House of Lords: Labour Peers’ Working Group Report

Lord Norton of Louth Excerpts

Thursday 19th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Norton of Louth (Con)]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Bolton, on securing this debate and on the report that is before us. The report constitutes a constructive contribution to the debate on the future of this House. In my view, it is far superior to the documents laid before us in recent years by successive Governments. White Papers have taken as given, first, that the second Chamber should be elected and, secondly, that the functions of the current second Chamber are appropriate and should be retained. By not justifying either point, the Government have avoided addressing the fact that the two are not compatible: if you accept one, the other has to be abandoned. Election would change, fundamentally, the terms of trade between the parties in the House. There would be no reason to accept the existing functions of the House or to exercise restraint in the use of existing powers, let alone to accept those powers as adequate.

By not addressing the contradiction, Governments have been able to focus solely on composition. Election is seen as the democratic option, and the functions are fine, so let us just proceed with election. This stance is fundamentally flawed, so the Government’s House of Lords Reform Bill of 2012 was always going to be a bad Bill. It failed to grasp the need to address functions and powers, just as it failed to recognise that election is not necessarily the democratic option.

This report is to be welcomed because it avoids those mistakes. It addresses functions, doing so through recognising the position of the House within a system of asymmetrical bicameralism. It recognises that the functions derive from the House seeing its role as complementary to that of the elected House. The report puts it very well:

“It is a ‘think again’ house, not a ‘yield or we veto’ house”.

In other words, the House adds value by fulfilling functions that do not challenge the primacy of the elected Chamber. Those functions have, on the whole, been well fulfilled, but there is scope for increasing the efficiency and the effectiveness of the House. The report goes on to say:

“The task then is to find a model for reform that tackles the defects of the present House while preserving its strengths”.

I think it important to recognise that the reforms advanced in the paper are practical proposals that derive from a clear appreciation of the role of the House. I find myself in agreement with most of the proposals embodied in the report, which is hardly surprising given that many echo what was in the original Steel Bill. However, there are a few with which I would take issue. Rather than seek to make what would be essentially Committee-stage points, I will just make a few general comments designed to contribute to the debate.

The report follows the Steel Bill in recommending that the House of Lords Appointments Commission be put on a statutory basis and that the by-election option for hereditary Peers be abolished. There was a reason both were in the Bill. Either they need to be implemented together or putting the Appointments Commission on a statutory basis needs to be achieved before the by-election provision is ended. The merit of the by-election option is that it brings in Members over whom the Prime Minister has no veto: he cannot block a Member who comes here under the provisions of the 1999 Act. At the moment, the Appointments Commission is formally an advisory body to the Prime Minister. By putting it on a statutory footing, one can protect the independence of the commission and there would thus continue to be a route to this House that is free of executive control.

I support the recommendations that this House should be smaller than the House of Commons and that no party should have a majority in the House—again, provisions of the Steel Bill—but I would not necessarily reduce the size to 450. I would be wary, in any event, of a fixed number of Members and one geared to the existing committee activity of the House. I think we could reduce numbers but expand the committee role of the House. I would also be wary of using an age limit to reduce the size of the House, which I would regard as too arbitrary. My view is that we should consider a scheme whereby, at the start of a new Parliament, the parties agree on how many Peers each should retain in the light of the outcome of a general election—the proportions could be geared to the proportion of votes achieved—and then each party group would be responsible for electing those they wish to retain. That would enable the issue of overall size, as well as party balance, to be addressed effectively. Providing that the House was never larger than the House of Commons would prevent the membership ballooning in size.

On the wider issue of a constitutional convention, I am one of those who support that proposal. I have argued previously in this House for creating a constitutional convention, although one somewhat different in scope to what is often proposed. I believe that we need a convention to help us make sense of where we are, and not necessarily to tell us where we should be going—Parliament can decide that once we have a much clearer appreciation of where we are in terms of the structures and relationships that form our constitution. Just over 30 years ago, I published a book entitled The Constitution in Flux. If it was in flux then, how are we to characterise it today? As the report recognises, we have experienced constitutional changes that have been both rapid and discrete. One change impinges on others, but in ways that have not necessarily been thought through. We are particularly vulnerable to the law of unintended consequences. If we plough ahead with further changes, that vulnerability becomes even greater. Hence the case for having a commission able to stand back and assist us in making sense of where we are.

We are now in a situation where it is difficult for a Government to resist the recommendation that there should be a referendum in the event of their embarking on an attempt at major change. I have made the point before that I have a principled objection to referendums, but the problem for successive Governments is that they have not. They have therefore conceded the case for referendums on proposals for major constitutional change. The position was well summarised by the Constitution Committee in its report, Referendums in the United Kingdom, published in 2010. It was for that reason that, as a member of the Joint Committee on the Government’s draft Bill, I voted to recommend that the Government’s proposals be subject to a referendum. The situation is not the ideal, but it is the real, and that is what we have to deal with.

To conclude, I very much welcome this report. It is a considered contribution to debate and forms the basis for moving forward to achieve change which is both practical and desirable. Moving forward on a cross-party basis is to be encouraged. This report meshes with, and reinforces, other contributions to the debate on the reform of this House and I hope that it will be considered seriously by both sides of the House.