House of Lords

Lord Foulkes of Cumnock Excerpts

Tuesday 6th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Richard (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Williams on raising this issue. It is one that we have skirted around many times in this House for a very long time—I still bear the stripes of past debates on this subject; no doubt there will be others to come—without facing up to it.

The chief attraction of what my noble friend Lord Williams had to say is that it can be done without primary legislation. I am in favour of an elected second Chamber and have been for a very long time, as the House probably knows. I do not resile from that position one scrap. Indeed, if some of the noises that are being made by the leadership of my party in favour of an elected second Chamber based on strong regional connections were to come about, I would welcome it with open arms and be delighted to support it.

We are not currently faced with that issue, however, but with a problem that has arisen from the way that the size of the House has grown. One can set out the issues very simply in a number of questions: is there a problem with the size of the House? The answer to that is clearly yes. It is too big for the work that it does. We do not need 800 people to do work that 400 or 450 are perfectly capable of doing. Is the problem going to go on unless it is resolved? The answer to that is clearly yes. Is the problem going to get worse? The answer to that is clearly yes.

I echo and totally agree with the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Butler, in his somewhat apocalyptic view as to what will happen after the next general election. An incoming Government are bound to want to rebalance the House of Lords. It is asking too much of any Prime Minister to say that he would be prepared to leave the House of Lords unbalanced, particularly if the number of Liberal Members of Parliament declines and there are more than 100 Liberal Democrats sitting on the Benches of the House of Lords. That is not something that any Government will view with equanimity or pleasure. He will want to do something about it. After all, this is a legislative Chamber. We are generally here not to advise the Government, but to pass laws, in which case the Government have to get their business through this House as well as through the House of Commons. To do that, any Government will want the House of Lords broadly to represent the political situation in the country at the time, and therefore I think that the problem will get worse rather than better.

What can we do about it? It seems to me that there are basically three alternatives. One is an age limit, which the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, and various other people have proposed. Secondly, people can be persuaded to go, presumably through a scheme of voluntary retirement, the outlines of which at least are on the statute book. That, coupled with some sort of financial inducement, might produce a mad rush out of this Chamber on the part of many of our colleagues, although personally I rather doubt that. Thirdly, the numbers can be reduced based on the service that people have given.

I understand the superficial attraction of an age limit—it is a simple way of dealing with the matter. However, it is brutal and blunt. It might be fair but I am not sure that it would be effective. A system based on an appreciation of what people do in this House, how often they appear and how often they participate in the affairs of the House would be a much more sensible way of approaching any sort of scheme for a reduction in numbers.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)]

I wonder whether my noble friend will give way. He mentioned the Liberal Democrat Peers. Would he care to speculate on why no Liberal Democrat Peer is going to speak in this debate? Why are they keeping their heads down today?

[Lord Richard]

If I were a Liberal Democrat, I would keep my head so low as to be totally invisible. My noble friend has answered his own question. I am now a bit lost as to where I was.

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[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow—if the noble Lord, Lord Cope, will forgive me for saying this—my noble friend Lord Cormack, who I have followed on a number of occasions in the other place as well as here. It is a great pleasure. Like him and, indeed, everyone else, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Williams of Elvel. I stress his territorial designation because a Freudian gremlin has appeared either in the Chief Whip’s Office, or maybe in the Clerk of the Parliaments’ Office, that describes him in the speakers list as “Lord Williams of Evel”—not the opposite of “good”, but E-v-e-l: “English votes for English laws”. So I suspect that the Clerk of the Parliaments has probably done that.

Like my noble friend Lord Cormack, I think that this has been an excellent debate. The contributions have been excellent. I have scored things out of my notes when I thought that what I was going to say would be irrelevant or had already been said, and I have added things because I wanted to respond to some of the comments. It has been a really good debate.

However, there has been one strange thing about this debate—the dog that did not bark. As I said to my noble friend Lord Richard in my intervention, this is the first time that I have been in a debate where the Liberal Democrat Peers have failed to materialise in verbal form. They have said not a word. If my noble friend Lord Williams had circulated a note saying that the criterion for deciding the number of people to continue in the next Parliament in the House of Lords will be based on participation in this debate, they would have been crowding in, speaking at length and dominating, as they often do at Question Time and in constitutional debates of other kinds, in foreign affairs debates and so on. This needs some kind of inquiry and I shall have to look into it.

My noble friend Lord Williams described some of the disorder that occasionally takes place at Question Time. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Cope, was not referring to me when he raised that issue. It is probably a terrible slur on his noble friend Lord Forsyth for bringing all this party politics into it. However, I have a more sensible suggestion. As I have said on other occasions, although I know that not everyone agrees, every other legislative body—or every one in which I have participated—that has questions from the floor and so on has someone in the chair with the power to call people and to moderate, as the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland and many others do. The issue is the unseemliness when lots of people get up to speak. I saw it again today when two Tories stared each other out so that they could get in. It is therefore important, as others have said, not to attribute all the problems that we face in terms of disorder to the size of the House.

I sympathise with the concern about size. As the noble Lord, Lord Butler, and others have said, we are the second-largest legislative assembly after the Chinese National People’s Congress, but we are also probably the cheapest national legislative assembly. This assembly costs very little indeed because, of course, we do not get salaries or have huge offices or numbers of staff. That occasionally makes it difficult to operate as a proper assembly. Consider the US Senate. As someone mentioned, it has only 100 people, but each one of those has about 100 others helping them in their offices to make sure that they can operate.

[Lord Maxton]

Equally, each state has its own senate, with its own members. Therefore, if one takes the totality of senators across the United States, there are probably considerably more than us.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

I am grateful to my noble friend for his helpful and wise contribution. It reinforces the point raised earlier by my noble friend Lord Clark: it is particularly difficult for those of us who come from afar, because the costs to get here are that much more. You do not get paid. In fact, you really do need a pension or a private income if you are to serve in this Chamber from anywhere outside of London. That is true. I am lucky to have a pension from the other place, so I am able to do so.

The main point I want to make is that we cannot consider size in isolation. We must also take account of the other constitutional changes that are either under way or planned, including further devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Incidentally, it is not just to Scotland. People say, “Scottish Members of Parliament shouldn’t vote and Scottish people shouldn’t participate”, but there is devolution to Wales and there has been for Northern Ireland for a long time. I never heard the Tories say, “These Ulster Unionists shouldn’t participate in matters that affect only England”. We have to deal with that as well. We also have to try to resolve the democratic deficit in England. That could include an English Parliament, a regional government, a combination of both, or more power to the cities, but it could also include some changes in this place, which I will come to.

The Library Note has been mentioned. That Library Note was helpful, particularly on the statistics. I was particularly sorry that it did not cover the Labour Lords’ report, to which my noble friend Lady Taylor referred. Perhaps they are being rather pure and non-partisan and do not want to mention it because it comes from one party, but I think it is one of the best contributions to this debate—I am a little bit biased as I was on the committee that helped to draw it up.

Among other things, it recommends that the size of this House should be smaller than the House of Commons. I say this to my noble friend Lord Gordon of Strathblane—my really good friend—and to the noble Lord, Lord Cormack: there is something symbolic about making it smaller than the House of Commons, to reinforce the primacy of the other place. It has to be reinforced in different ways and that helps to do it. In our report, the aim was 450 Peers, but I must say—I hope I am not giving any secrets away—that we were swithering upwards and downwards when we discussed that. There is not an obvious number. As others have said, we need the number to do the job. The Select Committee I serve on, the European Union Select Committee, with its six sub-committees, needs personnel to keep it going—I must not say to man it. We need enough for that as well.

We also recommend the abolition of hereditary Peers—at least of their participation in this place, not anything worse than that. I have not heard any arguments in favour of keeping them; if there are any I look forward to hearing them. The ones who have been useful have been made life Peers anyway. We also recommend a minimum attendance and participation level. That has been discussed; I will not go into it further.

We also recommended retirement at the end of the Parliament in which Peers reach 80. I have just been appointed to do something new. Many years ago, when I was young, I was director of Age Concern Scotland. I then got elected to Parliament and I had to retire from that.

[The Chairman of Committees (Lord Sewel)]

Shame!

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

My noble friend Lord Sewel has said it is a pity that that happened. I have just been appointed a trustee of Age Scotland, the new body that replaced Age Concern Scotland and Help the Aged in Scotland. The director, Brian Sloan, said to me when I was appointed, “Of course, George, you’ve got more of a direct interest in our work now”. He was absolutely right. This is the kind of thing that we should be doing. We are not in favour of arbitrary retirement ages; I should not advocate that. However, I do not think this is arbitrary. We have looked at it carefully and made a serious recommendation.

We then come to the longer term, which is the more important debate—no disrespect to what my noble friend Lord Williams and others have raised about the current matter. In the longer term, we need to start with the purpose of this House: not how many we are, but what we are here for. First of all, do we need a second Chamber? An argument has to be made against unicameralism in favour of a second Chamber. I used to be a unicameralist, but if you go to Scotland and see what has happened with the Scottish Parliament, where there are no checks and balances on a Parliament controlled by one party, with a First Minister, the Presiding Officer, and the majority of the Select Committees of the same party, you begin to see the advantages of a second Chamber.

If noble Lords agree with that, how should the second Chamber differ from and relate to the House of Commons? I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Butler, who said that it should be complementary to it. I think the noble Lord, Lord Walton, raised the question of the council of experts that we have here. This is a really important dilemma about what we are here for. If we want to be a council of experts that is one thing, but it does not have the legitimacy of a body that has some form of election, whether direct or indirect. That is difficult. It is difficult to argue that a nominated body, however expert and brilliant it is, should be part of the legislature. That conflict needs reconciling.

[Lord Butler of Brockwell]

I suggest to the noble Lord that it is the primacy of the House of Commons that is the answer to that. The primacy of the House of Commons is because they are elected. This body can contribute its expertise without being elected.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

That is an argument. I am posing a problem rather than coming down on one side or the other. It is difficult. If one looks around the world, there is nowhere else where the second Chamber does not have some form of legitimacy. We need to look at that where we are participating in the legislative process.

I do not know whether this is going to cause controversy in relation to what the noble Lord, Lord Cope, said. He spoke about the culture of this place and some of us—I am sure he was not referring to me, but maybe to some others—not accepting it. With respect to the noble Lord, some people outside this place do not accept all aspects of its culture, particularly the privilege that is represented by the very nature of this building, this legislature and this part of the legislature. People have to recognise that. We do not all think that the comfort and the comradeship represented here is automatically the right thing. There are some good aspects, but there are also some legitimate differences between the parties. These ought to be represented and expressed in a legislature. There is nothing wrong with doing that in a forceful and eloquent way; that was done no better than by my noble friend Lord Forsyth. I agreed with everything he said in his speech today. That will not do him or me any good; we will be attacked by the cybernats—the nationalists who go online and attack us regularly—for being in cahoots again. I think it is good that on an issue such as this, which is not a party-political issue but one about the functioning of the second Chamber, we come to some kind of agreement.

I have gone on much longer than I intended. I apologise. In conclusion, the Labour Lords’ group recommended a UK constitutional commission, as my noble friend Lady Taylor said. That has been supported by the House of Commons Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, which Graham Allen MP chairs, by the Electoral Reform Society, by the Constitution Society, by Unlock Democracy and many others. Along with my noble friend Lord Purvis of Tweed from the Liberal Democrats, I have been involved in setting up an all-party group to look at ways that this can be pushed forward.

The leader of my party, Mr Miliband, has already said that a Labour Government would legislate for a senate of the nations and regions. With no disrespect, I say to him and to the leaders of the other parties, why can we not set up that constitutional convention now? Why can there not be some agreement between the parties? Why can they not show that they can work together and say, “This is how we want to go forward”? We need that sensible, holistic approach, with respect, to protect us from further constitutional Cleggery: poorly thought out, short-term changes in that outrageous attack from Mr Clegg on the House of Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, said. By the way, that did not stop him stuffing lots more Liberal Democrat Peers into this place. There is a slight dichotomy there. Ah, a Liberal Democrat voice.

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

My Lords, I take great offence at the suggestion of being stuffed anywhere by Mr Clegg. I was appointed to this place from Greater Manchester on my merits. I went for my tea and came back at four o’clock. I get the feeling that no one is speaking from these Benches because to do so would be a complete waste of time. There are 800 turkeys here refusing to vote for Christmas. Until that is understood, there will never be the change that is needed to make this a democratic senate that reflects the people.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

It is difficult—

[Lord Cotter (LD)]

My Lords—

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

I have given way to one noble Lord. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Goddard, that I respect the qualities that he brings to this House. I heard his maiden speech. I thought that it was terrific and I look forward to hearing much more from him. I now give way to the noble Lord.

[Lord Cotter]

I am not down to speak but I want to say that I disagree with my colleague about turkeys. I have great respect for the experience of Members of this Chamber. I am sorry that I have not put my name down to speak so that I might say more but perhaps I will be able to do so on another occasion. I thank the noble Lord for giving way. I certainly think that we have great strength in this Chamber and I repeat that I disagree with my colleague on his point about turkeys.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

If I have achieved nothing else with my speech, I have had two Liberal Democrat interventions and that is a little step forward. What I said about Mr Clegg applies not just to House of Lords reform. We are now seeing the problems of fixed-term Parliaments. Thankfully, his misguided attempt to reform this place—and it was misguided—was thrown out. I think that a lot of the Liberal Democrats, including the one who has just intervened on my speech—I spoke to him about it—thought that it was misguided. Mr Clegg’s proposal on voting reform for the House of Commons was thrown out. That is one reason why we should view talking about the size of this House as a small step towards getting holistic, sensible and reasonable reform not just of the House of Lords or of Westminster but of our whole constitutional set-up.

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[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

My Lords, I absolutely accept that if the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, had something else to keep him from coming, he should be excused and there is no criticism of him for that, but there are 101 other Liberal Democrats.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

I do not want to get into any more debate on the Liberal Democrat Benches’ representation; I just wanted to make that point.

My noble friend Lord Wakeham was also very keen to contribute to the debate today, but he is unwell. I know that he would have made a very important contribution had he been here.

At the heart of all the contributions that have been made to this debate is a shared goal: to make this House the best, most effective Chamber possible. Of course I understand the position put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Williams, and some others: that our size affects our ability to be effective and may risk our reputation. However, whether or how to reduce the number of Peers attending the House each day is not where I want to start my contribution to the debate.

I want us not just to be effective but to be seen to be the most relevant British institution operating in our world today. In my eyes, regardless of debates about the composition of this House and its future, we exist today as an unelected House with an important job to do. It has been evident from today’s contributions that we all want this House to do that job as best we can. To achieve our goal, I believe that we should be driven by our purpose as a House. That was a point that the noble Lord, Lord Butler, and my noble friend Lord Wei made. My definition of purpose is not just what we exist to do—I think that we all agree that we are a revising Chamber seeking to help to make good laws and inform public policy. My definition of purpose also includes the answer to the question: why is that important? For me, the answer to that is this: it is to give people confidence in the laws that we are all required to live by. Giving the people we serve confidence in the laws that Parliament makes is what informs my views and my contribution to the debate today.

In the context of today’s debate, the main thing I would highlight that I think that we should not change, because it is a valuable part of our fulfilling our purpose, is the part-time nature of this House. The noble Lord, Lord Gordon of Strathblane, and my noble friend Lord Cope mentioned that. For me, “part time” means that we have a duty to come to this House when we have something to contribute because of our expertise and outside experience, especially on legislation. However, the noble Lord, Lord Walton of Detchant, was right to emphasise the important work of the Select Committees, too. I would put legislation at the top of the list of our important work, but Select Committees are a valuable part of what we do here as well.

Because Members are not expected to attend every sitting, it is open to us—that is, noble Lords other than those of us who are a member of the Government or on the Front Bench—to pursue other interests, activities and professions alongside our work in the House. That allows us to draw upon some of the most accomplished individuals in this country and bring a wide range of expertise, experiences and perspectives to our debates. Those insights, and those strong and independent voices, come from all around this House. My noble friend Lord Forsyth said this and is himself evidence of it: those of us who sit on the political Benches, as well as the Cross Benches and the Bishops’ Benches, bring an independent mind, experience and expertise to the work of this House.

The noble Lord, Lord Clark of Windermere, paid tribute to experts such as those from the medical profession who are Members of this House. The noble Lord, Lord Walton, made a similar point but it is important for us to remember that the Cross Benches are not the only places where we find expertise in this House. I add that the kinds of expertise and experience which we often point to as the best examples of the membership of this House are not the only kinds which are valuable. During the Recess I had the great pleasure of listening to the noble Baroness, Lady Prosser, speak on the “Jeremy Vine” programme on Radio 2. She was explaining to the listeners how she, as a former deputy secretary of the Transport and General Workers’ Union, made sure that she remained up-to-date in her knowledge of the manufacturing sector by going out to visit lots of factories for her own contribution to the work of this House. My point is that we have in this House experts and people with valuable experience who are working hard to maintain the relevance of that experience. Whatever changes we consider when we look at the way in which we operate, it is important to be careful that these features of our membership are protected and encouraged because they are what makes us different and a valued part of the parliamentary process.

To be clear, as my noble friends Lord Strathclyde and Lord MacGregor said, I, too, think that we need to keep refreshing our experience and expertise with new Members. The noble Lord, Lord Walton, referred to the moment of wonder when he was first appointed to this House and seemed to suggest that, in recent years, it was being lost a little from your Lordships’ House. I reassure him and all noble Lords that the people who are joining our House now are just as filled with excitement about their own opportunity to make a contribution to our work as the noble Lord would have been at the time when he joined. I have the great pleasure of meeting a lot of the new Members just before they arrive—certainly, the ones who sit on my Benches—and I continue to talk to them.

For me, the real issue is not about the absolute numbers of Members eligible to participate in our work but, as the noble Lord, Lord Williams, suggests in his Motion, about attendance. However, like my noble friends Lord Tugendhat and Lord Cormack, and other noble Lords, even on that matter I do not believe that it is strictly about numbers either. It is about how we make sure that Members play their part at the right time. Although each party and group rightly has its own requirements for attendance, which is proper and goes to a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, what is really important is whether each of us can say that we have done our bit—that we have used our valid experience and expertise at the right time, in the public interest, to help us as a House to fulfil our purpose.

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[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

The Minister has stressed the concept—I find this completely new; it was not given to me when I was appointed—that this is a part-time job. It may be possible to be a part-timer if the rest of your work is in London, but if you come from Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen or Carlisle how can you do something up there and come down here day in and day out? It is an entirely London-centred concept. I hope that she will rethink this, and go back to whoever advised her on it and say that it is just a lot of nonsense.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

I disagree with the noble Lord about that. I think that this is a part-time House.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

Answer my question.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

When I say “right time”, I mean that it does not have to be all the time. Some of the rarest contributors can be the most valuable Members of this House if they exercise self-restraint, a point well made by the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland.

I am not going to comment on each proposal put forward today and I am certainly not going to rule anything out before there is an opportunity for proper consideration. The noble Lord, Lord Butler, urged me to take this matter seriously and I do, but I also say to noble Lords that we must guard against sounding too defeatist in the way that we speak about this House and the number of Peers who attend. Some noble Lords have used what I thought was rather colourful language, which I would not deploy myself, to describe this House. Right now we are doing a good job. We remain a strong and considered revising Chamber, one where a noble Lord, whether a Minister or a member of the Back Benches, will always have to make a compelling case to win an argument and the support of the House. The Opposition waste no opportunity to highlight that the Government have been defeated over 100 times during this Parliament, so I was a little surprised at the way in which the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, represented what has happened over the past few years. The other point that is worth making is that in terms of the effectiveness of the contributions made by noble Lords in our debates—