House of Lords Reform Bill

Frank Dobson Excerpts

Tuesday 10th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Frank Dobson (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)]

Nothing will persuade me to support the Bill. I opposed the Labour Government’s proposals, and this Bill is far worse. I have not heard any convincing arguments in its favour. Most of them boil down to the syllogism, “Something must be done. This Bill is something. Therefore this must be done.” Such sophistry has been augmented with the line, “We must act now to complete the unfinished business left for 100 years, and we must get on with it.” Well, if we have waited for 100 years, we really ought to try to get it right and not botch it, and the Bill is undoubtedly a botch.

The plain fact is that an elected second Chamber would be very different from an unelected House of Lords. No self-respecting elected Member would accept for very long being bound by the conventions that restrict the unelected Lords. If the Lords were to lose their democratic deficit, they would replace the deficit with a surplus—a democratically legitimate surplus—of the dynamism, commitment and energy that election brings to the political process and which we all try to demonstrate.

[Hazel Blears]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Frank Dobson]

No. I ought to get on.

Not content with what the Lords do now, an elected Chamber would demand new duties to reflect their new democratic legitimacy, and with those duties would go new powers. I have to say to all those who are in favour of this proposal that “new powers” is the phrase that dares not speak its name in this debate. Until we get clear what job we want the second Chamber to do, we cannot sensibly decide how it should be made up. As I first said about 10 years ago, we are being asked to pick the team before we know what game it is going to play. An elected second Chamber would not play the touch rugby played under the present rules. An elected Chamber would lurch into the contact version of that game, crunching tackles and rucks and mauls with the Commons. Yet the Bill pretends that that problem does not arise.

Worse than that, the Bill does not look at what is wrong with Parliament as a whole. It has long been my view and long been my experience that Parliament is not working very well. It is not good at holding Governments to account. It is not good at controlling the raising and spending of tax. If anybody questions that, how can any of us justify the decades-long failure to pass laws which stop tax evasion? Parliament certainly is not good at passing laws that work as those who proposed them intended or that are readily understood by the people who have to try to make them work.

The House of Commons is undoubtedly the dominant Chamber, so most of the fault with Parliament must lie with us, not with the Lords, however good or bad that institution. We need to look radically at how we improve our performance. Then we need to consider, once we have done that, whether we need a second Chamber, and if so, what its functions can be. That is extremely important, because in these turbulent times people, and in particular young people, are becoming disillusioned with the political process, and not just with us. There is a danger that they will become disillusioned with democracy as a whole. We must start doing our job better before we start messing around with the House of Lords.