House of Lords Reform Bill [HL]

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Friday 3rd December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bilimoria]

My Lords, it is a great privilege and an honour to follow the maiden speech of the noble Marquess, Lord Lothian. As expected, it was superb. This House is renowned for having distinguished individuals who are the best of the best in their fields, with oceans of experience. In Michael Ancram, we are truly fortunate to have a distinguished lawyer, a Queen’s Counsel and, as he has told us, a former chairman of the Conservative Party, a former shadow Secretary of State for Defence and a former shadow Foreign Secretary. He was also a Minister. He fought, lost and won parliamentary seats on many occasions. In fact, he first tried for West Lothian and did not succeed, but he won East Lothian. Then, he may not quite have become Prime Minister himself, but he defeated the future Prime Minister Gordon Brown to win Edinburgh South. He is a true politician’s politician, who has bounced back time and again and never given up, and always with a smile. As Nelson Mandela said,

“The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall”.

Many of us know that the noble Marquess is an accomplished musician who has often played his guitar in front of thousands at Conservative Party conferences. I am afraid that we could not break with 800 years of tradition and allow him to use a guitar to accompany his maiden speech, but he will certainly be music to our ears over the coming years.

Next year, we celebrate the centenary of the Parliament Act 1911. A hundred years ago, it was decided firmly to establish the supremacy of the House of Commons. Since then, as the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, said, we have had evolution, not revolution. Arguably, the House of Lords operates more effectively today than it has ever done. Whenever we debate the reform of the House of Lords, we tend to focus on its legislative role, but our role is much wider. The House of Lords is defined on our parliamentary website as:

“A forum of expertise, making laws and providing scrutiny of Government”.

We are a check and balance on the other place. There is no question that, during the past 100 years, there has been evolution in the other place as well, but that has unfortunately created a House of Commons where career politicians predominate, many of whom have had no careers outside politics.

It is amazing that the breadth and depth of expertise of Members of this House, particularly, I am proud to say, among the Cross-Benchers, give this House the ability and the capacity authoritatively to scrutinise legislation every day and challenge the Government of the day, whether that be in our debates, our daily Questions, our Statements or our hugely respected committees. That is the guardianship role of the House of Lords, and it is done at a quarter of the cost of the other place.

There is no question about the fact that many accuse our democracy and our elections of creating, as we have heard from our maiden speaker, elected dictatorships. Many feel that the Government have become too powerful. Many feel that the Government of the day, though the whipping system, can always have their own way due to the majority that they hold in the House of Commons, as the noble Marquess, Lord Lothian, has pointed out. I remember from my days in the Cambridge Union the classic motion that we debated at least once a year: “That this house has no confidence in Her Majesty's Government”. In the real world, how often do the Government lose a vote of confidence? You can count the number of times that it has happened. Who is there credibly to challenge the power of government? The role of the House of Lords is to do that in a way that is independent and with an objective frame of mind.

I admire the noble Lord, Lord Steel, for persevering with this Bill—this may be the nth time lucky. The reforms that he suggests are certainly worthy of consideration, in particular the proposal to make the House of Lords Appointments Commission statutory. However, most important, this Bill is about evolution, not revolution.

As your Lordships know, a debate was arranged last week by the independent Cross-Bench Peers—I thank our Convenor, the noble Baroness, Lady D’ Souza, and her team for that—at the Royal Opera House with Intelligence Squared. At the beginning of what was a public debate, the chairman, Nik Gowing, took a show of hands on the audience’s views on the motion, “That an elected House of Lords will be bad for British democracy”. The show of hands at the beginning could be divided roughly into thirds—for, against and undecided—although there may have been a little bias towards those in favour of the motion. At the end of the debate, after several speakers and questions, the chair’s conclusion was that the show of hands had moved towards the motion. Time and again, whenever I have conducted my own straw polls of members of the public, I have found that they initially say that they prefer an elected House of Lords, because it feels and sounds more democratic, but when you explain the role, function and composition of the House, they invariably change their minds and prefer for it to stay appointed. That is exactly what happened in the Royal Opera House debate last week, in spite of superb contributions from the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, who surprisingly said that the House of Lords was toothless. If we are toothless, why are 40 per cent of our amendments accepted by the House of Commons?

It is clear that we have not thought through clearly the aftermath of a decision to have an elected or partially elected House of Lords. There is no question that there would be needless duplication, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe, said. There would be conflict with the Commons and there might even be, as was pointed out by Professor Vernon Bogdanor at the Royal Opera House debate, deadlock and gridlock between the two Houses, as has happened in Australia. There is no way that the House of Lords, if elected, would settle for less power than the House of Commons. If an elected second Chamber were to materialise, we would almost definitely end up with a written constitution and an appointed Supreme Court. We already have such a court, but as in the United States the Supreme Court would then have strike-down powers. In such an instance, what would we clamour for next? Elected judges in the Supreme Court? What is more, do we want to vanish into anonymity via the route of proportional representation, as has been suggested, in the European mould? As I have said before, how many members of the public know their MEPs? The MEPs are out of touch with their constituencies and their constituents. This is a road to ruin, not the road to reform. Do we really want to become House of Commons-lite?

This country is unique in not having a written constitution, but our democracy has evolved over centuries. We are regarded as the mother of Parliaments around the world and, regardless of all the scandals, we are still one of the most respected Parliaments in the world. We do not have to copy anyone. Let us not throw the baby out with the bath water; let us, as the Bill suggests, strengthen our appointments system, our independence, our expertise and our ability fearlessly and unwaveringly to question, challenge and hold to account the Government of the day every day.

To conclude, I am really proud to serve as a Member of this House. It brings out the best in Britain, and this House is the best for Britain. We are in many ways the guardian of the nation. This unelected Chamber is, ironically, the cornerstone of our democracy. Only through evolution, not revolution, will we able to continue to protect the fairness, justice, freedom and liberty of our great nation.