House of Lords Reform

Duncan Hames Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

I do not complain, Mr Deputy Speaker.

This is both a bad Bill and a half-baked Bill, and I shall certainly vote against it. It is not improvable in that sense because of the principles on which it is based. Admittedly, we are in strange territory with the new coalition, but some very strange policies and constitutional principles are coming out. First, in the name of democracy we are reducing the number of elected MPs and increasing the number of Members of the other place. That is pretty strange.

Secondly, the Deputy Prime Minister—I am sorry that he has left the Chamber—annunciates, as the basis of his support for many policies, that he can support any policy he wants, even if it is in contradiction to his manifesto, because he did not win the election. Who ever expected the Lib Dems to form a Government on their own? He is saying that because they were not going to form a Government on their own, he can support any policy he wants, irrespective of what he said to the electorate.

Thirdly—this is a difficult but fundamental point—reform of the House of Lords was in the manifestos of all three parties. However, that means that there was no differentiation. The electorate could not choose to vote for one party or another on the basis of what was in a manifesto. We have just had a fairly ridiculous referendum between first past the post and the alternative vote, but how much more important are making fundamental changes by introducing a voting system and changing the balance of power between this House and the other place? Are we having a referendum on that? No we are not, even though the electorate had no choice during the general election.

[Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)]

The hon. Gentleman mentions the lack of differentiation in the manifestos, but in actual fact one manifesto called for a referendum on the subject—the manifesto was for a party that was defeated at the election.

[Graham Stringer]

The hon. Gentleman may not have noticed, but all the parties lost the election. Nobody got a majority.

What is the problem? Is the problem in our democracy really the relationship between this House and the other one? I do not think so. Where has all the power gone from these Houses of Parliament? It has gone to Europe. Depending on which area people are in, 60% or 70% of our legislation is now passed by Europe. The proposals do not deal with that, but it is one of the most fundamental problems.

Within the power structure of our constitution—I accept that a lot of that power has gone away—the problem is not the House of Lords but the Privy Council, the royal prerogative and the fact that there is no separation between Ministers and Members of the legislature, which is almost never talked about when we compare Parliaments. It is fairly unusual in Parliaments around the world for Ministers to be accountable to themselves within a legislature. That is a big problem, and one reason why there is less Government accountability than one might expect, so the arguments for it are second rate and do not deal with the main problem.

Most of the debate we have had today has been about whether these reforms would affect the primacy of the House of Commons. If we introduce a democratic element into the House of Lords, it is bound to undermine the primacy of this House for several reasons. First, what would happen if we introduced proportional representation—STV or any other form of PR? Some Members of this House believe that PR is a superior and more democratic system to first past the post. The electorate disagreed, but that is those Members’ honest and openly held view. If we were to elect the other place by PR, it seems reasonable that they would then argue primacy.

Secondly, is it more democratic to elect people who never have to go back to the electorate who elected them and account for themselves? I do not think so. It is just a method of appointment. Democracy implies not only the ballot box, but accountability in terms of justifying which way Members have voted. Otherwise Members could vote any way they wanted without any consequences.

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[Paul Murphy]

It is an argument for reform, not abolition. The bishops are another case in point. I am a Roman Catholic, not an Anglican, but I believe that the bishops of the Church of England offer a tremendous amount of expertise and experience to Parliament, and that they should still be Members of the House of Lords.

[Duncan Hames]

Does the right hon. Gentleman think that bishops voting in the House of Lords adds in any way to the expertise they are able to offer through what they say in that Chamber, and might they find it easier to remain in that Chamber if they were to desist from taking part in Divisions?

[Paul Murphy]

That is possible; obviously, such matters would have to be addressed.

Whatever our views about the Bill, I have to say to my Front-Bench colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), that I entirely agree with the Opposition Front Bench on a number of points—for example, a 15-year term of election is completely dotty. I hope that will be reconsidered, because it would give Members a long time in the other place without any proper mandate. As they are to be paid and their job will therefore be a profession, most of them will, presumably, be about 51 years of age upon election now that the pension rules have been changed, so that they can retire at 65. I hope that that proposal will be jettisoned, therefore.

I want to conclude with a few comments about process. When this House considered the constituencies Bill, the coalition was not a bit interested in consensus. Every time contributors to the debates both here and in the other place talked about the need for major constitutional changes to have a bedrock of consensus, the coalition Government refused to take any notice, but now that they want their way on the House of Lords consensus is the order of the day. I wonder whether this is a consensus of convenience, therefore. I believe that my own Front-Bench team should be rather sceptical about a Joint Committee and about being drawn into a consensus that in my view is convenient. We should not be gulled by that, and I think this particular constitutional change needs more than a Committee; it probably needs a royal commission to deal with it, rather than a Committee of politicians. Whatever sort of body it is, however, we must be very careful.

In all the years I have been a Member of this House, there has been a free vote on reform of the House of Lords. That should be the case whatever the manifesto commitments—and I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough (Sir Stuart Bell) that our manifesto commitment fell when we lost the election—and whatever the policies of the parties. Over the years, there were manifesto commitments and party principles and policies, but there was always a free vote for all the parties in this House of Commons and in the other place, and I believe that there should be a free vote on this issue.

Finally, I wish to raise the referendum issue. Some 100 years ago when the then Liberal Government introduced their first reform of the House of Lords, there was, to all intents and purposes, a referendum in that there was a general election on a single issue: whether the House of Lords should be reformed. Therefore, it is completely logical that we, too, should have a referendum on reform of the House of Lords. We had a referendum on whether we should remain a member of what was then known as the Common Market. We had referendums on elected Assemblies in Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland. We had a referendum only this year on whether the powers of the Welsh Assembly should be extended—they were—and we also had a referendum on the alternative vote.

Lord Ashdown referred in his speech in the other place and in The Times today to people who hold my views on the matters under discussion as war horses, and to those who agree with me on the alternative vote as dinosaurs. Whichever animals we might be, the dinosaurs won the argument with the people on the alternative vote, and the war horses have the following in common with the dinosaurs: we want the people of this country to decide the constitutional future of this country in respect of the House of Lords, so let us have a referendum on this Bill.

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[Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)]

It is a privilege to follow the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart), not least because I can hope that the reason for our disagreement is that he has not yet had the chance to hear my speech.

I do not trust Governments—not this Government, not the last Government, nor any I have known. I am, after all, a Liberal. If, in common with many of my constituents, one distrusts Governments, then one must think it important to have checks on their power that protect people from their tyranny, be that a tyranny of the majority or, as is often the case in this country, a minority—of the old left and the old right as the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) described them earlier.

Chief among those checks on power in our country’s proud history has been the strength of Parliament, and in this debate we hear much about the relative strength of each House of Parliament. I do not want to see an end to the primacy of the Commons, but it is more important to rebalance power between the Executive and Parliament as a whole and to do so in Parliament’s favour, as argued by my neighbour, the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), and more strongly by the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan).

I, for one, appreciate the valuable work done by members of the House of Lords, and recognise that it is most unlikely, and in certain cases most undesirable, that those from some walks of life, whose wisdom or expertise is cherished there, would stand for election to a reformed second Chamber. For that reason, I can see how I could support the continued presence of a group of unelected members of a second Chamber, so that they could attend, advise, speak and no doubt persuade elected Members with the force of their argument. So powerful would these contributions be, however, that I see no reason why these unelected Members would need to cast a vote when the House divided.

The contribution of the House of Lords as a revising Chamber has been both welcome and necessary, but we cannot afford to leave it at that. I suspect its ability to be a revising Chamber is dependent on the powers with which it can persuade this Chamber to accept its revisions.

Parliament’s second Chamber needs the political legitimacy confidently to act as a brake against the unfettered power of an Executive who wield a majority in the House of Commons that they dominate first by their presence and then by their patronage. The Public Administration Committee noted in its recent report the increasing size of the “payroll vote”, as it is not entirely accurately called, to 141 MPs, which is already half the votes the Government have needed to win most of the Divisions in this Parliament. That dominance might grow further when the total number of MPs is reduced for the next Parliament.

It is an unwarranted concentration of power to have a second Chamber that is primarily appointed by the leaders of the political parties, at least one of whom will be at the head of the Government, as well as a Commons Chamber in which a quarter of MPs owe their roles in government to a similar process—and in which many more hope to. Such power is felt not just during Divisions in the Commons, but through programme motions that guillotine debate and through influence via the Committee of Selection in the appointment of Members to Public Bill Committees and those that decide on delegated legislation.

Some say that turkeys will not vote for Christmas and that that means we cannot hope to persuade the House of Lords to accept reform, but I say that for that same reason it is even less likely that this House will ever escape the dominance of the Executive. Our best hope of strengthening Parliament in the face of the Executive is to reform the Lords and to let the people decide who is to go there and vote on the laws of this land, a case that was made eloquently by the hon. Member for Carlisle (John Stevenson), my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson) and the hon. Members for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) and for Crawley (Henry Smith). In this way, party leaders can be made to cede power to the voters and the second Chamber can grow confident in the use of its existing powers, with greater public acceptance. Parliament will again be able to stand tall before the Executive.