House of Lords Act 1999 (Amendment) Bill [HL]

Lord Elton Excerpts

Friday 9th September 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Elton (Con)]

My Lords, in one respect this is a splendid occasion in that we are, perhaps for the first time, fairly effectively to demonstrate to the public that we are deeply unhappy with the state of the House of Lords and the constitution as it is. I say that as an elected—or excepted, as we call it—hereditary Peer. The easy thing would then be to sit down and say, “Carry on”, but I cannot because I have to explain why I am here.

I joined this House in 1973, when there was already a large majority of hereditary Peers. I recall that my father joined it in 1934, when there was only a handful of Labour Peers. In 1946, I remember my father walking in the fields and saying that having fought two general elections in the Labour cause and sat on those Benches since 1934, he had seen everything the Labour Party had wanted to put in place achieved and he was now going to move to the Cross Benches. That was the way the House worked in those days and we were part of that system back in 1999. It had changed very much; there was an influx of life Peers who brought a breath of fresh air and were very welcome but, like us, they were secure in their tenure.

I have next to explain why I decided to stand for election in 1999, when I was just the right age for retirement. It would have fitted with my game plan for life; I would now have written several books, which your Lordships would not have read, and painted many pictures, which some of your Lordships would have admired, none of which I have done. There were two reasons for that decision. One was that I enjoyed it very much and was able to make a contribution, but the other was that I had looked at history and seen how the Crown had been taking power out of Parliament ever since 1215. We say that it is ridiculous that this interim measure has gone on for 17 years, but 17 years out of a century is not much and out of 800 years it is insignificant—it is temporary. Why is it necessary to keep it? It is because of the success the power of the Crown has so far had in gaining power from Parliament. That is a long story, which I will not go into, and most noble Lords will know some of it. However, the upshot is that I found the justification for my decision in 2005—I made a note because my memory is not very good—with the Prevention of Terrorism Bill, which your Lordships will remember.

The Bill came up from the Commons with a clause in it that said the Home Secretary of the day, having talked to one chief officer of the police, could lock up whom he liked—or at least someone whose name he put on a piece of paper—for three months, or 90 days, with no access to any redress, no habeas corpus and no judicial review. That was so offensive to the Prime Minister’s own party that, although he had a paper majority of over 100, he got it through the House of Commons repeatedly with a majority of 14. In this House, it was defeated successively with increasing majorities, largely supported by either the votes or the absence of people appointed by Tony Blair, the then Prime Minister. We met at 2.30 pm on a Thursday and rose at 7.31 pm on the Friday, at which point we stopped the measure. That is what I came here to do. Why was that possible, and what was the difference between the Houses? One House was made up of people who were elected and, crucially, could be deselected, and who were paid salaries suitable for a career. This House was not elected and its Members could not be deselected or sacked, and they were not paid. We did not even have the, I must say, very generous attendance allowance that we now have. I will not go into that; it is a pity but we have it and I enjoy it.

I see indelibly in my mind that the understanding was that, until the great change came in, we were here—I do not think my noble friend made this absolutely clear—to see that the next House of Lords was at least as well able to call the Government to account each year, asking them to explain themselves and with their ill-doings dragged before the public, whichever party was in power. The great machine of government is not just a thin veneer of ambitious politicians in Cabinet and their supporters; it has its own ethos, moving through history as the means of governing this country. When I was a Minister of State, I heard civil servants wax very impatient, saying that they did not see the purpose of various pieces of legislation being brought before your Lordships because we all knew that they would work and would be perfectly effective, so it was a great waste of time and money. That was heard in some parts of the Civil Service, and they were key parts—it needs only a few people to air that view. It is always agreeable to reduce the difficulty of getting the Government’s will done.

I am here to stand up in front of that juggernaut and to try to make the country and your Lordships understand that, whatever we have, the people who come here to replace us—and I am very happy that they should—must have what the Americans call “tenure”. They must be secure for a great slab of time and must not be employable immediately afterwards in well-rewarded occupations. Those are the touchstones, and anything less is not acceptable.

Therefore, I cannot support the Bill. I entirely share the enthusiasm of the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, for reform, making us up to date and efficient and perhaps more in touch with the public. I have no interest, because I do not expect to survive if this Parliament lasts its full term, and I do not expect to serve in the next one. As the noble Lord said, it is painless for me anyway; it is my son who will be disappointed. He will check me in what I say, as I think he has no ambitions in that direction.

Therefore, entirely for the good of the government of this country, I ask your Lordships to wait until we have a proper measure that has more impact on this House. I have gone on for too long but I cannot resist saying a final word to your Lordships, although I am not sure whether the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, has already mentioned it. The majority in this House in 1999—by a majority of 250—were hereditary Peers. With their opposition the Bill could not have got through had the 92 places not been put on to the statute book. It was bought on those terms. I was elected by those people who agreed to that arrangement, so I am also here to represent their views. Those views are patriotic and selfless because those people are not involved at all.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to welcome the Bill, which has been introduced this morning very ably and succinctly by the noble Lord, Lord Grocott. He is a regular attender at the Campaign for an Effective Second Chamber meetings, which I have the honour of chairing and to which the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, referred. For a long time we have felt that this House does need significant reform. But we all believe very strongly in an appointed, non-elected second Chamber; one that will not challenge what I call the unambiguous democratic mandate of the House of Commons.

When something becomes ridiculous, it can no longer command respect. I cannot help but look back to the days when I used to teach 19th-century history and, in order to emphasise the need for the Great Reform Act 1832, one always cited the rotten boroughs, the rottenest of which was Old Sarum—which, ironically, is not a million miles from Avebury, from which the late Lord, or his forebear, took his title. The late Lord Avebury was a great servant of this House. Sarum was a rotten borough, electing two Members of Parliament with a tiny handful of electors, and, only a little while ago, Lord Avebury’s sad death led to that completely ridiculous election to which the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, referred.

I did not go along with much of what the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, said, but he referred to the election of my noble friend the Duke of Wellington, who is already making a significant contribution to this House. Again, the votes came to about 30, of which he got 21.

We have to address matters that make us look faintly ridiculous. I want to see the time—I hope it will not be long distant—when the wishes and views of the Campaign for an Effective Second Chamber come to pass and we address the issues of the numbers in and appointments to this House and deal with the issues encompassed in the first Bill introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Steel of Aikwood. That Bill was significantly watered down—it had to be because there was no appetite for it—and my noble friends Lord Trefgarne and Lord Caithness took a prominent part in ensuring that the part of the Steel Bill that referred to the hereditary by-elections was removed. In order to get something through, those of us who had been involved in drawing up that Bill and helping the noble Lord, Lord Steel, agreed that we would get through the retirement provision and divest the Bill of all other provisions. That retirement provision has already brought some benefit to your Lordships’ House and will doubtless bring further benefit in the future.

We then had the further incremental reform in the Bill introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, in the previous Session or the Session before, which enables your Lordships’ House to expel Members who have behaved in a way which is incompatible with the standards and dignity of this House.

Incremental reform is good and this Bill is yet another episode of it. The best thing about the Bill is that it does not challenge the position or the continued participation of those of our colleagues who are hereditary Peers, many of whom, including my noble friend Lord Trefgarne, make a significant contribution. My noble friend Lord Trefgarne chairs an important committee of your Lordships’ House. He can continue doing that. His position is in no danger or jeopardy if this Bill is passed.

The only thing I would say to the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, is that we need to separate the 90 from the two. We live in a hereditary monarchy and we have two hereditary officers of state who attend your Lordships’ House to perform their official functions. Neither of them play a part in debates because they do not believe that that is their duty. They should be separated and the Bill should concentrate on the 90, the future of each one of whom—whether here since the passage of the 1999 Act, like my noble friend Lord Elton, or having joined subsequently as a result of a by-election—is secure in your Lordships’ House until the individual Peer decides to retire or, sadly, dies.

We have already, in effect, abolished the hereditary principle because none of those men or women will be succeeded by a son or a daughter. The preposterous by-election system to which we have referred—with its tiny handful of electors and, in the case of the most recent, with significantly more candidates than electors—needs to go. I sincerely hope that the work of the Campaign for an Effective Second Chamber, supported, as the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, said, by some 300 Members of both Houses, will continue—and we are determined to continue—to bring other suggestions for reform before your Lordships’ House.

We hope soon to concentrate on the issue of numbers. We believe passionately that there should be a cap on numbers and that this House should not be larger than the other place. We believe that no party political group—those receiving the whip of a political party—should ever be able to have an overall majority in your Lordships’ House. We believe that there should always be 20%, at least, of Cross-Bench Peers. These are our principles. This is what we stand for. I hope that we will move in that direction very soon indeed.

[Lord Elton]

Perhaps my noble friend will allow me to make it clear that I entirely subscribe to all those beliefs. I am merely saying that until they are achieved, we are here to see that nothing less powerful succeeds.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)]

My Lords, I note an element of nostalgia in the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, for the snows of yesteryear when people paid attention to speeches in this House and the other place. The fact that there are other offensive elements in our constitution surely is not an argument against removing one of them. This is a very modest Bill. The by-elections and the retention of the hereditary Peers were meant as a temporary expedient. Some appear to argue that what was devised as a temporary expedient should now become a permanent part of our constitution.

I begin, as others have done, by congratulating my noble friend Lord Grocott. Clearly, he believes in the politics of small steps. He recognises that there is no prospect of a big bang in respect of House of Lords reform so he suggests a modest, little bang as the only realistic way of moving forward with it at this stage. The removal of hereditary Peers by this simple and painless method requires only a short Bill; therefore, only a short speech is appropriate. I shall not follow my normal practice of making three points—like a sermon—but will make only two points.

First, it is surely impossible plausibly and with conviction to defend the status quo. I heard the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, say that there should be no change unless there is a comprehensive change. That is almost the ultimate argument of reaction. I heard the noble Lord, Lord Elton, whom I consider a friend, make a point in relation to the blocking of the terrorism Bill put forward by the Government in 2005 but I am not sure how that was relevant to the position of by-elections for hereditary Peers. Had he argued, for example, after looking through the Division lists, that the Bill would not have been blocked had it not been for hereditary Peers, that might have been the start of an argument, but I am not sure it is relevant. Perhaps he can enlighten me.

[Lord Elton]

I am sorry I did not make myself clear. I was arguing that we were put here, trusted to see that excessive power was not given to Governments. That is exactly what we did and what this House did. We were entrusted, among other people, with the job of seeing that what succeeded the old system should not be less able to challenge Governments than the new, and the need for that was demonstrated in 2005.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

But that element of trust on behalf of the British people is surely for all of us and not in any way restricted to hereditary Peers, although I accept that it is perhaps rather odd that the hereditary Peers provide the only element of election for membership of this House.

As my noble friend Lord Grocott very plausibly and convincingly said, the Bill will allow the current hereditary membership to wither on the vine by allowing current Peers to remain Members for the rest of their days or until they choose to retire. It ensures that their successors to be Members of the House of Lords must be subject to the same criteria and procedures as the rest of us. There is no particular wisdom that can pass from one hereditary Peer to his son—why should there be? They should be dealt with and regarded in the same way as all the rest of our population. Hence we are talking about the removal of a nostalgic vestige of the old regime, which was agreed for tactical reasons in 1999.

Secondly, there is of course a case for wider reform. This is supported by the recent remarks of the Lord Speaker. I say in passing that the current Lord Speaker has started well and I hope he will continue to make comments on matters of interest of this nature. He states that the number of Members of this House should be cut to below 600, no greater than the number of Members of Parliament. Presumably he would want it to be capped at that figure and not to be increased by successive Members of Parliament. I invite Members to look at the recent appointments in the resignation honours of Mr Cameron and see the way in which No. 10 has been honoured so massively, and contrast that with what Mr Blair did in refusing to have resignation honours, when there were a number of people in No. 10 who were eminently worthy of coming to this House. I think of Jonathan Powell, for example, who facilitated the agreement in Northern Ireland and made a great contribution to this country. But Mr Blair said, I think correctly, that it was not appropriate to have such a resignation honours list.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

That is an interesting point but perhaps an argument for another day. I revert to what I was saying about the numbers in this House, which are getting quite impossible. I note also the argument of my noble friend Lady Smith of Basildon, who has argued persuasively for separating honours from the peerage, as many categories of worthy recipients of honours would not wish to participate in the work of this House. Of course, many procedures for reducing the numbers have been canvassed. Some argue for one for one—one out, one in—but that would not in itself reduce the numbers. The voluntary principle for retirement has had only a marginal effect, with 52 retirements since 2014. Perhaps that number might be increased, dare I say, with some form of financial inducement—a bronze handshake—but that is another argument. A retirement age has been mooted, with Members forced to retire at the end of the Parliament in which they reach the age of 80.

Clearly, more radical culling has to take place if the aspirations of our Lord Speaker are to be met. Ultimately I would like to see this House more representative of the United Kingdom as a whole, perhaps with regional assemblies putting forward their own lists, away from No. 10. But if the numbers are allowed to rise inexorably, when this House returns in 2028—or when we move, as is suggested, some time after 2020—the Queen Elizabeth II Centre will not be large enough to accommodate us. We shall have to look elsewhere, perhaps even to Wembley Stadium, to accommodate the numbers.

[Lord Elton]

I declare my friendship for the noble Lord as well. If he persists in pursuing issues that are not part of this Bill, I suggest that he considers the Bill coming up, I believe, on 21 October, which will actually reduce the number of Members of this House, whatever the fate of this Bill.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

I shall certainly follow the noble Lord’s invitation to look at that Bill as it appears. Still, that debate is for another day. Can the Government say how close that day is? Do they envisage any reform at all, even the modest reform that would include the matter now before us, during this Parliament? The sanction for this House is surely that if we do not seek consensual proposals, even if incremental, even if the politics of small steps, the Government may be forced by public opinion to tackle the current anomalies and absurdities, which I think the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, called ridiculous, such as is done in this Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, I am grateful for those interventions at the end: they will enable me to be shorter in my summing up. In particular, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, for making the point that I was not intending to derail the Government’s whole legislative programme. I think it would take about 10 minutes to get the Bill through were it not for—I say this with respect to them—a very small number of Members in this House, who were understandably overrepresented in today’s debate, who still feel that we should continue with hereditary by-elections. That is despite the fact that there is universal agreement—there I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, and so many others who spoke—for the Lord Speaker’s initiative to reduce the number of Members in the House. It has got to a ridiculous size, but that was not the main subject of today’s debate, although I say in passing that unless my Bill were passed, one way that we could not reduce the number of Members of this House would be by removing a hereditary Peer, because the mechanism exists for their immediate replacement by a by-election. I hope that that, at least, will be recognised.

I am very grateful to the many Members on both sides of the House who spoke, particularly those who take the whole issue of incremental reform very seriously through the reformed second Chamber group, many of whom spoke—all, I think, in favour of the Bill. I am sorry: one, perhaps two, did not. I have no doubt that in the House as a whole there is overwhelming support for this measure. I hope that when we proceed to Committee, as I hope we will, those who still feel strongly against it will respect the overwhelming support which, I submit, exists across the House to see the system changed.

I tried in my opening speech to address the fundamental principle that to refer to what was said and done in 1999 is no basis for moving forward in any respect. The good faith of Governments—I do not include myself in this, because I am not in favour of an elected House—Labour, coalition and even Conservative Governments, to move towards a fully elected House has proved impossible. They have tried and they have failed. To use that—because Governments have failed to introduce the second phase—as a reason for continuing with by-elections in perpetuity is disingenuous. If you say the by-elections can go when there is fully comprehensive reform, just tell us how you are going to deliver that reform, or we can only conclude that you are not committed to the removal of the by-elections.

The noble Lords, Lord Trefgarne and Lord Elton, stated what I should think from their perspective is quite an uncomfortable truth—I address this to the noble Lord, Lord Robathan, as well. Why was the Act passed with these exemptions by a Labour Government? I can give first-hand information on this because I was working in No. 10 at the time. It was because the Government knew that unless they made those concessions, their whole legislative programme would be wrecked, probably over two years. When Hansard is checked tomorrow, we will see that that fact was relayed accurately by the noble Lords, Lord Trefgarne and Lord Elton. That is not a basis on which to have reached either the compromise in the Act or any undertakings that were given. The Act was to that extent passed under duress.

Any reasonable person must look at it now and ask: was it a sensible compromise? Should the by-elections continue in perpetuity? No one has offered an end date. None of the speakers who opposed the Bill has put an end date.

So many noble Lords made excellent points, particularly on the size of the House, with which I very much agree. My noble friend Lord Howard mentioned that and emphasised the importance of incremental change. I always want to hear what the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, has to say on these issues and I am very grateful to him for his support, and for that of the noble Lord, Lord Cormack. There is cross-party support. The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, made the point that we need to remember how we look to the outside world.

Of course the noble Lord, Lord Robathan, is right. If I go to the Labour Club over the weekend, as I may well do, for my pint, people will not be saying: “What are you doing about by-elections in the House of Lords?”. They will not be saying much about Lords reform. They will not be saying much about a large number of the things that we talk about in this House, but that does not mean that they are not important, it just means that most people are not political obsessives as, to a degree, we must all be, or else we would not be here. They get on with their lives, make intelligent decisions on a wide range of subjects, including referendums and general elections from time to time, although not always. If we judged whether to legislate on something based on whether people are angsty about it in the streets, we could have very long recesses in this place, because there would not be a vast amount for us to do.

The original Act was passed under duress—that is the only way I can describe it. I say particularly to the hereditary Peers that I have been very careful in the Bill and in my remarks to re-emphasise time and again that it is no threat to existing hereditaries. I do nothing other than acclaim the work that so many of them do. My point is that they are pretty indistinguishable from everyone else in the House. I have been here a little while, but I have to think, “Are they hereditary?”—or, rather, I do not think about it, it is not of great significance to me. We do not know, and certainly no one watching from the Galleries would have the faintest idea. I reject very strongly what the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft—and, I think, the noble Lord, Lord Elton—said: that somehow it was the hereditaries who uniquely held Governments to account. That has not been my experience at all: they do it in much the same way as everyone else. I am sorry if I have provoked the noble Lord.

[Lord Elton]

I said no such thing. I said that we were put here by those who did not trust the system to deliver the reform that would maintain this House’s functions of scrutiny and challenge the Government of the day—not that we were the only people who did that but that we were to see that if other people opposed that, we would be the opposition to that opposition.

[Lord Grocott]

I am not sure that I fully understood that. I repeat that we are all Members of the House of Lords who come here by various different mechanisms. Judge us as individuals and by our contributions, not by whether we are life Peers, hereditary Peers, Bishops, Law Lords or whatever. Hereditaries have no unique characteristic which makes them more valuable to the House than any other group within it.

This is a plea more than anything else, I suppose, because I know perfectly well how it would be possible to cause great difficulty to the Bill. I know that many hereditary Peers support the Bill. One said to me before I came into the Chamber that it was a little wearing that, somehow, if you were a hereditary Peer in this House, you felt yourself to be in the firing line and that it was always a subject for discussion and debate. If the Bill was passed, that would cease. It would make all the remaining hereditary Peers indistinguishable for all practical purposes from other Members of the House. It would cease to be a debating point—it is a pretty artificial one in any event, apart from this business of by-elections to make sure that the system continues in perpetuity.

I am sorry that at the moment, the Government feel that there are more pressing matters—I agree with them, but a few hours is all that is needed to sort this out and make us look a better House in this small respect than we do at present. I am very grateful to my noble friend Lady Hayter for her support for the Bill as a whole. I hope that the House will give it a fair wind both at Second Reading and in the Committee that I hope will follow.