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Mr. Straw: I am listening with care to the right hon. and learned Gentleman's argument, but his point is a parody of our position. We believed that there must be a two-stage process because of the history of the difficulty of reforming the other place in the face of its built-in 3:1. Another reason is the history of the right hon. and learned Gentleman's own party. At every stage, attempts to go for comprehensive one-stage reform have faltered. That was our experience in 1910-11. Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman recognise that getting rid of the hereditaries will at least deal with the most objectionable part of the composition of the other place?

Mr. Clarke: The Home Secretary comes close to my case. Change was temporary in 1910. It has not been addressed since because it is difficult for the Government of the day to go for comprehensive reform. For 88 years Governments have decided that they cannot address the problem of the hereditary peerage. No Government have previously believed that the peers can simply be swept away without the big questions being addressed. The Home Secretary thinks that I am parodying his case, but the Blair Government appear to believe that they can be trusted to sail on safely with a second chamber entirely appointed by the Executive, or by a method chosen by the Executive.

Perhaps the Home Secretary can address my fears to some extent. He did not make it clear whether he thought that an appointed second chamber would be a temporary

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expedient, or whether it might be permanent. He did not rule out its being permanent. He did not accept that it would necessarily take a royal commission to decide that. Is it temporary? Or is the Home Secretary contemplating that it might be permanent?

The Home Secretary talked about improving the method of appointment. He talked, too, about the absurdity of a chamber in which people have inherited their right to vote, and I agree that that is absurd. It is, however, a pretty close second in terms of absurdity to suggest that a democracy such as ours should have a second chamber in which everyone has been appointed by the Executive, as if that were some strengthening of our political system.

The Home Secretary will have difficulties with such a chamber. As has been said, its Members will acquire their own sensitivities. He will find it difficult to canvas the idea that there might be an elected element to the second Chamber because the people who will oppose that idea will include all the great and the good--our old friends from both sides of the House--who, having put on the ermine, will think it extremely important that they should see their terms out. They will not be anxious to have elected successors.

Mr. Wilkinson: My right hon. and learned Friend makes a most important point about the legitimacy of the other place. Will he have the courage of what I hope are his convictions and say that we need a senate if the checks and balances to which he has alluded are to carry the support of the country? So long as the upper chamber is properly defined and its powers limited, surely a senate would meet the case? Otherwise, we would face the danger of having appointed senators for life, and they are not popular these days.

Mr. Clarke: I agree with my hon. Friend. I do not mind whether we call it a senate or a House of Lords. My views on that are not firm, but the form of the chamber should be debated and contemplated before we make a change. I do not think that the Bill should be allowed to proceed without any further indication on such matters.

Maria Eagle: Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give way?

Ms Oona King: Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give way?

Mr. Clarke: I shall take a final intervention, and I believe that the hon. Member for Liverpool, Garston (Maria Eagle) tried to intervene earlier.

Maria Eagle: I have listened carefully to the right hon. and learned Gentleman's speech, which is, as usual, thoughtful. Will he explain why abolishing the hereditary peerage as a first stage would preclude any of the debate to which he has referred, and why a House of Lords consisting only of the life peerage would be any worse than what we have?

Mr. Clarke: If the Government would commit themselves to abolishing the voting rights of hereditary peers at the stage at which the House has agreed a replacement for the second Chamber, they would be in

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a respectable position. Constitutional conventions would mean that they would get their way, and the Salisbury doctrine should certainly be maintained. They would have embarked on major reform that would eventually end hereditary voting rights, but only once we had protected the rights of the citizen--that is what really matters, as the Home Secretary said--and of individuals who may belong to unpopular minorities, including those who belong to parties that are for the time being out of office. There must be checks and balances in the constitution to ensure that an overmighty House of Commons--or a Commons that is too weak and that is governed by a party management more interested in the media than in parliamentary democracy--cannot sweep Members along in its response to pressures of the moment.

In conclusion, I undertake that, if I am still a Member of Parliament, I shall vote for the abolition of the voting rights of hereditary peers, as I would have done at any time since I entered the House, if it is part of a Bill that gives the House of Commons the chance to decide what form of second chamber--a senate or a House of Lords--we are to have in a modern constitution. It is a farce to say that people such as me are defending earls from Tasmania and hereditary voting rights. I have never been interested in the slightest in defending such things.

However, the Bill is a piece of gesture politics that will take up an inexcusable proportion of the coming Parliament's legislative time. If it is swept through as it stands, it will be yet another example of so-called constitutional change by the Government which will do lasting damage and which will reduce yet further the role of parliamentary democracy.

6 pm

Mr. Clive Soley (Ealing, Acton and Shepherd's Bush): I was excited when the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke) tempted me to think that he would join us in the Lobby, but he spoilt his commitment to do so with a number of caveats that will not be satisfied. That aside, the right hon. and learned Gentleman is making a fundamental mistake if he thinks that the Government's approaches to the constitution are short term or ill thought out: they are not, and they will be remembered for many years to come as very significant to change in this country.

The right hon. and learned Gentleman made an important point when he suggested that the previous Government--of whom he was a member under Lady Thatcher--mistakenly believed that the constitution should not change at all, because a high price has been paid for that belief. I have been a long-term supporter of Scottish devolution--and, indeed, devolution for Wales and the English regions--and I watched as the Scottish people became more and more angry with the Government in London who seemed to be disconnected from Scottish interests. The result was the collapse of the Conservative party in Scotland, which has done the Conservatives no good and the Scottish National party much good. The right hon. and learned Gentleman knows that that is the case and I am sure that he also knows that, if the Tory party is ever to recover, it must recover in Scotland. It must address the needs of people in Scotland, and that is why I agree with my right hon. Friend the

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Home Secretary when he claims that the Conservative party will not repeal any Act that gives extra powers to Scotland.

The Government are showing considerable courage and a well-thought-out strategy for change in three main areas. The first is the national and local impact of constitutional change; the second is the international aspect, including human rights legislation; and the third is the modernisation of Parliament itself. The three are linked, and it is important that we recognise that.

It has become clear that the British parliamentary system, which has been very successful over the centuries and has been copied by many other countries, has become rusty and archaic. It is a tragedy that we did not modernise it earlier. The most obvious area for change is the House of Lords, because even people such as the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe have acknowledged that it is indefensible for the hereditary peers to vote, and to vote in such numbers as to overturn the majority will of the House of Commons. That is unacceptable and it must change.

I part company with the right hon. and learned Gentleman and most of his party over the lack of confidence that they show in the ability of this place and the country to modernise our constitution as we have done in the past. In relatively recent times--for example, the post-1945 period--we have written constitutions for other countries that have been remarkably successful. Those countries include not only Commonwealth countries, but Germany. The right hon. and learned Gentleman is, I understand, an admirer of the way in which the German constitution works, but it was largely written by the British. It was structured so that the second chamber was partly inclusive of local government structures, so that an authoritarian Government could not abolish local democracy as had been done in the past and--I have to say--as the previous British Government did in some ways. That was an abuse of centralised power and that is why we have to reverse what they did. If we have been so successful in writing other countries' constitutions, why does the Conservative party lack the confidence in the British people and Parliament to modernise our own?

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