House of Lords: Reform

Lord Elton Excerpts

Tuesday 21st June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames]

My Lords, if I believed that the people did not understand the Liberal Democrat concept of democracy, or our national concept of democracy, I would not be here or arguing here at all. I believe that democracy is about elections and the expression of the popular will; it is about determining the composition of Parliament in a representative democracy on the basis of the popular will. It is as simple as that.

I accept the people’s verdict on the AV referendum, which has ensured that first past the post elections to the House of Commons will be a feature of our democracy for a while yet. I also accept that the electorate regard that as a legitimate system for electing MPs. It is therefore likely that we will have two different systems for election to the two Houses. Of itself, that will not undermine the primacy of the Commons; rather, it is likely to safeguard it. It is also significant, I suggest, that the link between individual Members of Parliament and their constituencies, which lies so much at the heart of our unique representative system, is a factor that will tend to sustain that primacy, because the link between elected Members of this House and their multi-Member constituencies, will, inevitably, be that much weaker.

The final point in this area is that MPs will be able to point to the fact that they are accountable to their personal electorates in having to face re-election. Elected Members of this House, elected for a 15-year single term, will have no such direct, personal accountability. They will still have, as the Leader of the House pointed out, the independence inherent in that system; it is not the same independence that they enjoy on appointment for life, but it is substantial independence none the less. I suggest that that independence is a good thing for the job that this House does.

[Lord Elton]

I know that the noble Lord has taken some injury time for interruptions, but he is now 50 per cent beyond the recommended time. I wonder whether he could draw his remarks to a conclusion so that others can have a fair crack at the whip.

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames]

My Lords, I am terribly sorry, but I have taken a number of interruptions and I have had to answer them. I propose to go on, although I will attempt to draw my remarks to a close when I think that a close is called for.

Leader’s Group on Working Practices

Lord Elton Excerpts

Tuesday 7th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde]

Yes, my Lords. Of course, the final decisions on these matters will be entirely in the hands of the House, which is entirely appropriate. In particular, I confirm to my noble friend that there is no reason why decisions cannot be taken immensely speedily after the debate and when we have taken the views of the House into account and sent them to the respective committees.

As for the role of the Lord Speaker, the Leader’s Group concluded that successive Leaders of the House had acted with complete impartiality in their role of advising the House on matters of procedure and order, including at Question Time. None the less, I am conscious that some in the House wish to see a far greater role for the Chair—notably at Question Time—and that the Leader’s Group has made proposals in this area, to which I intend to give prompt and serious consideration once Members have had the opportunity to have their say.

[Lord Elton]

My Lords, the report will be differently received as regards different paragraphs by different Members of this House. What is the procedure by which we shall be able to pick and choose that which we wish and that which we shall not wish?

[Lord Strathclyde]

That is a good question. The purpose of the debate is a bit like a Second Reading speech; it is for different noble Lords to use their speeches to look at different parts of the report. After that, it will be dissected by the usual channels and the clerks and sent to the respective committees. Their reports can then be debated and approved by the House as a whole.

Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Lord Elton Excerpts

Wednesday 11th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Elystan-Morgan]

My Lords, I support that idea. The noble Lord, Lord Harris, for whom I have immense regard—I respect his very great experience in these matters—was not quite right when he said that Clause 2 has no reference to a police commissioner. Clause 2(5) reads:

“A chief constable must exercise the power of direction and control conferred by subsection (3) in such a way as is reasonable to assist the relevant police and crime commissioner to exercise the commissioner’s functions”.

Am I right—

[Lord Elton]

As I understand it, under our Standing Orders, we can only speak to a Motion. The Motion before the Committee is Amendment 13. My noble friend the Leader of the House has proposed the way that we should go forward and the Leader of the Opposition has said she agrees that we should go forward. If we go forward now, we have decent time to do at least one amendment and we might get on with this Bill.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Elton Excerpts

Monday 17th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Soley proposes that the number of constituencies for the future should be determined by an independent commission and the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Lipsey prefers that the recommendation should be made to Parliament by a Speaker’s Conference. I do not think that the difference between these two manners of proceeding is necessarily very great. Indeed, an independent commission could turn out to be a Speaker’s Conference. However, I prefer the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Lipsey because my noble friend Lord Soley has thrown into his amendment a stipulation that the number of constituencies to be determined by the independent commission should not in any case exceed 650. If we examine the arguments on whether there should be more or fewer Members of Parliament, there is a strong case not for reducing the numbers of Members of Parliament but for increasing them. But whichever device were to be adopted, both of these modes of proceeding are designed to be reasonable, to gather evidence, to enable all concerned to work towards consensus and for their conclusions to be perceived to be unimpeachable. That last point is extremely important.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, in responding to the earlier debate—he did so entirely admirably—defended a case that is very difficult to defend. He reminded us that in the approach to the previous general election both the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrat Party signalled their view that there should be a smaller House of Commons. He suggested that there was therefore a mandate, but, of course, no mandate for a smaller House of Commons was provided by the electorate because neither the Conservative Party nor the Liberal Democrat Party won the election. Certainly, the coalition agreement has no status as a mandate at all. Of course, there needs to be a coalition agreement and of course this House treats with the greatest seriousness what the coalition agreement has put forward for the country, but this House is not intimidated by the coalition agreement, nor does it consider that it has some special quality.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, was of the view that in the end the size of the future House of Commons had to be a question of judgment. That is possibly so but, as the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, reminded us, when you are making a judgment it is your responsibility to make it on the best basis of evidence and of reasoning. Moreover, it is essential that the judgment is perceived to be disinterested. That is where the Government are in some political difficulty as they wax indignant at any suggestion that they are tilting the system in the political interests of one party or another. I will not impugn their sincerity in that matter but their political problem is in part that there is a perception that they are not objective in this matter. Irrespective of whether an independent commission or a Speaker’s Conference were involved, at least the matter would proceed reasonably, whereas the proposition that we have before us in the Bill—that the House of Commons should in future consist of 600 Members of Parliament—is not really even a product of judgment but of an opportunist wheeze.

The Prime Minister was of the view that Members of Parliament were unpopular and that there was a large deficit, which needed to be reduced. It occurred to him and his advisers that it would be a good wheeze to propose to the people that we should therefore have fewer Members of Parliament. That is the kind of opportunistic gimmick that political parties devise and resort to to get them through their relations with the media for a day, but it should be forgotten just as quickly as that.

You need a better basis for determining the appropriate size of the House of Commons. You have to start by looking at what those who elect Members of the House of Commons expect and, indeed, require them to do. Above all, they expect them to debate the great issues of the day, to scrutinise legislation and the propositions of the Government and to hold the Government to account. It is very important that there should be enough Members of Parliament who are not members of the Executive and not Parliamentary Private Secretaries on the payroll vote to be able to hold those independent debates. Such Members will take the Whip and they will have their party loyalties, but when push comes to shove those who elected them expect them to exercise a certain independence that is rightly not permitted to members of the Executive.

I was very interested in and listened very carefully to the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Martin of Springburn. Any of us must listen carefully to the views of a former Speaker of the other place. He favoured a reduction in the number of Members of Parliament on the basis that it might make for better debate, because he recognised that there is a problem for Members of the other place in getting into debates and having the opportunities to speak as often as they would no doubt like. That is true and relates to the procedures that the other place, in its wisdom, has developed over many years. It is interesting that Members of your Lordships’ House, who are more numerous and every day becoming significantly more numerous than Members of the House of Commons, can all individually get into debates when they wish. Indeed, there will be ample opportunity this very evening for noble Lords on the other side of the House to expound their views at length on this extremely important legislation. No Member of your Lordships’ House can say that they do not get the opportunity to contribute to debates. Therefore, it is just possible that the other place, in considering its procedures, might consider how it is that this House, which is more numerous, enables everyone to participate.

My noble friends Lord Soley and Lord Rooker were both of the view that it would be better if the size of the House of Commons were to be reduced. My view is that the House of Commons has great difficulty in performing all the functions that the citizens of this country want of it. It is getting more difficult as more and more Ministers are appointed. We are told that we have to look forward to there being more frequent coalition Governments—heaven forefend, but that is what is anticipated by quite a lot of people. We have seen that, when a coalition Government are formed, there have to be jobs for lots of the boys and girls in each of the parties that form the coalition. We now have an Administration in the House of Commons who have more Ministers than any other Administration have ever had. We are going to need more Back-Benchers who will still have an independent voice of their own.

[Lord Elton]

Can the noble Lord refresh my memory? I thought that the number of Ministers in the House of Commons was regulated by statute.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

The noble Lord will find that, one way or another, Members of the Administration, including Parliamentary Under-Secretaries and Whips, have become even more numerous than they used to be.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

But even before we saw this unfortunate growth in the size of the Administration, it was commonplace that the House Commons had great difficulty in examining all the legislation that came before it with the care that everyone would wish. For example, the Commons found it very difficult to find the time to scrutinise European legislation with any adequacy. It is an important part of the history of government in this country that over several recent decades there has been a vast increase in the quantity of secondary legislation—statutory instruments—which the House of Commons is entirely unable to scrutinise as much as would be desirable.

Legislative committees, which used to be known as Standing Committees, are set up ad hoc to scrutinise pieces of legislation, but so difficult is it for very busy Members of the other place to give their detailed attention to Bills that these are now routinely programmed. Members of your Lordships’ House will also wryly acknowledge that important pieces of legislation such as this one come through to us without having been exhaustively examined in Committee in the other place.

Separate from the scrutiny of legislation is the work of Select Committees. Departmental Select Committees did not exist before 1979. They are a source of great pride to the other place and to us all, but it is not disrespectful to the other place to note that attendance at Select Committees is less complete than perhaps it should be and that, because Members of the other place are legitimately very busy on a host of matters, sometimes one has the possibly erroneous impression that not all those participating in the work of a Select Committee have entirely mastered the papers before them.

The Public Administration Select Committee, chaired in recent years with enormous distinction by Mr Tony Wright, has persuaded not only the other place but the Executive that there should be greater independence for Select Committees. That raises hopes for the future work of Select Committees. It raises expectations about the amount and quality of the work that they will do. That is a large responsibility that falls on the other place and it may need more rather than fewer Members of Parliament to do full justice to it.

Party committees are a very valuable presence in the life of the other place because they enable the Executive and the Back Benches to explain themselves to each other. However, these meetings take time and, again, their attendance is not always as full as might be ideal. There are also all-party committees that come and go. All noble Lords have a view on whether it is necessarily a good thing that there are quite as many all-party committees as there are at any given moment. However, the best of them have enormous value. I will mention, for example, the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Disablement, in which the noble Lord, Lord Ashley, when he was a Member of the other place as well as when he became a Member of your Lordships’ House, played an outstandingly distinguished part. I see the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, in his place opposite. When he was the Member for Daventry in the other place, he inaugurated the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Archives, in which I, too, had the pleasure to serve. It is a very valuable committee, which brings together from all sides of both Houses Members of Parliament who have a particular interest and some expertise in a topic and, through the work of the committee, are able to relate to professional interest groups and others outside. This is extremely important in the representative work of both Houses of Parliament and very important for ensuring that there is a depth of knowledge on a range of specialised topics.

I mention also the All-Party Parliamentary Archaeology Group, which I have been involved with. I promise the House that I will not recite the entire list of all-party groups, tempting though it may be. The noble Lord, Lord Allan, when he was a Member of Parliament—I think it was for Sheffield Hallam—was a distinguished, active and expert member of that group. That is important. However, the reality is that it is very difficult for all-party groups to get a sufficient number of Members in the other place to take a full part in their meetings because there are not enough colleagues to carry out all the work that needs to be done. I could mention the all-party groups that are necessary to enable the House to function, such as the House of Commons Commission, for example, which has to be staffed and served. There is also the Speaker’s Panel. The enormous volume of legislation, particularly from the coalition, that is churning through Parliament creates a lot of demand. There is the international work of the other place. For some years, I was a member of the Intelligence and Security Committee. We have an important job to do on behalf of the Parliament of this country.

[Lord Elton]

My Lords—

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

I know that the noble Lord is going to remind me of the Companion, and quite right, too. That is one of his valuable sentinel roles in this House. Is that right?

[Lord Elton]

I did not quite catch what the noble Lord asked, but would he accept that we have a general idea that there are a lot of committees in the House of Commons which have a lot of things to do. The noble Lord thinks that there should be more people to do it. He has made his point; we have got it.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

I am infinitely obliged to the noble Lord. He is always rigorous and helpful to the House in exactly that respect.

Parliament

Lord Elton Excerpts

Monday 13th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I had a feeling that the noble Lord was heading that way. Whatever the realities of the relationship between this Parliament and Europe, what is of primary importance to this Government is that Parliament itself is in a fit state to scrutinise the Government.

[Lord Elton]

My Lords, my noble friend was very welcoming and supportive of the idea of parliamentary control of government, which I am sure we all welcome. Will he bear in mind that this enthusiasm is common in every incoming Opposition and cools in the first 18 months, so can he get on with it?

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I am sure that my noble friend, with his long experience, is almost certainly right. The basic principle of parliamentary accountability of the Executive is an important one that we should never let go lightly.

Parliament Act 1911: Centenary

Lord Elton Excerpts

Monday 6th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I am with the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, on 1911. It was a moment when the House of Lords did not act responsibly, and this House should not have confronted an elected Chamber. As for everything else that he says, these are matters for the Bill that we will publish early next year and for the debates that will ensue.

[Lord Elton]

My Lords, when mulling over the proceedings of this afternoon and tonight, will my noble friend bear in mind what many of us have observed over many years, which is that every Government, as they get older in government, want more power in relation to Parliament and that, in this, they are heartily supported by a Civil Service that regards Parliament as a considerable nuisance? Will he therefore, when he comes to frame a measure to remedy the present situation, avoid giving more power to the Government in relation to Parliament as a whole and reflect that this House must always supply, in control of the Government, what the other House cannot?

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, this Government will be different, which is why so much of our legislative programme is about devolving power to people. The localism Bill, which will be published shortly, and the Bill on elected police commissioners are all about taking power away from the Executive and handing it back to people.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Elton Excerpts

Monday 15th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Myners]

My Lords—

[Lord Elton]

My Lords, I think that it is our turn. I wonder whether the Front Benches consider that we have now heard as much as we are likely to take in that is relevant and that we should now divide.

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I do not know whether many of the questions were put to me or to the noble and learned Lord, but I shall be extremely brief. A number of issues have been raised this afternoon. They are important issues that will be raised and dealt with, quite rightly, in Committee—in particular, the questions of the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, concerning Telford—but they have nothing to do with the question of hybridity. I make two very brief points. First, the Bill is not hybrid and, secondly, the motivation behind the Labour Party’s anger is one of delay on this all-important coalition Bill.

House of Lords: Working Practices

Lord Elton Excerpts

Monday 12th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howe of Aberavon]

My Lords, it is for me personally a real pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Luce, in this debate. We have been in partnership together more than once; he was for a long time my parliamentary private secretary and a ministerial colleague. His own career has been so diverse and distinguished that he is in himself one of the best advertisements for this House. He served in the colonial service for some years and resigned from that on a point of principle. He also had the privilege of serving alongside my noble friend Lord Carrington and, for different reasons, resigned from that, too. He then came back to a second career as a Foreign Office Minister and then, when that came to an end, became a Minister for arts. When that came to an end—I think that I have this sequence correctly—he became vice-chancellor of Buckingham University, governor of Gibraltar and Lord Chamberlain. There are not many legislators in many legislatures in the world who can match that kind of career, and we welcome him most warmly. I agree with almost everything that he had to say in his speech.

I have only a very modest point to make in this debate, not addressing a number of the issues already raised but addressing the simple question of whether we will make the best of the resources in this House that can serve us in so many different ways. I set the context with a rather unusual quote from the San Diego Law Review, from tax law professor, Alice Abreu:

“If taxes had existed in the Garden of Eden, the Serpent wouldn't have needed an apple; the promise of a simpler tax system alone would have seduced Eve”.

That could be said again and again. We are always looking for a simpler tax system or a way of delivering such a thing. A lot depends on the perceived scale and nature of the taxes themselves, the objectives and the philosophy. A great deal depends on the mechanism for making, scrutinising and enacting the law, changing monetary objectives into intelligible legislation.

This is clearly an area where Parliament as a whole has a very important part to play. Every professional and business institution has offered some prescriptions as to how we might improve it. Two basic prescriptions have emerged—first, that there should some kind of agency at least semi-detached from government to keep in mind the objective of tax simplification, to prevent Chancellors letting their imagination run away with them or inspectors of taxation achieving the same effect and producing great complexity. That is one need on which there is agreement. Secondly, we should have the right parliamentary institutions for tackling the enactment of legislation. There have been a number of recent commissions and bodies that have made recommendations about those things. My noble friend Lord Forsyth presided not long ago over a Tax Reform Commission, whose report was entitled Tax Matters. I was invited to undertake a much humbler organisation, a working party to study the methods for making tax simpler. We both agreed with the prescription that has generally commended itself to many other people. The Government have now announced that we need something like an office for tax simplification, an independent body to focus on that all the time.

The second conclusion reached by all these bodies is the necessity for a Joint Committee of Parliament on tax legislation. I emphasise the word “joint”. That is almost universally supported by all the organisations outside the Government that have considered this: the CBI wants such a Joint Committee, as do the Chartered Institute of Taxation and the Institute for Financial Studies. The reason for that, I am sad to say, was set out some years ago by Sir Alan Budd in one of the earlier studies as long ago as 2003. He and his colleagues had this to say:

“The truth of the matter is that the House of Commons has neither the time nor the expertise nor, apparently, the inclination to undertake any systematic or effective examination of whatever tax rules the government of the day places before it for its approval. The irony of the Commons’ failure is that, because current constitutional arrangements allow the House of Lords no participatory role in the scrutiny of tax legislation, taxation legislation receives less Parliamentary scrutiny than other legislation. The criticism of Parliament implicit in this statement is not new. Parliament has rarely attracted praise for its role in enacting tax legislation. The longevity of this problem, however, is no reason for the continuing failure to address it”.

As I say, there has been very little dissent and disagreement about the general nature of what needs to be done. A few weeks ago we had a response to that set of specifications from Her Majesty’s Government in the document produced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Tax Policy Making, where the Government propose, among other things, two things. The first is, in order to promote simplicity, to create an independent office for tax simplification, with further details to be announced shortly. I say hurrah to that. The second proposal, in order to provide for greater scrutiny, is for the Government to publish more tax legislation in draft to allow for pre-legislative scrutiny. That is all right. Then, hesitatingly:

“The Government will welcome any consideration by the Treasury Committee”—

that is, the Treasury Committee of the other place—to review how to strengthen the role of Parliament in scrutinising tax legislation. The point that I make today so clearly is that that consideration by the policy committee in the other place must, if it is to be effective, be to the conclusion that all others have reached. We need a Joint Committee of both Houses because thereby we shall be able to mobilise alongside what is, alas, a relatively slender body of people with qualifications in the other place. Professional politicians have increasingly dominated it, and it is a far less well informed place on tax policy than it was 20 or 30 years ago in the days when it was almost fun to join the Finance Bill Standing Committee, with a range of experts doing combat against, for example, the capital transfer tax.

[Lord Elton]

My Lords—

[Lord Howe of Aberavon]

If my noble friend will forgive me, I am just making a point. I may find a slot where I can make way for him.

The point that I am making is that it is important to have both Houses represented in this joint parliamentary body if we are to make the Lords’ talent as available as it should be, and if we are to encourage the Commons’ talent to work together.

I have one last point but I am curious to know what provokes my noble friend.

[Lord Elton]

My Lords, for those of us who are less expert in these matters than my noble and learned friend, will he tell us whether the legislation he is speaking of would have no financial content? I assume that tax legislation always has numbers in it. If that is the case, would it not always be subject to a Speaker’s certificate as being a finance Bill? In that case, how does my noble friend see the other place reacting to his proposals?

[Lord Howe of Aberavon]

I am not quite sure that I follow the nature of my noble friend’s question, to be honest. It must be either so penetrating that I am overwhelmed or so obscure that I am completely innocent.

Let me come to my final point. The anxiety of the other place at seeing us becoming involved in the joint study of this question is that that would in some way encroach on its legitimate and important financial privileges. That is fundamental; indeed, it may be the point about which my noble friend was asking me.

[Lord Elton]

Yes.

[Lord Howe of Aberavon]

I am delighted that I have inadvertently answered my noble friend’s question as well as asserted my principles.

Great care has been taken to prevent such fear of encroachment. Some years ago, this House established a Finance Bill Sub-Committee of its Economic Affairs Committee. There was anxiety in the other place then that the fact that this House was studying finance at all, even with an attached condition, would risk encroachment. When this House decided to establish that sub-committee, there was an accompanying prohibition. The House decided,

“to prohibit the sub-committee from investigating the incidence or rates of tax and to allow it only to address technical issues of tax administration, clarification or simplification”.

That was designed to address the concern on the part of the other place. The Cunningham committee—the Joint Committee on Conventions of the UK Parliament —concluded:

“The Lords committee should continue to respect the boundary between tax administration and tax policy, to refrain from investigating the incidence or rates of tax and to address only technical issues of tax administration, clarification and simplification. Provided it does so, we believe there is no infringement of Commons financial privilege”.

Since then, our Finance Bill Sub-Committee has gained a good track record of scrutinising separate and important aspects of the past five or six Finance Bills. It has published its reports in time for consideration at Report stage in the Commons. Both in and out of Parliament, the reaction to its participation has been distinctly positive.

The case that I am making, lest it be at all obscure to my noble friend the Leader of the House and, indeed, to the House as a whole, is that here is an opportunity for the House to enlarge its role and to take part in the Joint Committee of Parliament that the Forsyth commission recommended and which everyone else would like. It is another opportunity for us to exploit our ability in an effective way. I hope that this idea will be accepted with good will in the other place as well as here. That ends my, I hope, tolerably clear presentation of what I was trying to say.

House of Lords Reform

Lord Elton Excerpts

Tuesday 29th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Elton]

My Lords, I hope that the House will forgive me if I go back briefly to first principles and stand back from the question we are looking at to consider the whole population of the United Kingdom. The first question we then need to ask ourselves is, “What is Parliament for?”, not “What is this House for?”. The short answer is: to enable the British people to choose a Government, to finance them and, essentially, to see that they remain their public’s servant, not their master. The very cornerstone of keeping a Government under democratic control is protecting the individual liberty of the citizens of this country. That is what Parliament is for.

We live in a democracy. Has the democratically elected House of Parliament sufficient power to ensure that Governments remain ultimately under its control? You might think so. It has the power to refuse to supply them with money. That is a nuclear deterrent and is rightly for the Commons alone, but the erosion of liberty is little by little. More appropriate to protect liberty is its power to refuse to give a Government the laws they want or, more commonly, to insist on substantial changes before it will agree to them. With such massive powers available to it, the Commons surely ought to be counted on to protect those liberties—but, my Lords, it cannot be. In 2005, it utterly failed to do so. If the House of Lords had not then acted in their defence, everyone in the United Kingdom would now be liable to summary arrest and detention without either trial or appeal. This and all future Governments would have been able to issue a derogated control order against any individual they decided to label a terrorist threat. With this order they would have been able to detain our citizens without trial, not just for a week or month but for 90 days. Such a weapon belongs in the armoury of a fascist state, not Whitehall, yet the democratically elected House of Commons let it through. It made clear what it thought of it; Mr Blair's majority was cut from 161 to a handful of votes—I think it was 14. I remind your Lordships that this unelected House stopped that happening. We stopped it by constantly refusing inadequate changes to this monstrous proposal. We did so in a sitting that lasted unbroken from 11 am on 10 March 2005 till 7.31 pm on 11 March. We rose only when we had secured just enough judicial involvement to prevent this thing being used unfairly, unnecessarily, or for undemocratic purposes.

Why did the two Houses behave so differently when faced with this same, very simple issue? I have never sat in the Commons and I intend no disrespect, but what I am about to say seems to have been borne out by inference from a lot that I have heard from Members who were there previously. The Commons voting figures seem not just to reveal the strength of some Members’ feelings but to draw our attention to the influence, even the power, of the party Whips on what for many MPs was a matter of conscience. Consider that MPs are elected but cannot be elected without their party's support. They therefore arrive, as the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, said, indebted to their party. If they belong to the majority party, they find up to 150 of their fellow Members sitting with them as members of the Government in the same Chamber. Therefore they do not, without effort, think of the Government and party as separate bodies. They also receive substantial salaries. To lose their seat is to lose their livelihood, and party Whips can arrange the deselection of a Member as well as his selection. That means not just that he will not win the next election but that he will not be able even to fight it.

Therefore, in the House of Commons as now constituted, three elements together necessarily diminish its power to keep the Government under the control of the electorate. Its Members are in an elected Chamber, they are paid a substantial salary, and they can become and remain Members only with the consent of their party apparatus. Even if they were all saints, these arrangements must have some effect on how they vote. Their effect is greatest when the number of Members is greatest—in the party of government. I regret to tell my noble friend Lord Caithness—or I would if he were here—that he is entirely wrong in his belief that election to this House would give it greater power.

How strange, how sad and how sinister that our colleagues down the Corridor are now clamouring to introduce precisely these three elements into the Lords—the only Chamber still strong enough to stand up to Governments who have prevented Members of the House of Commons from doing so. Your Lordships should also note that an appointed House does not automatically become the poodle of the appointing body. By March 2005, 45 per cent of the Members of this House had been sent here at the request of the very Prime Minister whose proposal they threw out; 147 among that new entry had taken his party’s Whip. The smallest margin of votes by which his proposals were rejected was 48. The largest margin—to the great credit of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, who is now our Lord Speaker—was on her Motion, which was carried by 150 votes. That is no poodle, but a guard dog with teeth. I ask my noble friends on the Front Bench to think about the need for this country to keep Governments under control, even when they are staffed by such benign and intelligent people as my noble friends. I listened to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Gilbert, with some reservation on that point.

Every Government, when they have been in power for quite a short time, want more power because Parliament is such a damn nuisance. If you are trying to run the country you do not want a lot of other people telling you how to do it better. You want to shut Parliament up. The pressure is from not only the Government and their colleagues, but the huge Civil Service machinery behind them, which wants to go this way, finds that a few people are squeaking in this House, and suddenly has to go that way. This is a matter of the greatest importance and I hope that in the years to come your Lordships will not let it go.