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Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I do not know whose electrical device is making a noise. Can it be identified and turned off at once? Madam Speaker gets extremely annoyed when such things happen in the Chamber. Hon. Members on both sides must either leave their devices outside the Chamber or make sure that they are switched off before they come in.
Mr. Straw: Had the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke) been present in our debates, he would know that every time that I have spoken I have been interrupted by a mobile telephone or a pager.
Mr. Kenneth Clarke: The right hon. Gentleman will be pleased to know that I am a bleeper-free Member of Parliament.
I was saying that the hereditary principle is seen to be preposterous and risible when it is applied to any other walk of life. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) has graphically put it, imagine inquiring of the pilot of an aeroplane about whom one was a little worried what his qualifications were and being told, "It was my grandfather who acquired the pilot's licence. I inherited it." Or imagine lying open-mouthed in the dentist's chair as the dentist drilled into the gum instead of the teeth. That would raise questions about his skills. Imagine if, when asked to produce his certificate of competence, he brought out one awarded in 1860 to his great great uncle William, but said not to worry because the skills had been transmitted through the genes.
I found it extraordinary that the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield criticised the second chamber in Canada on the ground that everybody there was appointed. That is true, but they are appointed on their own merits, not on the merits of their long dead ancestors.
Labour Members are not the only ones to have taken the view that there can be no place for hereditaries in the House of Lords--a succession of Conservatives have done so. A former Conservative Home Secretary, now Lord Baker of Dorking, said in the House of Lords on 14 October, almost as an aside, that the position of hereditary peers was one
Another Tory--at that stage a young Tory--told the Conservative party conference in 1980 that hereditary peers were "silly". That young Tory was one William Hague. I accept that we can all change our minds over an 18-year period, but when we do we owe an explanation. If hereditary peers were "silly" in 1980, what has changed since then to alter the right hon. Gentleman's opinion today?
Mr. Grieve:
The Home Secretary makes a great attack on the hereditary principle and I accept that there may be mixed views on it. However, in attacking the hereditary principle, would he care to reflect on the British jury system? Are not the vast majority of people who serve on juries summoned to do so because they happen to be descended from British citizens and therefore qualify for that purpose at the age of 18? It is a random selection sample which is not based on qualification. I would be grateful for the Home Secretary's comments on that point.
Mr. Straw:
I have a great deal of respect for the hon. Gentleman, but he does not do himself credit on this occasion because there is a world of difference between people being chosen wholly at random and the composition of the other place.
Mr. Laurence Robertson (Tewkesbury):
The Home Secretary referred to dentists. As I have just returned from the dentist, I hope that he will forgive my lack of verbal dexterity. Does his dislike of the hereditary principle extend to the monarch?
Maria Eagle:
The Queen does not legislate.
Mr. Straw:
My hon. Friend is right. There are overwhelming arguments for constitutional monarchy. Every other country with a constitutional monarchy does not have hereditary peers with legislative power.
Mr. Gerald Howarth (Aldershot):
The Home Secretary has not answered the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Tewkesbury(Mr. Robertson). If the Home Secretary is adamant that the principle of hereditary succession is, in his words,
Mr. Straw:
With great respect to the hon. Gentleman, I think that we can speak rather better for what we believe than he can, and what he says is untrue.
Mr. David Heath (Somerton and Frome):
Has the Home Secretary considered the position of the 12th Earl of Dunmore, Viscount Fincastle and Lord Murray of Blair, Moulin and Tillimet--who is one person--who did the other place a great service the other day by attending and speaking in the debate despite the fact that he has always lived in Tasmania, where he has now returned? Does the right hon. Gentleman believe that there is any reason why that person should be legislating on behalf of the people of Britain?
Mr. Straw:
No, I do not. However, it is consistent that the Conservatives, who gave votes to people living abroad, should rely for their majority on a very long list, which I shall not read out, of about 50 peers who live abroad and certainly would not serve on a British jury.
The first fundamental objection to the position of hereditary peers is that they are hereditary. The second, which the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield missed altogether, is that they give one political party--the Conservative Party--an in-built 3:1 majority in the Lords, regardless of which party has the most popular support in the country.
Fifty years ago, a party leaders' conference on the future of the Lords agreed a memorandum that was signed for the Conservative party by the late Anthony Eden. Although there was not consensus on every aspect of reforming the Lords--hon. Members can read the full text in the Library--it was agreed that no one party should have a permanent majority in the Lords. That was in 1948, but one party does have a permanent majority. What exposes the Conservatives' complaints about our two-stage process as utterly hollow is that in the intervening period since 1949 they have done absolutely nothing to change that in-built majority. We know why--it has not suited them.
We all acknowledge the important work of the other place as a revising Chamber, but that function requires neither hereditary peers nor an in-built 3:1 Tory majority. We also know that when push comes to shove, the Conservative party has always been ready ruthlessly to exploit that majority in its favour.
On any basis, the poll tax was an issue of rather greater significance and popular controversy than the question of closed lists for the European parliamentary elections. As many of us recall, it was opposed by so many Conservative Members that the then Government's majority fell from more than 100 to just 23. What role did the 3:1 in-built Tory majority in the Lords play? Was it to stand up for the democratic will and to challenge the ambiguity of the Conservatives' 1987 manifesto commitment? No, it was not; it was to drive the Bill through regardless of the arguments.
The Conservatives' use of their in-built 3:1 majority has differed when Labour Governments have been in power. In an average Session when the Conservatives
have been in power, there have been 13 defeats of Government business in the other place. In an average Session when Labour has been in power the figure has been five times that--on average 60 defeats, including the recent decision in the other place to override the elected will of this democratic House on five occasions in respect of the European parliamentary elections, forcing us now to use the procedures of the Parliament Act 1911.
I pose this question to Her Majesty's Opposition: if, by some freak of nature, the vast majority of hereditary peers had been overwhelmingly Labour or Liberal Democrat supporters and the in-built 3:1 unelected majority had been against their party, not in favour of it, would the Conservative party have been quite so relaxed about the reform of the other place? Of course not. The smile on the face of the shadow Home Secretary speaks for itself.
Mr. Donald Anderson (Swansea, East):
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right to draw attention to the recent record of the other place, including the poll tax. Would he care to comment on the constitutional propriety of the briefing to Conservative peers and Members at the time of the Queen's Speech that they should give zero tolerance to the Government's programme over the next Session--when the Government were elected with a massive majority?
"which no one can defend".--[Official Report, House of Lords, 14 October 1998; Vol. 593, c. 977.]
In a pamphlet published in 1981, the former blue chip group of new Conservative Members said:
"Hereditary peers no longer command enough respect from the nation as a whole to justify their exercise of legislative power".
[Hon. Members: "Where are they?] None of them is here, but some are in the other place. The four authors include three former Ministers--William Waldegrave, Tristan Garel-Jones, and Ian Lang. The fourth was then plain Robert Cranborne, now Viscount Cranborne, Leader of the Opposition in the other place.
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