House of Lords: Reform

Lord Howarth of Newport Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, coming in to bat at number 75 it is tempting to have a bit of a slog but I shall be my usual restrained and cautious self. We can surely all agree that our democracy needs safeguarding and strengthening, that government—policy-making, legislation and administration—needs to be done better, that the performance of Parliament needs to be improved and that the House of Lords needs to be reformed. As we pursue political and constitutional reform, our lodestar should of course be democratic legitimacy—the principle that elections determine who should form the Government, that elected Members of Parliament and the Government themselves should be accountable to the people and that the people should, from time to time, have the opportunity to renew them or to replace them. But we have such democratic legitimacy through the ways in which the House of Commons works, as it is now constituted.

That the House of Lords is appointed does not invalidate or weaken our British democracy. So long as the primacy of the House of Commons is accepted, as it now is, the democratic imperative is satisfied. As we have it now, the House of Lords is no more than an advisory Chamber. Its role is revision and scrutiny, which is what the Government want it to be. Of course there are, from time to time, impassioned and prolonged debates between the two Houses. We in the Lords offer our amendments. Sometimes we reiterate that offer. Occasionally, rarely, we exercise our delaying power but ultimately the appointed House of Lords always defers to the democratic authority of the elected House of Commons. Although the textbooks may not quite put it like this, since the Parliament Acts we have, in effect, unicameral government: an elected House of Commons with an advisory House of Lords beside it. The noble Lord, Lord Norton, who always educates me in these matters, described our arrangements as asymmetrical bicameralism.

Mr Clegg’s quest to introduce democratic legitimacy into the second Chamber is the pursuit of a red herring. The people who make the laws are already elected and are accountable to the people. The House of Lords advises the real legislators. If we were to have an elected second Chamber, the clear accountability of Parliament to the people would be muddied.

Elections are not the only source of legitimacy. Judges, academics and faith leaders have legitimacy. The legitimacy of the House of Lords derives from the quality of the advice that it offers through debates, amendments, the work of Select Committees and so forth. The quality of that advice derives from the expert knowledge and experience of the Members of the House—Cross-Benchers and Members of political parties alike. Good scrutiny makes for good government. That is the justification of what we should do.

Our democracy needs reform. The debate about the Bill is not a contest between those who are in favour of reform and those who are against it. The House of Commons needs to pursue the agenda offered by the Wright Committee to strengthen the Back Benches and improve their scrutiny of the Executive. The interaction of the Parliament at Westminster and the European Parliament needs to be improved. We need to attend very carefully to the arrangements for devolution because, since the recent elections to the Scottish Parliament, the union is in greater danger than it has ever been before. We need to reinvigorate elective local government through relaxing control from the centre. There is a large and legitimate agenda for reform and it certainly includes reform of this House. We should not be complacent. There is some risk that this two-day debate might be perceived by some—admittedly those who read it selectively—as a sustained indulgence in institutional narcissism. At any rate, we should not talk too much about our own wisdom. We need to reform the House to make it a more effective advisory House, not to make it a new democratic hotspot.

If the House of Lords were to be abolished and replaced by an elected second Chamber, as the Government propose, how would relations between the two Houses be affected? There could be an attempt to nip this new element of democracy in the bud—to emasculate its democratic potency—restricting its powers to those conventionally exercised by the present mainly appointed House, which is what the White Paper proposes. Who of first rate ability or serious experience in the world would want to stand for election to a Chamber with such limited powers? In principle, an elected second Chamber could be embraced as a vigorous and spirited House of Parliament flexing its democratic muscles. However, in that case, the House of Commons would have to accept a rebalancing of the respective powers of the two Houses. Members of Parliament would have to accept that Members elected to the second Chamber would have the same rights to represent and relate to the citizens of this country as they do. When the United States federal Senate became directly elected, its Members serving longer terms—though not 15-years terms—than Members of the House of Representatives, the Senate became the senior House. The Unites States legislature is characterised by permanent conflict and impasse, with the Executive unable to secure their preferred legislation.

The compromise proposal of an 80 per cent elected and 20 per cent appointed House would not work; I cannot imagine how such a hybrid Chamber could be successful. Of course, the appointed Members would be 20 per cent of a much smaller House. The Government propose that they should be full-time Members. They would be no match for the Cross-Benchers, who at present make such an invaluable contribution to your Lordships’ House. The decisive argument against the compromise proposal is that the unelected 20 per cent would again and again decide the outcome of votes in the mainly elected House, which would be unacceptable.

If we have abolition and replacement, it seems to me likely that the House of Commons would attempt to constrain the powers of the elected second Chamber; but the elected second Chamber would gradually and tenaciously aggrandise its powers, just as we have seen the Welsh Assembly, the Scottish Parliament, the London mayoralty and the European Parliament do. Do noble Lords remember the categorical assurances that we were given before the first direct elections to the European Parliament in 1979 that its powers would remain unaltered? We would have continuous instability and conflict and meanwhile we would have lost the virtues of the appointed House: its expertise and its forbearance.

Either way, whether we have a weak or a powerful elected second Chamber, the key question to be asked is: how would it improve the performance of Parliament? Again and again, I have asked the proponents of elections that question and I have never had an answer. I hope that when he comes to wind up this evening, the noble Lord, Lord McNally, will be able to give us an answer, but I fear that the price for the extra democratic legitimacy that is not needed would be a less effective Parliament.

It would be much better to concentrate our energies on reform of the second Chamber where we can agree, and on improving what we have. The proposals set forth by the noble Lord, Lord Steel of Aikwood, in his Bill are more or less contained within the White Paper and the draft Bill: a reduction of our membership; arrangements for retirement; the phased departure of the remaining hereditary Peers; powers to expel Peers found guilty of grave offences; and a statutory Appointments Commission. The statutory Appointments Commission’s task would be to ensure that the quality, expertise, range and representativeness, in the sense of the term used by the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong of Ilminster, were such as to provide an institution that would give the best of service to the country.

If the Government set aside, at least as their immediate purpose, elections, which are massively contentious inside Parliament, little debated or desired outside Parliament and irrelevant to the urgent needs of the country, it would not be difficult to achieve wide agreement on measures of incremental reform. Incrementalism is the British way of constitutional reform. Changes that often seem modest—for example, the introduction of life peerages—turn out over time to have profound, far-reaching and beneficial consequences. Mr Clegg, if he would moderate his ambition, could yet be a great parliamentary reformer.