Queen’s Speech

Lord Cavendish of Furness Excerpts

Wednesday 11th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cavendish of Furness (Con)]

My Lords, altering the rhythm of this debate once more, I want to speak on constitutional affairs—or, rather, to discuss what I see to be a threat to our constitution. I have heard it suggested sometimes that the British public have only limited understanding of the great issues that affect their daily lives. Even in your Lordships’ House, I have heard speeches that only just stop short of implying much the same thing. A number of European officials are on record as being openly contemptuous of voter intelligence and dismissive of their aspirations. A view has plainly taken hold that the lack of “demos” within the European Union contributes to the displeasure that has been increasingly directed at the political class, and notably so in recent weeks.

If my life’s experience has taught me one thing, and it applies to all organisations large and small, where accountability is absent or weak even, it is that you can expect trouble as sure as night follows day. The consequences of failures in accountability include incompetence, unfairness, waste and fraud. Some or all of these consequences are not just a danger, they are an inevitability. While I would agree wholeheartedly with those who believe that a significant element of public anger stems from the shortcomings and the undemocratic and unaccountable nature of today’s EU, there is also a compelling case that we should look closer to home to find the genesis of much of the public’s disquiet.

When the measures to update the electoral register were sabotaged as retribution for Parliament having failed to support House of Lords reform, some people may well have derived satisfaction from the thought that they had damaged my party. Never mind my party, whatever the motive, the effect of that action was to swindle the voters who in consequence will have to participate in next year’s general election using an old and out-of-date register. I find it hard to imagine a more unforgivably cynical or self-serving ploy. Nowadays, it looks as if the public share that view.

However, that misses another point. It may well be that your Lordships’ House could be improved and I am sure that it could. But at least it works, and I hear very little public demand to suggest that its reform should be a top priority. Where I sense many people feel an urgent need for reform is in the conduct of another place. Consider the continued and relentless use of programming and guillotine Motions in the other place, and the growing perception that House of Commons debates are irrelevant even when the subject matter is of huge public interest. The public see sparsely attended events where a handful of MPs, increasingly with little or no experience of the real world, often are seen reading from briefs prepared by lobbyists and who have vested interests.

Well within my memory, there was a substantial body of Members of the other place who were content to be and to remain respected Back-Benchers. This respect derived in large part from the fact that Back-Bench MPs really did hold the Executive to account. With new entrants today expecting almost immediate preferment, the party Whips enjoy a power that makes a mockery of the concept of MPs holding Ministers to account.

I have always held the view that the overwhelming majority of people who enter public life do so for honourable reasons. Very often things go wrong not because of bad intent but as a consequence of a collective failure to uphold the concept of accountability. I want to point to the apparent reluctance of modern Governments to reflect more than they do on the uses and misuses of power. The fact that Governments should have, and need to have, authority should not blind them to the fact that they govern by consent. Consent is not limited to what voters decide at election time. It needs to be sustained through day-to-day accountability. This weakness, in terms of accountability, spreads through all our institutions and all aspects of our national life. A senior figure in the BBC recently told me that no one knew how decisions were reached in his organisation. The same want of accountability is to be found in the huge array of quangos and monopolistic utility companies. It has led to atrocious service and an arrogant disregard for people’s needs and aspirations. Many of our corporate giants are patently unaccountable to their shareholders as well as frequently the enemy of small business. I was very pleased to see measures contained in the gracious Speech to curb some of their excesses.

Of course, no one conspires to govern badly but we must all take some responsibility when good policy surrenders to meretricious soundbites, personal integrity is at such a premium in public life and such a huge proportion of decision-making is ceded away to distant institutions without the consent of the people whose lives those decisions affect. I commend the coalition Government for the measures outlined in the gracious Speech and they will have my support. However, I hope the Government will reflect in the year that remains to them on the issues that probably cannot be remedied through the legislative programme alone. They need to react to the perception that power continues to be centralised and that we are governed less and less by people who enjoy popular support and more and more by new oligarchies both public and private.

We most surely need to understand that the recent election results were not uniform across Europe. We in Britain did not give encouragement to the National Front or any other extremist party. The public reminded us that we in these islands have a 2,000 year-old inherited settlement, unique to the English-speaking world, under which the freedom of the individual is better protected that anywhere else on earth, where government is servant not master. People believe that the often ancient institutions devised to protect them from unaccountable power are being compromised and weakened. There will be a heavy price to pay if their message is ignored.