House of Lords Reform

Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank Excerpts

Tuesday 29th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank]

My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Morris, we are all allowed a personal reminiscence—perhaps an indulgence—on this occasion. My text for today arises from 20 October 1994, when I said in the House:

“I believe that it would be a mistake for any government to make the reform of the House of Lords the centrepiece of the first parliamentary Session”.—[Official Report, 20/10/94; col. 368.]

I suggested that there were more urgent problems, such as poverty, unemployment, health, education and homelessness. I went on to say that if, however, legislation were to be proposed, it should examine how life Peers were chosen, and by implication the ending of the hereditary principle. I also said that an appointed House should reflect the composition of the electorate as indicated at general elections.

That was my view 16 years ago. Consistency is not necessarily a virtue, but my views since have remained broadly the same. As for priorities, although my noble friends on the Front Bench may wince, I will remind them that there were only two and a half lines about reform of the Lords in the 108 pages of my party's manifesto—and one paragraph out of 300 in the document, The Coalition: Our Programme for Government. In the election campaign, I did not hear much about this in Glenrothes, Wigan or Llanelli. However, I recognise and fully accept the Government's wish to publish a Bill with a large measure of cross-party agreement. If the Bill is a big, bold proposal, it will absorb a great deal of parliamentary time. The alternative is an important, significant but relatively modest Bill, which may succeed.

One objection to the character of the House 16 years ago was the unfair and damaging political dominance of the Conservative Party. In the interim, without statutory change and owing to my noble friend Lord Wakeham's royal commission, there is now a convention by which there are at present more Labour Peers in the House than Tories, even if there are not enough Liberal Democrats. Another objection at the time was, as I said, to the hereditary principle. Although I thought that it should be abandoned completely and did not agree with the Weatherill amendment, at least under the 1999 Act the hereditaries have been reduced to fewer than 100. There has also been an Appointments Commission since 2000. This is better than nothing, although it is not statutory, it has arbitrary numbers and it does not cover all noble Lords who sit on the Cross Benches.

There have been other major constitutional developments, including the election of the Lord Speaker and the departure of the Law Lords to the new Supreme Court. The House has changed a great deal for the better over these years without becoming elected or partially elected. By common consent, the House is very effective in the scrutiny of legislation because it now has a greater range of experience and talent. At the same time, there has been no challenge to the primacy of the Commons. In the end, the existing elected House wins—and quite right, too.

In a debate almost three years ago, I said that my preference among the options for reform of the Lords was for no more White Papers, no more parliamentary Statements and no more working groups. I called for a moratorium of at least five years. It was, I think, the informal view of my noble friend Lord Strathclyde that he would perhaps prefer 10 to five. However, when I came to examine the first draft of my noble friend Lord Steel's Bill, I softened. There was a strong case for supporting it.

Almost every Member of your Lordships' House has a personal agenda. My own is for all Bills to go first to the Commons for Second Reading—to agree on the principle of the Bill and vote if necessary—and then to the Lords for all its stages, from Second Reading to Third and Do Now Pass. After that, it would return to the Commons, which would take the remaining usual proceedings up to Royal Assent. One advantage would be to end the tiresome exchange of ping-pong, another to emphasise that the House of Commons would have the last word. I am tempted to examine this further, but on this occasion I am content to back my noble friend Lord Steel's Bill as the core for new legislation to be promoted by my Government.