Draft House of Lords Reform Bill

Lord Williamson of Horton Excerpts

Monday 30th April 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Williamson of Horton]

My Lords, I join other Members in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Richard, and the Joint Committee for their report. It seems to deal well with the issues directly covered in the draft Bill, as was the role of the committee, and to avoid becoming too deeply enmeshed in questions that are not covered in the Bill and which are clearly not subject to any consensus. I also thank the members of the committee who have made their alternative report available.

However, it is our duty to look a little beyond the terms of the draft Bill when we consider that some of the consequences that would follow from a move to a largely elected second Chamber are not dealt with, or are dealt with only cursorily, in the draft Bill. That is particularly true in relation to the future powers of the proposed largely elected second Chamber and the likely effect on the operation of Parliament as a whole—that is, a new sharing of power between the two Houses. These matters are dealt with in recommendations 2 to 16 of the conclusions and recommendations of the Joint Committee. They are also dealt with more trenchantly in points one and two of the executive summary in the alternative report.

There are hundreds of points in the draft Bill that will need discussion, and there are 87 conclusions and recommendations in the Joint Committee’s report, but the House will be glad to know that I shall not deal with them all today. There will no doubt be opportunities to do so in the weeks, months, probably years and possibly decades ahead. Today, I shall deal only with the question of the powers of the two Houses if there were a largely elected second Chamber.

I start with the simple proposition that the draft Bill would have one tremendously important consequence: it would bring to an end the House of Commons’ monopoly in democratic legitimacy. That is just about the most fundamental change that could happen to the first Chamber of a Parliament. It is difficult to detect in the draft Bill a full comprehension of the consequences of that change for Parliament as a whole. However, the Joint Committee has understood it and I would like to pick out and approve what it says on a number of points. First, the Joint Committee imposes an important condition where it records that a majority of its members consider that a reformed second Chamber should have an electoral mandate, and that condition is,

“provided it has commensurate powers”.

Of course, an electoral mandate is not an abstract concept; it is thousands of citizens trooping into a polling station and electing their Member of the second Chamber and, as a direct consequence, looking to him or her to respond to their wishes and deliver the goods. I am absolutely certain that a reformed House in respect of its elected Members would have a representative function, because the electors would demand it and the second Chamber would evidently be more assertive, not to say aggressive, in using its powers.

The events of last week on the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill provided a good example of what happens now and what would be likely to happen if Parliament were to consist not of one but of two democratically elected Chambers. Representative organisations and many members of the public already recognise that in draft legislation the House of Lords is now the principal revising Chamber. I had 256 e-mails last week from such organisations and others mostly recommending or pressing for specific changes in draft legislation—and I have not even been elected yet. I am amazed that a press that reports on the House of Commons gives little or no publicity to the fact that important parts of draft legislation are not discussed or debated in the House of Commons or are dealt with only cursorily in a very short time because a guillotine is almost universally applied.

Currently, the House of Lords scrutinises thoroughly and proposes amendments, where appropriate, but we are quite reticent about pressing them if the House of Commons cursorily rejects them. Evidently, that situation would not prevail between two democratically elected Houses. Some mechanism for conciliation between the two Houses in such cases would be needed. I do not think that it would have to be statutory because we would run into judicial interference, some sort of mechanism for conciliation would be an inevitable consequence of two democratically elected Houses.

Secondly, there is the specific question of the conventions between the two Houses. Clearly, those would need to be reviewed, and where necessary changed, to reflect the role of the two democratically elected Houses. I strongly agree with the Joint Committee that the current text of the Bill in Clause 2 risks making judicial intervention possible, contrary to Article 9 of the Bill of Rights, and is to be rejected. The conventions themselves will almost certainly need to be redefined, and that could be done in a concordat between the two Houses.

In my view, that should apply to all legislation, including secondary legislation, which has hardly been mentioned today. The House of Lords has shown almost complete restraint in dealing with secondary legislation, despite the fact that 10,662 pages of almost wholly home-grown—not Brussels—secondary legislation went through this House in a recent year. In the new circumstances, the second Chamber would clearly be more ready to strike off secondary legislation of which it disapproved.

Thirdly, and finally, like many other Members I shall say a word about the primacy of the House of Commons, which is central to the Bill, although the Bill does not deal with it adequately. The Joint Committee points out that Clause 2 is not capable of preserving the primacy of the House of Commons, so if it comes forward in that or a similar form, I am sure we shall have serious problems when the Bill itself comes before us.

I believe that the issue of financial privilege is more complicated than it has appeared to be in the discussion today, because we cannot have a situation in which we have two completely free tax-raising Chambers of Parliament. On the other hand, a democratically elected second Chamber would need a way of dealing with issues that are important but that had some financial consequences. I saw the south-west news at the weekend, which showed many people holding up banners that said, “The pasty tax is a nasty tax”. I am sure that that would be thought about by a Senator who came from Cornwall if we had change in the structure of this House.

I also believe that we need to maintain the structure under which there is a weapon of last resort, which is currently the Parliament Acts. I have noted the views of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, and of the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, in the report, but if the new circumstances come about it would be necessary to make statutory provision for some form of last resort—yes, more time and perhaps more controversy.