House of Lords: Reform

Lord Davies of Stamford Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, who is my old boss from many years ago and for whom I have always had the highest regard. It is impossible to address this subject without taking note of the extraordinarily contradictory behaviour of the Government in relation to the fundamental principles of this Bill over the past few months. One of its main purposes is to reduce our size from 800 to 300 Peers. But the Government have been making unprecedented increases in the numbers in this place over the past year. I recognise that I am one of them, of course, but that does not change the argument. In other words, the Government have massively contributed to a problem, which they now say needs to be urgently redressed. There is something slightly peculiar about that.

The Government have brought forward the EU Bill, in which some of us have been taking part. It provides for at least 56 referenda on different matters relating to our membership of the European Union and including such esoteric questions as whether or not we have qualified majority voting to decide the future of the public prosecutor’s office in the EU. Is it not extraordinary that the Government, who say that they want up to 56 referenda on those sorts of subjects—although a lot of people do not take it very seriously—do not provide for referenda on major constitutional reforms of the kind now being proposed? The only logical explanation is that the Government think that the change that they propose in the House of Lords is less significant than the use of qualified majority voting on the public prosecutor’s office in the European Union. That does not seem very convincing.

There are some difficult issues here. They might be the result just of confusion, hastiness or lack of thought, or of something slightly more sinister. It has become a pervasive suspicion in the country as a whole, which is very regrettable in terms of people’s confidence in our system, that the only reason for bringing forward this very important and momentous constitutional measure is to give Mr Clegg a boost to his amour propre after the humiliations of the past few months. I hope that that is not true. I believe that I will carry the whole House with me when I say that constitutional legislation above all legislation needs to be considered extremely carefully. It must not be brought forward hastily or wantonly, let alone cynically. It must be brought forward reflectively and with an eye for the long term.

Although I do not agree with all aspects of the Bill, as I shall explain, I am not against an elected House of Lords. I have always been in principle in favour of an elected second Chamber and I have become more in favour of such a Chamber since I have served here for nearly a year. The reason for that is simple. I am not sure whether election would increase the legitimacy of this House with the public as a whole. As far as I can see, there does not seem to be much wrong with the legitimacy of this House in the eyes of the public as a whole. But I am convinced that it would increase the legitimacy of this House in our own eyes. It would give us the courage of our convictions. I have been very struck by the extent to which we do not have the courage of our convictions. When it comes to ping-pong with the other House, after one or two sessions we throw in the sponge and we say, “Oh, we have to give way to the elected House”. I do not quite know why we do that because we are observing conventions like the Salisbury convention, which were offered up at the end of the 19th century as a substitute for statutory parliamentary reform, or perhaps to head off statutory parliamentary reform.

When we had the reform, which the House of Commons wanted, imposing the rules that it decided—that is, the restrictions on financial discussions, the time limitation in which we could hold legislation and so on—we had a set of rules imposed on us with which the House of Commons was happy. There is no reason not to observe those rules, which we have to, and to give up the previous conventions. It is an anomaly that we observe those conventions as it is but I am convinced that that anomaly would disappear if we were an elected House.

When I asked why we were not being a bit tougher and a bit more robust about standing up to the Commons, I was told, “Oh, but it is an elected House. Therefore, we feel that we cannot”. That is a very important reason and on that basis I am very happy to have an elected House of Lords. But I have some conditions for that. The first is that it would be a fully elected House. I cannot conceive of anything more absurd than legislating on the principle that you require election for legitimacy and then having 20 per cent of the House that, by definition in terms of that governing principle for the Bill, are illegitimate. That seems to me to be an extraordinary anomaly, which could not be justified for a moment. The House must be 100 per cent elected.

Secondly, the House should not be elected by PR, which is the worst possible form of election if you want to maintain the independence of the House of Lords. Of course, it is vital that we do so. Thirdly, for the same reason, I am opposed to the idea of allowing Members of the House of Lords to be Ministers. The offer of the potential of ministerial jobs is far and away the most constraining factor limiting the independence of Members of the House of Commons. I had experience of it myself. I knew when I voted against John Major over the Scott report that I was completely removing any possibility of my joining that Government. I was very upset about that and it was a very difficult issue. I was much less worried about deselection or being defeated at the next general election. I was confident that I would be able to explain what I was doing to my constituents and to carry them with me. If we want to have an independent House, we should exclude the Ministers. The idea of having temporary Ministers here, as the Bill proposes, is appalling. They really would be the placeman of the 18th century writ large.

There is a fundamental contradiction in the Government’s mind about whether you can be elected and not have representational functions. Yesterday, I heard several statements from the Government which implied that they thought that it would be possible to have an election and then for the elected Members of the House of Lords not in any way to conflict with the House of Commons in their representational functions. That is unrealistic. Once you have been elected, you cannot possibly turn around to those who have elected you and say, “Thank you for electing me. I am now going to enjoy my salary for the next 15 years but I’m not interested in your problems at all because I am not standing again for re-election, so you can get lost”. If there was a contribution that we could make to ensuring that we really undermined confidence in our democracy in this country, it would be exactly that. It would be to say, “Here is a class of politicians who have no responsibility to the people who sent them there and take no interest in their problems or their representations”.

Of course, once you start taking an interest in people’s problems and representations, you are obviously conflicting with the House of Commons. I am not offended by that but we should face that fact. Just as in the United States you can talk to your Congressman and if you do not get any help there you can talk to your Senator, exactly that situation would prevail in this country. I am happy with it but we have to face up to the fact and be honest with the House of Commons and say that there would obviously be a conflict. There is no mileage at all in trying to pretend schizophrenically to those who want election, “Yes, that’s fine, we can provide you with election”, and to those who are worried about a conflict with the House of Commons say, “Don’t worry. There will be no conflict with the House of Commons”. We have to be honest about this. Clearly, representation follows election. That has always been the case and it would be the case in the future.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Brinton]

My Lords, yesterday my noble friend Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon made arguments for legitimacy through democratic elections. I believe his arguments are unanswerable and I wish to echo the sentiment. A noble Lord commented afterwards that all Liberal Democrat candidates would write down his speech and deliver it in hustings over the next few years. There have also been comments that nobody outside this House is interested in possible reform.

When the coalition document was published last year, I had not just telephone calls but an irate voter in Watford, where I had stood for Parliament, knocking on the door to say that the coalition document was not strong enough on reform of the House of Lords. I hasten to point out that this was not a Liberal Democrat member but a member of the public who had heard me espousing the reasons that this Chamber should become fully elected at various hustings; it also came up during questions at those hustings. For some people—more than we suspect, I think—reform is an important issue.

I wish to make clear that my personal view is that I support 100 per cent elected, and I agree with the sentiments expressed earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford. However, I am more of a pragmatist than him and suspect that the draft Bill’s proposal of 80 per cent will move us in the right direction while retaining the expertise of the Cross-Benchers. I will come back to that in a minute.

The noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford, also referred to the issue of constituencies. It is important to recognise that with any list system on a regional basis, the constituency work of MEPs is very different from the constituency work of MPs in the other place. It is simply the nature of the geography: if you are a Member for a large region you will not have the close contact that you do with constituents in a smaller constituency.

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

Does the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, agree that the difference is that MEPs are elected to handle issues falling under the jurisdiction of the EU? In the case of the Lords and the Commons—or in the future, elected Lords and the Commons—the jurisdiction will be the same, and the issues will be the same. Therefore, there would be the conflict which I drew attention to.

[Baroness Brinton]

The point I am trying to make is that it is not purely about jurisdiction, it is about the practical application of having a constituency of 5 million people as opposed to 75,000.

I turn now to issues of diversity in a future House that is either partially or wholly elected. In an elected House, we need to ensure that recommendations from the Speaker’s Conference to improve the diversity of the other place are taken into account by the scrutiny committee over the next two years. In our present format we do not represent the country in all its diversity. Some of the appointments in recent years have attempted to deal with that, but, partly because there is no retirement, we still do not reflect the country that we represent.

There is also an issue about the geographical diversity that is needed. If we looked at where most Peers come from, I suspect that we would find a heavy southern bias. I was speaking with colleagues in the north-east the other day who feel that they do not have access to many Peers; they have some, but not the same as those who live among the large concentration in London and the south-east.

As for the conventions governing the relationship between the two Houses, we all agree that those are not absolute. I do not take the view that they will stand still, and my noble friend the Leader of the House must have been right yesterday when he said that the conventions will evolve and that the relationships between the two Houses may change. However, that is nothing new. Conventions have evolved over the years and the relationship between the Houses changes with time.

This House is much more muscular than it was a few decades ago. For example, in the decade up to 2000 the Government were defeated 155 times; in the decade up to 2010 the Government were defeated 422 times—nearly a threefold increase. Granted, cause and effect cannot be proved. It may be that the change in government in 1997 was influential and the reforms which saw the departure of the majority of the hereditary Peers should be noted.

However, we have not seen this House attempting to depart from any of the conventions since then. Furthermore, Clause 2(3) of the draft Bill makes it clear that the conventions governing the relationship between the two Houses are to remain unaffected, and there is no reason to suppose that that aim will not be achieved. However, if a future Parliament were of the view that the conventions needed to be explicitly codified to protect their efficacy, legislation could be brought forward to bring that about, as was proposed in the 2005 Labour manifesto.

I am concerned that a House of 300 could deal adequately with the workload of the House, particularly if there were to remain some who are not full-time politicians. I suspect that many in this House, and the public at large, regard the presence of some who are not full-time as one of the strengths of this House. The pride that is rightly taken in the House’s expertise derives largely from having here many who are active in other spheres, and I am not sure that it is intended that we should sit on many more days than we currently do.

Pride in the expertise of the Members of this House does not derive solely from the presence of Cross-Benchers, much as I respect their expertise. It is unfair to assert as a generality—and I have heard it said—that those who are unelected or without party affiliation hold a monopoly on expertise. A glance around this Chamber certainly proves that wrong.

As for the system of election, as a committed supporter of STV for parliamentary elections I nevertheless feel that—in the larger constituencies that will be appropriate for proportional elections to this House of, say, 80 to 120 new Members across the country at each election—an open list system has much to commend it. In particular, we would be far more likely to achieve a membership that is more diverse, as I mentioned earlier, and more representative of Britain as a whole with an open list system than we might with STV. That is why we should consider that system for elections. However, whatever the system of election, a democratically legitimate upper House, as part of a democratic Parliament of the United Kingdom, is a goal that we should pursue and achieve.