House of Lords: Reform

Lord True Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord True]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, and I shall disappoint other noble Lords by agreeing with a number of things that he said. He will have noticed that the debate opened with a striking speech by the Leader of the Opposition, in which she tore up, on behalf of the new reforming leadership of the Labour Party, the commitments made after many years of discussion involving the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, who is shaking his head, to an elected House. That was in the Labour Party’s manifesto and Labour pushed for it after its manifesto. The shadow Cabinet has awarded itself, as I see it, the freedom to duck and weave on this issue, while, as many of us will have noticed in this debate, not ruling out returning to election in the future, when it suits it rather more politically. I find in that position, which I must put down to Mr Miliband, very little principle and quite a lot of opportunism.

I share many of the reservations expressed about aspects of the Bill, but I am afraid that I accept many of its core arguments. I ask the House to consider whether this Government have done what this House time and again has asked Governments to do on legislation. They have put forward a Bill, however imperfect, for pre-legislative scrutiny. It is easy, when someone puts his head above the parapet, to open fire and, indeed, we have heard absolute volleys of grapeshot over the past two days—the ample body of my noble friend Lord Strathclyde offers a larger target than most. However, I hope that, in shooting at the target of this Bill, we will not block, at this perhaps closing stage of the question of the House of Lords, serious scrutiny of the idea of election, which has been in the open, as others have pointed out, since it was endorsed by the royal commission. I certainly hope that we will not rule it out, however tempting it might be, pour épater Monsieur Clegg.

I could not support a 100 per cent elected House or the effective exclusion of Cross-Benchers. Nor could I support the removal of the right reverend Prelates, for what I thought were the rather old Tory principles set out in the words of the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of York that were quoted to us yesterday. I would dearly love to see the return of the Supreme Court and the Law Lords here. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Scott, pointed out, that happened in 1876 after an earlier ham-fisted reform. It might well lessen the risks of future clashes between Parliament and the judiciary.

However, I cannot rule out election of at least some political Peers with the certainty that has informed so many speeches in this debate. The case for election is not only democracy, although I do not disdain democracy. After all, Lord Chancellors apart, since Victorian times almost all the greatest statesmen who have led in these islands, save the odd exception such as my noble friend Lord Carrington, have first been elected. That includes even the great Marquess of Salisbury. The case for election is not only some greater legitimacy, as has been argued, although I do not disdain that either. There have been many attacks on the 15-year mandate, but they neglect to point out that the House, although never dissolved, would be renewed and refreshed by election by thirds, as is the US Senate.

The case for considering election is surely that from which so many people in this debate have recoiled: challenging the House of Commons to do its job better. It has generally been accepted that the Executive are too strong and that the other place is malfunctioning. I agree with all those who have said that Clause 2 of the draft Bill is nonsense. A House with a significant elected element would challenge the House of Commons and its primacy more and with more conviction. But why not? Then the other place might have to win a few more arguments rather than relying on the juggernaut of the Whip and the mantra of primacy that we keep hearing.

I do not want to reel back through the mists of time, but it is an odd fact that the last time this House brought down a Government was in 1783, which opened the way to one of the greatest of all our Prime Ministers, William Pitt. I do not fear the challenge that election would put into the system. Nor do I panic about the word “gridlock”, which comes up time and again—sometimes from those who darkly hint that it would happen if they did not get their way on this matter. Do we not have too much ill thought-out legislation pumped out through our Parliament, including by the Government whom I support?

I am sorry but, if the need to avoid gridlock contributed to more forethought, more willingness to compromise and less haste to publish monster Bills, I would not lose too much sleep if election contributed to that. There are many ways to break deadlock and, in the good old days, Members of the House of Commons used to have to stand and take their hats off when Members of the House of Lords attended joint conferences.

[Noble Lords]

Hear, hear.

[Lord True]

I suspect that that might appeal to many here. As regards the criticisms that have been made about aspects of the draft Bill, I appeal to the House not to put itself in the position of being seen as ruling out any idea of election. Let us ask the Joint Committee to try to burnish a proposal and then—I agree with what my noble friend Lord Astor said yesterday—the proposal should be put to the people in a referendum.

To conclude, there should be at least one other option in such a referendum. When Lord Gardiner put his paper on reform to the Labour Cabinet in 1968 he said that there were four options—abolition, do nothing, election or appointment. Things have not changed much since then. The prevailing mood in the House is clear: noble Lords want an all-appointed House. Most see a seductive and stealthy route to that in the Bill put forward by my noble friend Lord Steel of Aikwood. I cannot support that Bill. We have an Appointments Commission already and I question the prevailing assumption—as did the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick—that a committee of seven or nine people, chosen from the ranks of the great and good, should be charged by statute for all time with controlling the peopling of a whole House of Parliament. I cannot accept as readily as some that it is axiomatically wrong that 40 million people should have a say in who might come to this House, while it is right that seven people should determine in secret who comes and why.

The core proposition of my noble friend Lord Steel’s Bill is the ending of the replacement of our hereditary colleagues in order to leave an all-appointed House. I will pass over the point that that would disproportionately disadvantage this party, which had the largest popular vote at the recent general election, and ask why, if this is so desirable—as has been so eloquently argued—the creation of this all-appointed House should be done by stealth. Why should it creep through the shadows under the name of incremental change? Why can it not proclaim itself as the full and final reform that so many of your Lordships wish? However, this is something that no party has put before the British people recently. It is featured in no programme and has been subject to no scrutiny or public debate. We have heard eloquent arguments for an all-appointed House, but if we want to settle the House of Lords question and close off election, as many noble Lords wish, we will not do so by a hole-in-the-corner measure.

The proposition for an all-appointed House, put by so many noble Lords with such conviction, should be put squarely before the British people in a referendum, alongside whatever proposition on a politically elected element may emerge from the Joint Committee and the deliberations of another place. If the British people then vote to reject the idea that they should ever have a right to vote for any Member of this House, I might be able to accept my noble friend Lord Steel’s Bill. Until then, I am sorry that I cannot.