Draft House of Lords Reform Bill

Lord Stevenson of Balmacara Excerpts

Monday 30th April 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

My Lords, the late noble and learned Lord Bingham said in his 2009 Jan Grodecki lecture,

“for over a century the future of the House of Lords has been regarded as a problem. Our belief in the power of reason generally leads us to believe that all problems are amenable to a rational solution if sufficient thought is devoted to them. But there is in truth a small category of problems which are not amenable to a rational solution, and the problem of reforming the House of Lords while preserving its present form is one of them. That is why, despite an immense outpouring of time and talent, no solution has been found”.

A few years ago, I had some responsibility for this policy area. When I met Lord Bingham after his lecture, we had a lively discussion that left a very deep impression on me. Although I will be supporting my party on this issue, I am very pessimistic that it will ever happen, as there is clearly no consensus, so I want to make sure that although, tragically, the noble and learned Lord is no longer with us, his thoughts are represented in the record of our debate today in case we have to return to this issue, as I fear we will, in future years.

In my contribution tonight, I will follow Lord Bingham and his lateral thinking about this issue. I am going to suggest two things: we should use this opportunity for a constitutional moment of reform to make the House of Commons more effective as a legislating Chamber and, since the Lords does invaluable work as a revising Chamber and in the work of its specialist committees, seek to enhance that contribution by creating what Lord Bingham called the “Council of the Realm”.

It is clear from the huge number of discussions and debates we have had on this topic that the main issues which bedevil any discussion of how to reform your Lordships’ House are the reform of its composition and the interrelated but different reform of the powers of the Lords. On composition, we are not the only country to be having problems about how to organise our second Chamber. A recent report has suggested that,

“few democracies were content with their second Chambers, and that many were engaged ‘in an apparently incessant dialogue about how they should be reformed’”.

That sounds familiar. It continued:

“The reason why so many countries are unhappy with their second chambers is that there is a problem of a very fundamental kind in creating a second chamber in a modern democracy, especially in a non-federal state. A second chamber needs to be based upon an alternative principle of representation to that embodied in the first chamber. But what is that principle to be? How can the same electorate be represented in two different ways in two different chambers?”.

Our House of Commons,

“represents the principle of individual representation. What alternative principle should the second Chamber represent?”.

As Lord Bingham was quick to point out, the irony is that the current composition of your Lordships’ House enables it to evade the conundrum of finding an alternative principle of representation to that used for electing the House of Commons. This is a point I want to return to.

On powers, it is arguable that, for most practical purposes, one of the main consequences of the Parliament Acts has been to produce unicameral government in Britain. I say that because it is patently clear that the Lords cannot effectively resist the legislation of a determined Government. This effect is magnified by the coalition, and we have seen this Session that the Government can whip their legislation through both Houses without much difficulty. The truth, as Professor Vernon Bogdanor has said, is that the Parliament Acts have, in effect, ensured that Britain has not developed a strong bicameral legislature. What we have is a unicameral system with two Chambers. The consequence is that this unelected, and hence undemocratic, House spends a great deal of time doing what the House of Commons does not do well enough: ensuring that the Government’s legislation is fit for purpose, making government more efficient, but, in essence, within a unicameral system, albeit across two Houses. Surely we should try to sort that out first.

In 1975, a former Conservative Leader of this House, Lord Windlesham, wrote that,

“the House of Lords should not attempt to rival the Commons. Whenever it has done so in the past it has failed, and usually made itself look ridiculous in the process”.

He goes on to argue:

“In any well-tuned parliamentary system there is a need and a place for a third element besides efficient government and the operation of representative democracy. This third element is the bringing to bear of informed or expert public opinion”.

In other words, was Lord Bingham right to suggest that if one could make the House of Commons do its job more effectively, one possible future role for your Lordships’ House would be to provide a forum in which “informed public opinion” can take shape, and that we should do more of what we are already good at: providing a space for the deployment of special knowledge and the representation of interests not otherwise present in the House of Commons?

In his lecture, Lord Bingham suggested that since it was not possible to come up with a rational reform of the House of Lords, what should happen is that the House of Commons should do what it is elected to do and the House of Lords should become what he called the “Council of the Realm”. I would prefer pinching the ancient title of the Privy Council, but whatever it was called, the council,

“would differ from the House of Lords superficially in that membership would involve no outdated pretence of nobility, and it would differ fundamentally in having no legislative power. It could not make law. It could not … obstruct the will of the Commons”.

Its power would be to recommend amendments, which the Commons would have a statutory responsibility to consider.

According to Lord Bingham:

“The Council would, however, resemble the House of Lords in crucial respects. Its members, appointed not elected, would be very much the same people, and the same sorts of people, as now make up the house. It would perform, but in an advisory and not a lawmaking way, the revising function it now performs. Its expert committees could function much as they do now. It could debate issues of public moment”.

Future recruitment would be by appointment, by a statutory appointments commission, with a remit to ensure wide experience, broad representation of interests, and gender and diversity balance. Lord Bingham suggested that,

“the number of members would be governed by the need of the Council to be able to call on members with knowledge and experience in politics but also, and particularly, in the multifarious fields which fall to be considered in a complex modern state … In this way, the most valuable functions of the existing house could be preserved”.

but the clever point is that what was referred to as,

“the features of the house which fuel calls for reform could be eliminated”.

Of course, more detail is required to flesh out this proposal, but as it neatly sidesteps many of the difficulties likely to be faced by the Government’s draft Bill, I hope that Lord Bingham’s thoughts may at some future point be considered worthy of consideration by your Lordships’ House. At the very least, we should keep in mind his view that there is,

“a small category of problems which are not amenable to a rational solution”,

and recognise that neither of the two excellent reports, nor the Bill likely to be before us shortly, provide that elusive solution.