House of Lords Reform

Debate between Lord Phillips of Sudbury and Lord Goodhart

Tuesday 29th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, I am strongly in favour of reform of this House and I am strongly in favour of the Bill of my noble friend Lord Steel. I hope that, at the end of the proceedings, he will press his Motion because I think it deserves support. It will give an instant impetus to what I would call sensible and organic reform and will stand to the credit of this place. Having said that, I also agree with what the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, said at the beginning of the debate when she observed that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. I do not think that this House is broke. It needs reform, certainly, but it is not broke. Sometimes I scratch my head and wonder how the other place manages constantly to point at us because if there is a broken House in our Parliament, it is, I fear, the other place.

Before I go on to say why, contrary to my instincts, I am against elections, I would say briefly that I am strongly in support of what the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, said in opening for the Opposition—that at some point we must have a referendum on the issue of election if it is pressed forward. I spoke to that effect in the debate on the Queen’s Speech and I do not propose to add to it more than to support what she said; she covered most of the key points.

To come back to elections, I was interested to hear the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, say that he thought that if 20 per cent of the House was retained on an appointed basis, he did not really see how the outcome would be very different from what we have now. I disagree with him radically for these reasons. The 80 per cent elected would, I fear, be beholden to the party members who put them on the list. Those high on the list would be particularly beholden and once in this House they would have, if you like, a powerful partisan obligation to be a great deal more observant of the Whips than Members currently feel they must be. Secondly, those personal party loyalties which are a natural—

[Lord Goodhart]

What does my noble friend think is the difference between that situation and the present situation in which appointments are made by the party leaders? Are they not equally under an obligation?

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

They are under an obligation, but a much more fuzzy and weaker one, and they are not constantly having to go back to their constituencies —as an elected Member would have to do—to justify themselves to their members. I have no doubt about that. As I was saying, the personal party loyalties, which are perfectly normal and good in our system, would not—contrary the hopes of the noble Lord, Lord Butler—allow many outsiders to appear high on the party list at elections.

In any event, the number of party members in this country is very low and still declining.