House of Lords

Debate between Lord Berkeley of Knighton and Baroness Taylor of Bolton

Tuesday 6th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Bolton (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, because he has introduced a different element to this debate by referring to adjusting procedures. That is certainly something to which the House will need to return either on the back of this Motion or independently of it.

Like others, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Williams, for introducing this debate. Any debate that is aimed at improving the workings of this House has to be welcome. There is much that can be done and without primary legislation, although I have to say to the noble Lord that I have severe reservations about the notion that he has found the silver bullet. I am not sure that his system would work quite as he hopes.

I want to mention—it may be a question of declaring an interest—A Programme for Progress, the report that the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, referred to. It was drawn up by a group of Labour Peers and contains some short-term as well as some long-term measures for improving the working of this House and considering its long-term future. I co-chaired that group, along with Lord Grenfell, who took his own advice prematurely and retired from this House and is now rather well in exile. I am sure that we all send him our best wishes.

The starting point for this debate is the numbers in this House. It is a concern that has been mentioned many times today and many times in this House during recent months and years. There is general agreement that the size of the House is too great. It is clear that it has been the Prime Minister’s intention to put more political nominees in here and to seek to get near to a majority that has caused that rise in the numbers. I am in the strange position of being a former Chief Whip who agrees with a former Conservative Chief Whip that it is not a good idea for any political party to seek a majority in this House. This House works best and is most respected when it is clear that no political party dominates in this Chamber. The Government’s attempt to improve their position far beyond what is justified has not only created practical problems in terms of the number of people in the Chamber and the pressure on speaking times, with two-minute speaking limits and things of this kind, but it will undermine the credibility of this House, which would be most unfortunate. It is true that this House will always need refreshing, but I do not think that that has been the motivation behind the numbers that we have seen coming into it.

The noble Lord, Lord Williams, suggested that a Chamber of 400 would be about right. The Labour document to which I referred suggested 450, and I think that the Joint Committee that the noble Lord, Lord Richard, chaired also suggested 450, taking into account the committee work that we do at present. However, I think the one thing that we all agree on is that the House of Lords, as the second Chamber, should be smaller than the House of Commons. That is a basic principle that we have to address and accept.

I have to say to the noble Lord, Lord Williams, that I think his mechanism is flawed. He said that there is no element of compulsion in his suggestion. He hinted that the expenses regime might be used to make sure that people were not rewarded for coming here if they were not on the esteemed list. As someone who lives some way from London, I think that would penalise Members of this House from the regions, as does the existing expenses regime, and would not be healthy for the mix we need to make this House most effective.

Our report recommended that for those who respond to the Writ of Summons at the beginning of a Parliament there should in future be a minimum attendance level, so that people could be “working Peers” and contributing. We must not think of contribution as simply being the equivalent of attendance—that is rather dangerous. The noble Lord, Lord Richard, talked about it being the work that matters. It is participation; it is speaking; it is voting—there we have another measure of how assiduous people are in what they do in this House. It would be wrong to give the impression that it is only turning up here that matters. Therefore, I am worried that a rather simplistic formula might cause problems.

I am also worried about the idea of frozen proportions: that the basis for future composition should be the proportions of Members at present. I have some concern about the suggestion made by the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, of a changeover after every election. That kind of churn would not necessarily attract people to come into this House in the first place and to build up the experience to make the contributions that perhaps they could make. There is therefore a difficulty there, as there is with the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, for internal elections. As a woman from the north, a category that is not overrepresented in this House, I would perhaps not be worried if we had allocations that way, but I would not want there to be divisions within parties of people who have to work together long-term to make the most of the opportunities in this House. That might not be helpful. Therefore, I do not like the churn that would be supposed to happen in that instance.

There are things that can be done to improve the workings of this House without the great constitutional reform such as is talked about from time to time. We should get rid of the hereditary by-elections; indeed, I would go further and have some primary legislation to end hereditary Peers’ rights to be in this House. Not all would agree, but I think that many people would.

I listened with care to what the noble Lords, Lord Butler and Lord MacGregor, said about financial inducements: that the figures show that a modest inducement could be of benefit to the taxpayer and that the Treasury might therefore accept it. I can see the logic of that, but politically it is a non-starter. Other people may disagree and it may be worth looking at in the future, but it would be difficult to sell to the public.

That leads me to the issue of retirement—the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, mentioned what we said in our report. We looked at this very carefully and we had people who were over 80 on that committee. We suggested that the concept of a working Peer is something that we should all take on board. When we respond to the Writ of Summons at the beginning of a Parliament, we should do so with the intention of giving a commitment to work and participate in this House for the full term of that Parliament. Whether we like it or not, we have fixed-term Parliaments at the moment. I do not like them and hope that they will go, but we have them so we should give a commitment to work for that whole Parliament.

We rejected the idea of, “You are 80, therefore you go on your birthday—party or not”. However, we said that it would help Members plan ahead if we introduced a system whereby they step down at the end of the Parliament in which they turn 80. The easing of that situation bears further consideration. I hope it is something we can look at in future. Political parties could also voluntarily agree to more transparent criteria in their nominations. The noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, just outlined the procedure that he went through. The fact that there is no procedure in terms of political appointees is something that could be changed, and could be done voluntarily.

However, I hope we do not see a great new influx of political appointees. I suspect that I am wrong and that it will not be possible to achieve this, but I would like to see some restraint. I would like to see a moratorium on political appointments in future, especially as we are now coming up to the manifesto period. We keep hearing that all three parties will say, one way or another, “Get rid of the House of Lords”. If all three parties want to get rid of this House, perhaps they should not nominate new Members to it. I am not sure that, when we have four months of constant campaigning, a manifesto will be read or raised by anyone, but there are issues we have to consider.

The way to get through to what we should be doing long-term is obvious and inevitable: that is, to have a constitutional convention that can make sure that we do not have a whole series of piecemeal constitutional reforms that do not hang together and which, in the end, lead to unintended consequences. That would be very dangerous to good government and certainly to accountability. As for short-term measures, I accept entirely what the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, said, that he could smell a conspiracy here. It is very likely that the Procedure Committee may intend to look at these proposals but if so I urge that it also looks at the debate that took place on 19 June on the Labour Party’s proposals, where there was a great deal of consensus that many of those issues should be looked at in great detail. That is the way forward because we should not have knee-jerk reactions one way or another to some of the issues raised.

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)]

I apologise for intervening but there is one question that the noble Baroness might be able to inform the House on. Did Mr Miliband consult the Labour reform group before saying he would like to see a senate in this House?

[Baroness Taylor of Bolton]

Noble Lords might be interested to know that the Labour group met with the party leader on more than one occasion. We talked to him about our proposal for a constitutional convention. We are very pleased indeed that he said that issues of that kind will be referred to a constitutional convention. If we could get other parties to agree that that was the way forward, we could have a time limit on how long that constitutional convention was to sit. We could write a remit that could be very tight and specific. I really believe that that would be the way to ensure that we do not get into the constitutional chaos that would come about unless we look at all these issues together in the round.