Queen’s Speech

Debate between Lord Thomas of Gresford and Lord Grocott

Monday 14th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, I thought that it would be helpful to today’s discussion if we cast our minds back a couple of weeks to the elections that took place across Britain. I am referring in particular to the elections regarding the 10 directly elected mayors. As the House will remember, the suggestion was that there should be 10 directly elected mayors in 10 of the great cities of Britain. This proposal was supported by the leadership of the three main political parties, which is always a rather worrying state of affairs. It was argued that it would be a far more democratic system that would provide greater accountability and represent change, and these days we are always in favour of change. I need hardly remind the House of the results of those elections by the good people of Birmingham, Coventry and sundry other cities. When presented with this proposition, roughly three-quarters of the electorate could barely stifle a yawn before they changed the subject. The quarter, roughly, who actually went to the polling station voted pretty overwhelmingly and, I am happy to say, nine out of 10 said, “No thank you very much. We don’t think our present system is broken. We will carry on as before”.

I will leave noble Lords to their own judgment as to the relevance of that to the discussion of Lords reform because so much is unknown about Lords reform, despite all the discussions we have had so far. We know that the Government will probably introduce a Bill, but we do not know whether the Bill will be largely the draft Bill or will be substantially changed in the light of the Select Committee’s report. We do not know when it will be introduced. We certainly do not know what its passage will show or whether or when it will reach this House. We do not know whether the Parliament Act will be applied, if necessary, and we do not know whether there will be a referendum at the end of everything.

There are a lot of do not knows, but I would like to put to the House something that I do know, I think. We cannot judge how the thing will end, but we can make a pretty educated guess on the direction of travel. I am sure that it is pretty much everyone’s experience, as well as mine, that the direction of travel on this debate about whether we should have an elected House has been slowly but inexorably moving towards those of us who say that an elected second Chamber would be bad for our constitution. If there is anyone around who previously thought that an appointed House along the present lines, but not quite, was a good idea, but who then read the draft Bill and thought, “Eureka! I used to favour an appointed House but, my word, this is a cracking little Bill and has certainly convinced me”—I have not met that person yet—perhaps they could drop a note to the Government because I am sure they would be very pleased to hear that.

I do not want to win this battle as, simply on the basis of procedural wrangles, it threatens to be deals between political parties or perhaps even between Front Benches. I want to win this argument because I want to see it concluded and put to bed for a very substantial period. It is very important that that happens. Perhaps I may be partisan because, obviously, the party I care about more than any other, and always have, is my dear old Labour Party. Should we win the next election, as I fervently hope, and should this attempt at Lords reform fail, I hope that we will not find ourselves mired in a commitment to introduce another Bill which will take an inordinate amount of time and trouble to no discernable benefit to the electorate. Perhaps I should remind those newer members of my party who seem to think that an elected second Chamber is in our DNA and is what the Labour Party has always believed in and campaigned for, that they do not have memories anything like as good as those of some of us on these Benches. I actually took the precaution—I never thought I would—of reading the 11 election manifestos of my dear old party since 1970. That is an arbitrary date, and was the first general election that I lost. Since 1970, there have been 11 general elections. Only twice did the Labour Party have a commitment to a directly elected second Chamber in its manifesto. Incidentally, we lost both those elections. I do not claim that there is a direct relationship between the two things but it may be worth a note of caution.

I commend to the House the reference to Lords reform in the 2005 general election manifesto. I expect the ears of my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer to prick up at this. The 2005 Labour manifesto said:

“Labour believes that a reformed Upper Chamber must be effective, legitimate and more representative without challenging the primacy of the House of Commons”.

I think that is a tremendous script and am sure my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer will also think so. We ought to; we wrote it.

Without being overconfident, I am confident about the way that things are progressing because I think we are winning the argument. I will not repeat points that have been made already but we have surely conclusively won the argument on powers. Clause 2 of the draft Bill is ridiculous. It just asserts the primacy of the House of Commons with absolutely no evidence to explain how that would be sustained. The Government have still failed to answer the question that others and I have put repeatedly in public—that is, parliamentary—and private meetings, which is simply this, on powers. If one House votes to go to war and the other House votes not to go to war, following a request from the Government for war powers, where on earth does that leave the Government?

It is no use saying that it works abroad. It is the weakest argument of the lot to say that things work in other systems overseas. For the most part, other systems overseas have written constitutions that precisely delineate the powers of the two Chambers. We are not in that position. We are in a position in which the two Chambers have pretty much the same kinds of powers, but most of the time this House simply decides not to exercise them to the full. That is why we have a good relationship between the two Chambers. Therefore, I will not trouble the House. The point about powers has been well argued already.

There has been no attempt to argue otherwise by the Government, or by the previous Government, under Jack Straw. I had the same sense of frustration arguing with Ministers then as I have now. They refused to address the problem, just saying, “Oh, we have the Parliament Act so everything will be all right”.

The other argument is more difficult but I think that those of us who are against a directly elected House have won it. It is the argument about democracy. I will not expand on this because no one could improve on the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Norton, on Thursday. He simply made the point, which I shall try to make in a sentence, that our democratic system depends on the people electing the Commons, the Commons determining the Government and the people being able to throw out the Government in a general election. To have a directly elected second Chamber would be an immediate and obvious threat to that core of the democratic legitimacy of our constitution. Therefore, I say quite confidently that a directly elected second Chamber would not enhance our democracy; it would damage it.

I put this as the final paradox. I was pleased when I realised that this was the case. The strongest—although not to me—and most frequently repeated argument that one hears from supporters of an elected House—

[Lord Thomas of Gresford]

The noble Lord referred to his party’s manifestos. In 1912, Keir Hardie and Arthur Henderson campaigned on the basis of the abolition of the House of Lords. The current policy, as enunciated by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, is for 100% election. Just to clarify this, is the noble Lord saying that 1999 brought about the final apotheosis of the House of Lords and that it should remain in that form for ever?

[Lord Grocott]

The noble Lord tempts me down the line of being even more of a constitutional anorak than I am. I could read out for him, but I will not, the commitments of the Labour Party on Lords reform to sundry general elections over the years. There is no common pattern within it, except that quite frequently there is reference to controlling the powers of the second Chamber, but when it comes to composition, there has been absolutely no consistency. I am quite happy to put a copy of this deeply researched note in the Library should anyone wish to read it.

I come to what I think is the final paradox of where we are in Lords reform. It is interesting that I should have had an intervention from a Liberal Democrat because I have heard it said frequently that, somehow or other, an Act now on Lords reform would be the conclusion of a 100-years struggle—we have heard that previously, although I do not know who has been struggling but most of my constituents were not—started by that great Liberal Government of Asquith and Lloyd George, and that this is somehow a conclusion.

I ask the House to consider the following proposition. Were Lloyd George around today and sitting at the other end of the Chamber—we will call him Dave in order to keep it contemporary—his colleague alongside him might say, “Dave, have you seen this new Lords reform Bill?”. Lloyd George might say, “No, I haven’t seen it. What’s in it?”, and his colleague might say, “It’s a great Bill which makes the Lords more powerful and will enable them to throw out more Commons legislation. What is more, in due course it will be able to start blocking Budgets. What do you think of that?”. I do not think that David Lloyd George would be too struck with that proposition.

I say to the House that in terms of this simple proposition, which I hope does not sound too egotistical on the part of those of us who take this view, if any heirs to Lloyd George are sitting around in Parliament at the moment, they would be saying, “We are protecting the primacy of the House of Commons”. I am confident that that is what Lloyd George would want to see, were he here. It is certainly what I say and what most of my colleagues have been saying. I hope that the Government will listen to this and realise that it is not just a bad Bill, it is increasingly a friendless Bill. They would do themselves and the country a favour if they were simply to drop it.