Draft House of Lords Reform Bill

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Monday 30th April 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bilimoria]

My Lords, I remember that soon after David Cameron took over as leader of the Official Opposition, he came to meet the Cross-Bench Peers and was asked what he thought of House of Lords reform. He said, “Of course we believe in a mainly elected House of Lords, don’t we, Tom?”, referring to the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, who is not in his place. The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, looked up at the ceiling and rolled his eyes. David Cameron continued, “But of course, Tom, that is something I will deal with in my third term”. Mind you, Mr Cameron said that back in 2006 when Britain’s economy was booming, as was the rest of the world’s. As the Nobel laureate, Paul Krugman, pointed out last week:

“Britain is officially in double-dip recession, and has achieved the remarkable feat of doing worse this time around than it did in the 1930s”.

On top of that, we have a Government in crisis in so many areas with many issues that have upset many people, such as the recent Budget. So many of the Government’s austerity measures have been rushed through and not thought through—the strategic defence and security review in 2010, for example. On top of all that, we have the eurozone crisis, which in all probability is about to blow up, and as the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, said, what are we debating today, tomorrow and for days on end following the gracious Speech is not a plan for growth and recovery in the economy but a plan for House of Lords reform. Yes, it has been pointed out that this was in the manifestos of all three parties and that evolutionary reform was called for in the shape of the reforms originally outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Steel, in his Bill. But this is not the time to force on us revolutionary reform of the House of Lords, which will turn our constitution upside down.

The Prime Minister who most radically reformed the House of Lords in the previous century was Tony Blair and even he said that,

“the key question … is whether we want a revising Chamber or a rival Chamber. My view is that we want a revising Chamber”.—[Official Report, Commons, 29/1/03; col. 877.]

One of the main reasons that we are going through this unfortunate distraction is because of the will of one my Cambridge contemporaries, the Deputy Prime Minister. He holds a utopian, ideological view that elected equals democratic equals legitimate. Mr Clegg and his allies have also tried to use the argument that other bicameral Parliaments have democratically elected upper Houses so why should we not? There are other Parliaments that do not even have upper Houses and countries whose upper Houses do not work properly, do not have the talent that we do or are in constant gridlock with their lower Houses. The ultimate, democratically elected upper House with real power and the resources to use that power is the United States Senate. The drawback, of course, is that the Senate does not have the depth or diversity of expertise that we have. Some 54 per cent of Senators in the United States are lawyers and powers are divided between the two Houses. In many cases, the Senate has more power than the lower House. That is not on the table in this country. Why do the Government not have the guts to go all the way, the whole hog, and propose a US-style Senate for Britain?

No, like the other hasty proposals that this Government have put forward affecting our economy, education, healthcare and defence, this draft Bill has not been thought through. A hastily put together Joint Committee has come up with a report that half its members do not agree with, to the extent that, for the first time that I can recall, they have broken away and published their own alternative report. The noble Lord, Lord Richard, is not in his place, yet this was not a Joint Committee but a disjointed committee. Instead of reforming our House, we are making laughing stocks of ourselves.

As the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, said on the argument that polls show that people want an elected House of Lords, that is only because, as other polls show, there is a huge lack of understanding of the working of the House of Lords by the public. I have seen this time and again in speeches that I have given around the country. When I ask the public if the House of Lords should be elected, they initially all say yes, but when I explain to them the function and working of the House of Lords, they change their minds and say it should stay appointed.

There are two key issues here. First, what is the role of the House of Lords, does it have the right people in its make-up to carry out that role, are they effective in that job, and, as a result, is the House of Lords effective? The second issue is constitutional. We decided in 1911 that the House of Commons should have supremacy as a democratically elected Chamber, so there could never be a prolonged deadlock between the two Houses. On both these issues, the House of Lords as it stands today fulfils its role as the guardian of this nation, as a check and balance, scrutinising, questioning and challenging the Government and the Commons each and every day through its legislation, debates and questions, and through its Select Committees. It does this in a way that the House of Commons could not even dream of imagining.

I challenge people regularly to name me a renowned world expert in any field in the House of Commons. They cannot name one. I am proud that in the House of Lords we have a sense of independence and objectivity that the other place simply could not match. This credible and incredible wisdom is unique in the world. Our method of debating through the self-regulating system is also unique. We do not need to be like or copy anyone else. After all, Westminster is the mother of all Parliaments. We do all this for a fraction of the cost of the House of Commons. What the Government propose will cost us at least half a billion pounds more per Parliament, if not much more. Unsurprisingly, the Joint Committee report does not even attempt a costing. It says that that is because the Government refuse to give a costing. Would you start a new business without doing a proper business plan? This is pathetic.

Whatever the Government say about the current conventions remaining in place, they are living in a dreamland. There is no way that an elected or partially elected House of Lords would for long accept subservience to the House of Commons. What is more, I cannot see how, by making people stand for elections, we could possibly maintain the amazing depth and breadth of knowledge we currently have in this House. We would end up with a House full of second-raters compared to the one we have today. Even today, the public holds very little respect for politicians. How will they feel if the House of Lords was filled with career politicians rather than the experts with real-world knowledge that it has today? Is this the way we increase the legitimacy of the House of Lords? It would have exactly the opposite effect.

Mark my words: if we go down the route of an elected House of Lords, we are moving to a written constitution. If we are moving one step closer to a written constitution, we are moving one step closer to a republic. Not only are we wasting precious time here, we are playing with fire. By pushing through this reform, the Government will throw the baby out with the bath-water. We have a delicate yet robust, a very ancient but tried and tested, a very complex but yet crystal clear unwritten constitution, one that has stood the test of time. By putting means before ends this Government are endangering, destabilising and wrecking all this by wrecking this precious House. As I have said before, the fundamental lesson in home improvement is that you can move the walls and raise the levels, but when you play around with the foundations you risk bringing the whole House down.