House of Lords: Reform

Lord Gordon of Strathblane Excerpts

Monday 11th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gordon of Strathblane]

My Lords, grateful as I am for this short debate on the important issue of the function of the House of Lords, I hope that at some point before we consider legislation we will have a proper, full-scale, two-day debate, because the most important issue is: what function do we wish the House of Lords to perform? Once we have decided on that, you tailor everything else to make us able better to fulfil that function.

I regret to say that I agree entirely with what the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, said at the start of this debate as regards the folly of electing a House and hoping that it will stay the same as the present one. The Scottish Parliament has been in business for slightly over 10 years. It is already seeking more powers. If the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, were to be elected—I would be one of his constituents because we live in the same part of the world—what would be his platform for election? How would I know whether he had delivered on that platform? We do not yet know, simply because the previous Government, I am afraid, used the term “election” as an emotive slogan and shied clear of trying spell out exactly what they meant. That was probably because they knew that the majority of Labour MPs were against election—as indeed were a majority of Conservative MPs. It is only the Liberal Democrats who carried the day in the House of Commons.

You have the choice of either having re-election, in which case you get accountability—undoubtedly there would be people wanting to get the power to demonstrate to their constituents that they had delivered what they had promised—or not having re-election, whereby, frankly, you have no accountability whatever; you elect me on day one and I do precisely what I want for the rest of the 15 years or so for which I may be elected.

We have at the moment a constitutional convention—the Cunningham agreement. It is vital that we decide, first, whether we wish to change that in any way. If not, we stick with what we have, because we change the Cunningham convention at our peril. We are living in very strange times in politics. Things that would have been thought impossible a year ago are now happening. Coalition government is one; changes in the Scottish Parliament are another; and the Welsh Assembly is becoming a Scottish-style Parliament. If we have an elected House, you do not know where that is going to lead.