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7.4 pm
Mr. Jacques Arnold (Gravesham): The debate has been extremely interesting. Hon. Members should reflect on the fact that we are in the House of Commons on a Thursday evening, on a one-line Whip, with no decision, and no vote to take at the end of the evening, yet there is quite heavy attendance. That is because the House has always taken the constitution and constitutional reform very seriously. Reforms must be practical and workable, and should be introduced for a purpose.
Given the attendance tonight, and the fact that hon. Members have put their cases in a non-partisan way, we must ensure that specific proposals for reforming our constitution are considered by all hon. Members. The most significant point that has been made during the debate was made, strangely enough, by the Leader of the Opposition. He refused point blank to confirm the age-old custom that, when constitutional legislation is introduced, the Committee stage is taken on the Floor of the House. He confined himself to saying that we cannot bind our successor Parliament, and that the Labour party will make up its own mind. Constitutionally that is correct, but his admission was extremely significant.
Mr. Martin O'Neill (Clackmannan):
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
What would be the programme for the next Parliament of a theoretical Labour Government? They would have to deal with the legislation arising from Maastricht 2, and with legislation on a European single currency, on Scottish and Welsh devolution, on reform of the House of Lords and on reform of the electoral system. Every one of those items is constitutional.
What would happen? On practical grounds, the legislation would be stuffed into Committee, and the Committees would be packed. Let us be under no illusion: a Labour Chief Whip would not put on the Committee dealing with legislation on the governance of Scotland the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell), the originator of the West Lothian question. The membership of the Committee would also exclude Labour Unionist Members, who are a little more timid than the hon. Member for Linlithgow and are not putting their heads above the parapet.
Given the electoral squeeze and the small number of Liberal Democrat Members that there will be in the next Parliament, I wonder whether they have realised that they may not even be represented on the Standing Committees that deal with such legislation. Bearing in mind the enthusiasm of the small nationalist parties and the Liberal Democrat party, and the fact that only one or two members of such Committees are from small parties, the way in which these matters would be handled in a House of Commons with a Labour majority gives us food for thought.
This afternoon, we have seen the Labour party blundering into a morass. It is incredible that, after 18 years in opposition, it has no clear idea and no detail of the reforms that it wants to introduce. The Leader of the Opposition was prepared only to dedicate himself to jeering at the House of Lords, because that is a nice easy sell to the left wingers on his Back Benches. It shows that the Labour leopard has not changed its spots. [Interruption.] It is clear from the reaction of Labour Members that they have not looked at their history books.
When did the House last try to reform the House of Lords, and what happened? There was a stitch-up between the two Front Benches, and the Back Benches chucked out the proposals under the most extraordinary alliance of Enoch Powell and Michael Foot. Plans to reform the other place need to be laid down extremely carefully. We should ask ourselves what we are trying to achieve.
For a start, we should ask what was the origin of the House of Lords. Indeed, what was the origin of our House of Commons? It is the House of the communities--the communities that send us here to represent our counties and boroughs--but what was the purpose of the other House? It was to represent the great vested interests in the land, and to bring them into the process of government. What were those great interests? They were the landowners and the Church. Obviously, landowning was an hereditary matter, and that interest is still in our legislature--as is the established Church of England.
Our constitution has evolved. To realise that, we need only run through the details of the admission of representative peers from Scotland and Ireland, the inclusion of the Law Lords, and the massive increase in the number of life peerages. They have existed only since 1958. Female life peers were admitted in that year, and hereditary women peers were admitted in 1963. Reform has taken place over the years, but, in reforming the other House, we must be very clear about what we are doing.
If we chuck out the hereditary peers--which strikes me as an interesting idea--what will we be left with? We will be left with a rump. We will be left mostly with peers who will be in the other place merely because of the patronage of the establishment of this House. In that event, there would be pressure in favour of bringing about membership of the other House by different means.
One possibility is indeed an elected House. If Members of that House were elected in the same way as we are, the paramountcy of our House would immediately be challenged. If those Members were elected through the same system as us, and agreed with us, what would be the point of it? If they disagreed with us, something would be wrong. If they were elected through a different system, and disagreed with us, there would be wrangling about which House was more representative of the British people--and it could well be argued that our House was not the more representative. Any form of election to the other House will mean a challenge to the paramountcy of this House, but there is no way in which that House down the Corridor can claim that it has greater authority than our House, because we--uniquely--are elected by the British people.
So what do we do? Do we revert to the original idea of nominations by the vested interests? Who are the vested interests of today? Eighteen years ago, the vested interests
were clearly the trade unions, and nominations by them would have meant Jack Jones, Hugh Scanlon and Arthur Scargill sitting in the other place. I do not think that many people today even know who the trade union leaders are.
Who, then, are the great vested interests? Are they in the press, or in television? Should those people be down the Corridor? How do we bring about the representation of those vested interests? How do we work out who should represent large business, small business, the professions and other Churches and faiths? As has been said, it is a complete morass. The fact is that, when we have constitutional change, we must make practical decisions here in the House of Commons.
We do not know what dirty deals have been done, and what secret treaties have been agreed, with the Liberal Democrats, who are enthusiastic about proportional representation. I fear that, in the successor Parliament, we shall see yet another push towards PR. Let me repeat the question that I asked earlier. What is the purpose of this House of the communities? It is to represent the boroughs and counties of the kingdom. Any attempt to introduce PR will break the sacred link that all of us have with our constituencies. [Interruption.] Members of the Scottish National party may well jeer, but I value that link immensely. I value my responsibility to speak and vote in the House on behalf of my constituents. Any form of PR would break the link with our constituencies, and would end our sole responsibility.
There are seven constituencies in west Kent, all of which, very wisely, have returned Conservative Members. Under PR, those seven Conservative constituencies might return four Conservative Members, two Labour Members and one Liberal Member. What would that do? A constituent comes to me with a problem, and I say, "If you vote Labour, go and see a Labour Member." A constituent wants to talk to me about housing or social security, but that may not be my issue; I tell him to go to one of the other Tory Members, if he is a Tory voter. PR would provide an opportunity to pass the buck. We must retain our electoral system.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Geoffrey Lofthouse):
Order. Time is up.
Mr. William McKelvey (Kilmarnock and Loudoun):
I shall confine my remarks to Scottish issues. Hon. Members will understand why. I believe that the Welsh should do what the Welsh people want, that the English should do what the English people want and that the Scots have won the right to decide among themselves how they will be governed.
The Scots are a difficult nation. Almost all our history has been scarred by deep and continuing divisions among ourselves about how we should be governed. That has been so since the brawling barons of Wallace's day. Today, I stood on the steps where Sir William Wallace was accused of treason, tried, quartered and dispatched around the country. His head was stuck on a pole. That was because of what he felt about how Scotland should be governed. At least we have come far since that day, and the same thing is unlikely to happen to those of us who feel that there ought to be a parliament in Scotland, but do not necessarily want to renegotiate the treaty of Union at this point.
The days of William Wallace were followed by the struggles of Jacobite times, and our repeated failure in this century to unite behind the cause of home rule. National division, and even civil war, have been more common in the Scottish experience than national wars of independence ever were. It is often forgotten, for instance, that there were as many Scots in arms against Bonnie Prince Charlie at Culloden as there were fighting for him.
Scotland therefore faces an historic choice as we head towards the new millennium. We can continue to divide under our different party political banners, or we can unite behind a cross-party and popular consensus that can and will deliver a workable parliament for Scotland. The Scottish convention provided an opportunity for that to happen. Unfortunately, although some 80 per cent. of the factions in Scotland were represented at various times during the discussions that took place, the Conservatives chose not to be a part of them, because--as has been proved in the speeches that we have heard today--most of them are opposed to any form of change. I do not blame them for that; I am not being moralistic. I understand their opposition.
We keep arguing about the difficulties and differences involved in the West Lothian question, but, irrespective of what happens in Scotland and whatever the political hue of our voting, given the way in which the Parliament of the Union has been set up, we as parliamentarians have a right to be here arguing our case on questions of macro-economics and defence.
I do not want to come down from Scotland, after the establishment of the Scottish Parliament, to argue about English education, but we must understand something else. We as Scots regret very much the attempt to anglicise our education system. Since the days of John Knox, we have been proud of our history in that regard. Education was to be provided free and at the time of need: that was, perhaps, a forerunner of the theory of the national health service.
In modern times, Scots have been irritated by the fact that, irrespective of how we have voted in Scotland--especially since 1955--the Conservatives have never had a majority of the vote. When they came here, to this Parliament of the Union--[Interruption.] I am not arguing the case for Labour. The vote for the Opposition parties combined has been greater than the Conservative vote--in recent years, much greater. The Tories have been left with a rump of Members who are content to come down here, to the Parliament of the treaty of Union, and to pursue aims that the Scots are most unwilling to accept.
The classic example of that was the poll tax. It was never proved to be illegal, although it was certainly immoral, and it was inflicted upon Scotland. We abhorred that tax, hated it, but we had to suffer for a year before the Government attempted to introduce it in England and Wales.
The poll tax was imposed on Scotland because Scottish Conservative Members were prepared to go along with the majority of Conservative Members here in an experiment on the Scots to see whether the tax would work. In part, the decision to impose it was malevolent because the Scots had voted Labour, SNP and Liberal Democrat. As a form of punishment, if nothing else, we were to be guinea pigs to test the success or otherwise of that obnoxious, iniquitous and unfair tax.
7.14 pm
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