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Maria Eagle: Does the hon. Gentleman accept that argument applies to hereditary peers? No one has the chance to decide whether hereditary peers are fit to serve in a legislative House.
Mr. Wilkinson: First, I suggested for the future a wholly elected senate. Secondly, the upper House is a revising chamber; it has no power over money Bills or budgetary matters, which is of crucial significance.
Miss Melanie Johnson (Welwyn Hatfield): During such a debate, for most of which I have been in the Chamber, I am especially proud to be on the Labour Benches--not only because of the quality of Labour Members' arguments, but because of the wider setting. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary was right to begin his speech by placing the subject in a much wider context and I was disappointed that so few Conservative Members picked up on that.
Like Members of Parliament, the constitution exists for a purpose. As my hon. Friend the Member for Salford (Ms Blears) said, Members of Parliament are here to help people in their ordinary lives outside the House of Commons and the other place. I have been helped in my intention to be brief by the fact that the Tories have not mentioned law and order, one of the many matters which the constitution exists to uphold, but which the official Opposition removed from the scope of the debate by not referring to it in their amendment.
This morning, I was sitting not on these green Benches but on a magistrates' bench. I was dealing with people who had first offended at the age of 13 but who were still going through the offending and imprisonment routine in their 30s and 40s. One of the reasons why we are discussing the constitution is so that we can make the right decisions, implement the right systems and processes and allocate the right resources to tackle matters such as youth offending. I am disappointed that the official Opposition have not enabled the many Labour Members who wanted to talk about the wonderful things that the Government are doing on that score to say more about how we have the answers to many of the law and order problems that everybody outside faces.
The regional lists are closed but, as many hon. Members have said, they are not as closed as hereditary peerages. Indeed, they are less closed than the lists used when Tories went on the chicken run from, for example, St. Albans to Hitchin and Harpenden, neither of which constituencies is a million miles from mine. I know that the electors of St. Albans wanted to vote in my hon. Friend the Member for St. Albans (Mr. Pollard), but I am also sure that many of them wanted to say no to the former Member for that constituency, the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley). Like others, they found it disappointing not to have such a choice.
Selection in the Labour party is very democratic. I was on a short list of six candidates, several of whom are now also Members of Parliament. However democratic that process, electors may nevertheless vote for only one party, so it is ridiculous for Conservative Members to make a fuss about the European elections when they have lived with the system for Westminster elections for so many decades.
Conservative Members seem to be arguing that, because we are not doing enough about the hereditary principle, we should do nothing at all about it. I want to know what has happened to democracy and its principles. Why has the word "democracy" not been used more often in this debate? Perhaps Conservatives are uncomfortable with democratic means of getting their way in Parliament. Dubious means have been used in the other place to frustrate legislation. Indeed, I am sure that dubious means would have been used to frustrate legislation on the abolition of hunting, for example--the other place would have come to a different conclusion from that of the House of Commons. Moreover, as other hon. Members have asked, to what extent do those with hereditary peerages represent women and the ethnic minorities?
Conservative Members have spoken about tradition. I expect that similar arguments were used to justify slavery or other practices that were once seen as traditional but have since been recognised as inappropriate in a more modern society. How can we justify a second chamber in which a large number of the people making
decisions are there by virtue of their birth, in which women are under-represented and in which ethnic minorities are hardly present? As an argument, tradition cannot have any weight.
Mr. Lansley:
I recall that the Earl of Shaftesbury was a Conservative, so I do not think that the hon. Lady can arrogate to the Labour party the responsibility for abolishing slavery. Will she deal with the real argument about the House of Lords? The Labour manifesto said that abolition of the voting rights of hereditary peers would be a self-contained step. Conservatives believe that the step should not be self-contained; before it is taken, a clear decision must be made on what should come next.
Miss Johnson:
I will be delighted to move on to that point in a moment. First, it was explicit in the Labour manifesto that this would be a two-stage process. In voting for a Labour Government--as people did with a massive majority--it was clear that people would be voting for a two-stage process, of which only one stage would be completed during this Parliament.
As has been said, we cannot reject hereditary Members. We are stuck with them by right of their ancestry--regardless of whether they are useful, appropriate, mad or sane. Some peers may fit into any one of those categories.
The two-stage process has been raised, and it is an interesting point. The Home Secretary made a powerful point about what you would do if you found that your dentist--or the pilot flying your plane--was in that position of responsibility as a result of a purely hereditary principle and had no relevant skills.
Mr. Grieve:
Will the hon. Lady give way?
Miss Johnson:
I am answering the point made by your hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley). If a dentist or surgeon worked on a hereditary basis, Opposition Members would not say, "Let us wait and see how it turns out before we decide whether that person should go on doing the job." That is the point that you are putting.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Lord):
Order. I am not putting any points. Would the hon. Lady try to use the correct parliamentary language?
Miss Johnson:
Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I will endeavour to do so.
If we do not have the two stages, we will not move forward on the hereditary principle; instead, we will maintain something that we feel is dangerous, inappropriate and out of place. The Opposition argue that we should move forward in one fell swoop and not in two stages--a proposal for which we have electoral support. My hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell)--who is not in his place at the moment--likened a royal commission to a broody hen sitting on china eggs. My grandparents had hens, and that was quite an effective manner of getting them to lay eggs. I would not want to indulge in my hon. Friend's pessimism on a royal commission.
The right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke) talked about moving in one fell swoop and about having an exact plan. That is the perfect ploy for
delay, which must be the reason the Opposition proposed it. They know perfectly well that if this process has to be carried out in one fell swoop, it is highly unlikely to take place. They are keen to see a second chamber without any legitimacy, and one in which the hereditary principle is still very much alive and well. That would be ideal for the Opposition.
One could say that the House of Lords was built by the Tories, for the Tories, to keep the Tories in power. It is not an independent second chamber. We have heard evidence today of how it has been biased against Labour Governments. The built-in majority results in limited changes when the Tories are in power, but massive opposition when the Conservatives have been removed by the people from Government and do not have their previous legitimacy in this Chamber.
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