Parliament: Elected House of Lords

Lord Steel of Aikwood Excerpts

Wednesday 10th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Steel of Aikwood]

My Lords, it is time we were more frank about the vocabulary that we use in dealing with the future of the upper House. There seem to be two schools of thought. One is in favour of reform and the other is in favour of abolition. I say straightaway that if the committee of both Houses comes up with a proposal for a small, elected senate of, say, 200 Members, elected by proportional representation, not first past the post or party lists, with no constituency responsibilities, representing the devolved nations and the great regions of England, I will happily go along with that, because it would lead us towards a written federal constitution of the kind that has long been the policy of my party. However, my fear is that that is not what we will be offered. We will be offered some kind of fudge.

The phrase “wholly or mainly elected” has been co-opted from the previous Government. The words “or mainly” suggest that they have some doubts about whether they are doing the right thing and think that perhaps they should keep some of the expertise that is here already. However, simply adding nominated Members because they fear they may be making a mistake would itself be a fundamental mistake. Both the Labour and Conservative Parties believe in first past the post elections. That, too, would be a mistake.

I will repeat something I said before in this House. When I became Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament, I presided over a system that we had legislated for in which we had regional elected Members in addition to constituency Members. I spent a lot of my time sorting out differences, both in the Chamber and in my office, between Members who were elected from the regions and constituency Members—usually of different political parties, but even sometimes of the same party. The minute we have elected Members here, trespassing on the territory of constituency Members of the House of Commons, we will be in real difficulty, and the Commons will come to rue the day that it agreed to an elected upper Chamber.