House of Lords

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts

Tuesday 6th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Williams of Elvel (Lab)]

My Lords, before I begin, I should say that, although this is a take-note Motion, it is a take-note Motion with a purpose. Most people seem to agree that the House is too large, but nobody seems able to come up with a solution that does not involve the cumbersome process of primary legislation. This afternoon, I want to offer a way forward. That is the purpose of this Motion.

Let us briefly look at the figures. During the past few years, the House has expanded both in “absolute” and in “actual” terms—these expressions and the figures I quote are taken from the recent helpful Library Note and supplements from the Library that I have requested. At 16 December last, the absolute—that is, the total—membership was 847. The actual membership—in other words, excluding those unable for one reason or another to be active Members—was 791. The average daily attendance in the 2013-14 Session was 497. By contrast, in 2009-10, the equivalent first and third values—that is, total membership and average daily attendance—were 735 and 388 respectively. Average daily attendance therefore rose from 388 to 497, which is more than a quarter.

The effect of this increase is not hard to see. The Chamber overflows at Question Time. The House has had to make provision for extra seats below Bar. Many debates are so populated that speaking time is cut down to five minutes or less. Consequently, Peers are put off from putting their names down at all. The rotation arrangements for committee membership to accommodate aspiring candidates is about to become, in my view, too stringent for proper operational efficiency. Division Lobbies are frequently too crowded for comfort. The facilities of the House are strained to breaking point. Accommodation and meeting space for Peers has not kept up with the increase in numbers, leading to business being conducted in the corridors or the Guest Room. In short, the conduct of the House’s business has become disorderly.

The question then arises: what powers does the House have by itself to deal with the problem without recourse to primary legislation? To this purpose, I have taken advice from the Table and my attention has been drawn to the report of the 1955 Select Committee on the powers of the House in relation to the attendance of its Members. In its report, which was approved by the House, the Select Committee stated in paragraph 2 that the House,

“has full power to do anything which may be necessary to ensure the orderly and decent conduct of its business”.

We should note in passing that what it cannot do is override the Writ of Summons.

My proposal on how to exercise this “full power” in the context of the problem that I have described is in mechanism quite simple but in reasoning rather complex. My proposal is that, on the recommendation of the Procedure Committee, the House should be invited to pass a resolution; namely that, “in order to ensure the orderly conduct of business in the House, attendance at the proceedings of the House shall be regulated in accordance with a scheme established by the House; and, to that end, Peers shall consider most carefully applying for leave of absence under the provisions of that scheme”.

If this resolution is passed it will allow an amendment to Standing Order 22 along similar lines but with the important proviso that, “the House will at pleasure grant leave of absence to any Peer making an application under the provisions of the scheme established under the Standing Order”. The Companion would then spell out in detail the proposed scheme in a new appendix. It will state the intention to ensure that no more than 400 Peers attend the House in each Parliament and that these Peers will be known as “active Peers”. These will be nominated by each of the four groupings—Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat and Cross Bench—and in addition the non-affiliated, on the basis of the proportion of the existing House held by each grouping, provided that 75% of nominations should be of those with the greatest relative attendance record in the current Parliament.

As to the reasoning behind all this, I will address what I perceive to be the four major areas of difficulty—all of which will merit full discussion in the Procedure Committee. First, there has been recently, after yet another influx of new Peers, renewed and more intense discussion about the optimum size of the House. Without regarding it as an optimum, the firm opinion of those I have consulted is that the maximum actual membership should be no more than 400 Peers. I believe this to be the right number to aim for. It would in practice return us, more or less, to the situation in May 2010—in numbers but with a different composition. It also has the advantage—I agree that this is rather dubious but in terms of presentation it is perhaps convenient—of being just over half the current actual membership.

Secondly, there is the balance of membership between the various groupings. As I said, I propose that the current balance of the House represented by the proportions of the actual membership in each grouping should be reproduced in my scheme. There are many possible variants but neither I nor anybody I consulted could suggest an alternative way of arranging the quotas that would not promote an undignified and bad-tempered wrangle. There will no doubt be disagreement but we are, alas, where we are.

Thirdly, I propose that 75% of all the nominations by grouping should be those who have attended with most relative frequency—relative to the number of days available to them—in the current Parliament. This provision would not only seem to be a most practical approach but will ensure a necessary degree of continuity, in particular to ensure that those who have kept the House active on a day-to-day basis in the current Parliament would be able to continue to do so without hindrance in the next. Moreover, it would be undesirable for the scheme in its trial period to produce a wholly different cast of characters, as might happen if this provision were not included. Nevertheless, political parties and the Cross Benches must have some leeway in choosing Peers who have not qualified as “active Peers” but who, for various reasons, they consider suitable to maintain and enhance the reputation of the House. The 25% provision for nominations at the disposal of each grouping is designed to give groupings that extra ability.

To go a little further, the reason for basing the majority of nominations on previous—

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

I am most grateful to the noble Lord, and I am listening very carefully to his scheme. However, would not the provision that required 75% to be very active Peers encourage more Peers to be more active and therefore defeat his purpose?

[Lord Williams of Elvel]

I am all for more Peers being more active. We are talking about 75% of those with relatively high attendance records in the current Parliament. This will be debated and decided by the Procedure Committee, but I do not see an argument for resiling on that.

There have been other suggestions. Some have suggested an inbuilt gender balance, some a proper regional balance, some ethnic representation. One suggestion that I heard was that former Members of the House of Commons should not qualify.

Frivolous and impractical suggestions apart, the only other attractive criterion for nominations is the exclusion of Peers beyond a certain age. Yet, attractive as the idea may be as a principle, in my view it has three main drawbacks. First, it is difficult—and, if I may say so, idiosyncratic—to argue that the disorder I described earlier is due not to overcrowding per se but to the presence of Peers above a certain age and that therefore an age exclusion would lie squarely within the aim of,

“ensuring orderly and decent conduct of … business”.

Secondly, in order to avoid being unfairly discriminatory in applying only to a particular group of Peers, it would have to apply to the absolute number, the total membership of the House. That being so, new appointees and Members returning from official duties or leave of absence would, as a matter of fairness, be subject to the same limitation as existing Members. In the former case, it is difficult to see how that would fit easily with the Writ of Summons and the Letters Patent—or, for that matter, human rights legislation.

Lastly, it would not properly address the matter of the balance of groupings in the resulting House. The application of a blanket limitation on age would have differential effects to the disadvantage of the Cross Benches, average age 72, my party, average age 70, and the Conservatives, average age 69. The winners would be the Liberal Democrats, with an average age of 67 —the party of eternal youth. I am not sure that that would be entirely acceptable to the House, but, if it were, it would distort the percentage of the groupings and in my view introduce an unstable House.

The fourth possible point of controversy concerns those who are at present entitled to attend but who are not nominated as active Peers. I suggest that they be encouraged to apply for temporary leave of absence. The Select Committee that I quoted and the consequent Standing Order 22(1) make the position clear. Application for leave of absence is an act of individual choice and there can be nothing which smacks of compulsion, but the fact that only active Peers will be entitled to attend and hence eligible to make claims for travel and attendance should be incentive enough if linked to the suggested text in the Companion.

I have used the expression “trial period” because the scheme may, and probably will, need to be modified in the light of experience of operating a House with a finite and defined membership, as opposed to one which is in practice open ended. It may be necessary to accommodate new groupings. In future years, different groupings may wish to adopt different methods of selection of active Peers. The House of Commons may in the end decide what it wants to do with us—perhaps.

I therefore suggest a review as the next Parliament draws to its close. Of course, it may be that the forthcoming general election will produce a House of Commons which is so fractured in composition that it is unable to last the full term of five years. Although I have suggested text for the Companion, I suspect that there may be some provision to allow that to be rolled over if there is an early Dissolution.

I am under no illusions about the difficulty of translating my proposal into action. There will be a particularly heavy burden on the Procedure Committee to analyse and digest both my proposal—which will be formally on the desk of the Chairman of Committees tomorrow morning if this Motion is agreed—and the proposals and submissions which I very much hope other noble Lords will make to it. Nevertheless, the House will be aware that if anything is to happen, it really has to happen before the end of March and the start of a new Parliament. That is why I urge that the committee reports back to the House with its conclusions before the end of February.

Finally, I am under no illusions about the impact of my proposals—or any similar proposals to reduce average attendance—on some valued Members who do not attend regularly and are not chosen by their groupings under the 25% provision. Nevertheless, I believe that it should be done. A House of finite and defined membership will have many advantages. No future Government will be able to pack the House with their supporters. The controversy over “cash for peerages” will disappear since although political donors may be awarded peerages as an honour, there will be no immediate passport to a voting membership in this House. Divisions will no longer depend on who can bus in more of their inactive Members. In short, the House will look more like what it should be, a well informed, experienced and moderate revising Chamber, and less like the caricature which is frequently painted: that of a cross between an old folks’ home for superannuated politicians and a bloated relic from a bygone age.

It can be done. We are always told that this is a self-regulating House—I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, will support me—and if we are to regulate ourselves, we should take the opportunity to do so. The means are there; the question is whether we have the will. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Clark, and I am most grateful, as everyone else is, to the noble Lord, Lord Williams, for giving us the opportunity for this debate. I do not think that he has produced a silver bullet; it is more of a grenade. I have a horrible feeling that others may pull the pin out of that grenade and that the consequences may not be quite what he had hoped for.

I have been in this House for 15 years, which I think was the term set by the royal commission in which the noble Lord, Lord Butler, served and which the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, chaired. After 15 years in this place, which is half a year longer than I was in the House of Commons, I am just beginning to work out how it works. I am not sure whether 15 years is long enough for me but it may be long enough of me for your Lordships. I really love this place because, as I think I have said before to the House, as I get older I find that I am less and less certain about many of the things that I was certain about. In this House, I find that if you are uncertain about things and they are debated, it is a very good way of setting your mind straight because people speak according to their beliefs and convictions.

One of the things that worries me about the proposals of the noble Lord, Lord Williams, is that they might give more power to the Whips. As my noble friend the Chief Whip will testify, I am not always entirely in line with what he would like me to do. This is one of the things that has gone wrong in the other place. Some years ago, I was in a taxi and the taxi driver said to me, “Do you miss that place?”. I said, “The place I miss no longer exists”, and he said, “No, I mean the House of Commons”—he obviously thought that I had gone completely gaga. I said, “I know that you mean the House of Commons”, but I meant that the House of Commons that I remember was a completely different place. I now see Members who are directed into what they say. From all parties, they go on programmes and repeat the same fatuous lines. The result is that we now have an electorate who are absolutely tearing their hair out with rage at what they regard as the breakdown of the political process.

Whatever is said about this place, and there are lots of rude things said about it, it is not one where people are in fear of saying what they think. That is because I know that there is nothing that the Chief Whip can do to me—nothing which I would care about. I do not want anything from him and I know that I have been appointed for life. One of the joys of this place is the independence that comes from having that appointment. I think that my noble friend Lord Deben would say that he was in the same camp as me, except perhaps even naughtier than me from time to time.

Having said all that, though, if we do not put our own House in order, I fear that others will do it for us, and a great institution would be lost at the very moment when I believe this is about the only part of our constitution, as far as Parliament is concerned, that is working relatively well. The problems actually lie in the other place. What are you to make of a Deputy Prime Minister—I am sorry that there are no Liberals speaking in this debate who could defend him—who describes this place as a thousand Peers who get £300 every day for doing nothing? That is such a travesty. It absolutely plays to the gallery and reinforces a view that is damaging. I would not mind that kind of ill informed criticism from the other place if the other place were doing its job, but it is not. We on this side of the House had a manifesto commitment that we would end the automatic timetabling of Bills. Presumably, that has been a casualty of the coalition. Because of that automatic timetabling, this House is overwhelmed by the volume of legislation that needs to be dealt with, so we need Peers in numbers to deal with it.

There have been various proposals to reduce the size of the House. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Williams, suggested that it should be reduced to around 400. The Library Note on attendance says that there has been a bit of an increase: in 2013-14 the average daily attendance was 497, while in 2009 it was under 400. We already have an active House of 400 or 500. That is attendance, by the way, which is not the same thing as an active House. That is people turning up and claiming their allowances, or turning up and voting and perhaps going away. The actual active involvement in the House is considerably less than that.

I do not think that the problem is that we have too many people participating, although I entirely accept the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, that perhaps we need to look at our procedures. You do not actually need to limit speeches to two minutes in a debate if you make more time for the debate, or if you alter your procedures so that people cannot put their name down right until the last minute. I wonder if we might take a leaf out of some of the good things that have happened in the other place since I left it, such as the control of the business being more in the hands of the House than in the hands of the Whips, or indeed whether we should look at whether the question of how many committees we have should be more in the hands of the House. Perhaps we might even elect the Chairman of Committees, as they have done in the other place—I can see that the Chief Whip is beginning to think of something that he can do to me. Still, we need to look at our procedures.

The coalition agreement, which contains the extraordinary and ridiculous commitment that we should alter the size of the House to reflect the proportions elected at a general election, is mathematically illiterate. It would mean an exponential increase in the size of the House—I do not know, perhaps some of our friends on the Liberal Benches can help me with this—or does it mean that, if at the next election there is a great reduction in the number of Liberal MPs and the Liberal vote, colleagues here will be applying for a leave of absence? I think not. It is an unworkable proposal, and I think that it comes from the Deputy Prime Minister who is absolutely determined to destroy this place. He is doing so, too: he refused to allow us, as a self-regulating House, to bring forward the reforms that were contained in the Steel Bill, which was more and more watered down, and talked about not having “reform-lite”. To me it smacks of Caligula appointing his horse as consul in order to destroy the institution; they are deliberately allowing this House to be more and more ridiculous, and it behoves us to take more action to change that.

I therefore welcome the proposal that the Procedure Committee should look at possible changes that we can make ourselves. However, the most important change that we can make is how we ourselves behave in this House. We have to take a decision: are we too old? Are we not able to put in the time? Are we not making a proper contribution? Should we really have claimed allowances on that occasion? These are the things that are down to the personal responsibility of Members. The other thing that needs to be done, while we are talking about reform, is that the other place and the Government should show more respect for this House. For example, Ministers in this House should be paid, not expected to find their remuneration either from the allowances or from their own pockets.

On the issue of retirement, I would like to mention one story. As many noble Lords will know, in her latter days when Baroness Thatcher used to come to this House, she was increasingly frail. One day I said to her, “Margaret, you know, you don’t have to come to this House so often. You’ve done your duty by your country; you’ve been Prime Minister. People love to see you but you mustn’t feel you’ve got to come in”, whereupon she set upon me and said, “Michael, when we were appointed to this House, it became our duty to come here. It’s our duty to do so until the day we die. Now, how often do you come here?”. I think that that sense of obligation is being released by the introduction of the procedure that, although I regret to see him retire, the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, has taken advantage of today. Let us see how far that innovation will bring about change.

There are ideas that are worth looking at, such as ending the hereditary by-elections. I agree with my noble friend Lord Jopling that there should be a cap on the size of the House. I do not know how we would do this, but I think there ought to be a stronger Appointments Commission that made sure that appointments to this place were seen to be sensible; that would be important for the protection of the political parties as well as of the reputation of this House. In response to the noble Lord, Lord Butler, I think there has been a conspiracy to make this House look ridiculous by people who wish to destroy it.

Lastly, while we are on the subject of reforms to this House, I know I should not mention this because no doubt I will be mocked for doing so, but the size of the House adds to pressures on facilities. Whoever is running the catering facilities, though, really ought to get real and recognise that the catering exists to service this House, rather than the House being a franchise that is given in order to run the catering. For example, being told that you cannot book in the tea room, as the noble Baroness, Lady Oppenheimer-Barnes, told me the other day, unless you are there at 3.30 pm when actually you want to be in the Chamber for Questions, indicates how that has gone wrong. There is also the issue of facilities being closed down so that there is enormous pressure on the remaining facilities. It is down to us ourselves to get a grip and reorganise our affairs to take account of the reality of where we are now.