Constitutional Convention Bill [HL]

Baroness Suttie Excerpts

Friday 17th July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Suttie (LD)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Purvis on introducing this timely and extremely important Bill.

In recent years I have had the privilege of engaging in democracy and capacity-building training work abroad, in north Africa, the Middle East and the former Soviet Union. Almost wherever you go in the world, the UK is held up as a solid and stable democracy, where the mother of parliaments—symbolised by these very buildings—is held in high regard. Judged purely on the basis of the years of democratic stability that we have enjoyed in this country, this reputation is well deserved.

It has been the British way to approach constitutional and political reform in an incremental and ad hoc basis. Our very stability and lack of revolutionary zeal has discouraged us from looking at these issues in the round in an overarching, interconnected package. However, while working abroad in these fledgling or challenged democracies, it always becomes a little more complicated when I am faced with more detailed questions about our British democracy. Countries that look to us as a role model find it more than a little mysterious when I explain that we have no written constitution; have an appointed second Chamber; have an unbalanced and uncodified settlement between the four nations of the United Kingdom; and have a voting system for Westminster elections whereby earlier this year UKIP received 3.9 million votes and only one MP, and the SNP received 95% of MPs in Scotland on 50% of the popular vote—not to mention that we have no fewer than five different electoral voting systems in use in the United Kingdom.

For many years political and constitutional reform has been a subject of minority interest, perhaps favoured in particular by my colleagues on these Benches. However, we have now reached the stage where the Scottish question is no longer just the West Lothian question but is connected to the English question and to the question of the roles of London, Cardiff and Belfast. In addition, following the expenses scandal in the run-up to the 2010 general election, many people have begun to ask profound questions about the quality of our representative democracy. It is testament to the growth of the importance of this subject that a commitment to some form of constitutional convention appeared in four of the UK political parties’ manifestos during the election earlier this year.

Back in 1992 I took part in the rally to campaign for a Scottish Parliament in the Meadows park in Edinburgh along with over 25,000 others. At that time the Scottish Constitutional Convention had been meeting for several years and included people from civil society and the churches, as well as politicians. I remember the great atmosphere at that rally, where I think everyone felt that they were fighting for something historic. The objective of re-establishing a Scottish Parliament was clear, and people were prepared to work across parties and reach out to civil society to achieve this goal.

The trouble with many of the more recent attempts to achieve political reform—this was perhaps particularly true in the last Parliament—is that they have been attempted on an ad hoc basis with a top-down approach. Indeed, in a sense, people have often been presented with the solution to an issue when they have been unaware of there being a problem.

As a Scot living in England, I am all too aware that the elasticity of tolerance towards the Scottish problem has its limits, but I fear that English votes for English laws is yet another example of a stop-gap solution that does not even begin to address the complexity of the subject. Although fixing these problems with yet another layer of “make do” solutions may politically suit nationalist parties on both sides of the border—not least as they are predestined to fail—I argue that dialogue and discussion based on inclusiveness are always going to be preferable to crisis and division. To engage in successful political reform, you have to take people with you.

In conclusion, I believe that a UK-wide constitutional convention is a concept whose time has come. It should be inclusive and, as the Bill sets out, at least 50% of its membership should come from outside the political world. As my noble friend Lord Purvis explained so eloquently, it should aim to tackle all aspects of the constitutional make-up of 21st-century Britain: relations between the four nations, voting reform, voting age, parliamentary democracy and active citizenship. Media, academics, think tanks, unions and religious organisations should all be involved. It is an opportunity to breathe new life into our democracy.

Some might say that if our democratic system is not actually broken, there is no need to fix it, and that people are much more concerned about the economy, jobs, schools and tangible things that affect their everyday lives. However, I fear that if we do not come up with a credible alternative to the seductive but simplistic charms of nationalism, the threat to our union will grow. We will need to take people with us when drawing up proposals for the future democracy of our country. I believe that the convention offers just such an opportunity to breathe new life into our democracy and to meet the challenges of an increasingly globalised world.