House of Lords: Reform

Lord Davies of Oldham Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, after 10 years spent chained to the ministerial Bench, I cannot remember ever uttering an original comment in this House, and I am therefore not likely to do so on this subject, particularly after almost 90 speeches which have covered every conceivable part of the document. It is a work of genius, I think, for the three main parties to be in favour of reform and for the Government to produce a document which seems to have attracted the wholehearted and complete support of fewer than five out of the 90 noble Lords who have spoken. Of course, we all await the Minister’s ability to redress the balance, and we look forward to that contribution with great joy.

As reformers, we should rejoice in the fact that the Government are committed to this degree of reform. I would remind those in my own party who have reservations about reform that it took us 40 years, more than a generation, to improve on the 1911 Act with regard to the relationship between the two Houses and then almost 50 years before we moved on again with regard to hereditary Peers. It is not as if this country or even my party moves at breakneck speed when it comes to constitutional reform, so I hope that on all sides there will be some degree of constructive response to this initiative. But I am all too well aware of the fact that the criticisms that have been expressed of the Bill have been not just on the detail but on crucial aspects of principle.

Let me express an obvious point. I have enjoyed my period in this House and I have particularly enjoyed the quality of the contributions to our debates. It is very rare that we do not present words of great worth to the nation, however ill reported they may prove to be. But part of that limited reporting is the very fact of the matter: we can be disregarded because we are unrepresentative. We are not a debating society. We are the second Chamber of one of the world’s oldest democracies. Other countries which have come much later into the democratic field than us have tackled the problems of a second Chamber with success. It may be said that many of those countries have written constitutions. Well, let the Government address themselves to that fact.

Fundamental Acts of Parliament such as the Parliament Acts of 1911 and 1949 and the Act passed with regard to the hereditaries are part of our constitution. If the Government need, and I think they obviously do, to define clearly the relationships they see developing between two Houses if they are elected, it is for the Government to make that abundantly clear before either House is asked to make a judgment about the composition of the House of Lords. That is why the biggest weakness in the document is its complete failure to identify the issues of powers. I hate to say this to my noble friend Lord Richard, but it looks as if we will need to ask the committee to go back to the drawing board on these issues, such has been the force of criticism in the debate.

I am in favour of an elected House. I do not see that an elected House could be anything other than an enhancement of our democratic position. However, I cannot recognise the concept of an elected House in this document. Election is not only a question of winning the votes to arrive at a place, but also about the accountability of the exercise of power when one is in that place. Of course, this document proposes that Members of this House would get here through election and not be accountable at all; they would enjoy 15 years as legislators, but not as representatives. The Government certainly need to address themselves to that.

Whenever the Government, in this paper, have gone into any area of detail, they seem to have fallen very short of the quality of argument we would expect. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, identified a proposal in this document that a Minister of the Crown can be appointed, can become a Member of Parliament and can be dismissed from his post by the Prime Minister, but also dismissed from Parliament by virtue of the post having been lost. That is an absolute absurdity. Where has a conscious thought gone into this White Paper if such absurd positions as that are produced? Let us be clear, however, about what this document does tackle and what the fundamental principle is that we have to address.

I have heard a great deal about the weaknesses of the document and about the Government’s position and I have made it fairly clear that I intend to support my Front Bench in a great deal of the criticism of the Bill because we hope that, when the Bill emerges, it will be very different from the one envisaged in this document. What is being tackled is the problem that we all share, each and every one of us. We are here as creatures of patronage. It is not an attractive word, not a word that has featured a great deal in this debate. Though we have been full of considerable congratulation on the work that we do, on the efforts that we put in on behalf of the community—and I appreciate all that work—it is still the fact that we are here because somebody in power thought that we should be. That is no basis for the second Chamber in a democracy. That is why, despite the bumbling efforts of the Government over this document, despite the ease with which we are able to subject it to criticism—unless my noble friend Lord Richard and his committee are able to produce very different perspectives indeed—we should respect that obvious point. We, a House of grandparents appointed through patronage by individuals, should recognise that we have limited legitimacy and one which has no place in the law making of a modern democracy.