House of Lords Reform Bill

Lord Austin of Dudley Excerpts

Monday 9th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman), who, if the proposals are passed, would end up being represented by the same regional list of senators as myself in Dudley—although how anyone could represent effectively both a rural community such as Hereford and a former industrial centre such as the black country is something we might ponder during the course of this debate.

I have always believed that the House of Lords should be reformed. It is clearly too big; it is indefensible that hereditary peers remain; and it is completely wrong that Members can fail to turn up for years and retain their membership, when they would be booted off a local authority if they failed to attend for six months. That said, however, there are major problems with the Government’s proposals.

First, the lesson of Scottish and Welsh devolution is that constitutional reform cannot be undertaken piecemeal. Those changes, which I supported, resulted in imbalances between Scotland and Wales and England and its regions, which have still not been resolved. The lesson is that a comprehensive and coherent view is needed of the relationship between the individual and the state, and of what powers should be exercised at national, regional and community level, before constitutional reform is undertaken.

[Mr MacNeil]

Are not the hysterics we are hearing in the House today reminiscent of the hysterics heard in 1979 about a Scottish Assembly, and in 1997 about a Scottish Parliament? There are hysterics only within these four walls, but when these things actually happen, the sky does not fall in.

[Ian Austin]

As I said, I supported the proposals for devolution, but I think the previous Government made a mistake in not undertaking them as part of a far-reaching, comprehensive and coherent view about the arrangements for governing Britain as a whole. Reform of the House of Lords needs to be properly thought through as part of a wider package of constitutional reforms to deal with the regional and national imbalances that are the result of stalled devolution.

For example, a renewed approach to regional government is needed. It is ironic that the Bill proposes that Members be elected from the English regions, which the Government have been doing all they can to abolish in all other respects. They claimed that the regions did not exist when they abolished the regional development agencies, regional spatial planning and all the rest. We have regional government in this country in the NHS, the police, planning, transport policy, housing and regeneration, but they are run by faceless civil servants in England, and by politicians in London, Scotland and Wales. I would prefer to have proper regional government and proper regional accountability for those powers and then to establish a revising second Chamber drawn from the regional assemblies.

The Government are proposing far-reaching reforms, which have huge implications for the way the country is run, and are doing so without a referendum. We had to have referendums for voting systems, for Scottish and Welsh devolution, for a regional assembly in the north-east and for directly elected mayors in some quite small cities, but the people of Britain will have no say in huge changes to their Parliament.

The central question is whether the House of Lords should be elected. I do not think it is possible to defend, as a point of principle, appointments and patronage. I am a democrat and I am in favour of devolving power to the people. That is one of the reasons I became interested in politics and got involved: I wanted to ensure that ordinary people have as much power as possible over the way the decisions that affect them in their daily lives are taken. Clearly, the current system is one of appointment, not election, but what we have to decide is whether the changes that the Government propose are appropriate and will do the job.

First, whatever the Government say, having an elected House of Lords will inevitably change the relationship between the two Houses. That is bound to happen. The Bill promises that this House will retain primacy, but simply asserting that and ensuring that it happens in practice are very different. It is not credible to say that nothing will change, when it is inevitable that people who have been elected will claim a democratic mandate and assert their authority. Secondly, there is no question but that elected Members of the second House will claim democratic legitimacy in our constituencies. That is bound to happen. In this debate and during the detailed scrutiny of the Bill that follows it, I want to see how the Government and this House will deal with those huge questions.

There are other issues we have to deal with. It is pretty clear that 400 new senators will bring huge additional costs. They will immediately demand the same level of resources, staff and offices and all the rest as we have, even though they will have no real constituency. Of those 400, the west midlands will have about 35 representatives elected from a regional list. Voters will have very little idea who they are voting for. I spent the weekend asking people in Dudley if they could name their MEPs. Michael Cashman and the other six west midlands MEPs do a good job, but the current system ensures that almost no one knows who their MEPs are. I take more than a passing interest in politics and I struggle to name all seven of them off the top of my head.

What I do know is that the introduction of a regional list system for those elections has resulted, to our great shame, in Britain being represented in the European Parliament, for the first time, by people standing for a racist and fascist party. It is pretty clear to me that if we go ahead with a similar system for a second Chamber, all sorts of cranks and extremists will get elected.

The idea of people being elected for a 15-year non-renewable term is appalling. One of the reasons that politicians work hard, particularly in marginal constituencies, is that we have to answer for our views and actions at the ballot box. The proposed system, which prevents people from being held to account for their actions by seeking re-election, appears to be based on the most appalling elitist view that listening to the public and taking their views into account is a bad thing.

Although I am in favour of democracy and elections, I shall be following this debate and the subsequent scrutiny of the Bill and amendments with great interest, to see whether the concerns I have expressed today can be dealt with.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ian Austin]

Can the hon. Gentleman think of any job in Britain that is guaranteed for the next 15 years, because I cannot?

[Steve Brine]

No, I cannot, and I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. Many of the constituents that he and I represent, in the public and private sectors, would give their eye teeth for a job with a 15-year guaranteed salary.

I wonder what the public would think if they actually saw the other place in action and were exposed to its debates in the same way they are to debates in this House, at Prime Minister’s questions for instance. I think that they would be genuinely shocked to find the level of debate that their lordships pursue and the much reduced partisan nature of their proceedings. Bagehot has been quoted a few times today, but clearly he has not been in the House of Lords lately.

The Bill, from my reading of it, would take all the worst element of this House, magnify them tenfold and place them at the other end of the building. The insane proposal to elect these senators to nine regions of the country by proportional representation would simply introduce a new breed of political animal to Parliament, one that owes everything to the party list that put them there. Of course they will act accordingly, and we would not blame them for doing so. Do right hon. and hon. Members really want to create a whole new raft of expensive, partisan and regionally roaming politicians?

I read in the weekend papers—there was a lot in them—the comments of one Liberal Democrat peer, who said that his party has had to swallow some bitter pills, such as student fees and the NHS Bill, strangely, as a result of coalition, and that it was time the Conservatives did the same.

That is one of the worst aspects of coalition, and I am a supporter of this coalition Government—and very much on the record as saying so. The horse-trading—the “you get, we get” mentality—that coalition fosters is a woeful way to carry on in any policy area, but when it comes to the constitution of our country it is just plain wrong and plain dangerous.

That is what is very wrong with this debate. The Bill is a reckless piece of proposed legislation that Baroness Boothroyd, who has far more experience of this House and the other than I do, described on the radio as “an abuse of Parliament.” I do not think that she would use that term lightly.

The Bill does not hang together intellectually. It is in part about coalition politics and, much more, about the internal politics of the Liberal Democrat party—and that is no reason to take a bulldozer to our constitution. In my bones I know that it is wrong, and the saddest thing of all is that it will probably set back sensible reform of the Lords for many years.

I urge the Government to step back, even at this late hour, and the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister to look each other in the eye over the Cabinet table this evening and simply to ask themselves whether these proposals will leave our Parliament a better place if they go through. I suspect that in their hearts both know the answer to that question, and I ask them to ask it.

I have never before voted against the coalition Government on a Government Bill, but with a very heavy heart, as others have said, I will do so tomorrow night.