Eleanor Laing
Main Page: Eleanor Laing (Conservative - Epping Forest)Department Debates - View all Eleanor Laing's debates with the Cabinet Office
(11 years, 10 months ago)
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The Deputy Prime Minister
I will make a little more progress and then give way again.
I have heard Lords reform presented as some kind of Liberal Democrat crusade. The truth, as I have said on a number of occasions, is that it made its way into all the party manifestos—in the case of the Labour party, as the right hon. Member for Neath has indicated, going all the way back to Keir Hardie’s 1911 manifesto.
The final myth is this: I have heard it said that the House of Commons should not be concerning itself—
The Deputy Prime Minister
May I first deal with this important point? The hon. Lady has raised it with me personally on a number of occasions, so perhaps she would care to listen to my answer.
The final myth is that the House of Commons should not be concerning itself with Lords reform at a time of economic difficulty. My answer is this: let’s get on with it—proper scrutiny, yes; years of foot-dragging, no. I do not remember this complaint being made when we legislated to create elected police commissioners, or when we were debating local government finance or legal aid reform. It is odd to suggest that Parliament cannot do more than one thing at a time. I certainly agree that jobs and growth are the priority, so let us not tie ourselves up in knots on Lords reform. We do not need to—all the parties are signed up to it. We should vote for the Bill and the programme motion so that we can scrutinise the Bill properly while still allowing ourselves to make progress on other Government priorities.
Mrs Laing
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. It happens that he has just hit on the very point on which I agree with him entirely. We do have a duty to reform the House of Lords, even though we are doing other things at the same time. He is absolutely right about that, but what a pity that he does not accept Lord Steel’s Bill and get on with the necessary reform that everybody agrees with. If all three party manifestos gave no choice on House of Lords reform, is that not a good reason to put it to the people in a referendum, because in the election they had no chance to vote against it?
The Deputy Prime Minister
Following that logic, the commitment to a referendum on House of Lords reform should have been included in the party manifestos.
Sadiq Khan
We are in favour of reform. I will come to the issue of timing in a moment.
I note from his opening statement that the Deputy Prime Minister highlighted areas where the Bill had been amended as a result of the Joint Committee’s report, but he was less keen to highlight those where he has not taken on board the Joint Committee’s views. He knows as well as I do that he has cherry-picked from the Joint Committee’s report, while blindly ignoring its other key recommendations and concerns. Let me turn to the Bill itself. If I was being generous, I would have to say that the Bill as it stands is a bit of a mess.
Mrs Laing
Having sat on the Joint Committee for eight months, I entirely agree with the right hon. Gentleman that the report was critical of the Government’s Bill. The alternative report—signed by 12 of the Joint Committee’s 25 members—was even more critical. The Committee agreed that eight months was not long enough to give proper scrutiny to the Bill, so how could 10 days be long enough for this House?
Sadiq Khan
I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. She reminds us that there are still a number of major deficiencies, which will need to be looked at in Committee, if the Bill is to be improved. Our support for giving the Bill a Second Reading should therefore not be taken as a blank cheque.
We have many concerns—many of them major—about the content of the Bill, but I shall concentrate on three areas.
The area of powers and conventions deserves our greatest attention. With all the focus on form, the Government have neglected function. On primacy, the Government have sought to rewrite the inadequate clause 2 of the draft Bill and dropped any reference to the conventions governing the relationship between the Houses. It remains to be seen whether this will deal satisfactorily with the issue; constitutional experts are no doubt poring over this as we speak. As the Bill will be debated on the Floor of the House, and as new clause 2 was not considered by the Joint Committee, there has been no pre-legislative scrutiny. We simply do not know whether the provision is adequate. Labour Members want to ensure that the Commons maintains its primacy even when a second Chamber becomes elected.
It is impossible to predict what changes might develop in the culture of the House of Lords following reform, but it seems likely that elected Members will expect to play at least a fairly assertive role and that voters may share that view. When the European Parliament went from being an appointed to an elected body, it demanded more powers to reflect its democratic mandate. Why should elected Members of the second Chamber be bound by conventions that bind a Chamber of hereditary and appointed peers? The Bill effectively washes its hands of this issue.
Mrs Laing
Does the right hon. Gentleman acknowledge that this is not just any Bill? The Bill brings about fundamental change to Parliament. It is a serious constitutional measure and, by convention, the House does not usually put a timetable—a limit—on a Bill of such constitutional significance.
Sadiq Khan
I heard Lib Dem Members chuntering while the hon. Lady, who sits on the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, sat on the Joint Committee and spoke for the Conservatives in opposition, made her important point.
The next two days offer an opportunity for views from all sides to be expressed. On previous occasions when the Chamber has debated House of Lords reform, there has been no shortage of opinions from across the full spectrum, all sincerely held and all genuine. I am certain that this occasion will be no different. I understand that more than 115 MPs have already indicated that they want to speak in the debate over the next two days. I know that there are siren voices of concern in all parts of the Chamber. There are those who favour reform, but have concerns about the Bill, and those who favour the status quo.
Let me end by saying that we can all agree that no one, except the Deputy Prime Minister, thinks that this is a perfect Bill. We will help the Government to give the Bill a Second Reading tomorrow night, but Government Back Benchers should vote with us on the programme motion so that we can all work together to achieve a better Bill.
Mrs Eleanor Laing (Epping Forest) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson). Although I disagree with a lot of what he says, I have respect for the way in which he says it. I certainly agree with his last point about a referendum.
There is wide agreement in this House and in the other place that we want reform of the second Chamber. Sadly, the Bill before us is standing in the way of measured, necessary reform. If only we had a small Bill that proposed to do what we all know needs to be done, we could get on with it. But we cannot, because the Bill is fundamentally flawed. It undermines democracy in three specific ways: first, it damages accountability; secondly, it has not been subject to proper consultation; and thirdly, it ignores the will of the people.
First, a person who is elected for a 15-year, non-renewable term of office is accountable to nobody.
Duncan Hames
How would the accountability of the Members of the House of Lords be achieved under the proposals that the hon. Lady would support?
Mrs Laing
I do not know what proposals I would support for the House of Lords, because we have not had proper consultation or proper consideration of what ought to be done. I believe that we ought to have a constitutional convention to consider the reform of Parliament as a whole. Once we have done that properly, I will be happy to give the hon. Gentleman my answer.
Worse still on the matter of accountability, a body of people who, having been elected, claim to have a democratic mandate, will behave as though they had one. There will be no stopping them. They will flex their democratic muscles and challenge this House of Commons. No matter what any Bill or any convention says, they will challenge the primacy of this House.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
When these people are elected to the House of Lords, or the House of senators, or the second Chamber, they will be elected by millions. They will therefore say, “Millions of our people have put me here, so I have a better democratic right than MPs to speak for them.” That will mean a challenge to this Chamber.
Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that the challenge will be not just here in the Chamber but in every marginal constituency? That is what happens in Australia, where they have the system in question. The equivalent of a Liberal Democrat Senator in a Conservative seat becomes that area’s parliamentary representative, and so it is in every marginal constituency.
Mrs Laing
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Joint Committee took evidence from the Australian Parliament, and Members ought to look at that evidence and pay heed to Australia before giving away our primacy.
The most worrying thing of all is that as the primacy of the House of Commons is challenged, the unique link of accountability between the elector and his or her representative in Parliament—their Member of this House —will be undermined, so Parliament’s very accountability will be undermined as well.
Quite apart from the fact that there is no reasonable question to which the right answer is 450 extra elected politicians, having a second House of Commons at the other end of the corridor will not increase the chances of holding the Government to account. It will do exactly the opposite. A clash between the two Houses and a squabble over when and whether the Parliament Acts could be used will lead to a challenge in the courts, and I for one do not want vital political issues to be decided not by Parliament but by the judiciary. Our electors expect us to take responsibility, and they expect the buck to stop with us, their MPs. We ought to fight to preserve that.
I turn to the matter of consultation. The subject of Lords reform may have been talked about for 100 years, but we are not considering it in a proper, wider context. Reform of one part of Parliament is reform of Parliament as a whole, but we have been able to consider only the narrow proposals that the Deputy Prime Minister has put forward. I sat on the Joint Committee for eight months, and we recommended a constitutional convention so that the subject could be properly examined in context. The Government have ignored that recommendation, and now we face the possibility that we might not even be able to examine the Bill fully here in the House of Commons because of a narrow programme motion. At the same time, the Government are afraid of a referendum. They are afraid to ask the people. No constitutional convention, no referendum, no proper scrutiny in the House of Commons—that is not democracy.
Mr MacNeil
May I do a cursory self-interest check? Will the hon. Lady rule herself out now of ever taking a seat in an unreformed second Chamber?
Mrs Laing
No, I will not rule that out—not that I ever expect to be offered a seat, and certainly not by my hon. Friends on the Front Bench. I am probably not the most popular Smartie in the tube today, but I do not care about that: I am here to do my duty for democracy.
The Bill ignores the will of the people. Only one year ago, we had an expensive nationwide referendum in which the people overwhelmingly rejected a proportional representation voting system. The Deputy Prime Minister now ignores the will of the people. PR for this House was rejected, so he says, “Let’s introduce it for the other place.” What contempt! What duplicity! Why does he do it? The answer to that non-rhetorical question is that a proportional election system will give the Liberal Democrats a permanent hold on the balance of power in the second Chamber. That is not democracy; it is blatant party political advantage. It is short term and small-minded, and I certainly cannot vote for it.
There is very much more to say on this subject, and I hope the House votes to give all the time necessary for proper scrutiny of such fundamental parliamentary reform.
Mr Heath
I will give way to the hon. Lady in a few moments.
We also heard the proposals, from the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) and others, that we should be going for Lord Steel’s Bill. Lord Steel has put forward some small and valuable proposals, but if anyone honestly believes that those small incremental changes that would put right the legislative incapacity of the previous Government actually address the fundamental constitutional issues about the House of Lords, I have to say that they are fundamentally wrong.
Mr Heath
It might be because we were anticipating 14 days of debate on this measure. The fact that the Government acceded to the majority of the recommendations of the Joint Committee shows that the Government have been prepared to listen.
Some have criticised the voting system, particularly this semi-open list. I made the point in an earlier intervention that that was something that the Labour party asked for. Of course, it asks for something and then it votes against it later, but that is par for the course; we expect that. To those who believe that a list with a voting constituency of millions is not better than a closed list with a voting capacity of one—the Prime Minister of the day, putting forward his or her nominations to the upper House—I have to say that I simply do not accept that argument.