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Mrs. Eleanor Laing (Epping Forest) rose--
Mr. Grieve: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Wareing: I shall give way to the hon. Lady, as I think that she asked first.
Mrs. Laing: Is not the hon. Gentleman arguing, most eloquently, for a total reform of Parliament itself? As he just said, we now have devolution and the opportunity--although Opposition Members do not want it--for regional assemblies. Does he therefore agree that, rather than debating the short Bill before us, which deals with only one aspect--
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael J. Martin): Order. As I have said before, an intervention is not an opportunity to make a speech.
Mr. Wareing: I shall answer the question of the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs. Laing) with pleasure. I honestly believe that the Bill is necessary now. It is necessary if only to ensure that the Government--who were elected with a large majority, in 1997--have a reasonable chance of having their legislation passed in the other place.
I see no justification for maintaining the hereditary principle.
Mr. Grieve:
I appreciate what the hon. Gentleman is saying--he wants the hereditary element in the House of
Mr. Wareing:
With respect to the hon. Gentleman, they are being dealt with. The Government have published a White Paper, which is there for us to read and to ask questions on. Today's debate will not be the only opportunity for us to raise the issues between now and publication of the royal commission's report, at the end of 1999.
If we move towards a federal Britain, my prescription--it is outlined in the White Paper; I shall not go into the details now--is typified by the Bundesrat, in the Federal Republic of Germany.
Currently--in this Bill--we have to deal with the House of Lords. I believe that the Lords spend enormous amounts of time in wasteful debate. Although the House of Lords deals with legislation, an occasional glance at its Annunciator shows that it is acting as a debating society. I have no argument with hereditary peers taking part in a debating society, but they do not have to use one of the Chambers of Parliament to do so.
The House of Lords ties up Ministers' time, which could be better used in other ways. [Interruption.] Ministers will admit that I do not often sympathise with them in the work that they do. However, the time that they spend answering questions in the House of Lords, and dealing in this place with amendments from the other place, could be better spent.
The House of Lords is able also to defy the electors.
Mr. Hawkins:
Does the hon. Gentleman accept Opposition Members' view that, when Ministers are questioned in the Chamber of a House of Parliament, they are being held to account for the work that they do? Should not Ministers--the Executive--be held to account by Parliament? Is that not why we are here?
Mr. Wareing:
Yes, they should be held to account. Ministers should be held to account by the elected Chamber--the House of Commons--and by Members of the elected Chamber serving on Select Committees. Moreover, I believe that the Prime Minister should have to attend Select Committees if called upon to do so. Ex-Prime Ministers should also have to attend when called. Baroness Thatcher refused to attend the Foreign Affairs Committee in the previous Parliament when we were debating the scandal of the Pergau dam. The Prime Minister should be called to account.
Mr. Eric Forth (Bromley and Chislehurst):
The difficulty for the Conservatives is that few of us would start from here. That is always a problem in such debates. It is clear from what a lot of what my right hon. and hon. Friends have already said that we would not have abolished the existing House of Lords because we believe that it performs a useful and robustly independent legislative role. Neither would we have set up devolved Assemblies and Parliaments in Scotland and Wales, and
Dr. Stephen Ladyman (South Thanet):
How fiercely independent does the right hon. Gentleman believe that the House of Lords is when 50 per cent. of all Divisions in the Lords during the life of the previous Labour Government resulted in defeat for the Government, whereas during the 18 years of Tory rule, only about 5 per cent. of House of Lords Divisions resulted in Government defeats?
Mr. Forth:
That might suggest that our legislation was better than Labour's. The hon. Gentleman has a point, but the fact that the bulk of the upper House has been hereditary has, in a peculiar way, made it independent by definition. Life peers certainly cannot be said to be independent.
Mr. Hope:
Half the hereditary peers in the House of Lords take the Conservative Whip, which hardly makes them independent. I should like the right hon. Gentleman to answer a question that I have asked other Conservatives: does he support clause 1, which abolishes the hereditary principle? What is the Conservative party's position on the Bill?
Mr. Forth:
I support clause 1. I am going to give my views in a moment, but first I should like to set the scene by quoting myself, which I always find pleasurable and productive. On 20 January--this is quite recent, so it is fresh in my memory--I asked the Leader of the House:
We already have the beginnings of the process of devolved representation and legislation in the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly. The process of change of the upper House is already well under way. I regret that I have to disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr. Wells) and the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Mr. Wareing), who advocated a single Chamber. I have taken it as axiomatic that a legislature should have two Chambers for checks and balances and revisionary purposes. I am uneasy about a unicameral approach, even though our friends in New Zealand have gone down that path.
We know that they have bitterly regretted some recent developments, so I am not sure that we should regard what they do as a good example.
Mr. Grieve:
Does my right hon. Friend agree that a key issue is the size of the country concerned? A unicameral system may work well in a small country such as Denmark or New Zealand, but applying the principle to a country of 60 million people is a different matter.
Mr. Forth:
That is a powerful point that we would do well to bear in mind.
We are faced with the reality of devolution and the perceived need--now broadly accepted--to change the nature of the upper House. Picking up on what the hon. Member for West Derby said, I have become an advocate of an English Parliament in response to the system that the Government have set up in Scotland and Wales. Just over a year ago, we embarked on the argument that, in fairness and for good administrative and legislative purposes, it is proper that the English people should be asked what they want, which has not yet happened. If they agree, they should be given their own legislature. That would answer the West Lothian question and would render regional assemblies inappropriate and unnecessary.
If we accept that that is a legitimate approach--I realise that not everyone does--it is easy and essential to move on and look at the role and functions of what would then be a federal Parliament, when the English, Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish were dealing with their domestic affairs through their new elected and accountable Assemblies. That would necessarily lead to a dramatically reduced House of Commons, dealing with foreign affairs, defence and overall economic matters.
To complement that, we should have a revised upper House consisting of 87 elected members. I do not pick the number 87 out of thin air. That is the current number of European constituencies. There would be no need for a lengthy and complicated study by the boundary commission. We have a ready-made electoral map on which an elected upper Chamber could be based. We could have multiples of 87, but I would feel comfortable with 87. The members should be elected for six-year terms, with one third of them being elected every two years. That would give the second Chamber a separate political legitimacy from the House of Commons. It would also allow the electorate the opportunity to express a view during the term of a Government, which would be a useful and necessary political device.
I accept that this is new political territory, but the Government have set in train a process that gives us not only the opportunity, but the obligation to look seriously at the way in which our country is run and our legislation is developed. What I have said may be somewhat radical, but this is the opportunity for a radical approach. The Government have already been radical with their measures for Scotland. They are already denying the people of England the say that they should have in all this. They are asking us to review the role, functions and nature of the upper Chamber, which surely also involves considering what the House of Commons does.
If we are considering a different sort of representation at English, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish level, and a different kind of upper Chamber, accepting--however reluctantly--that the basis on which the House of Lords
has operated for 1,000 years can no longer continue, surely the Government and the royal commission will accept that this is an opportunity to look in the round at how we govern and legislate, and to review our accountability and representativeness. I do not accept that a unicameral approach would give such legitimacy. I have no fear, as a member of this House for the time being, that a new, powerful, differently accountable and representative upper Chamber would necessarily pose a threat to the House of Commons. It should complement what the House of Commons does and its accountability. I believe that a self-confident Government should have no fear of a new-style, legitimate, elected and accountable upper Chamber--something that surely flows from what the Leader of the House said a few days ago.
"As the main criticisms that the Government are making of the House of Lords appear to be that it is undemocratic, unrepresentative and unaccountable, can the Leader of the House guarantee that at the end of the process, the second Chamber will emerge as democratic, representative and accountable?"
To my delight and pleasure, the right hon. Lady answered:
"The right hon. Gentleman identifies our case accurately. The House of Lords is uniquely undemocratic, unrepresentative and unaccountable."--[Official Report, 20 January 1999; Vol. 323, c. 919.]
There is a surprising amount of common ground on which I would like to build. That is a useful starting point, which goes some way towards answering the question of the hon. Member for Corby (Mr. Hope).
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