Draft House of Lords Reform Bill

Lord Steel of Aikwood Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Steel of Aikwood]

My Lords, I would like to speak to the line in the resolution that invites the committee to send for a person’s papers and records. If one reads the report of the two-day debate that we had in this House plus the day’s debate in the Commons, it is obvious that there are five major issues with which the committee is going to have to grapple. These are, first, the question of whether it is to be 80 per cent or 100 per cent elected, and a subsidiary to that is the role of the Bishops’ Bench; secondly, what the election system is to be, as two are outlined in the White Paper but there are others; thirdly, whether the suggested 15-year term is correct, as it was heavily criticised in debate in the other place by supporters of the Bill; fourthly, how the transition from the appointed House to the elected House is to be managed; and, fifthly, perhaps most important of all, what the concordats are to be between the two elected Houses—how will disputes be resolved and what has been the experience of other dual legislatures in that matter? I have enormous respect for the noble Lord, Lord Richard. I have known him in all his previous incarnations, and think he is a man of great wisdom and experience. But, frankly, he is not a magician. To expect a committee of 26 to deal with these five major issues, plus the four housekeeping matters in the Private Members’ Bill that I have been promoting, seems to me impossible to achieve by the date of February which is set out in the resolution. I see that the noble Lord is agreeing with me.

For that reason, I hope that the Committee will seek to send for two papers, which I want to quote. The first is the report from the committee of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral, which has already been debated in this House. Perhaps I may quote two passages from it. Paragraph 47 states:

“We recommend that a reduction in the number of members of the House should result in an overall saving to the taxpayer. We recommend that the possibility of offering a modest pension, or payment on retirement, to those who have played an active part in the work of the House over a number of years, should be investigated in detail, though on condition that this should come from within the existing budget for the House and should incur no additional public expenditure”.

The committee earlier said at paragraph 46:

“We are attracted by this ‘value for money’ argument and think it likely that, with appropriate actuarial and accountancy input, it would be possible to identify the potential saving to the public purse which could be achieved if the membership of the House were to be reduced significantly without delay”.

I repeat, “without delay”.

The other paper which I hope the committee may send for is the seventh report of the House of Commons Constitutional Reform Committee. Again, perhaps I may quote two passages. First, that,

“those proposing radical reform need also to address other incremental, urgent reforms that would improve the functioning of the existing House of Lords. A Government committed to radical reform in the medium term should see and portray short-term incremental reform as preparatory and complementary to its programme”.

Secondly, that,

“the current, effectively untrammelled, process for making party-political appointments to the House of Lords, coupled with the lack of any mechanism for Members to leave the upper House, threatens that House’s effective functioning in the shorter term … This is a pressing issue that cannot wait four years to be resolved”.

I suggest that the Joint Committee should look at these two reports. If it does, it would be fully justified in batting this issue back to the Government, and saying, “You have ignored these two reports. This cannot go on. The House is becoming impatient. You should get on with it, and leave us to deal with these five fundamental issues concerning the creation of an elected House, which is quite a separate matter”.

[Lord Grenfell]

I, too, welcome the composition of the committee: it is a very good choice of Lords’ members. With regard to the coalition Government’s attitude towards this process, I am inclined to Voltaire’s view that common sense is sometimes very uncommon. The Deputy Prime Minister has recently been saying that he wants to incorporate into the legislation much of what is in the Steel Bill. How does that square with what the noble Lord, Lord Williamson of Horton, said, in issuing his Augustinian warning that speed should not be too speedy? If we follow those two courses, the excellent recommendations in the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Steel, will not be incorporated until some very distant time, when possibly the legislation might become an Act of Parliament. I feel that the coalition is looking a gift horse in the mouth. This gift horse actually has extremely good teeth, and they should buy it. If we have to wait until legislation is passed, which may be a very long time indeed, we miss out on the possibility of instituting the extremely important, sensible and needed reforms that are recommended as an interim measure in the Steel Bill.