House of Lords Reform

Lord Gilbert Excerpts

Tuesday 29th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gilbert]

My Lords, I start by declaring an interest as probably the most prehistoric of your Lordships to address the House tonight. I have no intention of standing for a seat in your Lordships' House for the simple reason that I know perfectly well that I would not get elected, and I am not interested in elections in which I do not intend to be successful. I think that I am the only person this evening to have made that declaration of interest.

Why do we find ourselves in this ridiculous situation? I am afraid that the engine driving it has been within my own party, very much led by a certain Mr Jack Straw. Within my recollection, not many months ago Mr Straw and Mr Blair were united in total opposition to anything other than a 100 per cent appointed membership of this House. Why did they change their minds? I am afraid that I have a nasty, cynical explanation: some grubby work at the crossroads, and peerages from the north-west of the country at the time causing them to change their minds and to decide that the situation could not be tolerated and that they had to find some way out in order to divert public attention from what was going on in the Labour Party.

I will make it clear that it is not only within the Labour Party that grubby things happen when it comes to appointments to this House. Many of the motives behind the movement at the other end of the corridor come from a combination of envy and incomprehension. The incomprehension reposes in the fact that Members in the other place have not the faintest idea what would happen to them if this House were to be elected. The first thing that would happen is that people would say, “Well, I’ve got just as good a mandate as you have”, because, however this House is elected, whether directly or indirectly, the elections must cover the entire territory of the United Kingdom. If we are to cover the entire territory of the United Kingdom in this House with only 300 or so Members and there are 650 at the other end, it does not take a mathematical genius to see that anyone elected to this House will be able to say to someone in the other House, “I’ve got twice the mandate that you have. What are you going to do about it?”. Unless the elections are always on the same day, as in other idiotic ideas put forward from time to time, the elected Members of this House will be able to say to the idiots at the other end, “What’s more, my mandate is more recent than yours. What have you got to say about that?”. Of course, there is no answer.

Leaving aside some other unpleasant consequences, if people were elected to this House without any cojones whatever, they would start to demand three things: a say in supply, a repeal of the Parliament Act and more Ministers. The noble Earl, Lord Onslow, will speak for himself but that lovely dream that he had of a Prime Minister addressing this House from that Dispatch Box is something of which I simply cannot conceive as plausible. Why on earth would the House of Commons voluntarily submit to an aggregation of extra powers to this House? Therefore, the stage would be set for permanent conflict between the two Houses as soon as this Chamber was elected.

Then we come to the question of who will be elected to come here. You would get the sort of oik—for Hansard’s benefit, oik is spelt OIK—that could not get into the Commons, Europe, the Scottish Parliament or the Welsh Assembly and probably not into a half-decent county council. That is the sort of oik you would have here, particularly when you told them that they would be here only for one election and for 15 years at the most. That is absolutely barmy. I do not see anything funny about it—at least, I was not intending to be funny but I am often misconstrued; that is one of the prices of old age.

I think that there will be some candidates from within your Lordships’ House. Looking around at my Benches and with great respect to everyone whom I can see, only my noble friend Lord Hunt of Kings Heath could get himself elected effortlessly to any Chamber to which he put himself forward. I have no idea whether it would be in his mind to stand and I hope he does not think that I am giving him ideas. On the other side, I can see only one half of “the two TomToms”. The TomToms have great charm, good looks, energy, youth and devotion to this place on their side, and unfortunately a very similar level of intelligence, but I shall not go into that. That was not supposed to be funny either. In fact, it is a moment of great tragedy when you think about it.

I have probably spoken for long enough. I simply add that I totally support what the noble Lord, Lord Steel, seeks to do. It is nonsense to say that people in this House do not want reform, as distinct from abolition. I think that these days it would be very hard to find anyone in this House who did not, like me, support in principle what the noble Lord, Lord Steel, wants to do.