House of Lords Reform

Lord Howe of Aberavon Excerpts

Tuesday 29th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howe of Aberavon]

My Lords, it is a great privilege to follow the most reverend Primate in a debate of this importance, particularly because each of the three noble Lords who have spoken before me have taken us one step further towards clarifying the issues. The noble Baroness, Lady Royall, gave a clear insight into the fundamental importance of the central issue, which, put simply, is: is this House likely to improve if a substantial elected element is introduced to it? That is the great fundamental question and I have some sympathy with her proposal of a referendum on the consideration of that. The noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, reminded us that a number of transitional changes are featured in the Steel Bill, which, whatever happens, will need to be considered. As we have argued many times, they have and could have been considered already. That is the quality of the questions we are considering.

The first and fundamental question is whether there should be elected Members here. One of the problems is that we will not gain much from arguing about the procedure for resolving that; from arguing about the appropriateness of a draft Bill now, next week or next year; or from arguing about what committee should be designed to consider the problem and disentangle the difficulties so as to make it easy to go on with the next step. The difficulty is that every political organisation addressing this question is divided within itself. All the parties are divided. Both Houses of Parliament are divided, which causes gaps between the leadership, as well as between the sometimes slightly misleading term of the organisation. For example, we understood that this would be something for a third term of a Conservative Government, but somehow impatience has carried it in a different direction.

We want this caucus of Front-Bench representatives from the three parties to seek a way forward, and I can understand why. It then has to be commended to both Houses of Parliament. Both Houses have to address this fundamental question of elected Members and be persuaded in their judgment that it is a positive improvement for this legislative structure. Because that question concerns this House alone in the direct sense, it is very disagreeable to find any suggestion to the effect that the views of this House can be pushed to one side and that, above all, we do not require a clear majority persuaded in favour of this change in this House.

Therefore, where the evidence is on which the case for change is to be based becomes the important question.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

My Lords—

[Lord Howe of Aberavon]

Before the noble Lord speaks, I should say that it is not customary to give way in a speech of this kind. I fell into the habit on the Front Bench in the other House of yielding too often to interrogative bodies. I would like to have freedom from that on this occasion in this House.

I draw attention to the total lack of evidence that can justify a change of this kind on this scale. It is interesting to look at the speech made by the Deputy Prime Minister on 19 May in which he said that his second objective was to,

“reform to reduce the power of political elites and to drag Westminster into the 21st century, starting with the House of Lords”.

That is the proposition he advanced and it is the proposition which it is necessary to establish if this case is to get anywhere at all.

What will be the effect on the composition, style, quality and expertise of this House? It is that which is of crucial value and we need considered debate about it, as we have had frequently. The first quality is one that we hardly need to be reminded of: it is the sheer expertise of this House. Its difference and its quality are wholly distinct from that of the other place, and therefore it makes a very distinct contribution. Only in the past few weeks we witnessed a debate led by the noble Lord, Lord Patel, on genomic medicine. That is not a topic I even begin to understand anything about, but the House was privileged to have taking part in that debate not just the noble Lord himself, a profoundly authoritative expert on the subject, but four members of two royal societies, including the president the Royal Society of Edinburgh and two Fellows of the Royal Society, the president of the British Academy and chairman of the Nuffield Foundation, two Ministers, one a Minister of Health, and several other well qualified medical people, including the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, and above all, the noble Lord, Lord Winston. That is the kind of quality that to a large extent would be impaired and destroyed if we were to accept the concept of a wholly elected House.

I take your Lordships’ minds back to the debate four days after 9/11, on the Friday when we debated what would happen in Iraq and when, sadly enough, our views did not prevail so as to prevent that disaster. The people who took part in that debate included three former Chiefs of the Defence Staff, three former Foreign Secretaries who had played a role in that part of the world, two former Home Secretaries, two former ambassadors, two former Defence Secretaries and many others with service experience. The House has its character because of the accepted presence of a substantial number which makes up the quality that it is necessary to preserve. That is only one thing which would be damaged if we were to accept a substantial elected element here. Grave damage would be done to the quality, diversity and expertise of this place.

Secondly, I turn to the argument about legitimacy, about which we have heard mention already. It is a strange argument that is inconclusive in its impact because an apparent consequence of legitimising us by making us elected would be to provoke much more savage and regular conflicts between the two Houses. There is no doubt that if we were to feel as extravagantly self-important on the issues of this kind as the other place sometimes does, conflict would be repetitive. Nothing would be gained by sharing legitimacy in that way.

Another consequence would be the change in cost if this House were to represent people who had been elected with access to the same level of privileges, facilities and services as exist in the other place. I make no complaint about that, but where is there any evidence to suggest that elected Members here would effect an improvement in the quality of our performance? It is a question that I have asked many times. Curiously, we find that Parliament’s shortcoming is most frequently attributed to shortcomings in the other place. I have quoted previously the fifth report, HC 494-I, of the so-called Wright committee, published in 2002, much to the credit of that Member of the other place. The committee addressed the question of what effect legitimacy would have and said,

“the principal cause of today’s ‘widespread public disillusionment with our political system’ is the ‘virtually untrammelled control … by the Executive’ of the elected House”.

It is the fact that the other place is effectively dominated, commanded and controlled by the Executive, which now even chooses candidates for selection at constituency level and so on. That is the cause of the disillusionment with our political system. The Wright committee went on to reach two conclusions. It emphasised,

“the need ‘to ensure that the dominance of Parliament by the Executive, including the political Party machines, is reduced and not increased’”.

How would that dominance be reduced and not increased if we were to have elected Members here? Who would select those Members but the parliamentary Executive? Who would finance their campaigns? The parliamentary Executive.

For those reasons, the Wright committee reached the other conclusion that the Second Chamber—that is us—must be,

“neither rival nor replica, but genuinely complementary to the Commons”,

and, therefore, “as different as possible”. That would hardly be fulfilled if we were to now set about introducing elected Members to this House. That is the central question.

Interestingly, I started by quoting the Deputy Prime Minister as wanting to start the reform by making fundamental change here, bringing us into the 21st century. This week I came across an article in the Parliamentary Brief paper for June/July—the latest one—in which there is an article by the new Leader of the House of Commons, Sir George Young, someone for whom I have great respect. I have half a minute left and I dedicate it to Sir George Young. Under the heading, “The House rules, OK”, he starts with this paragraph:

“For years, the real scandal in British politics has been the impotence of the House of Commons. The terms of the trade between government and parliament have shifted too far in the executive’s favour. Over recent decades, it has simply become too easy for the government to sideline parliament; to push Bills through without adequate scrutiny; and to see the House more as a rubber-stamp than a proper check on executive authority”.

If that is the real scandal in British politics today, where, in heaven’s name, is there any sense in introducing and extending the role of the political Executive into this House with disastrous consequences?