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5.59 pm
Mr. John Major (Huntingdon): Let me beginby welcoming the right hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr. Mandelson) back to the Back Benches. It is an
honourable estate. As a Back Bencher, the right hon. Gentleman has an important part to play in trying to check the control of an Executive with an over-mighty parliamentary majority, and I look forward to seeing him perform that role.
Certainly, during the past few minutes, the right hon. Gentleman has demonstrated that he has the capacity to surprise. Not since Satan denounced sin have I heard such a recantation as the right hon. Gentleman's remarks about the possible implications for the "glue" of the United Kingdom of the devolution policies that he previously supported. But, speaking with some experience, I can tell him that he will find that returning to the Back Benches is not too bad; indeed, it has a large number of compensations.
I once advocated a classless society, so I am not here to defend the hereditary principle for legislative purposes. It is, for those purposes, a dead principle, and I am unconcerned about that aspect of what the Government propose in the short term. I am here to defend the effective and efficient working of Parliament, in Commons and Lords, for I do not wish to see that die in the same fashion as the hereditary principle, which is now doomed to extinction.
Over recent months, we have had a great deal of talk about reform of the House of Lords. Let us be clear: up to a point, this is reform. It is the first half, the destructive half, of reform. It is tearing down what exists; it is condemning the hereditaries to the tumbrel--but it builds for the future, nothing. It is, at the moment, a blank cheque for the future of the House of Lords. The hereditaries are disappearing into a vacuum, and, as we wish them godspeed, we have no idea what will replace them in the medium term. Not even my right hon. and noble Friend Lord Wakeham has any idea, and he is to chair the royal commission--a royal commission with an impossible mandate: to replace 700 years of constitutional practice in a few months of part-time consideration.
I do not know what the commission will propose. Maybe--given the virtues of the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman), as adumbrated by the right hon. Member for Hartlepool--if and when the Government ever get around to appointing all of it, the commission will prove to be very wise; maybe. What I do know is that, given the time scale, it will have no time for consultation, no time for consideration, no time for reflection, and no time to weigh the implications of what it may decide. If there had been some weighing of the implications of the Scotland Bill, we might not have had the Scotland Bill and the right hon. Member for Hartlepool might not now be worried about the glue of the United Kingdom. What is clear is that the commission has no time. The timetable imposed by the Government makes it less of a royal commission, as I have always understood it, and more of a high-powered fig leaf, as the Prime Minister understands it.
I hope that, when they have been appointed, the commissioners will examine their task and then say to the Government, "This is an important task, but if we are to perform it properly we must ask for more time. We are, after all, a royal commission and not a focus group, and we want to produce a report, which will be considered by Parliament in both Houses, of which we can be proud, not a report that has been too rushed."
I do not say that to make a short partisan point; I say it because the way in which Parliament works, in Lords and Commons, matters to us. Whatever changes may be made in the House of Lords will have an effect on the House of Commons. That is why, earlier, I sought the Minister's assurance that, if the Joint Committee of the Commons and the Lords disliked the royal commission's recommendations, the House of Commons would have an opportunity to decide on the Committee's views on a free vote, rather than a Whip imposed by a Government with a very large majority.
Thus far, this reform has been sold to the country on a questionable prospectus. If we are to believe Cabinet Ministers, a phalanx of self-interested peers, Conservative to the bone--both men and women--appears whenever necessary to frustrate the people's Government. I speak as one who occasionally had a bit of his Government frustrated by those same peers. The concept that they are there, waiting to rush out of the hills and frustrate just this Government, simply does not stand up to examination. When they attacked my Government, it was to the cheers of Labour Members; when they attack their Government, the peers are very impertinent. How dare they raise the possibility that the Government might be wrong! What a dreadful proposition! Off with their heads! The Leader of the House is pleased to see them go at the first possible moment: she will be there at the guillotine, knitting to hand, as head after head disappears in the near future.
Dr. Stephen Ladyman (South Thanet):
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Major:
I will not, if the hon. Gentleman will forgive me.
Hereditary peers are, of course, an easy target to attack. As I have said, I am not here to defend the hereditary principle in legislative terms--
Mr. Hope:
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Major:
I may give way a little later.
The Government, however, never miss any target if it can deliver an easy headline. It does not matter whether the target is the unpopular principle of hereditary peers, or the dotty ramblings of a football coach; if there is a mob mentality to disagree, this Government will put themselves at the head of that mentality in order to garner a headline or two.
Now, who was the first to intervene?
Mr. Hope:
I have listened carefully to the right hon. Gentleman, and I understand that he and Opposition Front Benchers do not support the inclusion of hereditary peers in a reformed second Chamber. Can the right hon. Gentleman therefore explain why he and his Front Benchers seem to support the inclusion of hereditary peers in determining the composition of that second Chamber?
Mr. Major:
If the hon. Gentleman will let me proceed, he will learn many other things, as well as the answer to that point.
Let me now make a substantive point. Although hereditary peers are to go, even Labour Members, in their quieter moments away from the Chamber, will admit that many of the hereditary peers--not all; they will not
concede that--have had great virtues. They will admit that one of those virtues--I testify to it, for it was used against me often enough--is their independence, because of their hereditary nature, from the party Whips, when they choose to exercise it.
How is such independence to be replicated? We have heard nothing of that from any Minister. How are the new peers to have the independence of Whips that the present Lords enjoy? The Government do not know the answer to that. How are the new peers to have the vocation of the hereditary peers? It was said earlier--and I can testify to this, too--that many of the life peers appointed were keen to go to the House of Lords, and were going to be there morning, noon and night; my goodness, they would turn up on Sundays. Where are they--not just those whom I appointed, but those appointed by many others, including the present Prime Minister? No sooner are their bottoms on the red leather Benches than they zip off somewhere else, and turn up only occasionally.
Mr. Andrew Tyrie (Chichester):
There are some in the Gallery.
Mr. Major:
There are, of course, exceptions, who not only attend the House of Lords but are diligent enough to return to listen to what is said in the Commons.
Mr. Gordon Prentice:
Did not Lord Archer miss the 1994 Conservative party conference, when storms were raging over the Anglia Television deal, because he was too busy as a working Conservative peer? He is a real busybody, that Lord Archer, is he not?
Mr. Major:
I can think of a substantial number of peers whose work rate in the House of Lords does not match that of my noble Friend Lord Archer.
We are told that we should not worry about the mass axing of the peers because the Government have a mandate. Yes, they have; but as an argument of principle that is pretty pathetic. It is generally the last refuge of a Government who, although they have no credible case, can at least point to something that was in their manifesto. But I must tell them that they have no mandate to act without thinking about what they will do to our constitution and to the working of our Parliament. They have no mandate to tear down what works without telling the House of Commons what they will replace it with. They can tear it down, but, before they do so, they have an obligation to explain what comes in its place.
Liberty needs protection from democracy. The Government are tearing apart, piece by piece, act by act, the most sophisticated constitution of them all, with little real understanding of the implications of what they are doing. That is why I think that it is a mean, inadequate little Bill. It is not because of the substantive point; it is because of what is not in the Bill but should be. The Bill utterly misses the chance of a proper reform of the Lords and, with it, reform that will have an implication for us in the House.
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