House of Lords

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Tuesday 6th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, would have made a very good shop steward.

It is a great pleasure for me to wind up for the Opposition and to congratulate my noble friend Lord Williams. He has stimulated a very high-quality debate. Turkeys we may be, but pretty erudite turkeys at that.

I support my noble friend in asking the Leader of the House to encourage discussions within the appropriate committees of your Lordships’ House on the issue of size and, by definition, retirements, but I should say from the Opposition’s point of view that any discussion about size and retirements cannot be divorced from equally important considerations about the balance of parties and Cross-Benchers in your Lordships’ House and any implications that might have for an incoming Government after May 2015. Nor can such a discussion be divorced from more substantive discussions about the future of your Lordships’ House.

I congratulate my noble friend on his ingenuity in suggesting essentially the use of Standing Orders to introduce a limit on the number of active Members of your Lordships’ House. However, I have reservations about that, as does my noble friend Lord Clark. I do not believe that it could be in the gift of this House, through Standing Orders and in the absence of legislation, simply to state that a certain number should be the limit. I also agree with my noble friend Lady Taylor in being concerned that my noble friend Lord Williams’s proposal, as enunciated, would lock in the current balance of this House into the next Parliament. That said, he has surely performed an invaluable function in stimulating an excellent debate.

Of course, many noble Lords—in both this debate and the corridors of the House of Lords—express concern about the growing size of the House. Yet a very full Question Time actually adds to the interest and intensity—as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, said, certainly by implication, when he talked about the decision of Attlee and Churchill in relation to the size of the Commons. It is certainly true that in some debates speakers are given impossibly short periods of time, but those are a rarity. Overall, the House has responded quite well to the increase in numbers. I suggest that this is not so much a question of the size having an impact on the effectiveness of the House but rather more on our reputation.

Given the patronage power held by the Prime Minister of the day to determine the size and balance of the House, it is always likely to increase in size. The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, who was very much welcomed to our debate, welcomed new blood—particularly Tory new blood, because we have had rather a lot of it in recent years. I do not want to go back and repeat what noble Lords said about the coalition agreement stating that the size of the House should reflect the votes cast at the last election. We know from Meg Russell’s excellent work that, if fully implemented, that agreement would have meant that by the end of this Parliament we would have had more than 1,000 Members.

We know that, going forward, if you then take account of changes in the votes cast at the next election, the issues of minority parties and parties that have a reduction in the number of votes cast, that almost becomes the baseline by which you then judge how many seats have to be appointed for the other parties that have increased their votes. That is clearly a nonsense. I hope that the noble Baroness, the Leader of the House, will respond to that point. The particular reason that it is a nonsense is because there is no route for significant numbers of Members to leave the House. Until that is grasped and some kind of understanding is reached about what should be the appropriate balance between the parties and the Cross Benches, it will be very difficult to implement the kind of scheme that noble Lords want.

My party, as noble Lords said, is committed after the election to a constitutional convention that will look at the place of the second Chamber in the context of political reform throughout the United Kingdom. That is a much more considered approach than that of the party opposite and its recent headlong rush to foist an ill-thought-out policy on English MPs without a thought for the wider consequences for the integrity of the union. We have to consider these matters in the round.

Of course, on the assumption that the constitutional convention leads to a successful conclusion in relation to your Lordships’ House, followed by legislation and then implementation, it would clearly be a little time before the substantive change were actually to take place. There are lots of ifs in that journey, so I disagree with my noble friend Lord Maxton. There is a case for the House trying to deal with some of our immediate challenges in advance of that substantial change, if it were to come about.

I hope that the Leader of the House will be able to give some consideration to the points raised by the noble Lords, Lord Sutherland and Lord Forsyth, about procedures and the point raised by my noble friend Lord Foulkes about the role of the Speaker. Governance is another issue. We have just had a report from the Select Committee established to look at governance in the Commons. It suggested more joint working between the Commons and the Lords. At the very least, we should look at that to see how we might respond in a positive way.

Size is clearly another matter that we could discuss now in an interim period, assuming that substantive change will take some years to come. I already said that any agreement on a scheme to set a limit on the size of your Lordships’ House has to take account of an appropriate balance between the political parties and the Cross Benches. That is very important. The noble Lord, Lord Luce, said earlier that the House of Lords is an effective body. However, crucially, for it to be effective, Governments have to face defeat—or fear it —because in the end that is the only way that changes to legislation are made. There is no question that there is a difference between what happened from 1997 to 2010 and what has happened subsequently. The last Labour Government was defeated 528 times in 1,701 Divisions —some 31% of the total. We are now in a new position. With coalition government, it is effectively much harder for an Opposition to win votes. Therefore, the number of votes the Opposition win is less than 31%.

My point is that this is important, because unless Governments really fear defeat, the House of Lords cannot be effective as a proper revising Chamber. When I was a Minister, I knew that if the Opposition combined with Cross-Benchers on key points of concern about legislation, one way or another, we had to respond. Sometimes it would be toughed out through ping-pong, but more often we had to respond. That precious balance between the two Houses ensures the effectiveness of the second Chamber.

I say in conclusion simply that it is right to think about ways in which we can deal with the size of the House, but we must be very careful that in so doing we do not upset the precious balance between the two Houses and the role of the Government and the Opposition in your Lordships’ House. I am most grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken. It has been an excellent debate and we all look forward to the noble Baroness’s response.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

When I say “right time”, I mean that it does not have to be all the time. Some of the rarest contributors can be the most valuable Members of this House if they exercise self-restraint, a point well made by the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland.

I am not going to comment on each proposal put forward today and I am certainly not going to rule anything out before there is an opportunity for proper consideration. The noble Lord, Lord Butler, urged me to take this matter seriously and I do, but I also say to noble Lords that we must guard against sounding too defeatist in the way that we speak about this House and the number of Peers who attend. Some noble Lords have used what I thought was rather colourful language, which I would not deploy myself, to describe this House. Right now we are doing a good job. We remain a strong and considered revising Chamber, one where a noble Lord, whether a Minister or a member of the Back Benches, will always have to make a compelling case to win an argument and the support of the House. The Opposition waste no opportunity to highlight that the Government have been defeated over 100 times during this Parliament, so I was a little surprised at the way in which the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, represented what has happened over the past few years. The other point that is worth making is that in terms of the effectiveness of the contributions made by noble Lords in our debates—

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

Would the Minister not agree that coalition government changes the dynamic of the second Chamber? We can trade statistics but there is no doubt about it: the Government are winning more votes than the previous one did, and that is clearly because the two government parties together have a large majority over the Opposition. That was not the case under the previous Government. It makes a difference.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

We do not have a majority because there are Cross-Benchers in this House, as the noble Lord knows well. The point that I was going to add was that we should not measure the effect of the contributions made in this House just by government defeats. A huge number of government amendments are made to legislation as a result of dialogue with noble Lords during the passage of legislation.

Clearly we cannot keep growing indefinitely, and that is one of the reasons why we have introduced a massive change in this Parliament: Peers are now able to retire permanently. That change reinforces our ability to give the public confidence in the laws that Parliament makes. Just as we should expect Members to contribute on occasions when they are especially well placed to do so, so we are now able to support noble Lords who wish to retire when they feel that that is no longer the case for them. Some noble Lords have argued against an age limit; some, like my noble friend Lord Naseby, have spoken in support of one. Consideration about retirement is not just a matter of age; it is also a matter of contribution, a point made by those speaking today.

I am not here to prescribe how or whether a contribution can be specified, because retirement is a deeply personal decision. We were all moved by Lord Jenkin’s valedictory speech, and I am pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Blair of Boughton, quoted from it today. However, if we focus on the purpose of the House of Lords and are committed to increasing our effectiveness as an unelected Chamber, we should be able to support each other in deciding when it is time to retire.

I turn to some of the points that noble Lords made about the need for restraint in new appointments. As has been acknowledged, the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Williams, focuses on attendance, not appointments. That said, the Prime Minister has indeed exercised his prerogative power to recommend appointments in a restrained way. I dispute what the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley of Knighton, said, not least because my noble friend Lord Strathclyde asked me to confirm whether there are only 34 more Members on the four main Benches than there were in 2007. That is incorrect. In the light of the retirement of Lord Jenkin, today the number is 33. It has gone down.

The idea of a moratorium on appointments was put forward by some noble Lords. As I have already said, and this has been supported by noble Lords today, it is right that there continue to be new appointments to this House so that we may bring fresh views and perspectives to our work. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, referred to vote share and the coalition agreement. That was in the coalition agreement. It is and has always been a general aim, not a mathematical equation, but it is worth pointing out that during this Parliament the Prime Minister has appointed 47 Labour Peers as well as Conservative and Liberal Democrat Peers.

Some noble Lords raised questions about the pressures on our practices, procedures and resources. Of course we should try to mitigate them. On specific matters of procedure and practice, I set out my views in some detail during the short debate last month led by the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, so I shall not repeat them, except to say that I disagree with him about the role of the Lord Speaker. I believe that it is important that we properly respect and uphold our self-regulating nature because it is again about being different from the Commons, and the fact that we are different adds value to what happens in the parliamentary process.

I understand that the noble Lord, Lord Williams, has spoken to the chairman of the Procedure Committee, who has indicated that he is willing to provide the undertaking that the noble Lord is seeking, namely that that committee should consider the issue he has raised with a view to reporting back to the House. I think that that is an appropriate next step as part of an ongoing discussion. My noble friends Lord Strathclyde and Lord MacGregor, the noble Lord, Lord Butler, and others suggested an options paper by the Clerk to inform the discussion of the Procedure Committee. A range of ideas has been put forward today by my noble friends Lord Jopling, Lord MacGregor and Lord Wei, the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, the noble Lord, Lord Richard, and others, so there is quite a lot to feed in to any discussion that may take place in the Procedure Committee. I would like that discussion to be informed by our purpose of ensuring that there is public confidence in the laws of the land and in what Parliament decides and to consider how we can be clear about what we expect from each other in contributing to that purpose.

I want to be specific in response to any suggestion that taxpayers’ money might be made available to encourage Members to retire. That remains very much a red line for me. That is not something that I want to support at all, for the reasons that other noble Lords have given today. The noble Lord, Lord Clark of Windermere, asked about mechanisms, and the noble Lord, Lord Williams, was clear when he said that any mechanisms that we consider will be voluntary.

My noble friend Lord Cope is right that our powers to self-regulate go far, but they do not override Her Majesty the Queen’s power in the Life Peerages Act to create peerages for life with rights to sit and vote or the Prime Minister’s right to put forward to Her Majesty recommendations for appointments. However, while I am on the matter of regulation, I can respond to the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner of Worcester, who asked about legislation to accelerate the appointment of women Bishops. A government Bill on that had its First Reading in the Commons just before Christmas, so that is proceeding.