House of Lords: Labour Peers’ Working Group Report

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Thursday 19th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friends on the report and can support it. I want, however, to use my time to issue what I would call a manifesto warning to the three party leaders about Lords reform.

I served as a member of the Joint Committee on the 2011-12 draft Bill. I supported An Alternative Way Forward, a document supported by 13 of the 26 members of the committee. After we had finished our work, in scribbling around, I started to think about amendments for the Bill during the summer, before it was withdrawn. I came to the conclusion that I should try to get a package together. In short, it amounted to a combination of giving the Lords an extension of its revising powers, but limiting its blocking powers. I shall explain. As has been said, the Clegg Bill refused to look at functions and powers, instead concentrating exclusively on composition. His answer was that solutions would evolve. Indeed, the noble Lords, Lord Ashdown and Lord Strathclyde, went further and seemed to relish the prospect of open warfare between the two Houses. No one took them seriously, but no progress was made.

The two Houses are not equal. The unelected Lords cannot force legislation upon the elected Commons, but the Commons can force legislation upon the Lords. That is as it should be. Leaving things as they are and dealing only with composition will undermine the Commons. When he gave evidence to the Joint Committee, I asked the Deputy Prime Minister, whom I had never met, whether he was a man from the House of Commons or a House of Commons man. The look on his face told all. But he is not alone: none of the three party leaders down there is what I would consider a House of Commons man. Of Messrs Cameron, Clegg and Miliband, not one of them has ever been an effective, active, marauding, campaigning Back-Bencher in the Commons. There is not a shred of evidence to contradict that. They are open to the seduction of the manifesto claim to democratise the Lords from advisers less committed to the Commons than they are. The fact that the Commons can be so easily undermined appears to be of no concern whatever. Putting in place an elected element in whole or in part while leaving the current Lords powers the same is so risky it beggars belief they would try to do so.

There is then the primacy argument, used by some as a means of opposing the elected element. The question of whether it is incompatible to have Commons primacy with an elected Lords is legitimate but deceptive. The Lords’ current powers, unused by an unelected House, must be reduced. Why should people stand for election to a House that has fewer powers? Why should an elected second Chamber have fewer powers than an unelected second Chamber? In my view, that is the wrong way to look at it. We have to find a way to deal with this issue.

If we accept the second Chamber as a revising Chamber, a thinking-again Chamber, a holding-to-account Chamber and then give it a real task in these areas greater than at present, it becomes much easier to get your head around the idea of reducing powers—or, more correctly, restricting the blocking powers. I have not set about looking for lots of examples on this because there are plenty around to distinguish between them, but I will give a couple. The beauty of them is they would work with both an elected and an unelected Chamber. They should be promoted now, so that when the issue of election comes around—as it surely will—we will have removed some of the barriers to a decent consideration. It is logical to restrict Lords’ blocking powers, given the powers of the two Houses are not equal on finance or the formation of Government.

So far as revision is concerned, I am well aware that there are plenty of ideas around: there are some in the report we are debating. They do not need to be invented. For example, we could give the second Chamber the power to offer a couple of modest amendments to secondary legislation. The Parliament Act should not apply because secondary legislation is implementing legislation. This would give a boost to the revision of implementing legislation, while allowing the Government always to get their statutory instruments—at a price. We could allow the second Chamber revision of any money Bill that is not a finance Bill. That would stop the nonsense we had last year over the social security Bill, where we were prohibited from discussing what was general social policy. As I recall, there is a legal requirement for a finance Bill due to the Provisional Collection of Taxes Act, so it is quite easy to distinguish between a finance Bill and a money Bill.

As for blocking powers, we could remove the right of the Lords to vote on any Second Reading. It beggars belief that we would chuck out a Bill when we are here to revise it, so remove the power. Okay, we do not use the power, but if we leave it there for an elected House, just think about the potential for problems. If we give the second Chamber powers to amend SIs, I think we should remove the right to reject a statutory instrument in exchange, so there is a quid pro quo. We could propose to stop introducing Bills into the Lords, as was said by the report, or indeed to apply the Parliament Act to all such Bills—that is the other way round. We should certainly give up that power, which gives the possibility of Bills slipping through.

There should be a time limit on Bills taken in the second Chamber. We could introduce a fixed time in which to return to the Commons Bills that have undergone pre-legislative scrutiny. I still favour—I raised this before the last election—special attention being given to Common Bills passed under a timetable Motion. The second Chamber must have the power to carry out proper scrutiny of such Bills, which may or may not have undergone pre-legislative scrutiny, and it should have the power, perhaps by a majority two-thirds vote, to extend the time by a specified period if the Commons has not done its job properly. That would be a big incentive for the Commons to reform its processes as well.

I shall stop there, but I trust that I have given the House a flavour of giving this Chamber more revising powers while, at the same time, taking away some of its blocking powers. That could be done now. They are powers which, by and large, we do not use but they would be there to be used by an elected Chamber if there was no change. In my view, we have to secure the primacy argument before there is any elected element.

I suspect that on my final point I shall be in a minority. It is a point that I raised in the Joint Committee. In the event of there being an elected second Chamber, I would prefer the courts rather than the Government Whips’ Office to make use of the Parliament Act. In other words, there should be a procedure whereby, if no solution is found, the dispute goes to a special court. That would be a big incentive for both Houses to act in a grown-up way; otherwise, you keep the status quo of ping-pong. That sounds like a written constitution, does it not? That is the issue, as has already been said. I said to the Deputy Prime Minister that, if his Bill had become law, the UK would have been the only country with two elected Chambers but without a written constitution to deal with disputes. At one point in the debate, I got thrown back at me Israel and New Zealand, but they are unicameral; they do not have a written constitution and they have only one Chamber.

A sentence in a manifesto does not give the Government absolute power. That is my warning. I am not going to be prepared to vote for any change which undermines the House of Commons.