House of Lords Reform Bill [HL]

Viscount Falkland Excerpts

Friday 3rd December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Falkland]

My Lords, this has been a remarkable debate. In the 26 years that I admit to your Lordships that I have been here, I have not enjoyed a debate as much. I walked three-and-a-half miles through the snow to get here this morning because I do not like public transport and I cannot get my motorcycle off its parking space. I admit to being 75, which is nowhere near the age of my noble colleague. I do not think that we should be judged in this House on age alone, but that is a minor part of the subject that we are addressing today.

We all know what a marvellous and experienced politician my noble friend Lord Steel is. His persistence and the adroit way in which he has ridden through this storm four times, adjusting to the changes which have taken place since 2007 when he first introduced his Bill, are quite extraordinary. The speeches today have been very encouraging.

We have heard two remarkable maiden speeches today, one of which I would regard as, if not the best, certainly very close to the best of any maiden speech that I have ever heard—which is not to say that the other maiden speech was not excellent also. The prescience of Bagehot, which was put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, was very appropriate. He foresaw the need for some kind of enlivening of the proceedings of your Lordships' House, and we had to wait until the 1958 Act to get the life Peers in here.

When I first came into your Lordships' House, I intended to stay only for a maximum of three months, because I was going, as we all do, through certain problems at that time involving my personal life and work. I joined the SDP. It was the party formed by my noble friend Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank, on whom I always look as one of the most reliable sounding boards if I have any problems in this House. I found the SDP to be very agreeable and full of very expert people, both hereditary and life Peers. I thought to myself, “Maybe I should give it a bit longer. Maybe I can combine it with some other things”, which I did for a while. Being here has been the most remarkable experience of my life. I am always attracted to things which work but for which there is no logical explanation of how they work. In my early days, I was persuaded to volunteer to go to talk to schools about how our bicameral system worked. It was always difficult when sixth-formers asked me how the House of Lords worked, how it worked with the House of Commons and why it persisted with an hereditary element. All those things were very difficult to explain.

Now, after 26 years, I have to say—maybe it is old age, but I do not think that it is—some anxieties are creeping in. The noble Earl, Lord Erroll, asked why so many Peers are being created. I can give him what may appear a cynical answer. It is very difficult to alter an institution, particularly one involved with the constitution, if it is working very well. When I came into the House, it was working very well, and it has been working very well until recently. The party with which I sit is made up of very nice people, as noble Lords know, and the majority of them want radical reform of your Lordships’ House. If something is working well, the logical way in which to deal with it is not make it not work so well—and it is not working so well at the moment. If you cannot think of clever ways in which to make it not work so well, then just crowd it out and make it uncomfortable. That is exactly what is happening.

I do not know on what basis people have their interviews for this place, when they are told, “We are thinking of putting you into the House of Lords”. But I was struck by the candid way in which my noble friend Lord Steel told us that when he led the Liberal Party he knew nothing about went on in your Lordships’ House, yet he had to put people up to come here. I shall have to ask him afterwards what the tenor was of the discussion that he had with these people. Obviously, he came to the right decision, because we had some jolly good people. But what is the tenor of the conversation now?

The noble Baroness was being extremely kind to the Deputy Prime Minister, who has done far worse than say that we should push on. He said that this place was a democratic outrage. His whole policy is based on his personal view, obviously, but I am very worried about this because it has caught on with my colleagues. A most charming colleague whom you all know but whom I shall not name, this week, in a moment of being tired and emotional, made a most curious attack—or what could be construed as an attack—on the Cross Benches. Any reform of your Lordships’ House without the Cross Benches is unthinkable. We have appointed Peers such as the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, and others, who have that inbuilt independence; they are intelligent and independent and will come to the right conclusions as individuals, as we hereditary Peers do. I was told by my noble friend Lord Lester of Herne Hill that I was being discriminatory even to raise that. I was not being discriminatory—we are all equal here—but I do think that hereditary Peers have an element of independence that is worth keeping.

It is the role of Parliament in properly holding the Executive to account that appeals to me. What angers me now is that it is getting increasingly difficult to do that. I shall stand up here, I hope, since I have voted twice against the coalition so far and have made myself seem to be a rebel. I do not think of myself as a rebel; I spent a long time on the Front Benches, and I could not understand why Lord Jenkins put me there, although we got on enormously well, but maybe it was to defuse my rebel instincts. I catch the eye of the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe. It may have been an accident, but when he was talking about having an independent aspect of 20, he said “perhaps” Cross-Benchers. Was it a mistake to say “perhaps”? Surely he means essentially Cross-Benchers?

This has been a fascinating debate. Everything has been said, and I shall not add anything further. The speeches have been extraordinary. I shall fight, personally, for rejecting an elected House in any form; the nation expects us to do the proper job that we do, within the powers and functions that we have, with the wonderful mixture that we have had in the past. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, that we can adopt with profit the ending of the hereditary elections, so that it dies out by natural wastage. All the other things I agree with. I am not sure about leave of absence—that goes back to my comments on age, and so on. But since the noble Lord has got thus far with the principal points in his Bill, why do we not adopt them? I really cannot accept that we cannot go ahead with an interim step because the Government feel that we are likely to have an elected second Chamber. That is absolutely crazy. I leave it there.