House of Lords Reform (No. 2) Bill

Lord Howarth of Newport Excerpts

Friday 28th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords, every little counts. I add my applause for Mr Dan Byles and the noble Lord, Lord Steel, for this further small increment of Lords reform. It is good that the Bill will authorise the House to make arrangements for retirement and will disqualify people for non-attendance. On balance, it is also right that we should have the same provision as the House of Commons to exclude from membership of this House those who are found guilty of a serious criminal offence. In mentioning retirement, let me also say how much I personally shall miss the wisdom and companionship of my noble friend Lord Grenfell.

I regret that practical political circumstances have made it impossible for the noble Lord, Lord Steel, to include further measures in the Bill. I very much agree with my noble friend Lord Davies of Stamford that we should have a power to suspend and expel people who disgrace themselves and the House. I also agree with the noble Lord, Lord Jay of Ewelme, that it is important that the Appointments Commission should be placed on a statutory basis as soon as possible. I say this with sadness but in the 21st century we really do need to proceed to abolish the principle of hereditary membership of the legislature.

All history and experience teach us that constitutional reform is best when it is incremental and, indeed, that there is very little chance of reform unless it is incremental. There is some talk again of a constitutional commission or convention, and I agree that we have to think systematically. There are great issues before this country; for example, the integrity of the United Kingdom. Whatever the result of the referendum in Scotland, it will have constitutional implications. The imbalance of wealth and power between London and the regions seems to be becoming a constitutional issue, and of course there is the anguished constitutional issue of our relationship with Europe. The future of the House of Lords must depend on the views that are taken and the reforms that may be introduced in relation to all those issues and, no doubt, others.

Reform of the House of Lords seems to exemplify Zeno’s paradox of Achilles and the tortoise. The tortoise starts off slowly on incremental reform, and Achilles, who is the great athlete, flexes his muscles, preens himself and dashes off with a grand scheme of redesign. However, Achilles never overtakes the tortoise. He stumbles and falls, and we have seen an instance of that within this Parliament.

I am therefore wary of grand designs, and I am wary of constitutional conventions that will almost inevitably come up with grand designs for constitutional reform. These radical programmes of change, especially if they are based on rather shallow thought and the arrogant assumption that the Government for the time being have a right to do what they will with our constitution, nearly always fall flat on their face and generate a lot of trouble in the process. Organic reform therefore seems preferable. I applaud not only the noble Lord, Lord Steel, but the Front Benches of the parties, who at long last seem also to agree that incremental change is the right process and the right way to go. Noble Lords want reform. I do not think that I know any Member of your Lordships’ House who is entirely satisfied with the status quo. It has been frustrating to us that the Front Benches have hitherto not allowed us to proceed as we wish to incremental reform.

I agree with the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester that the way to reform is incrementally and that the time to reform is when there is demonstrable need, but I also recognise that the call for radical reform is unlikely to go away. One can imagine a certain conjunction of political forces in which a coalition Government would again get the bit between their teeth and feel that they were entitled to legislate for radical constitutional change.

I therefore hope that, if the parties are considering what they may put in their manifestos, they will give consideration to a system of indirect election, a system whereby seats in your Lordships’ House would be allocated to the parties in accordance with the percentage of the vote they obtained at the latest election, leading to composition of the second Chamber which would be proportional to the landscape of political opinion in this country. We could do that with a House of 450, as was recommended by the Joint Committee which scrutinised the draft House of Lords Reform Bill earlier in this Parliament. If the Bishops and the Cross-Benchers were to form 20% of the membership of such a House, I think that we could be confident that no one party would have an overall majority in the House. If they were to form 30% of the composition of the House, I think that we could be confident that no coalition of parties would have an overall majority.

Your Lordships, I think, agree that our House is at its best when Ministers, in order to prevail, have to win the argument and cannot get their way by mobilising the party machines by way of the Whip. When Ministers have to win the argument, the House of Lords is best placed to fulfil its role of advising the House of Commons by way of proposed amendments to legislation.

Under such a system, we would continue with an unpaid and part-time House. Noble Lords would be Members of the House for 15 years, a third of them retiring every five years. A transition to that system could be achieved over three general elections. This is a scheme not unlike what was in the House of Lords Reform Bill, but it substitutes indirect election for direct election. Dr Alexander Reid, who gave evidence to the Joint Committee, has written a paper which demonstrates the feasibility of arriving at such a state of affairs.

If radical reform is to be sought by any of the political parties and in a future Parliament, and if there is truly to be a search for consensus—the phrase that we so often hear—I believe that a scheme of indirect election could be a compromise that sufficiently satisfied the proponents of election and the proponents of an appointed House. It would retain the primacy of the House of Commons, because there would be no direct elections and no geographical constituencies; it would retain the virtues of an appointed House, its independence and the experience and expertise of its Members. However, noble Lords will be pleased to hear that it is not my plan to amend this Bill to that effect, and I suspect that agreement on any scheme of radical reform remains a pipedream. We will therefore proceed incrementally and this measure is a very useful step in that process of increment.