Queen’s Speech

Debate between Lord Falconer of Thoroton and Lord Strathclyde

Thursday 12th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde (Con)]

My Lords, in her speech the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, gave us the theme of the constitutional importance of the House of Lords, which is one of the things I wish to discuss today.

I listened carefully to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, who made a great speech. He prayed in aid Lord Hailsham of years ago and his “elective dictatorship”, and I recognised the speech, because it is one I have made many times—or at least a version of it. The noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, prayed me in aid when he talked about my being involved in ping-pongs three or four times—not for many years now. Then the noble and learned Lord the Convenor of the Cross Benches himself talked about Henry VIII powers, skeleton Bills, rebalancing Parliament and the Executive and the constitutional importance of understanding that balance, and the complexity of legislation. Surely the noble and learned Lord is the inheritor of the late noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon of Glaisdale, who placed such importance on these issues. Who would disagree with the noble and learned Lord? I would not, and I suspect that most of the House would agree with him that some of these things need to change. The question is how to do it.

Occasionally, we need reminding that the Government have no majority in this House—and nor should they. The Government can be defeated here on virtually every Division. That adds a responsibility on us not to do that, but to pick our targets with care where there is support in the party in government in the House of Commons and where there is a chance that the Government might listen. On the other hand, here is how not to do it. In the last Session of Parliament, there were 129 government defeats. There were 12 in one night on the borders Bill and, on 17 January, 14 in a day on the police Bill. The previous record for that number of defeats was in 1975-76. Of the 12 government defeats on 4 April, the Cross Benches voted 61 against the Government, no doubt independently and not en bloc, as a pack or all together.

Increasingly, on Lords consideration of Commons amendments, which should be a small, short procedure, we instead hear noble Lords rather pompously say, “I think we should ask the Commons to think again, one more time”. Then away it goes, back down to the House of Commons, to be soundly defeated and returned here a few hours later, utterly pointlessly. Speeches are repeated at length. So much self-discipline has—

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)]

We have heard this speech before.

[Lord Strathclyde (Con)]

Well, the noble and learned Lord has been repeating some of my speeches.

The more we defeat the Government because we can, the more the Government will ignore us and look at ways to stop us. It will not be the old debate on who should sit here. We tried that 25 years ago, with the Government who the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, supported so much. It did not do us much good then and it will not do so now. Instead, this time, they will turn to what my noble friend Lord McNally used to call a wing-clipping exercise and look at our powers. It would be a terrible mistake and one that I would deprecate, but this is the route we are heading down: reducing the Parliament Act delays, limiting the times an amendment can be rejected or opposing a limit of a few weeks to return a Bill to the House of Commons, leading inevitably to guillotines in this House. We should never have this in the House, but this is exactly what will happen if we continue in the way we are.

It sometimes feels as if we have developed a kind of anarchy in the House of Lords—an incontinence of Divisions. I understand that, during the period of lockdown, it was too easy to just press a button from a deckchair in your garden, but this kind of thing needs to stop. We are at last returning to voting in the Division Lobbies, so if we had 13 Divisions in a day, we would not move out of the Lobbies very much at all.

We also need to remember that here in the Lords we do not represent anybody. We have no responsibility or accountability. We have the huge privilege of being legislators here, but we have not been elected. We have constitutional purpose; it is quite limited, but it is important. A lesson is that you can never win a general election from the House of Lords. We scrutinise, revise and debate the great issues of the day. Of course we can defeat the Government, and we should vehemently argue against them and oblige Ministers to come forward and explain what they are doing, but we must always remember that the House of Commons is elected and we are not.

The Government, for their part, need to improve the quality of legislation.