Queen’s Speech

Lord Grenfell Excerpts

Thursday 10th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, for the last 20 minutes or so, the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, has been busily rewriting his 2008 White Paper, and some would say tearing it up. I thought that it was rather a good White Paper, but I do not propose to follow him down that route. The 11 hours of debate devoted to the reform of our House persuaded me not to concentrate excessively on that issue today. Indeed, I want to try to avoid yet more incestuous self-congratulatory introspection. Instead, I want to look at the wider context to which the gracious Speech rightly drew our attention, that of political disengagement, which is the context for all the proposals that have come forward.

I have been involved in party politics for more than 40 years, in common, I suspect, with many other Members of your Lordships’ House. Party politics has a place in binding together people of similar persuasions and allowing them to act in concert and to get things done. It is easy to malign political parties, but I would suggest that they are very necessary. Yet the ebb and flow of electoral fortunes, and the ability to throw the scoundrels out, are surely no longer sufficient to persuade people that our country is genuinely democratic, that it is a place where power is shared on an open and equal basis, and where citizens can influence the course of events by the strength of their vote and the power of their voice.

We should take some examples, notably the corrosive effect on public confidence of a series of scandals like “Cash for Access” and, before that, the “Loans for Lords”. The Government are again working to look at the issue of party funding, but to solve the problem, we need to be bold. It is all very well to search for consensus, but one day someone is simply going to have to take a decision. I trust that that will be done in this Session of Parliament, and I hope that it will form part of the other measures mentioned in the gracious Speech which are to be put before us. For my own part, the Kelly proposals to spend 50p per elector on removing the big donations from political parties should be a good starting point. Everybody understands that finding extra money for politics now has implications for public confidence, but surely it is urgent to look at the ways in which present funding is distributed so that we can avoid buying influence for the disproportionate sway of the few and instead buy equal influence for the many.

In the Queen’s Speech, as the Leader of the House has said, the Government have promised an electoral registration Bill. That may seem rather unimportant to many in your Lordships’ House, but in fact it is the bedrock of our democracy: those who are entitled to be on the register have a civic duty to be on it, and they need to be there. Since recent research by the Electoral Commission shows that we are failing to register nearly one in five people in this country—and disproportionately so in some inner city areas, of course—this is a very serious issue that demands the immediate attention of the Government. I am only sorry that the previous Government did not make more progress on it. In previous debates in this House we have heard of the potential risks associated with individual registration, but I think that we should consider this as a great opportunity to engage more people, particularly younger and more mobile people in inner cities. I strongly support the efforts of my noble friend Lord Rennard to ensure that registration—not voting, but registration—remains a civic duty backed by a financial penalty, as it always has been.

With that firm backstop, there are also opportunities to engage military service personnel in their barracks, students directly in their universities and other colleges, and 16 year-olds in school. That happens to have been the experience in Northern Ireland which has moved on most successfully to individual registration and where the legal requirement has been retained. Voter registration in school is an obvious corollary for the citizenship curriculum rightly introduced by the last Government. In Northern Ireland, it is a natural continuum and has been very successful.

However, there is still more to do to persuade people that their role in a democracy can make a difference. We live in a world where interaction across great geographical and social chasms is instant: students chat to their tutors online; consumers email chief executive officers and get a reply; and, crucially, people can see the value as an end in itself of open dialogue around the issues of the day. Across counties, countries and continents, people show that they are far from disinterested in policy and politics, but for all that technology, no citizen has been brought closer to Westminster, which remains a world apart. Individual politicians try to engage as best they can, but the system itself seems “sludgen” and inert to the public. Parliament is a paradox: manifestly, it is a seat of power and yet not obviously a place that appears to get things done.

Of course, there are no easy answers about how to strike the right balance between maintaining the principle of representative democracy—one person, one vote—and bringing the process of decision-making closer to where people now do their politics; if there were, they would have been produced many years ago. If political debate generates more oxygen on Facebook than at the ballot box, we have to do more than simply lament that fact; we have to work out how to persuade people that issues worth entering into a dialogue about—perhaps with a perfect stranger—are the same matters in which we in this Parliament are also engaged.

Liberals have always believed in the power, agency and freedom of individuals. Before our eyes, society has become more content to develop its own structures and conduct its own rules and proceedings, disengaged from the institutions of Parliament and party politics. Of course, at the same time, society is more sceptical—more frustrated—by the democratic apparatus prescribed for it by the state. These changes may fit our philosophical mould, but they are difficult to deal with outside the abstract. It is a challenge for all of us, the whole political system, in the coming years.

Of course, as we try to meet that challenge, we have the benefit of some direct, personal, overriding experience. When people know that their participation in a democracy makes a difference, they are more enthusiastic and more numerous. I hope your Lordships will forgive me a personal reflection. When I was first elected to the other place in 1974, my majority was just nine votes. The very perceptive electorate in Cornwall, on a very wild and wet February day, saw that the result might be close and so the turnout was 83%. In 2001, when I was defending a majority of over 13,000, the turnout collapsed to 63%. I am sure that many of your Lordships have similar personal reflections. There are similar stories in other countries too. The recent turnout in the second ballot of the French presidential election, over 80%, showed that people really felt that that election would make a difference and they could make a difference within that context.

The conundrum is in trying to maintain that interest and participation by maintaining the reality and perception that people can make a difference to what happens in their democracy. Reform of the party political financial situation and better, modern arrangements for the enfranchisement of potential voters are all important to that end, but we must also recognise that the present situation, when this half of Parliament is so very unrepresentative in terms of age, background and geographical experience, does nothing to persuade people that their political system is, or even can be, capable of listening to them.

We have heard much this week about “bread and butter” issues. What can a Chamber whose average age is 70 and where a clear majority of active Members come from London and the south-east know about the problems of working families in the north of Scotland or the west of Cornwall?

In the coming years, there will be changes that will be difficult for Parliament to accept. We should start with the modest changes to this House and its practices proposed by the group of the noble Lord, Lord Goodlad—I am disappointed that these have not been put before us as a package. We will have to do much, much more as we adapt to a world where people want to speak to us and see very quickly indeed that we are listening to them.

Let us make no mistake: economic crisis can reflect as well as magnify political dysfunction, when people feel that they have no capacity to influence or change decisions that affect them personally. In Greece, Italy and Spain, this very fact has caused desperate problems already, as we are witnessing again this week. In politics, as in economics, we must always be vigilant to make sure that we do not fall into the same trap. If we are out of touch as party politicians, as Members of your Lordships’ House and as a Parliament, we risk encountering that same dreadful fate—that the public simply wash their hands of us.

[Lord Grenfell]

Does the noble Lord not agree that the membership of this House is a great deal more representative of the many strands of society in the United Kingdom than is the House of Commons?