Queen’s Speech

Debate between Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon and Lord Falconer of Thoroton

Monday 14th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[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—