House of Lords Reform

Debate between Mark Field and Mark Lazarowicz

Wednesday 14th January 2015 Westminster Hall

[Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart)—if he does not mind my calling him that, and if it is not too deferential for his standards—will realise all too well that, as a Conservative, my views on House of Lords matters are not particularly orthodox. In fact, even before his time in the House, I was the only Conservative to support the notion of a unicameral system—certainly unicameral compared with the appalling state of our current House of Lords. To be honest, as a Conservative, I have no problem with a little forelock- tugging. I do not mind having dukes, earls, marquises, barons and the like. I just do not want them having any place in the legislature. They can call themselves whatever they like, but the notion that they are able to vote through laws seems as anachronistic as he pointed out.

In discussing House of Lords reform, there is a great opportunity for us to make the link with something I had thought the hon. Gentleman would raise: English votes for English laws, and the disjointed devolution we currently have in the United Kingdom. I shall touch on that in my speech. I broadly share his view that the time has come for comprehensive constitutional change in the United Kingdom. If it were to be carried out precisely and without partisan party political consideration, I believe we would be capable of producing a solution that will benefit Britain for decades to come.

My instinctive and immediate proposal would be for the creation of a new federal Parliament. It would be an elegant solution designed to resolve effectively the four main domestic constitutional uncertainties of the United Kingdom, which have plagued the political arena during the past three decades and perhaps will continue to do so in the years to come. With a federal UK Parliament and four elected national Parliaments, we could maintain the monarchy, strengthen the Union, and resolve the questions raised by the disgracefully unreformed House of Lords, which we rightly debate today. I would also wish to give independent and equal Parliaments to England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Like the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire, I am a democrat. Since my maiden speech in the House some 14 years ago, I have supported a fully elected House of Lords. The case for the preservation of the so-called “ancient traditions” of the upper House—we heard much on that, even from younger colleagues of mine in the Conservative party, when the House debated the issue two years ago—was conclusively lost in 1999. Once the vast bulk of the hereditaries—all bar 92—were removed, so too should all appointed Members have followed. Instead, as has been pointed out, we have a ludicrously bloated House of Lords. I am afraid that the Lord Winstons of the House, who are often prayed in aid of the House of Lords, are, with their great broad-based experience, assuredly the exception rather than the rule.

Over the past 15 years, the ranks of the House of Lords have been swelled by hundreds of party hacks and large-scale political donors, along with legislators of very dubious quality who are often given the nod on politically correct grounds. Indeed, I remain staggered at the sheer gutlessness of this place, the House of Commons, as we waved through the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011. That legislation was promoted by the Deputy Prime Minister, who heralded the fatuous-to-the-point-of-being-disingenuous saving to the public purse of £10 million a year, which was ironic, given how the Liberal Democrats have not only stuffed the House of Lords full of their own placemen but swelled the ranks of special advisers to untold numbers, both of which actions are entirely counter to the idea of making the cost of politics cheaper.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

It appears that we all agree—or at least those of us present in the Chamber—on the need for democratic reform of the House of Lords. I remind the hon. Gentleman that we did not all support the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011—it was opposed by the Opposition.

On change in the House of Lords, although I understand the attraction of a radical transformation and move towards a federal Parliament, is there not a danger that we end up spending so many decades trying to get the correct solution that nothing ever happens? Is there a case for moving to an elected House of Lords now, and then moving on to further changes? Otherwise, nothing will happen, not only in our lifetimes but in the lifetimes of people yet unborn.

[Mark Field]

There is a danger of that. In many ways, much as I disapprove of what happened in 1999, from the point of view of the Blair Administration, they did the right thing in taking the view that they should partly sort out the hereditary issue. Of course, the risk of any reform is that a little flurry of it is followed by decades of nothing else being done—historically, that is what has happened with the upper House—with those who wanted some reform saying, “Well, listen, we’ve been able to achieve something.”

It is depressing that the House of Lords has become ever more a creature of the Executive, while House of Lords reform has ground to a halt. The truth behind what the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire said is that it is down to the numbers game. The Whips can get business through the House of Commons, so we have the utter discourtesy of Government amendments being tabled in the House of Lords simply because it is known that the legislation will not get through without amendments, which are rubber-stamped when it comes back to the Commons. Instinctively, that feels wrong. Ultimately, it is in our hands in the House of Commons. We are now only 16 or 17 weeks away from a general election, and if the result is indeterminate, we parliamentarians will have the opportunity to stand up, have our say and make a difference, particularly if we are in the realms of a minority Government.

I must confess that, although I was happy to support the underlying principle of electing the House of Lords on Second Reading and in the programme motion of the House of Lords Reform Bill, I believed ultimately that, in many of its particulars, it was a shoddy, poorly drafted piece of legislation. As the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz) said, if we try to work towards perfection, we will achieve very little. That is a great shame, because in many ways the British constitution has hitherto been one of the great success stories of modern politics. It has kept the country together—up to and beyond 18 September last year—united under a common Crown and common Parliament for more than 300 years. Not for us the coups, revolutions and counter-revolutions that have plagued much of the European continent over that period. So successful has the British constitution been that we Britons have often stopped thinking about it.

Until 15 or so years ago, no one lost much time worrying about constitutional niceties. We knew instinctively that, messy as it was, the British constitution worked well and worked for the whole of the British isles. The Blair Administration changed everything. They part-reformed the House of Lords by removing the independent hereditary element, but successive Governments since have created literally hundreds of new life peers. In response to the demand of the people of Scotland and Wales—a demand that I acknowledge the Conservatives were perhaps too slow to understand, and certainly to accept—devolved Parliaments and Assemblies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland were created. It requires little cynicism to see that many of those changes were designed for Labour’s political advantage, and that they have not necessarily been properly carried through elsewhere. That has created many problems, especially in England, the neglected land in all those constitutional changes. England is a nation proud and undivided, but many of its people increasingly demand equal treatment with the other nations of the UK. Since last September’s Scottish referendum—lost, in case there is a doubt about it, by 10.6%—some Tory strategists feel that the time is ripe to play the English card.

There is a deep and increasing disquiet among many in England at the effects of devolution, and the most serious problems are the imbalances left by the somewhat partisan settlement of the late 1990s. Those are easily stated. MPs from Edinburgh and Cardiff can vote on health and education policies that affect my constituents and Manchester constituents, and those of the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg), but not on health and education policies affecting their own constituents—but why? It does not seem just. Under the Barnett formula, residents of Edinburgh had £1,300 more spent on their public services last year than my constituents did. Again, that seems less than equitable. There was a disgraceful situation before Christmas in the Northern Ireland Assembly when the Democratic Unionist party and Sinn Fein worked together to put a gun to the head of the British Government, to try to ensure there would be more money on the basis that they wanted a Barnett formula for Northern Ireland. If there is an indeterminate general election result, we may go down that route, with a bidding war on similar grounds in May and June.