Houses of Parliament: Co-location

Lord Butler of Brockwell Excerpts

Thursday 16th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Butler of Brockwell (CB)]

My Lords, I join others in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Norton, for instituting this debate. I join the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Norton, and the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, for the work that they do on the Campaign for an Effective Second Chamber. There is no doubt that the noble Lord, Lord Norton, today made a devastating case as to why the effectiveness of not only this House but Parliament would be greatly damaged if the House of Lords was no longer collocated with the House of Commons.

It is not the first time that I have felt some sympathy for the noble Lord, Lord True, in having to defend the indefensible. I have no doubt that he will do it with his usual skill and good humour, but I feel the discomfort that might have been felt by a citizen of ancient Rome sitting in the Colosseum waiting for a poor Christian to face a lion—or in this case, a pride of Lions. It is an impossible case to make.

However, I do the Government the compliment of believing that they are serious about the levelling-up agenda. So although I share the indignation that many of your Lordships have expressed about the Government’s handling of this issue, we are right to discuss seriously the pros and cons of the suggestion that the House of Lords should be moved outside London and separated from the House of Commons.

I agree very much with the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham, that a main fault of our parliamentary system as it works today is that the House of Lords is already too separate from the House of Commons. This would inevitably be made worse by moving the House to a separate location. I have always believed that the basic construct of our Parliament is a good one. The House of Commons is rightly the main battleground between the political parties, but its Members are understandably preoccupied by the need to get re-elected and by looking after the demands of their constituents, which are inevitably increasing these days. The fact is—and we are all aware of this—that the House of Commons does not give sufficient time to the scrutiny of legislation. The House of Lords, consisting of appointed people with a wide range of experience and expertise, is able to fill that gap, as well as being able, through our Select Committees, to provide well-informed and authoritative reports on issues of the day.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Norton, that, if our system works perfectly, the two Houses complement each other. It should be a dream partnership, but we all know that, sadly, in practice it does not work that way—although I contend that, beneath the surface, it works more effectively than is often recognised.

The starting point, which I know from long experience in the Civil Service, is that all Governments regard the whole of Parliament as an inconvenient but necessary fact of life. As far as the Executive are concerned, Parliament, like the courts, is an institution which prevents or makes it difficult for Governments to do some of the things that they want to. From the Executive’s point of view, Parliament has to be manoeuvred around, appeased, cajoled, persuaded or just driven. A Government with a good majority, reinforced by their extensive powers of patronage, generally get their measures through the House of Commons, but they cannot count on doing so in the House of Lords, where they have no overall majority. It is true that the Government can use their majority in the Commons to overturn amendments passed here, but, nevertheless, the House of Lords is an irritant to the Executive. On our side, there is also frustration. We in the House of Lords often feel that the Executive in the other place overturn our amendments without sufficient consideration and without much respect for the painstaking debate and discussion which has taken place here.

Yet below the surface, Parliament perhaps works better than even we who are Members of it perceive. It partly does so because of the easy and informal access that Members of this House have to Government Front-Benchers responsible for taking legislation through the House, and to the channels of communication that those Front-Benchers provide to the departments sponsoring legislation. I know from experience that the noble Lord, Lord True, is a good example of that. That is the means, rather than debate in the Chamber, whereby improvements to legislation are very often made. As others have said, we have valuable Joint Committees with the House of Commons and some joint pre-legislative scrutiny, although not as much as many of us would like.

Apart from the practical difficulties that would arise from putting the House of Lords in a different location from the House of Commons—and those have been well described today—the benefits of collocation often unseen by the general public would be lost to our parliamentary system if the House of Lords was moved to a different location.

Of course, our parliamentary system could work better; it needs improvement and some major reform. But I am convinced that the working of Parliament as a whole would be made worse, not better, by moving the Lords to a location different from the House of Commons. That, as the noble Lord, Lord Norton, said, is an important constitutional point. I do not believe that there will be sufficient advantage to the levelling-up agenda to offset that damage to our national life.