House of Lords Reform

Lord Jenkin of Roding Excerpts

Tuesday 29th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

My Lords, I rise as number 50 on the list and I am conscious of the fact that there are still another 15 or 16 speakers to go before the wind-ups, so I shall be brief. I am sorry that my noble friend Lord Strathclyde is not in his place, as I would want him to hear this. He has listened to many hours of this debate and I cannot help but feel some sympathy for him as the Minister who will no doubt have to take through this House whatever emerges from the committee of which we have heard or from the Joint Committee that is to follow it.

It is perfectly clear from the speeches that we have heard that the position has not changed since the previous occasions when we have debated this issue. An overwhelming majority of this House is against the idea of an elected House and believes, as the noble Lord, Lord Birt, so cogently put it in the speech to which we have just listened, that an appointed House is a perfectly good way of finding the expertise that is necessary for us to perform our totally different function from that of the House of Commons. I listened to my noble friend Lord Onslow saying that the House of Lords needs more powers, including the power to tax. All I can say is, “Heaven forfend”. I hope that, as someone else said, the Members of another place may be persuaded to read his speech.

Earlier this afternoon, I listened to the speech of my noble and learned friend Lord Howe of Aberavon. We are very old friends; indeed, when we came down from Cambridge, we shared two rather grotty rooms while we started our practices at the Bar. Therefore, it is not altogether surprising that I should have intended to talk about two of the points that he made so cogently and to use the quotation that he gave from the Leader of another place, Sir George Young. However, as my noble and learned friend said it all perfectly well, I will not. To my mind, he made an extremely cogent argument as to why the Government’s position on this is wrong.

Like my noble and learned friend and others, I believe that the major problem in our constitution has been the Executive’s increasing dominance over the House of Commons and to some extent this House. It seems to me that that is what lies behind the public disquiet about politics and politicians. The Administration —one has to say this of whatever party or coalition of parties—seem to require the control of Parliament, which should be their watchdog. Parliament is there to scrutinise the Government as the first check and balance in the constitution.

One of the people who have been writing about our affairs over the years has been the admirable academic Meg Russell of the Constitution Unit at UCL, who has had many wise things to say about this House and its reform. The noble Baroness, Lady Howe, referred to the House of Lords Library’s excellent report—in fact, the other report was produced in March, not yesterday—from which I quote. Meg Russell wrote in her latest book:

“Although ministers try to present arguments as Lords versus Commons, the far more interesting dynamic is that of Parliament versus executive. The existence of the Lords as a serious longstop has given a greater confidence to MPs to extract concessions from ministers, and the greater rebelliousness of the Commons also acts to boost the power of peers. This … could represent a real shift of power within the British Westminster system”.

Yet what do we see? The Government propose an all or mainly elected House, which, as others have said, will come under the control of the political parties and in which we will lose most, if not all, the value of the Cross Benches and the independence of mind that they bring. It was certainly said that one of the motives of the last Government was to increase the Executive’s power over the House of Lords, which was the one organ of government over which they did not have control. So I align myself wholly with the majority of your Lordships in opposing what this Government are trying to put forward.

I am sorry that I did not hear the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, who expressed some doubt as to whether this reform could happen. I share that view. Given the great weight of opinion in this House, the Government will have a very severe task if they try to force their legislation through Parliament.

The noble Lord, Lord Steel of Aikwood, has a Motion on the Order Paper, and invited all of us in the House—a number of noble Lords have taken advantage of this—to express our views. I wholly support the four points that he has made in his Motion, and I particularly support the view that the commission should be statutory. I read the excellent evidence given by the noble Lord, Lord Jay of Ewelme, to the Constitution Committee of this House. It was a marvellous example of transparency that showed how the Appointments Commission works. If noble Lords have not read it, I strongly recommend that they do.

I will make one final point. The noble Lord, Lord Richard, said that nobody is listening to us. That simply is not true. I will cite my own experience: I chaired the House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology’s inquiry into science and society 10 years ago. Ten years later, there is not a single professional scientific or engineering body in the country that does not have its science and society activities—and the Government have, too. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Richard, is not in his place, but his idea that nobody is listening to us is complete rubbish. We work in a different way from the Commons, we can be equally influential and we should be allowed to go on doing this.