Constitution and Home Affairs

Viscount Thurso Excerpts

Monday 7th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

Urgency? The right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues had 13 years to do this. How often are they going constantly to ask us to do things urgently when we have had only three weeks and they had 13 years? Of course we need to find the 3.5 million people who are not on the register, alongside the progress towards individual voter registration, but I say this to him: please do not sit there all high and mighty and pretend that we are somehow responsible for a problem that he and his colleagues in government created over the past decade.

[John Thurso (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

rose—

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I will take one more intervention, and then I am genuinely going to try to make some progress.

[John Thurso]

I am delighted to hear that my right hon. Friend is not bound by any strict and rigid arithmetical formula, and I applaud his commitment to more equality. Within that, does he accept that the quality of service that one can give with a constituency of 3,400 square miles is dependent on the time available, which is greater in metropolitan constituencies where travel is not such an issue? Will he ensure that that aspect of rurality is taken into account in any plans that the Government have?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

Clearly the job of being an MP in sparsely populated and very large rural constituencies is a great challenge, which my hon. Friend knows more about than most. That is exactly the kind of thing that we will need to take into consideration as we progress with this measure.

I should like to turn to reform of the other place, which we all agree must now happen. It should be up to the British people to elect their second Chamber—a second Chamber that must be much more representative of them, their communities and their neighbourhoods. To that end, I should like to announce the following measures. First, I have set up a committee, which I will chair, to take forward this reform, composed of Members from all three major political parties, as well as from both Houses. Secondly, the committee will be explicitly charged with producing a draft Bill by no later than the end of this year—the first time that legislation for an elected second Chamber will ever have been published. Thirdly, the draft Bill will then be subject to pre-legislative scrutiny by a Joint Committee of both Houses during which there will of course be ample opportunity for all voices to be heard.

Make no mistake: we are not starting this process from scratch. There is already significant shared ground between the parties that will be taken as our starting point. I am not going to hide my impatience for reforms that are more than 100 years overdue. Subject to the legitimate scrutiny that the Bill will deserve, this Government are determined to push through the necessary reforms to the other place. People have been talking about Lords reform for more than a century. The time for talk is over. People must be allowed to elect those who make the laws of the land. Change must begin now.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Thurso (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Glasgow East (Margaret Curran) on a tremendous maiden speech. Those of us who know something about Scottish politics are well aware that she has a good reputation—a great reputation—and I am sure that she will continue her work in the House of Commons. She spoke with great passion and commitment, and she joins a number of ladies from Scotland on the Labour Benches who are a tremendous asset to this place.

May I express a little sympathy with the hon. Lady? Having also come to the House of Commons from another Chamber, I spent my maiden speech addressing the assembly as “My Lords”. Happily, I was cured of the habit pretty quickly, and I am sure that the hon. Lady will soon find it very easy to address the Chair as “Mr. Speaker” or “Mr. Deputy Speaker”.

I intend to talk about House of Lords reform. However, I am tempted first to make a brief comment about boundaries, particularly after hearing the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) say that absolute numbers were everything. I politely beg to differ. If, indeed, pure mathematics dictates that this Chamber should represent absolutely the votes cast in an election, the answer is extremely simple: it is called the single transferable vote. We all accept, however—I certainly accept—that there is something very special about the link between Member and constituency, which goes beyond simple mathematics.

There are other points to be taken into account. I am very happy with the argument advanced by my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister that we should have more equality, for who could be against more equality? But what sort of equality are we to have? I want to ensure that my constituents experience the same equality of quality of service that they can expect from their Member of Parliament. In an average weekend, I spend four, five or six hours in a car in order to see my constituents—because why on earth should they come to me?—as well as the 12 hours that I spend commuting to and from this place. I should not be penalised for that. I must tell my right hon. and hon. Friends that a constituency that stretched from Shetland to Argyll would be utterly unworkable. It must be possible to take account of the differences, and to achieve a proper balance between numbers and size.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

The hon. Gentleman is right to emphasise the importance of maintaining the constituency link, but would not including the option of the AV-plus system proposed by the Jenkins commission in the proposed referendum on the electoral system make it possible to maintain that link while at the same time adopting a fairer voting system? That would give us a real choice, rather than our being limited to an option that neither of the governing parties support.

[John Thurso]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making that point, but I must not become involved in a discussion on the subject. I am looking at the clock, and thinking about House of Lords reform. I can usually bore for Britain about House of Lords reform for hours on end, but I see that I have only four minutes and 48 seconds left. I hear what the hon. Gentleman says, but perhaps we could discuss it on another occasion.

I want to talk first about the “why” and then about the “how” of House of Lords reform. For me, reforming the House of Lords represents the linchpin of constitutional reform. Without a legitimate upper House, we do not have a legitimate Parliament. It is unacceptable for one half of our Parliament to debate, with quality, and reach a decision, and for that decision to be rejected by the other half, simply because it is not legitimate—and it is not legitimate because it is not elected.

There are many countries in the world where appointment is regarded as legitimate, but in this country—given the way in which the media in particular, but also this place, have discussed the upper House—the other place can be considered legitimate only if it is either wholly or in very large part elected. When that happens, and it has legitimacy, it will become the true check and balance on this place that it ought to be.

I am not the slightest bit worried about this House losing its primacy. A strong House of Lords, properly elected on, I suggest, a different model from this place—a fully proportionate model—and operating in the way in which it should, would complement Parliament. A strong upper House means a strong Parliament. I believe that much of what has happened in the past could have been avoided if Parliament had been strengthened to allow two functioning Houses to hold the Executive to account, each undertaking its separate functions.

That brings me to the “how”. First, we must consider the strengths of the House of Lords, of which there are many. The quality of debate is tremendous. The House has no instructions from the Chair, and Report stages and Third Readings proceed in a timeous manner. We could learn from those examples in this place. The quality of the scrutiny given to legislation, and of debates, is very high in the House of Lords, and the lack of a constituency link is essential: we cannot allow a competition with a Member of Parliament representing a constituency. It is traditional for peers to discuss their regions, but they do not become involved in constituency cases. I have long held the view that a House based on large regional constituencies, with one third elected at each election for a longish period with no re-election, would capture the majority of the benefits that currently exist in the upper House. It would become both a smaller and a stronger House.

I want to say a little about what has been called “grandfathering”. High principle and low politics are involved. The interesting thing about life peers is that they all go native. It seems that the hereditaries are the only ones who are happy to leave. Life peers are seduced by the glories of the place. I propose that they should all be allowed to stay there, and that we elect the first third, the second third and the third third. We will get there eventually. The grim reaper will take care of quite a lot of them, and I suspect that if—as I suggested on Second Reading of the Bill that became the House of Lords Act 1999 when I was in another place—we make it possible for them to retire, a great many noble Lords who have served for a long time and in an illustrious way will take that opportunity.

There is also a high principle, however. The high principle is that much of what is good about the House of Lords, and is in its DNA, needs to be passed on. If the House of Lords as it is today were changed completely and became wholly elected, that would be lost. As I have said, there is low politics, but there is also that high principle.

As the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) said at the outset, it is nearly 100 years since my party started this process off. Would it not be a fitting tribute if we celebrated the hundredth anniversary by completing it?