House of Lords Reform Bill

Jesse Norman Excerpts

Monday 9th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I shall make a little more progress, if I may.

The Bill, by creating a more legitimate House of Lords, gives it more authority to hold Governments to account—a greater check on Executive power. That does not mean emboldening the Lords to the point that it threatens the Commons—I shall come on to those concerns shortly—but it does mean bolstering its role as a Chamber that scrutinises Government. It means forcing Governments to treat an elected upper Chamber with greater respect. The aim of the Bill, to quote the right hon. Member for Charnwood (Mr Dorrell), is to create a second Chamber

“more independent of the executive, more able to exercise independent judgment”.

That will mean not only better laws, but fewer laws, restricting, again in the words of my right hon. Friend,

“the torrent of half-baked legislation”

that Governments are capable of.

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

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. The Blair Government were defeated four times in the House of Commons and 460 times in the House of Lords. Does the right hon. Gentleman really believe that an elected House of political placemen will do a better job of opposing than does the current House of Lords?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

It will be able to discharge that considerable authority with greater legitimacy, and therefore it will be harder for the Executive to ignore the opinions of the House of Lords. I would have thought, if I may say so, that it was a long-standing Conservative principle that it is the people who should be in the driving seat and the Executive who should be kept on their toes.

The third reason to support the Bill—

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[Sir Malcolm Rifkind]

My hon. Friend is right and he brings me to my next point, which is that if the Deputy Prime Minister really believes in a democratic upper House, why is he not providing for one in the Bill? What he is providing is form, not substance. The very name of the revised Chamber will continue to be “the House of Lords”. Not a senate, it will be the House of Lords, even though every Lord will have been expelled from it over a period of years.

When it comes to the proposed powers, the Deputy Prime Minister spends his time trying to reassure this House that the powers of the new elected, democratic Chamber will be—will have to be—exactly the same as those the appointed House has now. What possible justification is there for that, if he believes in an elected, democratic upper House? He is a Liberal Democrat; does he not remember the history of his own party? Does he not remember that the Parliament Act 1911 was passed because, until then, apart from on taxation matters, there was an equal right of veto in both Houses, and Asquith and his colleagues argued correctly that an unelected House could not have a veto on the business of Parliament? If the second Chamber is now to be elected, on what ground does he seek to justify his proposals—other than a desire to be all things to all people?

That is the sad problem with the Liberal Democrats: they always wish to be all things to all people—to go for the middle way. I am reminded of a remark I once heard, which I thought was rather good: if Christopher Columbus had been a Liberal Democrat, he probably would have been content with discovering the mid-Atlantic. [Laughter.]

What public interest will be served by the Bill in its current form? Does my right hon. Friend really believe that, compared with all these distinguished men and women from all over the country who serve in the House of Lords now, most of whom will not be able to continue to serve, a party list of candidates will result in more cerebral debate, more enlightened debate and more able contributions to the revision of legislation? Does he actually believe that and does he seriously want us to accept that, or does he recognise that that cannot, in fact, be the case?

[Jesse Norman]

I am greatly appreciating, as, I am sure, are all Members, the brilliance of my right hon. and learned Friend’s speech. Does he share my view that, as for Members of the European Parliament, Assembly Members in Wales and Members of the Scottish Parliament, the process of election can only empower this group, so that they start to throw their weight around even more?

[Sir Malcolm Rifkind]

Yes, but what worries me is the prospect of ending up with a party list system which, as we know from the experience of the European Parliament, has no legitimacy with the electorate, is not regarded as a way of electing people to represent their interests, and has been entirely discredited, regardless of the view one takes of the European Union as a whole. For that system of all systems to be chosen for the purpose of deciding membership of the upper House is totally incomprehensible to me, never mind entirely regrettable.

I say specifically to the Deputy Prime Minister, because clearly it is his party that is behind the Bill, and perhaps the only party that would care much if the Bill never saw the light of day, that if he wants to eliminate the defect he rightly referred to of the continuing presence of hereditary peers in the House of Lords, that can be done very easily by means of a simple legislative measure. If the right hon. Gentleman wants to get rid of the extraordinary nonsense that we have almost 1,000 peers, that can be done by a compulsory retirement age. If he wants an opportunity to deal with the other anomalies in the House of Lords, he does not need to go down this road. The only argument for going down this road is if he believes in a democratic upper House which, by its very nature, will then share primacy with this House of Commons. Let him, if he wants that, admit that, rather than try to conceal that fact behind words that do not carry conviction.

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[Harriett Baldwin]

We could oppose Third Reading, therefore, if we felt we had not achieved consensus in this House.

There is also consensus in this House that anyone who has been convicted of a serious crime should be kicked out. The cost of the second Chamber must be reduced, too. I am not convinced on this point; I will need quite a lot of convincing in respect of the Deputy Prime Minister’s earlier assertion that this proposal would be cost-neutral.

[Jesse Norman]

The cost figures have reached their current level only by the entirely illegitimate manoeuvre of including costs—such as costs of the Commons associated with the Lords—that have not yet been recognised in legislation, let alone achieved, as well as by ignoring the £85.7 million cost of five-yearly elections.

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

It is with a heavy heart that I speak to the Bill before the House. I am a reformer and I would welcome a well-crafted Lords reform Bill without election that reduced the size of the upper House, removed those who have committed serious criminal offences, improved the scrutiny of legislation, strengthened the appointments process, reduced political patronage, converted the hereditary peers to life peers, and separated the peerage as such from the legislature. Those measures would constitute a great reforming Bill and would, I suspect, pass through this House on a free vote. This Bill, however, is a hopeless mess.

Members of the House can properly differ on the merits of the underlying issues. What they cannot differ on are the flaws in the Bill itself. It is deeply confused and, indeed, dangerous legislation. It will prevent real reform. It will reduce diversity and deep expertise in our political system. It would be a catastrophe for this country if the Bill were ever enacted.

David Lloyd George famously referred to the House of Lords as Mr Balfour’s poodle, but if the Bill goes through we will have Mr Clegg’s lapdog—a Chamber full of elected party politicians.

There has also been an important failure of due process. The Government originally worked hard to establish a consensus on the Bill, but without success. The Joint Committee sat for longer than any in recent memory. Because of its internal disagreements, it was forced to put more issues to the vote than any recent Committee. It even produced an unprecedented minority report, signed by six Privy Counsellors, but the views of the Joint Committee have barely been heeded by the Government. Its key recommendations were that an issue of this constitutional magnitude required a referendum and that the crucial clause governing the relationship between Lords and Commons should be entirely rethought.

Those recommendations have been ignored or brushed aside. The result is that important matters have been introduced without any pre-legislative scrutiny. Those include a revised clause 2 on the relations between the Houses, and a party list voting system. Instead, the Government have treated the votes of a highly divided Committee as a consensus when they were nothing of the kind. The Government refused to allow the Committee to publish the costs of the draft Bill, and refused to schedule a debate on its report, as is normal practice. They have rushed to get the Bill into Parliament before the summer.

[Mr Gray]

As evidence of the lack of consensus that my hon. Friend so well describes, has he ever attended any Second Reading debate in which every speech of any substance at all was against the principle behind the Bill?

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[Jesse Norman]

My hon. Friend makes a shrewd point very quickly and elegantly.

The Bill is being pushed through the Commons by the Government—before the summer, on a whipped vote and with a guillotined debate—but the central question concerns the likely constitutional crisis that will arise from the Bill, which will transform the Lords into a Chamber competing with the Commons. The result will be gridlock, cronyism and a rise in special-interest politics.

The US offers a useful cautionary tale. The American political system is manifestly struggling: beset by gridlock; vulnerable to powerful special interests, from the gun lobby to the American Association of Retired Persons; and its politicians elected by corporate lobbyists through political action committees, recently liberated by the Supreme Court from any spending constraints under the first amendment. The two Houses have repeatedly found it impossible to achieve consensus on important legislation. Pork-barrel has been replaced by stand-off. President Obama’s health care Bill is a classic example and it ended up in the Supreme Court.

[Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

Is not my hon. Friend adverting to the fundamental conundrum at the heart of the Government’s presentation of the Bill? On the one hand, they are arguing for a more legitimate House; on the other, they are arguing that there will be no change in the relationship between the two Houses. It does not add up.

[Jesse Norman]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. As my noble Friend Lord Forsyth put it, what would be the point of electing these people if not to give them more power? Exactly the same thing as has happened in the US will happen here. I refer my colleagues and Members across the House to Lord Pannick’s brilliant memorandum on the issue, which has been published this afternoon. Lord Pannick is widely regarded as one of the most excellent lawyers and advocates of his generation, and is specifically expert in the Parliament Acts. He is also precisely the kind of person who would never be willing to stand for election to a new Senate. In his words:

“The Bill does not adequately address the central issue of constitutional concern: the fact that a House of Lords most of whose members will be elected will almost certainly be much more assertive than the unelected House of Lords and reluctant to give way.”

Lord Pannick states that the Parliament Acts

“only relate to the end of the legislative process, and not the day-to-day conventions which (at present) result in the Lords giving way to the Commons. Indeed, the Parliament Acts do not apply at all to Bills introduced in the House of Lords or to subordinate legislation.

The crucial question is this: should the Bill seek to regulate all these matters, or leave them to convention? If it leaves them to convention, then the result will be disputes between the two competing chambers. If it regulates these issues, then the result will be that relations between the chambers become justiciable in law, as they did over the Hunting Act, which went all the way to the Supreme Court.”

[Mr Harper]

The Joint Committee considered the question of putting powers in the Bill and clearly recommended that we should not go there; it would be dangerous and it would open up the Bill to interference by the courts. We listened to the Committee very carefully.

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[Jesse Norman]

I am grateful to the Minister for stating that he wishes to be impaled on the first horn of the dilemma: in the absence of regulation that would render the actions of the Houses justiciable, he wishes to impale himself on the horn of constant gridlock and competition between the two sides.

Lord Pannick concludes that

“the Government have, hitherto, failed to recognise the difficulty”—

failed to recognise the difficulty—

“and the importance of the constitutional issue arising from a decision to elect 80% of the House of Lords.”

Members of the House of Commons, Lord Pannick is no partisan, no party politician. His is quiet but devastating criticism. Perhaps the Minister can enlighten us about what external advice the Government took when they reformulated clause 2. We now know which of the two options he proposes to take, so I need not ask him. He proposes not to allow the judges in, but to leave future disputes between the two Houses to the conventions —and a thoroughly unsatisfactory compromise that is.

In politics, as in all else, timing is everything. That applies in particular to voting against one’s own Government for the first time, which is not something to be wasted on a small measure. Luckily, however, this Bill makes it very easy. There is a fundamental issue of constitutional principle at stake; the Bill is a hopeless mess; it is in no sense a piece of Conservative legislation; it lacks any genuine manifesto commitment; it proposes a new upper Chamber that will be less expert, less diverse and more expensive than the present one, let alone one after sensible reforms; and the issue is absolutely irrelevant to the overwhelming need to put out the fire in the economic engine room. I shall be voting against it and I would venture to suggest that the Bill is such that all MPs, Conservative or not, have a constitutional obligation to vote against it. Only thus can we rid our country of—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order.

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[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I nearly fell off my chair earlier today because I had an e-mail from a constituent on Lords reform. I think that that is the first one that I have had in all my years, despite the fact that I have held forth about the subject on many occasions. Fortunately, I agreed with her, so 100% of my constituents are in agreement with me.

I say to hon. Members who are opposed to the Bill that the current House of Lords is unsustainable. It has more than 800 Members, and the coalition agreement says that more should be appointed. At the rate that we are going, every member of the Liberal Democrat party will end up as a Member of the House of Lords. There are enormous problems with the numbers that we have at the moment, because appointment as the defining way of getting into the House of Lords leads to a heavy over-subscription of people from London and the south-east. Two hundred and seventy-three Members of the House of Lords come from London and the south-east, but just 38 come from the midlands and 74 from the north. It cannot possibly claim to be the representative House that it claimed to be seven centuries ago, when it had all the tenants-in-chief of the land available to advise the king.

[Jesse Norman]

Any reduction in the size of the upper House can be achieved without election. The hon. Gentleman is arguing not for election, but for a reduction in the size of the House.

[Chris Bryant]

I have only just started, to be fair. I wanted to start by saying that there are too many Members and, on top of that, too many who come from London and the south-east and too few who come from everywhere else. With a system of appointment, the people who do the appointing end up choosing people they already know, and that is why there is a heavy preponderance of people from London and the south-east. We also still have crooks, perjurers and arsonists up at the other end of the corridor. The hon. Gentleman will say, “Ah yes, but we can change all this through David Steel’s Bill,” but then we end up with a House of Lords that is solely appointed, and that is a House of patronage and power given to too few people, not to the people of the land.

We have the ludicrous situation of by-elections for hereditary peers. I say to all those who are opposed to the alternative vote system that we already have that system; it is used to elect people to the House of Lords. It is ironic that the last person who was elected in July last year, in a by-election that was not much commented on in the national media, was Lord Ashton of Hyde. I have never met that gentleman, and I suspect that few of us in this House have, but he got to stand as a hereditary peer only because of his original predecessor who was made a peer. That Lord Ashton of Hyde had been a Member of this House. He tried to get elected for Hyde several times and never managed to do so; but none the less, when he went to the Lords, he called himself Lord Ashton of Hyde. He went there because he had vacated his seat in the Commons two months before the vote on the Parliament Act 1911 to try to make sure that it could get through down at the other end of the building.

The system of having elected hereditaries in the Lords is completely bizarre, but it is even more bizarre to have the bishops of the Church of England there. There was an argument for that when we also had the bishops of Wales and Ireland, and some representation from Scotland, but it makes no sense for only one denomination representing one geographical area to be appointed to the House of Lords. I would move an amendment to get rid of all the bishops.

To those who argue in favour of the House of Lords on the basis of expertise, I would say that sometimes expertise is also a vested interest. Just take the case of two members of the Joint Committee on Privacy and Injunctions, which is considering a very sensitive issue in politics. One of them is Lord Gold. Most Members have probably never heard of him, but he happens to be a Conservative peer. He also happens to be a lawyer who specialises in litigation. Some people might say, “That’s great—he has expertise,” but I would say that he has a commercial interest in the legislation that he is advising on. Similarly, Lord Black of Brentwood, as the executive director of the Telegraph Group, has a direct financial and commercial interest in the legislation that is going through. That is why I say that, all too often, the commercial interests of people down at that end of the building turn it into a corrupt House.

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[Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for your patience and generosity. I had to sprint across to St Thomas’s, where my wife is having a scan. We are expecting our third child.

The supporters of the Bill would have the country believe that those who are opposed to it are opponents of democracy itself. Today I stand to refute that ugly caricature. No one in the House is more committed to British democracy than I. My family emigrated to Britain from an Iraq where democracy was spoken of only behind closed doors, late at night, among trusted friends. Compared to the brutal realities of Saddam’s rule, democracy was an abstract dream. Yet here in Britain there was a constitutional order which made democracy real, concrete, embedded in the very fabric of our national life.

Here was a judiciary—unelected, I grant you—which interpreted the law in the interests of the public, not of the ruling party. Here was a Queen—again, unelected—whose impregnable position as Head of State made sure that no politician could ever wield supreme power. And here also was the oldest and greatest of Parliaments, an elected House of Commons to embody the will of the people, and an appointed House of Lords to stand as a check against the tyranny of the majority.

[Jesse Norman]

Does my hon. Friend share my view that it is in the balance of these extraordinary institutions and in their distinctive history that so much of the genius of our history has been located?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

That is exactly right. I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. This is exactly the constitution that I believe in and this is the constitution that I will defend. This is not, as my hon. Friend the Minister with responsibility for political and constitutional reform has said, some “silly game”.

If recent events in the Arab world have shown us anything, it is that democracy is not just about holding elections. It is also about building institutions which ensure that the whole of society is represented, regardless of who is in power. The question that we should ask ourselves today is whether British society will be better represented by 360 more career politicians accountable to no one but their party.

I am not complacent about the state of our democracy. I know that Parliament currently faces a crisis of legitimacy in the eyes of the country, but the cause of that crisis is not the other place. No. It is that deeply damaging sense that politicians here, in this House, are out of touch.

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[Dan Byles]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Discuss this issue we must. Most Conservative Members are of the view that we would rather not, but if we have to it must be discussed fully and properly. This is a fundamental and irreversible constitutional change. It is not normal Government business. The idea that such a change should be rammed through with the routine whipping and programming is unthinkable.

The Bill is not about democracy. Too many people who support it seem to think that simply using the word “democracy” shuts down the debate. That is not the case. I was a soldier for nine years. I took the Queen’s commission and served Her Majesty. I was taught at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and the Royal Military College at Shrivenham to uphold and preserve democracy and the rule of law, which I do. I challenge anybody in this Chamber to tell me that I do not support democracy. That I support it does not mean that I must support the Bill.

My hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr Shepherd) described eloquently our complex and ancient constitution. The right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) made a passionate speech on the nature of the upper House and its specific and unique role in our constitution, which does not automatically require that its Members be elected. I was rather hoping that I would be called to speak immediately after him, because I would have been tempted to say, “What he said,” and sit down.

My hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle (John Stevenson) ran through a list of other parts of our system that are elected. Interestingly, I have the same list in my speech in order to make the opposite point. My constituents already have the opportunity to elect every level of government. They elect parish councillors, borough councillors, county councillors, Members of Parliament and MEPs. They elect their Government when they elect their MP. That is our system. If we move, in an ill-thought-out way, to a system in which they also elect, in a manner of speaking—I am not a fan of this system of proportional representation—Members of the other place, which House will form the Government? That system will result in confusion and chaos.

This change is being imposed. There is no suggestion that it will go to the people in a referendum, unlike the question of whether the people of Coventry want an elected mayor, as numerous colleagues have pointed out. Apparently, this fundamental change to the constitution of our country is not suitable for a referendum. The people who want to impose this fundamental change should at least come to the House to explain what the upper Chamber is supposed to do, what it is about the current system that is failing to achieve that end and how the proposals will achieve that end better.

It seems to me that the Bill fails in what it sets out to achieve. It will not make the upper House more accountable. I will not repeat the arguments involving the party list system and the 15-year terms, but the new Members will not be accountable. The Bill will not end the Prime Minister’s right of patronage. Ministerial Members will be appointed by the Prime Minister, not by an independent appointments commission, and he will be able to appoint as many of them as he wants. As long as fewer than eight of them are serving as Ministers at the time, he can appoint more. He can appoint eight on day one. If they all resign on day two, he can appoint eight more. He can do that every day. The power of parliamentary patronage is therefore still there. That means that it will not be an 80% elected Chamber. If each Prime Minister appoints only eight ministerial Members in each Parliament and they stay for three Parliaments, it will be a 74% elected Chamber. Let us call it what it is. And that is ignoring the Lords Spiritual.

[Jesse Norman]

Has my hon. Friend raised that topic with the Ministers who are responsible for constitutional affairs? I would be very interested to hear what the answer was.

[Dan Byles]

My hon. Friend is being naughty, because he knows that I have. He knows that there was some confusion in the Ministers’ office about how many times the Prime Minister could appoint eight ministerial Members. At one point, it was suggested that they could appoint only eight per Parliament. However, a constitutional expert in the upper House, whom I shall not name because I have not asked his permission, assures me that as the Bill is written, there is no limit on the number of ministerial Members who can be appointed.

The scope for constitutional deadlock that the Bill will bring about has been described at great length and with eloquence. Those who want us to give the other place what they see as more democratic legitimacy cannot run away from the fact that it will want to use and exert that legitimacy.

I am pleased that the Deputy Prime Minister is back in his place, because I would like to pick up on one of his points, if he is listening. He is not. He was naughty in his opening speech when he discussed the potential costs of the reform, because he included the costs of reducing the size of this place. The House will know that that was in entirely separate legislation that will be on the statute book regardless of whether this Bill is accepted. That reduction should form the baseline from which the costs of the Bill are judged.

I stood on a manifesto commitment to seek consensus on House of Lords reform. It is quite clear that that consensus has not been reached. When the Joint Committee, in an unprecedented move, issued a minority report signed by almost half its members urging that a constitutional convention be set up, because this matter was too important to be left to grubby political horse-trading, people should have sat up and taken notice. That is why I cannot support the Bill and certainly cannot support the programme motion.

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[Mr Heath]

The right hon. Gentleman may not have studied the Bill assiduously enough. It is true that those Ministers will not be there for life: the right hon. Gentleman is right about that. Under the present system they are there for life even when they have clearly outlived their ministerial usefulness.

We heard arguments in favour of secondary election, and I think that that is a perfectly valid debate for us to have in Committee. We also heard arguments about primacy. The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) made what I considered to be a very sensible suggestion about the possibility of a concordat. I thank him for that: it is something that we need to debate.

The hon. Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman) asked which legal expert the Government had consulted on clause 2. It was Lord Pannick, who I believe the hon. Gentleman thinks is a very good lawyer indeed.

[Jesse Norman]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Heath]

Very briefly.

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[Jesse Norman]

In that case, can the hon. Gentleman explain why the same Lord Pannick has been so devastating in his criticisms that were published this afternoon?

[Mr Heath]

I do not believe that he has, but that is an argument to which we can return in Committee.

The hon. Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) compared the Deputy Prime Minister with Andy Murray. I think that, if anything, he is more like Jonny Marray, in that he is a champion doubles partner, and on that basis the coalition has been succeeding.

Let me now deal with what I think is one of the most important issues on which we shall have to reach a conclusion tomorrow. There are those, predominantly in the official Opposition, who will vote for the end but not for the means, namely the programme motion. I have long argued, as has my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House, that programme motions should, wherever possible, be arranged by agreement. They should be for the convenience of the House: they should enable debate, not restrict it. That is the way in which we have managed things in this Parliament so far.

I repeatedly asked the right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) how much more time he wanted. He has 10 days for the Committee stage in addition to the two days for Second Reading and the two days for Report, 14 days in all. I asked him repeatedly how many more days he wanted, but answer came there none. The Opposition cannot say how many days they want, because they decided to vote against the programme motion before it had been published or even suggested. I believe that 14 days out of a total of 88—only 88 days are available to the Government for legislative business during a whole year—are sufficient. If the right hon. Gentleman has a proposal, let him come up with it; but if, as I suspect, he has no proposal whatsoever other than a determination to oppose, he is doing his own argument a great disservice.