House of Lords Reform Bill [HL]

Marquess of Lothian Excerpts

Friday 3rd December 2010 Lords Chamber

[The Marquess of Lothian]

My Lords, it is with a certain trepidation that I rise today to address your Lordships’ House for the first time. After 36 years, on and off, in the other place, I have come to know and respect the great fount of wisdom and experience that resides within this Chamber. I am therefore hesitant to trespass upon it, and today I will not do so for long.

I have been very touched by the welcome that I have received in this House since my introduction. I find myself here in somewhat unusual circumstances. Following the House of Lords Act 1999, I was the second hereditary Peer to be able on his father’s death to continue to hold a seat in the other place without renouncing my peerage. Thus, I think that I am the first hereditary Peer from the other place to be created a life Peer in this House. This is a strange, and certainly unintended, anomaly arising from that legislation.

I was first elected to Parliament in February 1974, since when I have represented seats in Scotland and Wiltshire. I was lucky to hold ministerial office in the Administrations of both the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, and Sir John Major, latterly at the heart of the peace process negotiations in Northern Ireland. Subsequently, I was the chairman of my party, shadow Foreign Secretary and deputy leader of the Opposition in what I affectionately call the midnight watches of my party’s recent history.

I realise that I must not be controversial today. Luckily, we are debating the principle rather than the substance of this interesting Bill introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Steel of Aikwood, so I can avoid becoming embroiled at this stage in its details. I have long been involved in debates on the future of this House. I have generally resisted change but not because change was not needed; it is in the nature of the development of human institutions that change is not only necessary but inevitable. My objections have usually been to the reasons for change, which have too often been advanced not out of necessity but from political ideology or partisan expedience. I note what the noble Lord, Lord Steel, said about the necessity of the Bill.

I wish today to set out what I believe should be the basic criteria against which any proposals for reform of this House should be judged. First, reform should never challenge the democratically mandated authority of the other place. While that is not an issue in this Bill, it could be significant in any future legislation that seeks democratically to elect either in whole or in part your Lordships’ House.

Secondly, reform should always seek to enhance rather than diminish the ability of this House to hold the Government of the day to account. It is hard for the other place ever effectively to do so, because, by definition, the Government have the support of the majority in the other place and only in exceptional circumstances can the Government fail to have their way. That is why the inherent and indisputable value of your Lordships’ House is that it can, and does, both hold the Executive to account and suggest to it in the most courteous way to go away and think again.

Accountability is a key element in any healthy democratic system, and in ours it is this House that can truly provide that. Any reform that weakens that role does our democratic system no favours. Equally, any reform that seeks to create of this House a political echo of the other place, with a loyal and in-built government majority, not only dilutes the ability of this House to deliver accountability but reduces, if not eliminates, its ability to ask the Executive of the day to think again. In securing reform, it is vital that nothing is done that would reduce the breadth and depth of experience and expertise that epitomise this House.

However, the greatest strength of this House in my political lifetime has been the indefinable spirit of independence which, whatever its political make-up, has allowed the House to challenge the presumption of the Government of the day. In my experience, government reactions have usually been of irritation, but they are often followed by a realisation that something outside what the late Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone called “the elective dictatorship” has spoken in the best interests of the nation. In my humble view, reform of your Lordships’ House should always seek to enhance rather than diminish that spirit.

I finish by reiterating the belief, which I expressed in my valedictory speech in the other place, that the greatest obligation of public service is stewardship: namely, to leave to those who come after us that which we received from those who went before us in as good a state, if not better, than we received it. I reflected ruefully on that occasion that in my political lifetime our score in this regard was not impressive. Within that concept of stewardship, reforms should address not so much how they will affect us today but what improvements they will bring for those who come after us. Stewardship must apply not only in what we do to our environment, our economy and our society but in what we do to our constitution.