Queen’s Speech

Lord Thomas of Swynnerton Excerpts

Tuesday 24th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Thomas of Swynnerton (CB)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, who we in this House know has done noble work in relation to the battle against terrorism.

I turn to the paragraphs in the gracious Speech that are of a constitutional nature, because the great political enormity with which we are faced in this Parliament is the referendum. I am not going to talk about the subject of the referendum—the European Union—but the referendum itself. Surely, it is likely that in years to come historians will be working away on how it was that, in the early part of the 21st century, this once-enlightened country allowed its most important decision to be taken not in Parliament but by a referendum. How was it that the British Parliament, which still has a very lively other place, was caused to reject our long and marvellous parliamentary experience?

We know, after all, from 1975 that a referendum can do much harm to a great party. It did it to the Labour Party and I am sure it will do it to the Conservative Party. That seems obvious. We should bear in mind that our most remarkable Prime Minister of the last 20th century, Margaret Thatcher, hated the idea of referendums or plebiscites and called them an instrument of tyranny—and so it has often been, as the historians of the French Revolution remind us. I would insist that we vow to thee our country to have no more truck with this particular continental device.

Edmund Burke was a great parliamentarian as well, of course, as a great Dubliner—

“Thou shouldst be living at this hour”—

and his letter to his constituents in Bristol sums up the political theory behind my views and the views that most people up until now have held. The BBC should now show its sense of responsibility by causing his communication, which expresses our essential political liberty, to be read every year.

What Burke said has nothing to do with the work of another MP for Bristol, namely Mr Anthony Benn, who for so long represented Bristol South East and who played an important part in initiating this parliamentary and constitutional monstrosity in 1975. The late Lord Annan once referred to the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, as Comus, taking us into a forest and leading us to a place we do not know how to get out of. I suspect most people now think Mr Anthony Benn will be known for being the sorcerer’s apprentice, leading us into nightmarish positions.

I have one more point to make, which I think I have time for. In his brilliant speech, my noble and learned friend Lord Judge talked about the size of the House. The size is one thing, but the origins of the peerage are a different matter. We should consider something like a corporate House, with a certain number of soldiers, schoolmasters, actors, lawyers no doubt and ex-politicians. It would be comparable to the present House but would be based on the idea that we should reflect in a more formal way the different professional interests that make us all up.