Draft House of Lords Reform Bill

Debate between Lord True and Lord Ryder of Wensum

Tuesday 1st May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord True]

My Lords, it is avoided precisely by the concept of the long mandate, which is non-renewable and with no right to go on to the House of Commons. That means that someone coming here would not be able to develop a political career and go forward to be a senior Minister of the Crown.

[Lord Ryder of Wensum]

I am very grateful to my noble friend. I have known him for many decades and I would never accuse him of naivety, but I have been following his speech carefully. If the other House continues to automatically guillotine every piece of legislation, what is to prevent this House from doing exactly the same and therefore being a mirror image of the other House by not revising legislation properly?

[Lord True]

My Lords, the procedures of this House are not currently in a state which would enable the Executive to impose the guillotine. Nor would that be the case in a House in which the political element would be smaller but selected in a different way. If I may, I would like to get on.

I accept that election would change the relations between the Houses, and of course the absurd Clause 2 of the draft Bill is froth, but the balance of power between the Houses is in my submission not a zero-sum game. Both Houses, acting more assertively, could claw back powers surrendered to the Executive, and perhaps other authorities too. However, and here I agree with others, there is no point in reform to include election if you also try to restrain the powers elected Members might exercise. Aside from the risk of letting in the courts, you simply secure all the confusion that follows radical change with none of the benefits that might follow from constructive and confident challenge. If that is the game, I want no part of it.

Elected Members with a mandate will not wish to be restrained. The noble Lord, Lord Dubs, was quite right yesterday to say that nothing is so transforming as seeing those pieces of paper with crosses by your name being tipped on to a trestle table. This House would be different and would behave differently. I agree that it is equally absurd to say that an elected Peer would not respond in a representative capacity; of course he would. My noble friend Lord Trimble described the realities in Australia. Is it really suggested that a Senator should write back to an elector saying, “I’m not able to help you because I’m not allowed an office and I might upset an MP”? The idea is a farce.

I agree with my noble friend Lord Forsyth that no one in either House, particularly in the House of Commons, should be blind to the uncomfortable effects for them of creating a stronger House here which, if we go through all the trauma of change and reform, would and should be ready to challenge aspects of Commons primacy. It so happens that I differ from my noble friend because I believe that, done correctly, the benefits of such challenge might outweigh the problems many have described.

To conclude, I am not going to be the first to proclaim the merits of the Bill. I cannot accept, for example, that in the form of election we should send back to the British people another version of the proportional voting systems that have only lately been rejected in a referendum. That may be okay overseas, but I expect rather better from my Government. The voting paper on page 123 of the Joint Committee’s excellent report reminds me of one of those hospital menus where you tick the box for roast beef and Yorkshire but end up with a vegetable omelette and mushy peas. If we are to have election, please let it be simple and first past the post. I also agree that introducing election here would be a major change to our Parliament and should be put to the people in a referendum. However, I cannot agree that faced with the manifest failings of our 21st-century Parliament and the crying need—the age-old need around which Parliament grew up—to control better the actions of the Executive, the Members of this House should sit back and say to the British people, “Leave us out of it. There is no remedy in changing the composition here”. There might be, and we should consider the Bill maturely when, or if, it arrives.