House of Lords Reform

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Tuesday 29th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I shall come in as Pollyanna, even if I leave as Cassandra. I support an elected House of Lords; I am with the noble Lord, Lord Richard, on that. I am happy with the composition and purpose of the committee; I am with my Front Bench on that. We have to have a focused committee if we are to get through the difficult business of producing a Bill. The structure that my noble friends have proposed is exactly right. I am happy that it should be followed by a pre-legislative stage, as long as it is given enough time. I am happy with what my noble friend Lord Strathclyde said about the elected House having the same powers and duties as the current House.

I do not see that there is necessarily a vast difference between those who want an elected House and those who support the Bill of my noble friend Lord Steel of Aikwood. At its closest, the only difference is that my noble friend’s Bill involves Peers being chosen from a secret list, whereas election involves them being chosen from an open list. The two are very close together, especially as my noble friend Lord Strathclyde says that the House is to have the same powers and duties, and therefore that we are presumably to try to keep close to the current model of this House—to have, as far as possible, an evolution rather than a revolution.

Perhaps we shall end up with a House which one can reasonably hope will behave in much the same way as does this one, or at least that it will change slowly and predictably. If we go for some of the more revolutionary styles of an elected House and move further from where we are now, we will get something that is much less predictable. It does not take long before we are in the territory described by my noble friend Lord Norton, where we have much more conflict with the other place, much less quality in this place and much less value for the public in the House as a whole

As I said, I am fundamentally optimistic, but I think that my noble friends are making a grave mistake in making the committee so closed to us. So many of the matters which the committee will have to ponder are entirely common between an elected House and proposals under the Steel Bill. What size should this House be? Should it incorporate or tend to major on expertise? What should be the political balance of the House? What should be the social balance of the House between gender and ethnic minorities? What should be the geographical balance of the House? How should we attempt to incorporate small parties? What should the thresholds be? What is the size and role of the Cross Benches? Are we to be a part-time House or a full-time House? What is the length of our term to be and is it renewable? What is the cost of this House to be? What are salaries to be? What support is to be provided to Members? Are we to have members of the Government in this House or are they merely to be visitors? How will we handle the transition? Should there be a continued link with the honours system?

Almost all the questions that this committee has to decide are matters on which this House has great expertise and interest and can apply itself regardless of whether we will end up with an elected or an appointed House. They all have to be sorted out whichever direction we are going in. There is no reason why we should not do that with good spirit and co-operation. The Government might even find—and I think they ought to know us well enough to trust us on this sort of thing—that we would give them a decent hearing on which electoral system should be used if we go for an elected House. What we have to do is be involved.

If we are left at the point where we do not really have any say until we get to the pre-legislative stage, we will be, in effect, supplicants to a committee half of which is made up of another place. I envisage us ending up in a train wreck. It is quite clear from the speeches today that the majority of this House is extremely cautious about the idea of election. If we think that all their ideas and contributions have been shut out of the process of getting to the Bill, if we are left with all the decisions seemingly taken, how do the Government expect that they will get their ordinary legislation through, let alone the Bill that will follow this? What are the consequences for the coalition if this policy falls apart because of the mishandling of this House?

It seems to me that there is a great deal to be said not for changing the composition of the committee, but for giving this House a great deal of time with that committee. I note that the Commons are coming back in September and we are not. I note that we have not been told when we are coming back in October, and not many of us really spend much time attending party conferences. There is plenty of opportunity for us to be given some quality time with this committee to get to the point where we feel that we have made our arguments, have helped to resolve some of the difficult questions in the Bill and that we have, at least in part, ownership of it.