Draft House of Lords Reform Bill

Baroness Andrews Excerpts

Tuesday 1st May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Andrews]

My Lords, this has been a very powerful and forensic debate. It is a challenge to be the last Back-Bencher to speak, and the last to have had the privilege of serving on the Select Committee. I said rather casually at the beginning of the process that it was a bit like being sent with Sir John Franklin on his expedition to the Arctic. I was wrong, however—at times it was more like being on the “African Queen”, with my noble friend Lord Richard as Humphrey Bogart hauling us through various crocodile-infested swamps and a rather cantankerous crew on board. The stamina which the chairman and my fellow members showed was remarkable. I pay tribute also to the clerks, who were incredibly patient with us.

A consensus was reached on the committee: it was that none of our debates were dull. Our disagreements were indeed all about principle, not perversity. It was helpful to have the benign voice of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester to restore harmony when we got out of control. As noble Lords on the committee have already made clear, our views did diverge, particularly in precisely those areas where the House would have wanted us to be most scrupulous: that is, on what we variously saw as the impact of an electoral mandate—and in the alternative report we used the term “electoral mandate” rather than “election” throughout—on the second Chamber and on the primacy of the House of Commons. Our second concern was the workability of the Bill and its practical and political consequences. On those grounds, those of us who signed the alternative report were convinced that the Bill simply fails the minimum tests. We thought that that needed to be recorded and explained.

Noble Lords have drawn attention to the stark and consistent divisions in the committee, and to the pattern of voting, with votes lost by one or two. Therefore, it is all the more significant that the committee was totally united in rejecting the fundamental proposition of the Bill, Clause 2, as fatuous. Witness after witness demolished the claim made by Clause 2 that the elected House would change nothing and the primacy of the House of the Commons would remain intact. That assumption could be the reason why we have had no impact statement on the Bill. If the Bill has no impact, why should the Government provide an impact statement?

The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, raised the issue of cost. I do not want to revive it but I was sorry that his wrath was not turned on the Government for not producing costings for us, rather than on my noble friend Lord Lipsey, who stepped into the breach. I also remind him that that was the precise reason why we invited IPSA to express—which it did rather well—what might go into those costings, including the whole range of support services such as research assistants, facilities, space and IT costs, which are all critical if an elected House is to do its job. Therefore, we have made a start on fleshing out the implications.

What was particularly disappointing was that the disingenuous—indeed, dangerous—thesis that Clause 2 changed nothing was peddled by Ministers and only by Ministers. The Select Committee’s report, which was based on the weight of the evidence and the great deal of experience that came before us, says—in contradiction to the Bill and in the words of one witness—that “the world will change”. Clause 2 cannot protect the primacy of the Commons. We have in the House of Lords an unusually powerful Chamber. So far, it has been restrained in its use of its powers by culture as well as convention. The report says that in future the second Chamber will unchain those powers and use them assertively; and that, as a result, the balance of power between the two Houses will shift in favour of the House of Lords. It also says that the second Chamber, elected on a proportional system, will indeed acquire a new function of representative responsibilities. It is hard to imagine greater changes in the status, function and powers of the second Chamber than these, or indeed greater changes in our present constitutional balance.

To answer the question of the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, it was on those grounds that the committee, at the very end of its deliberations, decided that these massive changes could not be left to the prerogative of government, but needed to be endorsed, or otherwise, in a referendum. I was very glad that the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, clarified his position on the referendum.

However, when challenged on the constitutional risks that will be a part and parcel of these changes, the Minister, Mr Harper, could offer only a cheerful wave in the direction of the Parliament Acts as a regulatory device that would have to be used more often. This is emergency legislation, cobbled together a century ago, to restrain the power of this House. The Deputy Prime Minister, who is already on record to the Constitution Committee as not being too concerned, or indeed too clued up, about the Parliament Acts, refused to be drawn. One witness described the ministerial approach to policy-making as racing blindfold over the edge of a cliff. Therefore, I am bound to say that it is hardly surprising, with this degree of thoughtful statesmanship, that the Bill marks a change of direction in our constitution in which the destination is unknown, the risks undetermined, the costs unquantified, the impact on Parliament as a whole left to chance and the constitutional impacts unconsidered. We know what the real agenda is. Even though the Deputy Prime Minister is on record as saying, in effect, that he knows that this is not the priority of either his constituents or the Government, the reality is that the Bill has become a bargaining chip for the coalition.

My noble friend Lord Richard stated rather plaintively that there was nothing left to say about the issue. We may have had years of debate but it has taken the reality check of the Select Committee and the alternative report to drive down into what is really at stake, and to uncover some of the intractable problems and contradictions of a second Chamber with an electoral mandate. As Professor Bogdanor told us, the problems of balance and power have been avoided only because we have just one elected Chamber. As we have heard, such problems have been resolved in other countries within a written constitution. We do not have that discipline or framework.

Taken together, the two reports show how much hard and detailed work is to be done and how divisive some of these issues are. Of those disagreements, the most profound was over our sense that the debate on and definition of primacy is incomplete. Many noble Lords have referred to paragraphs 66 and 67, which state that these “remaining pillars”—the Parliament Acts and financial privilege—on which primacy rests will be sufficient to secure its continuation. We do not believe that that is so, which is why we tried to remove it from the report. We lost that vote by 10 to 12. We believe that the powers that the second House will have will pose a serious threat to the authority of the House of Commons, for the many reasons set out so eloquently in this debate. Secondly, we do not believe that primacy of the House of Commons rests solely on the constitutional arrangements created by virtue of the struggle between the Crown and Parliament more than four centuries ago, or on the expediency of containing the powers of the House of Lords in the Parliament Acts.

There is something more at stake here, underscored by Erskine May: the primacy of the House of Commons and the positive obligation that MPs have to their electors—that is, the principle and the power of the unique mandate held by Members of Parliament. That is what we submit to every time we draw back from challenging a Second Reading, laying a fatal amendment to secondary legislation and pursuing amendments to their logical and moral conclusion. An electoral mandate with commensurate powers rips up these foundations. Who can predict which Chamber would prevail? The result would be a Parliament divided against itself, uncertain of where power might lie and locked into its own internal battles. In answer to the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, it was for those reasons that we concluded that a more assertive House would not enhance Parliament’s overall role. It is because the House of Lords will become so much more powerful that the Government offer democracy with one hand and take it away with the other.

As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester put it beautifully, it is democratic legitimacy watered down to incoherence. The mandate for the second Chamber is assumed by Ministers to be—and is designed in the Bill to be as far as possible—a very cramped and confined version of democracy. It is designed to reduce the challenge to the House of Commons, and to reduce the impact, scope and accountability of elected Members. Ministers were blatantly clear about this in their evidence. Not only would a hybrid House with 80 per cent of Members elected be less of a challenge to the House of Commons, it is also an illogical fudge for those of us who believe passionately in a 100 per cent elected House. A 15-year term with no accountability is an attempt to limit the scope of elected Senators by reducing their resources. I find that unethical and risible.

The Government may want to turn the second Chamber into steerage class but they will not be able to. If the Bill becomes law, tomorrow’s Senators will be national representatives, elected to a national Parliament on a national mandate. They will deal not with local, European or devolved matters but with the same issues as the House of Commons deals with every day, and they will exercise the electoral mandate that they have been given. Legislation, ministerial diktat and the ingenious devices put forward by some Members of this House will not be able to determine what these new Senators in a new Parliament will do, or how far they will go to use their powers.

What will the Government do about the report and the Bill? The Deputy Prime Minister said:

“We have tried in the time available to move in a very deliberate, collaborative and open fashion. That is very much the spirit in which the Government will respond”.

We have offered him a way forward and I am sure that, in the spirit of what he said, he will take it. We are in a very different place as a result of the work that has been done. We have exposed complex and unresolved questions. The long grass is not an easy option and we are not rushing for it. As many noble Lords have said, reform and election are two different things. It is not a case of being for or against greater democracy, or for or against reform. We can have both. The work has already started in the Steel Bill, the reform of the appointments system, the coherence of the Goodlad report and the wise words of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman. We have been too slow and too circumspect about reforming this House ourselves. Let us take this opportunity as the better alternative.