House of Lords Reform

Viscount Astor Excerpts

Tuesday 29th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Astor]

My Lords, one of the strengths of this House is that political parties in opposition love the place. It is the only Chamber where they can defeat the Government. Of course, once they get into power the love affair wanes as, often, the Government’s carefully planned Bills, which have inched their way through another place, are revised in this House. Then Ministers in another place get frightfully cross and start talking about the undemocratic nature of this House, or the cost to the Treasury of undoing their carefully thought-out plans. I hope that we never lose our reputation for awkwardness to Governments.

When one looks at our composition, we are a varied bunch and there are varied ways of getting here. One can be an elected hereditary Peer, like me. You can come from another place for services rendered or services to be rendered. Some noble Lords are active in retirement, but the sightings of some freshly made Peers from another place are as rare as those of a white rhino. You can also stay long enough in another place so that you get a peerage to encourage you to vacate the seat for some up-and-coming young politician. Finally, there is the more traditional Labour route; you deny vigorously that you ever want to come here; you rubbish the place vehemently; then, suddenly, a couple of months later you are here. I think that is the Healey, Hattersley and now the Prescott route.

In this House, you can be gallant, learned, right reverend, or even a people’s Peer; we are a mixed bunch. The question is how we can change this House, following the votes in another place and the recent general election result, and reflect the wishes of the electorate. One must start by saying that this House has become too large, as many noble Lords have said. As a parliamentary Chamber, this House is second in size only to the National People’s Congress of China. It is the only Parliament in the Commonwealth that I can find where the second Chamber is larger than the first. We are told that we will have more noble Lords arriving here. We have to do something, because we will soon have more than 800 Members. I am sure that there should be a way of encouraging some form of retirement, but if that does not work we may have to consider a mandatory retirement age, as for example happens for High Court judges. I also believe that the Cross Benches—this may be unpopular there—have become too large in relation to the political parties in this House. They are, in effect, almost the largest party.

We must remember that we are fundamentally a political chamber, not a debating society and however good our speeches, we are often self-congratulatory and too smug about what we do in this House. Too often, we have general debates; they are always informed and often fascinating, learned and entertaining, but the problem is that very few people listen—least of all Governments. That includes the noble Lords opposite and, indeed, my own noble friends. How often do we have brilliant foreign affairs debates, yet can anybody—from their time in government or the Civil Service—remember when, after a debate in this House, a Private Secretary has rushed in to see his Minister, saying, “Minister, you must read the Lords Hansard before you go to Brussels”—or to some important meeting—“because there has been a very interesting debate”? It just does not happen; we kid ourselves. Hansard is, I hope, read by those who have made the speeches. I have always thought that everybody should be forced to read their own speeches the following morning, as a sort of hangover cure. Perhaps there are a few insomniacs too.

Anyway, this House is at its best when it scrutinises and revises legislation. As we have heard, most amendments that are agreed in this House are accepted by another place and, as my noble friend Lord Jenkin of Roding pointed out, the Select Committees are very influential, so this House functions surprisingly well both because of recent reforms and, indeed, in spite of them. Yet any new reform must look at function as well as composition and everybody has their view to the future; sadly, so have I. We must move towards an elected second Chamber but, as we have seen in the past, rushed reforms do not always work well. We cannot bury our heads in the sand and hope that reforms will be sidelined or somehow go away. They are promoted by all three political parties.

A possible route would be to have elections based on Euro-constituencies for one Parliament. This would amount to 78 seats. If we were, over time, able to cut our number to around 400, that would amount to around 20 per cent. It would ensure that the grandfathering proposals put forward by my noble friend would work and we would need to consider how to move on from that change. The one advantage would be that if the consensus was that it was working, we could extend it. If it was not working, as might easily be the case, we could return to a fully appointed second Chamber. We have to find a way of getting all three major parties and their Front Benches off the hook of a fully elected Chamber. It will not go away. We have to help them.

We must improve what we do in this House. I am afraid we did not always hold the previous Government to account in the previous Parliament as we should have. We are too nice sometimes—too gentlemanly and perhaps too afraid of reform. We allowed a Minister to come here after having twice resigned his post in another place. We failed to hold the Government to account on the vast increase in national debt, the rise of unemployment, increased taxes and, most importantly, the breaking of our covenant to the Armed Forces.

I make one further plea. Reform of this House is too important just to be left to the political parties—even one as well led as my own. I suppose I must declare an interest as the stepfather-in-law of the Prime Minister—or, to put it more easily, I am married to his mother-in-law. I am very grateful to the Leader of the House for initiating this debate so early in the process of reform. I know he will take a close interest in everything that has been said this evening, and inform his colleagues in another place.