House of Lords Reform

Lord Mayhew of Twysden Excerpts

Tuesday 29th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mayhew of Twysden]

My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, and rather a surprise to follow the noble Lord, Lord Wright. I admire both of them. I admired the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, in the House of Commons for many years and admire him in this House. The difference is that I generally agree with him in this House, and I have agreed with him to a very great extent today.

The noble Lord, Lord Filkin, said that there was more to reform than composition—and, of course, there is. But the debate about composition is the cornerstone of reform. I hope that I shall not be thought to be obsessive if I devote my seven minutes to trying to demolish that cornerstone.

In his book, The New British Constitution, Professor Vernon Bogdanor, Professor of Government at Oxford University, has a particular footnote which I shall read. It says,

“In 2007 I heard a Liberal Democrat MP at a meeting in the House of Commons on House of Lords reform solemnly apologise for the fact that the Liberals had not fulfilled their pledge to democratize the composition of the Lords. Perhaps his apology was unnecessary. For the pledge was never intended to have been taken seriously”.

In support of this, Bogdanor reminds us of the then Liberal Government’s heavy and radical reform of legislation. He said that they and their Back-Bench supporters,

“wanted simply a measure which, by removing the obstacle of the House of Lords, would allow”

their programme to be implemented. He continues,

“They saw the Parliament Act as a final solution to the problem”.

They did not see it as “an interim measure”, and, as he says, for the reason that,

“the Liberals were hardly likely to construct a second Chamber more legitimate”

than the then current hereditary system, because being more democratically based it,

“would be in a stronger position to wreck their legislation”.

He concludes:

“It is doubtful ... whether current attempts to reform the composition of the House of Lords designed to make it more legitimate, can fairly be characterised … as ‘Mr Asquith’s unfinished business’”.

These are not fanciful considerations; they were not even fanciful in those days, or considerations peculiar to the differing circumstances of 100 years ago. Neglected though they have been, they remain good today. In modern times, I guess that there was no shrewder judge of these matters than the late Viscount Whitelaw of such fond memory—a highly successful leader of your Lordships’ House and, before that, an MP for some 28 years. In his memoirs, published in 1989, he wrote declaring his opposition to any elected House of Lords, partial or otherwise, as follows:

“Surely, experience with all assemblies, of which the most recent is the European Parliament, shows that the moment the members are elected they demand more powers”.

We can add that subsequent devolution surely adds further examples of that phenomenon.

Let us look into the future. If further powers are demanded, probably—and I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, about this—through a rejection of some of the conventions that govern our relations with the other place, what will happen? It is highly unlikely that the Commons will concede them, so there will be ongoing conflict and instability, with the probability that the delaying powers of this House would be further curtailed in the end, and that the stability of the 1911 settlement—substantially amended as it has been, as we have been reminded—which has served us so well will be disrupted.

Even if the powers of the Lords remained the same, membership of this place would be unlikely to attract what one might perhaps describe as first XI or even second XI players. To quote once again from Bogdanor’s book:

“The more the powers of the Lords are restricted, the more difficult it would be”,

for,

“people of ability to stand for election. What person of merit would wish to stand for election to a toothless chamber”,

and attract to himself all the joys of serving a constituency?

Almost at a stroke, then, there will be undermined and diminished those House of Lords functions which attract the strongest approval from the public; first, our wide expertise, so graphically illustrated by my noble and learned friend Lord Howe this afternoon, brought to bear when scrutinising legislation and in holding Ministers to account; and, secondly, our independence—the latter, because, as Professor Bogdanor points out,

“in every modern elected upper house, elections are organised by political parties and run by professional politicians”.

Not much scope for independence there.

I contend that the right solution, although there is no time to develop it, is a House appointed by an independent statutory commission. That would give it legitimacy from having been imposed, set up and established by Parliament. I concede, of course, that the high-water mark of the case for an elected House of Lords is the fact that all three major political parties supported it in their manifestoes. That undoubtedly advances the case, but does not secure it. Objectively, it can be seen to constitute a shared mistake. The electorate may well forgive a mistake that is confessed, explained and corrected. It will not forgive a mistake that it is left to it, by bitter experience, to discover for itself.