House of Lords Reform

Lord Murphy of Torfaen Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Paul Murphy (Torfaen) (Lab)]

Before the Minister leaps up and tells me how I have voted on various debates on the House of Lords over the years, let me say that, like my right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (David Miliband), I eventually voted for a 100% elected House, but for very different reasons. According to a rather bizarre tactic—I must confess that I did not quite see the logic of it—if I voted for that, the establishment of a directly elected House of Lords would somehow be prevented. [Laughter.] There it is; we were told that at the time.

Nevertheless, I want to put on record that I do not believe in a directly elected House of Lords. I am not attracted to the idea because I believe that we would elect a rival to this House of Commons, and I do not think that we would have a revising Chamber anywhere near as good as the one that we have now, although I do believe that there is a strong case for reforms of the House of Lords as it stands.

A Member mentioned Australia earlier. The lower House is elected by alternative vote—that is another story—and the upper House by single transferable vote, but over the years there have been serious differences of opinion and almost gridlock between the two Houses on various issues such as climate change. That could well occur were the upper House in this Parliament to be elected. The Prime Minister’s tutor Vernon Bogdanor, who recently wrote a book on the coalition and constitutional change, has said that in the event of disputes between the two Houses,

“a directly elected second Chamber would decrease, not increase, the power of the voter, by insulating Parliament even further from the voter than it is already.”

I am not persuaded in that regard.

The hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams) and others have observed that the House of Lords does not contain the sort of expertise that it might have years ago, and that today it is packed with place-people from various parties. I am not sure that I agree with that. In last week’s debate in the other place, Lord Howe of Aberavon cited contributions to a debate on the national health service by

“two former deans of university medical schools, a practising dentist, a consultant obstetrician, a consultant paediatrician, a former GP, a former professor of nursing, a former director of Age Concern and the president of Mencap.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 21 June 2011; Vol. 728, c. 1195.]

I do not believe that a House of Lords whose Members were elected in the way suggested could provide such expertise.

[Conor Burns]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that even if the number of experts diminished over time with the increased number of appointees, that would be an argument not for the abolition of the House of Lords but for returning to having more people of expertise appointed to the House of Lords?

[Paul Murphy]

It is an argument for reform, not abolition. The bishops are another case in point. I am a Roman Catholic, not an Anglican, but I believe that the bishops of the Church of England offer a tremendous amount of expertise and experience to Parliament, and that they should still be Members of the House of Lords.

[Duncan Hames]

Does the right hon. Gentleman think that bishops voting in the House of Lords adds in any way to the expertise they are able to offer through what they say in that Chamber, and might they find it easier to remain in that Chamber if they were to desist from taking part in Divisions?

[Paul Murphy]

That is possible; obviously, such matters would have to be addressed.

Whatever our views about the Bill, I have to say to my Front-Bench colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), that I entirely agree with the Opposition Front Bench on a number of points—for example, a 15-year term of election is completely dotty. I hope that will be reconsidered, because it would give Members a long time in the other place without any proper mandate. As they are to be paid and their job will therefore be a profession, most of them will, presumably, be about 51 years of age upon election now that the pension rules have been changed, so that they can retire at 65. I hope that that proposal will be jettisoned, therefore.

I want to conclude with a few comments about process. When this House considered the constituencies Bill, the coalition was not a bit interested in consensus. Every time contributors to the debates both here and in the other place talked about the need for major constitutional changes to have a bedrock of consensus, the coalition Government refused to take any notice, but now that they want their way on the House of Lords consensus is the order of the day. I wonder whether this is a consensus of convenience, therefore. I believe that my own Front-Bench team should be rather sceptical about a Joint Committee and about being drawn into a consensus that in my view is convenient. We should not be gulled by that, and I think this particular constitutional change needs more than a Committee; it probably needs a royal commission to deal with it, rather than a Committee of politicians. Whatever sort of body it is, however, we must be very careful.

In all the years I have been a Member of this House, there has been a free vote on reform of the House of Lords. That should be the case whatever the manifesto commitments—and I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough (Sir Stuart Bell) that our manifesto commitment fell when we lost the election—and whatever the policies of the parties. Over the years, there were manifesto commitments and party principles and policies, but there was always a free vote for all the parties in this House of Commons and in the other place, and I believe that there should be a free vote on this issue.

Finally, I wish to raise the referendum issue. Some 100 years ago when the then Liberal Government introduced their first reform of the House of Lords, there was, to all intents and purposes, a referendum in that there was a general election on a single issue: whether the House of Lords should be reformed. Therefore, it is completely logical that we, too, should have a referendum on reform of the House of Lords. We had a referendum on whether we should remain a member of what was then known as the Common Market. We had referendums on elected Assemblies in Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland. We had a referendum only this year on whether the powers of the Welsh Assembly should be extended—they were—and we also had a referendum on the alternative vote.

Lord Ashdown referred in his speech in the other place and in The Times today to people who hold my views on the matters under discussion as war horses, and to those who agree with me on the alternative vote as dinosaurs. Whichever animals we might be, the dinosaurs won the argument with the people on the alternative vote, and the war horses have the following in common with the dinosaurs: we want the people of this country to decide the constitutional future of this country in respect of the House of Lords, so let us have a referendum on this Bill.