Draft House of Lords Reform Bill

Lord Shipley Excerpts

Monday 30th April 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shipley]

My Lords, I am privileged to have been a Member of your Lordships’ House for almost two years now. In that time, I have lost count of the number of times people have urged that the House of Lords should prevent Bills passing and that, despite being an unelected Chamber, we should prevent the elected Chamber from delivering its programme. As we know, this reflects in part a lack of understanding of the role of this Chamber. We exist, and must continue to exist, to revise and to scrutinise legislation, not to challenge the primacy of the House of Commons.

Too much legislation reaches us without proper scrutiny having been undertaken. It would be unthinkable for there not to be a second Chamber in which such revisions can be made. The role of this Chamber must remain to revise legislation for consideration and confirmation by the elected Chamber, but it does not follow that a wholly or partly elected second Chamber would inevitably end up competing for primacy with the House of Commons, as has been claimed.

I was impressed by the submission of the Hansard Society on this matter. It argued:

“The different electoral system, term lengths and limits proposed for the reformed Lords, coupled with the constitutional reality that it is the Commons from which the government is formed and where it must sustain confidence, should underpin the primacy of the Commons”.

I concur with its thinking and, with an agreed concordat and the codifying of Lords powers and conventions as proposed by the Electoral Reform Society, it is entirely possible to prevent the potential for conflict.

I believe instinctively in a 100 per cent elected second Chamber. It is hard to see on what basis it can be democratic for this Chamber to be unelected. When we revise Bills we are inevitably legislating and, in so doing, we should have a clear democratic mandate for what we do. I do not accept the argument that House of Commons primacy takes care of democracy, because the House of Commons cannot do everything. The House of Lords influences and amends Bills significantly. In so doing, it should derive its power from its own democratic mandate.

However, I am very conscious of the independence of thought and the expertise that comes from the system of nomination to this House. In particular, the Cross Benches provide an essential antidote to domination by party politics. For that reason, I would be very content with a House in which 80 per cent of its Members are elected and 20 per cent are nominated by an independent appointments commission. With 450 Members altogether, the present culture of this House could continue with no party in majority control.

To prevent domination by one political party requires a system of proportional representation, as recommended rightly by the Joint Committee. But the use of proportional representation is vital for another reason. In 2000, the royal commission concluded that there was a need to ensure greater representation from some of the constituent parts of the United Kingdom. In the 12 years since then, little seems to have changed. Of the 614 Members of this House who have registered an address as their main residence, only 74 are in the north-west, Yorkshire and the north-east. The north-east has 16 Members, Yorkshire has 27 and the north-west has 31. If we add the 15 Members from the East Midlands and the 23 from the West Midlands to the 74 from the north of England, just 112 Members of this House are from those five English regions. That amounts to just 18 per cent of the total when they have a population of 24 million, which is almost 40 per cent of the UK. These figures compare with 273 Members from London and the south-east—some 44 per cent of the total membership, but with a population that is seven million fewer. An electoral system for 80 per cent of the membership of this House based on proportional representation would go a long way to putting right this serious anomaly and would ensure that this Chamber reflects the nations and regions of the UK.

Finally, public opinion is strongly behind reform. A recent YouGov poll showed 69 per cent in favour of reform of the House, with 33 per cent wanting a fully elected second Chamber and only 5 per cent wanting the status quo. The British Social Attitudes Survey has found that one-fifth of people would prefer to close this House down altogether. Therefore, we need to think very carefully about what the public feel because I do not think that trying to maintain the status quo, as some would like to do, will work. Parliament needs to listen to the general public on this issue and to act accordingly, which is why any proposed constitutional change simply must be backed by a positive vote in a referendum. It will not be enough to rely solely on three party manifestos.