House of Lords Reform Bill

Debate between Alan Johnson and Jake Berry

Monday 9th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Alan Johnson (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (John Thurso), who has some experience of these things.

This morning, Mr Speaker, I heard on the radio one of your most distinguished predecessors suggesting that this Bill was the end of civilisation as we know it. To me, it is a very small step on the road to a better civilisation that we might arrive at if we could get through some of the very tribal differences that we are expressing today. There are three questions to ask in this debate: first, should we reform the Lords; secondly, if we should reform the Lords, what should be the nature of the reform; and thirdly, should that reform be subject to a referendum of the British people?

I came into this House in 1997 on the back of a very important Labour manifesto. We had been out of power for 18 years, and so important was that manifesto that we took the unprecedented step of putting it to every individual member of our party in a programme called “The Road to the Manifesto”. I think that my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) was in charge of that process. As well as saying that we would get rid of hereditary peers, we said that that would be the beginning of

“a process of reform to make the House of Lords more democratic and representative.”

Ever since I have been in this place we have, very slowly but very surely, inched towards a consensus on this. That has happened because the quality of our parliamentary democracy must be diminished by a second Chamber that is wholly dependent on privilege or patronage for its membership. Only two countries in the world have a bigger second chamber than first chamber—Burkina Faso and Kazakhstan. Incidentally, I doubt whether they can match the fact that in our House of Lords 54% of Members come from London and the south-east, only a fifth are women, and there are more Members aged over 90 than under 40, which is why my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) once said that it is a model of how to care for the elderly.

[Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman think that the House of Lords as it currently stands is representative given that two thirds of its Members come from public schools?

[Alan Johnson]

It is a shame that that was said by a Government Member, but the hon. Gentleman makes a fundamental point about why Labour Members have sought reform—originally abolition, but then reform—of the other place. To me, I am afraid, it represents institutionalised snobbery.

I do not agree with Walter Bagehot’s comment that the cure for admiring the House of Lords is to go and look at it, but neither do I agree with the constant stream of self-regard that comes from those on the other side of Central Lobby about how it is the greatest, most expert revising chamber ever to be devised in the world. They have certainly been very expert at preserving the status quo. I am quite prepared to listen to and debate the very strong arguments for the status quo made by Members who, despite manifesto commitments, are perfectly entitled to come here and make that case. Incidentally, that is not the view of my right hon. Friend the Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett), who believes in a unicameral system. However, the consensus that we have been inching towards says that the status quo is indefensible in a modern, 21st century democracy, and that view is reflected in the proposals in the Bill.