House of Lords: Labour Peers’ Working Group Report

Baroness Taylor of Bolton Excerpts

Thursday 19th June 2014 Lords Chamber

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[Baroness Taylor of Bolton]

That this House takes note of the Labour Peers’ Working Group report on the future of the House of Lords and its place in a wider constitution.

[Baroness Taylor of Bolton (Lab)]

My Lords, I am very pleased to have the opportunity to introduce this debate. I start by thanking my colleagues on the working group for their support and the work that they did, and I thank those who assisted the committee. I make particular mention of my co-chair, Lord Grenfell. I am pleased to report to the House that when I saw him a couple of weeks ago in Paris, he was on fine form.

The composition of the group was very mixed in terms of our backgrounds, our experiences, our length of service in this House and indeed our age, but it was also mixed in terms of our long-standing attitudes to an elected Chamber. It was therefore very interesting to debate these matters and we produced a unanimous report. We found that the more we talked through the issues, the more we achieved consensus. I think that there is a lesson to be learnt there, in that on constitutional issues it is wrong to come to knee-jerk conclusions.

It is also important to note—we say this very clearly in our report—that we do not claim that this is the last word on House of Lords reform. We are sure that not everyone will agree with every recommendation but I think that we have a set of positive proposals for real progress. I shall explain what led to this report.

Basically, Labour Peers, like many others, felt that the ill fated attempt by the Deputy Prime Minister to pilot an ill conceived Bill through Parliament highlighted the fact that a simplistic approach to Lords reform was always going to crash, and it did crash when the reality of the complexities of constitutional reform was realised. However, just because that attempt ended in somewhat ignominious failure, we did not think that the issue would go away. Therefore, we wanted to do something constructive to bring together ideas which would help the House to work even better.

We believe that this House has many strengths, and makes a significant and positive contribution to the examination of legislation and to holding to account the Government of the day. We also believe that the House has some problems in terms of its size, its procedures and its image. Steps can be taken to improve all these and they could be taken quite quickly. I am pleased that the Government have stopped blocking any form of change and that the Byles Bill was passed. I hope that we will make further progress based on the work of the noble Lord, Lord Steel, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman.

I turn first to the size of this House. The number of people entitled to sit in this House is causing increasing concern to most active Members. Although daily attendance is much less than the total attendance could be, it is rising. We looked at what, in ideal circumstances, would be an appropriate size for a second Chamber in our system. The Clegg Bill suggested 300 Members and the Joint Committee suggested 450. We decided that two principles should apply. First, the Lords should be smaller than the Commons. Secondly, there should be sufficient Members to carry out the functions of revision, scrutiny and holding the Government to account properly, including the important committee work.

The Joint Committee recommendation of 450 Members seems about right to us, although Members will be relieved to know that we are not suggesting an immediate cull. At the heart of our proposals is the concept of a working Peer. That concept is often talked about but has never really been defined. We believe that all Members of this House should be working Peers but we acknowledge that this does not mean it has to be a full-time role. It is, of course, an honour to be here but we also have a job to do. There are other ways to give honours and to recognise those who have made a significant contribution to British life but whose other responsibilities would prevent them from fully participating in this House.

We suggest that when the Writ of Summons is issued at the start of each Parliament, Members who respond should do so with the intention of serving for the whole of the Parliament as a working Peer. We suggest that there should be an attendance requirement of an average of three-fifths of our Sessions. We recognise that that is a crude measure of contribution but it indicates commitment. We also recognise that there could be some exceptional circumstances, which would require modification.

We recommend—this may be controversial—that Peers should step down from active membership of the House at the election following their 80th birthday. There are always the exceptions and people who make fantastic contributions but two of our eight members of the committee were over 80. They were keen to point out that if we had such guidance, we as Members could think well in advance about when and how to adjust to life outside. As we have a fixed-term Parliament, at least for the moment—I wish my noble friend Lord Grocott well in his Private Member’s Bill—it is possible for us to start thinking ahead as to when would be the right time to step down.

In terms of membership here, more attention should be given to achieving greater diversity and greater regional balance. That is the responsibility of parties for political nominees and the House of Lords Appointments Commission for others. The Appointments Commission, which should be put on a statutory footing, could do better on this, although we realise the constraints in which it has been working in recent times. We think that its published criteria are appropriate. The political parties making nominations should adopt new transparent criteria for nominations based on the principles of the House of Lords Appointments Commission, particularly in respect of ability to make a significant contribution, a person’s range of expertise, a strong personal commitment to the principles and high standards of public life and, of course, a commitment to be resident in the UK for tax purposes. We also believe that no one, no matter how distinguished his or her public service, should have a role in public life—in the Civil Service or wherever—that should automatically lead to a position in this House.

As far as the Bishops are concerned, we make no recommendations. Putting it mildly, there were strong views on both sides. I recall one of my senior colleagues in another place telling me that House of Lords reform would come to a full stop with any Bill that included the abolition of the Bishops. I am not sure whether that is true, but we decided not to go there, such was the strength of feeling both ways.

However, we all agreed on hereditary Peers. I think that there is widespread though not unanimous support for the end of the hereditary principle. We point out how it could be done while acknowledging the very significant contribution of some hereditary Peers. Of course, some of those people could be awarded life peerages on transfer. On disqualification, we simply think that we should always align our rules as closely as possible to those in the Commons.

Political balance is a much more difficult problem. In 1997, the Labour manifesto said that no political party should seek a majority in the House of Lords. In government, we stood by that. Coalition government has created a new situation. There is only one Government and at the moment they have 58% of political Peers in this House, which makes it harder for the House to assert itself.

There have been suggestions that the number of political Peers in this House should be changed after each election and should reflect the percentage of votes at the previous election, although I note that some who advocated that have been quiet on that issue since opinion polls changed. Unfortunately, although it sounds a simple solution, it is a recipe for an ever increasing size of the House and not something that we think wise. In effect, only party leaders can deal with the balance issue. It requires them to be responsible and not just to seek party advantage.

We also make recommendations about procedural reform. The first is that we suggest that all non-Private Members’ legislation should start in the House of Commons. Bills could then have a First Reading in the House of Commons and follow the normal procedures in the Commons or be subject to a referral Motion that would ensure that this House then took on the detailed examination of any Bill. This procedure would reinforce the primacy of the Commons and, with a few tweaks, allow the Parliament Act to be applicable to all pieces of legislation.

We also make a proposal about secondary legislation in this House because the current situation of “accept or reject” causes a great deal of frustration. We therefore suggest that there should be a three-month deferral opportunity so that Members can make the Government think again when there is serious concern about an SI.

We think that more should be done to look at the work of previous committees, such as that chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Goodlad, in terms of modernising the procedures of this House. In particular, we are very keen on the idea of a legislative standards committee, which we think could be established as a Joint Committee, although it should be established by this House if the other place does not want to go down that route. We also think that, because of the good reputation and the sound work that is undertaken by many committees in this House, there is scope for more short-term ad hoc committees on specific cross-departmental subjects. We also recommend a review of the role of the Lord Speaker, which is not personal but was promised when that role was first established by the House.

We also make recommendations about the wearing of robes. We believe that the wearing of robes creates an image of the House that belies the very modern contribution that the Lords makes to current political life. It may make for good television for some, but it does nothing but detract from our very positive contributions to the working of our democracy.

Those are measures that we think could be implemented quite quickly and, most of them, without legislation, but I will also say a word about our thinking about long-term constitutional change. If the Clegg Bill did anything positive, it convinced many people that piecemeal change, without consideration for the consequential effects, deliberate or otherwise, is most unwise. We point out in our report that, at the moment, there seems to be some common agreement that there is widespread public disengagement from politics and our parliamentary system. That is quite dangerous, and has many causes but very few simple answers. So it is with constitutional change: there are few simple answers. Despite the fact that constitutional change is not a priority for most of the public, we have had a significant number of important but piecemeal changes in recent times, and more are proposed. We have had fixed-term Parliaments, the failed AV referendum, changes to voter registration and votes for 16 year-olds in Scotland. There is also the Scottish referendum to come, maybe an EU referendum, questions about extending powers to the Welsh Assembly and new discussions on the regions and city areas; nor, of course, has the issue of Lords reform gone away. We believe that complex constitutional matters need not only careful consideration but careful co-ordination. We think that such changes should command public support—after some political consensus, we hope—and we acknowledge that referendums might have an important role in this respect.

Many people—committees, commissions, politicians and academics—have looked at all these issues and one thing is, I believe, emerging as almost inevitable. It is not quite there yet, but there is an emerging consensus that there is a need for a constitutional commission or convention, which can take an overview of any and all of these issues. We suggest that such a body should be tasked with reporting within two years of the next election, which would allow time in that Parliament for further legislation where it is needed. This is the only way to ensure a coherent approach and to undertake change in a measured way. We have to make sure that we make our constitution fit for the challenges that lie ahead, and we need that wider view of how to do it. Our report is intended to be a contribution to that, and I recommend it to the House.

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[Baroness Taylor of Bolton]

My Lords, I thank everybody who has participated in this debate. Obviously, I am very pleased that there has been a general welcome for the report and that our discussions have, by and large, been on a non-party-political basis, which most of us think is the only way forward. The debate has been very wide-ranging, touching indeed on the very nature of democracy, which is no bad thing. But I think the one thing that all the contributions have shown us, and there are many dimensions to this, is that we cannot look at these problems in isolation. I was reassured by some of the Minister’s remarks a moment ago.

I should very much like to have time to go through all the comments that have been made but that is impossible. I have some sympathy with what my noble friend Lord Dubs said about Bishops. He may have noticed that since he made those comments there have been reinforcements, so perhaps he had better watch out. I want to comment on what my noble friend Lord Rooker said. He is always perceptive and it is a reckless Government or party that ignores his comments. I should have liked to follow up what my noble friend Lord Foulkes said about indirect elections. It is something that I have been interested in for a very long time and I think there is increasing momentum in that area. Those possibilities really need exploring.

I cannot respond to everybody but I want to say just a word about what my noble friend Lord Richard said about a constitutional convention or commission. He has long held the view that any such commission would be kicking the issue into the long grass—the unmowable grass, I think he said on this occasion. I would counter that by saying that if we do not have a commission, we will have a quagmire of piecemeal changes that do not hold together and are an absolute mess. Incidentally, I must point out to him and others that, so far as Labour Party manifestos are concerned, for the whole of the 20th century Labour Party manifestos clearly recognised the danger of having an elected second Chamber. The commitment to election is indeed very recent.

Several colleagues went into some detail about the Clegg Bill, and I think lessons are very slowly being learnt there, in particular the need to look at the bigger picture and not focus on just one area of change. I was reassured when the Minister said in his closing remarks that we have to look at Lords reform in the context of wider constitutional change. I hope he may be able to persuade his leader that that is the case and that you cannot write solutions on the back of an envelope and expect them to get through. We really need to take a comprehensive approach. Looking forward to see where we could get co-operation before an election is no bad thing and something that people will be willing to look at. As the noble Viscount, Lord Tenby, said, I hope that we can have sensible and realistic commitments in all the party manifestos for the election. That is the only way forward, and putting that in the context of a constitutional commission would be the way to deliver it.

To say just a word on our short-term proposals, I hope that we will see progress along the lines that many have said would be acceptable and would improve the working of this House. I hope that the Minister will follow through on the suggestion of all-party support. Once again, I thank everyone who has participated in a very important and useful debate.

Motion agreed.