House of Lords: Labour Peers’ Working Group Report

Lord Kakkar Excerpts

Thursday 19th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kakkar (CB)]

My Lords, I join in thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Bolton, for introducing the report, which makes an important contribution to the ongoing debate on the future of your Lordships’ House. I declare my interest as chairman of the House of Lords Appointments Commission and take this opportunity to thank for the first time my predecessor, the noble Lord, Lord Jay of Ewelme, for his tremendous contribution to the work of the commission in his five years as its chairman.

Noble Lords have discussed the content of the report and previous attempts to reform your Lordships’ House in this Parliament, particularly the Bill proposed by the Deputy Prime Minister which fell in the other place. Important lessons can be learnt from that experience with regard to reform of your Lordships’ House. The fundamental problem with that proposition was that it did not deal with the important question of defining the powers of elected Chambers in this Parliament. That remains a fundamental question. As the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, said, no bicameral Parliament with two elected Chambers exists which does not have a written constitution defining the powers between the two elected Chambers. It is wrong to suggest that your Lordships’ House would have opposed as a matter of principle a Bill that had been fully debated in the other place; rather it might have taken the opportunity to consider this important constitutional question and ensure that, in changing fundamentally the nature of this Parliament by having two elected Chambers, the other place was cognisant of the fact that, as was stated in the preamble to the Parliament Act 1911, Parliament would need to address the question of limiting and defining the powers of the House of Lords. That remains a fundamental issue that should be addressed by a constitutional commission. It will eventually have to be addressed if this Parliament moves from having an elected Chamber with primacy and an absolute clarity of mandate democratically delivered by our fellow citizens, and a second Chamber made up of appointed Members revising and scrutinising legislation, to having two elected Chambers.

I would like to deal with some of the issues in the report relating to appointment to your Lordships’ House and the work of the independent House of Lords Appointments Commission. Noble Lords will be aware that this independent commission was established at the time of the previous major reform of your Lordships’ House around 1999 and 2000 and discharges two important constitutional responsibilities—to nominate individuals without allegiance to party to sit on the Cross Benches and to vet all nominations to the party Benches, the Cross Benches and those of Peers who are nominated through the other available mechanisms. That vetting function is a vital, clear, but sometimes not altogether recognised, purpose of the House of Lords Appointments Commission.

In this important report, it is suggested that criteria are published that might in some way match those adopted by the House of Lords Appointments Commission, so that our fellow citizens can understand the basis upon which individuals are appointed to either the independent Cross Benches or the party-political Benches. The criteria that the House of Lords Appointments Commission uses have been refined over time since its inception and provide an important basis of clarity in terms of the qualities that the commission looks for in making appointments to the Cross Benches, and might usefully be adopted by the political parties for that purpose.

In terms of the vetting function for independent Cross-Bench Peers, the commission looks both at the criteria that define suitability to serve in your Lordships’ House and at the criteria and vetting with regard to propriety. It may be—and it has been suggested—that an independent commission might take on an assessment of suitability criteria for party-political Peers. That matter has not been discussed by the commission at this stage, and it has never been put to the commission by any Government or by either Chamber of this Parliament.

With regard to the question of participation and commitment, the House of Lords Appointments Commission has always been of the view that those wishing to serve in your Lordships’ House are able to make a substantial time commitment and are prepared to recognise that they should serve by participation in the Chamber and in the work of the Select Committees, as well as by being prepared not only to provide their expertise but make general contributions to the effective discharge of the responsibilities of this second Chamber. There is an increasing expectation by our fellow citizens outside Parliament that individuals who offer themselves to your Lordships’ House, and are prepared to accept the privilege of serving in it, do so on the basis that they make a regular and active contribution—an important point made in the report.

There is also the important question of whether the House of Lords Appointments Commission should be put on a statutory basis. This has not been considered by the new commission, which consists of an independent chairman, three independent commissioners and three commissioners appointed as a result of party-political nomination. There is no question that there could be justification for a statutory appointments commission, but the issue should be addressed once we understand what the final function of your Lordships’ House is going to be in this bicameral Parliament; once we better understand whether that function will be delivered as part of a fully elected—in which case, there would be no need for an appointments commission—fully appointed or hybrid Chamber; and, on that basis, once we understand the responsibilities that we have to discharge, how Parliament sees us going about those responsibilities, and the balance between elected and appointed Peers. The question could then be put about how a statutory appointments commission could be formed and on what basis the statutes should be delivered.