Parliament: Elected House of Lords

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Wednesday 10th November 2010 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Lord Grocott]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what would be the effect of an elected House of Lords on relations between the two Houses of Parliament.

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, this Question seeks the Government’s view on the effect of an elected House of Lords on the relationship between the two Houses of Parliament. I hope it does not sound presumptuous of me to say that I think this is a matter of fundamental constitutional importance, albeit that we have only an hour and a half in which to debate it. It needs to be addressed, not least because the present relationship between the two Houses is the right one and works very well. That is not just my judgment; it is shared by a committee of this House, the Cunningham committee, which reported a few years ago and whose report was adopted unanimously by both Houses of Parliament. Therefore, if my judgment is not considered sufficiently strong, I hope I can persuade the House that that committee’s report is conclusive.

The basis of the relationship could not be simpler; the primacy of the Commons is secured by the fact that it is elected and we are not. That is the conclusion of the report, which explains the current relationship. My argument is very simple and I shall try to develop it. An elected upper Chamber—whatever you call it—would fundamentally change that relationship for the worse. This question has been disgracefully neglected or ignored by the previous and present Governments. Every time I have attempted to raise it on various occasions it has been dismissed as something we should not spend too much time worrying about.

First, I wish to look at the key arguments of those who say that this does not constitute a major problem, that the two Houses will be fine after any reorganisation of the House of Lords and that we are worrying unnecessarily. They use two arguments most frequently. The first is that the Parliament Acts are supposed to be the absolute guarantor of the supremacy of the Commons over the Lords because in the last resort the Commons can insist on its legislation going through. People who recite that mantra do not know, or do not want to know, anything at all about the practical day in, day out consequences of the ways in which the two Houses relate to one another, which is demonstrated most vividly when ping-pong occurs. That is rather a dismissive title for a fundamentally important part of our constitution but we all know what I am talking about. I recall that ping-pong between the two Houses has occurred six, seven or eight times, but it always concludes in the same way in my experience, which is that the Commons defers to the Lords.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Grocott]

I am sorry. I should have said that the Lords defers to the Commons. I remind the House of a much admired Peer whom we remember with great affection, the late Lord Kingsland, who took many Bills through the House that were subject to ping-pong. On one occasion when the Lords finally deferred to the Commons, he said to the House that this procedure would not happen if the House of Lords was elected. That is obvious to me but I wished to cite a higher authority than myself to demonstrate that point. Frankly, it would be bound to be the case. People who say that there is nothing to worry about do not even begin to imagine what it would be like to stand as a senator for this House—I refer to senators for the sake of argument—and say to one’s electorate, “I very strongly oppose the poll tax”, or, “I very strongly oppose the imposition of an identity card system and will do so as strongly as I can as a senator in the House of Lords but ultimately I will stop opposing it if the Commons insists”. That would be a very peculiar plea to put to your electorate when you are hoping to be elected to this House.

I wish to dismiss the other common argument reasonably quickly: that is, when people say that there is nothing to worry about because other parliaments across the world have no difficulty whatever in having two elected Houses. The answer to that question is so obvious that I am almost embarrassed to repeat it; they started with a blank sheet of paper. We have a House with existing powers, which in most respects are identical to those of the House of Commons. That is the difference between us and other parliaments. If we were starting with a blank sheet of paper, of course we could define what the Lords does and what the Commons does and away we go—there would be no problem. It clearly would be a problem if you had an elected House taking over the powers that we enjoy but which—this is crucial—we choose not to enforce. That is the difference between the present position and the one that would apply if this House were elected.

I am more than half way through my time, so I shall recount quickly what I think are the inevitable, predictable consequences for the relationship between the two Houses of an elected second Chamber. First, there would be a constant battle for legitimacy between the two Houses and constant arguments about which represented the most authoritative voice of the British people. Would noble Lords on the Lib Dem Benches who are so passionately in favour of proportional representation—we are told that we will have proportional representation in the upper House—declare that an upper House elected on the basis of proportional representation is not as legitimate as the other House down the Corridor, which is elected on first past the post? Of course they would not say that. There would be endless debates and arguments about which was the most legitimate Chamber.

The second inevitable consequence would be that this House would demand more powers. I do not know of any House anywhere, whether it is the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly or the European Parliament, where people, once they are elected and in situ, do not demand more, not fewer, powers. I say that to people who argue that the only answer is to have a written constitution. I ask them whether they can really imagine sitting down and writing a constitution, the first few paragraphs of which would have to state, “We are now going to have an elected upper House instead of the appointed upper House, but we think it is important to start by reducing its powers”. That would be quite a difficult argument to get across in any rational debate.

I wish to ask two more questions to which I do not know the answers, but perhaps brainy people in the Deputy Prime Minister’s Constitution Unit will have worked them out. In a situation in which there are two elected Houses and a Motion of no confidence in the Government, what is to stop both the Houses having Motions of no confidence in the Government? What happens if one says, “We have confidence in the Government”, but the other says that it does not? I should like to know the answer to that question. I do not know what it is. I should have mentioned earlier that, if this were an elected House, there is no question whatever of its having far more Secretaries of State. There is no reason why any of the key offices of state should not be held by Members of this House, except, I suppose, that of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. In the 19th century, the Prime Minister sat in this House, when it was an hereditary House and a Prime Minister could do so again if the House were fully elected.

We have had the Deputy Prime Minister, the Secretary of State for Business and the Secretary of State for Transport in this House. What is to stop this elected House having a roughly coincident number of Secretaries of State, or even more, than the other House? The question about the votes of confidence is not mischievous, but it would be an odd thing if this House had passed a Motion of no confidence in the Government, and half the members of the Government were in it, while the other House thought the Government were wonderful. Even more seriously—this is not frivolous—we have now decided that it is pretty important for the elected House of Commons to make a judgment before our troops are committed in battle. If one House, democratically elected, said yes it is right to go ahead, and the other House, also democratically elected, said no it is not, I would not like to be the lawyer to work that one out. Those are the kinds of questions, when there are two elected Houses with equally democratic legitimacy, that simply have not been sensibly addressed.

The only reason why I wanted to raise this issue today is that I believe it is the absolute duty of the Government to think not only about whether the House of Lords should be elected or not elected, but about the consequences not just for the House of Lords but for the House of Commons, for MPs’ relations with their constituents, and for relations between the two Houses. That needs to be addressed before any fundamental change is made. If this debate makes a small contribution towards that, it will be time well spent.