Queen’s Speech

Debate between Lord Forsyth of Drumlean and Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon

Monday 14th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[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.

Draft House of Lords Reform Bill

Debate between Lord Forsyth of Drumlean and Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon

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.

[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.