House of Lords Reform Bill

Graham Allen Excerpts

Monday 9th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sadiq Khan]

I apologise for correcting my right hon. Friend, but in fact there were nine days of debate, not four, on the Floor of the House. She is absolutely right in all other respects.

[Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend understand that if he is not prepared to say how long a programme motion should specify for debate, even in his wildest dreams, while saying that he wants reform of the second Chamber, people outside this Chamber might well feel that his position is contradictory? Will he therefore consider entering into proper negotiations should the programme motion fail tomorrow night, so that we ensure that everyone outside this place knows that the Labour party is still a party of reform of the second Chamber?

[Sadiq Khan]

I thank the Chair of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee for his helpful words. It is important for us to ensure that we do that so that the public can see that we are genuine and because we believe in House of Lords reform. We do not want the Bill to get stuck in the House of Commons so we will enter into discussions, but the Government must talk to us. The Deputy Prime Minister has failed to talk to us on the substance of the Bill and what is really important is that the usual channels operate—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)]

The most fundamental principle of any democracy is that those who exercise political power over us must be elected by us, yet everywhere in the UK it is evident that the long march to extend the franchise has a long way to go. The most powerful and influential in our society are not directly elected—the media, the bankers and the civil service. Even the chief executive of our Government is not directly elected. We are still one of the few western democracies in which the people are not trusted to elect directly their Prime Minister—the top politician in the land. Our problem is not too much democracy, but not enough democracy.

Elections are almost a guarantee of powerlessness. Anyone contaminated by contact with the ballot box is edged around by regulation, oversight and rules that dull our enterprise and inhibit our leadership. For example, locally elected councillors are bound by 1,500 Acts of Parliament, which render them as little more than agents of the centre. Elected Members of Parliament have a fleeting existence as an electoral college on general election night, but thereafter are laughably alleged to hold to account the very Executive that whips them to vote for them several times a day, every day, every week.

[Dan Byles]

Presumably, therefore, the hon. Gentleman will be delighted that a large number of Government Members will show that we are more independent by not giving in to the Whips and by voting against the programme motion?

[Mr Allen]

I very much hope that Government Members exercise their independence in pursuit of parliamentary sovereignty and a wider democracy rather than in pursuit of any special interest—I am sure that will happen.

In all those areas, reform is a relatively simple matter, but the most centralised state of all western democracies is blocking the way—the sclerotic relic of an empire, with England as the last country to throw off its yoke. The regime is so suffocating and so clueless about the alternatives that some of our blood relatives in the nations of our kingdom feel driven to break free of it.

There is an alternative, as there always has been, and as the best elements of the philosophies of the Labour, Conservative and Liberal parties have always known and for which they have always fought: the ballot box. No one, and above all hon. Members, needs to be afraid of the ballot box or of spreading electoral possibility. The ballot box is the weapon feared most not by those outside the House, but by Executive power, whether in the House or elsewhere. The vote can deliver devo-max not just for the nations of the UK, but for this Parliament and for locally elected councils, and above all for individuals in our country.

Today, we will see whether this elected House, this poor, whipped, dwarf of a legislator, can reconnect with its historic mission to extend the franchise, or whether we decide to pull up the drawbridge so that none can share our meagre status. Can we outgrow this fairytale of parliamentary sovereignty and our self-delusion about the primacy of the first Chamber? The cold, harsh reality is that we have Executive sovereignty and the primacy of Government. That is what dominates British politics, not some fairyland where Members of Parliament dominate the political scenario.

[Mr Watts]

As an ex-Whip, my hon. Friend will know that we have had more rebellions in the past 10 years than we had in years before that. Does that not prove the independence of the House of Commons?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Allen]

My hon. Friend makes his point, but anyone looking objectively at this House would see two competing teams, one for the Government, the other against, and it is rare that there is rebellion or independence of mind, as he well knows.

We should not fear the liberty and the improvement of the second Chamber. It might actually be the making of the freedom of the first Chamber. It might be one step on the road to having a free and independent legislature that would challenge the power of the Executive.

[Mr David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

I wouldn’t hold your breath.

[Mr Allen]

My right hon. Friend, having been a strong member of a past Executive, knows where he is most powerful. Is he most powerful sitting on the Back Benches here, or was he most powerful when in Whitehall and commanding a Government Department? We could discuss how effective the scrutiny was that he went through.

To have an un-elected Chamber with a say in passing laws over our citizens is a democratic abomination. It is not a deficit, an anachronism or a quaint ceremonial corner; it is an insult to every elector in the land. It is hobbling and repressive. It says to our citizens, “You are not capable or worthy of deciding your own future, of deciding who should run your country.” It says that this country is about deference and patronage, about a lack of self-confidence and belief, and about insiders and those who know better. It is about our past, not our future. It is an open wound in the body of our democracy and it must be healed.

That wound can be healed only by introducing the elective principle to the second Chamber. That is what this generation of parliamentarians in both Houses can achieve over the next year, and it can be done without beheading those whose service in the second Chamber deserves our respect, not our abuse. For those of us who for 25 years or more have worked for reform, standing on the shoulders of a century of giants before us, these proposals are the most serious attempt yet to bring about a change in our democracy and bring it into the modern era. Their courage and ambition mock the flaccid indecision of recent years.

Are the proposals perfect? No, of course not. Only the 650 different plans in the minds of each hon. Member are perfect, but that is why, theoretically at least, we have a parliamentary process. There is a—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order.