Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Lord Howarth of Newport Excerpts

Monday 16th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Chester]

My Lords, briefly, I support the noble Lord on his amendment. I do not think that the constitution, or even our politics, is broken, but a certain amount of damage has been done. In my lifetime I have seen a tendency for participation rates in voting to fall, along with an increasing sense of weariness with modern politics and disrespect for politicians. I am on the record as saying, when the Constitution Committee published a report on referendums last year, that there is a place for them in building confidence. Interestingly, the participation rate in the recent referendum was really rather encouraging. It was higher than we thought it would be in the lead-up to it. A cautious but proper rediscovery of the place for referendums has a part in rebuilding political life in this country.

More substantially, I should like to try a thought experiment on your Lordships. Let us imagine that we had a Bill before us that proposed to extend the life of a Parliament from a normal term of five years to six years. Would we think that that required a referendum? We would probably think that it did because it would extend the maximum term from five years to six, but in practice we are going to extend the length of Parliaments by an average of about a year. Why is this not an issue on which there should be a referendum?

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, I agree entirely with those who have just spoken that it would be helpful to the House—indeed, I think it is a necessity—that some clear principles should be articulated as to when a referendum would be appropriate. I understand the case for referenda on major constitutional issues. After all, the constitution is the property of the people and not of us as parliamentarians. If significant aspects of it are to be changed, there is a strong case for saying that they should be changed only with the permission of the people. However, I invite the House to consider the proposition that every significant constitutional change that we have seen over the last several decades has diminished the centrality of Parliament in our constitution. Whether it has been accession to the European Union, devolution or the development of the practice of holding referenda, we can see in all these instances that the capacity of the Parliament of the United Kingdom to take the major decisions that the people of the United Kingdom elected it to take has diminished. So before we express enthusiasm for the proliferation of referenda—perhaps no noble Lord wants to see their proliferation, although we should note that the European Union Bill seems to offer the scope for at least 57 varieties of them—we should consider what this may mean for the centrality and the character of Parliament in our national life.

[Lord Reid of Cardowan]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for giving us an opportunity to speculate on the nature and the circumstances that might make it imperative to hold a referendum. It is unreasonable to expect the Minister to respond in definitive terms, and I do not think that we would necessarily push for that tonight; but it is reasonable to expect two things. The first is that the Minister, who as noble Lords have said has been more than reasonable in his attempts to respond to and clarify some of these issues, should attempt to answer the point. Secondly, he should consider some of the criteria that might compel a referendum on subjects the nature of which we are now discussing. He might like to consider, for instance, that one of the elements that would compel a referendum would be on subjects that are closely related to those which have recently been the subject of a referendum, and when the course being proposed by the Government would, in effect, alter that decision of the people in some incidental fashion.

Hypothetically, the people could resoundingly decide to reaffirm first past the post as an electoral system. If there was then any suggestion of a move by either Chamber of Parliament to reject it, obviously that could not be done, especially in the wake of an overwhelming decision to reject the system of alternative vote. If any attempt was made by either Chamber of this House to change that decision, perhaps by putting it through Parliament itself, it would be an outrage. If it was good enough to do it by referendum in the first place, it is good enough to do it in the second place. It is no argument to say, “We did not like the result the first time around, and so we will change the system”. That is partly why the alternative vote was rejected. Therefore one of the criteria might be that there has been a recent vote on a subject.

A second criterion might be that something was a fundamental part of the British constitution, such as the voting system itself. It would appear from past experience that that requires a referendum. That might be the second criterion which a priori we would suggest would require the people to be consulted. A third criterion might be a fundamental change in the constitutional arrangements for the governance of the United Kingdom, such as the abolition of one of the two Houses of Parliament. As the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, said, we might speculate that we will have a proposal before us not for the reform of the House of Lords, but effectively to abolish it and replace it with a senate. I leave aside the substantial arguments as to whether this is taking place in the context of, whether intentionally or otherwise, the other House having been denigrated. I merely point out that abolishing a House of Parliament would be a major and fundamental constitutional change and therefore might be a subject for the Minister to consider as one of the criteria I have mentioned.

A fourth criterion would be the complete and fundamental diminution of the powers of one of the Houses of Parliament. I speculate again that if, for instance, we were to create a senate whose representatives were elected by, say, proportional representation, that would hugely diminish the powers, status and role of the other place. That is because the other House is only powerful relative to the second House of Parliament under the British constitution by virtue of the fact that the latter is constrained to scrutiny. If the second House were to add democratic legitimacy to its perceived wisdom and maturity, especially using a system that some people claim is more democratic than first past the post, that could not but diminish the powers of the House of Commons.

Finally, if each one of these criteria was an a priori reason for holding a referendum, we must conclude that any move to bring forward measures to change our constitution that included all the criteria—an electoral system that had already been put to the people, a proposal to abolish a House of Parliament and diminish the rights of the other House by the restoration of a new second House—would mean that they would be compelled to include in any legislative proposals an assurance that there would be referendum on them all. I shall give way to my noble friend.