Extension of Franchise (House of Lords) Bill [HL]

Lord Sherbourne of Didsbury Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 19th July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sherbourne of Didsbury (Con)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Naseby, and I support the Bill. Before I come on to the main point that I want to make in my speech, I shall pick up one of the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Dubs. He made a very fundamental point about the privilege of voting in general elections. I have always been struck by the empowering way in which general elections happen. Millions of people go into their local library, village hall or church hall. They go into a booth, take the stub of a pencil on the end of a piece of string and put a cross on a scrap of paper. They put that scrap of paper into a tin box and, very often, the next day the entire Government leave office. That is the most empowering thing that we do in a democracy. I happen to like the fact that it happens the next day, because it reminds people that they themselves did it; it was not done in smoke-filled rooms. I remember how empowered I felt when I first voted, and I have voted in every single election, as I suspect most people in this House have. However, the one thing we are not allowed to do is vote in general elections. We are denied that empowering and unifying experience, which is so important to our country.

I support this Bill for one fundamental reason, which is taxation. Everybody in this House pays income tax, VAT and excise duties; they possibly pay capital gains tax; their families might pay inheritance tax. Quite rightly, we in this House do not decide taxation—I agree with that. Members of Parliament in the House of Commons decide that, but we cannot elect those Members. We cannot have any say at all on the levels of taxation imposed upon us. If we were talking about some third-world or newly independent country where they denied certain people the right to elect the people who impose taxes on them, we would be horrified.

I want to give the House two figures. At the last election, there were 46 million people on the electoral roll. Every one of them was entitled to vote for the Members of Parliament who decide taxation. There are 778 people who cannot do that—Members of this House. We are denied that right. This is more than just a minor anomaly; it is fundamentally wrong.

I want to pick up some of the arguments that I suspect—I may be wrong—my noble friend the Minister will deploy in arguing against this Bill, as I am sure he will. The first is that we should not do this via piecemeal reform. This is how House of Lords reform has been done for the last 100 years. There is no prospect of a coherent, comprehensive piece of legislation coming forward. We have changed the composition of the Lords, we have allowed retirement and we now have an attempt to reduce the size of the House. I looked back to see what excuses had been made against individual piecemeal reforms of this House in the past, and I was fascinated by the arguments used against the policy proposed in the 1960s by Viscount Stansgate, better known as Anthony Wedgwood Benn, who wanted to allow hereditary Peers to renounce their peerage. One of the arguments used against that was deployed by the Garter King of the day. He argued that allowing peers to renounce their peerage would subject their wives to what he called “social demolition”. Very weird arguments are used against piecemeal reform, but the only way this House will reform itself in the foreseeable future is precisely by piecemeal reform.

The other argument that will no doubt be used is that there are some technical flaws in the Bill. I do not know if there are or not, but if there are, they can be corrected. This week, we had the Northern Ireland Bill that went through the House in two days. There were technical flaws that had to be corrected, and they were corrected extremely efficiently and swiftly.

The third argument will no doubt be that this is not the right time. Of course, I fear that this Bill will not reach the statute book, because we will come to the end of this Session at some point.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

Do not bank on it.

[Lord Sherbourne of Didsbury]

I want to put this point to the Minister, and I would like him to answer it if he would. Does he at least accept the fundamental principle that there is something wrong when people who have taxes imposed upon them have no right to decide who imposes them?