House of Lords Reform

Debate between Peter Grant and Kelvin Hopkins

Thursday 14th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate, which I greatly welcome. I particularly enjoyed the speech by the hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire (Martin John Docherty). It was entertaining, but also serious, making many important points. The House of Lords has, of course, been in the news again recently, and the Government are clearly threatening change to rein in our allegedly noble colleagues. Yesterday’s debate in the other place seemed to suggest that even Conservative peers were not entirely happy with what the Government want to do. My interest in speaking today is to argue for a unicameral Parliament. The majority of legislatures across the world are unicameral, and some European nations—Sweden, for example—have chosen to become unicameral. We should at least discuss that possibility and, I hope, move towards that system in time.

When I first entered the House in 1997, the New Labour Government—I emphasise New Labour with a capital N—established a royal commission to consider possible reforms to the House of Lords. Shortly into my time here, I attended a Labour party so-called regional policy forum—I am sure that Mr Deputy Speaker would understand what regional policy forums were like. It was in Watford on a Saturday afternoon with about 25 to 30 party members attending. A chairman had been allocated by the party machine, and we were addressed by a learned professor from the royal commission.

The terms of reference set out by the Government for the royal commission made no mention of abolition of the House of Lords as a possible option. I asked why that was, and suggested that abolition should be a possible option for discussion. Another member suggested that we should have a show of hands to test opinion and see how many members at the meeting favoured abolition—an innocent little test of opinion. At this, the chair became very agitated and said, icily, that there would be no votes. Clearly, not even a show of hands in Watford among a small number of Labour party members on a Saturday afternoon—it was no doubt raining outside—was allowed to express a majority view that we should abolish the House of Lords. I suspect that there was probably a majority for abolition in that room, but it was not to be discussed. It was clear that our leaders wanted to keep the House of Lords in some form and that discussing possible abolition was not to be tolerated. It was most interesting.

Some reforms were later enacted by the Blair Government, and remain in place, but abolition is still not being discussed. Some longer-standing Members may recall the later discussions and debates on reform, and the series of votes on possible alternatives that took place in March 2007. One Division effectively permitted a test of opinion on possible abolition of the House of Lords. Among Labour Back Benchers, 169 of my hon. Friends voted for a bicameral Parliament, but 155 of us voted against that, effectively in favour of a unicameral Parliament and the abolition of the House of Lords. That was almost half of the Labour Back Benchers, showing a substantial body of support for a unicameral Parliament. The fact that this option was deliberately excluded from consideration by the earlier royal commission was, I think, a scandal and clearly a political fix.

I tabled an early-day motion to that effect at the time, which received the support of 50 Labour Members, some 14 of whom are still Members today. It was clear that that was due to the simple fact that the Prime Minister at the time wished to retain his power of patronage to appoint Members to the Lords, for a number of reasons. I might add that, subsequently, many argued strongly for an appointed House of Lords, and for retaining a substantial proportion of appointed Members even if it became democratic.

One of those reasons was obviously the ability to offer Members of the House of Commons the prospect of elevation to the Lords, both as a means of keeping control and reducing the potential for rebellion in the Commons and, possibly, to help to persuade older Members with safe seats to agree to retire at a convenient time for the party machine to slot leadership supporters into those safe seats.

[Peter Grant]

I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman recalls that, last time there was a major review of the boundaries in Scotland, the Kingdom of Fife was reduced from five parliamentary constituencies to four. The then Member of Parliament for Dunfermline, East, by the name of Gordon Brown, found himself without an obvious successor seat. The MP for Kirkcaldy agreed to retire from the House, Mr Brown became the MP for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, and very shortly afterwards the former MP for Kirkcaldy became a Member of the House of Lords. Is that the kind of democratic process to which the hon. Gentleman was referring?

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I do not wish to mention particular examples, because there are still hon. Members here who may or may not have experienced this process, but in my party I want individual Members to have the power, rather than party machines, and I certainly do not want leaders to have the power to select candidates.

I used the word “possibly” about selections of this kind because I cannot prove that such things occurred, and I do not wish to imply any criticism of other hon. Members who may have been selected in strong party seats. That may, of course, occur in other parties as well. It is clearly the case, however, that successive Prime Ministers, before and since, have jealously guarded their powers of patronage. I want to see those powers taken away in the interests of a more vigorous, intensive democracy in this House and outside, and to rein in the excessive power of the Executive.

I think that this is a serious matter, and I hope that, as and when we come to discuss the possible future of the House of Lords, the possibility of a unicameral Parliament and getting rid of this patronage will be raised again.

--- Later in debate ---

[Peter Grant]

I am very grateful indeed, Madam Deputy Speaker, not least because I intend to quote the bard later on.

I find it astonishing that when we started the process of review of and consultation on how to repair the fabric of this undoubtedly magnificent and historic building, it was based on the assumption that Parliament would continue to operate in exactly the same way as it presumably always has done. May I suggest that a golden opportunity was missed to start to reform the processes of not only this Chamber, but the second Chamber?

Indeed, this might be an opportunity to ask ourselves why we need a second Chamber at all. Other modern, inclusive, democratic countries manage perfectly well with one Chamber. If we think about it, the argument that the second Chamber is good at scrutinising and checking the actions of the first Chamber suggests that we are saying that the first Chamber is not doing its job, so perhaps we should literally get our own House in order and then consider whether we want another House just down the road.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I agree with what the hon. Gentleman has said. In my speech I mentioned Sweden, which has abolished its second Chamber. Does he appreciate that Sweden has not become undemocratic as a result? It is as democratic as it was before.

[Peter Grant]

The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point. Imagine that this Parliament had historically consisted of a single, elected Chamber. Then imagine that someone comes along and suggests that we need a second, unelected Chamber in order to become more democratic. They would be laughed out of court.

I think that there are options available to us if we are prepared to look at having a second elected Chamber, assuming that we need a second Chamber at all. That would give us a chance to elect the House of Lords on a different electoral cycle from that of the House of Commons, in order to avoid the temptation for Governments to time their announcements and legislation with a view to getting re-elected in a few years’ time. It would give us the chance, importantly, to elect a second Chamber by a different electoral method to help even out some of the undoubted inequities that exist in the first-past-the-post system. Yes, the SNP benefited from that system at the general election, but the system was not fair when it worked to our disadvantage, and it is no fairer when it works to our advantage.

Comments were made earlier about the place of the representatives of the Church of England in the House of Lords. I will defend and warmly commend the actions of a number of Churches and faith groups in helping to act as a social conscience of our nations. I think of the important work that various Churches have done in critiquing benefit sanctions and nuclear weapons, or in reminding us that the refugee crisis is about human beings, not burdens on our benefits system. I hope that faith groups, including humanists, who in my view are a legitimate faith group, will continue to do that. However, in this day and age should they have an automatic right to make laws that apply to the majority of citizens in these islands who choose to follow a different interpretation of their faith? I fully appreciate that that will be a difficult conversation for many, but it is one that we really cannot shy away from for very much longer.

It can be argued that there is a benefit in allowing people from all walks of life to play a part in scrutinising legislation, rather than just the relatively narrow “political elite”. There are two problems with that argument. First, the House of Lords is not a representative sample; if anything, it is more dominated by the political elite than the House of Commons. Secondly, the House of Lords does not just scrutinise legislation; it can block it. It can even initiate legislation and ask us to scrutinise it.

As the hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins) mentioned, if there are benefits in having experts who are not Members of Parliament, or lay people, advising and scrutinising legislation, why not set up a system that allows appointed people to scrutinise and examine, but not to legislate or to overrule the will of the democratic Chamber? That is an option that I think is well worth further investigation.

There will be those who appeal to a deity called tradition, as if tradition was always a good thing. I think that tradition is important. Our traditions are what make us who we are, and if we lose sight of who we are, then we really are in trouble. But if we allowed tradition to be the judge of what happens in future, we would still be sending children up chimneys and down mines, and we would still be exploiting slaves from other parts of the world. More topically, if we continued to judge things according to the traditions that applied in this Chamber for so long, the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for Scotland would have had to resign this week. Thank goodness we have moved away from traditions that were indefensible 300 years ago and are no more defensible today.

What does it say about democracy in this Parliament when the only organisation that consistently blocks any kind of proper reform of the House of Lords is also the one with the biggest vested interest in not reforming it? Most people in these islands simply cannot understand that. Even those who are not 100% convinced that the Lords should be abolished cannot understand why, when what is supposedly the sovereign Chamber in Parliament takes a decision to reform the House of Lords, the Lords itself can block any attempts to do so.

Even without legislation that can still be blocked or delayed indefinitely by the Lords itself, party leaders could give commitments that would get rid of some of the potential abuses, which, let us face it, we all know have happened. Although it is not possible to point to an individual appointment and know for certain that it was based on financial transactions, or on a deal made when somebody was still a Member of Parliament, the fact that the system can be vulnerable to that kind of abuse means that in the eyes of the public it very probably has been abused in that way in the past.

Let us look at the three worst abuses, which cause a lot of concern. I invite the Minister not to commit to dealing with them but at least to give serious consideration to how the parties could, right now, start to make the appointment system of the House of Lords a bit more acceptable, pending a proper and rapid review sometime in the next two or three hundred years. First, politicians who get kicked out by the democratic process can come back, arguably better off than they have been here, by being appointed to the House of Lords. Why not ban appointments of former MPs to the House of Lords, at least for a period of five or 10 years afterwards?

Secondly, there seems to be a high correlation between new appointments to the House of Lords and previous donors to party coffers. I am told that about 25% of all recent appointments by the Prime Minister were of people who had made substantial donations to the party coffers. I do not object to people giving money to causes they believe in, but there is an issue there that damages the reputation of this place in the eyes of the public. Why not set a limit and say that anybody who has donated above a certain amount to a political party cannot then take a place in the House of Lords, again possibly with a five-year or 10-year cooling-off period?

Finally, there is an abuse of the system that we have seen here. Page after page of improvements to the Scotland Bill put forward by the people who were elected to represent Scotland were rejected by MPs who have no mandate to represent Scotland, and then promptly reintroduced by those same MPs through their friends in the House of Lords. When the amendments came back to the House of Commons a short time later, the people who had voted against them trooped through the Lobby to vote for them. That is a wrong use of the process. Why not invite the Government to consider the possibility of putting themselves under a voluntary ban whereby they will not introduce major legislation in the Lords unless it has been passed by this Chamber first, and will not introduce large numbers of significant amendments in the Lords when they have had the opportunity to have them considered in this place first?

Even those changes would not go far enough for me, or for a lot of people, but they would at least start to show the people of these islands, in good faith, that the Government are serious about tackling an appointments system, in particular, that has no place in a representative democracy.

Earlier, someone referred to Westminster as the mother of Parliaments. I have heard the story that once, during a hustings debate probably somewhere north of the border, somebody announced in a very pompous manner that he was proud to serve in the mother of all Parliaments, and a voice from the back asked him if he had any idea who the father was. I am not going to say which of those comments I prefer.

I started by quoting the greatest poem, or song, that Robert Burns ever wrote, but I think that the greatest piece of writing by Robert Burns is, surprisingly, not a poem or a song, but a piece of prose:

“Whatever mitigates the woes or increases the happiness of others—this is my criterion of goodness. And whatever injures society at large, or any individual, in it—this is my measure of iniquity.”

The way that Members of the Lords are appointed right now means that we have an iniquitous situation in this Parliament. If the Lords is not prepared to accept fundamental reform, then it can, will and must be abolished.

Relocation of Migrants in need of International Protection (Opt-in Decision)

Debate between Peter Grant and Kelvin Hopkins

Monday 14th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

I will not speak for long, Madam Deputy Speaker, but it is important to say something in this debate. I support my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) and his emphasis on behaving in a humane way towards migrants, as well as his point about the rather small numbers of people currently being allowed into our country. Like him, I believe that we should consider taking more of those desperate people into this country from areas where they risk death on a daily basis.

I support the Government’s position, and it is right that this country should have its own controls, but I think that that should go further and that other EU countries should also be able to control their own borders—that is what has caused the enormous row that the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) mentioned. I believe that a fundamental component of democracy is that a country should control its own borders and who comes in. That is sometimes difficult to do, but it is fundamental. Borders matter, and trying to eliminate them in pursuit of the creation of some kind of super-state—that is effectively what has been happening in the European Union—is a mistake and will eventually come to a sticky end. It is noticeable that tensions are rising strongly at the moment.

As I said in an earlier intervention, refugees may not want to go to the country to which they have been allocated. If they are allocated to countries that do not really want them, they may not be made welcome, cared for, or well treated when they get there, and that is another serious problem. A way of helping refugees to go to places to which they want to go, and where they will have some kind of welcome and be looked after, would be much more sensible than a forced allocation policy. The UK can do that and we should not opt in to the arrangement, but other countries in the European Union should be in the same position as us.

I do not accept free movement; I think it has been a mistake. If we want to recruit people from other countries who have the skills we need, that is fine. That could be done on a temporary or permanent basis, but it should be a choice and not that of some supranational body that says, “You must accept people because those are the rules of the club and you ought to accept those rules.” I do not accept those rules, and neither do many people in Britain.

There is a conflict here. We must ensure that we behave in a humane way to other people. We all admire and wish to adopt such humanitarian actions, but large, substantial and unregulated movements of people can militate against the humane feelings that we all have. There comes a point when people think, “We can’t cope”, and destabilising massive population movements are not conducive to humane behaviour.

In the 19th century there were vast open spaces in the United States, South America, Australasia and elsewhere, and countries recruited people because they needed them and it was not a problem. We recruited people from Ireland in particular, as well as from elsewhere. We have also been very humane with certain immigrations. When I was younger in the 1960s, the Ugandan Asians were being seriously threatened and we accepted them into our country. Indeed, one or two Members of the House are descended from that population, and those people have made a massive contribution to our society. We have behaved well in the past, but when movements of people become so large and seemingly unstoppable, our humanity starts to break down—not individually in the Chamber, but as a society—and people start saying, “We can’t cope. There is a desperate housing crisis and unemployment and so on”.

[Peter Grant]

The hon. Gentleman clearly has a point, but would it destabilise the United Kingdom to take a share of the 4 million people who have fled Syria? How can it stabilise anyone for all 4 million to be left in two or three countries in the Mediterranean?

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I accept what the hon. Gentleman says. I have said, and my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras on the Labour Front Bench has said, that we should accept more people from Syria. There is absolutely no question about that. We should play a bigger part in helping refugees to escape their terrible situation. The number the Government have decided to accept is far too low. That said, we are not going to have an open border policy in which very, very large numbers of people come here, because that would be politically destabilising. It would not be good.

Germany’s population was falling. It is a very successful industrial country with a low birth rate, which means it needs workers. Our population is increasing rapidly. We are going to overtake Germany and become the country with the largest population in the whole of the European Union. We are therefore in a very different situation from Germany. If we had a serous labour shortage, and lots of space and vacant housing, we would want to recruit more people.