House of Lords Act 1999 (Amendment) Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Grocott and Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 9th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen (Con)]

My Lords, I start by congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, for steering his Bill, which has provoked an interesting and engaging debate, into Committee. The whole House recognises his understanding of Parliament and his commitment to ensuring its work continues to be relevant. Given the number of amendments before us, many of which are related, if not grouped together, it may be for the convenience of the House if I set out the Government’s position at this point. I do not intend to comment on subsequent amendments, solely because I would be repeating myself.

As we have seen in the past, if reform of this House is to succeed, we must be able to work constructively together to make progress. It is clear from the Second Reading debate and comments from noble Lords today that this is an issue on which there are strong feelings on both sides, and no clear consensus as to the way forward. With that in mind, and as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and my noble friend Lord Strathclyde said, with so many other pressing legislative priorities to deliver over this Parliament, noble Lords will perhaps not be surprised to hear that as a Government we express reservations about this Bill.

Yet that does not mean we should simply set ourselves in aspic. As my noble friend the Leader made clear in the debate earlier this week, we want to work constructively with noble Lords to look at pragmatic ideas for change that can command broad consensus, just as we did in the last Parliament. Then, we worked with noble Lords to introduce some focused, important reforms. With government support, the Bill sponsored in this House by the noble Lord, Lord Steel, now the House of Lords Reform Act 2014, enabled Peers to retire permanently for the first time—54 Members so far have done so—and provided for Peers to be disqualified when they do not attend or are convicted of serious offences. The following year, through what is now the House of Lords (Expulsion and Suspension) Act 2015, we supported the Bill of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, which provided this House with the power to expel Members in cases of serious misconduct. Both were important reforms that have made tangible changes to the culture of this House.

We must now bring that same spirit—of pragmatic, incremental, consensual progress—to discussions in the coming weeks and months, keeping in mind the need for any further reform to both enhance our role as a Chamber of scrutiny and revision and enable us to continue to draw on a wealth of expertise and experience. We must do so together as a House, building on the sense of real partnership that the debate earlier this week demonstrated. Although there might not be consensus on this Bill, I look forward to the discussions we have to come in order to identify where that consensus might be found.

I finish by observing, as my noble friends Lord Cormack and Lord Strathclyde said, that the debate in the House on Monday on the size of the House was conducted in a friendly and constructive spirit, whatever the differences between noble Lords in their views on the right way forward. Monday showed this House at its best, and I am sure we will continue in that spirit today.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, it has been a varied debate, although the one thing that has united everyone who spoke, including the mover of the amendment, is that no one spoke to the amendment. I do not make a criticism on those grounds, but we have essentially had a Second Reading debate, and I fear that we would have that on all 60 amendments should we proceed. I shall be brief as I also note that this first group has taken an hour, and there are 60 amendments. Most of them were put down yesterday, which makes them quite difficult to deal with, and all of them have been degrouped, so we have to have nearly 60 separate debates. I think 60 hours on this would be a bit much and try the patience of all of us—quite apart from how we would appear to the world outside.

The first amendment simply removes Clause 1(1), and basically wrecks the Bill. It certainly does when considered with all the other amendments of that type. The noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, has put down amendments to remove subsections (1), (2), (3), (4), (5) et cetera. He is perfectly entitled to do that. We are a Parliament with parliamentary procedures, and he is entitled to put down as many amendments as he likes, but he acknowledged in his opening remarks that he is totally opposed to the Bill. That again is a perfectly legitimate and honourable position to adopt, but if he wants to adopt that position, he either should have voted against the Second Reading or should vote against the Third Reading. He has another opportunity to do that, but instead he has just put down huge numbers of amendments, which I do not think he would be too proud of if they were read out one by one—as I have already mentioned, he did not actually move the first amendment. Seven or eight amendments simply vary the date at which the Bill comes into operation: one month, two months, three months. Let us have a serious debate on serious amendments if we are going to, but of course the problem that the noble Lord, and the House, face is that this is such a narrow and specific Bill. It is a two-clause Bill, dealing with a very specific problem, and it is almost impossible to amend sensibly. However, of course your Lordships can reject it. You either support the end of the hereditary by-election system or you do not, and I hope that the House will come rapidly to a decision on that.

Since everyone else has made something close to a Second Reading speech, I will just remind the House what my Bill does. It was motivated by a general feeling of unease, but was precipitated by the by-election on 18 April this year—I know most Liberal Democrats feel just the same about this as I do—where there were seven candidates and an electorate of three. That must be a world record. Of the seven candidates, six did not get any votes, and the seventh got all three votes—100%, which, as I said at the time, beats North Korea. That is not sustainable. It is so easy to get a laugh out of this, because the present system is laughable. Whatever the motives or arguments over why it came into operation, and we can rehearse those again and again, it is what has happened as a result of the decisions made in 1999 and the resulting section of the 1999 Act that has resulted in this by-election system, which has now been going on for 17 years and has led to 30 new Members being brought in via this mechanism.

The noble Earl, Lord Caithness, thinks that somehow the 92 hereditaries are precipitating a major reform of the House. “It is a long time coming”, is all I can say to that, and he did not offer a timescale on which he expected that to be achieved. So the objective has not worked. We have had all these by-elections, and they will go on in perpetuity. If the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, is straightforward with the House about this, as I am sure he will be, he will acknowledge that if the Bill fails the by-elections will continue and we will end up at the stage where the grandchildren of the Peers who were first exempted find themselves in the House of Lords via this bizarre mechanism.

I repeat that my Bill hurts no one. I was mildly concerned about the comment from the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell; I am not trying to bribe anyone at all. I know many hereditary Peers who support what I am doing. I make no criticism whatever of the hereditary Peers in this House. The reason why they are excluded from the Bill is not that I am looking for their votes in passing it; frankly, I probably do not need them. It is because many of them, such as—it seems invidious to mention any of them, but I shall mention one—the noble Earl, Lord Howe, make a tremendous contribution to the work of this House.

So the Bill is nothing to do with that point. It is simply saying that any honest, straightforward person looking objectively at the system that exists would say, “Let’s get rid of it with a clean break”. Then, admittedly, over a period of 30 or 40 years, there would no longer be any hereditary Peers in the House. That is not the objective of the Bill but a consequence of it, and I do not think it is a revolutionary consequence. The noble Lord, Lord True, who I know very well, mentioned that it might result in a change in the party balance. I think 10 Tories have been elected so far under the by-election system over a period of 17 years. I know we move slowly in this place, but that does not strike me as a revolutionary overnight change. This is incremental reform in the best traditions of the group chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, which I have supported over many years. I am often criticised for that; I am called a “constitutional conservative”, and I can live with that. It is common-sense incremental reform to a system that to want to sustain is, frankly, pretty indefensible.

The indications I have are that there is very strong support for this in the House. I would much prefer it if we could just acknowledge that, complete Committee stage and see what happens to the Bill. The worst of all solutions would be if we had hour after hour after hour of debate on amendments that, frankly, I do not think the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, or the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, would be terribly proud of if their biographies were to be written. That would not bring the House into disrepute but would not leave it looking very good, particularly after the splendid debate on Monday—I can say that as I did not take part in it, though I listened to most of it—when it was clear that the wish of the House was that it should be smaller. It must be pretty well a first in the world for an organisation to say, “We want fewer of us”. I cannot think of any other organisation that I have had anything to do with that would say that. So the House realises that its size affects its performance and reputation, and that we should look for ways of reducing its numbers. Here is a way that would reduce its numbers over a period of 30 years to the tune of 92.

I make this appeal to the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, and I think I speak for most people here, whatever they feel about the Bill: I ask him not to persist with the remaining 59 amendments, most of which are in his name. I ask the noble Lord to acknowledge that when he stands up to speak.

We have had a good debate. We need to come to a conclusion on this amendment, which would remove subsection (1), which, as I have said, would wreck the Bill. The House needs to decide whether it wants to do that, and I hope the noble Lord tests the opinion of the House. Most of all, I would like to hear him acknowledge that we should move on and have a Report stage in due course, and formally move the rest of the amendments.

Franchise: British Citizens Abroad

Debate between Lord Grocott and Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen

Thursday 20th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

I thank my noble friend for that. Introducing votes for life will require primary legislation to amend the Representation of the People Act 1985 and associated secondary legislation. There is no current timetable for introducing the Bill but the intention is to have the new arrangements in place ahead of the next scheduled general election in 2020.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

Has the Minister heard the ugly rumour that the reason the Government are proposing to extend the franchise to people who have not lived, worked or paid taxes here for decades is not because of an important constitutional principle but because they think they are more likely to vote Tory? In order to dispel that ugly rumour, will the Minister tell the House from the Dispatch Box that no such consideration has ever entered her or any other Minister’s head?

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

I certainly cannot speak for anybody else but it had not entered my head. This will allow everybody who was resident in the UK and is now living abroad, but has been living there for more than 15 years, to vote in UK elections. It does not matter what party they vote for; we welcome them all.