certainty you can have it. Take no action. You will then have the certainty that this chemical convention and the laws behind it will become a dead letter. You will have the certainty that chemical weapons have been used once with impunity and can go on being used again with impunity. You will have the certainty that this will happen in the other conflicts that are about to rage, and are raging, in the Middle East. You will have the certainty that in due course that will be delivered to us too. Yes, we have an interest in this. If those are the certainties you wish, then by all means take no action. If, on the other hand, you want to take some action that is best calculated to produce a better outcome, to support international law and to make sure that we will not tolerate the use of these weapons in the best way that we can, we should pursue the action proposed by the Government.

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown, talked about action and said that action should be taken, but not once did he describe in any way, shape or form how that action should be taken or how it could be contained.

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon]

My Lords, I am extending beyond my time. I do not believe that it is up to politicians to act as armchair generals —I never have and I never will. The Government have defined what they need to achieve by this action. It needs to be limited, defined, targeted, proportional and within international law. Those are the conditions of the action before us. It is up to the military to decide how the Government can pursue that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

Asking us to provide a full sketch of a plan B at 23.00 on a Thursday night is not possible. I am of course not privy to what the Americans may or may not be planning. We all take what is being said on the opposition Benches under consideration, but at the moment we cannot predict what will happen over the next few days.

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon]

My Lords, I have no wish to make life more difficult for the Government when they are already in a rather difficult position, but I really do think that, given the wisdom we have heard from both the noble Baroness the Leader of the Opposition and from other speakers, it might be worth while for this House to take a 10-minute break. If there is no news to deliver, that is fine, but a 10-minute break is a sacrifice we could make to our sleep if it would give us some clarification on what should come next. I find it quite difficult to believe that we cannot find some news to deliver to the House in that time.

House of Lords (Cessation of Membership) Bill [HL]

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon Excerpts

Friday 29th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, again, we do not wish to go too far into the other Bill. We are all conscious, if we are critical, that of those of us who turn up regularly, many of us work extremely hard but not all of us work as hard as the others. That will very likely be the same in an elected House, but we hope that the level of hard work will be even broader than now.

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon]

I apologise to my noble friend for intervening, but since I seem to have uncharacteristically ruffled the feathers of the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, I suppose that I ought to put matters on the record. I do not insult the work done by Members of this House. The work that noble Lords do is partial, since it is a revising Chamber, but noble Lords do it exceedingly well. I wish that noble Lords also had the power to hold the Executive to account more effectively, since the place at the other end does not do so. That we do not do so effectively—that is not noble Lords’ fault but the fault of the institution. I do not in any way cast any aspersions on the integrity or hard work of Members of this House. What I cast aspersions on is the way in which we get here.

[Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean]

I am very glad that I let the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown, speak first, because I am very pleased to hear his admission that this is a revising Chamber and not one that makes the law, as the Deputy Prime Minister has tried to claim.

Will the Minister address the point again about constituency work? What is there to stop elected Members of this House choosing to do constituency work? The fact that the Government would rather they did not do it is neither here nor there. When they are elected, it will be up to them to decide whether or not they do that work. It is very unlikely that I would ever be one, but if I were ever to be an elected Member of this House, I would be tempted to cherry pick the constituency work to choose those high-profile cases that might have a real impact, thereby undermining the position of the constituency MP. The Minister looks puzzled, but I assure him that this subject was discussed over and over again on the Joint Committee of both Houses when we looked at the Bill. It is a matter of real worry to colleagues at the other end of this building, and I would be very grateful if he could answer. What is to stop elected Members of this House doing constituency work?

Queen’s Speech

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon Excerpts

Monday 14th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon]

My Lords, I will not claim to know what Lloyd George might or might not have said. He was a radical. It seems depressingly clear that there are very few radicals for reform on the other side of the House. I find that very sad for a Labour Party that has always stood for constitutional reform in favour of democracy and the people in this country, but its members must examine their own consciences on this.

I should begin by making an apology to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. On Thursday, I was here for most of his speech. I regret that I had unavoidably to leave for the last couple or three sentences. I offer my apologies to him. Obviously, I read what he had to say in Hansard.

Well, so here we go again. Over the weekend, I was speaking with a friend in Somerset. I do not think that he votes Liberal Democrat—I think he is probably a Tory—but he watches these things rather carefully. He had looked at our debate on the parliament channel or had read it in Hansard and certainly knew what had gone on. I was expressing to him how depressed I was. He said, “Paddy, you may be depressed but you should not be surprised. The House of Lords is performing exactly its traditional function down the years of opposing every democratic reform”.

This is the Chamber that opposed the Great Reform Act 1832, women being elected and so many fundamental reforms. It did so à l’outrance but was finally dragged kicking and screaming to the democratic reforms that have made this a democracy to be proud of. So it shall be again. In 1911, this House opposed democratic reform—perhaps we can understand that. We were somewhat ahead of our time then but we are depressingly, disastrously behind the times now. I asked the House of Lords Library to tell me about the new constitution for Egypt, which was proposed by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces—no lovers of democracy there—and supported by the Islamic Muslim Brotherhood. It proposed a bicameral system—a shura will be the upper House. It will be two-thirds elected and one-third appointed by the President. We are behind them.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

My Lords—

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon]

I will happily give way in a moment. Are noble Lords really content that the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces of Egypt will create a constitution with better contact with democracy than we have in this place, and that most Members of this place wish to see here? It is an untenable position and sooner or later this House, in the future as in the past, will be dragged to democracy, even against its will.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

The weekend before last I was in Egypt and sat in the gallery of the lower House of the Egyptian Parliament. It was a lively debate, with over 400 members all present. Does the noble Lord know how many women there were? There were half a dozen. That is all. He should look around him now and see how many women we have.

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon]

I do not pretend that Egypt is a perfect democracy—of course I do not. But if it is prepared to elect its second Chamber, on that matter and in this instance is it not a better democracy than we are in this place, who resist that?

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords—

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon]

I will give way in a moment. Let me just make it clear that across the world, or at least a very great deal of it, people are on the streets demanding democracy, while here we sit huddled, determined not to even let it enter through the doors. It is an unsustainable position.

[Lord Cormack]

I am most grateful. A couple of weeks ago, the noble Lord, Lord Morgan, asked his noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford why Lloyd George—the hero of the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown—did not believe in an elected second Chamber. The noble Lord, Lord Thomas, could not answer that question. Can the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown, do so?

[Lord Thomas of Gresford]

I did answer that question. I said that Lloyd George was for the abolition of the House of Lords. “I am a single Chamber man”, he said—and in that he was assisted by Arthur Henderson and Keir Hardie.

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon]

I am grateful to my noble friend, but I do not want to talk about 1911—I want to talk about today. Democracy is on the march across the world, and you cannot keep it outside that door. In the end, you will be dragged there. Let me make this proposition to noble Lords: the longer they delay it, the more ridiculous they will look. That is where we are in the eyes of many of the public, 69% of whom want to see a directly elected Chamber. [Interruption.] I am grateful for any support I can get.

I want to answer a few of the arguments that have so far been put forward to prevent this happening, to delay it, and to make sure that we hang on to our seductive comforts for as long as we may. The first is the most ridiculous, but it featured in our previous debates and there were echoes of it on Thursday—that we are not a House of Parliament but a committee. Some committee! We are told that we are a monocameral Parliament, that all we do is advise and that this is just a committee. We are invited to believe, therefore, that when we met King John on the banks of the Thames nearly 1,000 years ago we were not beginning with a Magna Carta and Parliament but creating a committee—and that when we invite Her Majesty to come here all dressed up in her finery, accompanied by a company of the guards and a clatter of the Household Cavalry, to sit on the Throne and read the parliamentary programme for the future to your Lordships, who are dressed in red dressing gowns while the other Chamber has to come and parade before us, we are no more than a committee. That is a preposterous suggestion, and those who make it, as the noble Lord, Lord Richard, said in a previous debate, simply do not understand our history or function.

The argument that is made to bolster this claim is that we do not contribute to the making of laws. You cannot make that argument on the one hand and then claim, as my noble friend Lord Phillips did, that we have done our function because we have changed and passed so many laws. The truth of the matter is that we contribute to the making of the laws in this country. In a democracy, those who do the people’s business should be the people’s representatives. We are the daily affront to that basic principle. How can we be satisfied with that? It is a desperate and ludicrous argument that gives little comfort or respect to those who continue to seek to make it.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I am grateful to my noble friend for giving way. I notice that his wording has now changed to, “contribute to the making of the laws”. The Deputy Prime Minister said that those who make the law should be elected. Should we take this as an acknowledgment that the House of Commons has the final say on all laws that are made in this country?

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon]

Of course we should. The draft legislation that was put before us made it perfectly clear that the House of Commons should have primacy. That is not a contentious item. By the way, I said that we participated in the making of the laws. We contribute to the making of the laws. That should be done only by the power that is derived not from the Prime Minister or from patronage but through the ballot box.

My noble friends in the Conservative Party often ask, “Why should we address this constitutional issue at a time of crisis—is this not a distraction?”. Those noble friends should have a care as they, too, are interested in constitutional reform. As the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, has just said, they introduced mayoral elections. Now we must vote for police chiefs across the country, whether we like it or not. It seems to me that my noble friends are interested in every constitutional reform except the reform of this place. They want to see the election of mayors and chief constables but not of anybody in this place. I say to noble Lords who love to make that point that it is a dangerous one to make.

It is also dangerous to make that point as we are facing not just an economic crisis but a democratic crisis. We should look at what is happening on the streets of Egypt and at what has happened here. Our economy is in crisis but so is our democracy. We should look at the turnouts in the local elections last week. You cannot solve the democratic crisis unless you can create more respect for, cognisance of and at least trust in the democratic process. We need a process of democratic renewal in this country. I do not claim that the House of Lords represents all of that programme but it is certainly a crucial part of it. You cannot resolve the deep economic crisis of this country if you do not also address the democratic crisis, and that is what we seek to do.

Another point that is often made is that famously there is no public call for reform of this place—we have heard it in the Chamber today—and that campaigners have knocked on many doors but not one person has called for democratic reform of the House of Lords. But they never do. This is not the people’s business; it is our business. There was no great public call for the Great Reform Act 1832. There was a campaign up and down the country, but in the Dog and Duck and other pubs around Britain in the 1830s there was no great public call in support of that or, later, the suffragette cause. The campaigners believed deeply in that cause and they fought for it, but the public did not, being largely uninterested in it, if not opposed to it.

The noble Lord, Lord Luce, said the other day that there have been four reforms of this place—in 1911, 1949, 1963 and 1999. None of those reforms was called for by the public. We initiated them to put our House in order. This has nothing to do with the public calling for reform. It is entirely to do with the fact that we should recognise that we have grown out of touch with democracy and that we have to put our House in order—no more and no less.

[Lord Elystan-Morgan]

The noble Lord says that there was no great public demand prior to 1832. What does he think brought together the 100,000 people who risked life and limb at Peterloo about 10 years previously?

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon]

My Lords, I did not say that there was no great campaign. I made it very clear that among the ordinary people of our country there was no great public cry for this, as indeed was the case with the suffragettes. I had a look at this in the Library only the day before yesterday and I assure noble Lords that that was the case. However, if noble Lords will not accept that, and it seems that they are not inclined to do so, I repeat that on the four occasions that this House has reformed itself it did so because it needed to, not because the public demanded it. So it was then and so it is now.

Finally, I turn to the question of the written constitution, because this has come up a number of times. Let me see if I may address it directly. Perhaps I may pick up on the statement, or perhaps question, of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, during the debate last Thursday. He is a man for whom I have a great deal of respect and admiration, but he made an odd statement. He said that if we were to be a democratically elected second Chamber we would be the only one in the world with an unwritten constitution so to do. There are only three countries with an unwritten constitution—not a huge number. There is New Zealand, Israel and Great Britain. His argument was, “How could we make such a change when there is no model for us to work from?”. I looked at his statement in Hansard and could read it out to him; I have it here.

[Lord Rooker]

New Zealand and Israel are unicameral, for a start. The point I made was that we would be the only country with two elected Chambers and no written constitution.

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon]

My Lords, the point the noble Lord actually made, springing from that, was that we would not have a model to work from. Since when have democratic reformers in this country needed a model to work from? We have always had an unwritten constitution. Did it cause Cromwell to stop and say, “Hang on; I had better not go ahead with demanding that powers be transferred from the king because there isn’t a model anywhere else”? He was the model. Others followed him—not he followed others.

For the Great Reform Act 1832, we did not sit down and say, “Oh my goodness, we have no model to follow”. We had an unwritten constitution. We did not know how the powers would fall. We did not call for a constitutional convention to decide those powers before moving forward to reform. We made the democratic reforms and the world followed us. I am absolutely confident that, because we were ahead of the rest in 1832, the Great Reform Act saved us from the revolutions that swamped Europe in blood in 1848. Surely the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, is not one to argue that because we have an unwritten constitution we cannot have democratic reform. That is a ridiculous argument.

I say to those who say that we cannot have reform because we have an unwritten constitution, but at the same time talk about the magic of our unwritten constitution that reforms and resolves all matters, that I do not much believe in the unwritten constitution. To be honest, there is a case for a written constitution in this country. However, those who argue that the unwritten constitution resolves all, and that because it is a living constitution it can evolve and cope with these changes, cannot then say that some part of that constitution has to be written down. The proposition made by those who make that argument seems to be this: there has to be an unwritten constitution for everybody else but a written one for us—it has to be codified and we cannot otherwise move forward. You cannot make both arguments at the same time. Either you have an unwritten constitution, celebrate it and leave things to it, or you have a written constitution. However, noble Lords in this House seem to want the best of both worlds—an unwritten constitution for everybody else but a codified and written constitution for us and our relationships. The noble Lord, Lord Richard, was entirely right when he said that this should be left to the two Houses to work out. It would be better if it were.

[Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean]

My Lords, I am very interested in the last point made by the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown, because he said, in essence, that he would not be unhappy with a written constitution. To be fair to my noble friend Lord Rooker, the point I think he was making was that if you have two elected Chambers, both with representatives of the people in them, you must have a written constitution in order to resolve the relationship between the two Houses. That was his point—not that you cannot do it, but that there is an ineluctable logic to the written constitution. In that case, the proceedings of the Houses become justiciable. That is why the conventions between the two Houses are not codified. It is why they are written down as explanations, not as a code. If the noble Lord does not understand that, it is he who misunderstands our constitutional arrangements.

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon]

That was rather a long question. Let me address it straightaway. The proposition that the noble Baroness makes is that because our constitution is unwritten we cannot have democratic reform of this place.

[Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean]

No, it is not.

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon]

Allow me, my Lords; the noble Baroness’s proposition is that, if you want to have democratic reform of this place, you must first have a written constitution. If we had a Bill before us for a written constitution, I would vote for it. However, we do not; we have a Bill for democratisation of the House of Lords. Perhaps I may make this point to the noble Baroness: if the past great reformers of this country took those risks, going out and leading the world from the basis of an unwritten constitution to change the powers of the monarch of this place and of the Commons, why should it not happen again? What is the basis on which it will not happen again?

I have taken up a good deal of the House’s time—

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton]

I agree with the noble Lord, especially because of his allegiance to the principle of a bicameral system, but surely he agrees that in a bicameral system the relationship between the two Chambers needs to be understood by people if it is put to them in a referendum. The noble Lord appears to be speaking in favour not of the draft Bill but of the Bill that he wishes it were. When I spoke to people in Lancashire, they said, “If it’s to be democratic, why elect once for 15 years? I would have no control over you, Josie”. That is what people said in my locality. Why is the noble Lord not arguing for what he believes in?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon]

My Lords, I have been arguing for precisely what I believe in. Perhaps I may put it to the noble Baroness in this way. The draft legislation made it very clear that the Commons would have primacy, and I imagine that the legislation that will be put before us will have that phrase in it. However, if you believe in an unwritten constitution, you believe that that relationship needs to be worked out when the system has established itself. That is what an unwritten constitution does. I repeat: when they drew up the Great Reform Act, did they say, “My goodness, how will this alter things? If we were to abolish the rotten boroughs, how would this alter the constitution? We must have this codified”? Of course they did not. They went ahead and did what was necessary and our constitution responded effectively. That is the wisdom and the magic which I am told attends upon an unwritten constitution. You cannot argue that you believe in and value an unwritten constitution but where it relates solely to us it has to be written down. Either it is unwritten and works magically, as I propose it does, or it does not—full stop; end of story.

I feel that I may be trying the patience of the House as the Clock shows 20 minutes—

[Noble Lords]

Hear, hear!

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon]

I guessed that I would be—I have never been popular in making these points, here or elsewhere—but perhaps I may come back to the central issue. The House of Lords Library tells me that there are 71 bicameral Parliaments across the world. Somebody said that it was 76 and I accept that. Leaving aside the microstates of the Caribbean, whose constitutions we wrote, only seven apart from ourselves have no contact with democracy, and they include Belarus and Yemen.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon]

I am sorry; noble Lords may not like this—

[Lord Norton of Louth]

My Lords, I have the figures in front of me. There are 15 wholly appointed second Chambers in the world—16 if you include the United Kingdom—but they do not include the legislatures just referred to by the noble Lord.

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon]

I am happy to put the advice provided to me by the Library into the public domain if noble Lords wish, but I have the advice here and it is very clear. The other seven appointed bicameral Chambers include the nations that I have just talked about. If the noble Lord wishes to contend that, I shall be happy to exchange with him following the debate the Library research paper on which I base what I say.

This situation cannot be sustained. Noble Lords know that. Some people are using every argument to delay or obstruct reform and are coming forward with arguments that, frankly, do not hold water. Sooner or later, in some way, this House will have to become connected to the democracy of our country. Democracy cannot be kept out of this Chamber; it cannot be kept on the other side of those great brass doors. Sooner or later it will come here, and the longer noble Lords sustain this opposition to it, the more ridiculous this House will look. We now have an opportunity to put that right. Let us take it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon]

I hear what the noble Lord says and have some sympathy with it, but is not the system that he described exactly the system brought in by the previous Government for the European election?

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

Indeed, and I am not very comfortable with that. One thing that we ought to do is to learn from our mistakes in the past, look at the problems that have arisen from things that we have done and not do it again. That is what I am arguing very strongly. It would be an entirely nonsensical system, just as it is nonsensical to suggest that an elected Chamber would not demand extra powers. That goes against every principle of politics. Look at the devolved Parliaments—they are asking for extra powers, saying, “We are elected and we want more powers”. That is just so obvious that it should be accepted by all politicians. A hybrid House would have real problems in terms of having two classes of Members.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for that comment as it constitutes my next point.

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon]

Before my noble friend moves on to his next point, I hope that he will allow me to make two points. Some 60% of the Members of this place are appointed here as Members of Parliament from the other end by their party leaders. That is pure patronage, not patronage which is diluted in any way by democracy. Even though he points out flaws in the democratic system, with some of which I agree, surely a system which has some contact with democracy is better than one which has none and is based on pure patronage.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

I genuinely admire my noble friend’s courage and sense of principle in putting forward his points with such strength. However, I remind him that he put me here.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

Hang on, I have not finished my point. My noble friend got absolutely no encouragement from me to think that I would be a good little boy and follow my party Whip night in, night out—and I bloody well don’t. I am sorry.

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon]

I am grateful to my noble friend for giving way. The fact that I put him here does not make the system any better; it makes it worse because I had to put him here to enable us to fulfil our functions. Although he did not give me any undertakings, I remind him that he came here to represent a party which has had this issue in its manifesto for 100 years. He must have known what was expected of him.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

My Lords, I apologise to the Leader of the House, my noble friends Lord Hunt of Kings Heath and Lord Wills, the noble Lords, Lord Tyler and Lord Wakeham, and the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, who, sadly, is not here to receive my apologies, for being absent when they made their speeches. I have read them in Hansard and I shall return to them in my winding-up remarks. I also apologise to the noble Lords, Lord Stoddart of Swindon and Lord Thomas of Swynnerton, because I was having my supper at the time that they made their speeches. My noble friend Lord Hunt of Kings Heath has told me all about their speeches and has spoken about them in the warmest possible terms.

Over two days, we have debated the constitutional aspects of the gracious Speech. We have devoted the vast majority of that debate to the proposals for reform of your Lordships’ House. I anticipate that in this Session of Parliament, this House will do very important things about constitutional reform and that that will have nothing to do with Lords reform.

Before I turn to wind up the debate from our side of the House on Lords reform, I wish to comment on the particularly important things that the Government will do. First, the royal succession is important and we support the proposals being made by the Government to do away with male primogeniture. We will do everything in our power to help those proposals go ahead. We agree that these must be done in such a way as to preserve our relationship with the Commonwealth. We believe that there is a degree of urgency in relation to those proposals.

Electoral registration is the second important constitutional issue that will be faced by this House in this Session. I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, says but there is a more important point in relation to that as well. However much we debate the importance of the House of Lords in our constitution, the one thing on which no one disagrees is that the Commons is where the pivot of our democracy takes place.

As my noble friend Lord Wills mentioned in his excellent speech on electoral registration, the Electoral Commission has said that if the Government’s proposed reforms go forward in their current form—introducing individual registration without tying it to a comprehensive improvement in the amount of registration—it is possible that the number of people who are registered could go down from 90 per cent to 60 per cent. We have focused very much on Lords reform and not on that issue, which has an immediate and definite effect on our democracy.

I ask the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, who I understand will be winding up on behalf of the Government, what their response is to what the Electoral Commission says on the effect of individual registration. What steps are the Government taking and what expenditure are they making to ensure that electoral registration does not go down significantly as a result of proposals that are being made? It is important to emphasise that the people who are most affected by a lack of registration are the poor, the disabled, the young and those from the black and minority ethnic communities among us. So it is an important issue for the Government to address.

The next issue on constitutional reform that I believe to be important is judicial diversity. It is of immense importance as far as the country is concerned that we have a judiciary that reflects our society. There is no doubt that our judiciary, which is excellent in very many respects, does not reflect in its gender and racial balance the country that it judges. We would be very keen to see detailed measures and, in particular, those that move away from the situation in which the person at the top of the class gets appointed to judge, to one which looks at merit in a much wider context, as we believe it should be. That is the basis on which the Constitution Committee of this House addressed the issue, and we strongly support that approach. Could the Minister tell us when we can expect a Bill to deal with that?

Another issue to affect the constitution is the defamation Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Mawhinney, was right that it will have a significant impact on freedom of speech. The committee that the noble Lord, Lord Mawhinney, chaired was an important one, and we should try to give effect to the proposals that it made.

The final constitutional issue, before I come to Lords reform, is that of Europe, which is not referred to in the gracious Speech, save in the mention of proposals to be put before the House to admit Croatia as part of the European Union. The noble Lord, Lord Elton, and the noble Lord, Lord Owen, in what was an exceptional speech, and my noble friend Lord Giddens are right to say that there are things happening in Europe that are of greater importance than many of the other things that we have to debate. What do the Government say is the UK’s position on the change in arrangements and structure of Europe that is being proposed in some quarters and which will inevitably have to be given effect to deal with the eurozone crisis?

Those are the issues that we will be dealing with in the course of the next year, the issues that will affect our constitution, and the issues on which I hope we will have a role and voice in this House. They affect our country much more than Lords reform.

Where are we on Lords reform? Although I missed all the speeches that I indicated, I had the pleasure of listening to the other 46 speeches during the course of the Thursday and Monday. It is true to say that there were some very exceptional and penetrating speeches in relation to the issue. Without being invidious, I wish to single out the speech of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, which completely encapsulated the relationship between electoral mandate and the powers of the House. I refer also to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, who expressed very clearly that our electoral system is based on the fact that we have a Government in the Commons, and if you do not like that Government you throw it out by election. The effect of changing that is that you fragment—to use his word—accountability.

Then there was the speech from the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard, who completely got right the fact that it is obvious that the work has not been done on this Bill. She did not say it in capital letters, but I felt that it was in capital letters, and her message to the Government was, “Do the work”. That is obviously right. The Leader of the House said, “Well, hold on, it is proposals from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, and Jack Straw, on which we are building”. We both put forward proposals which foundered on the fact that we could not deal with the powers and electoral accountability issue. We learnt from that. We thought that if the Leader of the House was going to come forward with proposals, he would have a solution to that problem. I waited in anxious hope for such an answer to come. Unfortunately, although I was not present when the noble Lord delivered his speech, all that I got from it was effectively abuse of the Labour Party. As I understand it, he said that if we did not support his proposals—the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, floated this—the failure to get reform would be,

“entirely due to Labour’s conniving and collective spinelessness”.—[Official Report, 10/5/12; col. 31.]

I was very surprised to read that. If I were trying to build consensus, I asked myself whether the way to do so would be to abuse the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, and all his colleagues. No, so I wondered what the noble Lord’s motivation was for abusing me. Then I reached for the previous Saturday’s Financial Times and read that the noble Lord the Leader of the House had wagged his finger at the Commons, saying that the moment we had an elected element we would be much more assertive against the Commons.

I completely agree with what the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, said. Was the noble Lord trying to encourage dissent in the Commons? He points at himself and shakes his head in his inscrutable way. The most telling aspect of the whole story is this: if he really wanted consensus, would he not resort to his normal oleaginous charm? Would he not talk to us in that deferential way that we have come to love in the House of Lords? We know that he does not believe in almost everything he says, but at least he tries to persuade us. However, that is not the case on this occasion; he has switched to a completely new mode.

Where are we then on Lords reform? I cannot hope to match the quality of some of the speeches that have been made but I shall seek to analyse where we have got to. Everybody, including the proponents of the Bill, now agree that it is unlikely that the relationship between the two Houses would remain the same if we kept everything the same, except for making all or the majority of the Members of this House, elected. The Joint Committee said unanimously—this is not the alternative report; every single person on the Joint Committee said this—that,

“following election the increased assertiveness of a reformed second chamber will affect the balance of power between the two chambers in favour of the House of Lords”.

The alternative report expressly agreed with that position. If we have had the opportunity to read the Financial Times of two Saturdays ago, we will know that the Leader of the House of Lords also agrees with that proposal.

The Government’s proposals were advanced on the proposition that we do a good job in the House of Lords and that everything should remain the same except the method of entry. In the light of the unanimous view that election will affect the balance of power between the two Houses, it is plain that the aim and stated purpose of the reform—namely, to leave everything the same except method of entry—has not been achieved. The approach of the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard, with which everybody agrees, is that more work needs to be done to address the question of powers. According to the noble Lord the Leader of the House, the Conservative Party is divided on whether there should be Lords reform and, if so, what the form of that reform should be. My party is not committed to supporting the current proposals. It believes, as do many people, that the problem of powers is unresolved and that a hybrid House of the sort proposed would reduce the validity of non-elected Peers, who would tend to give way to the elected Peers. We are committed to there being a referendum before any significant proposals for Lords reform can proceed.

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon]

I wonder if the noble and learned Lord could be clearer than was his noble friend, the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, in our debate last Thursday, in which he seemed unclear as to whether or not, if this Bill were presented to this House absent of a clear codification on the issue of powers, the Labour Party would vote in favour of it. Can the noble and learned Lord enlighten us? If the Bill comes in that form, without a clear codification, will the Labour Party vote in favour of it, or will it not? Yes or no.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

My noble friend Lord Hunt was absolutely clear. We will not vote for a Bill that does not solve the problem of the powers. We do not believe that the draft Bill does that. As my noble friend made clear, we will have to wait and see what is then produced. There was absolutely no lack of clarity in what my noble friend Lord Hunt of Kings Heath said in relation to that issue.

Our position is clear. The Conservatives’ position is clear. I should also make it clear that I thought that two of the parties were divided internally as to what to do—the Conservatives and Labour—and that the Liberal Democrats were united. Imagine our surprise when we saw them today. First, we had the greatest exponent of Lords reform, the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, who, to his great credit, did not even mention Lords reform. We heard the excellent noble Lord, Lord Phillips, give an inspirational speech on how well the Lords performs now; we had the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, saying that more thought was required; and the two proponents of Lords reform were the noble Lords, Lord Ashdown and Lord Rennard.

The passion of the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown, for reform was so great that he did not allow history to get in his way; he did not allow foreign comparisons to be drawn accurately; and he was, on two separate occasions, corrected on the facts in relation to his speech. Nobody, particularly those in the Egyptian Parliament, could have doubted his enthusiasm for Lords reform. I wonder whether enthusiasm is enough. Surely it would be much more sensible if we got down to the arguments in relation to it.

I continue on the propositions: there is no doubt that the Joint Committee was divided on the way forward. The Lords is, by a very substantial majority, I would opine, opposed to the Government’s reforms. The Liberal Democrats, however, are, by a majority, in favour of reform but appear to have nothing to say on the detail. The current position is obviously a very bad basis for reform. I am very sympathetic to the position of the Leader of your Lordships’ House, who everybody admires and likes. Like him, I embarked on proposals for reform—but they foundered. The right thing for the noble Lord to do is to come forward with proposals that have some prospect of success.

We know that we all agree on certain things. The speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, went much further than the Steel Bill, and we can implement those proposals as quickly as possible. The answer for us, in terms of ensuring that we retain our effectiveness and status, is to come forward with detailed proposals that would be attractive to people. It is ultimately not enough to have the excellent passion of the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown, and the position of the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde—

Draft House of Lords Reform Bill

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon Excerpts

Tuesday 1st May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

My Lords, having listened to many of the speeches yesterday—I confess that I missed some of them because I went to the theatre to see a play appropriately called “The Collaborators”—and having read the others, it is difficult to know what to say about this debate that is different. But I wonder whether your Lordships remember the Austin Allegro. The Austin Allegro was probably the worst car ever built. It was completely unreliable, it had a totally underpowered engine, and its big selling feature was that it had a square steering wheel. This car was designed by the management for political reasons. They ignored the people who knew about cars and design and it was meant to save British Leyland. It was the management’s answer. In fact, they were so convinced that it would save the company that it was nicknamed the “flying pig”.

I do not know whether noble Lords can see the parallel that I am drawing here, but it seems to me that this Bill, which has been so comprehensively filleted by the Joint Committee, has many similarities to the Austin Allegro in so far as the Deputy Prime Minister believes it will save the Liberal Party at the next election. It was conceived for political reasons and without any recognition of the needs of the consumer and the customer—in this case the wider electorate.

The case is being made for “reform”. However, I think “reform” is the wrong word here because actually it is the abolition of this House that we are talking about and we are talking as well about the destruction of the House of Commons as we know it. So “reform” is the wrong word to use. It is the right word to use in the context of the Bill of my noble friend Lord Steel, which for too long has been ignored by the Government for reasons that are incomprehensible to me. The Government could perfectly well bring about some reform that would deal with most of the issues and avoid all the difficulties that the Joint Committee has so comprehensively illustrated.

I want to deal with two of the fibs which have been repeated during the course of our debate. The first is that this was a Conservative manifesto commitment. It was not a manifesto commitment. Our commitment was to seek a consensus on Lords reform. One has only to listen to the chiding given by the chairman of the Joint Committee to the excellently produced alternative report to realise that there is no consensus. A casual reading of the committee’s report will show that we have failed to reach consensus. So as far as I am concerned, as a Conservative, we have discharged our manifesto commitment.

The second fib which is told is that it was part of the coalition agreement. The agreement was that the Deputy Prime Minister would convene a hand-picked committee to look at this issue with a view to producing a Motion by December 2010. But as the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, pointed out as a member of that committee, it failed to do so. In fact, it failed to reach any agreement at all, to the point where the committee stopped having meetings because it was impossible to make progress. So on both of these counts, the obligations of the coalition agreement and the obligations of the Conservative manifesto have been discharged.

My noble friend Lord Strathclyde has come up with a new definition of consensus. “Consensus” is what the House of Commons votes for on a three-line Whip on a constitutional Bill. The play I saw last night was about Stalin, but not even he would have used that argument. I have to say, listening on the radio this morning to a beleaguered Minister trying to persuade the chief executive of British Airways, or whatever it calls itself nowadays—the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, may be able to help me with that—who had explained that there are queues at Heathrow, that they are not really as long as he said they were, made me wonder this: what does the country think? Do people think that it is better for us to spend money on 450 superannuated politicians rather than on immigration officers at Heathrow to deal with these problems? As the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, pointed out, this is not an issue that is central to the problems facing our country.

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon]

I wonder whether the noble Lord would allow me to intervene. I am most grateful to him.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon]

My Lords, I knew that an intervention would be popular.

Can the noble Lord address the central question? Can he explain why it is that this Chamber cannot follow the same principle as the vast majority of second Chambers elsewhere in the world, which is by being democratically based? Is it because our democracy is so weak? Is it because we are totally unique in the world? Or is it because the House of Lords is, as it always has been, opposed to democratic reform?

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I have to say to my noble friend that I read his speech with interest. In it he made that point repeatedly, along with the point that this House should have the right to decide whether we go to war. He did not actually explain what would happen if this House, elected by PR, voted against going to war and the other place, elected by first past the post, voted in favour. How would we resolve that? The point about this House—what makes it effective—is that it is completely different from the House of Commons.

In his speech, the noble Lord—my noble friend—said that this place ought to be able to decide things, which is a perfectly respectable point of view, but it is one that I do not agree with. That is because, like him, I served in the House of Commons. I love the House of Commons. It is the central feature of our democratic system. It is the body which guarantees our liberty and its sovereignty is crucial. By creating a competing House here, we will undermine it. Another noble friend, the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, said in her speech that she was sick of hearing about people talking about turkeys voting for Christmas. The turkeys will be in the House of Commons, not in this House, if they vote for this legislation, for it will undermine the power of the House of Commons. It will turn this into a competing Chamber, and that will be a disaster for the House of Commons. So I do not agree with my noble friend that we should become a kind of House of Commons.

At the same time as we had the Austin Allegro there was a very popular programme on television which I used to enjoy—watching with my children, of course—called “The A-Team”. If we have an elected House here, it will be very much the B-team. Who in the A-team is going to want to be part of a Chamber that is perceived to be secondary? Who will put up with that? But if I had been elected on a 15-year term with a popular mandate, I have to say with regard to the Scotland Bill—on which I think I spoke for quite a long time—that under the powers which already exist in this House it would have been perfectly possible for me to kill that Bill. That is one of the things to consider when people talk about the existing powers. This House has enormous powers, but we do not use them because we respect the fact that the House of Commons is the elected Chamber. I could easily have killed the Bill, but I did not do so. Although I hate the Bill, I did not do so because I am not elected and I do not have a popular mandate. If I had a 15-year term, so that even if it was unpopular in my constituency I would never be held to account, I tell you what— I would certainly have done it.

That is the problem with this whole Bill: it will change behaviour. I can tell noble Lords something else. There are not too many Conservatives in Scotland. If I was elected as a Conservative Member of this House on a 15-year term, I would make it my business to secure in every constituency the election of other Conservatives to the House of Commons. I would be there for 15 years while the average term of a Member of the House of Commons is, I think, eight years. I would be there for 15 years, so I would know all the issues. I would be interfering in constituency business. The noble Lord, Lord Richard, said that, by not giving them secretarial services, they would not interfere. The noble Lord himself was a Member of Parliament— I do not know what his constituency was.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon]

My Lords, it is important that we are clear on this—by the way, of course I agree with that position. Is the noble Lord saying that the Labour Party would not support 80 per cent elected, 20 per cent appointed?

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

Our position is very clear. If there is to be an elected House, it should be 100 per cent elected. Of course, we also believe that we have to sort out the powers issue, because the two go together.

I come back to the issue of costs. I thought that my noble friend Lord Lipsey put forward some interesting evidence. I thought that it was a bit unfair for the noble Lord, Lord Tyler—his interventions are always enjoyed by your Lordships’ House—and Ministers to dismiss his work as highly speculative, because the Government will not put their costings into the public domain. This can be sorted very quickly if the Minister will offer to the House today to put those costings in the Libraries of both Houses so that we can study them with great care.

As for the suggestions of the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, on salaries, I would have thought that that meant that only rich people need apply, but that is a rather familiar refrain from some parts of the coalition Government at the moment.

We come to the end of our debate. I, too, hope that the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, will provide some reassurance that the Government will reflect on this debate and study both reports with great care. I say again that I hope that the Government will not rush to produce a Bill with minor tinkering around Clause 2. That would be very disappointing.

I also hope that the Minister will explain why, when the country faces so many challenges, not least on the economy, Lords reform is apparently to be a centrepiece of the Government’s legislative proposals in the Queen’s Speech. That is a rather strange sense of priorities. Last night, my noble friend Lord Stevenson referred to the observation of the late Lord Bingham that there is simply no solution to the problem of Lords reform. That is why, Lord Bingham said, despite an immense outpouring of time and talent, no solution has been found. I do not go that far, but I think that in a non-federal state, working out the relationship between two elected Houses is very difficult. The charge that I put to the Minister is that the Government have not begun to think this through.

I hope that the Government will agree to allow for the role, functions and powers of an elected second Chamber to be determined before proposals on membership are made. Above all, I hope that the Government will agree to such proposals being put to the British people in a referendum. In the end, should not the people decide?