House of Lords Reform: Lord Speaker’s Committee

Deidre Brock Excerpts

Wednesday 15th November 2017 Westminster Hall

[Luke Graham]

I will be addressing that point shortly in my speech.

There are, therefore, reasons why a second Chamber should be retained. To have experts as part of the parliamentary process, able to sit outside some of the pressure of regular elections and to stay constant and think of the country’s good rather than the next election, is a benefit and a strength to the nation that should be retained. However, that does not mean the House of Lords is above reform, as I have said. All in, as the hon. Member for Edinburgh East said, there are about 825 Members in the House of Lords, with a working number of 800. That is far too large a number to be practical in terms of work, or democratically justifiable for an unelected second Chamber. The Lords must therefore be reduced in size.

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

Will the hon. Gentleman address the lack of clarity about appointments that are made? There was much concern following appointments made by the previous Prime Minister, when he left office. How would the hon. Gentleman want that to be dealt with in future?

[Luke Graham]

I am glad that the hon. Lady has raised that point. My favourite Prime Minister is David Lloyd George, a strong Welshman who was responsible for the “People’s Budget” in 1909, and who in 1911 pushed through reforms. However, he came unstuck on the issue of Lords and patronage in the 1920s, with similar issues to those that came a century or so later. There is a need for more clarity about the appointments process. I will come on to some of the suggestions in the report, but I think the process should be strengthened and there should be greater transparency. We should make sure that there is fair and transparent way to appoint Members in all parties, as well as independents and Cross Benchers.

I welcome the report produced by the Lord Speaker’s Committee, which proposes to reduce the number of peers to 600. It advocates that any new peers should have to sign an undertaking to serve a 15-year term before retiring from the House, requiring real commitment from them. It recommends a two out, one in system for life peers to get the number down from 800 to 600. After that, there would be a one out, one in system. Finally, it proposes a democratic link through the allocation of new peers to each party according to the average between their vote share and Commons seat share at the most recent election; it also proposes keeping 134 independent Cross Benchers, reflecting the current proportion of Cross Benchers who sit in the House of Lords. Those people are not bound by party loyalty, but are there to serve their country, and provide a valuable, independent voice.

Those are all sensible suggestions. The report proposes the implementation of meaningful reform without the loss of the beneficial aspects currently supplied by the Lords. It is important that any reforms should also respect the Parliament Act 1911 and ensure that the reformed House of Lords does not undermine the supremacy of the House of Commons, which I fear a fully elected upper House just might do. It is important to respect that principle, which has underpinned our parliamentary democracy for the past century; it is just as relevant now as it was in 1911 that those who have been directly elected and who have constituency links can have the final say on laws, and make sure that they are pushed through to reflect their constituents’ views.

I agree with the hon. Member for Edinburgh East on one point: hereditary peers and Lords Spiritual. I am all for tradition, but as a democrat I cannot justifiably defend the continuation of such peers in the Lords, should any reforms be enacted. I would therefore push for the reforms to go further, with current hereditary peers allowed to complete their term, but an eventual phasing out of hereditary peers from the House of Lords.

--- Later in debate ---

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairpersonship, Mr Howarth. What a very interesting debate this has been. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Tommy Sheppard) for securing it. There have been many debates on the House of Lords over many years. Indeed, some would say that many Scots have been arguing over its very existence since at least 1707. We should recall, too, that England has been far less timid about this in the past. Under Cromwell, the English House of Lords was abolished by an Act of Parliament that stated:

“The Commons of England assembled in Parliament, finding by too long experience that the House of Lords is useless and dangerous to the people of England”.

My hon. Friend raised the issue of the House of Lords’ credibility being in crisis, which, by extension, may affect the credibility of the House of Commons. He pointed out the shameful fact that the House of Lords has had to take action to address that because, as has been made clear in both the 2015 and 2017 Conservative manifestos, the UK Government consider electoral reform “not a priority”.

The hon. Member for Ochil and South Perthshire (Luke Graham) in a characteristically passionate contribution made it clear that he supported reform, although he feels a fully elected second Chamber would be unworkable. I appreciate the fact that he wants reform, but, on his concerns about such a second Chamber being unworkable, I point out that such arrangements exist in many other countries around the world, including my country of birth: Australia.

[Luke Graham]

It would be great to have some clarity on the SNP position, because we have heard a couple of different opinions this morning. The hon. Member for Inverclyde (Ronnie Cowan) talked about having a unicameral legislature such as China’s. Other Members have talked about a fully elected second Chamber. It would be great to understand from the party’s Front-Bench spokesperson what the position is: is the SNP for a unicameral legislature such as China, or a fully elected second Chamber?

[Deidre Brock]

In Scotland, happily, there is a long tradition of considerable consultation on these issues. I expect the people of Scotland to decide these matters after considerable consultation.

The right hon. Member for Delyn (David Hanson) spoke of his long-standing support for the abolition of the House of Lords and the need to decide on a good replacement. He also decried very much the presence of hereditary peers, which I will address.

My hon. Friend the Member for Inverclyde (Ronnie Cowan), who as always made a very passionate contribution, described the report’s recommendations as timid and highlighted the House of Lords’ many democratic shortcomings. My hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands) spoke of the SNP’s principled opposition to House of Lords membership for its representatives. I am certainly proud to be a member of a party supporting that position. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady), in ebullient form, called for significant and rapid reform.

I rather admire the boldness of that statement in the Act from the English Parliament calling for the abolition of the House of Lords. I join in that sentiment and call for its abolition. I call for it to be scrapped. Many consider it to be nothing more than a retirement home for decaying politicians and people with nothing better to do than take a handout from the public purse. Some say it is a knacker’s yard for knackered politicians who refuse to accept that their time has passed. As an Australian, I have a special dislike for the idea that unelected people have a major role in governing a country. I am clearly far too young to remember Gough Whitlam’s Government, but his dismissal by an unelected Governor-General still haunts the politics of that nation.

With the help of the Library and the blog of the London School of Economics, I discovered a few things. As mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North, there appear to be only two Parliaments in recognised democracies that have a Chamber of wholly unelected Members appointed for life: this one and Canada’s, though thankfully the one in Canada is soon to be reformed. Even Zimbabwe’s Senate is elected, and even Bahrain’s National Assembly has a four-year term instead of lifelong sinecure.

It is time to modernise properly and, if abolition is not on the cards, to introduce much greater term limits and elections. As has been mentioned, the report seems to see some difficulty in cutting the numbers quickly, but I, too, have a few suggestions. As my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East asked, why do bishops sit in the legislature? We should remove them and the remaining hereditaries; if they think they have something to contribute, they can always stand for election. Then we could institute one of the report’s recommendations, but in a far more direct form—get rid of everyone who has served more than 15 years. That would extract a couple of hundred Members. If we got rid of former MPs, we would be down to about 350. If we removed people who had served in other Parliaments or on councils, lobbyists and those rewarded for internal party work, we would be down to about 250. We could cut the ones who have not turned up or not spoken in the past three years and the number would be down further. It is easy to cut the number if people are interested in a functioning parliamentary Chamber.

As has already been mentioned, there is great concern about the criteria used to decide who is eligible for such appointments. Many argue that the second Chamber is riddled with people rewarded for blind loyalty, people who are there doing party work rather than parliamentary work, and people ennobled so that they could become Ministers because the party of government got incompetents elected instead of people who could do the job. It is considered by many to be a rotten borough and a cesspit of self-interest and entitlement. Any Government who believed in democracy would get rid of it.

The recommendation should not be one new appointment for every two Members who leave. We should ramp that ratio up—to three or four out for every one in—or hold all appointments until the number is down to below 400 at least. Alternatively, we could have it that two must leave for every one appointed and then let the appointments clean the stables. We could get rid of all the incumbents and think again about who we actually want in that Chamber—a revising Chamber, as some would have it. We could abolish it or make people stand for election. We could do practically anything to breathe new life into a museum, but what would be unsustainable would be tinkering at the edges to reduce numbers slightly over many, many years and keeping the same broken system.