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Mrs. Laing: I agree that most hereditary peers are unaccountable--but they are also unaccountable to any political party because they were not put there by a political party. That is why the hon. Gentleman's argument falls. Although many hereditary peers support the Conservative party at any given time, they remain independent. Several hundred of them could decide tomorrow to support any other party. When we discussed this subject a few weeks ago, some of them did just that.
Mr. Hope: I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. Someone once told me that members of the House of Lords sit independently, debate independently and then vote Conservative independently.
Despite their unrepresentative nature and their appalling track record, can the hereditary peerage be defended on the basis that it offers a balanced check on the House of Commons and the Executive? The problem here is the word "balanced". The figures have been well rehearsed in this Chamber: the Conservatives outnumber Labour in the House of Lords by three to one. In government, the Conservatives forced through unpopular measures relying on the support of the hereditary peers. In effect, the presence of the hereditary peerage means that, regardless of who wins the general election, the Tories stay in power in one House of Parliament. A Labour Government get only the legislation that the Conservative hereditary peers allow them to have.
Mr. Cash:
I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman's script, but may I ask why the Government do not propose that the 91 hereditary peers be converted into life peers? Given everything that he has said and his repeated questions about the hereditary principle, why are the Government maintaining the notion that hereditary peers should remain?
Mr. Hope:
I am addressing the central issue, the one that Conservative Members appear not to want to address. Why have hereditary peers? I have not yet heard a single argument from an Opposition Front-Bench spokesman to justify the Conservatives' opposition to hereditary peers' rights being abolished. I am looking forward to hearing the Opposition spokesman who winds up the debate explain, in detail, whether the Conservatives will support the hereditary principle.
The Conservatives cannot defend the hereditary principle, so they argue that we should take a big-bang approach, whereby we do everything at once, or nothing at all. To pick up the theme introduced by the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Bedfordshire(Sir N. Lyell), the Conservatives' position on reform appears to be that of saying that they would have some fish, but only if there were chips with it; they cannot have fish on its own. The Opposition's proposals make no sense, unless they are hungry for change.
Mr. Nick Hawkins (Surrey Heath):
Being in the interesting position of following the hon. Member for Corby (Mr. Hope) enables me to deal with the question that he repeatedly asked of nearly every one of my hon. Friends who has spoken in the debate. To save him the trouble of intervening on me, let me tell him that he will be clear as to my answer once he has listened to my whole speech. From having looked him up, I see that the hon. Gentleman was, for several years before becoming a Member of Parliament, a secondary school teacher: may I suggest that, had a third former, as it used to be, or a pupil in year nine, as it now is, repeatedly asked a question in the same childish way as he has done this evening, he as a teacher would have become distinctly fed up with that child.
I would describe the hon. Gentleman's speech as the paradigm, the very epitome, of what new Labour is about in the Bill and the debate. From the start of the debate
and in the opening speech from the Leader of the House, we have heard the politics of envy, red in tooth and claw--that is what new Labour is all about. I strongly object to so much of what comes from the Labour Government because of their obsession with the words "modern" and "new". If anything in the United Kingdom is traditional, they are against it: a priori, by definition, if it is not modern, it is bad--that is new Labour's thinking. That thread was started by the Leader of the House and it has shot through every single Labour Member's speech.
I stand here to expose the smokescreen that has been thrown up. With this Bill, the new Labour Government are trying to bring old and new Labour together by telling those who rebel against them on matters such as lone parent benefit or nuclear deterrence that they are at least getting rid of the hereditary peers. The Bill is designed to muzzle the left and enable the Government to say, "We're throwing you a bone, we're giving you a sop--we're going to get rid of the hereditary peers' voting rights for you." That is what it is really about: class prejudice of the old and worst kind. In making it clear that, when the Bill goes to the upper House, he will accept 91 hereditary peers carrying on, the Prime Minister has accepted the hereditary principle. The left of new Labour and the extreme left of old Labour do not like that, but they are muzzled.
As a distinguished commentator speaking in a Radio 4 documentary said recently, there is a lot of republicanism on new Labour's Benches. This very afternoon, when one of my hon. Friends pointed out that the logic of Labour's position suggested that Royal Assent should be abolished, there were a lot of "Hear, hears" from Labour Back Benchers. However, the Prime Minister does not want to do anything that smacks of disloyalty to the monarchy, so again he muzzles his Back Benchers on the subject of the hereditary principle.
Mr. Rammell:
We have heard that bogus point about the relationship of the hereditary principle to the House of Lords and the monarchy before. Is the hon. Gentleman aware of a pamphlet published by the Tory Reform Group, which argues:
Mr. Hawkins:
There are several possible responses to that question, but the first is to remind the hon. Gentleman of the point I was making when he intervened. When it was said that the logic of the Labour party's position was that Royal Assent should be abolished, there were a lot of "Hear, hears". As the presenter of the Radio 4 documentary said, when surveys are sent out to Labour Members asking whether they would abolish the monarchy, many hon. Members respond in the affirmative. However, they are not allowed to say so in public or to be honest about it in the Chamber, because their party leadership would not be happy were they to do so. That is what is really happening: Labour Members are being muzzled to prevent them from saying anything inconvenient, but that undermines the logic of their position and the class prejudice displayed in the Bill.
When we consider the role of the second Chamber in a bicameral legislature, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr. Cash) said, the important point is the scrutiny of legislation. I am especially concerned about the scrutiny of secondary legislation. My hon. Friend was right to say that a vast amount of legislation takes the form of delegated legislation, and I want any reformed second Chamber to be able to scrutinise properly European directives and secondary legislation. That is vital, so we must press, by means of detailed reasoned amendments to the Bill both here and in the other place, to ensure that any reformed second Chamber is able to provide that proper scrutiny. It is crucial that our legislature, in both Houses of Parliament, should be able to hold the Executive to account. The large amount of secondary legislation that passes through the House, especially that which originally emanates from Europe, needs detailed scrutiny and the electorate require both Houses of Parliament to give it that scrutiny.
As on so many issues, of which the Bill is merely one example, the Labour party has let the genie out of the constitutional bottle, with no idea of where it will go. We can already see the grand project coming to grief with the creation of the Scottish Parliament. It was announced that the right hon. Member for Glasgow, Anniesland (Mr. Dewar) who is currently known as the Secretary of State for Scotland, would be Scotland's First Minister, but the polls now suggest that he will not, and that the First Minister of the first Scottish Parliament will be the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond), because Labour will lose the election in Scotland as a result of letting the genie out of the bottle. Only last night, I heard about polls showing that, in the Welsh Assembly elections, there will be huge gains for Plaid Cymru at the expense of Labour. Again, the Labour Government have let the genie out of the bottle and they must now reap the consequences.
Mr. Malcolm Savidge (Aberdeen, North):
Will the hon. Gentleman say which polls show that the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond) appears likely to become First Minister of Scotland? Every poll that I have seen recently suggests the opposite.
"Those that think, if the hereditary peerage goes, the monarchy will be next have no clear grasp of the clear distinction between the role of legislators, who make laws, and the role of a sovereign, who acts on advice"?
If he cannot convince members of his own party, does he really expect to convince us?
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