Queen’s Speech

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Wednesday 8th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, others on these Benches will cover the justice, home affairs and other matters raised in this debate. Given its significance, I want to focus on the proposal in the Conservative manifesto to establish a constitution, democracy and rights commission within the next 12 months, which is repeated in the Queen’s Speech.

After I read that section, I re-read part of Edmund Burke’s writings on the British constitution. The tone of that part of the Conservative manifesto is astonishingly un-Conservative. It suggests that the disruptors from Vote Leave really have taken over the party from authentic Conservatives and are determined to destroy its traditional approach to the British constitution. Burke warned in his Reflections on the Revolution in France that the constitution of a country

“is not a problem of arithmetic”;

that is, not of a simple majority sweeping all before it, claiming to embody the “will of the people”—something that Burke would undoubtedly have seen as a very Robespierrean phrase.

He wrote to the electors of Bristol that their parliamentary representatives owed voters their judgment and wisdom rather than simply following popular sentiment. He emphasised the importance of the rule of law and of careful limits on the prerogative powers of the Crown. Above all, he stressed the importance of spreading power down to local communities or subdivisions—“the little platoons”—as,

“the first principle … of public affections, ... the first link in the series by which we proceed towards a love to our country, and to mankind.”

What this allegedly Conservative manifesto offers us, in sharp contradiction, is a reassertion of prerogative power, both over Parliament and over judges as interpreters of the law. It refers to,

“The failure of Parliament to deliver Brexit”,

in the same way that Cromwell referred to the failure of the Long Parliament to grant him the powers he wanted. The failure to carry through Brexit for three years was, after all, due mainly to divisions within the Conservative Party, only resolved by expelling the dissenters as Cromwell also did.

It is therefore extremely important to agree what shape the proposed constitution, democracy and rights commission will take. How will it be constituted? If it is to attract and restore public trust, it will need to be seen from the outset as more widely constituted than from among the supporters of a Government which received well under half the votes in December’s election. Who will define its agenda? Will this be decided by No. 10 or by a process of consultation that will welcome divergent views? Will this commission be independent of government in its operation, or under the tight control of a Government in a hurry? I hope that the Government, in replying, will give us some indication of when such vital details will be presented to Parliament in—I hope and assume—a Green Paper for public debate and scrutiny.

We face some fundamental challenges to constitutional democracy, in Britain as in other open societies. Political technologies, funded by state actors or wealthy private individuals supporting their favoured political protégés, have spread from Russia across the western world. Data science now permits precise targeting of different groups of voters, with messages finely tuned to appeal to their fears and hopes. Populist politicians, backed by well-funded campaigns, promote “illiberal democracy” against liberal democracy, which means leadership without constraint, generating popular support by stoking foreign threats and national grievances. From Viktor Orbán to Donald Trump, impatience with the checks and balances of constitutional democracy, and with the limits that law and constitutional rules place on political power, feeds a drift to authoritarian government.

Yesterday, we learned that Tim Montgomerie, appointed an adviser to Prime Minister Johnson last September, has praised Viktor Orbán’s pursuit of what Montgomerie, in a speech in Budapest before Christmas, called “the limits to liberalism”, hailing Trump, Orbán and Johnson as comrades in arms in the move against liberal democracy. I hope that the Conservative Benches in this House deplore this praise for authoritarian populism as much as I do.

The Federalist Papers, setting out the rationale for the American constitution, spelled out the justification for limited government, with institutionalised checks and balances and the careful devolution of power from central Executives. James Madison declared that

“The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands ... may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”


Alexander Hamilton—whose musical your Lordships have undoubtedly all seen—said that government has been instituted because

“the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice, without constraint.”

We have become painfully aware, particularly in recent days, of the passions of Donald Trump not conforming to the dictates of reason and justice, and many of us lack confidence that the ambitions of Boris Johnson will not lead him to follow suit.

We on these Benches welcome the opportunity that a well-organised constitutional convention may offer to reform and improve the quality of British democracy and government at all levels, from the federal to the local. However, it must be independent of government, with support from all parties and from civil society, not an attempt to impose a populist electoral dictatorship on Britain—or at least on England, if and when Scotland and Northern Ireland leave the union. And it will need to start by clarifying what we mean by “democracy”. Democracy is not just an event every five years; it is a process that holds government to account, a dialogue between government and citizens that provides and maintains consent for government policies. Popular alienation, of which we are all painfully aware, stems partly from the decline of local democracy, with politics looking like a game played in distant Westminster, unaware of local needs and concerns.

The restoration of public trust requires, to start with: the restoration of direct links between representative government and local communities—the centralisation of the government of England in London has also alienated people in northern towns; regional devolution, for example to Yorkshire, which is as large as Scotland and as capable of managing policing, transport and industrial development; a second Chamber, in what would then become our federal parliament, that represented the regions, to replace our appointed House of Lords, something that my party and others have supported for a long time; a stronger Parliament with fewer Ministers, to hold executive power to account; a more open electoral system so that voters no longer had to hold their noses and vote for whichever of the two dominant parties they disliked less; tighter controls on money in politics, to block the very rich from playing the populist card through heavy investment in political technologies; and citizens educated about their political and civil rights and responsibilities. That will be our proposed agenda for this new commission.

The Conservative manifesto suggests, on the contrary, that the Government want to restrict access to voting, to redraw constituency boundaries so that they no longer represent even the shadows of coherent communities, to inhibit judicial scrutiny and to attack the autonomy of the Civil Service. There is even a reference in that section of the manifesto to the greater use of data science in government, one of Dominic Cummings’ manic enthusiasms, which certainly carries some major potential benefits but also major potential risks. When will the Government spell out to Parliament how they intend to exploit consolidated government data? What statutory safeguards will they build into that exploitation? This is a very important and delicate area of policy.

Yesterday, I was told in a ministerial briefing on the EU withdrawal agreement Bill that the clause in the previous Bill that provided for continuing parliamentary scrutiny of future trade negotiations had been removed because the Government’s majority in December’s election provided a sufficient mandate for whatever they may negotiate in future. That assertion takes us back towards electoral dictatorship as opposed to parliamentary democracy, and suggests that what we are facing from our Prime Minister and those around him is a concerted attempt to shift the balance between government, Parliament and courts—and the devolved Assemblies—in favour of the Executive. That should worry the democrats in all parties.

I have not forgotten that our current Prime Minister thinks that the rules and conventions of constitutional democracy need not apply to him. I recall that he broke several clauses of the Ministerial Code within three days of resigning as Foreign Secretary. However, democracy rests on rules and acceptance of conventions, as Conservatives from Burke to Lord Salisbury have understood. I look forward to learning how the proposed constitutional convention will address these fundamental issues.