House of Lords Reform

Lord Cope of Berkeley Excerpts

Tuesday 29th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cope of Berkeley]

My Lords, I wish to express my views on the main issue of whether or not we should have an elected, largely elected or partly elected House. The House of Lords has evolved under Governments of all three parties during the past century and I support some further evolution such as that suggested in the Bill of my noble friend Lord Steel. However, as I said, I want to discuss the main question.

The basic argument in principle against the present set-up, which has already been set out, is that we are not elected. The argument is that it is wrong that unelected people should be involved in legislating in a democracy. I do not accept that. After all, even if we had a fully elected senate, many non-elected people would still be involved in legislating—the Civil Service to begin with. Given that almost all legislation of importance is government legislation, government collectively have a much larger and more detailed input than either House into what goes into legislation. That will not change.

In addition, Governments these days also consult widely from outside when preparing legislation, draft Bills and so on. That involves experts, interest groups and the public generally—and quite right, too. So the idea that only elected people should be involved in decisions on legislation is not sustainable.

However, this is also related to the question of power. As others have said, this House is high in expertise but low in power—and, for that matter, in cost. An elected House would dramatically lower the expertise involved in legislating, and it would inevitably increase the cost immediately. It would increase the power of the second House, at least over time, and it is the question of power that is the least understood. The House of Lords lacks power exactly because it is not elected. That does not mean that it does not have any power; it does, but in the end the elected House prevails.

Having been a Whip in both Houses, for some years in both cases, I have seen the ping-pong process from the inside. The process when the two Houses disagree is more subtle than is often realised. If each House insists on its version of the Bill—what is called “double insistence”—then the Bill falls altogether. By that time that is rarely wanted by either side, so the amendments exchanged between the Houses in the course of ping-pong in order to avoid double insistence progressively move nearer to one another until agreement is reached. I can tell your Lordships from experience that when ping-pong is in process or, for that matter, merely threatened, the time comes when noble Lords increasingly say, “Well, the elected House should have its way. We have expressed our opinion and they have expressed theirs”. When enough Peers say that to the opposition Chief Whip, the Lords give way. This is not a secret. After all, at both ends of the building, and, for that matter, in private, Ministers use the argument vigorously in such situations.

If there were an elected senate, however, then that argument would not apply. The senate would be elected by a different method or on a different timescale, or some combination of those. At times it would say, “We are more legitimate than you, the House of Commons. We were elected more recently”, or, “We were elected by what we think is a better method”—more proportional representation, or whatever the method was. I hope that Members of the House of Commons realise that if we were to go down this route, the Commons would lose their vital power ultimately to decide legislation. To ignore that entirely foreseeable consequence of an elected House of Parliament is to be as short-sighted as a Uruguayan referee. Better to have an appointed second House with world-level experience and expertise and the influence that that gives to this House, but with the low powers that follow from not being elected.

Fundamentally, I believe that whatever can be done to improve our system of governance will not be achieved by electing more legislators. We are not suffering from a shortage of politicians.