Extension of Franchise (House of Lords) Bill [HL]

Lord Adonis Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & 2nd reading (Hansard)
Friday 7th February 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, I cannot quite believe that we are having this debate and wasting Parliament’s time on such a monumentally inconsequential reform. However, I at least congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, on producing what I think, in my 15 years in this House, is the most minor change to the statute book of any that I have yet been a party to. By my calculation, there are 794 Members of the House of Lords and the total electorate of the nation is 45,775,800. That means that the noble Lord’s Bill would add 0.00173% to the electorate. If we were able to give an hour or two of debate to every issue in the country that could make a 0.00173% improvement to the relevant public policy of the country, we would sit continuously. Maybe we would do some good but we certainly would not give so much scrutiny to this issue.

Indeed, I was trying to work out whether it would make any difference at all to any constituency. It is just possible that it might have done, although I fear perhaps not in Northamptonshire. However, I note that in Kensington, where many noble Lords live, there was a majority in the 2017 election of only 20. So maybe, if the Bill had become law, in one constituency in the nation in one election in history, it might have made a difference. Perhaps all those who are residents of Kensington should be allowed to cast their vote retrospectively in the 2017 election and we might have a different Member of Parliament. Otherwise, it will not make any difference. As Ernest Bevin famously said on another occasion:

“If you open that Pandora’s Box, you never know what Trojan horses will jump out”.


This Bill is not of any great consequence—I could not really care whether it passes. Maybe in Northamptonshire people stop the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, in the street and ask why this great scandal of him not having the vote is allowed to perpetuate. However, I admit to your Lordships that no one has ever said that to me. Far more often, they have said, “Why are you there at all?” What on earth is the argument for the noble Lord, for the noble Earl, Lord Howe—

[Lord Blunkett]

Who forced my noble friend to come here?

[Lord Adonis]

Who forced my noble friend Lord Blunkett not to have a vote in a general election? He accepted the peerage and, by virtue of that, he does not have a vote. The reason that the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, does not have a vote is not that some great constitutional outrage is taking place but because he chose to become Lord Naseby. None of us is forced to be here, because we no longer have hereditary succession without the right not to accept the peerage. Everyone is here by choice. The argument made by the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, whom we hold in great respect, and an argument that I assume the noble Earl will make again from the Front Bench—that in our democracy everyone should have a voice, which I argue noble Lords have by virtue of participation in this Chamber—is completely correct. If people want to vote for the other House, they should not come here. The idea that somehow there is a parallel with other Chambers in other countries is completely false, because this is the only second Chamber in the world, apart from China, in which people are here simply by virtue of who they are rather than by virtue of any representative credentials whatever.

As I said, I do not think that the Bill would make any difference one way or the other, apart from to the 794 of us here, but it raises principles. The noble Lord, Lord Sherbourne, said that incremental reform is a good thing. I am in favour of incremental reform that improves things. The reforms that he mentioned—the introduction of life Peers, for example—improved the working of this House significantly, but this Bill will not of itself improve anything at all. It deals with what is arguably an anomaly or arguably not an anomaly—it depends how you look at it—but it would do nothing whatever to improve the operation of the constitution. Indeed, it would do nothing to address any of the issues that were very well put by the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, concerning the working of our democracy. He raised very timely issues such as the right to vote at the age of 16. We should spend the time of this House debating issues such as that, not minor issues of this kind.

As we are being forced to have this debate, perhaps I may make two points.

[A noble Lord]

We are not being forced.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Adonis]

The noble Lord, Lord Naseby, has tabled the Bill and we are doing him the justice of debating it, although, as I said, I think that it is entirely inconsequential. My first point concerns our contribution. We are all here by virtue of being individuals who have been given peerages. I speak as someone who wrote a book on the subject of the operation of the House of Lords in the late 19th century when it was under the almost dictatorial control of Lord Salisbury—the portrait of him addressing the House of Lords on the rejection of the Irish home rule Bill faces the Bishops’ Bar. One striking and extraordinary thing about the House of Lords as an institution is how little the operations of this House have changed to enable Peers to make an impact.

In most areas of public policy that matter to this country where we could have an impact, we have zero impact because we have no committee system. We have been here for about eight centuries and have had time to put this right but the only developed committee of this House is our European Union Committee. It is arguable whether over 45 years it made any difference to our membership of the European Union but, unfortunately, it has had no impact at all on most areas of public policy. I was a Minister for five years in this House—indeed, I was a Secretary of State for one year—but never in that entire time did I appear before a Select Committee of the House of Lords because there was no Select Committee of the House of Lords to appear before. I appeared monthly before the relevant Select Committee in the House of Commons, which conducted very good scrutiny, but the great potential in this place, where there were many experts in all fields, was completely neglected.

The way that we organise our business has changed very little since the 19th century. All the changes that have taken place in the House of Commons in the last 50 years have passed us by. We have no proper departmental Question Time; we still have the haphazard business dating back to the mid-19th century of individual Peers tabling Questions that are entirely random, depending on their interests; and there is no proper Question Time. The way that we consider Bills has not changed, including the extremely cumbersome Committee stage process, which is entirely unintelligible to people outside. In particular, the fact that it takes place in the Chamber is a very great occupation of the time of the Chamber that could be spent on other matters. The size of the House has increased but our procedures have not changed at all. We do not really have debates which, by the standards of the House of Commons, constitute debates. We simply divide whatever time there is, no matter the number of speakers, which often means that we have literally four or five minutes in which to speak. For the most part, we read speeches that are reported in Hansard, and there is almost no give and take in debates.

We have not undertaken all the incremental changes of the kind that the noble Lord, Lord Sherbourne, referred to. We are a fossilised, atrophied institution that massively plays below its own weight and it needs reform, if we were capable of that. However, the bigger issue that I hope the noble Earl will tell us about is the wider context of reform, which might lead to the replacement of this House, as should surely happen in due course.

[Lord Naseby]

I hope that my noble friend on the Front Bench will remember that the scope of this debate is just this Bill; it is not the wider scope that the noble Lord has been talking about for the last 10 minutes. I say that with the benefit of having been a Deputy Speaker in the other place.

[Lord Adonis]

I am very grateful to the noble Lord for pointing that out, but he has raised the issue of reform of the House of Lords. He presented this as an issue of reform, so it is perfectly reasonable for those of us who have other ideas about reform to raise those too.

Can the noble Earl tell us about the commission on the wider reform of the constitution? That could be an opportunity for substantial reforms of the House of Lords. When will the commission be set up? Will it be a cross-party commission? What will its terms of reference be? Over what timescale will it deliberate? Those are hugely important issues that I think should engage us, and anything that the noble Earl can tell us on that score will be very welcome.

I make one final point: I had not realised—it is fascinating—why the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, took his title. It was after the Battle of Naseby in 1645 between the parliamentarians and the royalists, which he said was a great advance in the move towards democracy. But of course it was Oliver Cromwell, in his very first act after the execution of Charles I, who abolished the House of Lords as dangerous and useless. Maybe it is time for us to look more widely at the legacy of the Civil War.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Dubs (Lab)]

My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, on his persistence in bringing this legislation before us for the second time, and my noble friend Lord Blunkett for having previously tried to get it through. I commend the Library on its excellent briefing, which saved me doing a lot of homework. It is all there to quote from.

My Bill got a little further than some of the others; it got to the Commons. I will remind your Lordships of what happened, and I shall be critical of the procedures in the Commons; I think that I am allowed to do that. The normal practice is that, after the Bill is called, it takes one anonymous voice in the Commons to shout “Object”, and that kills it. I knew that this was liable to happen, so I wrote to all the Members of the Commons who had a reputation for shouting “Object”. I pointed out that my Bill was modest, did not affect them, had the support of this House and was well worth backing. I sat in the Gallery and a voice said, “Object”. It is quite undemocratic that one voice can do it, without one knowing who the MP is or what he or she represents. I was quite puzzled, but that is what killed it.

We have already had references to whether change should be incremental, piecemeal or done all in one go. My understanding, or slight suspicion—as I turn aggressively to the Lib Dem Benches—is that it was Nick Clegg who did not want any incremental change to the Lords; he wanted all or nothing. I cannot prove it, but I have some circumstantial evidence which might help. Certainly, the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, when he wound up the debate here on behalf of the coalition, said:

“On Lords reform, we have to look at a package.”—[Official Report, 5/7/13; col. 1421.]


On that basis, he argued that the Government should resist this “small, partial proposal”. That is why I think the Lib Dems had a key part to play in stopping us having a vote in the elections that followed. As has already been said, we have had the right to vote in local elections, the European Parliament and referenda. The Lords Spiritual, of course, are allowed to vote—whether they exercise that right I do not know. Using the analogy of the United States, American senators can vote in elections for the House of Representatives. All these are good arguments for doing it.

My noble friend Lord Adonis spent 10 minutes—10 minutes—telling us that we are wasting our time. I agree with him that this is not the most important issue. I helped in about eight different elections in eight different constituencies. I was out almost every day in the last election, knocking on doors and getting my knuckles ripped off in letterboxes as I put leaflets through—all things that I am sure my noble friend did too. Did he?

[Lord Adonis]

Yes.

[Lord Dubs]

Of course, nobody asked me about the right to vote in the Lords. There are no demonstrations in Parliament Square or people marching down Whitehall backing this Bill. They are not saying, “What do we Want? Votes for the Lords! When do we want them? Now!” Of course they are not, but quite a few issues are matters of principle. We do not have to stir up public demos; this just happens to be the right and proper thing to. I feel personally hurt when I tramp the streets trying to get other people to vote and then find myself denied that basic right. I find it personally painful every time there is an election. My own views do not matter much in the scheme of things, but that is how I feel. We pay our taxes. What we surely want to do by voting is to have some influence on who the Government will be. Once the Government are elected, we can influence legislation. I think we can do a better job, as my noble friend Lord Adonis suggested, but we can talk about that another day. It is just that I would like to have some influence on who the Government will be, not just on the legislation that follows, but I have no chance to do that at all. I can influence my local authority, and previously I could influence the European Parliament, but not the Government. Surely that is a basic and simple right, and it will happen sooner or later.

I actually feel sorry for Ministers who have to answer because, in my brief two or three years as a Minister, I found it difficult when my heart was not in the argument that I was putting forward.