House of Lords: Reform

Lord Jopling Excerpts

Tuesday 21st June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jopling]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, ended her speech by talking about the long grass. A good many people have said that that is the best place for most of the proposals in the White Paper and the draft Bill. I agree with that but, on the other hand, there are a couple of things that need to be done and need to be done quickly. The House of Lords is far too big with a membership of around 800. Something needs to be done urgently about that. My American friends say to me, “800 people in the upper House? We manage with 104 in our upper House. Why do you need 800?”. It is urgently necessary to bring the numbers down. The suggestion to reduce the number at each election down to 300 is one bit of the proposal that I rather agree with. I would have preferred to reduce the number by 200 at the next election, then by another 200 to bring it down to 400 and for that to be the cap on the membership. So there is work to be done. I would like us to have legislation to bring this into effect at the next election and I would like the Government to take over the Steel Bill. When he winds up tomorrow, I would love to hear from the noble Lord, Lord McNally, that the Government will accept the Steel Bill.

However, the main question before us tonight is whether the House should be elected or nominated. I am opposed to the proposals in the White Paper and the draft Bill. I served in the House of Commons for 33 years and in many ways I am a child of that place. Paragraph 10 of the White Paper states:

“The Government believes that the powers of the second chamber and, in particular, the way in which they are exercised should not be extended and the primacy of the House of Commons should be preserved”.

That is just about the wildest pious hope that I have ever heard. Is it the serious view of those who are pushing this Bill that that would be the likely attitude of elected Members in this place? They just would not have that. They would want to take on more powers. It has to be understood that an elected upper House would be a direct challenge to the Commons. That is one reason why I am opposed to it.

The second reason why I am opposed is that we should not be destroying the expertise of this House. The breadth of knowledge here is unique. My noble and learned friend Lord Howe of Aberavon talked about that most eloquently. Once you start having elections and bringing elected Members into this Chamber, you will naturally have domination by the parties and therefore much greater domination by the Whips’ Office than now. I have some knowledge of the Whips’ Office in another place and all I can say is that, if you want the domination of the Whips in this place to be similar to what it is down the Corridor, then have elected Members.

I believe that the proposals in the White Paper and the draft Bill will not be agreed by Parliament—nor should they be. To enact this will dominate the rest of the Parliament. I can assure the Government of that. Instead, what we need is a fallback situation to try to get a consensus and to save the face of the parties that say that they are committed to elections. I think that it is better to abandon the proposal for direct elections and to have a House of Lords that reflects the composition of the Commons after each general election within the overall cap on membership, having allowed, say, 20 per cent of the House to go to the Cross Benches nominated by a independent body. If this House reflected the composition of the Commons after each election, you would be saving the face of those who say that there must be greater electoral legitimacy in this House. It would not go all the way, but I think that it would be an acceptable compromise, because you would give each party a quota within the 80 per cent, not including the Cross-Benchers, and you would say that the governing party could not have more than 40 per cent of the total vote. Therefore, you would preserve what most people want, I think, which is that the governing party should not have an overall majority here.

That would mean that after each election the parties would top up their membership from a list system. I heard what my old and noble friend Lord St John of Fawsley said. He does not like the list system, but I point out to him and others that the vast majority of us in this House are here on what has, to all intents and purposes, been a list system. We are here because we have been nominated by the parties, and we say that this House does a good job, so what is wrong with having each party’s quota topped up under the list system?

On the other hand, where a party reduces its membership after an election, I would have the membership of that party decide in a party caucus who should stay and who should go. We did that with the hereditary Peers. It is a perfectly well known method, which works very well. Of course, it would mean urgent action between polling day and State Opening, but that could be done as long as the preparations were made before the general election. I dislike very much age limits and set terms. I think that 15 years is a disgrace and I reject it totally. The fact is that the members of each party group know best who is past it and who does not pull their weight. This is what happened with the hereditary Peers and I do not see why it should not happen again.

It is said that a good idea is a proposal whose time has come. It may be that my ideas are not yet ripe, but my hope is that their time will come. I have circulated a paper on these ideas to many noble Lords and I am happy to make it available to anybody who asks for it. I hope that it will be looked at.