Queen’s Speech

Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts

Monday 14th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

My Lords, I have a possible compromise suggestion. If there were to be functional constituencies, as in Hong Kong, I suspect that the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, would be head of the historians’ functional constituency. Indeed, I am sad that there were not more historians or people with a historical background among those who drafted the Bill. It would have come out very differently. We have clearly come to the time in the debate when everything that can be said has been said, but I have not yet said it so I will have a go.

As a Welsh nonconformist, I always like to base a speech on a text. The text that I have chosen comes from a traffic sign that we all know. It says this, which may be one of the high points of political wisdom: “Do not enter the box unless your exit is clear”. Certainly, the coalition partners entered the box in 2010 when they went through a form of marriage in the gardens of No. 10. Indeed, they reaffirmed their vows in an Essex factory last week. One reflection might be: unhappy are the couple who deem it necessary to reaffirm their vows after a mere two years of marriage.

I think that there may be an exit from this commitment in sight. Is abandonment politically feasible? Is it already in sight? Is it when, for example, the guillotine Motion, the timetable Motion, fails in the House of Commons, or when even a consensus, as defined by the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, is not obtained and trench warfare of Passchendaele proportions arises? Will the Liberal Democrats eventually be bought off by stopping the constituencies Bill, which threatens to decimate their numbers?

Pace the three manifestos, no one really is happy with all the provisions of this Bill. Yet the Liberal Democrats appear, alas, committed to the elections. It is a curious obsession on their part as regards constitutional structures. They are not great negotiators. In other countries, in Germany for example, the federal democrats emerged with a key department. There is a Foreign Minister. The Liberal Democrats did not emerge with any such departmental position. They yielded to the Conservative agenda on legal aid, welfare cuts and the NHS, so long as the cherished package of constitutional reform was achieved. But it may be that, ultimately, all that they have gained will crumble to dust. At the end of the day, they may have nothing to show for that curious obsession, which is so far from the priorities of the public.

I would normally intervene in matters of international affairs but there is very little of that in the Queen’s Speech. Even for the Commonwealth, so beloved by the other side, there is no mention, save in the succession to the Crown.

There are one or two other important matters, including, obviously, electoral registration. But there is nothing in relation to Northern Ireland, Scotland or Wales or any attempt to meet the problem of what might happen if the Scottish referendum in a couple of years opts for independence. Clearly, that would have the most profound implications for any change in the House of Lords.

The Queen’s Speech states:

“The composition of the House of Lords will be changed”.

There is no mention of powers or functions, as if they are wholly unrelated to the composition of this place. The Queen’s Speech is very short. What would happen if the House of Lords Bill were to be abandoned during the course of the year? There would be an enormous hole in the legislative programme. It would be rather like the problems we had in this House in February and March of this year as regards the poor management.

The background is that we had the Joint Committee proposals, the alternative report and the high-quality, one-and-a-half-day debate. Since then, as they say in another place, an amendment has been moved. That amendment was the verdict of the people in the local elections. I would not be so adventurous as to claim that there was a direct relationship between the way in which the people of this country voted in the local elections and their views on House of Lords reform. But surely there is an indirect effect in that they were protesting, in part, against the way in which this Government were unwilling to listen to their views and had got totally out of touch with public opinion. Who in the broad public, apart from the UK equivalent of the belt around Washington, is seriously interested in reform of this place?

The illusions of the Government have surely been shattered. Clause 2(1)(b) on the primacy of the House of Commons, as if by a simple declaration, is sufficient to ensure that that is so. The assertion that this will be more democratic is absurd. Anyone who has been in the other place, as I had the privilege to be for 30 years, knows that the democratic responsibility of a Member of Parliament arises from direct contact regularly—a point well made by the noble Baroness, Lady Knight—with members of their constituency in order to be as a bridge to relay their views to the Executive and to relay back, as appropriate, the views of the Executive. If one is elected for 15 years, non-renewable, and if one manages to find one’s way on to a party list, how in any way is that likely to be more democratic?

I suspect that if we ask who is likely to be elected, many will see this place as a springboard for getting to the House of Commons and will resign under Clause 57 of the Bill. And is it not likely that those who put themselves forward will be those who are already in the party structures and were perhaps unsuccessful for selections for the other place? There will be no generals and no senior lawyers, because the question will be, “Have you laboured in the vineyard—what have you done for us?”. Alas, senior lawyers and generals will say, “I was doing something else at the time—I fear I wasn’t able to knock at the doors and distribute leaflets at the relevant time”. “Ah, you are not a man for us”, they will say.

The other problem is that the House of Lords as presently constituted is composed of those who are beyond ambition. I wonder if that will continue if people are elected and may well seek to find their way into another place. It is clearly also likely that this place will be far less expert, as I notice that according to the Bill the Cross Benches will be reduced in 2015 to a mere 20. I would not like to have the job of working out who those 20 lucky people will be. Perhaps there will be a lottery.

So those illusions are shattered. But equally worrying is the manner in which this Government do constitutional change. There seems to be an unwillingness to have a sense of history or politics—although the noble Lord, Lord Norton, would no doubt correct me on this. We do things in this country in a different way; I do not demand reverence for our constitution, but surely we should have a certain respect for our constitution. Traditionally in the UK we make our constitutional change after a non-partisan debate and on the basis of consensus, not the consensus as defined by the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, as what the Chief Whip in the other place happens to decide at any one time. That is not real consensus. We move from precedent to precedent in an incremental way, as was shown extremely well in the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman. The Bill smacks of a political fix and glue and an unwillingness to consider the wider ramifications and the effect on the other place or on the devolved Assemblies. In short, there is case for a convention. I shall not proceed with this argument, although I could speak at great length, but are we moving inexorably along the road to a quasi-federal system, and an unwillingness to look at comparative legislature.

One part that I enjoyed very much in the speech given by the noble Lord, Lord Norton, was his reference to the article by Meg Russell in the January edition of Political Quarterly, which surely exploded much of what the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown, and others claimed in seeking to bring forward evidence for their own views. Even now, in a spirit of incrementalism and the true spirit of constitutional change, the Government can obtain on the basis of consensus a substantial part of what is wanted—by looking at the Steel Bill and the original Bill in which proposals were set out so well by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman. They could show some good will by yielding gracefully on the referendum issue. On that one recognises that the rules of the game have been changed, even more so than on the AV matter. But no—for partisan reasons and as a result of a deal they are determined to sleepwalk in what is clearly a constitutional minefield. We will look only at the composition of the House of Lords until, probably, they will be forced to seek an exit strategy from the box in which they have impaled themselves.

Surely at a time of austerity, as the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, said, this Government are presented with a golden opportunity to make the kindest and least controversial cut of all—that cut being to abandon this Bill.