House of Lords Reform Bill

Robin Walker Excerpts

Tuesday 10th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Livingston (Graeme Morrice), and I agree with him on one point—his strong support for a referendum. If one thing comes out of this debate, it is that issue. My hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) made the interesting point that we should perhaps look at having a referendum lock on any major constitutional changes in future.

Having listened to well over 12 hours of this debate, I agree with the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) that it has been very good. A number of people who are usually loyalists have spoken out on points of principle, which is hugely important and very welcome. Whatever else is decided tonight, and however the votes go, there has been an important victory for Parliament in our having stopped the programme motion, which it would have been wrong to pass.

Like the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt), I should declare a family interest: after 31 years in this House, 16 of them spent on the Government Front Bench, my father went to the other place and served a number of years there. I do not intend to detain the House with family history, but it is worth noting, for the sake of those who like to characterise the other place as a haven of privilege for the few, as the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali) did, that Lord though my father may have become, he was not a scion of an ancient family, but the younger son of a factory worker and shop steward—someone who made his own way in the world and earned his place on the green Benches and the red through merit, hard work and experience.

It seems to me, as a very junior Back Bencher, that much of the debate that I have listened to over the past two days has been about a battle between theory and practice: between the idealistic pursuit of democracy, which is admirable, and an understanding of the way it actually works; and between the many loud voices of political correctness and the calmer voices of political experience. When my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Nicholas Soames) and the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) agree, they are generally right. When experienced former Ministers, such as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind), and the right hon. Members for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett), and for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson), all speak out against a Bill, they should be listened to.

It is notable that a number of distinguished former Speakers of this House, including Lady Boothroyd and, in the past, the late Lord Weatherill, spoke out against unthinking democratic reform, because they knew very well the strengths and the shortcomings of both Houses. It is especially notable that no former Prime Ministers have been championing the cause of reform. Instead, the one Prime Minister in living memory who pushed through changes to the second Chamber while in office now warns, to quote Tony Blair’s recent editorial in the London Evening Standard, that

“there is almost no public appetite for such reforms. And there might be even less as the full implications of the Bill become clear. By making the Lords largely elected, with elections in May 2015, the character of the Upper House would be irrevocably changed. It would be a place dominated by politicians, and probably second-rate ones at that, given the Commons’ continued dominance. It would also be likely to challenge the Commons far more, stringing out the legislative process and embroiling every stage in party-political wrangling.”

Those who unthinkingly argue that we must have democracy in both Houses need to answer those concerns. They also need to bear in mind the role of the second Chamber as primarily a revising and amending Chamber. The expertise of its Members has been adequately addressed by other Members here, but does that mean that there should be no reform of the second Chamber? Of course not. I would strongly support reforms to introduce a term limit for life peers, to create an independent appointments commission and to limit the power of prime ministerial patronage to create peers, as well as the reforms set out by the noble Lord Steel.

We should be seeking reforms that build on the strengths of our second Chamber, broaden its horizons, and eliminate its weaknesses. What we should not do is press on with creating an elected second Chamber without recognising what the consequences would be—another tier of elected politicians more beholden than any before to the party political system, another layer of expensive professional politicians, a group who from the moment of their first election will be itching to take on the authority of this Chamber and to show that they have just as much right, if not more, to initiate and determine the course of legislation, as we do.

I am a proud democrat. I believe profoundly in the representative democracy that this House enshrines. The coalition agreement said that we would seek consensus to bring forward proposals on House of Lords reform. As yesterday’s and today’s debate has shown, there is no such consensus. Before this debate I was going to say that given the crises affecting our country and the world, the vital importance of the other work that needs to be done and the irrelevance of this debate to the vast majority of our constituents, I could not in all conscience vote down a programme motion. However, I was persuaded by the arguments in this debate that the only way that we would get the issue properly dealt with would be to do so. I am very glad that the Government have done the right thing and listened to the will of the House on that.