House of Lords Reform Bill

Gerald Kaufman Excerpts

Monday 9th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

I was a member of the royal commission on the House of Lords, an all-party commission that, after many months of consideration and consulting a large number of witnesses throughout the United Kingdom, decided unanimously that

“we could not recommend: a wholly or largely directly elected second chamber”.

In the years since then I have come upon no evidence to dissuade me from that view. This Bill is a botched mess that seems to have been drafted on the back of an envelope, and it is based not on principle, but on a series of deals between the two parties that comprise the Government.

The principle, if one can grace it with such an epithet, behind the Bill is not how to secure the better governance of this great democracy, but how to gratify the whims of the Liberal Democrat party, which has been determined to distort our parliamentary system, first, through the alternative vote and, now, with this rubbish in an effort to wangle more Liberal Democrat Members of either House or both Houses.

Significantly, what concerns the Liberal Democrats, to the extent of their threatening the stability of the Government, is not what concerns our constituents, such as jobs, the health service, schools, pensions, law and order, housing, but their own party self-interest.

One issue that has always troubled me about even a part-elected second Chamber is the conflict between Members of such a Chamber and the rights of the House of Commons and its Members. This Bill is imprecise to the point of vacuity on the relationship between the House of Commons and the new Chamber that it seeks to create. What is clear, however, is the certainty of conflict and collision between Members of the House of Commons and Members of the second Chamber in the areas where their membership coincides.

If a Member of the House of Commons and a Member of the revised second Chamber both take up the same individual case, or take up a position on the same issue, chaos could result, and the rights of the elected Member of the House of Commons could be eroded or undermined, particularly given the different lengths of membership of each body and the fact that Members of the second Chamber will be unaccountable because they cannot be re-elected.

I was not thrilled with the proposals for a second Chamber in the 2010 Labour party election manifesto, but at least they started with a referendum to legitimise any subsequent action. That difference being so strong, I am bewildered by the decision of Labour Front Benchers to support the Bill’s Second Reading. In 42 years in this House I have voted only once against the Labour Whip, but I shall certainly disregard it tomorrow evening. Perhaps it will set a precedent. I shall vote against both the Second Reading and the programme motion.

On whipping, let me say this to hon. Members in the Conservative party, although from what I have heard in this debate so far I do not believe that they need to be told it. I have a considerable personal regard for the Government Chief Whip, but on this issue he is not McLoughlin but Machiavelli. His job is to manipulate to get the result that he needs to deliver.

If one picks up a newspaper or turns on the television, one encounters all kinds of lurid warnings and threats: “boundary changes may be in danger”; “the very future of the coalition may be at stake”. Boundary changes crop up every few years and will continue to do so. I have survived four sets so far, and perhaps I will survive the next as well. Governments come and Governments go, but the new Chamber proposed in this Bill will be irreversible. Once we have it, we will not be able to get rid of it.

This nation’s parliamentary system of government has evolved over nine centuries to make the United Kingdom, for which under this Bill there will be different electoral systems in different countries, the greatest and most stable democracy in the world. There has been change, but it has been evolutionary change. A Liberal Government asserted the primacy of the House of Commons under the Parliament Acts more than a century ago; a Conservative Government created life peers and introduced women peers; and a Labour Government began the end of the hereditary system in the House of Lords.

We, unlike other democracies, do not have a constitution, and that is because we do not need a constitution. The Queen in Parliament is all we need. Let us uphold British democracy tomorrow night. Let us vote no in both Divisions and be done with this pernicious threat to what has made the United Kingdom a great democracy.