House of Lords Reform (No. 2) Bill

Debate between Edward Leigh and Dan Byles

Friday 18th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Dan Byles]

Absolutely; in the absence of any method of leaving the other House, the leave of absence system does provide a compromise. However, it is far from a perfect compromise, because one could very well ask: how many peers do we currently have? The 43 peers currently on a permanent leave of absence have a very ambiguous status. Some of them could, in theory, continue to seek a rolling leave of absence each time for 10 or 15 years and then suddenly decide to come back and start voting again.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend consider that the Liberal party has taken leave of absence during this debate?

[Dan Byles]

My hon. Friend tempts me down a route that I shall avoid.

What is the status of those peers who have been granted leave of absence? Is it possible to replace them? Arguably not, because we could replace 43 peers who, it appears, have now chosen to leave the Lords, but all 43 could come back in five years’ time. So it is a compromise that has gone some way towards addressing the problem, but it is not an elegant or permanent solution.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dan Byles]

I am not sure whether to thank my hon. Friend for that last bit, but I am not a parliamentary draftsman and that wording was put into the Bill on the advice of the Clerks. His point is interesting, and I am not qualified to comment on it, but that wording was drafted by the system, so to speak. If we feel that it sets a dangerous precedent that might require it to be put in all future Bills, I would be more than happy to discuss that point in Committee and address it if necessary.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I am struggling to know what difference the Bill will make, frankly. Why should anybody retire from the House of Lords when they are going to get no pension, and when they have to attend only once a Session? Would anybody ever retire from this House if there were no pension and they had to turn up only once a Session? Nobody would.

[Dan Byles]

I could turn that around and say that if my hon. Friend thinks the Bill will make no difference, he has no reason to oppose it. The Lords have asked for these provisions, and I understand that at least five or six noble Lords desperately want to leave. We have already heard that many of them—43 at one point—have requested leaves of absence. There are peers who wish to have the right to leave, and even if only one is released from what has become a life sentence rather than a great privilege, surely we should allow that. It seems a bit bizarre to keep them against their will and send them a written summons every Session whether they want it or not.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

I also commend my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire (Dan Byles) for promoting the Bill. I hope he did not mind my intervening on him and suggesting that it would make very little difference. His reply was interesting; he said, “It’s going to make so little difference, it’s not worth opposing,” which is an interesting constitutional innovation.

I think that my hon. Friend is going about this the right way, though. We are all familiar with the dictum that when it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change. I think we can add to that: when it is necessary to change, it is necessary to do so very slowly. That is a gradualist, Conservative, Tory—high Tory, if I may say so—notion of constitutional reform, and Edmund Burke would have been proud of him today. Edmund Burke, incidentally, was known as the “Dinner Bell” during his time in the Commons because his speeches were so long and so boring, but that certainly did not apply to the crisp way in which my hon. Friend introduced his Bill and replied to all our many points.

What I like about the Bill is that it establishes the notion that it is possible to reform the House of Lords gradually and to remove its greatest faults without suggesting that we need an elected House of Lords. I am personally convinced that this is the way forward. It was a very good point made earlier that it is extraordinary that those most hellbent on creating an elected House of Lords, based on proportional representation to ensure that no one party can dominate it, are the same people who, precisely because they want a radical reform, insist on killing off every single modest reform ever attempted. That is an extraordinary constitutional notion.

With this extraordinarily modest Bill, we are just trying to take one or two steps, and if it becomes law, there is no reason why we could not take two or three further steps next year. Of course, I do not think the Bill goes far enough. It does not get to the kernel of the problem, but that is not a good reason for denying my hon. Friend’s Bill progress today.

I want to make a few points about how we could solve some of the House of Lords’ major problems. If the Bill were to become law, what would it achieve? It would allow people to retire. My hon. Friend made a fair point when he asked why anyone should not be allowed to retire. No one would suggest that the provision on retirement is a wrong notion in itself. We all know, however, that it is already possible to take leave of absence. My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) has intervened to make that entirely justifiable point. There are no incentives to retire, because there is no pension and because people can take leave of absence. Even under this Bill, Members of the House of Lords would have to turn up only once a Session to retain their membership. It is therefore hard to imagine why anyone would choose to retire. However, according to my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire, there are four or five people in the other place who wish to do so. Fair enough—why should anyone stop them? The fact that only a few people want to do something is not a reason for opposing their right to do it. So I have no problem with that provision.

I do not think anyone has a problem with putting the House of Lords pretty much on a par with the House of Commons in terms of criminal convictions, although I think that too much is made of this point. Just as there are probably very few people who would choose to retire from the House of Lords, because it is unnecessary to do so, there are also very few people who have been convicted of relatively serious criminal offences.

[Dan Byles]

Three.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Indeed. So that provision would hardly make any difference.

The main problem with the House of Lords is that there are too many people there. It is not that the Benches are overcrowded or that people have to turn up early to speak. The problem with having too many people in the House of Lords is that it gives too much power and patronage to the Government. The Bill will make absolutely no difference to that. That is not a reason to oppose it, however.

Our debating these important constitutional points today gives us an opportunity to say that the Government are in a difficult position on this matter. They introduced a massive Bill last year that would have fundamentally changed the relationship between the two Houses of Parliament. It would effectively have created an elected House of Lords and put people in there for a 15-year term. Such a dramatic, radical step would have offended many Conservative sensibilities, and the Government failed to achieve consensus on the Bill. They also tell us constantly that they are worried about the other place because there are too many people there, yet they go on stuffing it—I use the word advisedly—with more and more political placements. It has reached the stage where even someone like me could hope to go to the House of Lords.