House of Lords

Lord Butler of Brockwell Excerpts

Tuesday 6th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Butler of Brockwell (CB)]

My Lords, I greatly welcome the opportunity to debate this important matter this afternoon. I found myself in a large measure of agreement with the noble Lord, Lord Elder, who has just spoken. In fact, it is a pity that this debate does not give the House an opportunity to express its opinion. If there were such an opportunity, I think that a majority of the House would agree with the statement of the noble Lord, Lord Norton, in an earlier debate, that this House is too big, is growing bigger, and needs to be reduced. That is an urgent matter now, for a reason not referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde; it is inevitable that, after the next general election, there will be, and should be, a substantial number of further appointments to the House.

The House does risk coming into disrepute. Fun is poked at us by people pointing out that the House is the largest parliamentary body in the world, apart from China’s National People’s Congress. Of course, it does not act like that, and the whole membership does not attend, but it is an example of how fun can be poked at the House.

I am not a conspiracy theorist, despite what people might suspect from my background, but it is tempting to suspect that there is a conspiracy on the part of those thwarted in the reform of the House in the 2012 Bill to make so many appointments that the size of the House makes it unworkable and absurd, so reform then becomes inevitable. The flaw in that was pointed out by the noble Lord, Lord Elder—that there is no agreement among the parties about the nature of the necessary reform. If the 2012 Bill did one thing when it came before Parliament, it was to cause the penny to drop with Members of another place that an elected second Chamber would become, in one form or another, a direct challenge to the supremacy of the House of Commons, and that no way could be found of entrenching that supremacy.

I was a member of the royal commission under the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, which was the last body to take an unconstrained look at the nature of the reform of this House. That was 15 years ago. I do not include the Joint Committee under the noble Lord, Lord Richard, which did an excellent job, only because it was constrained by the 2012 Bill that the Government had introduced. That royal commission started, as all approaches to the question should—and as the noble Lords, Lord Strathclyde, Lord Elder and Lord Williams, did—by asking what the purpose is of the House of Lords. Why should we have such a House at all? I think that on this matter, too, there would be a large measure of agreement in the House. It is to complement the other House, not to challenge or replace it, by bringing a measure of experience and expertise from people drawn from a wide range of positions in our national life to comment on and advise on legislation introduced by the Executive into Parliament. I do not think that there would be much challenge to the proposition that your Lordships’ House performs a necessary and useful role in doing that.

I will not go into the question of whether that is best achieved by an elected or appointed House, although the royal commission concluded that the range of expertise which is useful for that purpose could not necessarily be expected in an elected Chamber. That is why the royal commission proposed a mainly appointed House but with some elected Members. It also recommended that there should be a limit on the tenure of a position in this House of either 15 years or three electoral cycles. Again, I do not want to debate today whether that is the right thing to do or whether a scheme of the sort proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Williams, would be a better approach. As I looked round the House as he made his speech, I noted some scepticism about whether a scheme could be introduced in the very short time before the general election. However, given that we face the prospect of a number of further appointments, this is an urgent issue and I urge the Government to take it seriously.

For the reasons that I have given, some do not want to see any further reform of this House as they believe that that would cause the reform which did not happen previously to become inevitable. However, that is to argue the merits of a train crash. As the noble Lord, Lord Elder, said, the danger of adopting that approach is that an unwise reform is undertaken. That is what I fear. Therefore, I urge the Government to take this issue seriously.

I support the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, to ask the clerks of the House to produce options that could be considered by the Procedure Committee. I do not think that there is much prospect of reaching agreement on a very complicated scheme. However, despite the political difficulties, I think that there is merit in a scheme offering a financial inducement limited by the amount of money noble Lords received in attendance allowance in the previous Session. Calculations show that that would be a good deal for the taxpayer which would quickly pay off. That cannot be done through legislation but it does need to be done. I say to those who wish to go on as we are that to allow the House to grow like Topsy until it becomes ineffective and almost a scandal is the height of constitutional irresponsibility.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

My noble friend Lord Sewel has said it is a pity that that happened. I have just been appointed a trustee of Age Scotland, the new body that replaced Age Concern Scotland and Help the Aged in Scotland. The director, Brian Sloan, said to me when I was appointed, “Of course, George, you’ve got more of a direct interest in our work now”. He was absolutely right. This is the kind of thing that we should be doing. We are not in favour of arbitrary retirement ages; I should not advocate that. However, I do not think this is arbitrary. We have looked at it carefully and made a serious recommendation.

We then come to the longer term, which is the more important debate—no disrespect to what my noble friend Lord Williams and others have raised about the current matter. In the longer term, we need to start with the purpose of this House: not how many we are, but what we are here for. First of all, do we need a second Chamber? An argument has to be made against unicameralism in favour of a second Chamber. I used to be a unicameralist, but if you go to Scotland and see what has happened with the Scottish Parliament, where there are no checks and balances on a Parliament controlled by one party, with a First Minister, the Presiding Officer, and the majority of the Select Committees of the same party, you begin to see the advantages of a second Chamber.

If noble Lords agree with that, how should the second Chamber differ from and relate to the House of Commons? I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Butler, who said that it should be complementary to it. I think the noble Lord, Lord Walton, raised the question of the council of experts that we have here. This is a really important dilemma about what we are here for. If we want to be a council of experts that is one thing, but it does not have the legitimacy of a body that has some form of election, whether direct or indirect. That is difficult. It is difficult to argue that a nominated body, however expert and brilliant it is, should be part of the legislature. That conflict needs reconciling.

[Lord Butler of Brockwell]

I suggest to the noble Lord that it is the primacy of the House of Commons that is the answer to that. The primacy of the House of Commons is because they are elected. This body can contribute its expertise without being elected.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

That is an argument. I am posing a problem rather than coming down on one side or the other. It is difficult. If one looks around the world, there is nowhere else where the second Chamber does not have some form of legitimacy. We need to look at that where we are participating in the legislative process.

I do not know whether this is going to cause controversy in relation to what the noble Lord, Lord Cope, said. He spoke about the culture of this place and some of us—I am sure he was not referring to me, but maybe to some others—not accepting it. With respect to the noble Lord, some people outside this place do not accept all aspects of its culture, particularly the privilege that is represented by the very nature of this building, this legislature and this part of the legislature. People have to recognise that. We do not all think that the comfort and the comradeship represented here is automatically the right thing. There are some good aspects, but there are also some legitimate differences between the parties. These ought to be represented and expressed in a legislature. There is nothing wrong with doing that in a forceful and eloquent way; that was done no better than by my noble friend Lord Forsyth. I agreed with everything he said in his speech today. That will not do him or me any good; we will be attacked by the cybernats—the nationalists who go online and attack us regularly—for being in cahoots again. I think it is good that on an issue such as this, which is not a party-political issue but one about the functioning of the second Chamber, we come to some kind of agreement.

I have gone on much longer than I intended. I apologise. In conclusion, the Labour Lords’ group recommended a UK constitutional commission, as my noble friend Lady Taylor said. That has been supported by the House of Commons Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, which Graham Allen MP chairs, by the Electoral Reform Society, by the Constitution Society, by Unlock Democracy and many others. Along with my noble friend Lord Purvis of Tweed from the Liberal Democrats, I have been involved in setting up an all-party group to look at ways that this can be pushed forward.

The leader of my party, Mr Miliband, has already said that a Labour Government would legislate for a senate of the nations and regions. With no disrespect, I say to him and to the leaders of the other parties, why can we not set up that constitutional convention now? Why can there not be some agreement between the parties? Why can they not show that they can work together and say, “This is how we want to go forward”? We need that sensible, holistic approach, with respect, to protect us from further constitutional Cleggery: poorly thought out, short-term changes in that outrageous attack from Mr Clegg on the House of Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, said. By the way, that did not stop him stuffing lots more Liberal Democrat Peers into this place. There is a slight dichotomy there. Ah, a Liberal Democrat voice.