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Dr. Starkey: Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman clarify the fact that, although he refers to new peers as "he", he envisages that some might be women?
Sir Nicholas Lyell: Of course. The House knows well enough that when we talk about people who will be elected, they will be of either sex. It depends on who stands.
Members of the upper House will have the authority of having been elected, but it is vital that they have a substantial measure of independence. Only a proportion of those who are elected should be elected at the same time. I recommend a partially rolling Chamber of a third of elected members elected every two or three years so that there is no sudden change. When a Government are on the wane, Opposition Members may be elected to the upper House as time goes by; likewise, when a new Government are elected, they will not have a clean sheet and will have to sustain momentum if their elected Members are likely to form a majority in the upper House.
Independence and continuity are vital attributes if the upper House is to remain the constitutional anchor that has served us so well as over the centuries.
Although Conservatives welcome genuine moves towards reform, we have to oppose the Bill because it remains deeply wrong in principle to destroy without renewal. I not only sincerely believe that criticism myself, but in conversation with people of almost any party--including less dyed-in-the-wool supporters of the present Government--it seems to find widespread support.
In response to that criticism, the Government have at least made some moves towards speeding up the process of genuine reform and maintaining continuity with the upper House. I welcome those changes and ask the Government to think sincerely about extending them. For all the points that the Secretary of State made--they were very much jejune debating points, starting with the Earl of Dunmore flying from Tasmania, which I was amazed to see at the top of her list--it is clear that no Government have anything deep to fear from the House of Lords. In practice, Governments will be seriously defeated by the upper House only when they have lost the argument.
Mr. Peter Temple-Morris (Leominster):
It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Sir N. Lyell). He and I have agreed on many issues in the past. Sadly, we are now on different sides of the House, but I can at least agree with much of what he said about phase two--eventual final reform of the House of Lords. I disagree with him, however, on the history of Conservative attitudes towards reform of the Lords. It is abundantly evident why reform should be carried out in two stages.
In some of the speeches that I have made in the Chamber since finding myself--very happily, I might add--on the Labour Benches, I have tried to relate the subject to the reasoning that led me here. One of my first speeches was on Europe and I have made several on Ireland. We are now discussing the constitutional agenda, and Lords reform is an important part of that. I therefore welcome the opportunity to speak on the first day's debate of this subject.
I have always been strongly in favour of reforming the House of Lords and abolishing the hereditary right to sit in that Chamber. In 1977, the first Temple-Morris effort to reform the Lords was made by way of a committee of the then Bow group, which I chaired, on Lords reform.
It was called "secundus inter pares" and in the autumn of 1977 it made proposals not unlike many of the suggestions for phase two reforms that we are discussing today.
The proposals achieved a little publicity--they came out just before the Conservative party conference in Blackpool. When I duly went to Blackpool in October and was lingering innocently by a book stall, I heard the sound of marching feet behind me. To my horror, the then leader of the Conservative party was rapidly approaching. When she saw me she stopped, wheeled round and said abruptly, "Peter, I have read your pamphlet on the House of Lords." With that, she turned round and marched on. She did not say another word to me. I must confess that I never imagined that I had bright future under that leadership. If I needed confirmation of that in my early days in the House, I certainly got it then.
The traditional Conservative response to Lords reform has not changed this century. Lords reform has always been on the Conservative party's agenda. The party has been pragmatic about it and, on occasion, has made constructive proposals, but there has always been an element of compulsion. In that context, my former party's ideas are unchanged: basically, it would like to leave the House of Lords as it is because it likes the place. On the other hand, it is pragmatic because it has always realised, since the debates leading up to the Parliament Act 1911, that the House of Lords will probably have to change one day. I am trying not to score points but to present a factual argument. There is a dilemma, which is evident today: how much should people co-operate over something that they realise might have to change one day when they would like to leave it as it is?
Mr. Hope:
My hon. Friend might be able to help me with the contradictory answers that I have received across the Chamber this afternoon. Based on his experience, can he clarify whether the Conservative party does or does not support the hereditary principle?
Mr. Temple-Morris:
Judging by the election manifesto--on which, I have to say, I stood, although I was blissfully unaware of that particular element of it--it seems that we were elected on the basis of support for the hereditary principle. The party is not, with all respect, what I like to refer to as the old Conservative party. I have no doubt that, in those days, elements of it would have liked to reform the House of Lords. I believe that the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup(Sir E. Heath) will address the House tomorrow and it will be particularly interesting to hear what he has to say.
Sir Patrick Cormack:
I am most grateful to my former hon. Friend for giving way. Does not he remember that, in 1984, I introduced a Bill to reduce the number of hereditary peers to 200? He, and the Leader of the House, voted against it.
Mr. Temple-Morris:
I do not like half-hearted reform. I have no doubt that I chose the right course of action by marching into the Lobby firmly to encourage my former hon. Friend to be slightly bolder in his efforts. I am very sad, because he now has a wonderful opportunity to make a constructive contribution.
The Government's approach has always been consensual. We could have achieved one-passage reform of the House of Lords only if my former party had taken a constructive view from the outset of this Parliament, when possibilities were being discussed. We could have put reform through in one measure, but it has been patently clear from the various perambulations of the Conservative party that--as in so many other things, I fear--it cannot quite make up its mind.
I want to get away from the present, to quote from the admirable report by Lord Home and to finish my point about the fact that the Conservative party's basic attitude has been unchanged throughout this century. The element of compulsion--the dilemma--began in the debates on the Parliament Act 1911. A footnote on page 30 of Lord Home's report quotes A. J. Balfour, no less. What he said is unchanged:
It is inevitable that there will be reform in the end, but unfortunately, once the immediate threat of abolition--the sword of Damocles--and, in particular, the threat of a unicameral Parliament are withdrawn, the measure of co-operation drops--and drops at the first opportunity that the Conservative party has. I repeat that that is a major reason for the justification of the two-stage sequence for reform. We must concentrate on reform for the future; we must not spend hour after hour, day after day--and even Session after Session--arguing about the past.
That leads me to Lord Home's report, to which I want to refer in a little more detail. With all due deference to the private Member's Bill of my former hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Sir P. Cormack), it is a last major effort within the Conservative party at addressing reform of the House of Lords. The Conservative review committee's attempt at reform in 1978--which took place a year after my first attempt--is referred to in the White Paper, at page 49. The motivation for Lord Home's report was exactly the same--fear of abolition and fear of the possibility of a unicameral Parliament as part of the abolition--but it was clearly pro-reform and favoured a stronger and more legitimate second Chamber.
The quality of the report's findings mark it out as very worthy indeed. Sadly, however, the reaction of the then leader of the Conservative party--when Leader of the Opposition in 1977--to Lord Home's report and to my humble efforts, which argued for much the same thing as he argued for in his far more illustrious report; and her reaction to these efforts when in power, made it patently clear that, once the threat of reform of the House of Lords and the element of compulsion were no longer present, co-operation would be dropped.
Lord Home chaired the committee and its report is relevant to the debate and to the royal commission, and for the Government. It recommended a mixed House of Lords, part elected and part nominated; the abolition of
the hereditary right to sit; elections under regional proportional representation, particularly if the electoral system for the European Parliament went in that direction, as it now has, so that recommendation is still very much alive; salaried Members, called Lords of Parliament; and separation of the awarding and carrying of titles from the legislature.
"I dislike the whole thing. I would like to leave things as they are if we could. I don't believe you can make a better House. But that is not the question. The question is: can you make a Second Chamber strong enough to stand and resist assault? Can you make such changes as will enable our men to fight with success in Yorkshire, Lancashire and Scotland against single-chamber government? I don't think we can in our democratic days unless you admit an elective element".
That was way back in 1910. That comment is typical: once driven towards reform--because people cannot defend the indefensible--the party gets constructive.
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