House of Lords Reform

Jesse Norman Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sadiq Khan]

The right hon. Gentleman may not have heard everything I have said—it has not been that great so far—but I think I highlighted in the first 30 seconds the Labour party’s policy, and my views, on this issue. He can take it from us that we will do business with those who keep promises and whom we can be sure have a real commitment to a properly elected second Chamber.

It is obvious that many of the conventions that have stood us in good stead over decades are becoming increasingly defunct and will not serve us at all should reform proceed as planned. For example, the convention whereby the Lords will not continue to oppose legislation based on manifesto commitments for which there is a mandate faces a new test under the coalition given that it is not clear what can be considered its manifesto. Is it each party’s manifesto or the coalition agreement, which the electorate did not vote on? We will need to ensure that the rules and regulations that allow a reformed upper Chamber to continue to revise and scrutinise are in place, while continuing to recognise the role of the Commons. The second Chamber must continue as a revising Chamber, not a rival Chamber.

[Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con)]

Given the right hon. Gentleman’s strong commitment to honouring manifesto commitments, will his party honour its own manifesto commitment to insist on a referendum on any Bill on an elected House of Lords?

[Sadiq Khan]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good intervention. It is important that the Joint Committee respects party policy and manifestos, and I hope that it will do so in its recommendations.

The draft Bill does not adequately address these issues. Clause 2 simply states that nothing in the Bill

“affects the primacy of the House of Commons”.

That is inadequate and ignores work done on rules and conventions by previous Committees, including the Joint Committee on Conventions chaired by Lord Cunningham of Felling. The new Joint Committee will need to recognise this fact and seek to open up the issue of powers and conventions; otherwise, the reform process runs the risk of being fatally flawed.

Another area of concern is the length of term of those elected to a newly reformed upper Chamber. Increasing the democratic accountability of the Lords has to be one of our key objectives, but I am unclear how this will be best served through single 15-year terms for those elected. What do we do in a situation where some less diligent individuals are elected and recognise, almost straight away, first, that the next 15 years are now sorted and, secondly, that they do not need to worry about what the electorate believe or want because they will never need to face them again at the ballot box? Is this what we want in our second Chamber?

We also face the tricky constitutional issue of the future of the bishops. I recognise that we have an established Church and that a move to a fully elected upper Chamber would not accommodate our current system. Some have argued that if we allow the bishops to stay in the reformed second Chamber, we should allow representatives of other major religions to have seats. However, there are major practical difficulties, not least the fact that some religions do not have such obvious hierarchical structures as others, so it is unclear who would be their representatives—let alone whether it is right for organised religion to play such a central part in our political system. It is right and proper that this House and the Joint Committee debate such issues if we are to get reform of the second Chamber right.

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[David Miliband (South Shields) (Lab)]

I apologise to the House for having to absent myself for a short period this evening.

It is nice to be able to speak in the House in full and enthusiastic support of the manifesto on which I was elected, and consistent with my previous votes in the House for 100% election and 80% election to the Lords, in 2003 and 2007. I look forward to getting the chance to vote on the matter again.

I wish first to dispose of three very bad arguments against proceeding towards an elected House. The first is that we need to sort out the functions of the House of Lords before doing so. The truth is that there is agreement on that point. The House of Lords is a revising Chamber not equal to the House of Commons, prevented by statute from pre-empting the supremacy of this House and established by law and by practice to persuade and restrain this House.

The second argument is that the public have got other things on their mind. The idea that the Government have a bad economic policy or health policy because they are distracted by House of Lords reform is frankly risible. We are elected to this place to debate the big issues of the time, and I do not believe that it is sufficient to say that this is not people’s main preoccupation.

The third bad argument is by far the most tempting. It is: because the Deputy Prime Minister is in favour of an elected House, is sponsoring the debate and will sponsor the Bill, it must be a bad idea. That view has many supporters in both main parties, as we will discover, and one can see the force of the point. When the right hon. Gentleman said before the election that he wanted to unite the nation, he could scarcely have imagined that people of all shades of opinion would come together so quickly to agree that he is not a very lovable rogue. However, although that is a tempting argument, I hope that my colleagues, especially Labour colleagues, will not fall for it. The right hon. Gentleman needs no help from either of the two so-called main parties to administer his fate, and there is a much bigger game here than the temptation to kick a man when he is down. The roadblock to reform is not, in this case, the right hon. Gentleman, but the Government’s puppetmaster, the Prime Minister. We should not be diverted by the temptation of kicking smaller fry.

The fundamental issue at stake is whether a stronger, more assertive, more legitimate House of Lords will be good for the governance of the country, not just in democratic theory, but in real life and practice. I believe that it would. I am a believer in strong government. I also believe that a strong Government get stronger and better when they are more accountable to a strong legislature. That is what we are debating today. That is a recipe not for gridlock but for better government.

Legislative strength is, in part, the way in which this House functions. Personally, I would have liked to see electoral reform of this House and the second Chamber on the same ballot paper in a single referendum, because we should debate the Parliament of the United Kingdom as a whole. The House of Commons and the House of Lords exist in relation to each other, not simply separately. However, following the alternative vote fiasco, that opportunity has been missed. None the less, it is striking that many of those who argue that reform will make no difference to the public also contend that it will mean the end of the House of Commons as the voice of the public. They cannot have it both ways.

Reform of the House of Lords is important to the strength and effectiveness of the legislature as a whole. That is why I argue for it.

[Jesse Norman]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for reciting such a compendium of errors. If he is giving us a lecture on logic, how does he explain the contradiction of a Prime Minister, who is allegedly, in the right hon. Gentleman’s view, a puppetmaster, yet also an enthusiastic advocate of the proposed legislation?

[David Miliband]

The hon. Gentleman tempts me and I will deal with that exact point shortly.

To those who say that an elected House of Lords will be stronger, I reply, “Good.” It will be good for the House of Commons and good for Governments of any stripe to face more effective and assertive scrutiny, and, where necessary, revision of their legislation from the House of Lords. That is not the same as advocating the overthrow of the primacy of the House of Commons, or as saying that the House of Lords will be a rival to the House of Commons. This country’s democratic problem is not neutered Government, emanating from the House of Commons, but under-scrutinised, under-accountable, over-centralised and over-confident Government.

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[Andrew Griffiths]

As my hon. Friend is, like me, a member of the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform, he will know how passionate we both are about political and constitutional reform. We want to see a better Chamber and a better politics come out of this place, but all too often we are navel gazing by talking about the things which turn us on as political anoraks, but which have no impact whatever on the general public and voters at large.

[Jesse Norman]

Does my hon. Friend share my view that the process of scrutinising the Bill is likely to take days, if not weeks, of parliamentary time? Does he also share my view that it will be impossible to account to the electorate for how that time was spent when there is a fire in the economic engine-room?

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[Mr Ruffley]

I want to make some progress.

The final objection to such a system, of which we have heard much today, is that an elected peer would be elected for a 15-year term, and during that period would be accountable to no one. Even on its own terms, the democratic argument seems defective.

According to the White Paper published earlier this year,

“The Government does not intend to amend the Parliament Acts or to alter the balance of power between the two Houses of Parliament.”

I must say, with respect, that that utterly misses the point. A democratised upper House would be stronger, and would have its own view about the balance of power. Once the power has been given to them, what Ministers “intend” is irrelevant. The Minister has said that there would be no change in the balance of power. How precisely does he intend to enforce that?

[Jesse Norman]

Is my hon. Friend as concerned as I am by the example of Scotland? Although Mr Salmond has no mandate to call a referendum on Scottish independence, it seems absolutely certain that he will do so in the next two to three years.

[Mr Ruffley]

That is an excellent point. We heard some sensible observations along those lines from other Conservative Members earlier. It would be a case of mission creep. It is not something that anyone would specifically intend and it would not be explicit in a Bill, but it would be implicit in the granting of powers to a new set of elected individuals who would claim legitimacy and a democratic mandate. I ask again why we should wish to duplicate the mandate that elected individuals have when those individuals are here, in this Chamber?

When it was studying the upper House, the Joint Committee on Conventions said that if the conventions between the Houses were to change—which would be inevitable if there were elections to the upper House—all the conventions and Acts involved in their relationship would have to be examined again. Will the Minister undertake to re-examine the conventions and Acts governing the delicate balance between this Chamber and the upper House?

Many of us are not luddites. We know that practical reform of the upper House could be effective in certain respects, and could make it more efficient. My hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth West gave us a flavour of some of the changes proposed by Lord Steel, who suggested the establishment of an independent commission that would limit the number of peers. He also suggested that the 92 hereditaries, as and when they died off, should not be replaced, and that peers who did not attend for a defined period should lose their right to speak and vote, as should those who committed serious criminal offences.

I consider it unacceptable, in this day and age, that in the last year 137 peers did not table a question or make any contribution to debates in the upper House. We can change that, and we can do so along sensible, practical lines that most Members of both Houses would sign up to tomorrow. The upper House should not be pickled in aspic—we should not be luddite in any way—but, although it can be improved, the Bill is not the way in which to do that. We fumble with the rich and delicate texture of our constitution at our peril, and we should beware the law of unintended consequences.

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[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

I am very grateful for your calling me to speak in this debate, Mr Deputy Speaker, although I admit that for the first time in 13 months I do so with some trepidation, because, given the interventions and sedentary comments of those sitting close to me, I suspect that this is one of those arguments on which we will respectfully have to agree to disagree.

In case it has escaped anybody’s notice, we are at the beginning of the second decade of the 21st century, and in a democratic country it is anathema that both Houses of Parliament should not both be democratically elected. The ultimate question in a democratic system is, “Who appoints the representatives?”, and the ultimate answer is that only the people should be empowered to do so.

We have heard about the 61 other bicameral Parliaments throughout the world and how the vast majority have two fully elected Chambers, and that is absolutely right. Throughout the world, throughout the Commonwealth and, although it pains me to say it, throughout Europe, we see that that democratic structure is the norm. The United States Congress, with its House of Representatives and its Senate, is probably the predominant example, and 49 of the 50 American states have fully elected bicameral systems, too. There we have systems that work extremely well and, indeed, provide a greater check and balance than we have in our own Parliament.

In the Commonwealth, perhaps the best example is the federal Australian Parliament with its House of Commons and Senate, a system that, although no system is perfect, works extremely well for the people of Australia. That system goes for most Australian states as well.

[Jesse Norman]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful and interesting speech, but he is surely aware that the vast proportion of the legislatures that he describes operate under codified constitutions that explicitly prevent power leaching from one side to the other. Does he propose a codified constitution in this case? That is surely the counterpart of the undoubted change in conventions that would occur if there were an elected Lords.

[Henry Smith]

My hon. Friend anticipates the remarks that I hope to make in a few moments.

Several weeks ago I was in Poland, where I was fortunate to meet the Speaker of the Polish Senate. That country saw its Senate abolished under the Communist totalitarian regime but, happily, had it democratically restored approximately two decades ago, and again it is a system that works very well.

My main point—I hope this answers my hon. Friend’s question— is that I do not look to the rest of the world to tell me the best way to construct our Parliament; I look to our proud British history. We have had Parliaments in these islands for the best part of 1,000 years, and I am struck by the coincidence that 2015 will be the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta, which is probably one of those points that set us off on our constitutional journey.

Since then, we have had the civil war, which in a greater way established the sovereignty of this Parliament, the Bill of Rights, the Reform Acts starting in 1832, the Parliament Act exactly a century ago, universal suffrage for women following the first world war and the Parliament Act 1949.

We are an evolving constitution, and we are a country that to its credit has proudly developed the principles of liberty and participative democracy over the best part of many centuries, but, as we are at the beginning of the second decade of the 21st century, an evolving constitution to my mind says that the only legitimate second Chamber for this Parliament is a wholly elected second Chamber, because 100% is the most legitimate and best way forward.

I do, however, want to make a couple of remarks about the draft Bill. I am pleased to note that it is a draft Bill, and I congratulate the Government on that and on the Joint Committee, because it is important that we feed in as many views as possible to what is an important constitutional change.

Time does not allow me to elaborate too much on the pros and cons of 15-year terms, but I suggest, first, to the Government that there should be a power of recall over any future elected Member of the House of Lords. I am sure that the vast majority of them will diligently carry out their duties on behalf of this Parliament and the country.

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[George Eustice]

I accept that to some extent, although judges often make public policy decisions, and those judgments influence our legal system. However, my point is that we do not need elections for these institutions to be legitimate.

[Jesse Norman]

It is not true that judges do not have a role in making the law. For 700 years, common law judgments have been made in difficult cases that have laid down what is the law as a result. This position has always been understood by the judges. A famous lecture was given on the topic by Lord Reid in the 1960s. I am sure that my hon. Friend agrees that we should have no truck with the idea that judges do not have a thoroughly legitimate, though unelected, place in the constitution.

[George Eustice]

I share my hon. Friend’s view entirely.

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[Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con)]

I am delighted to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart) and congratulate him on an excellent speech. This Government will be seen in time as one of the great reforming Administrations, but I must say that I am not an enthusiast for this legislation. I will focus on one argument that goes to the heart of the debate. It has been repeatedly claimed that an elected House of Lords is a commitment set out in all three main party manifestos and that the Government and the Opposition would therefore be justified in using the Whip and the Parliament Act to push it through. If we look at the manifestos, however, we can quickly see that this argument is mistaken. The Liberal Democrat manifesto includes just three references to the House of Lords and includes a commitment to “a fully-elected second chamber”, so Liberal Democrat MPs who vote for an 80% elected Chamber will be voting against their manifesto.

The Labour manifesto does better, because it has five references to the Lords, but its commitment includes a referendum and the Bill does not, so Labour Members can hardly be whipped to vote for an elected Lords without the democratic legitimacy of a referendum.

What does the Conservative manifesto say? There is just one reference to an elected House of Lords, on page 67, and it is not deemed sufficiently important even to be included in the summary at the head of the chapter. It states:

“We will work to build a consensus for a mainly-elected second chamber to replace the current House of Lords”.

That is a commitment not to an elected House of Lords but to

“work to build a consensus.”

We have a White Paper and a draft Bill, so that commitment has been discharged, and on those grounds alone it would be quite wrong to use the Whip or the Parliament Act to force Members of this House to vote for this legislation. There must be a free vote.

The House of Lords is an imperfect institution, as even its own Members concede. Its powers, composition and legitimacy have all come in for severe criticism over the years from different parts of the spectrum, but I am at a loss as to why anyone should want a Lords that was more party political, less expert and more expensive than it currently is. There is widespread public distrust in elected politicians, but this measure serves only to aggravate that distrust when we should be doing everything that we can to restore it.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

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[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

It is a delight to follow the hon. Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman), although that was the most casuistical argument based on party manifestos, and I completely disagree with him.

My central argument in favour of reform of the second Chamber is that the current system is unsustainable, in particular because of its effect on this House. At the moment, that House infantilises this House, because all too often Ministers stand up in this Chamber and refuse to give way or to agree to a perfectly sensible amendment, and then the Government go down the corridor and give way in another House.

Quite often, civil servants—whom we all love—say to their Minister, “What are you going to give away when you get down to the other end of the building?”, and that means that we do not do a proper job of scrutiny in this House. We will never do a better job of scrutiny in this House until we reform the other House, and that is why it needs to be changed.

[Jesse Norman]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Chris Bryant]

I will not, if the hon. Gentleman does not mind, because he has only just spoken. Some 34 Back Benchers spoke, and I want to reply to as much of the debate as possible.

The current system is also unsustainable simply because of the numbers. There are already more than 800 Members down the other end, and if we do not make reforms towards an elected second Chamber, we will end up with another 269.