House of Lords: Reform

Lord Higgins Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tyler]

If the noble Lord had read his own White Paper, let alone the Government’s White Paper, he would know that three tranches of elections to this House—whether it is 80 per cent or 100 per cent—mean that at no time would the membership of this House have a more up-to-date mandate than that held by Members of the other House. That is absolutely clear—and Jack Straw and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, were clear about it, too.

I am very respectful and appreciative of the wise heads in this House, but they cannot go on asserting the primacy of the other House and yet build up the impression in this House and beyond that they intend to threaten a veto on any reform Bill that the other House sends us. That is yet another irony.

Breaking a habit of a lifetime, I will concentrate for the few minutes that I have on the one area where I think there may well be a consensus in your Lordships’ House. Several Members have questioned the suggestion that 300 is a sensible number for a reformed House. This matter requires very careful analysis by the Joint Committee. The commission headed by the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham—who was here just now—recommended 550; the 2001 government White Paper 600; the House of Commons Public Administration Select Committee 350; the Bill which was sponsored by Messrs Clarke, Wright, Cook, Young and Tyler, 413; and the Jack Straw/Philip Hunt White Paper 435. At no stage has anyone suggested that the workload of this House could be undertaken by 300. We all thought that it was preferable to have a second House of Parliament where it was not necessary to have full-time parliamentarians. I regret that the White Paper has gone on that route when it has never been recommended.

There are five reasons why 300 Members is too small a number. First, as I have hinted, Parliament as a whole benefits from having a proportion of Members who retain an active involvement in other walks of life, which would be very difficult to have with only 300. Secondly, given the relatively long but one-term limited service, it would be difficult to recruit candidates who were prepared to be full-time parliamentarians while they were not able to take part in other activities and go back to another career. Thirdly, your Lordships should note that 80 of the 800 Members of your Lordships’ House are already involved in European scrutiny. It is already a very considerable commitment and I do not think that 300 could do the job.

[Lord Higgins]

In fact, the White Paper comes up with the very strange proposition that the figure should be around 300 or so because that is the average attendance in this House. However, this assumes that the average attendance covers all the same people, which is absolute rubbish. People come depending on their expertise in a particular debate. We need more than that number in order to get the coverage.

[Lord Tyler]

I am very grateful to my noble friend, but there is an additional reason. In fact the average is not 300; it is over 400. That figure is out of date. I accept entirely what my noble friend said and I hope that there will be support from other Members across the House when it comes to looking at this issue in the Joint Committee.

Finally, under whatever system of PR, if the number is so small it will be quite difficult to get diversity—indeed, even gender balance—in the membership of this House. If only 80 Members are elected in each tranche there will be relatively small multi-Member seats and it will be quite difficult to get the sort of diversity and gender balance that I know many Members of your Lordships' House wish to have. Many have already expressed concerns on this.