House of Lords: Reform

Lord Haskel Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Haskel]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, has given us perhaps the only argument in favour of this Bill—that those who make the laws should be answerable to the public and, in the public’s view, we do make laws in this House. That is why I have always spoken in favour of an elected House. I have also pointed out, however, that this is an ideal, an objective. It is an objective to be achieved not in one huge leap but by a series of steps. It is a series of steps because of the complex constitutional issues that have to be resolved and which we have been debating here.

In 1999, together with my noble friend Lord Stone, I wrote a submission along these lines to the royal commission of the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham. In our paper we spoke of stages of reform, of mixed composition with full and part-time Members, and of how the House would have to perform additional functions. The Labour Government took this route of incremental change. They removed 90 per cent of the hereditary Peers; they created the post of an elected Speaker; and they separated the judiciary and the House of Lords. I still think that we should continue in this careful way—dealing with the issues one at a time and, most importantly, carrying the public with us.

I agree with other noble Lords that the main issue is the primacy of the House of Commons. The Government say that this is secured because of its privilege over financial matters and because of the Parliament Act. The noble Lord, Lord Marks, sternly told us that this is the law. The reality is that the House of Commons has primacy because it is elected and we are not. We have conventions that respect this. If this House were to change, the conventions would change, and it is ridiculous to say otherwise.

I find the proposed method of election a big obstacle to reform because it presents a contradiction which other noble Lords have pointed out. The Government’s argument for reform is legitimacy, but election also means accountability. A 15-year single term destroys any accountability and, as other noble Lords have said, it encourages the opposite. I think that it rather demeans the electorate.

In addition, the proposed system of election will not produce people with the knowledge, the experience, the talents and the will to scrutinise the work of the Government—tasks that the Government say should be the main function of this House. I agree with others that the election system proposed would just produce a political clone of the other place.

There are further dilemmas, and in its paper, Eight Key Obstacles on the Road to Lords Reform, the Constitution Unit of University College London lists some of them. For instance, why are the Bishops here? Is it to add spirituality to our deliberations, as the right reverend Prelate suggested? The transition to 300 senators will be tricky, but is 300 the right number? Will they fill all the committee places and do all the other work on and off the Floor of the House, which the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, described as “outreach”? Like her, I do not think so.

The Government’s Bill does not come anywhere near to dealing with those issues; nor does it deal with the checks and balances necessary when there are two elected Chambers. This Bill is just another example of the coalition’s unthinking and reckless “big bang” approach to constitutional legislation. As my noble friend Lady Royall said, it is a bad Bill and we deserve better.

The Motion of the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, points the way forward. Indeed, for one moment I thought that the Government might withdraw their Bill after she effectively demolished it in eight minutes flat. As she said, part of this reform process is getting our own House in order. My noble friend Lord Grocott said that another part of the process is for the House of Commons to reform itself so that it, too, can work with an elected second Chamber. The Steel Bill deals with some of these issues, so the Government should accept the noble Lord’s offer and take over his Bill.

We have sensible proposals to improve our working practices, so let us get on with those. There are proposals to allow for retirement. Let us strengthen them and make them a bit more imaginative, using them as a way of starting to deal with reducing the number of Peers. There is polling to find out what we think, but what do the public think? Probably not much, as the noble Lord, Lord Norton, suggested, but let us find out. Meanwhile, let us see whether the Joint Committee can produce a consensus on solving some of these dilemmas.

An elected House is an honourable and democratic objective. Let us work towards it issue by issue, but not by this bad and unworkable Bill.