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7.11 pm
Mr. Clive Soley (Ealing, Acton and Shepherd's Bush): If the Conservative party follows the views of the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth), it will end up as an English nationalist party--which would be a sad end for a once-great party.
The main message that I have taken from Conservative speeches today--particularly that of the Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox)--is that the Conservative party intends to go into the next general election as the only party in Britain which supports the right of hereditary peers, wherever they may live in the world, to vote in our legislature.
Mr. Soley:
I invite the hon. Gentleman to say categorically and unequivocally that the Conservative party will oppose the right of hereditary peers to vote in the House of Lords.
Mr. Letwin:
I am most interested in the hon. Gentleman's observation--I cannot for the life of me imagine how he got that idea. Does he agree that the Government are proposing, and will accept, that hereditary peers should continue in the House of Lords?
Mr. Soley:
No. The proposal is clear. For a limited period, 10 per cent. will continue to have the right to vote. I asked the hon. Gentleman a question that he has not
Mr. Letwin:
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that in order to do that, the Conservative party would have to vote against an amendment to keep hereditary peers that the Government would be supporting?
Mr. Soley:
This is no time for wriggling. Is the Conservative party in favour of hereditary peers having a vote in the House of Lords, as a second Chamber, in the future? The hon. Gentleman's co-defendant on the Front Bench--[Laughter.] The hon. Gentleman's supporteron the Front Bench, rather--the hon. Member for Woodspring--avoided that question.
As the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst said a few moments ago, the Conservatives say that they would not have started from here. The point is that we are starting from here because this is where the previous Government left us; it is, therefore, difficult to start from anywhere else. It is simple to express whether one thinks that hereditary peers should have the right to vote in the House of Lords. I will give the hon. Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin) one last chance to answer that question, yes or no. The people of Britain have a right to know, and they need to know soon.
Mr. Letwin:
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving me one last chance, although it took him rather a long time to do so. Will he accept this perfectly clear statement from the Opposition; that there is not a chance in hell of the Opposition proposing the resurrection of more hereditary peers than will already have been put in that House by the Government? In the second phase--if the Government allow a second phase--the Opposition would not dream of proposing the hereditary principle as a way forward. Is that clear enough for the hon. Gentleman?
Mr. Soley:
No, it is not. The question that the hon. Gentleman has to answer is this; if the hon. Gentleman was a Minister in a Tory Government, would he be proposing the abolition of the right of hereditary peers to vote in the House of Lords? The answer, as we all know, is a resounding no. It is a resounding no because the hereditary peers have given the Tory party a built-in majority for more years than many of us care to remember.
I enjoyed the speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn), as I always do--not least because of his historical grasp. However, he gave one or two examples that must be dealt with. He referred to a US-type system. I have never thought of my right hon. Friend as the greatest supporter of the US system, and there is a lot that is wrong with the US constitution.
My right hon. Friend suggested that it was a good thing that the Senate and the Republicans could hold the President over a barrel, as they are doing now. However, that is not a good example of why we should have an elected second Chamber--it is a profoundly bad one. Everyone knows that the battle in which the President is engaged in the US has nothing to do with the political, economic or social problems facing the US. It has everything to do with the fact that the Republican party could not beat a Democratic President on two occasions and seeks to remove him from office because it cannot win.
A few weeks ago, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield gave the Levellers as another example. I am a great supporter of the Levellers, and, in some respects, that important part of history set the standards for democracy here and elsewhere. The problem with the Levellers was that because of the way in which they carried through their policy in a situation that was fraught with difficulties, we ended up with the only period of dictatorship that this country has ever known. Again, that is not a good example.
A far better example from our history concerns Britain's writing of large parts, if not most, of the constitution of what was then West Germany after the second world war. The reason we put into that constitution an indirectly elected part of the Chamber was precisely to stop a centralising Government taking power again. Hon. Members on both sides of the House who believe that the only democratic proposal is an elected second Chamber must be aware that there are profound dangers in that, as historical examples show.
My right hon. and hon. Friends who follow that line ought to take into account the fact that when Baroness Thatcher was Prime Minister, she had no hesitation in destroying local government when she did not think that she could win the elections. An elected second Chamber--particularly one elected at the same time as this House--would do exactly the same. In the German constitution, we built in the safeguard of an indirect part of the Chamber.
Mr. Cash:
Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the Bundesrat is, in fact, anything but independent, and furthermore that it is the biggest bunch of fat cats that has been seen this side of the Alamo?
Mr. Soley:
The hon. Gentleman would do well to remember that the Bundesbank has been one of the most successful organisations in Europe. Local government has been represented on the board of the Bundesbank, which is why regional economic development in Germany has been much more successful than here.
I wish to refer to the speech of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House. We should have a sense of history in a debate such as this. I compliment my right hon. Friend on having the good fortune to be the person who modernises Britain's constitution by introducing this fundamental reform of the House of Lords. It is profoundly important, and it is right that in this debate, we do not lose our sense of historical perspective.
Mr. Brooke:
For the benefit of those who are reading this debate centuries from now, it would be helpful if the hon. Gentleman knew that my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr. Cash) referred to the Bundesrat, and that his answer was in the context of the Bundesbank.
Mr. Soley:
If that is what he said, I entirely accept that. I answered in the context of the Bundesbank in my second example, because I thought that that is what the hon. Gentleman said. Either way, in the political and economic structure of West Germany--[Laughter.] Conservative Members may laugh, but we should take pride in the fact that we wrote that constitution and set up much of the
Mr. Maclennan:
I follow and to some extent support what the hon. Gentleman has said about our wisdom in respect of the German constitution. Does the hon. Gentleman support what we did to the voting system for West Germany?
Mr. Soley:
Not necessarily. In local government, much can be said for a different type of voting system, but there are horses for courses.
The importance of our current proposals is, as my hon. Friend the Member for Burnley (Mr. Pike) said earlier, that we are trying to modernise the British constitution, not just in one area--the House of Lords--but through devolution to Scotland, Wales, London and, I hope, the English regions. I am confident that this Government will radically reform the British constitution.
The special tragedy of the Conservatives--their party used to take pride in the British constitution--is that they let it freeze in the 20th century and made no significant changes to it. They believed that it kept them in power, and to some extent it did. The one constitutional change they did make, they now tell us that they did not intend--I refer to the Single European Act, which removed some power from the House of Commons and made it indirectly controlled through the Council of Ministers.
Britain has the advantage of having an unwritten constitution, although some people disagree that that is an advantage. The right hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Mr. Maclennan) might prefer a written constitution. The advantage of an unwritten constitution is that it can continually evolve. The United States is having difficulty changing its written constitution as it now needs to. However, because we did not change our constitution in the 20th century, it has become redundant in many areas and is seen by many people as irrelevant to our needs.
The message about reform today is that it is necessary to deliver the right economic and social policies that the country needs. We are not doing this just for the sake of reform or even because the principle of hereditary voting is wrong. We are doing it because we need efficient, democratic government--and that means reform. That also means that we need the first stage reform, because that is where reform has been blocked in the past. Members on both sides of the House have referred to the failure of reform in the 1960s. That happened because people, including some Labour Members, fell for the Conservative argument that we had to change everything or nothing. That is a fatal mistake which we must not make now.
We want the first stage reform now. It has been argued that the Bill will lead to a neutered second Chamber, but the Conservatives will still have a majority. It is worth reminding the House of the long-term aims of the Government, which were spelt out in the White Paper:
"The legislative powers of the House of Lords will remain unaltered."
It also states:
"No one political party should seek a majority in the House of Lords."
1 Feb 1999 : Column 657
That gives the lie to the argument that the Bill is an attempt to install a Labour majority in the House of Lords. We will not have a majority in the House of Lords once the Bill becomes law and we will not be able to create such a majority artificially, because of the independent appointments system. We will then move on to the second stage, and debate on the form it should take will continue. Now, we must focus on the first stage.
It is time to be brave and to recognise that reform of the House of Lords is essential. The hereditary principle is a nonsense. People talk about the hereditary vine, but my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield produced a phial of blood to show that the hereditary principle is not always entirely pure. Occasionally, as the nobles wandered the highways and byways of olde England, they spread their seed far and wide. That gives a new meaning to the phrase "genetically modified crops". I think that they should be labelled, but that is another issue. As my right hon. Friend said, the hereditary principle has been used as an advantage and switched on and off as necessary. It is no longer necessary and we must reform the House of Lords to achieve an efficient, democratic Government. We must have the first stage in order to move on properly to the debate about the second stage.
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