Welfare Reform Bill

Lord Naseby Excerpts

Tuesday 14th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Fowler]

She introduced the Lords amendment that justified the disagreement thus:

“Because it would alter the financial arrangements for housing benefit made by the Commons, and the Commons do not offer any further Reason trusting that this Reason may be deemed sufficient”.—[Official Report, 24/7/86; col. 416.]

Therefore, this is not a new position. Obviously we can argue about all the amendments that have been negatived in that particular way. However, given the financial position, and the amount of money that is at stake here, it is justified.

However, I would like to add two further points. The noble Baroness, or perhaps it was my noble friend, said that we do not want to get into a debate about procedures in the other place. We would have a great deal more confidence in the parliamentary process if everything in the other place was not guillotined and timetabled. The trouble is that so much comes here that is half digested, and some of it has never been considered at all. If we are to have consideration, that should be it.

The second point—and I realise that I am slightly chancing my arm here—is about the future. Does my noble friend think that things are going to be quite as easy with an elected House of Lords as they are with us? Does he not think perhaps that elected Peers might say, “My vote is as good as yours in the House of Commons”, and that the result will be exactly the kind of situation that my noble friend is trying to prevent?

[Lord Naseby]

My Lords, as the 58th Chairman of Ways and Means, I have to say to the noble Lord opposite, who is a great historian, that the point of being appointed Chairman of Ways and Means was created by that Act in the 17th century, because the then Members of Parliament did not trust the then Speaker with ways and means—in other words, with money. That is why, even today, the budget of this nation is taken by the Chairman of Ways and Means. Therefore the historical analysis that the Leader of the House gave us is absolutely correct, and that is the situation as of this moment. I would just say that the points made by my noble friend Lord Fowler are two additional points that the House may well wish to reflect on as we move forward in the future.

[Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield]

My Lords, I have immense respect for the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde. Would he accept that bicameral legislatures work best in conditions of respectful mutual restraint? If one or the other Chamber pushes its powers to the maximum, it tends to produce a spiral of escalation that leads to Parliament becoming much less than the sum of its parts. It would be impossible for your Lordships’ House to serve as a Chamber of what Walter Bagehot called “respected revisers” if the other place pushed its undoubted financial privilege to the maximum in anything but the most exceptional circumstances. We have, very neatly, great wisdom from the past on this from a remarkable Liberal Prime Minister, Mr Gladstone, who said of the British constitution that nowhere in the wide world does a constitution presume,

“more boldly than any other the good sense and the good faith of those who work it”,

and I underline the verb “work”.