House of Lords: Lord Speaker’s Committee Report

Lord Murphy of Torfaen Excerpts

Tuesday 19th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, even if it is as the 82nd speaker in today’s rather long but important debate.

In all my years in Parliament, I have never been persuaded of the need for an elected second Chamber. I agree with elections—since 1973 I have fought 11, one every four years—but I do not think an elected Upper House will be anything other than a rival to the House of Commons, particularly if that House were elected on the basis of proportional representation. Having been involved over the last decade in the establishment of parliaments in Northern Ireland and Wales, I think it is inevitable that as a new parliamentary institution is set up it will eventually want more powers as it goes along. In Wales’s case, I think that was right, but would that be the case for an elected second Chamber that wanted more and more powers as the years went by?

However, if we do not have an elected Chamber then we have to have an appointed one that is reformed. In the two years that I have been in this place, I have been deeply impressed at the level of debate and expertise. I have been particularly impressed by the level of scrutiny of legislation, which is infinitely better than that in the House of Commons. At the same time, though, we have to look at the issue of size. When I entered Parliament in 1987, the House of Lords had 1,200 Members. In all the years that I was an MP, I never had one single letter or email about the size of the Lords. That is not to say that it is not an issue, because it is. My noble friend Lady McIntosh and others have said that it is a matter of reputation, not only of this House but of the whole of Parliament. Over the last five or six years, for all sorts of reasons, Parliament has not been seen in the best light. Unless we try to ensure that this House is a reasonable size then we are doomed, particularly on the basis that the Government want the membership of the House of Commons actually to go down. You cannot have a reduced House of Commons and an increased House of Lords; that just does not make sense in a modern constitution. I therefore join in the chorus of approval for the noble Lord, Lord Burns, whose committee has done a tremendous job on the report. “Elegant” is certainly the word; it is also practical, important and, most importantly, possible.

There are of course other issues that need to be addressed. I think we should abolish the by-elections for hereditary Peers. However, I believe the Bishops’ Bench should remain. I am a Catholic Christian who is quite willing to pass on to the Church of England the issues of Christianity that need to be debated in this place, and I have never heard any contribution from the Bishops’ Bench with which I have disagreed. I think that is important too.

The other issue that is important, certainly for those of us who do not live in or represent London, is the need in a changed political landscape to ensure that this place properly represents the nations and the regions of the UK. We now have devolution of sorts in Northern Ireland—I hope it will come back—and in Scotland and Wales, and there is an increasing move towards devolution in the north of England as well. Like many second Chambers in the world, this one could do a great job of ensuring that the nations and the regions of the UK in the 21st century were properly debated and looked after.

There is a problem with all of this, though, which has been touched on by a number of noble Lords during the course of the debate. If we are to listen to the gossip and rumours that are now prevalent throughout Parliament that the Prime Minister is about to appoint anything between—I have heard—25 to 56 Peers into this place, simply for the reason of passing legislation on Brexit, that would torpedo this report. That would never make sense. We cannot have the House of Lords appearing to be extremely united in wanting the report to be implemented and then, only weeks later, for that to be undermined by the creation of dozens of new Peers by the Prime Minister—who, I admit, has been very moderate on this issue in years past. If there is to be a race between new Peers being appointed by the Prime Minister and the implementation of the report, I am all in favour of the implementation of the report.