House of Lords Reform Bill

Lord Harrington of Watford Excerpts

Tuesday 10th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Gareth Johnson]

There was no commitment in the manifesto I stood on effectively to abolish the House of Lords.

We need to be brave enough to say that the Lords works. It is not perfect, but it works. These proposals will ensure that the Lords operates in a party political manner. Legislation will be blocked or supported for purely party political reasons, rather than simply because the Lords believes that the legislation is wrong.

[Richard Harrington (Watford) (Con)]

I agree with most of the points my hon. Friend makes, but does he agree that it is possible to be in favour of reforming the House of Lords without supporting these ridiculous proposals and filling it full of party political hacks?

[Gareth Johnson]

My hon. Friend makes a valid point. Very few Members of this House think that the House of Lords is perfect in every way, but we do not want radical overhauls and an elected House of Lords, as suggested by this fundamentally flawed Bill.

Governments are currently created by single elections—general elections—and the reviewing Chamber acts as a check and balance without—[Interruption.]

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Harrington (Watford) (Con)]

Mr Speaker, I reluctantly have to tell you that I will not support the Bill. The reason why is not that I am against reform of the House of Lords; I think that many of the criticisms of the House of Lords made by hon. Members on both sides of this House—for example, on grounds of age, demographics and lack of accountability—are valid. In fact, for many reasons I am in favour of reform of the House of Lords. Neither is my reason for opposing the Bill the one given by the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Stephen Lloyd) in what I thought was a good speech. He said that, yesterday, some right hon. and hon. Members seemed to show venom against the Deputy Prime Minister personally. I am not one of those Members. Indeed, I am not one of the people whom the hon. Gentleman mentioned who dislike Liberal Democrats; in fact, some of my best friends are Liberal Democrats. I support very much of what the coalition does and what our Liberal Democrat colleagues do. I am passionately against the Bill, however, because it would perpetuate a monopoly of the political classes in the legislative procedure.

We have here a Chamber to which 650—or, as it will become, about 600—people are elected, properly and democratically. Nearly all of us belong to one of the legitimate political parties. That is a very good system for the core of democracy. We do not need to replicate it in a second Chamber, where people are elected for 15 years, from exactly the same gene pool—exactly the same pool of political parties as we all come from. That is fundamentally wrong. It would deny democracy in respect of a large group of talented people who would not dream of standing for a political party. I include my party in that, the coalition parties collectively and the Opposition parties.

Democracy and legislation are a lot richer if a way is found to bring into the process people who would never dream of standing on a party political ticket. I am against the privilege and patronage of the current system in the House of Lords. I am in favour of reforming that House significantly. I want a proper system of appointment, as happens in Germany, of people from different sectors of society representing people of different ages, regions and interest groups. Politics is essentially a system of balancing interest groups. We have to find a way to appoint people without the patronage of Prime Ministers, Opposition leaders, donors and all the people who have rightly been criticised for their role in appointing Members of the House of Lords.

Under the proposed system, everyone would be a slave to a party manifesto, because saying “I am a scientist,” “I am a footballer,” “I am an academic,” or “I am a talented musician” would not get people who should be in the House of Lords on to a party list. They would be elected not because of their specialty, but because they agreed to a general party manifesto, which we do —something I agree with.

My constituents in Watford are already faced with elections for parish councillors, three district councillors, a directly elected mayor, Members of Parliament, Members of the European Parliament and now police commissioners. Do right hon. and hon. Members really think that an eighth category of election will really make this country more democratic? I do not. The number of people voting is going down time after time. I cannot accept that having people on party lists, as in the proposed system, will make this country more democratic by making the House of Lords more representative.

Consequently, Mr Speaker, on this Bill, for the first time and, I hope, the last time in my short and somewhat less than illustrious political career—unlike that of right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of this Chamber and, of course, yours—I will oppose my party’s view and my coalition’s view. I urge Members on both sides of the House to consider the proposals carefully and to do what I and many of my colleagues think they should do, which is reject the Bill, not because they are against reform but because they are in favour of the House of Lords being reformed in a responsible, modern and sophisticated way that does not make it a further tool of party hacks.