House of Lords Reform

Lord Howarth of Newport Excerpts

Tuesday 29th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, an elected second Chamber is the wrong answer to the wrong question. Even those who accept the Prime Minister’s melodramatic characterisation of our politics as broken cannot claim that dissatisfaction with the House of Lords so much as registers among the public’s concerns—notwithstanding the grubby efforts of the Mail on Sunday and the Sunday Times. Public dissatisfaction with our political culture arises mainly, I believe, from two other sources.

First, people think that power is excessively centralised in London. Too few decisions are taken locally. Too much political power resides in Downing Street. Associated with that is a widely held view that the House of Commons is excessively dominated by the Executive. There is good will towards the coalition, a hope that it may portend a fresh politics, but that sentiment has not dissipated the folklore that Members of Parliament are too biddable by their leaders and Whips and, as exposed by the expenses crisis, venal. Unfair though this is, the House of Commons has a lot more to do to vindicate itself to the people. We are entitled to retort to the eager proponents of Lords reform in the other place, “Physicians, heal thyselves”.

We can applaud the new localism professed by the coalition, but if and only if it means a revitalisation of democratic local government and not a marginalisation of it. Reform of the House of Commons and renewal of local government are the right priorities for constitutional reform. Reform of the House of Lords will, at best, do nothing to mitigate public disaffection from politics and, if it is to mean a second elected Chamber—costly, docile, weak and otiose—it will actually make it worse.

The second principal source of malaise is the malfunctioning of the media. Our politics suffers profoundly from the relentless cynicism, triviality and sloppiness of so much political journalism. There is no solution to this at the disposal of constitutional reformers. The best we can hope for is that we might, over time, have better educated citizens who will insist on better political journalism.

Why would people want to create an elected second Chamber? For some MPs, it is good enough that it looks progressive and deflects public indignation from the House of Commons. For Mr Cameron, embarking on it at this stage is a price worth paying to have Mr Clegg on board. For some Ministers, it will be attractive no longer to suffer the inconvenience of a second Chamber that does revise their legislation and from time to time blows the whistle on seriously misguided policy. Rather than those independent Cross-Benchers and former senior parliamentarians, how much easier to have a second Chamber of elected placemen, placed by patronage on the party list under PR, people more like Prufrock,

“an attendant Lord, one that will do

To swell a progress ...

an easy tool,

Deferential, glad to be of use,

Politic, cautious and meticulous;

Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;

At times, indeed, almost ridiculous”.

If those explanations are too harsh or fanciful, it is difficult not to take the view that, in the present circumstances of our country and the world, for senior members of the Government to be channelling their energies into abolition of the House of Lords is displacement activity, a frivolity. In the scale of things, reform of the House of Lords is neither here nor there; that, I am quite sure, is the view of the public. People will stop worrying about political institutions if they become confident that the politicians they have elected are making wise judgments about the big issues, tackling them with determination, courage and effectiveness and offering inspiring political leadership; that is the proper path to democratic renewal.

None of this is to say that reforms of the House of Lords are not still needed, following the major reforms since 1999: the removal of most of the hereditary Peers and the establishment of a Supreme Court, separate from this House. We are proud of this institution, but we are not complacent.

My own agenda is fourfold, aligned with that set out in the latest Bill and the Motion tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Steel of Aikwood. We need to open the way to abolition of the hereditary principle for membership of the legislature. We need to place the Appointments Commission on a statutory basis and task it to improve further the representativeness—representativeness of civil society—of your Lordships’ House, a House which is already more diverse in terms of experience, gender, ethnicity and disability than the House of Commons. We need to disqualify from membership Peers guilty of serious criminal offences. And we should introduce a term for membership. I would go further than the noble Lord, Lord Steel, in not only making provision for retirement, but abolishing the right to sit in the legislature for life.

The reforms proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Steel, and backed by so many of us on both sides of the House, are reforms that the previous Government would not countenance and nor would the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde. He showed no sign today of becoming any more pragmatic in office than he was in Opposition. If he would only abandon his dogmatic attachment to an elected second Chamber, he could carry the House in support of a substantial set of reforms.

What most noble Lords seek is not abolition of the House of Lords, as advocated by the Leader of the House of Lords, but reform to consolidate and enhance the existing capacity of this House to do the job that the public want it to continue to do: to scrutinise legislation thoroughly and rigorously and offer amendments; to debate the issues before the country with expertise and relative impartiality; to advise; sometimes to propose restraint to overweening central government and a House of Commons that finds it hard to shake free of party conformism; to prompt second thoughts and a pause to get things right. This is the contribution that we make as a House of Parliament. The problem is not a lack of democracy at Westminster. So long as this is an unelected House, we will not defy or block the democratic House of Commons. Would it not be sensible to settle for this kind of complementarity?

What motivates so many of us, who value this House, to oppose its replacement by an elected Chamber is not self-interest but a deeply held belief that such a change would be damaging to Parliament and the quality of government. As I have said again and again, the onus should be on those who propose an elected House to explain how it would improve the performance of Parliament. None of them has yet been able to do so.