House of Lords: Reform

Lord Howarth of Newport Excerpts

Monday 11th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, the role of the appointed House of Lords is entirely clear. It is advisory: to advise on policy, to scrutinise legislation and to offer revisions to it. This House is well fitted to performing that role, drawing as it does on the knowledge and wisdom of the two principal groups of its Members: senior and experienced politicians and very distinguished individuals from many other walks of life. This House invigilates the Government and presses and prods them and the House of Commons to think again, to think harder and to explain themselves. It is never a rival to the elected Chamber. An elected second Chamber could not perform the same role, nor would its ambitions be so modest. Its Members would believe that they had a duty to those who had elected them to use their democratic authority not just to advise and advance a point of view but to insist on what they thought was right. The gentle and persuasive critique of an appointed House would be replaced by the clash of two elected Chambers.

It may be that the Deputy Prime Minister has a cunning plan to define and constrain the role and powers of the elected second Chamber. Perhaps he intends to legislate to entrench the existing conventions, or something like them. There would be two possible consequences of that. The parties could use the list system to place pliant individuals in the second Chamber. What benefit would that be to politics and to the country? It would lose the virtues of the existing House and gain nothing worth having. If the governing party were in the majority, it would reinforce the dominance of the elective dictatorship; if the opposition parties were in the majority in the second Chamber, the second Chamber would become a second arena for the party dog-fight, and no more. Or, if people worth their salt did stand for election to the second Chamber, the lid would quickly blow off the pressure cooker. Those people would indeed insist on what they thought to be right. They would strike down legislation, particularly when they and the country thought that the Government have got it wrong. Armed with democratic authority, they would challenge the primacy of the House of Commons. We would risk legislative impasse between the two Houses.

Codification will not work. We have seen how the European Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and the Scottish Parliament have all gradually gained powers. Elected Chambers will always seek to do that. For the umpteenth time in these debates, I ask the essential question: how will the replacement of an appointed House by an elected House improve the performance of Parliament? To say that it will make the second Chamber more democratic or legitimate does not answer the question. I suspect that the Government are not interested in improving the performance of Parliament. All Governments regard Parliament as a nuisance. We must be on guard to ensure that so-called reform does not weaken Parliament, which is—or ought to be—a restraint on executive absolutism and the safeguard of our liberties.