House of Lords Reform

Lord Paddick Excerpts

Tuesday 15th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, I start by paying tribute to the contribution of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lichfield. We, too, regret that he has not spent more time in the House during his service, and we wish him well for the future.

As the final speaker for the Liberal Democrats, it is my duty to put forward our party’s position, and I can do no better than to repeat the words of my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness. The Liberal Democrats and our predecessors have called for a democratically elected second Chamber for more than 100 years. It is also important to look at its purpose. This House is a revising Chamber that holds the Government to account and asks the other place to think again from time to time. As my noble and learned friend said, the best way forward would be a constitutional convention that would look at devolution and the democratic legitimacy not only of this House but of the other place. The only way for the Lords to reflect the democratic view of the people is for it to be an elected Chamber. If the Conservative Government want to address the issue of representation in the Lords by bringing forward proposals for an elected second Chamber, Liberal Democrat Peers will eagerly vote for it. But it is not likely to happen.

In the mean time, we can look at ways in which things can be improved. As to whether there are too many Liberal Democrat Peers in the Chamber, I find it somewhat confusing that noble Lords from UKIP seem to be attacking us when we are, and always have been, advocates of proportional representation. I know that the phrase “lies, damned lies and statistics” has been well used, but I shall quote figures that differ from those quoted by the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch. In the general election, 7.9% of votes were cast for the Liberal Democrats, and when you add the Liberal Democrat Members of the House of Commons to the Liberal Democrat Members of the House of Lords, we have 7.7% of parliamentarians. You can cast the numbers whichever way you like. As my noble friend Lord Greaves pointed out, it is interesting that it is only now when, according to the votes cast in the general election, the Liberal Democrats are overrepresented in the House of Lords—whereas until then we were underrepresented—that there is this cry for proportional representation.

The noble Viscount, Lord Astor, asked me whether we will conform to the Salisbury convention. We will comply with the Salisbury convention as much as the Conservative Party adhered to it when there was a Labour Government and the Conservatives were in opposition. In fact, a committee on the conventions of the UK Parliament recognised the right of the House of Lords, in extreme and exceptional circumstances, to say no. What extreme and exceptional circumstances are is a matter for debate.

I feel somewhat sorry for the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, and I have some sympathy for what he said about not having heard many convincing arguments about the need to reduce the size of the House. If we go down to 500 or 600 dedicated and enthusiastic Members, all determined to prove their worth, would Questions be any more genteel than now? Would speakers lists be any shorter? As the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Bolton, mentioned, every time the size of this House is mentioned in the media, it is said that it is the second largest legislative chamber after China’s National People’s Congress, and we need to address the public perception that we are bloated and far too big. The way to do that, as many noble Lords have suggested, is for this House to match or be slightly smaller than the House of Commons.

The noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, spoke about the need for an information and rebuttal office, and I thoroughly agree. We have been subjected to a completely one-sided attack on the reputation of the House of Lords in recent weeks. Clearly there is need for reform, and some party leaders’ recent appointments have made this institution a sitting duck, but what has not been thought through is how to retain the best aspects of the House of Lords while dealing with the worst. My more than 30 years’ experience of the Metropolitan Police Service has taught me a number of things: the importance of real experts, as opposed to people who think they know the answers; corporate memory; and strategic thinking. If you are spending a lot of time campaigning and trying to win or keep your seat, you are concentrating on that issue more, perhaps, than on the legislative process. We need people who are free to concentrate on holding the Government to account and going through legislation line by line, as we do so well in in this House. I did say that these are my views, rather than those of my party.

Partisanship can be put on one side in this House, as we saw during the passage of the Modern Slavery Act. More than 100 amendments were made to legislation that had already been through the process in the other place. How much better is the Modern Slavery Act as a result of the experts and experience in this Chamber than it would have been if we had no House of Lords at all or if the House of Lords simply reflected a similar make-up to the other place?

Three major questions need to be looked at. Obviously, if we have a wholly democratic second Chamber, then primacy becomes an issue and that needs to be addressed. The second issue is how do we retain the expertise and experience that we have in this House, particularly among the Cross-Benchers? Again, in a wholly democratically elected Chamber, that would have to be dealt with. The third issue, as I have already mentioned, is the ability of Members of this House to dedicate themselves to the legislative process, to holding the Government to account and to campaigning on important issues, rather than having to spend a lot of time convincing either members of their own party or members of the public that they are deserving of an elected place in this Chamber.

The House of Lords is too big. It is carrying too many passengers and some people who are being appointed do not appear to me to be likely to add much value to the business of the House while damaging its reputation. To the critics of this place I would ask: how do you avoid throwing the baby out with the bath-water? We need practical suggestions for something better than we have now, rather than destructive criticism.