House of Lords Reform

Stephen Pound Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sir Stuart Bell]

Yes, you did.

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

As ever, my hon. Friend has been illuminating the House from a position of great wisdom and experience. When he talks about parties being split, however, does he not accept that the Labour party might be split on the detail, the minutiae and the sub-clauses of the Bill, but that there is absolutely no man, woman or child in the Labour party who is against the principle of House of Lords reform in some way, shape or form?

[Sir Stuart Bell]

I would have reached that part of my speech, if I had not been interrupted from the Labour Front Bench by my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda. Of course we want reform of the House of Lords. The noble Lord Steel has proposals for the reform of the House of Lords. If it is a question of reforming the House of Lords, the proposals are already there. Why go to the expense when even the Deputy Prime Minister—he made an eloquent contribution today and the other day—cannot quantify the cost of a new House of Lords or Senate, as it will become.

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[Gavin Shuker]

The hon. Gentleman and I obviously have different opinions on the definition of that legitimacy. There is a type of legitimacy that is very important—the legitimacy of being able to look people in the eye, having stood for election, and hold the mandate of being elected. Equally, there is an issue of accountability. If the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) were here, I am sure he would stand up and say that the most accountability and legitimacy he would have would be with Mrs Bone, because he has a particular one-to-one relationship. [Interruption.] Obviously, I should not speak about him when he is not here. I hold a level of legitimacy and authority with the constituents I represent—100,000 or so—and believe that that would be an unfair level of legitimacy, accountability and authority to bestow on the other place in its new and revised form. I think that that indirect accountability is probably the best way to achieve the balance between having an elected House and not threatening the rights and responsibility of Members in this House to represent their constituents. I think that a party list system would probably be the best way to achieve that. There are many arguments for and against it, and I look forward to the Joint Committee looking at that in more detail.

I want to discuss one other area in relation to which I feel that a 100% elected system would be best: the selection of bishops in the House of Lords. I am a Christian. I am quite overt about that and very proud of my Christian faith. I want to see more Christians and people from other faiths coming into Parliament, but I find it very difficult to defend a system under which we choose a certain group over-represented or to always have a seat in that Chamber. I buy into the liberal idea that there is a round table around which we all get to come together and make our voices heard, and, although I do not feel that that position is always held in this Chamber or in the other place, I believe that that second Chamber could be a place where people go with their own representational legitimacy to make their case, and to make it well, without relying on the fact that they are there simply because of who they are in their own organisations or through right of birth.

The proper way to get more people of faith into our institutions is to encourage more people of faith to stand and make their case for election.

[Stephen Pound]

I am extremely impressed, as I am sure the House is, by my hon. Friend’s speech. I do not claim to speak either ex cathedra or for the Roman Catholic Church, but I can confirm that it is the policy of the Roman Catholic Church not to seek Catholic bishops in the House of Lords, because quite simply we believe in the sound Augustinian principle of the separation of Church and state. There should be good Catholics in the House of Lords, but not as bishops.

[Gavin Shuker]

My hon. Friend speaks as a good Catholic.

In summary, we will need to resolve the issue of whether 80% or 100% of Members should be elected, and we will need to ensure that this Chamber is predominant in our discussions, while extending greater legitimacy to the other House so that its Members can look people in the eye and say that they have been elected and chosen to go there.

I believe that 100% elected is the best way as we choose to go forward as a House with the other place.

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[Henry Smith]

My hon. Friend anticipates the remarks that I hope to make in a few moments.

Several weeks ago I was in Poland, where I was fortunate to meet the Speaker of the Polish Senate. That country saw its Senate abolished under the Communist totalitarian regime but, happily, had it democratically restored approximately two decades ago, and again it is a system that works very well.

My main point—I hope this answers my hon. Friend’s question— is that I do not look to the rest of the world to tell me the best way to construct our Parliament; I look to our proud British history. We have had Parliaments in these islands for the best part of 1,000 years, and I am struck by the coincidence that 2015 will be the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta, which is probably one of those points that set us off on our constitutional journey.

Since then, we have had the civil war, which in a greater way established the sovereignty of this Parliament, the Bill of Rights, the Reform Acts starting in 1832, the Parliament Act exactly a century ago, universal suffrage for women following the first world war and the Parliament Act 1949.

We are an evolving constitution, and we are a country that to its credit has proudly developed the principles of liberty and participative democracy over the best part of many centuries, but, as we are at the beginning of the second decade of the 21st century, an evolving constitution to my mind says that the only legitimate second Chamber for this Parliament is a wholly elected second Chamber, because 100% is the most legitimate and best way forward.

I do, however, want to make a couple of remarks about the draft Bill. I am pleased to note that it is a draft Bill, and I congratulate the Government on that and on the Joint Committee, because it is important that we feed in as many views as possible to what is an important constitutional change.

Time does not allow me to elaborate too much on the pros and cons of 15-year terms, but I suggest, first, to the Government that there should be a power of recall over any future elected Member of the House of Lords. I am sure that the vast majority of them will diligently carry out their duties on behalf of this Parliament and the country.

[Stephen Pound]

Just as Bagehot said that

“the cure for admiring the House of Lords was to go and look at it,”

may I advise the hon. Gentleman to read the House of Lords record on those occasions recently when recalcitrant peers have been identified as breaching the rules? He will suddenly see that the wagons circle around them and, far from a power of exclusion, there is a power of holding tight to the ermined bosom. That comes across loud and clear.

[Henry Smith]

I wish I had the hon. Gentleman’s eloquence, based on that final comment. There are some infamous examples of noble Lords who have behaved in a less than noble way, but most Members of the other place do a very diligent job, and I am sure that future Members, under whatever system, will do so as well. It is important, however, that we have a mechanism like that in local authorities, whereby, if somebody does not participate for six months, excepting ill health or some other legitimate reason, there is a power of recall or replacement for that individual.

My second remark is about an 80% versus a 100% elected second Chamber. I think that 300 Members is about the right number for a second Chamber, but my concern is that if only 80 Members are elected at the beginning of every Parliament, that will not be terribly representative of the smaller regional constituencies proposed in the draft Bill. Having 100% election and 100 Members elected at the start of every Parliament would ensure that there was far greater representation in the other place. It would also mean that we had a second Chamber that was not dominated by any one party, not only because of the system of single transferable votes but because of its term stretching over the course of three Parliaments.

With regret at not having more time to elaborate on my arguments, I very much support the Bill and look forward to Members’ contributions making it even better.

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[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

In years to come, when the proud constituency of Camborne and Redruth is mentioned, one speech will spring to the memory: the glorious suggestion of the Saga Chamber or the pensioners’ Parliament, where the old, the tired and the formerly famous can shuffle off to some distant spot where they will do no harm; where the dust will slowly settle, the clocks gently unwind and the ermine capes float through the detritus of torn Order Papers and House of Lords Hansard; where, like in the dying days of the court of Emperor Haile Selassie, no wages are paid; and where, like in the great zoos of Addis Ababa, giant pachyderms sink to their knees and surrender to starvation. There, in the House of Lords, a few people with their last breath will say, “Well, at least we weren’t out there causing trouble. We had been put somewhere safe. And who have we got to thank for it? Let us look to Camborne and Redruth.”

I suggest that there are other, better ways. I am not entirely sure that we suffer from a democratic deficit; I think we suffer from a flipping democratic surfeit. I, as an honest burgher of a sophisticated west London borough—Ealing, obviously—am represented by three first-class councillors; an MP of certain qualities, that is to say myself; a member of the Greater London authority; Members of the European Parliament; and Tony Blair, who certainly represents me in some forum somewhere, because he represents us all all the time. Do I really want somebody to be trailing his escutcheon through my constituency every few years, touting for votes, presumably on vellum and hand-engraved? There would be nothing so vulgar as an election, but I am sure that there would be some process, which would no doubt be worked out in North East Somerset. Do we really want that? I think that we probably have too much democracy.

There have been a few occasions on which people have sat down and thought about whether they actually needed a second chamber. One thinks obviously of the great Philadelphia convention, but some of us also think of the 1937 constitution of the Republic of Ireland. Those great legislators sat down and said, “Do we need a second chamber?” They came to the conclusion that, by and large, it was a fairly good idea to have one. I will not ascribe any ignoble motives to that, but it might have been a form of care in the community. To this day, Ireland has the vocational panels. The original idea was that there would be vocational panels to represent all aspects of modern Irish life. That is why people such as Oliver St John Gogarty, in between being thrown in the Liffey, and W. B. Yeats were Members of the Seanad Eireann. To this day, Ireland has the cultural and educational panel, the agricultural panel, the labour panel, the industrial and commercial panel, the administrative panel, and, of course, the national university of Ireland panel and the university of Dublin panel. I miss people such as A. P. Herbert who were elected to this place from the universities. Why does the university of West London not elect someone? If it cannot elect them to here, let it be to the other place.

Let us ask ourselves the most simple, basic, obvious question: is it really true that the only way in which experts can bring their light to bear is in the upper place? Did the noble Lord Ara Darzi achieve more as one of the finest and most famous surgeons in Europe than as a Member of the House of Lords? Look at the single greatest social change of the 20th century. The person behind that—Beveridge—was not in the House of Lords. He did not have to sit as a Member of the upper House to come up with the extraordinary idea of the national health service. The upper House is not the sole repository of wisdom, and it is not the only place where the great, the good, the bright and the brilliant can go and shine. There are so many other ways.

So do we need the House of Lords? I am not entirely sure, in all honesty, that we do, but as with so many things in this country, let us leave well alone. It is some glorious, great Gormenghast of a building that no one would ever build nowadays, but around which accretions, crenellations, towers and ramparts have emerged over the years. Hardly anybody knows what the original purpose was, but it does little harm, it is attractive, and on occasion it can actually add to the limited pool of intelligence and expertise that exists in this place.

I want to say that I have no ambitions whatever.

[Mark Durkan]

For now.

[Stephen Pound]

At least not this week, no. The difficulty, obviously, would be what level of expertise I would bring to the House of Lords. However, I have to say that I am instinctively opposed to the idea of a replicate second Chamber. We cannot have a dual mandate and have the same level of accountability in two places at once. Man cannot serve two masters; Parliament cannot have two masters.

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[Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)]

I thank hon. Members who will serve on the Joint Committee for listening to the contributions of other Members—particularly my hon. Friends the Members for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell) and for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing), who I believe have listened to every contribution.

Unlike my hon. Friend the Member for Burton (Andrew Griffiths), I did have one constituent—a gentleman from Kelsale—bring up the issue of Lords reform when I was canvassing in the general election. As I told him then, although I had not had a thought about it and did not feel particularly strongly about it, I would listen to the debate—and that is what I am doing now and for the future.

I agree with several things in the Bill. If we are to reform the House of Lords, for example, I agree with capping the number. I agree with the idea of its Members not being for life, and I agree with the idea of the transition. I quite like option 1. My favourite is the option to move to a smaller Chamber straight away, and I firmly rule out option 2 in favour of aspects of option 3.

As my hon. Friends have already said, it seems peculiar to say that there is accountability when people are not re-elected. There is, however, an opportunity to include recall powers, perhaps if Members do not show up. That happens in councils: if people do not show up for a certain period of time, they are automatically disqualified.

I welcome the idea of having ministerial Members, but will the Minister clarify whether these would be voting Members? Otherwise, there is nothing in the draft Bill to stop the Government of the day packing the upper House with a huge number of Ministers who could then vote.

I am not so sure of the need for Lords Spiritual. As others have suggested, there could be a role for a chaplain and it would be possible for people to speak as non-voting Members. As for having appointed Members, although I respect people’s expertise, there is as much of it in this House as in the upper House. So-called experts could be called as witnesses, although there is a risk of Buggins’s turn. A large number of ex officio appointments seem to be made when people retire from certain roles. That is wrong. Today, the Secretary of State for Defence has ruled that out for elements of our military forces.

As for where I strongly disagree, in common with my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South (James Wharton), I believe that having the single transferable vote is wrong in this context. I would go further and suggest to the Minister that if we are having the elections on the same date, why bother having two separate votes? Having two voting systems on one day is completely unnecessary. We could use the proportion of the national vote—or the vote within a region, if regions are insisted on—to determine the election of Members to the upper House.

On the issue of whether we need regions or electoral districts, I strongly support other Members’ views on how, frankly, we do not want people floating around our constituencies, especially when they can say that they are also the representative in Westminster. I am not suggesting that our electorate is not intelligent enough to know the difference, but—how can I put it?—one election leaflet after another can sometimes be put across in a certain way. I will not go any further; I think hon. Members know what I mean.

[Stephen Pound]

Printed in yellow!

[Dr Coffey]

I could not possibly comment on that.

Let me move on to deal with the powers. I made this point when the Deputy Prime Minister originally raised the issue. I disagree with the right hon. Member for South Shields (David Miliband), as I think we should be careful before we say definitively what the powers are going to be. I sympathise with hon. Members who are worried that giving legitimacy to the House of Lords by making it elected will lead its Members automatically to accept the idea that that is their lot in life so they will not look for any more. The European Parliament used to be appointed, then it became elected and over time it has gradually grabbed more and more powers. Indeed, it has an insatiable desire for more power, which the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) mentioned earlier. During this Parliament, we have seen the Welsh Assembly gaining more power and the Scottish Parliament demanding more power.

People will be elected for 15 years on the basis of a common manifesto. As I may learn, perhaps to my downfall in future, manifestos change every five years. If someone were elected for one term of Parliament, they might not feel bound to support the Government later on in their time. That said, Members elected for 15 years will at least be able to say to the Whips, “This is what I was elected on; this is my credibility; I will vote as I choose.” On that note, I support further discussion.