House of Lords

Lord Richard Excerpts

Tuesday 6th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Richard (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Williams on raising this issue. It is one that we have skirted around many times in this House for a very long time—I still bear the stripes of past debates on this subject; no doubt there will be others to come—without facing up to it.

The chief attraction of what my noble friend Lord Williams had to say is that it can be done without primary legislation. I am in favour of an elected second Chamber and have been for a very long time, as the House probably knows. I do not resile from that position one scrap. Indeed, if some of the noises that are being made by the leadership of my party in favour of an elected second Chamber based on strong regional connections were to come about, I would welcome it with open arms and be delighted to support it.

We are not currently faced with that issue, however, but with a problem that has arisen from the way that the size of the House has grown. One can set out the issues very simply in a number of questions: is there a problem with the size of the House? The answer to that is clearly yes. It is too big for the work that it does. We do not need 800 people to do work that 400 or 450 are perfectly capable of doing. Is the problem going to go on unless it is resolved? The answer to that is clearly yes. Is the problem going to get worse? The answer to that is clearly yes.

I echo and totally agree with the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Butler, in his somewhat apocalyptic view as to what will happen after the next general election. An incoming Government are bound to want to rebalance the House of Lords. It is asking too much of any Prime Minister to say that he would be prepared to leave the House of Lords unbalanced, particularly if the number of Liberal Members of Parliament declines and there are more than 100 Liberal Democrats sitting on the Benches of the House of Lords. That is not something that any Government will view with equanimity or pleasure. He will want to do something about it. After all, this is a legislative Chamber. We are generally here not to advise the Government, but to pass laws, in which case the Government have to get their business through this House as well as through the House of Commons. To do that, any Government will want the House of Lords broadly to represent the political situation in the country at the time, and therefore I think that the problem will get worse rather than better.

What can we do about it? It seems to me that there are basically three alternatives. One is an age limit, which the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, and various other people have proposed. Secondly, people can be persuaded to go, presumably through a scheme of voluntary retirement, the outlines of which at least are on the statute book. That, coupled with some sort of financial inducement, might produce a mad rush out of this Chamber on the part of many of our colleagues, although personally I rather doubt that. Thirdly, the numbers can be reduced based on the service that people have given.

I understand the superficial attraction of an age limit—it is a simple way of dealing with the matter. However, it is brutal and blunt. It might be fair but I am not sure that it would be effective. A system based on an appreciation of what people do in this House, how often they appear and how often they participate in the affairs of the House would be a much more sensible way of approaching any sort of scheme for a reduction in numbers.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)]

I wonder whether my noble friend will give way. He mentioned the Liberal Democrat Peers. Would he care to speculate on why no Liberal Democrat Peer is going to speak in this debate? Why are they keeping their heads down today?

[Lord Richard]

If I were a Liberal Democrat, I would keep my head so low as to be totally invisible. My noble friend has answered his own question. I am now a bit lost as to where I was.

[A noble Lord]

Serves you right!

[Lord Richard]

I think that I was getting near to the end of what I was going to say. I wish to add two sentences. Yes, there is a problem. Yes, it needs resolution. However, setting an age limit is perhaps a brutal way of dealing with the issue. I would far prefer it to be done on the basis of experience and on who does what and when. I still hold to a basic, almost trade union, principle, which is that those who work are entitled to remain in their jobs and those who do not work should perhaps be the ones to whom we say goodbye.

My noble friend Lord Williams has produced a scheme which, in its outline, conforms to that principle, and it is well worth looking at. It is useful that we are having this debate and it is right that this matter should go to the appropriate committee of the House. The clerks are going to have to work extremely hard to produce their options paper, but we all know that the clerks in this House are redoubtable and flexible individuals who can no doubt produce large quantities of paper when that is required, although it is probably not required in this case. We do not want large quantities; we want small quantities. We want a proper options paper, proper consideration by the committee and a quick report. One hopes that more time will be given for the House to look at this issue again before the general election.

Finally, I want to say a word which goes back to where I started. I believe that the future of this House is as an elected second Chamber. I know that that is not a popular view in this House and I am well aware from my experiences in 2012 that it is not a view universally shared. However, faced with the alternative of the continuation of a nominated House with the sorts of problems that we are looking at in this debate or an elected second Chamber, I know which side I would come down on.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Jopling]

I am well aware of that, but if they found themselves in government with Ministers down at the other end of the corridor, it is inevitable that they would need to have Ministers on the Government Front Bench here to speak for their party in your Lordships’ House. I think that that is obvious.

Let me put forward another scenario. We are told by the public opinion polls that the Liberal vote has seriously sunk. If that was to happen—I think it was my noble friend Lord Strathclyde who referred to this —and there was only a handful of Liberal Members in the House of Commons, this House would look particularly stupid if it still had 103 Liberal Peers sitting here simply because the arrangements for membership of this place were not flexible. We must somehow build a flexibility into the membership. I believe that, after each election, the way you can achieve that flexibility is to pitch the party membership of the House to broadly reflect the views of the public. That is quite different to having an elected House—this is more or less what you would get if you had an elected House, but this is a much better way of going about it.

The third and final scenario—

[Lord Richard]

The noble Lord has given both the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats some advice as to what they might do. Would he like to give his own party some advice as to how to deal with UKIP?

[Lord Jopling]

If the UKIP vote at the next election matches the Liberal vote—as the public opinion polls suggest it might—it would mean that neither of them would have very many Members down the corridor. But let us leave that just to the side for the moment.

A third scenario is that it is not impossible, as I have said to your Lordships before, that a new party could sweep to power. My old friend, the noble Lord, Lord Richard, mentioned UKIP. I do not think that UKIP will do it, but politicians are not popular creatures at the moment, and there is the opportunity for a new party to sweep to power in this country at some time. We have seen it happen in Turkey and in Italy in recent years, with a new party suddenly appearing from nowhere, and this House would look particularly stupid if you had a Government with virtually no support in your Lordships’ House.

These things can be done quickly; it is not impossible to do them. I have discussed this and circulated my plan before. If any of my noble friends wish to see it, I should be very glad to send them a copy of the solution for the construction of the House of Lords which, as I say, I have been peddling for over 12 years.