Parliament: Elected House of Lords

Lord Howe of Aberavon Excerpts

Wednesday 10th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howe of Aberavon]

My Lords, three questions ought to be answered in light of the prospect of the arrival of elected Members in this House. First, will any fault be corrected thereby? Secondly, will any improvement be achieved thereby? Both those questions have so far secured only absolutely void answers. On the contrary, virtually all the judgments on the performance of this House have been strongly positive. The House will remember the Jay White Paper—as I call it—in 1999, which stated:

“The most valued features of the present House”,

are summarised by the following epithets:

“distinctive … real expertise … well regarded … distinguished … particularly valuable”.

More important than that, perhaps, the fifth report of the Commons Public Administration Select Committee—the Wright committee—stresses the considerable virtues that should be preserved, and sets the objective of building upon the strength of the present Chamber.

I come to the third question: is there therefore any reason for change in the direction of elected Members? Only one answer is actually offered by any of the champions of change, to the effect that the present membership of the Lords lacks legitimacy, on the assumed basis that only election can confer true legitimacy. This presumption sits uneasily alongside the Wright committee finding that 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. Hence the two conclusions of the Wright committee: first, that there is a need to ensure that the dominance of Parliament by the Executive, including the political party machines, is reduced, not increased; secondly, that the second Chamber must be neither rival nor replica but genuinely complementary to the Commons and therefore as different as possible. On that basis, it surely cannot make sense that the most fundamental change proposed for the second Chamber—the introduction of elected Members—is the most likely to extend the influence of the elective dictatorship that so manifestly provokes disenchantment with the present elected House.

The Prime Minister said a few years ago that we keep what is good and we change what needs to be changed. Let him be sure that we keep what is good.