Draft House of Lords Reform Bill

Lord Grenfell Excerpts

Monday 30th April 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grenfell]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Cormack. The congruence of our views on Lords reform are long-standing and determined—and as a long-standing and determined opponent of an elected second Chamber, I have difficulty with many of the conclusions and recommendations in this report. However, that in no way diminishes my admiration for the extraordinary achievement of the Joint Committee and its chairman, my noble friend Lord Richard. The fruits of nine months’ hard work are impressive. As a piece of pre-legislative scrutiny, it fulfils the requirements of rigour, comprehensiveness, focus, careful argument and a clarity that contrasts starkly with the draft Bill and the White Paper into which it inquired. I would not be surprised if the two hefty volumes of oral and written evidence stand for a long time as the best repository of informed opinion on this hugely important constitutional issue.

The immediate conclusion that I draw from reading the report is that the draft Bill as a vehicle for reforming your Lordships' House is not fit for purpose. As the emergence of a well-reasoned alternative report confirms, the conclusions and the recommendations reached by a bare majority of the committee members reflect a glaring lack of consensus. In short, the draft Bill will just not do. It is obvious from the start, as many have pointed out, that it is fatally flawed. The absurdity of the assertions made in Clause 2 relating to the preservation of the primacy of the House of Commons undermines the very premise on which the drafters of this Bill sought to build their case for an all or partially elected Chamber.

To me, the logic is that, in the face of this total lack of consensus on how to proceed, we should not proceed on the basis of the draft Bill, the White Paper or the recommendations of the report before us. Has not the Prime Minister told us more than once that reform of this House must be achieved by consensus? Or has he changed his mind? Am I naive in suggesting that the Government’s threat to use the Parliament Act makes an utter nonsense of his call to reform by consensus? Or—as the noble Lord the Leader of the House intimated earlier—does he intend to exclude the opinion of your Lordships' House from such a consensus? To my mind, that would be outrageous. That said, I could scarcely blame the Prime Minister if he has changed his mind, since it must now be blindingly obvious even to him that consensus is unreachable on any reform remotely resembling that so dear to the heart of his Deputy Prime Minister. He has only to listen to a substantial bloc of his own Commons Back-Benchers to recognise that.

In preparing a necessarily short speech I had difficulty in deciding on which of the report’s many arguments, conclusions, options and recommendations I might focus. So, mindful that there are more debates to come in the new Session, I decided to focus on the overall message that I received from a first reading of this report. I recognise that others will have received a different message, but the message to me is that if the coalition is still hell-bent on abolishing this House and replacing it with an all or partially elected Senate, it will have to go back to the drawing board.

But not just any drawing board. Because the Joint Committee, by its mandate, was restricted to the examination of those subjects covered by the draft Bill and the White Paper, it had insufficient scope for the kind of broad consideration of the functions and powers of both Houses, without which the contribution of a reform of the Lords to the enhancement of government simply cannot be devised. The authors of the alternative report state that while they agree with the findings of the Joint Committee's report as a whole, the content and constitutional significance of the draft Bill needs consideration in a much broader context. That, they claim, is best achieved through a constitutional convention, which would consider the next steps on further Lords reform and any consequential impact on the Commons and on Parliament as a whole. That surely is the right way to go, and I warmly support it.

Of course defenders of the draft Bill, or of a hastily amended version of it, will cry, “Delaying tactics!”. So be it. The Government have had their chance and have blown it with this deeply flawed draft Bill. They now have no right to impede the efforts of those committed to finding, through a truly fit-for-purpose mechanism, a more comprehensive and workable solution.

I end with three short points. First, I deplore the petty-mindedness of the Government in their attitude to the Bill brought forward by the noble Lord, Lord Steel of Aikwood. They cry, “There is really nothing in it”, as if it was not on the Conservative Benches here that the evisceration of the Bill was plotted. How cynical can you get? I hope that rumours that there may be some second thinking on that are well-founded.

My penultimate point: whatever the method used in a further attempt at consensus—through a constitutional convention, as I would plead; or without one, which I would strongly warn against—the resulting agreement, if any, must, imperatively, be put to the people for approval through a referendum. It is far too significant a constitutional matter to be decided otherwise. Let me be blunt about this. The Government are opposing a referendum for short-term political advantage, not for the long-term betterment of government, which is what the people deserve and on which their voice should be heard.

My third and final point: how on earth could the coalition Government get the ordering of their priorities so wrong? Is it not absurd that the Prime Minister should bow to his deputy's insistence that Parliament invite upon itself a lengthy and acrimonious period of legislation on an issue that strikes no chord with a public who are rightly demanding that the Government and Parliament focus urgently on the double-dip recession, on unemployment, on housing, on schools, on health, on welfare, on pensions, on the Scottish question and a host of other life-changing concerns? It is our duty to make the Government think again.