House of Lords: Working Practices

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Thursday 1st November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bilimoria]

My Lords, since I joined your Lordships’ House more than six years ago, we have debated House of Lords reform inside-out and upside-down. As we have heard throughout this debate, the latest attempt by the coalition to go for drastic reform has thankfully resulted in major reform being shelved for the moment, particularly in terms of an elected House. It has been kicked into the long grass, but my worry is that at the next election we will see the major parties, once again, in a frankly populist way, putting an elected House of Lords in their manifestos. Perhaps the Leader of the House can answer that.

However, that is a red herring because the most important part of this debate is to ask: what do we do and how? What is our role? As the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, said, this is the time; this is the opportunity—and congratulations to her on becoming a grandmother. I have always seen our role first and foremost as a sort of guardian of the nation. Ironically, this unelected House is a cornerstone of democracy in our country, with the amazing depth and breadth of experience and expertise that we have. In those terms, we sit head and shoulders above any other upper House in the world, but do we use this experience and expertise enough?

We have an unwritten constitution that has evolved, that is delicate, and we have the best of the best people in this House, not in a prescriptive way—no one has told us, “You have to have so many scientists, engineers, lawyers and former Cabinet Ministers”. It has evolved; it has happened. In this House we have the best of the best in every field. No party list system would ever deliver that.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, for initiating this debate. The noble Lord said that this House is too big. Perhaps we need to reduce our numbers but we have to take into account that to keep this depth and breadth of experience and expertise, and to get the attendance levels that we now have, we need quite high numbers. Unlike in the other place, we are not full-time employees. We do not get a salary. We do not get a pension. We are expected to hold outside appointments and jobs. I still run an international business. Those of us who have retired bring their experience here. Nobody has brought this point up today, but in terms of bang for buck, this House is phenomenal value for money—very different from the other place.

How do we make more of this expertise? I do not think that we make enough of it. In the House of Commons, there are departmental committees in every field, which have the power to scrutinise Secretaries of State, whereas in your Lordships’ House we have far fewer committees and they do not have nearly the same remit or powers as in the other place. We need to redress the balance of power between the two Houses. This is the time to do that. The committees in the House of Commons have these powers but they do not have the experience that we have. Just imagine some of our Members sitting on those committees and how much value they would add.

I did a comparison with other Parliaments. In the UK we have 43 Commons committees and only 16 Lords committees and seven Joint Committees. In the USA there are 21 House committees, 22 Senate committees and six joint committees. In Canada there are 24 House committees, 18 Senate committees and two joint committees. We are missing an opportunity here, and even if we do not go that far, maybe we should consider that Members of the House of Lords could sit on existing committees and add their expertise to make those committees that much more effective.

We have had a great debate. The essence of this debate is not just evolutionary reform, as the right reverend Prelate suggested. We need that, but we also need to take this opportunity, as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, said, to make Parliament much more effective on the whole.