House of Lords: Lord Speaker’s Committee Report

Lord Dobbs Excerpts

Tuesday 19th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dobbs (Con)]

My Lords, it has been said by everyone but not yet by me: I echo the words of gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Burns, and his committee. The report has the huge benefit of being not only elegantly written but mercifully brief. I hope to match the brevity if not the eloquence.

What more is there to be said? We seem to be creating an impetus, a demand, for change that can probably no longer be stopped. We focus almost obsessively on numbers and cutting our House down to size. I wonder if that might lead in the course of time to more professionalism and politicisation—that is a possibility—and more expense too, as we have just heard most eloquently from my noble friend Lord Porter. That would be an unexpected consequence of reform, but change there will be. The question is whether that change will be achieved voluntarily or imposed upon us. Once you put the ferret down the rabbit hole, you can never be entirely sure of the consequences.

It is not just the reforms that we are discussing today; in connection, there is also renewal and restoration to consider. At some point in the not-too-distant future, it is likely that we will be moved to a different place—well, we move or we burn. I think it was Churchill who said we make our buildings and then our buildings make us. I wonder what the QEII conference centre will make of us. As the noble Lord, Lord Geddes, suggested, that in itself is likely to greatly reduce our numbers. It will also change our practices, how we see ourselves, how others see us, what we do and how we do it. We will not be the same House when and if we return to this place.

There is a still more pressing factor. Next year we will be immersed in the elected Government’s main legislative vehicle, Brexit. Some noble Lords have already declared that it is a Bill of betrayal, threatened trench warfare and even compared it to the appeasement of Hitler. That sort of action and that sort of language threaten to undermine everything that the Burns committee has been trying to achieve. If this unelected House decided to engage in open trench warfare, what options would that give any Prime Minister other than to appoint new Peers? This has to be thought through. To use a rather hackneyed phrase, we cannot have our cake and eat it.

Reform, renewal and restoration, Brexit—this could all come together as a perfect storm that might sink this place completely. So it is evolution or revolution. There is no standing still, not any more. The Burns committee stands for evolution, uncertain as that process usually is. That is why I support it, always bearing in mind that it is the other House, the House of Commons, that is in far more need of reform than we are.