Extension of Franchise (House of Lords) Bill [HL]

Lord Sherbourne of Didsbury Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & 2nd reading (Hansard)
Friday 7th February 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sherbourne of Didsbury (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, who speaks on this issue with a powerful voice, as he does on so many issues. I too congratulate my noble friend Lord Naseby on bringing forward this Bill again. A similar Bill was debated on 19 July last year. The Minister who replied to that debate was my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham, who I see is in his new place today. He gave a less than positive response last July. Of course, he was speaking on behalf of the then Government. Five days later we had a new Government and today we have a different Minister, so dare we hope for a more positive response?

I have just reread the speech my noble friend made last year. As noble Lords would expect, it was delivered in the most mellifluous and elegant way. But even that could not disguise the shallowness of the Government’s arguments. How could we quarrel, he argued, with the principle enunciated in 1699, which he quoted from the Commons Journal of that year:

“That no Peer of this Kingdom hath any Right to give his vote”?


If that was good enough for us 300 years ago then surely, he implied, it is good enough today. He went on. The principle was justified by the

“ancient, immemorial law of England.”—[Official Report, 5/7/1858; col. 928.].

Here the Minister was quoting admiringly the Lord Chief Justice in 1858. And then, lest we had forgotten, he prayed in aid cases and judgments from 1872. It is a strange line of reasoning which asserts that if that is what the law said in 1699, 1858 and 1872, then that is what the law should say in 2020.

In my speech last year, I said that I supported this Bill for many reasons, but for one fundamental reason, which is taxation. I argued that while everyone in this House pays tax—income tax, VAT, excise duties and no doubt many others—we have no say whatever on taxation. That is decided by Members of the House of Commons, for whom we cannot vote.

How did the Minister try to justify the anomaly that Members of this House who pay taxes are not allowed to vote for the MPs who impose taxes? He said that taxation is

“not connected to democratic representation in the UK”,

and, as if to prove the point, he said:

“An American or Japanese citizen of voting age who works and pays taxes in the UK does not have the right to vote in parliamentary elections”.—[Official Report, 19/7/19; col. 486.]


Well, of course they do not, for the rather obvious reason that they are not UK citizens. Members of this House are UK citizens, so that argument just does not stand up. By the way, the so-called principle that a Member of the legislature, because they are a lawmaker, should not be allowed to vote for an MP, does not apply to MPs. A sitting MP who, for example, is a registered elector in a seat that he or she does not represent is entitled to vote in a parliamentary by-election in that constituency. If Members of the Commons have the right to vote in parliamentary elections while they are MPs, why should Members of the Lords not have that right?

When he replies, will my noble friend the Minister tell the House what it is about this Bill—you could not wish for a more modest Bill, as my noble friend Lord Naseby said—that worries the Government? What is the worst thing that could happen if Peers were given the vote? What is the downside? What is the danger? What precisely are the terrible consequences that would flow if this Bill were to pass?

The truth is that there are no robust arguments against giving Members of this House the vote. The only argument that the Government have left is that they are opposed to piecemeal reform, and no doubt we will hear that this proposal would best be done as part of a wider and more comprehensive reform of the House of Lords. But if we had set our face against piecemeal reforms we would never have had life Peers or women Peers. It would be much better if the Government stopped trying to argue the unarguable and were a little more honest with the House and just said to my noble friend Lord Naseby, “You’ve made a good case. Logic is on your side. Let’s talk.”