House of Lords: Membership

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Thursday 28th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Laming]

My Lords, I will be brief. Perhaps I may remind the House that I try hard to speak personally, especially on occasions such as this, and that I have no authority to speak on behalf of the Cross-Bench group. That will become all too evident very shortly.

The noble Lord, Lord Steel, has vast experience in both Houses of Parliament and indeed far beyond. Furthermore, he has an enviable record of championing changes designed to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of this House. However, as I hope the House will understand, I was extremely unhappy about the content of the Motion that he has put down on the Order Paper. I am grateful and pleased that he has accepted the amendment.

The one thing on which we can at least agree is that the membership of the House is too large. As the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, has made plain, this results in colleagues feeling frustrated when they are denied the opportunity to serve on committees that are dealing with matters of special interest to them and, moreover, when their important contributions to our debates are limited to three minutes or even less. There is a real issue to be faced about the membership of this House. In my view, the Motion is not helpful. I was going to speak about the report to which the Motion refers but as the noble Lord, Lord Steel, has accepted the amendment I will move on.

Only yesterday two new Cross-Bench Peers were announced. I very much hope that at the appropriate time your Lordships’ House will make those new Members extremely welcome. This House has a record of doing that and we should avoid the danger of giving the impression that we are resisting new Members. My concern is solely about tactics and timing. My fear is that the amendment will be perceived to be either irrelevant in the current situation or, at worst, provocative. I well recognise the thought that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, has given to the amendment and I do not doubt for one moment the good intention behind it. However, I still fail to see how it will have a significant impact on reducing the size of this House and, in particular, the pressure on the facilities and costs. We already have a voluntary retirement scheme that has not been a great success. Any form of financial inducement to make such a scheme more popular would, in my view, especially in the current circumstances, be inappropriate. Trying also to reduce the membership of the House by excluding those who do not, for whatever reason, attend regularly could be counterintuitive in that it would run the risk of encouraging them to attend your Lordships’ House.

The frustrations frequently expressed are sincere, although I cannot help but feel that we are in danger of giving the impression that we want to resist any newcomers into our House. That would be to the disadvantage of the work of this House in revising and improving legislation for the benefit of our fellow citizens and holding the Government to account. In recognising that the House is too big, I nevertheless fear that the amendment will not have the desired effect. I hope that out of this will come something that will be a stimulus to much more detailed discussion across the House in order that we can work towards achieving consensus. That said, I will, as always, listen carefully to the debate.

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, I am a great admirer of the noble Lord, Lord Laming, who has given great service to our nation and to this House. Although I agree with him that the two new Members who have been announced should be given the warmest of welcomes—we all agree with that—I regret to say that I cannot follow the logic of his other remarks. I wish to give my strong support to the initiative taken by my noble friend Lord Steel of Aikwood, to whom we are all in debt, and very much to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, who has moved his amendment moderately and persuasively, and I hope in a way that will have garnered support in all parts of the House.

[Lord Hughes of Woodside]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. Since he is a great advocate of reducing the size of this House, might I commend to him the traditional trade union solution to dealing with redundancies: last in, first out?

[Lord Cormack]

If that became the will of the House we would all have to accept it, wouldn’t we? My old and mischievous friend from another place makes his point with his customary tact. It is now 11 years since my noble friend Lord Norton and I formed a group called the Campaign for an Effective Second Chamber. My noble friend Lord Norton, who did that group great service as our convenor throughout those years, cannot be here today because of his teaching duties at his university. We miss him and the contribution he would have made. We formed that group, over which I have had the honour to preside, because we believe that this Chamber is effective but could be much more effective. We were always committed to an appointed House rather than an elected one, but we also recognise the fact that the House as it exists can and should be improved even though many people in this House—by no means the majority, but a number of very distinguished Members—would like to move towards election. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, has made that his position in the past. Nevertheless, surely we can all recognise that the House as it exists is not only capable of improvement but cries out for improvement, not only in its size but in the way in which we do business. We all owe a great deal to noble Lords such as the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, who have been working hard in this regard over recent months and years. Whatever one’s ultimate view is, surely we should not stand in the way of what the noble Lords, Lord Steel and Lord Hunt, have referred to as “housekeeping reforms”.

To the Deputy Prime Minister, who has shown an interesting flexibility of mind and memory in recent days, I say, “If you believe that the best is elected, then do not let the best be the enemy of the good”. We think that this House as it exists—and on Mr Clegg’s own admission it cannot be fundamentally changed for some years—should now be changed in the way proposed in the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. We all hold my noble friend the Leader of the House in the highest regard. I very much hope that he will take it upon himself as Leader of the House—leader of all of us—to convene a meeting to discuss ways and means of approaching the problems referred to by the noble Lords, Lord Steel and Lord Hunt. He would be doing us all a very great service if he exercised his initiative in that regard and I very much hope that he will. Of course, our expertise and experience, notwithstanding the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, must be refreshed and revived, but if many more Peers are introduced into this House without addressing the current problems we will bring this House into disrepute.

[Lord Elton]

Like the rest of us, my noble friend sees the expected approach of large numbers as rather like a torpedo. He is now choosing one of two paths put before your Lordships and I would like to know his explanation of that. On the face of it, the admirable amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, is actually hortatory—it advises and says that something may be done—whereas the principal Motion is prescriptive and states that it shall be done. The second is not in our gift; the first is. If you want to put out a net to catch the torpedo, surely it must be the first and not the second.

[Lord Cormack]

I understand and sympathise with the point made by my noble friend, but the fact is that there are issues like royal prerogative that have to be taken into account. We do not want to precipitate—this was implicit in the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt—a major constitutional crisis. What we want to do is address the housekeeping issues in this House. That is a simple and reasonable aim. This is declaratory, of course it is, but, if we have a vote at the end of this debate, I hope that the House will declare that it really is concerned about these matters. We are asking the Leader to do what he can to bring some common sense to bear.

Surely it is wrong that a particular person should be the stumbling block in the face of sensible reform. Mr Clegg has many admirable qualities, but he should not be allowed to be the arbiter of our constitution. That is wrong. He introduced a Bill, which failed. I am proud to wear this morning the tie made by the 91 stout Tory rebels who frustrated that Bill in July by saying, “You cannot get this through because we will not give you the time to do so”. Mr Clegg recognised that, and he should now recognise that if he believes in parliamentary democracy, and if he believes in this House as being a fundamental part of this democracy as it is the moment, it should be as effective as it possibly can be. If we continue to appoint new Peers without addressing the issues so eloquently talked about by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, we will run the risk of making this House fall in public repute and indeed become something of a laughing stock, which it should not be. That would fly in the face of history and of what has been achieved by so many, particularly over the years since 1958 when life Peers were introduced. If this comes to a vote, I urge Members to vote in significant numbers to show that there is indeed a consensus in this House on these modest proposals.

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, I want very briefly to put a couple of points to my noble friend the Leader of the House before he responds to the debate. I wonder whether he might reflect on the fact that in the previous Labour Administration, some 40% of the new recruits to this House were added to the Labour Benches, compared with 21% to the Conservative Benches and 15% to the Liberal Democratic Benches. Even more significantly, in May 2010, immediately following the general election, there were additional recruits to your Lordships’ House—28 Labour Members, 18 Conservative Members and nine Liberal Democrat Members. Will my noble friend reflect on the very interesting Pauline conversion, if I might put it like that, of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, who suddenly seems to find the overpopulation of this House such a terrible problem? Apparently it was never a problem under the previous Administration, nor was it a problem even in May 2010. I am the last person to turn against a sinner who repenteth, but there is an important question to put to the opposition Benches about their change of attitude.

Would my noble friend also note that some of the Members who now object so strongly to further appointments were indeed the most vociferous when the Government came forward with a proposal to end a fully appointed House? My noble friend Lord Cormack, who is a very staunch defender of the primacy of the House of Commons, may have forgotten that the Government’s Bill received a considerable—indeed, a uniquely—sizeable majority at its Second Reading. That was an attempt to sort this problem out. It had indeed built very firmly on the proposals put forward by Mr Jack Straw, in which the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, played a very important part. Again, he seems to have changed his attitude.

I share the view of the noble Lord, Lord Laming, that this Motion as amended would still be inappropriate at this time. Having had, I accept, an expression of concern on all sides of the House about this problem, I very much hope that the Motion, even amended, is not put to a Division because I think it will have more power if it is not seen to be something that is divisible and therefore divisive in your Lordships’ House.