House of Lords Reform

Lord Mancroft Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mancroft (Con)]

My Lords, I feel a sense of déjà vu enveloping me as I listen to this debate. I well remember an almost identical debate that I took part in once before. A Labour Government had been elected by a landslide, led by a pale, male, north London lawyer. His party had a manifesto commitment to reform the House of Lords, but apparently any reform was impossible while there were hereditary Peers in it. The Government did a deal with those hereditary Peers whereby they agreed to leave the House on the understanding that full reform would be enacted as soon as possible and, in the meantime, they would leave 92 of their number to ensure that it took place.

The hereditary Peers agreed to leave the House but, astonishingly, that manifesto commitment evaporated without any hint of reform and the Government forgot about it for the remainder of their 10 years in office, so it cannot have been that important after all. Thanks to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, who is sadly not in his place today, now we know that no such reform was ever planned or intended. We had been played for fools.

Twenty-five years later, we are back where we started. Now we have another Labour Government, also led by a pale, male, north London lawyer—although not such a popular one—with a manifesto commitment to reform this House. Apparently, the handful of hereditary Peers who it was agreed would remain in this House until reform took place and have dutifully fulfilled their side of the bargain are now themselves the block to any substantive reform and must be cast into outer darkness to enable it to take place. What a load of rubbish. This Labour Government stand by their promises to their union paymasters but conveniently forget their promises to those hereditary Peers, to this House and to the House of Commons, which voted for that deal as set out in Section 2 of the 1999 Act.

There is a strong case for a fully elected House, as set out by the noble Lord, Lord Newby, and Second Reading on the Government’s Bill in the House of Commons in October clearly shows, rather extraordinarily, that this now appears to be the model favoured by the present House of Commons. As we have heard, an elected House presents significant problems. It seems inevitable that an elected second Chamber would, rather as the noble Lord, Lord Murphy, was talking about, press for the repeal of the Parliament Acts. A new distribution of powers between the two Houses would be needed, along with a new set of conventions to resolve disputes between them, unless we are to see the sort of deadlock that happens in the United States Congress, which would inevitably occur more with an invigorated second Chamber.

Our difficulty is that we have no real idea what the Government are planning, no White Paper and nothing from the Prime Minister—understandably, as he spends so little time here and is so busy abroad—but we know that Gordon Brown’s commission, of which the noble Lord, Lord Murphy, was such a distinguished member, favoured an elected House representative of the nations and regions, even if he did not. I am not sure how much more representative we could be, although I accept that north London is somewhat overrepresented on the Benches opposite. We know that the Prime Minister favours an elected House, which makes it all the more bizarre that we are shortly to consider a Bill that establishes a fully appointed one.

While there would be less risk of conflict with the other House, an appointed House does not come without problems. As we have heard, the Salisbury/Addison convention has enabled this House to operate efficiently since 1945, but if the remaining hereditary Peers go it will become obsolete. Nor is it within the Government’s power to enforce it, and they can therefore expect Divisions on their Bills at Second Reading and Third Reading. It is even less likely that the convention on secondary legislation will hold for long, as it has been increasingly challenged in recent years.

There is one problem that this Bill creates above all others, and not one speaker in the House of Commons addressed it. While there are arguments in favour of an elected House and an appointed House, there is no credible case for an appointed House where the Executive, in the form of the Prime Minister, who controls the majority in the first Chamber, has sole power of appointment to and thus ultimate control of the second Chamber.

We frequently have to listen to rather silly, childish comparisons between the size of this House and the Chinese National People’s Congress. Anyone with even the most basic knowledge cannot compare a chamber of placemen set up 42 years ago in a communist dictatorship with one political party and a population of 1.4 billion to an 800-year old second Chamber of a highly developed legislature in a multiparty democracy of 68 million. Or can they? While many countries around the world now have bicameral legislatures, many of which are based on the Westminster model, there is only one in which the head of the Executive has complete control. Not even the most powerful Executive in Europe—the President of France—nor President-elect Trump, with his party’s control of the Senate, will have the power that Sir Keir Starmer is giving himself under this Bill. The Government are proposing to give the Prime Minister the same powers of appointment that President Xi has. That silly joke is about to become reality. With the Bill the Government now propose, this House and Parliament will become like the toothless farce that is the Chinese National People’s Congress.

Whatever the Government say, we all know from bitter experience that the Bill that will shortly come before this House is very unlikely to be followed by any further reform. Our constitution is the bedrock of our nation’s freedoms and success. It is like a beautiful, priceless piece of porcelain, but it is very fragile. The previous Labour Government treated it thoughtlessly and cracked it. We cannot allow this Government to break it, because it will be almost impossible to glue it back together again.