Draft House of Lords Reform Bill

Debate between Lord Richard and Lord Forsyth of Drumlean

Tuesday 1st May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Richard]

That this House takes note of the report from the Joint Committee on the draft House of Lords Reform Bill. (HL Paper 284)

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

My Lords, having listened to many of the speeches yesterday—I confess that I missed some of them because I went to the theatre to see a play appropriately called “The Collaborators”—and having read the others, it is difficult to know what to say about this debate that is different. But I wonder whether your Lordships remember the Austin Allegro. The Austin Allegro was probably the worst car ever built. It was completely unreliable, it had a totally underpowered engine, and its big selling feature was that it had a square steering wheel. This car was designed by the management for political reasons. They ignored the people who knew about cars and design and it was meant to save British Leyland. It was the management’s answer. In fact, they were so convinced that it would save the company that it was nicknamed the “flying pig”.

I do not know whether noble Lords can see the parallel that I am drawing here, but it seems to me that this Bill, which has been so comprehensively filleted by the Joint Committee, has many similarities to the Austin Allegro in so far as the Deputy Prime Minister believes it will save the Liberal Party at the next election. It was conceived for political reasons and without any recognition of the needs of the consumer and the customer—in this case the wider electorate.

The case is being made for “reform”. However, I think “reform” is the wrong word here because actually it is the abolition of this House that we are talking about and we are talking as well about the destruction of the House of Commons as we know it. So “reform” is the wrong word to use. It is the right word to use in the context of the Bill of my noble friend Lord Steel, which for too long has been ignored by the Government for reasons that are incomprehensible to me. The Government could perfectly well bring about some reform that would deal with most of the issues and avoid all the difficulties that the Joint Committee has so comprehensively illustrated.

I want to deal with two of the fibs which have been repeated during the course of our debate. The first is that this was a Conservative manifesto commitment. It was not a manifesto commitment. Our commitment was to seek a consensus on Lords reform. One has only to listen to the chiding given by the chairman of the Joint Committee to the excellently produced alternative report to realise that there is no consensus. A casual reading of the committee’s report will show that we have failed to reach consensus. So as far as I am concerned, as a Conservative, we have discharged our manifesto commitment.

The second fib which is told is that it was part of the coalition agreement. The agreement was that the Deputy Prime Minister would convene a hand-picked committee to look at this issue with a view to producing a Motion by December 2010. But as the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, pointed out as a member of that committee, it failed to do so. In fact, it failed to reach any agreement at all, to the point where the committee stopped having meetings because it was impossible to make progress. So on both of these counts, the obligations of the coalition agreement and the obligations of the Conservative manifesto have been discharged.

My noble friend Lord Strathclyde has come up with a new definition of consensus. “Consensus” is what the House of Commons votes for on a three-line Whip on a constitutional Bill. The play I saw last night was about Stalin, but not even he would have used that argument. I have to say, listening on the radio this morning to a beleaguered Minister trying to persuade the chief executive of British Airways, or whatever it calls itself nowadays—the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, may be able to help me with that—who had explained that there are queues at Heathrow, that they are not really as long as he said they were, made me wonder this: what does the country think? Do people think that it is better for us to spend money on 450 superannuated politicians rather than on immigration officers at Heathrow to deal with these problems? As the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, pointed out, this is not an issue that is central to the problems facing our country.

Trusts (Capital and Income) Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Richard and Lord Forsyth of Drumlean

Wednesday 28th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Richard]

The original date of publication was to be 16 April. That is what the committee accepted, and that was my view. I took the view very strongly that the report should not be published unless and until this House was sitting. It would be quite wrong to publish the report when the House of Commons was sitting and the House of Lords was not. The Government then chose to change the date from 16 April, so that we have an extra week’s holiday and come back on 23 April. In those circumstances, the committee decided, and I totally agreed with it, that the publication date should be 23 April not 16 April.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

My Lords, I appreciate that this is not a matter for the Leader of the House directly, but the report on the BBC this morning of the leak suggesting that 12 bishops will be retained also contained the information that the Government would be content to accept that. That suggests that people in the Government are talking about the report, which would be very damaging because it gives the impression that the Government and the committee are working hand-in-hand when, of course, the committee is completely independent. If my noble friend is saying that we cannot have a Statement because the Government could not respond, surely it is inappropriate for people to be briefing the BBC in these terms.

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, nobody could doubt the integrity of the noble Lord, Lord Richard, but it would reassure the House if he were able to indicate that no copies of this report will be distributed to anyone before the embargo date and that no member of the committee will be in possession of the report. As a former chairman of a Select Committee, I know that that is not normal practice, and I hope it will be the case here. I think everybody in this House will applaud the decision made by the noble Lord, Lord Richard, about 23 April and will endorse the Leader of the Opposition’s request that this report be debated as soon as is reasonably possible, ideally before Prorogation.