Queen’s Speech

Lord Norton of Louth Excerpts

Monday 14th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon]

I am sorry; noble Lords may not like this—

[Lord Norton of Louth]

My Lords, I have the figures in front of me. There are 15 wholly appointed second Chambers in the world—16 if you include the United Kingdom—but they do not include the legislatures just referred to by the noble Lord.

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon]

I am happy to put the advice provided to me by the Library into the public domain if noble Lords wish, but I have the advice here and it is very clear. The other seven appointed bicameral Chambers include the nations that I have just talked about. If the noble Lord wishes to contend that, I shall be happy to exchange with him following the debate the Library research paper on which I base what I say.

This situation cannot be sustained. Noble Lords know that. Some people are using every argument to delay or obstruct reform and are coming forward with arguments that, frankly, do not hold water. Sooner or later, in some way, this House will have to become connected to the democracy of our country. Democracy cannot be kept out of this Chamber; it cannot be kept on the other side of those great brass doors. Sooner or later it will come here, and the longer noble Lords sustain this opposition to it, the more ridiculous this House will look. We now have an opportunity to put that right. Let us take it.

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[Lord Lloyd of Berwick]

There are always too many lawyers, but I maintain that we could do with fewer former MPs and perhaps more elected Peers in the way that the royal commission suggested.

I accept that the Wakeham proposals, which I support, rested on a compromise—of course they did—but you will never, ever reach consensus on a disputed issue unless there is compromise on both sides. Therefore, I beg the Government to think again about the Wakeham proposals before introducing a further Bill, as I hope they will do. A 20% elected House would of course fall far short of what the Deputy Prime Minister wants but it would at least represent a step in the right direction and as such should, I suggest, be accepted by the Labour Party in the House of Commons. As the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, mentioned, it would make the House of Lords more representative but without challenging the primacy of the House of Commons.

If a Bill along those lines were introduced in the House of Commons, I would expect it to get through and, if it did, I hope that it would be accepted by your Lordships in this House. Surely that would be far better than forcing the present Bill down our throats by having resort to the Parliament Acts. Let us do something now and something more than what is contained in the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Steel. Above all, let us not defer the decision by appointing another royal commission under a different name.

[Lord Norton of Louth]

My Lords, the Royal Commission on the Reform of the House of Lords was precisely that—the clue is in the title. Since then, there have been significant changes to the constitution of the United Kingdom. A constitutional convention would address the constitution holistically and not one particular part looking outwards.

[Lord Lloyd of Berwick]

I should be grateful if the noble Lord would indicate what changes there have been since 2012. The only one that I can think of is the progress of devolution. The fundamental questions relating to primacy which we have been discussing are still exactly the same as they were.

[Lord Norton of Louth]

In addition to devolution, we have had the implementation of the Human Rights Act and significant changes in relation to the European Union, to name but three.

[Lord Lloyd of Berwick]

I am entirely unable to see how the Human Rights Act could affect the position. Surely, if anything, it favours an elected House rather than an appointed one.

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[Lord Rennard]

My Lords, in the debate on the gracious Speech two years ago, I made the mistake of beginning by discussing the fixed-term Parliaments proposals, only to find to my great surprise that a principle that had been in the Labour Party manifesto had suddenly become the subject of such passionate opposition from the Labour Front Bench that I was intervened on some six or seven times in as many minutes. I may be about to repeat that mistake by attempting to respond to some of the points made in this debate about the future of your Lordships’ House. I hope then to make a few remarks about electoral registration.

There has been much debate about the future of this House since the much quoted Parliament Act 1911, which followed the controversy over this House blocking what became known as the “People’s Budget” when a Liberal Government, with Lloyd George as Chancellor, first introduced the old-age pension in the face of great opposition from the largely Conservative hereditary Peers who were of course Members of the House at that time. It has been said many times in this House that the House of Lords merely revises legislation and invites the other place to think again. Many of those most opposed to reform frequently say that this House does not block the will of the elected House. However, in many ways, the current controversy about the future of this House goes back all that time to the attempts to block the introduction of national insurance and the old-age pension. These came not long after Gladstone’s attempts to introduce home rule for Ireland.

[Lord Norton of Louth]

The House of Lords actually passed those Bills.

[Lord Rennard]

I defer to the perhaps greater knowledge in this respect of the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth. However, I recall seeing the paintings of the debates in 1893 that hang outside the Bishops’ Bar. I thought that it was at that point that the House of Lords was blocking home rule for Ireland.

[Lord Norton of Louth]

The first home rule Bill was blocked in the House of Commons, not the House of Lords. The House of Lords under the Liberal Government had let through such matters as old-age pensions. Those matters which were clearly popular outside, it let through.

[Lord Rennard]

I think that Lloyd George in his many arguments against the hereditary basis of the House of Lords felt otherwise as he tried to introduce radical legislation.

Turning to more recent times, I would dare to suggest that opposition to the Government’s legislative programme in the past two years has often gone well beyond polite exhortations to the Commons to reconsider. This House has real purpose and real power, even if limited today to the significant power to delay non-financial matters. The power to delay can in practice often be the power to prevent.

The issue of legitimacy for this House to exercise its powers has been debated for more than 100 years. It is frequently suggested that we may now be moving too rapidly to conclude that debate. As I have said previously, it is probably only in this place that a Government intent on proceeding with a principle contained in all major party manifestos and introducing a phased programme of democratic reform over about 15 years could be accused of acting with “undue haste” with only a mere century of deliberation so far.

Proposals for reform appear to have shocked many noble friends to my left in this Chamber—I do not mean to my political left, of course—as well as a few around me. Some of those around me should recall that we have two words in our party title. The first word is “Liberal”, which takes us back to the party of Lloyd George and Asquith and that fight to end the hereditary principle and, at least in Asquith’s case, to replace it with the popular principle for membership of the House.

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[Lord Rennard]

With the greatest respect to the noble Lord, there was absolutely no promise of a referendum on the issue of Lords reform in the Liberal Democrat manifesto in 2010. I believe in representative democracy. I think there are many problems with referendums, as I shall elaborate. The Liberal Democrats did not promise any such thing in 2010.

In answer to the noble Lord’s basic premise that the Liberal Democrats are acting out of pure self-interest in this matter, I point out the major flaw in his argument. In common consensus around the Chamber tonight, we have talked about there being perhaps 400 or 450 Members of this House who are particularly active. I draw noble Lords’ attention to the fact that there are now 90 Liberal Democrat Peers. That is not far off some 23% of the active membership of this House. I also point out to noble Lords that many people who talk about the effectiveness and work of this House have said that it is effective because no one party has an overall majority. No one party has an overall majority if you have a system of proportional representation.

[Lord Norton of Louth]

My Lords—

[Lord Rennard]

I will give way to the noble Lord in a moment. It is not inconsistent for the Liberal Democrats to argue that there should be a system of proportional representation for electing Members of your Lordships’ House to prevent there being a majority for one party in both Houses at any one time.

[Lord Norton of Louth]

I am sorry to interrupt my noble friend again but, on a point of detail, there is a system of proportional representation in Scotland and Scotland now has a majority Government.

[Lord Rennard]

Indeed it has. That is because the Scottish National Party secured almost a majority of the votes. My noble friend serves also to remind me of the other flaw in the argument advanced by some noble Lords during this debate that proportional representation would mean that the Liberal Democrats were permanently in government. That was suggested a few moments ago. As the noble Lord, Lord Norton, said, we have PR in Scotland and Wales and the Liberal Democrats are not in government there. That does not follow.

[Lord Norton of Louth]

It does if you look at the proportion of votes that the party gets in the whole of the United Kingdom, focusing on England.

[Lord Rennard]

I simply think that PR is a matter of democracy and we need democracy within this House.

Given the Labour Party’s recent history on House of Lords reform, I am surprised by this new-found enthusiasm for a referendum on the issue. I note that that was in the Labour Party’s manifesto in 2010 but not previously. In the 1996-97 period, leading Liberal Democrats such as my noble friend Lord Maclennan of Rogart, together with the late Robin Cook and other noble Lords and Baronesses—some of them present in the House tonight—agreed a fundamental reform of the House of Lords in the event of the Conservatives losing the 1997 general election. There was no suggestion that there should be a referendum on the proposals. It seems that if there is to be a referendum on the issue it would be because parliamentarians in the other place have failed to do the job that they were elected to do.

I would like to refer briefly back to the report on referendums—

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[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, there is room for a discussion and a concordat between the two Houses. We have also seen in the evidence that there is some resistance to putting into statute a further codification of the relationship between the two Houses because, as I have heard many noble Lords say, the jurisdiction of the courts and litigation would not necessarily be desirable. The Government did notice and will consider the recommendations of the Joint Committee with regard to initiating preliminary work on a concordat between the two Houses, but such work ultimately would be the responsibility of the two Houses rather than of the Government, as it would be concerned with constitutional conventions.

I want to make one other brief point. I was puzzled to hear a number of noble Lords say that this Chamber is not part of the legislature. Erskine May has been quoted on several occasions. On the first page, chapter 1, page 1, paragraph 1 states:

“Parliament is composed of the Sovereign, the House of Lords and the House of Commons. Collectively they form the legislature”.

[Lord Norton of Louth]

I think that my noble friend is confusing a point. People are not saying that the House of Lords is not a part of the legislature; they are saying that it is not a legislature.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I will return to those speeches that I have read. I admit that I have never taken the MA in legislative studies at the University of Hull, but I referred back to my views. This House is clearly part of the legislature; this is a two-Chamber legislature.