Lord Young of Cookham
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House of Lords Reform Bill
Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts(12 years, 4 months ago)
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The Leader of the House of Commons (Sir George Young)
We have listened carefully to the debate so far, confident that we will get a significant majority on Second Reading tonight. But for Lords reform to progress, it needs those who support reform to vote for reform and to vote for that reform to make progress through this House. It is clear that the Opposition are not prepared to do that, so we will not move the programme motion tonight. We remain committed to making progress on Lords reform, and with Second Reading behind us we will then consider how best to take this agenda forward and how best to secure progress through the House for reforms that have the backing of this House. The Government will move a timetable motion before we make progress in the autumn, in accordance with the rules of the House.
Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)
The Government’s decision to withdraw the programme motion today is a victory for Parliament. The Leader of the House has talked about a timetable motion, but will he now confirm, so that there is no doubt, that if this Bill passes its Second Reading tonight, it is the Government’s intention to bring forward immediately a motion to commit the Bill to debate on the Floor of this House? Will he also confirm that it is not now the Government’s intention to bring forward a guillotine on this Bill, having effectively lost the argument for a timetable today? We must have the time to debate this Bill and scrutinise it adequately.
Sir George Young
I have nothing to add to what I have just said, apart from this: there will be business questions on Thursday, and at that point I hope to be able to tell the House more about the Government’s proposals.
Sir Menzies Campbell (North East Fife) (LD)
Does my right hon. Friend have any sense of optimism that, following the announcement he has just made, the Labour party will at last tell us how many days it wants?
Sir George Young
I say to my right hon. and learned Friend that I am ever optimistic, but, as he will have noticed during the exchanges yesterday, despite repeated requests, the Opposition were never able to put a figure on the number of days that they would have found adequate.
Mr David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)
Will the Leader of the House give way?
Mr Blunkett
I am very grateful to the right hon. Gentleman, who is indeed a gentleman and always has been. Will he confirm what he said a moment ago in reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle): that a timetable motion will actually be brought forward in the autumn by the Government, and as a consequence the only way in which this House can show its displeasure at this constitutional abomination of a Bill is to vote against it on Second Reading tonight?
Sir George Young
I respect the right hon. Gentleman, but I would not draw that conclusion. The issue on Second Reading is whether the House supports the principle of the Bill, and I very much hope that the House will do so. As I said, there will subsequently be a timetable motion, which the House will have an opportunity to debate and vote on, and it is at that point that the right hon. Gentleman will be able to express any concern that he may still have.
Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
May I commend the Government for the wisdom of their decision today? But may I put it to my right hon. Friend that whatever moral authority this Bill had it has now lost? I commend his determination to reflect on what to do next, but may I beg him to make no further commitments about what might be decided, because I think that the authority of the coalition will be undermined if it proceeds with a Bill that it is unable to obtain?
Sir George Young
With great respect, I have to disagree with my hon. Friend. Whether the Bill has “moral authority”, to use his words, depends on the verdict of the House on Second Reading. If the House gives the Bill a majority on Second Reading, the House is perfectly entitled to make progress with it, and I indicated in my statement that in the autumn we hope to come back with a timetable motion in order to make progress. But we do now have some moments for reflection.
Sir George Young
I will give way one last time, as I am conscious of Mr Speaker’s injunction about the large number of people who want to speak.
Jesse Norman
I am enormously grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way. Let me make it clear from the Conservative Benches that the very substantial opposition from within the Conservative party, not just that from Labour, was responsible for the withdrawal of the motion. That should be perfectly clear and reflected in the record.
Sir George Young
On these matters, I listen to my right hon. Friend the Patronage Secretary, who indicated some dissent with the proposition put forward by my hon. Friend. I always agree with the Patronage Secretary.
In response to your injunction, Mr Speaker, I shall now move on to what I was going to say about the merits of the Bill on Second Reading. I want to address the issue of the primacy of the House, which was a matter that concerned many hon. Members yesterday. As the first Conservative Front Bencher to speak in the debate, however, I hope the House will understand if it I say why I think my party should continue to support the Bill.
The House will recognise that I could have no conceivable problems with the Bill, given that some of the ideas originate in a book that I co-authored in 2005, to which the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson) referred yesterday. I have spoken in favour of reform in just about every debate since 1997—and there have been many—and, like many colleagues, I have supported reform in the Lobby. I respect the views of my colleagues who oppose our reforms, but I point out that the last time the House voted on this topic in a free vote in 2007, the majority of Conservative Members voted against a fully appointed second Chamber.
Some have branded the Bill a Liberal Democrat measure, but I invite the House to look at the list of the Bill’s sponsors. As far as I am concerned, the Bill has strong Conservative antecedents, and I would have been happy to introduce it if we had had a majority Conservative Government. My party has a long and proud history of constitutional reform. Although other issues might make the hearts in North West Hampshire beat a little faster, we have always been concerned with the health of Parliament.
At the 1955 general election, the Conservatives under Anthony Eden announced in their manifesto:
“It has long been the Conservative wish to reach a settlement regarding the reform of the House of Lords, so that it may continue to play its proper role as a Second Chamber under the Constitution.”
Three years later, it was a Conservative Government under Harold Macmillan who navigated through Parliament one of the few reform Bills of the past 100 years, the Life Peerages Act 1958. I say to my colleagues who are unhappy about this Bill that when the then Government introduced the 1958 Bill, it was in the teeth of sharp objections from some Conservatives in both Houses, but I believe that everyone now accepts that that was a sensible reform. I believe the same is true of our proposals to move progressively from an appointed to an elected House. I see nothing Conservative about retaining a wholly appointed upper House in the 21st century.
Conor Burns (Bournemouth West) (Con)
My right hon. Friend referred to the free vote in this House in March 2007. I remind him that in the vote on the wholly appointed element of the proposals, 17 current Conservative Ministers and six Conservative members of the Government Whips Office voted for that 100% appointed Chamber. They will now be compelled to vote against their beliefs.
Sir George Young
I am sure that my hon. Friend’s point is absolutely accurate, but that does not destroy the point I made a few moments ago, which was that on a free vote in the previous Parliament, the majority of Conservative Members voted against a wholly appointed House. As a matter of interest, the whole House voted by a majority of two to one against a fully appointed House.
Sir George Young
I will give way to the right hon. Gentleman, but I am not going to give way for ever.
Mr MacShane
The Leader of the House is making the perfectly fair point that different parties at different times have had manifesto and party commitments to reforming the House of Lords. We can be agreed on that. The Prime Minister is offering a referendum to the people of the Falklands and a possible referendum on Europe and we have had a referendum on the alternative vote system, so will the Leader of the House explain why the British people are not being offered a referendum on the biggest constitutional change since 1832 as a final part of the Bill?
Sir George Young
I say gently to the right hon. Gentleman: what happened to the Lisbon referendum? I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman was in the Chamber yesterday, but my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister dealt with the question of a referendum on several occasions. He dealt with it again in Deputy Prime Minister’s questions today and it is dealt with in our response to the Joint Committee’s report. In the 1990s, under the leadership of my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary, the Conservative party opposed Labour’s changes to the composition of the upper House, not because we wanted to retain the hereditary peers, but because we took a principled stand to argue—with very little dissent—for “no stage 1 without stage 2”. Our fear, disputed forcefully by Labour at the time, was that if we did not move immediately to an elected House after the abolition of the hereditaries, progress would inevitably stall. That was my party’s view at the time, and how right we were.
Let us remember that, in their response to Lord Wakeham’s report in 1999, the previous Government said that they would
“make every effort to ensure that the second stage has been approved by Parliament before the next general election.”
That was the 2001 election, when they told us we were going to elect the first tranche. Yet with three large majorities, three White Papers, two Green Papers, one royal commission, one Joint Committee, two Acts of Parliament and two sets of free votes, Labour missed a golden opportunity to move on to the second stage, despite support from many Conservatives and Liberal Democrats.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Sir George Young
I propose to make a little more progress, and then I may give way again.
No political party ever voted for the halfway House that we now have, and no one wanted that to be the lasting settlement, or imagined that it would be. Although their Lordships do a diligent job, I believe their work is undermined by their lack of democratic legitimacy. It is simply unacceptable that just five people have appointed over 75% of the Members of our second legislative assembly. Tony Blair appointed 316 peers during his time in office. I find that difficult to defend.
Pete Wishart
Should we not just go home? The Leader of the House knows it is all over; Government Members know it is all over. We have more important things to debate and decisions to make today. Let us just say, “Enough is enough,” and call the whole shooting match off.
Sir George Young
The hon. Gentleman can go home, but the Government plan to proceed with their legislative programme.
Mr William Cash (Stone) (Con)
On the question of election, would the Leader of the House be good enough to explain how it can possibly be justified that the Lords in question should be elected for 15 years?
Sir George Young
The average length of service now is 24 or 26 years, so the proposal is an improvement.
Sir George Young
No, I am going to make some more progress.
We have ended up with exactly what the Conservatives warned against at the time. As my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary said when he was Leader of the Opposition:
“if we are not careful we are going to have a House of Lords dominated by the cronies of the prime minister of the day”.
I say to Members of my own party that they cannot argue for “no stage 1 without stage 2” and then block stage 2. We have been committed to a mainly elected second Chamber since 1999 and this commitment was in our last three election manifestos.
Let me address briefly the issue of primacy, which came up repeatedly during yesterday’s debate—
Sir George Young
No.
Some colleagues accept the case for reform, but are opposed to the idea of election. We heard yesterday that giving the House of Lords a more democratic mandate might somehow undermine the primacy of this House. I have never believed in the one-dimensional view of the relationship between the two Houses, in which if one Chamber gains in authority, the other must lose. That point was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (John Thurso)—the only Member, incidentally, who has experience of both Houses. I have always believed that a reformed, more accountable second Chamber will strengthen Parliament as a whole. As the Wakeham report concluded:
“Our ambition for the reformed second chamber is that it should enhance the overall ability of Parliament as a whole to hold the Government to account. It should do this by using its particular strengths to develop arrangements which complement and reinforce those of the House of Commons.”
Most of the time, the Commons and the Lords are not rivals, but partners in holding the Government to account. I would argue that over the past 10 years, the House of Lords has gained in authority, not at the expense of this House, but at the expense of the Executive. I would further argue that if the legitimacy of the House of Lords were to be enhanced by the injection of some democracy, its authority would be further enhanced, not to the detriment of the Commons, but better empowering Parliament as a whole to do its job. Those who believe in a stronger Parliament should welcome, not obstruct, a more effective second Chamber.
Sir George Young
I commend the right hon. Gentleman on his persistence, which is now rewarded.
Mr Spellar
I thank the Leader of the House for his usual courteous generosity. He claimed that what he says follows a long line of Conservative tradition, so can he explain why there is not a single Conservative Cabinet member on the Front Bench to support him?
Sir George Young
I now regret giving way to the right hon. Gentleman, because I am sure that there are other Members who would have made a more worthwhile point if they had intervened. Looking around, I see a large number of colleagues behind me, and I have all the support that I need.
On primacy, the fact is that Members of this House are all elected on the same day, on the basis of a party manifesto. We are elected to the pre-eminent House in Parliament—pre-eminent because it sustains the Executive, controls supply, and produces the Prime Minister. We submit ourselves for re-election, which is when the country gives a verdict on our performance. None of those conditions would apply to the second Chamber as proposed in the Bill. Elected Members would not be elected all at the same time, but over a longer period—a move supported by the Joint Committee on the draft House of Lords Reform Bill. The other place would have no mandate to rival the mandate of those in this House; indeed, some Members of the other place would be not elected, but appointed. The notion that they could somehow convert themselves into an equally legitimate Chamber that could challenge the authority of this House is simply far-fetched.
Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend give way?
Sir George Young
No, I am pressing on. Nothing in the Government’s Bill changes the current status of the second Chamber, which is clearly defined as complementary and subordinate to this House. Its only powers are those given to it by this House, which remains pre-eminent. The second Chamber would simply not be able—even if it wanted to—unilaterally to change its powers after reform, any more than it can now.
Another misconception relates to the Government’s preferred electoral system for the second Chamber. An assumption has arisen that, somehow, Members of the upper House who are elected on party lists will have been parachuted in by the party leadership. I say as delicately as I can that this has not been my party’s experience with Members of the European Parliament, some of whom have proved robustly independent in their opinions, and in expressing them, and were certainly not the preferred candidates of the leadership. Indeed, this argument ignores totally the democratic hoops through which candidates must jump before being selected: primaries, public meetings, and the scrutiny to which people seeking election are properly subjected.
Whereas there is a closed list in the European Parliament, we propose a semi-open list, so voters can overturn the order predetermined by parties. Ultimately, colleagues who have an issue with the Government’s proposals will want to analyse and probe them in Committee, but I do not believe that the list system will have the consequences that some have suggested.
Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)
My right hon. Friend mentioned elected Members of the European Parliament. Does he not agree that just because another elected Member has one’s constituency as part of their region, it does not mean to say that they are interfering in one’s work all the time? No MEP has ever interfered with my work.
Sir George Young
And how very wise Members of the European Parliament are not to interfere in my hon. Friend’s constituency.
I turn finally to the issue of the progress that we have sought to make with the Government’s legislative programme, and with the Bill in particular. The Deputy Prime Minister established and chaired a cross-party Committee to develop policy and explore the contentious issues. There was a five-hour debate once the White Paper and draft Bill were published in 2011. There has been more than 22 hours of debate on the subject in the upper House since the beginning of the year.
Wayne David
As the Government now accept that there is a need for consensus on the issue, will the Leader of the House give a commitment to open meaningful dialogue immediately with the Oppositioning?
Sir George Young
The hon. Gentleman almost tests my patience. We are always open to discussion through the usual channels on issues such as this. I have to say gently to him that before we had even tabled the programme motion, the Labour Opposition said that they would vote against it. That did not indicate the sort of consensual interchange of ideas that the hon. Gentleman has just invited me to engage in.
We established a Joint Committee to consider the draft Bill. That Joint Committee held evidence sessions on 16 separate days—approximately 48 hours of parliamentary time—with the Minister giving evidence on four separate occasions. After the Joint Committee had concluded, we responded to it and we have amended the Bill before the House in the light of its recommendations.
As I confirmed to the House at the beginning, the Government will not proceed this evening with the programme motion. I want sufficient time to debate and vote on these issues, but I also want sufficient time for the House to scrutinise other important Bills in our legislative programme—major reforms to the banks, public service pensions, electricity markets, adoption and support for children with special needs, the state pension, the creation of a national crime agency, and the rest. Some substantial constitutional measures have passed through Parliament in the past two years—on fixed-term Parliaments, the referendum on the alternative vote, reducing the size of the Commons and the referendum lock on powers to Europe—yet the coalition also pressed ahead with sweeping reforms to public services and getting on top of the deficit.
I know that a number of my colleagues on the Government Benches have objections in principle to what is in the Bill, and I listened to them with respect yesterday. They are likely to register their objections on Second Reading. But if the House gives the Bill a Second Reading, I hope they will respect that decision and the need to make progress with others measures in our programme for the current Session.
I hope that Back Benchers on both sides of the House will see the Bill for what it is: a serious attempt at long last to strengthen Parliament’s ability to hold the Government to account, which will raise the game of the Executive and empower the individual citizen. I commend the Bill to the House.