House of Lords Reform (No. 2) Bill

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Friday 18th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Dan Byles]

As I said, my hon. Friend has me at a disadvantage, because I was not aware of that particular scheme.

[Mr David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Dan Byles]

I would be grateful for some assistance.

[Mr Blunkett]

I will not hold up the hon. Gentleman. I just want to say: stick to your guns, as I believe you are right.

[Dan Byles]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman. I will certainly take great interest in that scheme at Committee stage and I will be happy to look closely at it, but I have been assured by those who have far greater knowledge of these matters than I do that whatever the scheme is that my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) is referring to, it is not a permanent method of retiring or leaving the House of Lords, because no such system exists. It may be a form of extended leave of absence; I am not sure. The Minister might receive some inspiration before he speaks.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

I apologise to you, Mr Speaker, and to Members on both sides of the House, for the fact that I will not be able to be here for the whole debate due to a long-standing and immovable commitment.

I commend the hon. Member for North Warwickshire (Dan Byles) for using his successful bid in the private Members’ Bills ballot for what he has described as, and clearly is, a modest Bill that is none the less necessary. The interventions this morning have reinforced in my mind how lucky I have been never to have been drawn high up in the ballot. The difficulty of getting anything through, no matter how limited it is, has been shown by the number of Members who have danced on the head of a pin this morning.

I ask the hon. Gentleman to stick to his guns and make this limited but necessary improvement. This could have been called a House of Lords Improvement Bill, if some people are upset by the word “reform” in the title and others are upset by any kind of move, no matter how limited, thinking that it might undermine substantial reform such as an elected House of Lords. It is strange that those who are so strongly in favour of compromise and of always being here to compromise that they want proportional representation—so that there is permanent compromise—do not want to compromise when it comes to the House of Lords. They say, “If we can’t get what we want, we don’t want anything”. That has bedevilled attempts at improvements to the House of Lords—its operation, its relationship with the House of Commons, its make-up and membership, and its reflection of society as a whole—since 1911, through the post-war changes, the 1958 debates that have been referred to today and the great combination of Michael Foot and Enoch Powell, all the way up to the magnificent efforts of the hon. Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman), which seem like a lifetime ago—was it last year? Thank goodness, he was successful in stopping a constitutional outrage.

Not even those Government Members who are worried about the particulars of the Bill could view it as a constitutional outrage. It is a modest effort to be encouraged and supported. If hon. Members believe that there are too many Members of the House of Lords for the place to function properly, and there clearly are, they will back the Bill, even if it achieves only a modest improvement in that regard; if they believe that the Bill is too modest to effect any substantial change, they will not oppose it, because it is so modest that it could not possibly upset anybody. Either way, we should support the hon. Member for North Warwickshire.

It is appropriate that the Bill should have its Second Reading in the week in which the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform reported. The Committee highlighted just how much progress we could make if people on all sides were of good will, and if the hon. Gentleman’s optimism about us all being grown up were realised. I have been here 26 and a half years, and that was one of the most optimistic statements that I have heard.

When we sit down with and talk to people across the parties in this House, we find a whole range of feelings and views. Setting apart those who are absolutely dedicated to the belief that the House of Lords cannot perform an acceptable role unless its Members are voted for—even though the voting would be done on a list system, on a regional, proportional basis, so it would just affirm the party list and delude the electorate—when we come down to basics, there is consensus across the House. There is consensus on sensible reform; on building on the recommendations of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee; on whether we are able to develop the steps that are being advocated this morning; and on building on the Steel Bill of six years ago, and on Baroness Hayman’s modest proposals. There is actually consensus across the House on making sensible, logical changes.

The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee rightly identified the fact that consensus on the make-up and balance of the House of Lords is controversial and difficult, though not impossible, to achieve, but everybody accepts that if we move to more than 1,000 peers in the House of Lords, it will implode. Those who want to keep the House of Lords should be in favour of substantial, sensible, non-elected reform; those who want reform because they believe in reforming the House of Lords and its nature should be in favour of reform per se; and those who could not give a damn should leave the rest of us to try to get on and make some sense of the situation. Then we might have a House of Lords that has a new relationship with the Commons.

In future, we should not simply be debating make-up, or even the balance between parties; we should be debating how we can improve and reform this House, and then its relationship with the House of Lords as part of the broader constitutional changes taking place around us almost daily. There are the changes in the power of the Mayor of London and the Greater London authority; the change to the powers of the Assembly in Wales; the vote next September in Scotland and its aftermath—let us pray that the Scots vote to retain the Union—and our changed relationship, whatever happens, with the European Union after the referendum in 2017. All those changes, and many other major economic, social, political and cultural changes, are happening around us, but we are struggling to make any sense of the relationship between this House and the House of Lords, or of the Lords’ make-up, function, and purpose. I hope that the measures outlined by the hon. Member for North Warwickshire will enable us to do that.

I also hope that those who are concerned that the Bill does not go far enough in slimming down the House of Lords, or are more generally concerned that the House of Lords is becoming dysfunctional, will do their utmost to persuade the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister that stuffing even more people in there, on this side of the general election, is not a very sensible idea. As I said, if people believe that the House of Lords should continue, they must believe that it should continue on a functioning and acceptable basis.

[Mark Tami]

Does my right hon. Friend agree—in some ways, the Bill is an example of this fact—that we are looking for ways of tinkering, whether we are talking about election, the different types of election, or appointment, when what we should be talking about is what the House of Lords is there for?

[Mr Blunkett]

Yes, I do believe that, and I put forward a paper to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee on how the House of Lords could have a different function, building on what it already achieves and is good at, if we took away, very carefully, the element of it being a legislature. That does not mean that it could not debate and put forward legislative propositions; I am talking about the constitutional role that it plays, which is what upsets people so much—people not being elected to it— even if, under the proposal of the Deputy Prime Minister, those people would not be responsible or accountable to the people who elected them, because they would never have to stand for election again; nor would they have held offices, or have had to report back to their multiple constituencies in any meaningful sense. It would be good to start with the question of what we want the House of Lords to do, and then go on to how it should be made up, and how we could make it function better.

Unfortunately, as the hon. Member for North Warwickshire, who opened this Second Reading debate, is always ready to acknowledge, the pressure on him was to minimise any suggestion of any proposition whatever. He cannot be blamed for bringing forward a Bill that moves—I was going to use the term “goalposts”, but I think that has been overdone in the past fortnight.

[Mr Nuttall]

We are talking about badgers again.

[Mr Blunkett]

I was thinking of pitches. Let me put it this way: it is a Bill that moves the sods very little at all. We should commend the Bill, ask ourselves whether we are serious in wanting reform, and put it to our respective parties that it would be quite useful to put in the manifestos commitments to finding solutions, rather than putting up propositions that we all know will meet their demise once the practicalities, sensitivities and realities are examined and voted on in this place. Then we might get commendation from the electorate for acting like grown-ups and adults, and for being prepared to move our constitution on a little bit, while the rest of world moves the constitution around us.

I give my support to the hon. Member for North Warwickshire. Whatever heads of pins people may stand on, and while they might make sensible points in amendments to the Bill, it would be a great shame if so modest a measure was scuppered by people who wanted the perfect as an alternative to it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Greg Clark]

My hon. Friend will be aware that the coalition agreement makes it clear that the Government, pending further reform of the House of Lords, will continue to take steps to make it reflective of the result of the general election, in terms of the representation of parties. On the measures that have been proposed, there has been a degree of concern that the provisions, for example, on the consequences of criminal convictions, are out of line in the other place with those in this place.

The Select Committee, on which my hon. Friend serves, has reflected on the leave of absence provisions and has noted that they have not been very effective in providing a mechanism for Members to retire. So the support that the Government are willing to give specifically reflects concerns that have been expressed beyond this House, but also by Committees of this House, and this is a way to facilitate the correction of those aspects, if not the wider aspects that we have debated from time to time.

[Mr Blunkett]

Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman would be good enough to reflect to the Prime Minister that it is a bit odd for a Conservative-led Government, irrespective of what is in the coalition agreement, with only 18 months to go till a general election, to allow the minor party to press a point that would undermine the stability and functioning of a Chamber that the majority party in the Government supports and wants to work. Is that not perverse?

[Greg Clark]

The creation of the coalition was based on a coalition agreement. That was discharged. The Bill was put to the House and the House took a view on it. My hon. Friend’s Bill does not relate to those matters. It relates to some specific reforms that have come from a variety of sources, endorsed by one of the Select Committees of this House, and on that basis I am happy to confirm the Government’s support for it to proceed into Committee, if that is the wish of the House.