Constitution: Gracious Speech

Lord Wills Excerpts

Thursday 25th June 2015 Lords Chamber

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[Lord Wills]

That this House takes note of the implications of the constitutional changes proposed in the Gracious Speech.

[Lord Wills (Lab)]

My Lords, in 2007, when the last Labour Government launched their programme of constitutional reform, the political editor of the BBC pronounced that this was all very well but nobody would be talking about it down at the Dog and Duck. Last year, in the aftermath of the Scottish referendum, the same Nick Robinson said that such constitutional issues were,

“what politics is really about—who should have power over what?”.

He was right on both occasions.

Constitutional issues are often esoteric, but they are also always important. They reflect and determine how power is distributed in our country and, in turn, that determines how every other question in our public life will be answered. These issues are particularly important now. The politics of our democracy are febrile. Too many voters feel adrift and alienated, disillusioned and distrustful of politicians and suspicious of the established and powerful. In response, successive Governments have sought to make changes in the wiring of our democracy. There have been attempts to rebalance power away from Westminster and Whitehall, to reform Parliament and to restrict the power of the Executive. Now, this Government have announced themselves with a raft of new constitutional proposals in their manifesto and in the gracious Speech.

The Government are right to recognise the need for reform. Our constitutional arrangements urgently need to adapt to changing political realities. The union is fraying. Our relationship with the European Union is now in play. Everyone agrees that your Lordships’ House needs to change but very few agree how. At the last election, UKIP received nearly 4 million votes and has one Member of Parliament, and the SNP has 56 out of 59 MPs in Scotland and not a single Member in your Lordships’ House. George Osborne is the only member of the Cabinet with a constituency in the north of England. The main parties are increasingly sequestered in their redoubts. This is a fragmenting polity. Only 16% of the British people trust politicians to tell the truth but 31% trust bankers. Constitutional reform is needed.

Some of the Government’s proposals are welcome. Their measures that significantly devolve power to cities, Scotland, Wales and Ireland have received widespread support and will help to recreate a sense of belonging that is so important in countering this toxic sense of alienation. These reforms build on previous developments. The other proposals also address long-standing concerns.

However, the more closely those other proposals are scrutinised, the harder it is to avoid the conclusion that they are partisan and short-sighted, and driven not by the needs of the nation but by the short-term, sectarian interests of the Conservative Party. They do not adopt a one-nation approach, as promised in the gracious Speech; they are a departure from the welcome custom that successful and enduring constitutional reform needs to be framed by proportion and consensus. I want to discuss this in relation to four key proposals which, taken together, reveal an unmistakable pattern of behaviour. I am pleased to see that so many distinguished Members of your Lordships’ House from all sides are going to speak after me to provide their wisdom and insight into these issues and others, I hope.

Perhaps the most glaring example of this Government’s narrow and partisan approach is in their approach towards the union. For more than 300 years, the United Kingdom has in my view been a uniquely successful enterprise in multicultural and multinational living, but it now faces what one can only say is an existential threat. For those of us who care about the future of this remarkable institution, this is a time for statesmanship and vision, a time to bring the people of these islands together again. But what we are getting from the Government instead is a short-sighted, self-interested approach to one of the most difficult and intractable constitutional questions. The Daily Mail reported that on the night of the Scottish referendum result, over a curry dinner, the Prime Minister decided that he was,

“going to explode a bomb in Labour territory”.

That bomb was giving English MPs a veto over matters affecting only England, which it is widely agreed will tend to give that veto to the Conservative Party. It constitutes and continues the process of setting nation against nation which is so destructive of the union. The Chancellor of the Exchequer is reported to have been an enthusiast for this bomb—relishing, it is reported, the “raw politics” of it.

The Prime Minister and the Chancellor did not try to build on the Scottish referendum result to cement the union. Instead, the very next morning they went out to explode a bomb in Labour territory. Once the veto is scrutinised in detail, its flaws reveal themselves. Quite apart from the technical problems of definition, critically, it ignores the principle of the need for differential protections for the minority nations of the United Kingdom. The Economist chided its favoured party of government by saying:

“Britain’s union is a delicate balancing act. It is the only stable rich country of its kind: one in which the population of one constituent part is much greater than all the others put together”.

That Conservative bomb on Labour territory was followed by another one during the recent election campaign with that party’s scare stories about Labour and the SNP—again setting the nations of this United Kingdom one against the other. On this I can do no better than to quote one of your Lordships who sits on the Conservative Benches opposite and who has unsurpassed experience in these issues. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, was quoted in the Guardian in April as saying of his party’s approach that:

“It doesn’t seem to me to be a very good policy to try and deal with the rise of Scottish nationalism by stirring up English nationalism. I think you have to, we need to find ways of binding the United Kingdom together, of binding that partnership together”.

That is exactly so. The survival of the United Kingdom is not a tactical munition to be chucked around in some politician’s jape after a curry dinner.

That brings me to this Government’s onslaught on the Human Rights Act, which among other things was designed to help foster a sense of belonging by providing the individual citizen with protection against the overweening power of the state. One rule of law must command broad support in society for it to be sustained. It should not come at the price of requiring majority support for every leaky judgment. That would leave minorities and individuals defenceless. We forget at our peril where the orthodoxies of majorities can lead. Modern human rights were born from the terrible experiences of the 20th century, where the protections that we take for granted—democracy and the rule of law—proved frail and millions and millions paid a terrible price.

The Government’s commitment to scrap the Human Rights Act is intended to suggest that human rights judgments in the courts that have provoked disquiet in sections of the media and the population will no longer occur. That is simply not true, not least because many such cases have resulted from judgments not in British courts but in the European Court of Human Rights. If the Government then seek to satisfy those populist demands by also withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights, as some senior Ministers are reported to be advocating, they will be turning their backs on those fundamental protections for the individual.

Noble Lords should not take my word for that. In 2009 Jesse Norman, now a respected Conservative Member of Parliament and chair of the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, and Peter Oborne, a prominent right-wing commentator, wrote this:

“As a General Election approaches, it is important for the Conservative Party to drive home the message that it stands for freedom, decency and British liberty. It should drop its opposition to the Human Rights Act”.

The fact that it has not, again, speaks for the short-term and partisan nature of this Government’s approach.

Anyone who still has doubts about that should chart, as I have done, the occasions of the Prime Minister’s public pronouncements on the Human Rights Act. Their timing is characterised by coming after the Prime Minister has had some difficulty or other with the more extreme dwellers on his party’s right wing. The Human Rights Act is the meat that he throws from the sledge to keep those wolves at bay. The protection of the individual against the state really should be more precious than that.

Finally, I want to address two issues that are perhaps so technical that the Government might have hoped that they would sneak through without anyone in the media or the public taking much notice. Both of them will nevertheless fundamentally alter the way in which elections are fought in this country and how Governments are elected. In the light of this Government’s track record it is not surprising, perhaps, that they will alter them in favour of the Conservative Party.

The first concerns political party funding and the Government’s proposals that trade unions should opt in to this. There are two fundamental principles that should govern any attempt to solve the intractable problems with political party funding. First, it should remove the public perception that political influence can be bought; and secondly, it must do so in a way that is roughly equivalent in its impact on all the main political parties. In other words, it should be seen to be fair. This proposal satisfies neither principle. It will do little to address the popular perception that political influence can be bought and, while there may be good arguments for an opt-in, there are none for doing it in this way in isolation.

Why are the Government bringing forward this measure and not also one that, for example, would ban all party political donations from individuals who had evaded tax through aggressive tax avoidance schemes? There is at least as good a case to exclude such donations. This Government’s partial approach makes it impossible to avoid the conclusion that they do not want to secure a long-overdue clean-up of party funding. Instead, they want to privilege the short-term interests of the Conservative Party.

My last example of this Government’s partisan approach is the superficially innocuous commitment in their manifesto to try again to,

“address the unfairness of the current Parliamentary boundaries, reduce the number of MPs to 600 to cut the costs of politics and make votes of more equal value”.

There is nothing inherently objectionable about that proposal. However, the statistical basis on which the size of constituencies is equalised is crucial. The Government appear to be opposing this not on the basis of population but on the basis of an electoral register that remains neither comprehensive nor accurate. The most recent assessment by the Electoral Commission last year suggested that it was still only 85% complete. That means that 8 million voters who are eligible to vote cannot do so because they are not on the register. This matters for specific electoral reasons as well as on the grounds of general democratic principle. Most agree that those eligible voters not registered to vote are more likely to vote Labour when they do vote and the Liberal Democrat vote in the inner cities, such as it still is, is also likely to suffer. The Electoral Commission found that underregistration is notably higher than average among the young, private sector tenants, and black and ethnic-minority British residents, and that the highest concentrations of underregistration are most likely to be found in metropolitan areas.

The evidence suggests that the party that will suffer least, if at all, from such a flawed electoral register is the Conservative Party. Electoral registration has been significantly lower in Labour areas than in Conservative ones. The Daily Telegraph, with its hotline into the inner sanctum of the Conservative Party, revealed on 8 May this year the real motivation behind this reform:

“Redrawing constituency boundaries to lock Labour out of power for decades is at the top of the agenda for the new Conservative government, senior Tories have said”.

Our electoral arrangements should never become the object of partisan manoeuvring; it corrodes public trust and undermines the foundations of our democracy. So for many years all political parties have sought consensus on such issues and have, for the most part, succeeded in finding it—but no longer, apparently.

These are all far-reaching reforms being pursued by a Government who have hardly received a resounding endorsement from the electorate. In the last 50 years, only one Government have had a smaller absolute majority. In these circumstances it might have been thought prudent to embark on an extensive and comprehensive programme of public engagement and consultation, but there has been no sign of that so far. The Government may argue that this is a matter for Parliament and that it is through Parliament that popular consensus is secure. Of course our system of representative democracy is one that we should continue to cherish, but it can be augmented. In the case of such profound changes, it should be.

Many of my noble friends, and others in your Lordships’ House, believe that there should be a constitutional convention to discuss all these issues in a way that properly reflects their interdependence. I have long been a supporter of this; I wrote a pamphlet advocating it 10 years ago, although it is important that such a convention should not just convene the usual great and good, but accommodate the peoples of these islands through a randomly selected, demographically representative sample of them. Even if a constitutional convention is too great a stretch, there are other means to engage the public through new technologies and deliberative forums. Again, there has been not a word from the Government about any of these forms of public engagement.

Worse than this, earlier this week we heard from the Justice Secretary his intention to restrict the ability of the public to engage with these issues by emasculating their rights to know under the Freedom of Information Act. It is no surprise that Ministers and civil servants do not like that Act—it would not be doing its job if they did—but it is essential to open up the Government to the public whom they serve. How do the Government think they will enhance the public’s confidence in their politicians if they restrict their rights to know in this way? What exactly is it that the Government want to stop the public finding out about their plans for the country?

I understand that the Minister is an Oxford historian. I do not know whether he took the paper on theories of the state when he was up there, but if he did he may recall what Aristotle said about constitutions. The great philosopher wrote that:

“constitutions which aim at the common advantage are correct and just without qualification, whereas those which aim only at the advantage of the rulers are deviant and unjust, because they involve despotic rule which is inappropriate for a community of free persons”.

If he does not recall those words, I commend them to him now. In the context of these short-sighted and partisan proposals, I conclude by also commending to him and to everyone in your Lordships’ House the conclusion of the royal commission in 2000, which was that your Lordships’ House’s key function is,

“to act as a ‘constitutional long-stop’”,

to ensure that,

“changes are not made to the constitution without full and open debate and an awareness of the consequences”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wills]

My Lords, it was daunting enough to open this debate. It is even more daunting to close it after such a distinguished and compelling succession of speeches. I thank everyone on all sides of the House who took part in the debate. Every single contribution illuminated these extremely important issues.

I wish to pick up on only one point made by the noble Lord, Lord Butler, before I turn briefly to the Minister’s remarks. I do so only to set the record straight because he seemed to suggest that I was opposed to any attempt to deal with the West Lothian question, on the grounds that to do so would be partisan. That is not my position, as I think he will see when he reads Hansard tomorrow, as I hope he will. I am simply opposed to the way of dealing with it—the veto—set out in the Conservative Party manifesto. It is interesting that in his comprehensive remarks, the Minister did not seek to deny the story that I cited: that the Government’s motivation was to put a bomb on Labour territory. I do not know how the noble Lord, Lord Butler, defines “partisan”, but putting a bomb on the opposition’s territory seems a pretty good definition of it to me.

I thank the Minister for a very illuminating and comprehensive response to what I agree was an excellent debate. I am extremely grateful to him for reading our pamphlet, which means that I can now start counting its readership on my second hand. That is a devotion to duty that goes well beyond anything that could reasonably be expected of him, so I am grateful to him for that. I am also grateful to him for the wide range of references. I do not think I have ever been bracketed in the same paragraph with Elvis Presley before, something for which I will always be in the Minister’s debt.

Apart from that, I am afraid that the substance of the Minister’s response did nothing to allay my concerns about the Government’s programme. There are a whole range of issues on which we shall have to differ. I was particularly alarmed to note that the Government are still not ruling out leaving the European Convention on Human Rights. However, I have no doubt that we shall return to these issues again and again and again in the coming months. In the mean time, I beg to move.

Motion agreed.