House of Lords: Abolition

Patricia Gibson Excerpts

Monday 18th June 2018 Westminster Hall

[Paul Scully (Sutton and Cheam) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered e-petition 209433 relating to a referendum on the abolition of the House of Lords.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Walker. As I normally do, I will read the text of the petition for the Official Report:

“Give the electorate a referendum on the abolition of the House of Lords. The House of Lords is a place of patronage where unelected and unaccountable individuals hold a disproportionate amount of influence and power which can be used to frustrate the elected representatives of the people”.

As of a couple of hours ago, 169,215 people had signed the petition. The timing of the debate is apt because at the other end of Parliament, the Lords are currently exercising an incredible amount of influence and power over the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, as they debate the amendments that have been rejected by this place. We will see what comes back to us later.

I congratulate the petitioner, Rob McBride, who is in the Gallery today with his wife. I just had a snatched conversation with him—I hope to catch up with him after the debate—about what motivated him to start the petition. I was told it was purely the argument, applicable before the EU withdrawal Bill came to the Lords, that in this day and age there is no place for appointed members of a legislative body. I hope to talk about the options, and about the discussions that we have had, that the Lords themselves have had, and that I have had with a number of university and school students regarding the issues and practicalities of Lords reform.

I suspect that many of the 169,000 people who followed Rob’s lead and signed the petition were specifically motivated by the Lords’ consideration of the EU withdrawal Bill, because many signatures came quickly after it. I suspect that a lot of people were concerned about how the Lords had started to overstep their remit—a view I share. I believe that some of the amendments to the Bill sent to the Commons, such as those relating to the European economic area and the customs union, were not in the scope of the original Bill; such matters are properly considered in other legislation, not least the Trade Bill, which is coming before us again in a few weeks’ time. However, considering and voting on provisions such as so-called Henry VIII clauses is well within the Lords’ remit. That may be uncomfortable for the Government and for Members who, like me, voted to leave the EU and want to get on with it, but the House of Lords exists not for my comfort or for the Government’s, but to scrutinise legislation and to return it to the Commons, hopefully in a better state.

That the House of Lords has overstepped the mark in throwing back certain amendments is evidenced by some of the comments made during the debate. Lord Bilimoria said, when considering amendment 49, that

“Thanks to this amendment, Parliament would have the ability to stop the train crash that is Brexit.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 30 April 2018; Vol. 790, c. 1854.]

It is not appropriate for the upper House to thwart the will of the people and to get us to consider what are effectively wrecking amendments to a Bill that was clearly in our manifesto and that we need to get passed in a timely fashion if we are to leave the EU in an orderly way. Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb said in the same debate that she had intended to vote for an amendment, but the speeches in favour of it had turned her against it, as there was clearly “more of an agenda” than just allowing more oversight of the process.

Oversight of the process is what the House of Lords is for. The Lords do many different things, but in the Chamber itself about 40% of their work involves scrutiny—debating, asking questions, and responding to ministerial statements and such things. The other 60% of their time is spent improving draft legislation—primary legislation and statutory instruments. From speaking to a number of Members of the House of Lords, it is clear to me that they spend a lot of time on, and take a lot of interest in, statutory instruments—probably more so than the Commons does, where we typically rely on a Government majority to get them through. The Lords take their role of scrutiny and adding their expert view very seriously.

[Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)]

Does the hon. Gentleman not agree that regardless of the legislation being considered, in a country that I would hope considers itself to be a democracy, it is an affront that we have more than 800 unelected peers, with 13 new appointments recently, while we face the prospect of the democratic Chamber being further reduced?

[Paul Scully]

I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention. I will talk about the need to reduce numbers later. I will also talk about the practicalities of whether we have an elected or appointed upper Chamber, how we could reform an appointed Chamber, and the need for an upper Chamber in the first place. Should we go unicameral as New Zealand has? I will consider whether there is scope for doing that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Justin Madders]

I appreciate that, but it does not make the existing system any more acceptable. The problem that successive Governments have found with the House of Lords, and the trap that they and we all fall into, is that we obsess about how we shall make the system work, rather than saying as a statement of principle that we do not believe that an unelected Chamber in this country is an acceptable way to proceed. We should state as a starting point that we want abolition, then, if we agree, we should have a period of time in which to work out exactly what we want instead.

[Patricia Gibson]

I very much agree with the hon. Gentleman who is talking about the credibility gap—people cogitating and reflecting on legislation when they have no democratic accountability. Does he agree that the credibility of the Lords is further undermined by the fact that they pay no tax on their House of Lords earnings or allowances?

[Justin Madders]

I was not aware of that. In the past, some people have had issues to do with their involvement in making donations to political parties or with paying their taxes. It is absolutely right that someone resident in this country and taking part in the democratic process should be subject to the same rules as every other citizen.

We are told that expertise and knowledge is in such abundance among Members of the other place that radical reform would pose a risk to the ability of Parliament to scrutinise legislation. The truth, however, is that out of the 13 most recent nominations, seven were former Members of Parliament, one a former general secretary of the Labour party and one a former deputy chairman of the Conservative party. Indeed, since the Life Peerages Act 1958, a third of the 1,452 peers created have been former MPs who were therefore relieved of the bothersome inconvenience of having to obtain the consent of the electorate before being allowed to continue in public life. Many more nominees were councillors, party donors or staff. Of the Members appointed since May 2010, half are either former MPs or former local councillors, and a further fifth are former special advisers or party employees.

It appears that there is very little difference between the qualifications and types of people in the two Houses. In response to the argument about expertise, what is it about earning the legitimacy of the popular vote that precludes a person from having expertise on a particular subject? The House of Commons has plenty of experts from all walks of life. The fact that they have to face elections does not seem to prevent them from coming here in the first place.