House of Lords: Reform

Lord Stewartby Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stewartby]

My Lords, one of the problems of speaking fairly far down the batting list is that most of what needs to be said has already been said, several times. For the convenience of the House, I shall confine myself to do no more than identify a number of areas where I am more concerned now, as a result of listening to much of the debate, than I was before. I certainly do not favour abolition, even if it is creeping abolition over several years. On the other hand, it has become increasingly important to tackle the issue of reform. Like many others, I commend my noble friend Lord Steel for his work on that and hope that we can progress it, either on its own or in conjunction with part of the draft Bill in front of us.

What bothers me most is that it appears that those who drew up the Bill had certain preconceived notions of what would and would not work, and how they wanted it to happen. However, one must consider function in broad terms and identify its requirements if one is to give it authority through our parliamentary system. I do not see that that happened. Instead, we have a proposed composition of a rather extraordinary kind, which contains a lot of elements that are individually very hard to justify.

We have heard a lot about the 15-year appointment period. I think that that is completely unworkable. If you are elected and for some reason do not do anything much in the parliamentary system, you can go on holiday for 15 years—which might appeal to some people.

Do we really need another elected body? We are always complaining that we have too many elections—to central government, to local government and to the devolved Administrations. Do we want to put in yet another tier?

I missed the point about Members of a reformed House being paid less than Members of Parliament. That is an extraordinary twist and I do not think that the Bill will get anywhere, even if its fundamental proposal of elected membership makes progress.

When dealing with an electoral system, it would be better to have one elected House than two so that responsibility remains clear-cut. There will undoubtedly be challenges from one House to the other—it will not always be the upper challenging the lower—and the Bill will change the relationship between the two. It will change the way in which they carry out their functions and it is a huge leap in the dark.

One can be sure that any upper House of the kind proposed would seek to extend its competence. One has only to look at the EU or Scottish Parliaments to see that the new body would desire immediately to widen its competence across the board and would demand more powers; that is so certain that one does not even have to justify it.

On a practical level, I worry that the process will effectively exclude any parliamentarians who continue to know what is going on in the outside world. For some years, the House of Commons has made it evident that outside jobs are frowned on. Here, all Peers are part-timers and get a lot of experience from what they do outside the House. If they are replaced by 300 professional politicians, how will that enable the new body to bring all the necessary experience and knowledge to bear on its parliamentary work?

The worst thing about the 15-year figure is that there will be no accountability for those involved. One will not get anything that could be described fairly as a democratic system in the full sense if there is no accountability once somebody has been elected in the first instance. That is such a gaping omission that it invalidates a lot of the concepts behind that part of the draft Bill.

The question of who would stand and what we would do about existing Peers with outside jobs and so forth are unresolved areas, but they will need a great deal more thought and attention if there is to be any prospect of them getting near legislation. I do not believe that legitimacy depends entirely on election. In our society there are many examples of people with considerable responsibilities but who are not elected to their posts. Judges are the obvious case, but they are not alone. Throughout the structure of public affairs we have people like the Comptroller and Auditor-General and the ombudsmen. A long list could be produced of those who are not elected but who exercise very substantial power. So the legitimacy argument is not quite as helpful to the Government’s cause as it might seem at first sight.

I hope that this debate will focus attention on many of the most difficult and worrying areas of the process. I have said quite enough already, but I conclude by saying that those who are going to have to try to work this system deserve our thanks and admiration.