House of Lords: Reform

Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank]

My Lords, if I upset many of my noble friends on these Liberal Democrat Benches, I am sorry, but I remain opposed to a wholly or partially elected House. That was my view when I joined this House nearly 20 years ago and, since then, it has remained broadly the same. As a former leader of the Liberal Democrat Peers, and to avoid any misunderstanding, I told the Deputy Prime Minister last summer where I stood. The publication of the draft Bill and the appointment of yet another committee have strengthened my conviction.

Many noble Lords will remember, and will have experienced in the House of Commons, the 1968 Bill on reform of the Lords, which was abandoned. I fear that this Bill, as it stands, will also run into the sand. With a coalition heavy legislative programme for this Parliament, Lords reform will inescapably block or delay more important issues. There will be no consensus, which there ought to be on a very major change in the nation’s constitution.

On the day when the Deputy Prime Minister made his Statement about the Bill on 17 May, I listened to the 10 o’clock BBC television news. The first item was the Queen in Ireland; the second, 4.5 per cent inflation; the third, a legal matter; the fourth, the Scottish First Minister wanting an early referendum; the fifth, the Greek economic crisis; the sixth, defence costs and international aid; and then, at 10.25 pm, reform of the Lords. That was the order of priority; Lords reform was at the bottom of the pile. On the best available evidence, that is the order of priority for the public at large. In the last election, I do not think we heard much about Lords reform on the doorsteps of Sheffield Hallam or the Forest of Dean, the constituency of Mark Harper, the Constitution Minister.

As the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, has reminded us, the Deputy Prime Minister drew attention in his Statement to what he called the “roots” of the coalition's proposals. He referred to the preamble of the Parliament Act 1911, by which Herbert Asquith's Government intended to substitute for the House of Lords,

“a Second Chamber constituted on a popular instead of hereditary basis”.

Nick Clegg continued:

“There has been progress in the intervening years … We should see ourselves as completing that work”.—[Official Report, Commons, 17/5/11; col. 155.]

However, “completing that work” is not the right approach. If we are to have a better second Chamber, in whatever form, the starting point for legislation should be now—how things are—not 100 years ago, when the circumstances were very different.

In 1911, the choice was between a wholly hereditary House and an elected House. That was all. There was no suggestion of a peerage that could last only one generation. Today, and since 1958, we have very many life Peers.

Asquith never considered or imagined the option now available, and he would have been amazed by the range of professions and talents that we now have—the diversity, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe, and others have put it—with a great deal of differing experience. We do not know what Asquith would think about reform in 2011, but we certainly cannot assume that he would have preferred an elected House.

As for a “popular” basis in 1911, “popular” meant only men. At that time, Asquith, was, in his own words,

“a strenuous opponent of the extension of the political franchise to women”.

He was certainly not a model for women today.

The Parliament Act was not a carefully considered proposal, a long prepared democratic measure, but a by-product of the 1909 Budget and a constitutional crisis. The economic, social, moral, cultural and political climate of those times was very different. History is history; Asquith was Asquith. Reform of the Lords should be judged on merit in the year 2011, not in the spirit of the Liberal high noon in the Edwardian twilight.

For many years, despite the 1958 life peerages legislation, reformers assumed, in one breath, that getting rid of the unacceptable hereditary principle meant an elected House, but that was never the choice. My own preference then, and now, was for ending the hereditary principle and for necessary reform built on a life-Peer House.

In yesterday’s debate, we were reminded of the events in 1999, when the House agreed to retain the hereditary principle through electing 90 “excepted” Peers. I shall not bother going further into the complications and course of the Weatherill amendment—there is a very good House of Lords Library Note on it—but it was nonsense from the start. The proceedings for by-election under Standing Order No. 10 have become a subject for ridicule. To repeal the Weatherill amendment and finally end the hereditary principle in the Lords should be the essence of reform.

It follows that I join in the widespread support in the House for my noble friend Lord Steel's Bill, and I would much prefer action now rather than a long examination of this coalition's draft document and, I am afraid, fruitless conclusions.

The House of Commons and the House of Lords are joined together in a single Parliament. The balance of powers, including the powers of the Executive, works very well despite some rough edges. After scrutiny, debate and negotiation in Committee, including the ping-pong, the elected House of Commons and overall democratic legitimacy eventually wins, and so it should be.