House of Lords Reform (Draft Bill)

Sadiq Khan Excerpts

Tuesday 17th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister (Mr Nick Clegg)]

With permission, Mr Speaker, I wish to make a statement about the Government’s plans to reform the other place.

At the last general election, each major party committed to a democratically elected second Chamber. The coalition agreement set out very clearly the Government’s intention to deliver that, but the roots of these changes can be traced back much further. A century ago, the Government, led by Herbert Asquith, promised to create

“a Second Chamber constituted on a popular instead of hereditary basis.”

There has been progress in the intervening years—the majority of hereditary peers have gone, and the other place is now predominantly made up of life peers. We should see ourselves as completing that work.

People have a right to choose their representatives. That is the most basic feature of a modem democracy. Our second Chamber, which is known for its wisdom and expertise, is none the less undermined by the fact it is not directly accountable to the British people. I am therefore publishing a draft Bill today, and an accompanying White Paper, which set out proposals for reform.

In the programme for government, we undertook to

“establish a committee to bring forward proposals for a wholly or mainly elected upper chamber on the basis of proportional representation.”

I chair that cross-party Committee, which reached agreement on many of the most important issues—not on all of them, but good progress was made—and those deliberations have greatly shaped the proposals that are being published today. I should like to pay tribute to all members of the Committee, particularly Opposition Members, who engaged with us in an open and collaborative fashion. Let me also thank those individuals whose past work on Lords reform has laid the foundations for what we are doing today, particularly the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) and the right hon. and noble Lord Wakeham. Rather than start anew, the Government have benefited from their previous endeavours. Today’s proposals represent a genuine, collective effort over time.

The draft Bill and White Paper will now be scrutinised by a Joint Committee composed of 13 peers and 13 Members of this House. The Committee will report early next year, and a Government Bill will then be introduced.

The Prime Minister and I are clear that we want the first elections to the reformed upper Chamber to take place in 2015. However, although we know what we want to achieve, we are open minded about how we get there. Clearly, our fixed goal is greater democratic legitimacy for the other place, but we will be pragmatic in order to achieve that. We therefore propose an upper House made up of 300 members, each eligible for a single term of three Parliaments. Three hundred is the number that we judge to be right, but this is an art and not a science. In the vast majority of bicameral systems, the second Chamber is significantly smaller. That arrangement helps to maintain a clear distinction between the two Houses. We are confident that 300 full-time Members can cover the work comfortably. We are, however, open to alternative views on that.

The coalition agreement committed the Government to produce proposals for

“a wholly or mainly elected chamber.”

That debate is reflected in what we are publishing today. The Bill makes provision for 80% of Members to be elected, with the remaining 20% to be appointed independently. The 60 appointed Members would sit as Cross Benchers, not as representatives of political parties, and in addition bishops of the Church of England would continue to sit in the other place, but would be reduced in number from 26 to 12. The White Paper includes the case for a 100% elected House of Lords. The 80:20 split is the more complicated option, and so has been put into the draft Bill in order to illustrate it in legislative terms. The 100% option would be easy to substitute into the draft Bill should that be where we end up.

There are people on both sides of the House who support a fully elected Chamber, believing that an elected House of Lords should be just that. Others, again on both sides, take a different view, and support having a non-elected component in order to retain an element of non-party expertise, as well as to keep greater distinction between the two Houses. Personally, I have always supported a 100% elected House of Lords, but the key thing is not to make the best the enemy of the good. That approach has stymied Lords reform for far too long. After all, 80% is a whole lot better than 0%.

Elections to the new reformed House will be staggered: at each general election a third of Members will be elected, or a combination of elected and appointed. That is to prevent the other place from becoming a mirror image of this House. In the Bill we set out how those elections could be conducted using the single transferable vote. The coalition agreement specifies only that the system must be proportional, and what is most important is that it is different from whatever we use in the Commons. That is to ensure that the two Chambers have distinct mandates; one should not seek to emulate the other.

STV allows for that, and would also give the upper Chamber greater independence from party control. Votes are cast for individuals rather than parties, putting the emphasis on the expertise and experience that candidates offer, rather than the colour of the rosette they wear. We want to preserve the independence of spirit that has long differentiated that House from this one. I know that some Members prefer a party list system, including Opposition members of the cross-party Committee I chaired. We are willing to have this debate, and have not ruled out a list-based system in the White Paper.

The Commons will retain ultimate say over legislation through the Parliament Acts, and will continue to have a decisive right over the vote of supply. In order for a Government to remain in office they will still need to secure the confidence of MPs. The other place will continue to be a revising Chamber, providing scrutiny and expertise. Its size, electoral cycle, voting system, and terms will all help to keep it distinct from the Commons and a place that remains one step removed from the day-to-day party politics that, quite rightly, animate this House. What will be different is that our second Chamber will finally have a democratic mandate, and will be much more accountable as a result.

Clearly, the transition must be carefully managed. We propose to phase in the reform over three electoral cycles. In 2015 a third of Members will be elected, or a combination of elected and appointed. The number of sitting peers will be reduced by a third, although we are not prescribing the process for that; it will be up to the parties in the other place to decide. In 2020, a further third will come in under the new system, and then again in 2025. There are other ways of staging the transition, however, and the White Paper sets out two of them.

To conclude, history teaches us that completing the unfinished business of Lords reform is not without challenges. Our proposals are careful and balanced. They represent evolution, not revolution, and are a typically British change. I hope that Members from both sides of the House and the other place will help us to get the proposals right. The Government are ready to listen and are prepared to adapt, but we are determined, in the end, to act. I commend this statement to the House.

[Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

I thank the Deputy Prime Minister for advance sight of the statement, and for how he chaired the working group—squaring the views of Lord Strathclyde with those of the rest of us was nothing short of a master class in conflict resolution. I am also pleased to see the Prime Minister here supporting the Deputy Prime Minister. The latter must feel like the manager of West Ham seeing his chairman after the final whistle on Saturday. I hope he has a better outcome than the chairman—I mean the manager—of West Ham had on Saturday.

I agree that our politics and constitution are in need of reform. Like the Deputy Prime Minister’s party, Labour had a manifesto commitment to create a fully elected second Chamber. Let us be frank: Lords reform is not near the top of any of our constituents’ priorities. They are more interested—[Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] I am grateful for that support; I am not sure whether the Deputy Prime Minister is. Our constituents are more interested in their schools and hospitals, and whether they will have a job at the end of the year. This is about how we write the laws that affect us, including laws on schools and hospitals, and who writes those laws, so if we are doing it, we have to get it right.

The present situation is unsustainable. The Lords has more than 800 Members, and the Prime Minister intends to pack in another 200, at great expense to the taxpayer—117 have already been added since May 2010—while at the same time cutting the number of elected Members in this House. More unelected, fewer elected—and he calls it progress. I fear that the Deputy Prime Minister will soon realise that the Tories are the real obstacle to reform, just as they were when we were in power.

It is important that we get the details right. The Deputy Prime Minister says that he supports a fully elected second Chamber, yet he is unveiling a Bill today that leaves at least 20% appointed, plus bishops, plus Ministers appointed by the Prime Minister. The Joint Committee will have a built-in Government majority, so the idea of it overturning anything of substance in the Bill by next year is unrealistic. These proposals risk being a dog’s dinner, with nobody happy at the outcome— not even the Lib Dem activists, whom the Deputy Prime Minister is trying to appease. After 12 months in office, he has nothing new to say on Lords reform, but is simply putting out proposals that kick the issue into the long grass.

Before the Deputy Prime Minister delegates responsibility for the Bill to the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), who is the Minister responsible for political and constitutional reform, and to Lord Strathclyde, can he answer these 11 questions on the proposals?

Bearing in mind that the country comprehensively rejected the AV system two weeks ago, is the Deputy Prime Minister seriously suggesting that he should impose a system of proportional representation for the second Chamber without consulting the electorate? What powers does he want a reformed House of Lords to have? How will he deal with the conventions that currently govern the relationship between the two Chambers? Does he believe that the relationship should be codified? What role does he envisage for the bishops in the second Chamber, and why 12? Can he set out the cost of a reformed second Chamber? If it is possible that no peers would be forced to leave until 2025, what does he predict the maximum size and cost of the second Chamber will be in the interim? Will he confirm that he wants reform on the statute book by the next election? Will he confirm whether he intends to use the Parliament Acts to force the proposals through? Will he also confirm whether coalition MPs and peers will be whipped to vote for the Bill when it comes out of the Joint Committee? Finally, will he allow a debate on his Bill in Government time before the summer recess?

The Deputy Prime Minister has confirmed by the publication of this Bill just how irrelevant he and his party are in the coalition Government. I am afraid that the Bill, the White Paper and the whole process are a huge anticlimax.

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

Not only did the right hon. Gentleman fluff the lines at the beginning, he also failed to rise to the occasion. This is an occasion when, for once, he could put aside his sour observations and try to work across parties, as we have in the cross-party Committee, to make some progress not only, I should remind Opposition Members, on something that was in their manifesto—by the way, so was AV, but a fat lot of good that did us all—but on something that we have been discussing as a country for almost 100 years. If that is not long enough, I do not know what is.

Before I turn to some of the right hon. Gentleman’s questions, let me address the vital issue, which he has raised once again, about a wholly or mainly elected second Chamber. It would be so much easier to take the right hon. Gentleman’s admonitions in favour of 100% seriously if, during the 13 years under Labour, more had been delivered than 0%. Given that the country has been debating House of Lords reform for more than a century and that all three parties made a manifesto commitment on this issue last year, it is crucial not to make the best the enemy of the good. We have set out in the Bill how an 80:20 split would work, and we have maintained the option in the White Paper of moving to 100% if that is what people want. That is exactly what we will submit to the Joint Committee.

Turning to the right hon. Gentleman’s questions, the cost is almost impossible to estimate at this stage, without knowing precisely what the final composition of the House of Lords will be or the method of transition from where we are now to where we want to be in 2025. In the Bill, we have proposed a staged election—or election and appointment—by thirds in 2015, 2020 and 2025, alongside a staged reduction, commensurate with that, from the House of Lords as it is at the moment.