Queen’s Speech

Lord Armstrong of Ilminster Excerpts

Monday 1st June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Armstrong of Ilminster (CB)]

My Lords, I join others who have congratulated the new Peers who made maiden speeches this evening. I thank them and look forward to the contributions that they will make. I should like, in particular, to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane. I cannot emulate his manner but, as to matter, he will find that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

In this country we are much given to claiming with an air of regretful apology, but actually with modest and self-satisfied pride, that we have an unwritten constitution. We are not, we feel, the kind of country that needs a written constitution. It is not quite true to say that our constitution is unwritten. Over the years, it has been extensively described and written about by learned academics such as Lord Blake and Professor Vernon Bogdanor, but even some of those who have had to operate it have contributed to the discussion. Now, we have the Cabinet Manual. But the Cabinet Manual explicitly describes existing practice; it does not prescribe future practice or exclude or limit the possibility of change. There is no official and authoritative document, an Act of Parliament or whatever, that defines the constitution, as it were, set in stone—as seems to be the fashionable thing these days.

All constitutions need to be amended or revised from time to time as circumstances change and as social or economic developments require. In the United States, they have a written constitution which can be amended only by Act of Congress. In the Republic of Ireland, the constitution can be amended only by a referendum. In this country, without a written constitution, changes are made as we go along by means of precedent broadening out from precedent. The constitution can be tweaked as needed, not without notice or discussion, and sometimes not without an Act of Parliament, but without a prescribed and elaborate procedure for organising the change.

That has been possible, I suppose, because the constitutional state of the United Kingdom has for many years, until recently at any rate, been relatively stable. It has been a unitary state. We have known where powers lie, who has responsibility for the exercise of those powers, and who is accountable for the outcomes. Some powers are still prerogative powers of the Crown. But for statutory powers, Parliament at Westminster has been sovereign.

All this is changing. The processes of devolution and the principles of subsidiarity are fundamentally altering the distribution of powers and of responsibilities. Some powers formerly exercised at Westminster have gone to the European Union. Some have gone, and more are going, to the parliaments and assemblies of the constituent nations of the United Kingdom. Some will be going to the new northern powerhouse and eventually, no doubt, to other regional powerhouses in England.

All these changes presage a continuing diminution of the powers and responsibilities of the Parliament at Westminster. Here and in the other place, we need to face up to the implications of this. I hope that the United Kingdom will remain the United Kingdom, but it seems that it is inevitably becoming a federal United Kingdom, not a unitary United Kingdom. This will be a great change: perhaps a necessary and inevitable change. To many perhaps, it will be a welcome change, maybe even a change for the better. If that is how it is to be, we shall increasingly need to design and define the structure of the United Kingdom and its parts, and the distribution of powers and responsibilities within it.

I have not hitherto wanted to see a written constitution, a constitution codified and made statutory. The move to a federal United Kingdom may make that not only inevitable but necessary. I do not think that the written constitution need necessarily be a statute, though that is no doubt a possibility; it might well be preferable to make it a code, rather like the Highway Code, based on statute.

The decisions on these issues will be taken by elected parliamentarians at Westminster, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast. But, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester and many others reminded us, these political decisions should not be taken just at random or in isolation as immediate reactions to a political problem of the moment; they should be coherent and consistent with a system of constitutional principles.

I therefore share the view of those who think that we should set up without delay a constitutional convention or a royal commission—whatever you like to call its—to consider these issues and to make recommendations. The membership of such a body should include not only lawyers and academics but people with experience in central and local government. Governments and Parliaments would of course not be bound by the recommendations of such a convention or commission. They would be free to take whatever decisions seemed right to them but the proceedings of such a commission would enable a wide range of views and ideas to be brought together and put in the public domain. Its deliberations and recommendations would provide a framework and a set of principles against which a series of coherent political decisions could be reached and judged.

The outcome of such a process could be the written constitution which I believe we are going to need, and could make possible the establishment of a stable constitutional framework for the development of a federal United Kingdom in continuing membership of the European Union, but let us not be too optimistic. If your Lordships look back at major constitutional change in this country, I do not think that it has ever been worked out by something like a constitutional convention or a royal commission. It has emerged out of crisis and been in a situation which the politicians have muddled through. It is extraordinary how new muddle quickly morphs into old tradition.