Parliamentary Constituencies Bill

Baroness Smith of Basildon Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 10th September 2020 Grand Committee

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, made an interesting speech and made points that the Minister might find hard to answer, but he did not make a case for this amendment. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris, made an argument in support of it because he wants there to be more Welsh MPs, even if this means more MPs in every other part of the UK. However, I doubt that this proposal would ever make it into a serious party manifesto.

The key question for the Minister is whether the Government accept the principles of the Burns committee and agree with the House of Lords, which wants to reduce the number of its Members. The amendment is clearly born out of frustration that the Prime Minister has just appointed more than 30 new Peers. Perhaps the Minister will explain why.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Norton, on his ingenuity in bringing this amendment forward. I describe it as an enabling amendment. He hit the nail on the head. He said that one reason was to try to get the Minister to justify why any House with a size of 800 should be deemed acceptable. It also allows us to discuss a very topical issue that has been in the news recently and which gives us all cause for concern: the increasing size of your Lordships’ House.

It is relevant to discuss this when we discuss the size of the House of Commons and boundaries, because we cannot look at one House in isolation. The two Houses function as a Parliament. What happens in one, and any changes to one, impact on the other. The two come together. I agree with the noble Lord. It is incredible that the Government were talking about reducing the size the House of Commons at the same time as increasing numbers were being appointed to this House.

At this point, I should say that I find it very difficult to speak without moving my arms. I feel like I am in the language lab when I was at school in the 1970s. If noble Lords hear occasional clicking, it is because my hands have hit the sides. I find the Dispatch Box easier than a Perspex box.

The role of a Member of Parliament is becoming increasingly demanding. I know that a number of former MPs are here today. When I was a Member of Parliament I used to say that my work was in thirds, but not of equal sizes. A third of it was my constituency casework and another was advocacy work for the constituency. I used those two-thirds to inform my parliamentary work. It sometimes strikes me that MPs are finding it harder and harder to carve out the time for that work in Parliament to debate and engage with legislation. That is why our relationship with the House of Commons is so important, because that is the work we focus on. It has rightly been said that we do not have the constituency work or advocacy work, but we have to focus on legislation in a different way from MPs because we are not informed by constituency casework.

To me, that role has always been a very serious point about how our parliamentary system functions effectively. The noble Baroness, Lady Deech, is quite right. She made her own point in some ways when she said that people dislike the House of Lords partly because of its size and partly because of our role on Brexit. People thought that the House of Lords was trying to block Brexit. It never did. All the House of Lords can do is make suggestions to the House of Commons for it to have the final say. In some ways, we are like an advisory body that can be helpful to any Government and the House of Commons.

The Government often misunderstand the relationship between the House of Lords and the House of Commons as being the relationship between the House of Lords and the Government. Drawing a distinction between the House of Commons and the Executive is very important. Our challenge and scrutiny role has a purpose: to be useful and a benefit to the elected House. That is sometimes not a benefit to the Government, but that is not our role, which is to be useful and a benefit to the elected House.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Faulkner of Worcester) (Lab)]

My Lords, I have received a request from the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, to speak after the Minister.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly. First, I make a plea to the Minister never to refer to this House as a part-time House. He half-corrected himself but this House often sits longer and later than the House of Commons. We are a full-time House. The only difference is that not all Members are full-time Members of your Lordships’ House; they have other interests and activities. We are a full-time House but not all our Members are full-time.

I want to make a couple of points. The Minister said that reform cannot be piecemeal because it must be considered. Reform can be both considered and piecemeal. Most reforms in British constitutional history have been quite gradual. That does not mean that they have not been considered; they have just taken a step-by-step approach, not the big bang approach. The Minister harked back to ducks and tabby cats; I would liken the House of Lords more to a tabby cat than to a duck.

The night in question, when the Minister and I had many discussions late into the night, went later than either of us wanted to be here in Parliament, but potentially the point the Minister is missing is that, after the conflicts that he referred to, both the 1911 and the 1949 Parliament Acts constrained how the House of Lords works. It is quite clear that we have an advisory role and that the House of Commons has primacy. We do not block legislation, we have no intention of blocking legislation and we have no remit or legitimacy to block legislation, but we have an opportunity and an obligation to advise the House of Commons on the basis of the information that we have.

On the Minister’s point about a Prime Minister needing to be able to appoint lots of Peers to get their legislation through, I am not aware of anything that Boris Johnson would have more difficulty with in the House of Commons than in the House of Lords. Even on the rule of law, I suspect that his colleagues in the House of Commons are not terribly happy with him, but that is not why he has appointed these 36 new Peers. It is nothing at all to do with legislation; it is a Prime Ministerial whim and a numbers game.

I am grateful for the Minister’s comments on the size of the House of Commons being 650 Members. There is something that we can agree entirely on.

[Lord True (Con)]

First, as I hope I indicated in my remarks, I accept the strictures of the noble Baroness on the phrase “part-time House”. It is a House whose expertise derives in part from the presence of people who are here part-time and bring us their expertise, which is a slightly long-winded way of saying the same thing. I think I said specifically that I would not want anyone to run away with that remark and say that that is what I think of your Lordships’ House. I revere it.

With that correction, I will not detain noble Lords further but I will bank the statement by the Leader of the Opposition that this House’s role is not to block legislation. We shall test those words in the coming weeks and months.