House of Lords Reform Bill

Graham Stringer Excerpts

Monday 9th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure and a privilege to follow the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr Shepherd). I shall be in the Lobby with him to vote against the programme motion and against the Bill, as it is a bad Bill.

I am not one of those people who has great admiration for the House of Lords. I agree with Bagehot, who was quoted earlier, that one need only go along the corridor and look at it more often. It is not such a wonderful place, even though there are some excellent and extraordinarily capable people there.

I believe in democracy and in improving our constitution, but the proposals do not do that at all. They diminish democracy in this country by setting up a counter-Chamber at the other end of the corridor. The problem, which has been mentioned in many excellent speeches, is that we have an over-mighty Executive and that this House has not kept as many powers as it should have done to itself over the years. I have not heard one speech from the people in favour of the proposal that told us how they would prevent power from being taken away from this Chamber if the Bill were passed.

The Bill will not improve the accountability of the Executive but will set them free to do more of what they want to do while being less accountable. So, the first argument in favour of it, which is that it improves democracy, falls. The second supportive reason given by the Deputy Prime Minister was that all the other countries he could think of had an elected second Chamber, which, as right hon. and hon. Members have corrected him, turns out not to be 100% true. Even if it were true, virtually all the countries that have such a second Chamber have a written constitution to deal with precisely the matter covered by clause 2, which is primacy. With no written constitution and elections to the second House, we will lose the primacy of this House.

[Mr Brian H. Donohoe (Central Ayrshire) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend not also accept that right now one could argue that areas of this country, particularly Scotland, are over-governed as regards democracy?

[Graham Stringer]

I want to increase democracy where it is effective so that people feel that they are changing things, not being left behind and lost by politicians. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears) said, the idea behind the genesis of the Bill is not the improvement of democracy but the improvement of the prospects of the Liberal Democrats, who are frightened of the prospect of democracy and the electorate at the next general election. What they are trying to secure in the Bill is proportional representation in the other place so that they can be in government for ever, but I do not see my job as coming to this House to put the Lib Dems in government for ever. To achieve that, they obviously have to introduce a system of PR, but just over 12 months ago the electorate said quite clearly that they did not want to move from first past the post, even though it was not PR that was put to them.

I must ask those who say that clause 2 will protect and provide security for the primacy of this House: how? There is only one legal basis for that primacy, and that is the Parliament Act, but we are not going to Parliament Act every Bill that comes through. All the other details such as the Salisbury convention and the convention on statutory instruments are just that—conventions. If I were elected to the other place, I would say, “The Salisbury convention no longer exists, because the basis of it was the fact that some people were elected and some were not.” If people in the other place are elected, they will have the right to say, “My electorate are as important as your electorate, and a great deal bigger, and I have been elected by millions of votes, so I will vote against what you in the House of Commons believe.”

It will be impossible to prevent freely elected people from doing that, particularly when they will never be accountable for anything because they will never go back to the electorate, and I see nothing apart from the Parliament Acts to prevent the other House from challenging the primacy of this House. That takes us back to the point made by the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) that the proposals will not affect the Government. Ministers may be appointed, but by blocking legislation they could do exactly what the Lib Dems are doing in this debate: blackmail whatever Government are in office so as to get their own way and get posts in the Government.

[Simon Hughes]

rose—

[Simon Hughes]

I hope that the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) accepts that, at the moment, at the other end of the building there is clearly no party with an overall majority. Indeed, everybody is in a minority. He is worried about having one period only for election and no need for re-election, but what would his alternative be that would end patronage and heredity in the second Chamber, if it is not something like this Bill?

[Graham Stringer]

That is the easiest question I have ever been asked in this Chamber: I would abolish the other House, for the simple reason that, in the constitutional position that we are in, it is difficult to improve and democratise it without diminishing ourselves or having a written constitution.

Policies and manifestos have been mentioned a number of times. On the day after the general election, it was my view that all the parties had lost. The advantage of our system is that the core parts of manifestos are voted for. If a party becomes the Government, it gets the rest of its manifesto because it put that manifesto before people, but when none of the parties has won and there are three differing commitments on House of Lords reform—incidentally, none of those commitments is embodied in the Bill before us—it is difficult to understand how my Front Benchers or Front Benchers from other parties could say, “This Bill is legitimate to put before people and we have the will of the people behind us.” We simply do not have the will of the people behind us on those manifestos and the only answer—again, the Lib Dems are particularly frightened of the electorate—is to put the proposal to a referendum.