House of Lords: Reform

Baroness Royall of Blaisdon Excerpts

Tuesday 21st June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

My Lords, this is an important occasion. It is far from the first time that this House has considered its own future, but it is the first time that it has considered a substantive piece of legislation on that subject—what used to be known as second-stage reform. What a pity that, as a substantive piece of legislation, the draft Bill in front of us is such a bad one.

Getting this House right is important, important to us all here as Members of your Lordships’ House but important too to our legislative process, our Parliament, our politics and our constitution. At the same time we need to remember that reshaping our constitution, though undeniably important, does not rank high in the priorities of what the public want us as politicians to do. The public’s concerns need to remain our concerns, such as jobs and the economy, health and education. Many of the Government’s Bills that this House either is scrutinising now or will have before it soon concern these areas. Whatever else the outcome of the alternative vote referendum last month showed, it showed that the public have little interest in the kind of constitutional reform proposed. In our debate on these issues over the next two days and beyond, we would all do well to keep that important calibration in mind.

This House must not be obsessed with itself. The House of Lords needs to be about much more than House of Lords reform. This House is sometimes castigated as resistant to reform and its Members are characterised as roadblocks to reform, but I do not believe that that is true. This House has in fact seen real, repeated reform, in 1911 with the removal of the fiscal powers and the shifting of its right of veto to a right of delay; in 1949 with further changes to its delaying powers; in 1958 with the introduction of life peerages; in 1963 with changes to peerage succession; in 1999 with the removal of the majority of hereditary Peers; and in 2004 with the separation of powers between the legislature and the judiciary, with the ending of the Lords as the final court of appeal and the establishment of the new Supreme Court—evolutionary change over a long period of time, but regular repeated reform.

For some, that rate of reform is too slow. They want further and faster reform. I understand that, but reform is difficult and takes time. My party has long been committed to reform. In our 1945 manifesto, for example, when a great reforming Labour Government were swept to power by a popular vote, we said,

“we give clear notice that we will not tolerate obstruction of the people’s will by the House of Lords”.

In 1964, when we were again returned to power, our manifesto said,

“we shall not permit effective action to be frustrated by the hereditary and non-elective Conservative majority in the House of Lords”.

In 1997 our manifesto said:

“The House of Lords must be reformed”,

and proposed both an initial self-contained reform to remove the right of hereditary Peers to sit and vote and a Joint Committee of both Houses of Parliament to propose further reform. In 2010, we proposed further democratic reform to create a fully elected second Chamber, to be achieved in stages with the promise to put such proposals to the people in a referendum. That was the case I argued as a member of the committee chaired by the Deputy Prime Minister which, following the outcome of the general election last year and the formation of the coalition Government, was charged with bringing forward legislation on further reform of your Lordships’ House.

We believe that it was right to take part in that process, but I want to make it absolutely clear that what we have before us today—the latest attempt at reform in the shape of the Government’s draft Bill and White Paper—is not a product of that process. The Leader of the House was right to issue a correction to his Statement in the Chamber recently that the Clegg committee met as many as nine times; it did not—in fact, it met seven times. Not only did the last meeting of the committee take place six months before the White Paper and Bill were finally produced, at no point did the Clegg committee ever see anything other than policy papers. It saw no White Paper, it approved no White Paper. It saw no draft Bill, it approved no draft Bill. The draft Bill and the White Paper are not a product of that committee. It is a stand-alone Bill—a coalition Bill. Indeed, given the lack of support for the Bill on the Conservative Benches in both Houses, it is a Liberal Democrat Bill.

We as a Labour Party are committed to reform of this House; that is a long-standing policy. However, following our general election defeat and the election of a new leader of our party, we are undertaking a fundamental review of all aspects of policy. Labour members and supporters are entirely able, if they so wish, to argue for a review of our party’s support for an elected House. That is their right and their opportunity. Within the present policy position there are certainly differences of opinion on the Benches behind me. Many observers will expect my Benches to be divided on the issue, as are the two parts of the coalition on the Benches opposite. Indeed, many Labour Peers—almost certainly a clear majority—are opposed to direct elections of this House. I acknowledge and accept that. It is not my personal opinion, I am in favour of election and I have voted that way, but I recognise that many of my colleagues believe that further fundamental reform of your Lordships' House, and especially the introduction of direct elections, would damage the House, politics and the constitution. These are genuinely, often passionately, held views. They are not my views, but like my party, I respect them and those who hold them.

We on these Benches have our differences but the main issue on which these Benches are completely united is in our belief and judgment that this is a bad Bill. That is the fundamental difference between these Benches and the Benches opposite, because the Benches opposite are fundamentally divided. The Leader of the House argues the Government’s case for reform. He has done so in his speech today; he did so when publishing the Bill; and he has done so in media interviews given since its publication, though in some, such as last weekend, he seemed to give slightly different messages. However, the words “Conservative” and “Lords reform” do not sit easily in the same sentence. It is transparently clear that in setting out the case for reform the Leader of the House does not have the support of the overwhelming majority of Conservative Peers and Conservative MPs, or perhaps of Conservative Party members and Conservative supporters.

The only reason the Conservatives are able to pay lip service to the notion of reform is because essentially they do not believe that Lords reform and, indeed, the Bill before us today will actually happen, particularly in the light of the outcome of the AV referendum. The Conservative position is fundamentally divided from that of their coalition partner. The Liberal Democrats, and the Liberals before them, have long supported further fundamental reform of this House—indeed, a fully elected House. We all thought that we understood that. We all thought we knew that that was their position but now we find, following the survey by the Times newspaper, that that is not the case. Indeed, we find that, according to the survey, far from unanimously supporting a fully elected House—their party’s policy—Liberal Democrat Peers are split right down the middle over whether this House should be elected at all. Further, we find that the Leader of the Liberal Democrat Party—the Deputy Prime Minister—is not supporting his own party’s policy either. In putting forward this draft Bill, the Deputy Prime Minister is not arguing in favour of a 100 per cent elected House but an 80 per cent elected House, as set out in the draft Bill.

For those of us not in the Liberal Democrat Party, these are deep and murky waters—waters so impenetrably deep and murky that the rest of us may not, sadly, be equipped to comprehend them fully, or indeed at all. No doubt, if you happen to be a member of the Liberal Democrat Party, all is clear to you. The rest of us await elucidation with interest. I suspect that the debate—

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

I thank the noble Baroness for giving way, but I cannot resist asking her, what are the differences between the splits on her Benches and the splits on these Benches?

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

My Lords, I have explained that I fully accept that there are splits behind me, and everyone knows that. We have been totally open about that, but we are united in our view that this is a bad Bill. That is where the difference between my Benches and the noble Lord’s Benches comes.

The debate will also demonstrate that the clear and united view on these Benches is, as I have said, that this is a bad Bill accompanied by an inadequate White Paper. Even for a Government who are making it their specialist subject to bring forward bad Bills, this is a very bad Bill. It is a bad Bill because it is badly done and because it is not up to the task that it is addressing. The Government can, for example, assert to their hearts’ content, as they do in Clause 2, that nothing in the Bill,

“affects the primacy of the House of Commons”,

as the Leader of the House explained earlier. Ministers can, if they wish, assert that the moon is made of green cheese. They can even put such an assertion in the Bill, should they so choose, but however eloquent such an assertion is, and however well drafted such a provision is, it makes not a jot of difference in fact, because the changes to the House as it is currently constituted, and its replacement by an elected senate, will automatically affect the primacy of the House of Commons. The fact that needs to be faced is that further reform of your Lordships' House is not so much about the House of Lords but the House of Commons. The real impact of Lords reform is not in this place, but in the other place. With the publication of the draft Bill and the White Paper, this Government have put the primacy of the House of Commons into play.

There will be many other areas on which to focus. Difficult issues have not been addressed to date. They have not been considered or resolved. This is a bad Bill because it does not answer the key questions on the issue. What is the role of the House of Lords? What should be the role of the second Chamber? What powers should a reformed House of Lords have? What powers do the Government want a reformed House of Lords to have? What will be the conventions that govern relations between the two Chambers? What happens to the current conventions that govern the relationship between the two Chambers? Should that relationship be codified? These and others are big questions that will have to be properly addressed, properly considered and properly resolved before any Bill to reform fundamentally your Lordships’ House is enacted by Parliament. These are questions with which constitutional reformers have grappled for years. They are questions that successive Governments have considered for years. They are questions that were considered in depth by the Joint Committee on Conventions, chaired by my noble friend Lord Cunningham of Felling—the conclusions of which included that the conventions would need to be considered again if substantive proposals on composition were brought forward, as they have been in this draft Bill, and approved by all parties in both Houses.

However, the Bill ducks those questions because, to Liberal Democrats, such questions and those who raise them are roadblocks to reform. They believe that those who pose such questions are just anti-reformers slipping into constitutionalist disguise. However, we on these Benches do not accept that. These are real questions and genuine constitutional problems. We certainly wrestled with them when we were in Government and wanted to proceed with Lords reform. Other Administrations have done the same. What is simply not adequate or sufficient is to do what this Bill tries to do—just to put the questions aside as though they do not matter. They do matter and they—

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon]

I have listened very carefully to the noble Baroness, but, with great respect to her, it seems to me that her entire speech is predicated on the fact that she has been presented with a Bill. She is not being presented with a Bill. She is being presented with a White Paper.

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon]

I am sure that the noble Baroness understands the difference between the two.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

My Lords, if the noble Lord were to read the White Paper again and reconsider it, he would find that within it there is a draft Bill. It is the draft Bill about which I am addressing my remarks.

We on my Benches give the House warning that when the draft Bill has been finalised, if it ever comes before this House, it will be properly scrutinised. Some Members of the House were disquieted by the way that we, as an Opposition, scrutinised the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill earlier this year. We may not necessarily scrutinise the Bill in the same way, but the Government need to know that if it comes before the House, we will scrutinise it with the same focus and intensity. However, we are a long way from there. First, we have the Joint Committee of both Houses. Joint Committees of both Houses of Parliament are excellent instruments. The Joint Committee is the proper committee to address all the difficult issues that require to be debated about further reform of your Lordships' House.

The Joint Committee, whose establishment we welcome, will, I am sure, do a first-rate job, and we thank all those who have volunteered to serve on it. We on these Benches thank in particular our Members from this House on the committee: the noble Lord, Lord Richard, a former Leader of the House, who is taking on the particularly onerous role of chairing the committee, two former Ministers and Deputy Leaders of the House, the noble Baroness, Lady Symons of Vernham Dean, and the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, and a former Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews. All are widely respected not just on these Benches but throughout the House.

Their task is a challenging, even a daunting one, as is the task before all members of the committee from both Houses. The scale of that task has been made clear by the responses to the publication of the draft Bill and White Paper: almost all of them sceptical or negative. I cite only two responses. The House of Lords specialist, Donald Shell, the University of Bristol politics academic whose book, The House of Lords, is the acknowledged primary guide to the House, argues that some hard thinking needs to take place. He asks a key question of the Bill: do MPs really want a Lords that can challenge the Commons? A key question indeed, although one that the Bill seems wholly to shrink. I might quote Martin Kettle; on the other hand, I might cite Peter Oborne in the Telegraph, who described the Bill as.

“a recipe for chaos, one that will see British government come to resemble the annual shambles of the Lib Dem conference”.

Mr Oborne concludes that,

“exactly 100 years ago, Lords reform helped wreck HH Asquith’s Liberal ascendancy. History may be about to repeat itself”.

Those are grim warnings for the coalition and for Parliament. It will take all the skill of those serving on the Joint Committee to navigate their way through those rocks and shoals.

It may be that if, as we on these Benches expect, the Joint Committee addresses itself properly to the complexities and difficulties which abound around the issue of further reform of your Lordships' House, its work may take time. The Leader of the House has already acknowledged in this Chamber that if the Joint Committee needs more time to conclude its work than by the end of next February, more time it will get. We welcome that commitment.

It may well also be that if the complexities and difficulties with which the Joint Committee will be wrestling prove as intractable as they have been for the past 100 years, the part-Liberal Democrat coalition Government may find greater attraction in the proposals put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Steel of Aikwood, a distinguished former leader of the Liberal Democrats, in the Bill he has before the House. Members of the House will recall that we on these Benches had included the bulk of the Steel Bill recommendations in our Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill before the election, but they were struck out in the wash-up by one of the parties now on the government Benches.

When the Bill eventually appears in the House, there will be a clear position from these Benches. As I said, we have many different opinions on these Benches about Lords reform. Many of my Members are strongly opposed to a directly elected second Chamber, but we are united in seeing the Bill—and it is a draft Bill—as a bad Bill. That is not a unity in papering over the cracks, as the coalition parties on the Benches opposite will no doubt seek to do, but a unity of resolve to ensure that the issues involved in further reform of this place are properly considered. It is a resolve to ensure that any Bill that comes to this House is properly scrutinised and a resolve to ensure that, if this House is to be reformed, it will be reformed by good and proper legislation, not by a Bill as bad as the one before us today.

This House, this Parliament, our politics and our constitution merit more than that. Reform should mean proper reform. That in turn means a better Bill, a good Bill. We, as an Opposition, will work to ensure that this House, our politics and our constitution get the legislation that they deserve.