House of Lords: Reform

Earl of Glasgow Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd June 2011 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Glasgow]

My Lords, I am somewhat embarrassed. As a Liberal Democrat, I believed myself to be a member of the sensible party, and on nearly all issues I still believe that I am. However, in the case of House of Lords reform, my official party’s proposals make no sense to me at all.

I have always believed—and I thought that this was a fairly general view—that the House of Lords justified its existence by being a very effective revising Chamber. Its primary purpose was to scrutinise and improve government legislation and not, like the House of Commons, be a party-political slanging shop. The House of Lords succeeds in being an effective revising Chamber largely due to the quality and variety of its inmates. It is composed of the wise and the good, experts in an infinite number of fields, and representatives of nearly every ethnic group and religion in the country. Why should we want to exchange this for a Chamber of second-rate politicians who will feel that they have the democratic authority to challenge the supremacy of the House of Commons, where most of the first-rate politicians can be found?

Yet, say the architects of the draft Bill, this new second Chamber is still to remain subservient to the lower House and retain its functions as a revising Chamber. Second-rate professional politicians will be revising the work of first-rate professional politicians. It does not make any sense. We are told that this all has to be done in the name of democracy, but some in my party have a narrow definition of democracy. They are trying to push through a Bill that should be entitled “Let’s reform the House of Lords at any cost because it is not democratic and then see what happens after that”. That is the Bill that they seem to want to put through.

However, as many noble Lords have pointed out, this is not a reform of the House of Lords—I wish that the leaders of my party would be honest about this—it is abolition of the House of Lords and its replacement by a senate. I cannot think of a better example in modern politics of attempting to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Fortunately, not everyone in my party is bent on constitutional vandalism. My noble friend Lord Steel of Aikwood, has a Bill that is a serious attempt to reform the House of Lords—not to abolish it but to rid it of some of its anachronisms, indiscipline and absurdities while at the same time ensuring that it retains its primary function as an effective revising Chamber. My noble friend makes it clear that the only way to retain this carefully balanced House is by appointing Peers, not electing them.

Then, however, the delicate question in this case is: who does the appointing? Here, I disagree with my noble friend Lord Steel’s role model for a statutory appointments commission. I am proposing that the members of the appointment commission—the people responsible for appointing new Peers—should be the ones who are elected. When I say “elected”, I do not necessarily mean they should be elected by the people, I also mean indirectly elected, elected by their own association or group, or ex-officio appointments based on previous elections.

For instance, the Prime Minister or his representative would have to be on the commission. So, too, would the leaders of the other main parties. Members of the existing House of Lords might elect a Back-Bencher from each party to represent them; importantly, that would also apply to the Cross-Benchers. Under my proposal, that would be the extent of professional politicians’ representation. Other members of the appointments commission might be selected through election from key professions or important interest groups—the CBI and the TUC being the most obvious examples—and from leaders of important ethnic and religious groups.

If one must keep the commission to fewer than 25 members, which would be more than enough, there would clearly be some argument and competition over places. I personally like the idea of having, say, two people's Peers, possibly elected directly through the media, and I will be rooting for one elected hereditary, literally elected from among the 1,000 or so Peers. His presence would give the appointed Chamber some historical continuity and justify the House continuing to call itself the House of Lords. Whoever the members of the proposed commission turn out to be, I ask the committee set up to consider the House of Lords White Paper seriously to consider the possibility of an elected appointments commission. I hope that that will go some way to satisfy the leader of my party's diktat that anyone in any legislative position of power or influence and should be democratically chosen by and accountable to the people.

I believe that a second Chamber that, more or less, represents the best of British society as a whole in all its complexity is just as democratic and a good deal wiser than a second Chamber made up largely or entirely of elected politicians.