House of Lords Reform

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Thursday 14th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Martin John Docherty (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered House of Lords reform.

Not since 2011, when the then Deputy Prime Minister presented the case for reform, have Members of the House of Commons been offered the opportunity to debate and discuss the House of Lords on the Floor of this House. Therefore, before proceeding any further, I wish to extend my grateful thanks to the Backbench Business Committee, and to the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) especially, for agreeing to this debate and for some sage advice, which was critical, given my novice plea.

During the general election there were various mentions of House of Lords reform. Critically, the Conservative party limited its vision in its manifesto to addressing only the size of the House of Lords, for clearly size matters to the Tory party. At its present velocity of expansion, the House of Lords will soon exceed the National People’s Congress of China. It has already exceeded the size of the European Parliament, which is elected by over 400 million European citizens. Clearly, Parliament envy will soon see even this House displaced by the Prime Minister’s expansionary tactics.

I know that at the previous general election the British Labour party took a more pragmatic view. I give credit where credit is due by recognising the work the previous Labour Government did to limit the hereditary peerage, although that work was sullied by the cash for honours scandal uncovered by my hon. Friend the Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil). I wonder where my Labour colleagues are today.

At least on these Benches we have spoken with one voice. At the general election the Scottish National party placed our proposal before the entire community of Scotland: “Abolish it!” If this Parliament is to work as an effective and legitimate legislature in the British state, its upper Chamber should resemble less the congress of a communist state and more the revising and advisory role of a Parliament of a 21st century liberal democracy.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman about abolition, which is a theme I wish to speak about later. Does he agree that the power of patronage of Prime Ministers to appoint people they choose to the House of Lords is even more pernicious than having hereditary peers, who at least have the advantage of being independent?

[Martin John Docherty]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. He need not worry, because I will get there.

Let us return to the hope of many Members of this House—a hope that is shared, in particular, by my hon. Friend the Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), who cannot be here today—that any future reform of the upper Chamber should not only consider its size, but limit it and remove with haste its ability, as an unelected and unaccountable Chamber, to generate legislation. That is an affront to my constituents and an aberration at the heart of the British political system.

Only a few months ago the Government were keen to play down any reform agenda. Their latest antics have the right hon. Member for Tatton (Mr Osborne) as Citizen Camembert rather than Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the Prime Minister playing the good cop and leading man as the Black Fingernail. This is indeed a farce, if not a “Carry On”.

While many Members across this Chamber would seek a long-term resolution of the undeniable illegitimacy of the upper Chamber in its present form, the Government tinker at the edges with the Strathclyde review, a botch job done in jig time for Christmas. Although the review offers a way forward, it seems to confuse the role of the House of Lords. Is it to be a mere stamper of Government policy, or is it a revising Chamber that tackles the Government on the tough subjects of the day? Critically, all options would offer an additional burden on the workings of this House and highlight the behemoth that is the Palace of Westminster. If the report were at least linked in some way or form to improvements in working practices such as electronic voting, which would allow us in this place to deliberate more robustly, in more depth, and with reduced recourse to statutory instruments, it would have been a slightly more useful document. For the record, however, I wish to commend Lord Strathclyde and all those involved for seeking to overcome the Government’s obstacles.

While the report is welcome, it highlights the Dickensian, if not medieval, machinations and dubious working practices of this Parliament. It accidentally shows the Alice in Wonderland antics of the so-called liberal democratic practices of the mother of Parliaments. If the review was worth the paper it was written on, it would be my hope, and that of my hon. Friends, that it would seek to uphold the nature of our polyarchy and at least promote its first pillar, namely that control over Government decisions about policy should at all times constitutionally be invested in elected officials—Members of this House elected by their constituents, from whom they derive their political mandate.

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[Martin John Docherty]

My very hon. Friend has given the answer from a sedentary position: Wales does not have a separate jurisdiction. That in itself is a disgrace and one of the main concerns for my hon. Friends in Plaid Cymru.

As I said, all this could be seen as pure Celtic hyperventilation about the unaccountability of the House of Lords, yet there are Members from beyond the Celtic fringe—although I wonder where they are today—who find the unelected and unaccountable nature of the House of Lords an affront to liberal democracy.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

May I inform the hon. Gentleman that there are some English people—I am English from generations back on all sides—who believe we should have one democratic Chamber, not an unelected Chamber full of place persons and hereditaries?

[Martin John Docherty]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I do, of course, count Cornwall in the Celtic fringe.

Any debate that links the Government and Her Majesty’s Opposition to some of the most damning political consequences and incompetence, as highlighted in the last Parliament by my hon. Friend the Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar, will fill even those Members—those hardy souls—with dread. Cash for honours sends a collective shiver down the spine of this House and, indeed, our parliamentary system. I seriously doubt that we have seen the last of it, not only in the upper Chamber but even here. The appointment process exposes beyond doubt the privileges of those Members of the House of Lords. In reality, there is no substitute for democracy and direct election.

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[Martin Vickers]

It is certainly true that there are now fewer practising Christians throughout the UK than there were in the past. As the hon. Gentleman rightly says, however, our heritage is of a Christian nature and the eternal virtues taught by the Christian Church are the basis of our society.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

The hon. Gentleman may have noticed that, in the last census, some 31% of the population said that they had no religion and that they do not feel that they would be represented be people of faith. I am a vice-chair of the all-party humanist group. Does the hon. Gentleman not think that humanists should also be represented?

[Martin Vickers]

Humanism has always seemed to me to be the absence of faith. We could debate the hon. Gentleman’s rather philosophical point endlessly, and I would be very happy to do so some time.

The hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire referred to a unicameral system. It would be a mistake to move to a system with only one Chamber. However, I would point out that, with devolution, Scotland is almost a unicameral Assembly; I will leave that matter to Scottish National party Members.

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[Steven Paterson]

I will let the hon. Member for Clacton (Mr Carswell) speak for himself on that one. My own view is simply that, whatever the country, people should get the representative Government they vote for. Whether I happen to agree with the hon. Gentleman’s party or not, if people vote for it then that is who they should get as a Government—that is what I believe in terms of democracy.

How does the crooked, anti-democratic nature of the House of Lords manifest itself? To answer that, let us consider for a moment the curious case of the quite inappropriately named Liberal Democrats. The Liberal Democrats were hammered at the ballot box—not before time, many of us would say. That happened first in Scotland in the 2011 Scottish Parliament elections, when they were reduced to a rump of five MSPs out of 129, and was followed up at the UK general election last year when they were reduced to a rump of just eight MPs out of 650. In a democracy, the people speak and the message is sent. That is not the end of the story, however. The Liberal Democrats defy democracy thanks to the House of Lords. There are an incredible 111 of them along the corridor there sitting—or sleeping—on the red benches, grazing, collecting their tax-free £300 when they pass go, occasionally contributing to the debates and maybe even voting. They are down at the other end of that corridor, unelected and unaccountable. They are Westminster’s own political zombies. We really have to move forward. They are not elected and the people’s views must be paramount.

Some would say that the House of Lords provides access to expertise that cannot be found among MPs in the House of Commons. I acknowledge, because I have met some, that there are some Lords who certainly have expertise, but there are many hon. Members in this place and it cannot be beyond the wit of this place to find experts on a range of issues.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

The hon. Gentleman talks about expertise. It would be possible to have an advisory body of experts. The Lords have legislative power—that is the difference.

[Steven Paterson]

Indeed. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. There are a number of things we could do and that suggestion is certainly one of them.

One of the many problems with the House of Lords is that it is stuffed to the gunnels with former politicians who failed to win seats but are none the less looked after by the powers that be. One of my predecessors as MP for Stirling is one such. Michael Forsyth has not won an election since 1992. In his 14-year career as MP for Stirling, he was democratically chosen by the people of the constituency to serve in that role. He has now spent 17 years in the unelected Chamber along the corridor. This illustrates a fundamental problem. There is a long, long list of such former political big beasts out to pasture at the end of the corridor; former elected politicians of such inestimable stature as Jeremy Purvis, for example. There are then those apparently picked at random, perhaps for saying the right things at the right time to help the party in government, or making the requisite donation to their political party.

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[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate, which I greatly welcome. I particularly enjoyed the speech by the hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire (Martin John Docherty). It was entertaining, but also serious, making many important points. The House of Lords has, of course, been in the news again recently, and the Government are clearly threatening change to rein in our allegedly noble colleagues. Yesterday’s debate in the other place seemed to suggest that even Conservative peers were not entirely happy with what the Government want to do. My interest in speaking today is to argue for a unicameral Parliament. The majority of legislatures across the world are unicameral, and some European nations—Sweden, for example—have chosen to become unicameral. We should at least discuss that possibility and, I hope, move towards that system in time.

When I first entered the House in 1997, the New Labour Government—I emphasise New Labour with a capital N—established a royal commission to consider possible reforms to the House of Lords. Shortly into my time here, I attended a Labour party so-called regional policy forum—I am sure that Mr Deputy Speaker would understand what regional policy forums were like. It was in Watford on a Saturday afternoon with about 25 to 30 party members attending. A chairman had been allocated by the party machine, and we were addressed by a learned professor from the royal commission.

The terms of reference set out by the Government for the royal commission made no mention of abolition of the House of Lords as a possible option. I asked why that was, and suggested that abolition should be a possible option for discussion. Another member suggested that we should have a show of hands to test opinion and see how many members at the meeting favoured abolition—an innocent little test of opinion. At this, the chair became very agitated and said, icily, that there would be no votes. Clearly, not even a show of hands in Watford among a small number of Labour party members on a Saturday afternoon—it was no doubt raining outside—was allowed to express a majority view that we should abolish the House of Lords. I suspect that there was probably a majority for abolition in that room, but it was not to be discussed. It was clear that our leaders wanted to keep the House of Lords in some form and that discussing possible abolition was not to be tolerated. It was most interesting.

Some reforms were later enacted by the Blair Government, and remain in place, but abolition is still not being discussed. Some longer-standing Members may recall the later discussions and debates on reform, and the series of votes on possible alternatives that took place in March 2007. One Division effectively permitted a test of opinion on possible abolition of the House of Lords. Among Labour Back Benchers, 169 of my hon. Friends voted for a bicameral Parliament, but 155 of us voted against that, effectively in favour of a unicameral Parliament and the abolition of the House of Lords. That was almost half of the Labour Back Benchers, showing a substantial body of support for a unicameral Parliament. The fact that this option was deliberately excluded from consideration by the earlier royal commission was, I think, a scandal and clearly a political fix.

I tabled an early-day motion to that effect at the time, which received the support of 50 Labour Members, some 14 of whom are still Members today. It was clear that that was due to the simple fact that the Prime Minister at the time wished to retain his power of patronage to appoint Members to the Lords, for a number of reasons. I might add that, subsequently, many argued strongly for an appointed House of Lords, and for retaining a substantial proportion of appointed Members even if it became democratic.

One of those reasons was obviously the ability to offer Members of the House of Commons the prospect of elevation to the Lords, both as a means of keeping control and reducing the potential for rebellion in the Commons and, possibly, to help to persuade older Members with safe seats to agree to retire at a convenient time for the party machine to slot leadership supporters into those safe seats.

[Peter Grant]

I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman recalls that, last time there was a major review of the boundaries in Scotland, the Kingdom of Fife was reduced from five parliamentary constituencies to four. The then Member of Parliament for Dunfermline, East, by the name of Gordon Brown, found himself without an obvious successor seat. The MP for Kirkcaldy agreed to retire from the House, Mr Brown became the MP for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, and very shortly afterwards the former MP for Kirkcaldy became a Member of the House of Lords. Is that the kind of democratic process to which the hon. Gentleman was referring?

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I do not wish to mention particular examples, because there are still hon. Members here who may or may not have experienced this process, but in my party I want individual Members to have the power, rather than party machines, and I certainly do not want leaders to have the power to select candidates.

I used the word “possibly” about selections of this kind because I cannot prove that such things occurred, and I do not wish to imply any criticism of other hon. Members who may have been selected in strong party seats. That may, of course, occur in other parties as well. It is clearly the case, however, that successive Prime Ministers, before and since, have jealously guarded their powers of patronage. I want to see those powers taken away in the interests of a more vigorous, intensive democracy in this House and outside, and to rein in the excessive power of the Executive.

I think that this is a serious matter, and I hope that, as and when we come to discuss the possible future of the House of Lords, the possibility of a unicameral Parliament and getting rid of this patronage will be raised again.

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[Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)]

When I first wandered into the Chamber today, I thought I had come into the wrong debate, because the Annunciator shows the title of the debate as “House of Lords reform”. Neither my colleagues nor I believe that there can be any reforming of something that is so deeply undemocratic and rotten to the core.

There is no doubt that the general public across the UK are deeply disengaged from and alienated by much of what goes on in this place. It is dangerous for democracy when the very people it is intended to serve lose so much interest and faith in it. We can come up with warm words and grand ideas about how to tackle that, but perhaps the single most important thing we can do to repair some, although not all, of the damaging rift between those of us who serve and those whom we seek to serve would be to hear the calls—a deafening din in Scotland—to abolish the House of Lords. It is no better than a carbuncle on the face of democracy across the United Kingdom, and there is a deep sense of frustration with it across communities in Scotland. It has already been pointed out that this archaic, outdated and medieval and anachronistic institution has no place in any state that purports to be a modern, enlightened and forward-looking democracy. Just to be clear, we do not simply object to the personnel in the House of Lords, although we do; we do not recognise its legitimacy or its right to legislate over the citizens of the UK.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I agree very much with what the hon. Lady is saying. The hon. Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng) suggested earlier that this subject never came up on the doorstep. Does she agree that that is because people’s first concerns are jobs, housing, poverty and the health service? However, if people are asked about the House of Lords, many would say that we should abolish it.

[Patricia Gibson]

I absolutely agree with what the hon. Gentleman has just said. When people talk to us on the doorstep, their priorities are of course job security, benefit sanctions and putting food on the table, but if we scratch the surface, we find that the House of Lords is universally hated, across the UK in my view. There might be small pockets of support among what might be called traditionalists, but for the ordinary man and woman in the street, the House of Lords is an affront to modern democracy.

What I am about to say has already been mentioned earlier in the debate. That is one of the disadvantages of being so far down the speaking list. It is bad enough that the House of Lords is unelected, but it really is quite incredible to think that we are the only state in the world apart from Iran that has clerics pontificating on legislation. That further illustrates the absurdity of this relic.

Despite all the plaudits and feeble attempts to justify the other place, perhaps by those who have pals or cronies there or those who seek to retire there themselves when the voters reject them, it cannot be justified to retain those who are unelected. They have often been actively rejected by the voters. It is arguably worse that some of them have shied away from presenting themselves to the voters at any time at all, despite having political ambitions. That really makes the House of Lords a laughing stock in the eyes of the rest of the world.

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[Peter Grant]

I am very grateful indeed, Madam Deputy Speaker, not least because I intend to quote the bard later on.

I find it astonishing that when we started the process of review of and consultation on how to repair the fabric of this undoubtedly magnificent and historic building, it was based on the assumption that Parliament would continue to operate in exactly the same way as it presumably always has done. May I suggest that a golden opportunity was missed to start to reform the processes of not only this Chamber, but the second Chamber?

Indeed, this might be an opportunity to ask ourselves why we need a second Chamber at all. Other modern, inclusive, democratic countries manage perfectly well with one Chamber. If we think about it, the argument that the second Chamber is good at scrutinising and checking the actions of the first Chamber suggests that we are saying that the first Chamber is not doing its job, so perhaps we should literally get our own House in order and then consider whether we want another House just down the road.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I agree with what the hon. Gentleman has said. In my speech I mentioned Sweden, which has abolished its second Chamber. Does he appreciate that Sweden has not become undemocratic as a result? It is as democratic as it was before.

[Peter Grant]

The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point. Imagine that this Parliament had historically consisted of a single, elected Chamber. Then imagine that someone comes along and suggests that we need a second, unelected Chamber in order to become more democratic. They would be laughed out of court.

I think that there are options available to us if we are prepared to look at having a second elected Chamber, assuming that we need a second Chamber at all. That would give us a chance to elect the House of Lords on a different electoral cycle from that of the House of Commons, in order to avoid the temptation for Governments to time their announcements and legislation with a view to getting re-elected in a few years’ time. It would give us the chance, importantly, to elect a second Chamber by a different electoral method to help even out some of the undoubted inequities that exist in the first-past-the-post system. Yes, the SNP benefited from that system at the general election, but the system was not fair when it worked to our disadvantage, and it is no fairer when it works to our advantage.

Comments were made earlier about the place of the representatives of the Church of England in the House of Lords. I will defend and warmly commend the actions of a number of Churches and faith groups in helping to act as a social conscience of our nations. I think of the important work that various Churches have done in critiquing benefit sanctions and nuclear weapons, or in reminding us that the refugee crisis is about human beings, not burdens on our benefits system. I hope that faith groups, including humanists, who in my view are a legitimate faith group, will continue to do that. However, in this day and age should they have an automatic right to make laws that apply to the majority of citizens in these islands who choose to follow a different interpretation of their faith? I fully appreciate that that will be a difficult conversation for many, but it is one that we really cannot shy away from for very much longer.

It can be argued that there is a benefit in allowing people from all walks of life to play a part in scrutinising legislation, rather than just the relatively narrow “political elite”. There are two problems with that argument. First, the House of Lords is not a representative sample; if anything, it is more dominated by the political elite than the House of Commons. Secondly, the House of Lords does not just scrutinise legislation; it can block it. It can even initiate legislation and ask us to scrutinise it.

As the hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins) mentioned, if there are benefits in having experts who are not Members of Parliament, or lay people, advising and scrutinising legislation, why not set up a system that allows appointed people to scrutinise and examine, but not to legislate or to overrule the will of the democratic Chamber? That is an option that I think is well worth further investigation.

There will be those who appeal to a deity called tradition, as if tradition was always a good thing. I think that tradition is important. Our traditions are what make us who we are, and if we lose sight of who we are, then we really are in trouble. But if we allowed tradition to be the judge of what happens in future, we would still be sending children up chimneys and down mines, and we would still be exploiting slaves from other parts of the world. More topically, if we continued to judge things according to the traditions that applied in this Chamber for so long, the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for Scotland would have had to resign this week. Thank goodness we have moved away from traditions that were indefensible 300 years ago and are no more defensible today.

What does it say about democracy in this Parliament when the only organisation that consistently blocks any kind of proper reform of the House of Lords is also the one with the biggest vested interest in not reforming it? Most people in these islands simply cannot understand that. Even those who are not 100% convinced that the Lords should be abolished cannot understand why, when what is supposedly the sovereign Chamber in Parliament takes a decision to reform the House of Lords, the Lords itself can block any attempts to do so.

Even without legislation that can still be blocked or delayed indefinitely by the Lords itself, party leaders could give commitments that would get rid of some of the potential abuses, which, let us face it, we all know have happened. Although it is not possible to point to an individual appointment and know for certain that it was based on financial transactions, or on a deal made when somebody was still a Member of Parliament, the fact that the system can be vulnerable to that kind of abuse means that in the eyes of the public it very probably has been abused in that way in the past.

Let us look at the three worst abuses, which cause a lot of concern. I invite the Minister not to commit to dealing with them but at least to give serious consideration to how the parties could, right now, start to make the appointment system of the House of Lords a bit more acceptable, pending a proper and rapid review sometime in the next two or three hundred years. First, politicians who get kicked out by the democratic process can come back, arguably better off than they have been here, by being appointed to the House of Lords. Why not ban appointments of former MPs to the House of Lords, at least for a period of five or 10 years afterwards?

Secondly, there seems to be a high correlation between new appointments to the House of Lords and previous donors to party coffers. I am told that about 25% of all recent appointments by the Prime Minister were of people who had made substantial donations to the party coffers. I do not object to people giving money to causes they believe in, but there is an issue there that damages the reputation of this place in the eyes of the public. Why not set a limit and say that anybody who has donated above a certain amount to a political party cannot then take a place in the House of Lords, again possibly with a five-year or 10-year cooling-off period?

Finally, there is an abuse of the system that we have seen here. Page after page of improvements to the Scotland Bill put forward by the people who were elected to represent Scotland were rejected by MPs who have no mandate to represent Scotland, and then promptly reintroduced by those same MPs through their friends in the House of Lords. When the amendments came back to the House of Commons a short time later, the people who had voted against them trooped through the Lobby to vote for them. That is a wrong use of the process. Why not invite the Government to consider the possibility of putting themselves under a voluntary ban whereby they will not introduce major legislation in the Lords unless it has been passed by this Chamber first, and will not introduce large numbers of significant amendments in the Lords when they have had the opportunity to have them considered in this place first?

Even those changes would not go far enough for me, or for a lot of people, but they would at least start to show the people of these islands, in good faith, that the Government are serious about tackling an appointments system, in particular, that has no place in a representative democracy.

Earlier, someone referred to Westminster as the mother of Parliaments. I have heard the story that once, during a hustings debate probably somewhere north of the border, somebody announced in a very pompous manner that he was proud to serve in the mother of all Parliaments, and a voice from the back asked him if he had any idea who the father was. I am not going to say which of those comments I prefer.

I started by quoting the greatest poem, or song, that Robert Burns ever wrote, but I think that the greatest piece of writing by Robert Burns is, surprisingly, not a poem or a song, but a piece of prose:

“Whatever mitigates the woes or increases the happiness of others—this is my criterion of goodness. And whatever injures society at large, or any individual, in it—this is my measure of iniquity.”

The way that Members of the Lords are appointed right now means that we have an iniquitous situation in this Parliament. If the Lords is not prepared to accept fundamental reform, then it can, will and must be abolished.

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[Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)]

I genuinely congratulate the hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire (Martin John Docherty) on opening the debate and on his very colourful and well-informed speech. I must say that many good points have been made. I emphasise the point made by the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson), which is that we must have a debate. It is very important to recognise the complexity and difficulty of reform, and we must begin by having an honest debate.

I congratulate Scottish National party Members on the consistency and uniformity of their arguments, by and large. They showed discipline. The number of times I heard reference to China’s National People’s Congress, I would not like to say. The hon. Member for Inverclyde (Ronnie Cowan) did talk about reform, rather than abolition. I welcome that because it is healthy to have a difference of emphasis within a political group, if not a complete difference.

Few people would genuinely say that our parliamentary system does not need fundamental change. It is important to remember that the biggest change to the composition of the second Chamber came under a Labour Government, when we secured the abolition of most of the hereditary peers. That was the start of a reform that we must complete as soon as is practicable, and it must be a radical reform. I say radical reform, rather than abolition of the second Chamber, because I am not convinced that we should move away from a bicameral parliamentary system.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

Clearly we have a difference of view on this. My hon. Friend says that there has not been enough discussion about reform. There has been a lot of talk about reform, but there has not been much of a debate about the alternative of having a unicameral Parliament. That is what I want to see.

[Wayne David]

I respect my hon. Friend’s view. That is one of the discussions that we need to have in this Chamber. He is perfectly right that we need to discuss not just how reform might be brought about, but whether we even need a second Chamber. I am of the view, although I am willing to take part in a debate, that we should have a bicameral system. There is a need for a second Chamber to scrutinise, modify, suggest amendments to and delay legislation, although I think that legislation should always emanate from this House.

It is deplorable that we are seeing two sustained attempts not to introduce more democracy into the second Chamber, but to exercise control over the second Chamber’s ability to hold the Executive to account. It is important to remember that this Government have appointed more Conservative peers than Margaret Thatcher did in her 11 years as Prime Minister. There is also a debate taking place about Lord Strathclyde’s report, which I would argue is all about undermining the ability of the other place to hold the Government to account.

We know why the Government are trying to control and weaken the Lords. It is not because they believe in democracy or because they have accepted the arguments of the SNP, but because they do not like to be scrutinised or challenged, no matter where it comes from. The issue is not the primacy of the House of Commons over the House of Lords; this is about the Government trying to minimise challenge and push aside opposition.

In the last Parliament, a great deal of time and effort was spent on debating reform of the House of Lords. Sadly, it came to nothing because the Liberal Democrats refused to have a constructive dialogue with reformers on the Opposition Benches and because—it is important to remember this—the Prime Minister did not deliver on his promise and Conservative Back Benchers defended the status quo.

What is needed now is a nationwide debate about the kind of democracy we need for the 21st century. The 19th-century, highly centralised nation state based on London is surely a thing of the past. Decentralisation must be the order of the day, not just to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, but to the regions, cities and localities of England. There is therefore a strong case for a second Chamber—call it a senate if you like—made up of representatives of the nations and regions of the UK, possibly with people drawn from local government as well. Such a second Chamber might be made up of indirectly elected representatives or directly elected representatives. It would have the advantage of providing informed scrutiny by individuals drawn from all parts of the United Kingdom. It is a shame that most Members of the other place are either drawn from, or have a focus on, London and south-east England. That cannot be acceptable.

When we talk about fundamental change to our constitution, it is important to remember three things. First, there must be debate and dialogue between all political parties and, if possible, a high degree of consensus about what kind of changes are needed. If it is believed that political advantage is a motive behind any constitutional change, that change will not work effectively and will ultimately fail. Secondly, it is important not to see Lords reform in isolation from other changes that are needed for our democracy. I have already referred to devolution, but I believe that in our country there is a widespread thirst for popular engagement. No longer are people prepared simply to sit back and allow those who are unelected to make important decisions. It is therefore important to have a broad perspective when considering changes to our democracy.

Thirdly, we must not believe that there can be a top-down approach towards political reform, or that we are the repository of all knowledge on these matters. The people of our country need to be fully engaged in the debate on democratic renewal, and that is why we believe that there needs to be a people’s constitutional convention. Such a convention ought not to be made up of the great and good; rather, it should draw in people from all walks of life and all parts of the country. It must be focused in its discussions, and it must also inspire and enthuse people so that we give our democracy fresh life and inspiration.

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[John Penrose]

Many of them are in the House of Lords. They are reduced to a small number of MPs, and none of them is here today. I regard that as a real tragedy because in the last Parliament, and in previous Parliaments, they—they have not been the only ones—were pressing the case for reform of the Lords and other constitutional reform. All of a sudden, when they are hugely over-represented in the House of Lords relative to their representation in this House, they are nowhere to be seen. They are Macavity’s cat when it comes to reform of the Lords and this debate. That is a tragedy, and people will draw their own conclusions about their relative levels of interest.

The hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire encapsulated a series of criticisms about the Lords, which have been widely echoed by many Members. I will not go through them all in huge detail when summing up the debate, but broadly speaking he made the point in a variety of different ways that the level of democratic legitimacy in the House of Lords is incredibly low. The only group that are elected are the 92 hereditary peers, and they are elected from an electoral college.

There are other criticisms—that the House of Lords is very large, and the bishops and hereditaries should not be there—that buttress the central charge of a lack of legitimacy and democratic principle in the Lords as it is currently constituted. I agree and that is reflected in my personal voting record on the issue. The hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins) mentioned the series of votes on the issue in the 2005 Parliament. It was my first Parliament and I voted consistently for anything that would increase the level of democratic involvement in the House of Lords. In the 2010 Parliament, we had an incredibly long and drawn-out attempt to reform the House of Lords. I do not think that anyone could claim that there was not a determined attempt—probably the most determined attempt for several generations—to reform the House of Lords and to make it more democratically legitimate. I voted consistently throughout for those reforms, even though the form of election might not necessarily have been to everybody’s taste—even mine. They were a step in the right direction, however, or at least they would have been had they been passed. I cannot argue, therefore, either from a personal or Government point of view, that the central charge is not valid. That is why the Conservative party’s election manifesto said we remain committed in principle to reform. Our approach is not driven by an opposition to the central charge made by the hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire and echoed by many other hon. Members today.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

The Minister talks about making the House of Lords more democratic, which is second-best to abolition. How will he deal with the real problem: prime ministerial patronage?

[John Penrose]

If I can ask the hon. Gentleman to hold his horses, I hope to come back to that later. I am sure he will pick me up on that if I do not address it sufficiently.

At this point, I should declare a small, non-financial family interest. A couple of years ago, my wife was appointed to the House of Lords. When she was appointed, I had to point out to her that I had a long track record of voting multiple times to abolish her, and anybody like her, from the House of Lords in due course. She has forgiven me and I am sure the House will be delighted to hear that relations over the family breakfast table are not too strained. However, I can reassure hon. Members that my personal views have not changed, despite the family involvement. Given the chance, I would vote to make them far more democratically legitimate.

I started by assuming, I think not necessarily entirely correctly, that the SNP was exclusively and purely a unicameralist party. I think we have heard support for that view during the debate from many SNP Members, the hon. Member for Luton North and, to some degree, my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers). I hope I am not putting words in anybody’s mouth, but I think I heard some degree of qualified willingness to at least consider a more democratically legitimate second Chamber as an alternative to the perhaps favoured unicameralist view.