Draft House of Lords Reform Bill

Lord Campbell-Savours Excerpts

Monday 30th April 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My Lords, I am in favour of an elected House—a position I made clear on my appointment. I strongly support the thrust of the excellent Richard report, which we have before us today. I have no intention of using this occasion to argue the case for reform; I shall do that in Committee when we are finally presented with a Bill. I want to concentrate today on the referendum and Clause 2.

I favour a referendum due to what I believe to be a growing resistance to a Bill in the Commons. There is a fundamental dishonesty and artificiality about the debate there. Conservative Members argue publicly for reform in tune with their manifesto, while privately they are strongly hostile. Liberal Democrats are unsettled by the prospect of their coalition partners reneging on the coalition agreement in this area. My own colleagues in the Commons are increasingly uneasy over the emergence of a competing institution. The danger for reformers is that a coalition of the concerned will, for a combination of diverse reasons, set out to block the Bill in the Commons.

Some MPs who have historically supported an elected House on public platforms—in the media, during general elections and even in Parliament—will use any excuse in a desperate attempt to block the Bill. Some will claim to be unicameralists. Some will argue that they oppose an open-list STV system, which they say is the wrong PR system. There are those who will quibble over the 15-year term. Others will argue over the cost of the whole project. Some object to the extended transition period. Many will oppose the hybrid House in an all-or-nothing argument. Quite a few will argue that the Bishops should be excluded. Some have expressed concern about overlapping parliamentary mandates, and there are those whose motives are far more cynical. They want to come here in due course, either because they wish to retire or are to be displaced under the Government’s ill considered proposed reduction in constituencies. That is the real world in which we live. All sorts of excuses are now being deployed in the campaign to block an elected House.

That is why I want a referendum. While I recognise that there are those who support a referendum because they believe that the public will kill the Bill, that is not my view. I believe that supporters of an elected House can win and I am confident in that judgment, as I was in my belief that the AV referendum would be lost. Furthermore, a yes vote would lock Parliament into a position of reform. Parliament cannot reject the judgment of the people in a referendum. The alternative report proposes delaying a national vote, pending a report from a “long grass” constitutional convention. I reject that approach. The talking must come to an end; it has gone on for too long.

The problem is that if the referendum is in the Bill, it will be impossible to secure passage of the legislation prior to the next general election. We cannot allow provision for a referendum to be held up in the logjam of delay over the Parliament Acts. We all know that the Parliament Act will inevitably be used to delay implementation. Indeed, I presume that the government Whips have already factored calculations on extended debate in the Lords and delay under the Parliament Act into their legislative timetable. In my view, we need two Bills running coterminously. I cannot conceive of circumstances in which the Lords would seek to block a referendum of the people; it would be seen as nothing short of self-serving.

Moving to Clause 2, I strongly believe that a constitutional settlement on powers between the Houses is attainable, although I recognise that an elected House will inevitably seek to increase its powers and will probably, in time, succeed. We cannot be naive by failing to consider the possibility of gridlock—that is, unless some constitutional lock can be deployed which impeded that development, allowing the Commons some flexibility to concede greater responsibilities to the Lords over time.

I propose that we turn to the oath and the signing of the undertaking to abide by the Code of Conduct which we take when we enter this House. I have raised this idea with a number of colleagues. It has found little support among colleagues in the Lords but has received a sympathetic hearing among some colleagues in the Commons. We enter the House only after taking the oath under the Parliamentary Oaths Act 1866. The form of the oath is prescribed by Section 2 of the Promissory Oaths Act 1868 and Section 1 of the Oaths Act 1978. Alternatively, we can affirm. No oath means no entry. The refusal of elected Sinn Fein MPs to take the oath meant that they could not take up their seats. I argue that the oath could be amended to include an obligation to accept the constitutional settlement between the two Houses as underpinned in legislation—both an amended 1866 Act and the proposed 2014 Act—the settlement to include the limitations on the statutory and non-statutory powers as set out in paragraphs 39 and 40 of the committee’s report. The oath could then provide us with a constitutional lock. I am not advocating that an elected Lords could not debate the case for increased powers. However, I am advocating an arrangement under which the Lords would be unable to threaten to delay, or to delay, legislation with a view to securing greater powers. Nor would the Lords be able to initiate an amendment to the constitutional settlement. The process of amending the settlement would be initiated only by the Commons deploying its primacy.

I know that some have written off the proposal as a constitutional nonsense. They argue that it could be challenged in the courts and that Parliament cannot bind its successors, which, of course, would not be the case if the Commons had the powers to amend. However, there is a division of opinion on these matters. I ask only that the idea be considered.