Extension of Franchise (House of Lords) Bill [HL]

Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 19th July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood (CB)]

My Lords, I support this Bill just as I supported the same Bill when the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, was promoting it six years ago, in June 2013. I have reread the Second Reading debate of his Bill then and noted rather to my surprise that I managed to speak for eight minutes; I am not sure I shall manage that today.

I recognise, of course, that this is perhaps not the most burning political issue of the day. But it has for some time been, and remains, an issue worth raising and one which should finally be resolved—in its favour, I suggest—and put to bed. I invite your Lordships to look at it this way: suppose that our present bicameral system was being devised and established for the first time today, long after the passage of the Parliament Acts of 1911 and 1949, with an elected House of Commons being rightly accorded the primacy it is recognised to have; it alone having the power to impose taxes and deal realistically with money Bills; it alone having the right by convention to implement its policies, particularly its manifesto promises; it alone having the power to bring down government; and so on. Suppose all that, and that those setting up the system of government then asked themselves—after looking around the world at other bicameral nations where the second Chamber invariably has the vote—should the Members of the upper House have a vote in deciding who should be the Members of the House of Commons? I suggest that one cannot seriously doubt that the answers would be: of course they should; why on earth not?

It is quite wrong to suppose that the mere fact that we have a limited say in scrutinising and refining Bills from the House of Commons, and occasionally promote Bills ourselves, should disqualify us from voting in parliamentary elections. One point I made in the debate brought by the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, is that the 11 of us who in October 2009 ceased to be Law Lords here and were recreated as Justices of the new Supreme Court became at that point totally disfranchised. For so long as we remained Supreme Court Justices, we ceased to have any vote or voice whatever in national political life. We were disqualified from speaking or voting here in the Lords, yet as Members of the House of Lords we had no vote either in parliamentary elections. Still now, 10 years on, there remain in the Supreme Court two such Justices, the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hale, the President of the Supreme Court; and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Kerr of Tonaghmore. There are, I think, two Scottish law officers similarly placed.

This does not apply to Peers who retire, nor indeed any Peer who may be expelled from the House under the provisions of the House of Lords (Expulsion and Suspension) Act 2015, although no doubt it applies to other Peers statutorily disqualified from active membership. Should we simply write off those cases as mere oversights or regrettable anomalies in an otherwise sensible, logical voting system? I suggest not. It seems to me rather that, as a matter of principle, we should finally end the wider anomaly, which consists in the disqualification of all Members of this House from voting in Commons elections. The right to a parliamentary vote should be regarded as a basic fundamental right that should be denied to citizens only for compelling reasons. It is no longer denied to mental patients. It is, as we all know, still denied to all convicted prisoners. Personally, I regret that, but I suggest that today is not the occasion to debate again its pros and cons. No more is it, pace the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, the occasion to debate the Liberal Democrats’ cause of a wholly elected House of Lords or indeed the question of votes for 16 year-olds.

I accept that there is a stronger case against prisoners voting than there is against Members of this House having the vote, but I suggest that there really is no coherent case for denying us the vote simply because we have a limited—though, I recognise, valuable—role in the overall legislative process. It is not a sufficient role to justify our being denied any say in those who have primacy in legislation, the Members of the House of Commons.

The vote is a symbol of a healthy democracy whose value should be recognised. The Bill would assist in that recognition, and I wish it well.