House of Lords Reform

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Tuesday 29th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness]

My Lords, when I saw that I was going to follow the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, I was reminded of that lovely quotation in the book The Leopard:

“Things have to change in order to remain the same”.

It is a delight to see the noble Lord back in his place, and it is a great benefit to this House.

The noble Lord, Lord Richard, reminded us that we are on an eternal roundabout and not making much progress. Although we are not making much progress with reform, the House continually evolves as we adjust our procedures and conventions. To me, one of the conventions that has changed markedly and, I think, for the worse is the number of interruptions in our opening speeches. We are a great debating chamber, one of the finest in the world, but the number of interruptions in opening speeches, particularly today, reduces the value of those speeches, and that is to our detriment.

I was sad when I read the document that my Government put out on 20 May. It says:

“Lords appointments will be made with the objective of creating a second chamber that is reflective of the share of the vote secured by the political parties in the last general election”.

Why was I upset by that? Because the House is large enough as it is. It is increasingly difficult for us to do our job, given the space that we have. The noble Lord, Lord Graham, rightly reminded us that the House was much bigger when there were a number of hereditary Peers, but they did not attend. The average attendance in those days was under 300, if I remember rightly; now it is more like 400, and growing. If we are going to get a whole lot of new Peers, that will mean that attendance increases because they will be the regulars.

It is interesting that the Liberal manifesto said that they wanted to have a fully elected second Chamber with considerably fewer Members than the current House. How small a Chamber should we be? Going by the recent edition of Dod’s, if we wanted a House of 400 people, there would be no one here over the age of 70. That would move me suddenly from the lowest quartile in this House, where I have been for 40 years, into a much higher one. If we wanted a House of 350, the retirement age would have to be 67, so a number of us who have spoken today would be leaving and not returning. There is no doubt in my mind that the key driving force now for reform is the number of people in the House.

I join the many noble Lords who have asked in this debate, “What is our role? What is the point of a second Chamber? What role do the Government really want us to undertake?”. At the moment we consider in great detail, and spend hours debating, legislation that has not even been discussed in another place. We have long debates; we then have a vote, as the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, just said; the Government are defeated; and what happens? It goes down to the other end and most of it is not even discussed there. At the moment we are not asking the other place to think again—we are not even asking it to think. We are an advisory Chamber, not a revising one.

The second Chamber should be a revising Chamber, and that is why I firmly believe that we should be a wholly elected House. That is the only way that we can have some brake on the Executive. The other place is not holding the Executive to account at all, while we are doing a little bit. But we ought to have a much stronger voice and we ought to be much more challenging. We should be a totally elected Chamber, not a partially elected Chamber. I see huge complications in having some Peers appointed and some elected. It would be much cleaner, much better, to have a totally elected House. I have been of that opinion for some years.

The noble Baroness, Lady Royall, said that she felt that the Conservatives were naturally anti-reform. I would have to remind her of the 1958 Act. I would have to remind her also of the 1968 Bill, which was passed in the House of Lords by the hereditary Peers, who were ready to abolish themselves. It was Michael Foot and Enoch Powell in another place who destroyed that Bill. So I take issue with the noble Baroness on her view that we are the party against reform.

The noble Baroness also mentioned a referendum. I found that interesting. I found it hard to believe, too, considering how the Labour Party behaved with regard to a referendum on the Lisbon treaty. Could it be trusted on a referendum on this House? However, the point of a referendum is important. Having listened to a number of noble Lords who have spoken on it today, I believe that what we agree—if we manage to agree anything—should be put to a referendum.

The noble Lord, Lord Steel, has put down his Motion. He knows that I have fought him on his Private Member’s Bills in the past, but, since then, things have changed—we are both very lucky, we are both noble friends. Nevertheless, I shall still fight him on his Private Member’s Bill, most particularly because of its proposals in respect of by-elections for hereditary Peers. Those were an integral part of the 1999 agreement which secured that Bill into legislation and without them it would have been a very different story. It is a major principle for all of us hereditaries and it needs to be retained until there is a major reform of the House of Lords. When there is a major reform it will be a different story, but to do this incrementally and to remove the one plank that saw so many noble friends all around the House leave this Chamber after making such a huge contribution for most of their lives, would be a great mistake. I shall therefore fight my noble friend on his Motion and on his Bill.