House of Lords Reform Bill

Martin Horwood Excerpts

Tuesday 10th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Conor Burns]

I think they are impressed that we accept more than 80% of the amendments that peers send back to us, and that in the other place there are people with great expertise—world-renowned people who would never dream of putting their names on a party list, going to central office, seeing Gareth Fox and getting on to the candidates’ list. It just would not happen, in any way.

I received a text last night from my old history teacher, who spent his entire career inspiring young people with a love and reverence of our country and its institutions, and he said to me:

“An elected Chamber would be a disaster and lead to the dilution of the Commons.”

I could not put it better myself.

I faced tonight a dilemma that I have finally resolved in my own mind. I cannot support this Bill on Second Reading. I could not look myself in the eye if I voted for it on Second Reading, and clearly that is incompatible with membership of Her Majesty’s Government, so I informed the Chief Whip this morning that I have resigned as Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.

I am doing that in order to vote for something that I believe in strongly and on principle. I want to see a fully appointed second House, and I will go into the Lobby with the aim of trying to preserve that, in the same way that other, current members of the Government—17 Ministers and, indeed, the Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Mr Swire), to whom I was PPS back in August 2010—went into the Lobby in 2007 in support of a fully appointed second Chamber. I will go into the Lobby in the same way also that six members of the Conservative Whips Office went into the Lobby in 2007 in support of a fully appointed second Chamber.

What an Alice in Wonderland world we now live in, that voting for something which has been a mainstream view in our party for decades—indeed, generations—now leads to incompatibility with serving in the Government.

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

If it was such a mainstream Conservative philosophy, as the hon. Gentleman says, how did Lords reform sneak into the party manifesto, the coalition agreement and the Queen’s Speech?

[Conor Burns]

It is a very mainstream view within the Conservative party, and I totally agreed with my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, who still has my full support and loyalty, when he told the Association of Conservative Peers that this was a very urgent issue for a third term. As we have yet to win a first term on our own, a third term is quite a way off.

I support this Government in every way, and I bitterly regret the fact that I will vote against the Government tonight. I support the Prime Minister and I support what the Government are trying to do; I even have some coalition-coloured ties to demonstrate that support. I see my friends from Northern Ireland on the Opposition Benches, and I genuinely regret the fact that I will not be able to continue to make such a contribution in the Northern Ireland Office. As someone who was born in north Belfast, who spent the early part of their life there, who is a Catholic and a Unionist and who recognises, understands and, indeed, feels both traditions in Northern Ireland, I think that taking such action is a matter of great regret, but I do it with passion and belief, and confident that it is the right thing to do.

I tell the House—and this should worry every single Member, in every corner and on both sides—that the number of comments I have had from people expressing amazement that a Member of this House in 2012 is prepared to resign on a point of principle, shows us how diminished and deluded our politics has become in this country. We need more days such as today, when this House is prepared to assert its will and to tell the Government what they can and cannot do.

I end with this, because I think that she was a great parliamentarian—my hon. Friends think that I am going to quote someone else, but I am not. The right hon. and noble Baroness Boothroyd, who served with distinction in the Chair over many years, said in one of the papers this morning, to those of us who will do what I will do later this evening,

“you are doing the right thing by your constituents, by your country and by Parliament”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Robinson]

I take my hon. Friend’s point and accept it, but this is not really a priority. If we accept that the language of politics or the art of government are about achieving our priorities and managing the problems that are in the way of achieving them, I cannot see the House of Lords as a big problem at the moment. It really is not. It may well be an anachronism with its robes, its frumpery and all that; yes, I would love to get rid of it. For those who want reform, as I do, however, the proposals put forward by Lord Steel seem to deal with the matter. They seem to deal adequately with all my principal objections to how the House of Lords works, how it is constituted and how it deals with various aspects of ritual that people either like or do not like. The proposals deal with it all. If we had a set of provisions broadly based on what Lord Steel had proposed, I believe that we could have gained cross-party agreement, but we have not got that. We have a dog’s breakfast of a Bill.

[Martin Horwood]

Tom Paine first suggested reforms of the House of Lords more radical than those suggested by Lord Steel, and that was in the 1790s. If the hon. Gentleman supports reform, when exactly are we going to make it a priority?

[Mr Robinson]

I do not see that it is a priority, and I have no intention personally of speaking to it as a priority. It is not a priority; what is it stopping us doing? The priority at the moment is to get agreement between the two parties that form this so-called Government or this so-called coalition. That is what is preventing the Tory majority from carrying through their programme. Every day we read about it, and every Government have the same problems to a greater or lesser extent, and these are the in-built checks and balances of our very system. No Government find it easy to get their business through. The whole problem in government is getting business through, and in most areas we do not apply the guillotine or a timetable motion. I do not see the problem in the same light or from the same perspective as many other Members who see it as a priority.

Let me explain the points I find most objectionable about this Bill. The 15-year term is an affront to the concept of accountability. What legitimacy is conferred by that if no accountability comes with it? Clearly there is none. I intensely dislike PR—it is a personal view, and the issue can be debated across the Chamber, but such matters are in-built. The objective is the same as that which has been sought since Lloyd George first converted to PR way back in 1920 when he realised he would not win by any other means. He was always a man of great principle. That was when PR became Liberal dogma, and it is has remained as such ever since.

Above all, if we are to have a massive constitutional change of this kind, we should have a referendum. That is why I supported Tony Benn—yes, I did—when we had the first referendum on the European Community, which amounted to a massive change to the country’s constitutional arrangements. That is why, with a clear conscience and a glad heart, I shall vote against Second Reading tonight—quite simply because a basic element in the Labour party proposals as I remember them was the idea that this matter should be subject to a referendum of the British people. If that were part of the arrangements now, they would probably be kicked out, but above all else one would feel much happier in voting for them. As things stand, I shall vote against Second Reading.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Griffiths]

My hon. Friend has made a very good point, and I commend the work that he has done in opposing the Bill. He has done a fantastic job, and I pay tribute to him and to others in the House.

I also struggle with the idea of having to confront my constituents, who are being expected to deal with austerity. We are expecting people to accept the cuts that the coalition claims are necessary if we are to put the country back on its feet and deal with the mess that we inherited, but at the same time we are telling them that politicians may decide to spend £153 million on more politicians. How can I look my constituents in the eye—the workers in my local council who have been made redundant, and the public sector workers who are having to accept pay freezes and make more contributions to their pensions—and say to them, “Yes, but what is important is for us is to have elected representatives costing £153 million”?

I find it worrying that the Government have tried to persuade us that savings made in the House of Commons can be offset against the extra costs in another place. We all recognise that reducing the number of Members here represents a massive saving, but that money should not be spent on more politicians in another place. I am also worried about the 15-year term. The possibility that Members of an upper Chamber elected in 1997 with Tony Blair’s mandate and Tony Blair’s election result would have only just finished sitting strikes me as undemocratic in the extreme.

[Martin Horwood]

How, then, can the hon. Gentleman justify defending an institution in which Members appointed by Tony Blair are still sitting?

[Andrew Griffiths]

Because we all recognise that those people in the other place have expertise and knowledge, and they are not at the whim of the vagaries of the political process. They are not politicians and they are not standing for election; they do not choose to kiss babies and knock on doors. They are there because they are independently minded—