House of Lords Reform

Lord Hoyle Excerpts

Tuesday 29th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hoyle]

My Lords, we always get surprises in this House, and I did not imagine that I would agree so much with the noble Earl. Nor did I imagine for one moment that he was going to be in favour of an elected House. Indeed, when agreeing with the Leader of the House in the past, I said that there were only two of us in favour. Now it appears that there are one or two more than that.

On the other side, we have heard again—I agree with my noble friend Lord Richard when he says that the arguments are all the same—the reason for delay and why we cannot do it now. We have referred in passing to the fact that there have been party manifestos on this. The Conservative Party manifesto stated:

“We will work to build a consensus for a mainly-elected second chamber to replace the current House of Lords, recognising that an efficient and effective second chamber should play an important role in our democracy and requires both legitimacy and public confidence”.

In their manifesto, the Liberals were quite short on the subject. They simply said:

“Replace the House of Lords with a fully-elected second chamber with considerably fewer members than the current House”.

That is quite straightforward as well. The Labour Party manifesto stated:

“Further democratic reform to create a fully elected Second Chamber will then be achieved in stages. At the end of the next Parliament one third of the House of Lords will be elected; a further one third of members will be elected at the general election after that. Until the final stage, the representation of all groups should be maintained in equal proportions to now. We will consult widely on these proposals, and on an open-list proportional representation”—

I emphasise, an open-list proportional representation—

“electoral system for the Second Chamber, before putting them to the people in a referendum”,

with which I agree. It is no use this House continuing to resist change.

My noble friend Lord Desai is right; it is possible that that could go through, and it is time that the House recognised that that is legitimate and could happen. We have seen that the new Government are prepared to bring that about. There has been a lot of talk about the clash between the two Houses if it happened. On 24 June, the noble Lord, Lord McNally, stated:

“The Government believe that the basic relationship between the two Houses, as set out in the Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949, should continue when the House of Lords is reformed”.—(Official Report, 24/6/10; col. WA 206.)

That is right as well. There is no reason why there should always be a clash between the Commons and the Lords. What about the Lords and the Commons coming together to bring the Executive to account? I do not see why that could not be achieved. We have been looking at the negative; let us look at the positive for a moment.

We have been talking about the size of a new House. We ought to recognise that this House is run by about 400 people. There may be nearly 800 Members, but attending week by week or day by day there are about 400, give or take—sometimes there are less, sometimes more—so there is no reason why we should not look at a composition of a House of about 400. I welcome what the Leader of the House said: that he would look at proposals for what might happen to existing Peers—retirement, or how else they could go? There is no reason why we cannot change that.

I also agree with the noble Earl that anyone who is elected should be elected for one term—that term being, I suggest, about 15 years. It could be for three Parliaments; it could be for 15 years. Where I disagree is that if we are to get a real turnout and make a representative House, the election must be on the same day as the general election, when the Commons is elected, but in a different way. I believe that it should be elected by region; I believe that it should be by proportional representation; but I believe that it should be by an open list, so that Members are not responsible to the parties in the same way. We know what parties do with lists; they put those who they want at the top and those they do not want nearer the bottom. Why should not the electorate select for themselves who they want to sit in Parliament?

If you pass legislation, you should be democratically elected. I think it is possible—I go no further than that—to say that after 100 years, we may be nearing the time when there could be an elected House. I respect everyone in this Chamber. I really enjoy my time here and any debate I partake in, but instead of trying to delay and procrastinate, we have to recognise that this might happen and must play a role in bringing it about. We must be positive and look towards the future: a democratic House. We will end 100 years of procrastination when we achieve that aim.