House of Lords Reform and Size of the House of Commons

Ian Lavery Excerpts

Wednesday 19th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

I am absolutely delighted to participate in today’s debate, particularly at a time when, owing to Conservative gerrymandering, the UK’s democratic structures look more fragile than ever. Under the previous Prime Minister, as numerous speakers have said, appointments to the unelected House of Lords were made at a faster rate than under any other Prime Minister since life peerages began. Incidentally, the outgoing Member for Witney will be replaced tomorrow—hopefully by the Labour candidate, Duncan Enright. Perhaps we have not seen the last of the former Prime Minister—perhaps we might see him in the House of Lords in future.

Astonishingly, between taking office in 2010 and leaving this year, the former Prime Minister added 261 peers at an estimated cost to the taxpayer of somewhere in the region of £34 million. Frighteningly, it is thought that up to 20% of all appointments to the House of Lords have been people who have given substantial donations to the Conservative party. Others appointed include the former Prime Minister’s cronies, his head of operations, the head of his No. 10 policy unit and the head of external relations.

[David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the same could be said of the Labour party and the unions?

[Ian Lavery]

If the hon. Gentleman looked at the statistics on trade unionists, he would find that appointments by the former Prime Minister were completely different.

The bloated Lords now has over 800 Members and leaves the UK noticeably as the only bicameral country in the world where the second Chamber is larger than the first. Indeed, as mentioned by the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), the only Chamber that is bigger is the national assembly of China. It is an absolute outrage. Let us be honest about it: we are a laughing stock in this regard. It is worth remembering, of course, that China’s population is 28 times the size of the United Kingdom’s.

[Sir Desmond Swayne]

I think that my hon. Friend the Deputy Leader of the House may have misremembered. It was not that there was no consensus; there was a Bill on which we all agreed, or which certainly had the support of the House, but it was the hon. Gentleman’s party that withdrew support for the programme motion. We could have had a reformed House of Lords, had it not been for the machinations of the Labour party.

[Ian Lavery]

I think there is more to the history of that than blaming the Labour party. I think it was the coalition Government that suffered a slight hiccup in their relationship at that point.

While what I have described was clearly bad enough, it came at the same time as the Government sought to reduce the number of elected Members of Parliament from 650 to 600. That was done under the guise of making politics cheaper, but it barely scraped the surface of the additional costs of the unelected Lords. Just where is the logic in reducing the size of the democratically elected Commons? If we want consensus, we can all agree to abolish the Boundary Commission review. We are being asked for consensus by the Minister, and that is fine, but if we want consensus in relation to certain issues, we should have consensus in relation to democracy. That is simple.

During the last Parliament, the attempt to rig democracy in favour of continuous Conservative control failed only because the Conservatives’ coalition partners, the threatened Liberal Democrats, rebelled—a point that I made to the right hon. Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne). They did not rebel over the much trumpeted 2010 anti-austerity policies. They were not terribly interested in opposing in-year spending cuts, increased tuition fees, or even the fundamentally illiberal “gagging Bill”. The truth is that the Liberal Democrats spat out the proverbial dummy because of the Government’s failure to back their poor compromise on reform of the Lords, which they themselves sought to stuff with their own peers. [Hon. Members: “Where are they?”] Absolutely. I was waiting for an intervention then, but, looking around the Chamber, I see that there is no one from the Liberal Democrats here to intervene.

The coalition agreement on Lords appointments would have meant an additional 186 peers, costing an estimated £24 million. All of them would have been Liberal Democrats or Conservatives. Interestingly, the Dissolution honours list contained more Liberal Democrats than their current parliamentary cohort. I hear people say that that is not hard to achieve, but it is nevertheless an important point.

Although the Liberal Democrat rebellion scuppered the 2013 review, the legislation was never repealed, and the unfettered Conservative Government have returned to the task. Their proposals to redraw constituency boundaries are grossly unfair, unjust, undemocratic and wholly unacceptable. They are based on an out-of-date version of the electoral register with nearly 2 million voters missing, a disproportionately high number of whom are transient and poorer voters: students, and families forced to move as a result of changes in the benefit system. The changes fail to take any account of the myriad bits of additional work that the vote to leave the European Union and a return of powers would bring.

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman has suggested that the Boundary Commission, and therefore the commissioners, are guilty of a gerrymander. May I invite him to reflect on that? We have independent commissioners who are looking at our parliamentary boundaries. To impugn their honour, their integrity and their independence belies the hon. Gentleman.

[Ian Lavery]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that, but I did not in any way suggest that the commissioners were gerrymandering. My view is that the Conservative party—this Government—are attempting to gerrymander the boundary changes. They are the ones who want the reduction from 650 to 600. I do not believe that there is any other party in the House of Commons that wants that. That is my point, and I wonder how reducing the number of MPs from 29 to 25 in my native north-east or from 59 to 53 in the west midlands fits in with the Tory devolution agenda. I am unsure, but perhaps the Minister will answer that at some stage.

[Michael Ellis]

Does the hon. Gentleman have an objection to equal-sized constituencies, because that is what we are seeking to achieve with these boundary reforms: equal-sized constituencies across the country, which we do not have now?

[Ian Lavery]

I have absolutely no objection to equal-sized constituencies, but I do have an objection to gerrymandering and changing the boundaries to ensure there is a distinct advantage to one party rather than another. But perhaps the Minister will respond to the point about devolution.

The Conservatives have once again done what the Conservatives do best: look after themselves and their party despite the real needs of this country. While on the Opposition Benches there is broad agreement about equalising the size of the constituencies, we cannot support this Tory attempt at what we would class as establishing perpetual rule. Let me make it absolutely clear: the Labour party will emphatically oppose the proposals of the Boundary Commission.

On the question of the second Chamber, it is my party that has always sought to reform the Lords. We passionately believe in the role of the second Chamber in our great democracy: we believe that no Government of any colour should be able to implement legislation without the proper scrutiny that a bicameral legislature provides. But while this is true, I must add that my party firmly believes that the House of Lords should be a democratic Chamber, not one appointed to through the patronage of the Prime Minister. We will not support any curtailment of the powers of Cross-Bench Lords and other measures designed to weaken the ability of the House of Lords to properly scrutinise, and where needed oppose, Government policy.

Under this Government, the use of secondary legislation has soared and is now being used for controversial and far-reaching policy changes such as tax credit cuts that traditionally have been introduced through primary legislation. Last year we were left with the sickening sight of Lord Lloyd Webber being flown back to the UK to try to defeat attempts to stop the Tory Government punishing hard-working British families through the Tory tax credit cut. I think it is appropriate at this point to put on record our sincere thanks for the great efforts and deliberations of Labour Peers and others who ensured that the attack on tax credits was defeated. It is vital that the Lords are able to continue to use the powers they have to scrutinise the Government’s plans and prevent such disastrous Government policies from being introduced.

[Sir Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman talked about fairness, but why does he think it fair that his constituency, which has an electorate of 62,000, should remain as it is, while my constituency has an electorate of 80,000?

[Ian Lavery]

I have already said I believe in equalisation, but not in the reduction in the number of parliamentary seats from 650 to 600. I firmly believe we should be looking at the equalisation of constituencies, but that is not the issue here: the issue is the unfairness of reducing the number of MPs while at the same time stuffing the other place ram-jam packed with people who are unelected and unaccountable. That is totally and utterly unjustified.

It is inevitable that during this Parliament the Lords will be required once again to properly scrutinise, and if necessary overturn, the actions of a Government increasingly dominated by right-wing populism, although in this we must be careful about the recommendations of the Strathclyde report, which was a rapid response by the Government to these actions and designed to render the second Chamber toothless against such authoritarian measures.

In the wake of the Brexit vote, the House of Lords must be allowed to get on with its vital role of scrutinising legislation. The process is likely to throw up an enormous number of statutory instruments, and without the Lords they would probably go through on the nod.

Labour has long called for reform. In the reduction of the Lords and in government, we have sought to find consensus. It is important to remember that it was a Labour Government who cleared out most of the hereditary peers, but we fully acknowledge that fundamental reform is essential.

Given the vote to leave the EU, the Government’s boundary review and the political estrangement felt by many voters, this is a timely debate. We live in a changed society in a modern age, where leaps in technology have resulted in an increase in people across the UK becoming more interested in political issues, but participatory democracy feels alien to many and, with a few noticeable exceptions, wanes every year. Many people feel that politics is unable to change their lives, their area or their country for the better. As parliamentarians and politicians, we face a huge challenge of how we widen democracy in this country and give people the power to make things better.

Some people may wonder why the SNP has chosen once again to focus on constitutional issues rather than its day job of governing Scotland, but I will leave that to its Members. It is very interesting that the party should take such an interest in matters relating to the House of Lords. In Scotland’s devolved Parliament, no such second Chamber exists. The forensic scrutiny of the Lords in the UK is said to be provided by the Scottish Parliament’s Committee structure, but sadly the political balance of those Committees allows the Scottish Government to proceed very much as they wish.

That said, I am happy to inform the House that the Labour party will vote in favour of the SNP motion, but this should be only the beginning. The Government have many questions to answer on the issue of democracy; perhaps the Minister will address them at some stage. Will the Government agree to abandon the proposal for boundary changes until a review of the bicameral system in its entirety has been conducted? [Interruption.] Somebody shouted “No” from a sedentary position. The Minister spoke just before me and pleaded for consensus on our democratic processes, but I am not sure whether the hon. Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare) was present at that point. We need to look at the system in its entirety.

Will the Minister give a guarantee that those Tory MPs who may lose their seats under the proposed boundary changes will not be stuffed into the House of Lords as a solution to the problems that the Conservatives themselves face as a result of those changes? When will a plan be put in place to deal with the unwieldy, unelected and unaccountable second Chamber, and to replace it with something more befitting the 21st century? How will we bring democracy back to the communities that feel abandoned by politics?

We have an opportunity to rebuild democracy in this country, making politics relevant to people’s lives, and to rebuild trust. We need to put giving people a real say in their communities and workplaces at the heart of our work as public servants. Labour sees transferring power from Westminster, Whitehall and, indeed, the boardroom to our communities as imperative to the future of our democracy. We want real devolution of power, not the phoney Tory con of regional mayors, designed simply to pass on the blame for swingeing cuts. Democracy needs to be revived in every nation and region of our country, and in every community, town and city. It must be transparent, it must be fair and it must be accountable. It must be a major improvement on the current Tory plans. We need progress, and we need it very quickly. We need an agreed workable timeframe. Democracy cannot be seen to be ignored; it needs to be embraced. I am pleased to say that the official Opposition will support the motion.

[Several hon. Members rose—]