House of Lords Reform

Lord Skelmersdale Excerpts

Tuesday 29th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Skelmersdale]

My Lords, in discussing this subject, I believe that we should take a firm and objective view of ourselves and what we do or, rather, the results of what we do. When all is said and done, we are a House of Parliament with very few powers, fewer even than when WS Gilbert wrote that we,

“Did nothing in particular,

And did it very well”.

As my noble friend Lord Cope pointed out, we often do not use the powers that we have. We credit ourselves—and, to be fair, outsiders do too—on being an efficient and cheap revising Chamber, not only in discussing potential Acts of Parliament, but in general debates, Starred Questions and in looking at government policies or, sometimes, the lack of them. I must ask noble Lords to look beyond this and consider what happens then.

The noble Lord, Lord Richard, is right. The answer is precisely nothing, except in very rare cases until or unless the Government of the day accept our findings. That is why I believe that a better description of our activities is “advisory”. It follows then that we are not so very different from any other quango anywhere in the world, but with one notable exception. We are the biggest by far. I am sure that it is principally this that has, over the past few years, put the wind up the leaders of all the political parties. I am therefore delighted by the formation of the Leader’s Group to be chaired by my noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral.

We are, of course, smaller than we were before the great emasculation, a phrase that does not gain universal approval. On 13 October 1999, we mustered 1,213— technically anyway, as 117 noble Lords had either no writs of summons or had taken leave of absence. That is around the size of the roll of Eton. At the beginning of the next Parliament, we had reduced to 674, with only four Peers on leave of absence. Today, including the three noble Lords we have just welcomed, we have 745. As my noble friend Lord Strathclyde said at the beginning of this debate, it would not surprise any of us if we did not number 800 by this time next year.

How can we possibly justify this? The answer is that we cannot. Indeed, could we do the same job so well and so inoffensively with less than the average daily attendance of 400? Do we even need 800 Peers to achieve attendance of 400? I doubt it very much. We must correct it. My solution is rather different from the announced policies of the main political parties, which got approval for them from a series of votes in another place in the last Parliament. This has resulted in a quick and dirty solution; that is, to have a substantially elected chamber. It is beyond peradventure that this will be the guts of the draft Bill that will be the product of the committee comprising the great and the good of the main political parties, all of whom are members of one or other Front Bench. My noble friend on the Front Bench will have noticed more than a little resentment here.

Before they do further work, I strongly suggest that the Government organise a free vote in another place to ascertain the views of a substantially different House. More than that, I would like to see a self-denying ordinance by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister of not recommending the creation of any more new Peers to Her Majesty once the parliamentary parties in this House are balanced. There should be no more mid-term lists except to correct the natural wastage of those that go to the great debating chamber in the sky, and there should certainly be no resignation honours unless we invent non-parliamentary life Peers. There should also be a statutory limit on the suggestions of the Appointments Commission.

Last, but not least, there should be no question of an elected House for all the reasons that have and will be given by other noble Lords. Another place will live to regret it if there is, unless we are to have what the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, might have called an elected poodle. That is what it seems the Government want.