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9.45 pm
The Parliamentary Secretary, Privy Council Office (Mr. Paddy Tipping): I am delighted that we have been able to discuss the Bill over two days. We have had more than 11 hours of speeches in the debate and a total of 45 speakers, counting those who spoke from the Front Benches. I am sorry that a number of hon. Members who have been present for a large part of the debate have not had the opportunity to participate because of lack of time.
The discussion has been wide ranging, covering the Bill and the underlying White Paper. There will be an opportunity during the Committee stage, which will be taken soon on the Floor of the House, for all hon. Members to pursue in detail issues and points raised in the debate.
The debate has been good-humoured in the main, thoughtful at times, and occasionally passionate. Some criticisms have been made of the fact that no thanks have been given to the Lords for their services over the years. At the risk of offending one or two--only one or two--of my colleagues, I am prepared to put that right now. Many, many Lords have given unstinting time, effort and commitment; I have no hesitation in saying that. I value their service over a long period. That, however, does not justify the system. Those peers are making the best of a bad job.
Many specific points were made during the debate. I am conscious of the fact that I may not be able to answer them all, but I give an undertaking to write to hon. Members before Committee.
There were several important themes to the debate. First, I am struck by the consensus across the House on the need for change. Almost without exception, hon. Members have advocated change. Some have been more radical in their approach. Yesterday, the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Bedfordshire(Sir N. Lyell) and the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) made interesting suggestions on the composition of the second Chamber. My right hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) spelled out clearly--we heard him--his position on the hereditary peers.
During the debate, my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Mr. Wareing), the hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr. Wells) and my hon.and learned Friend the Member for Medway(Mr. Marshall-Andrews) advocated the case for a single Chamber. I was interested to hear the Father of the House, the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Sir E. Heath), speak tonight about the need for an elected Chamber. For him, the time had come for change.
The overwhelming opinion of the House is that the hereditary principle cannot be defended any longer. I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Mr. Hope) for vigorously questioning hon. Members on that point. It reminded me of the accusation, "When did you last see your father?" In this case, the question was, "Do you sign up to clause 1?", which states:
The importance of the Bill is that it has already triggered an effective change in position by the Opposition, but what has also been an issue--
Mr. Gerald Howarth (Aldershot):
Will the Minister give way?
Mr. Tipping:
The hon. Gentleman has honoured us with his presence. Some hon. Members in the Chamber have sat through the debate for 11 hours without being called to speak, but he has just joined us.
The pace and scale of change have also been an issue. It is not clear at all whether the Opposition believe that the pace of change is too fast or too slow. They have criticised us for not setting up the royal commission earlier, and they have criticised us on the other constitutional issues on the agenda and on the big issues: a minimum wage and the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, which took priority in the first Session of this Parliament.
What do the Opposition say about the pace of change? The hon. Member for South Staffordshire (Sir P. Cormack) tries to make a deal extending the life of the royal commission, but the mood--certainly in parts of today's debate--is that we have not moved quickly enough. What did the Opposition do when they were in power? They had an 18-year policy vacuum on constitutional change. They maintained the status quo; they wanted a quiet life. They did not believe in constitutional change; it was a black hole for them.
The former Lord Chancellor, Lord Mackay, has been set up to lead a commission on the Opposition's behalf.
Mr. Evans:
The Minister is obviously seeking some form of consensus. Will he allow the Conservative party to appoint its own nominees to the royal commission and the appointments commission?
Mr. Tipping:
It is interesting that the Opposition spokesman, having again opposed change, now argues for a step that will give the Opposition some political advantage. That sums up their approach to this matter.
Mr. Tipping:
I will come to that point in a moment.
Lord Mackay, a former Lord Chancellor, is setting up a commission, but none of his thinking--and none of his work--has impinged on the debate in the Chamber today. I look forward to the work done by the Opposition being put towards the royal commission.
The royal commission has a demanding timetable. It has an independent chairman, a fact that, on 20 January, was welcomed by the Opposition. Lord Wakeham is currently consulting about the membership of the commission. I hope that we can establish a commission that meets the needs of all parties in this House.
It is simply not true that this issue is being kicked into the long grass. We will be judged on what we achieve, but I believe that the eventual endgame will be quicker than the pessimists forecast. Our aim is to make the position clear before the general election.
I suspect, however, that the Opposition are keen not to kick the issue into the long grass, but to kick it into the jungle and put a palisade around it. That is the traditional device of those who have opposed change over the years. The idea is to ask more and more questions, to make life more difficult, to go for a one-stage solution, to argue for the big bang and, at the end of the day, to delay and delay until nothing is happening.
Mr. Grieve:
Will the Minister give way?
This time, that simply will not work. This is a short, simple, elegant Bill, which is already acting as a catalyst for change in the thinking of Opposition Members. The debate is moving on, not with a big bang, but in the British tradition of evolutionary change, one step at a time and adapting to survive.
The Opposition made a lot of noise about the need to hold the Executive to account. I am surprised that they cannot see for themselves that that is an implicit criticism of their own performance in the House since the general election. At least the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Sheldon) recognised that. Rather than discussing a big issue and a broader vision, Opposition Members talk about the trivia--the trips and the accommodation. They are not interested in modernising Britain.
That leads me to the Opposition's wider accusation that the second Chamber will be a quango packed with the Prime Minister's placemen and placewomen. We have been fortunate today in hearing from two former Prime Ministers. The right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup was certainly sparing with his appointments. I thought that was due to principle, until he told us this evening that, for every appointment he made, he disappointed nine other people. The right hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major) made it clear that he, too, had made appointments--160, of whom 75 were Conservatives, 40 Labour and 17 Liberal Democrats. He packed the upper House with his own people. He argued that the life peers were not independent, but 119 Cross Benchers are life peers--more than 20 per cent. of the total number.
The current Prime Minister has made it clear that he will establish an appointments commission on Nolan lines. He will give up power; he will not block the appointments of other party leaders. What is more, we have said in our White Paper that we will seek broad parity between parties in the other place. No one has concentrated on that. Winding up the debate, the hon. Member for South Staffordshire did not make it clear whether that principle, for which the Tories have stood since 1911, still obtained.
Opening the debate, my right hon. Friend the President of the Council described the Bill as a simple solution, designed to remedy a state that is broken and indefensible. After 88 years of debate on the hereditary element of the House of Lords, the Bill provides an agenda for action. It constitutes another step towards the modernisation of Parliament and Britain. It is time to stop looking at the old--the past--and to fix our sights on the future.
The time has finally come to modernise the House of Lords. We have a chance to make it more representative--a chance to build a new future. After years of indecision and confusion, the Bill provides a way forward. The time has come to face the challenge; the time has come to make the change.
"No-one shall be a member of the House of Lords by virtue of a hereditary peerage."
What is the attitude of those on the Conservative Front Bench on that matter? Do they support the hereditary principle or not? There still seems to be a slight ambiguity. The campaign guide, as we heard, stated:
"It is important to defend the hereditary principle in its own right."
Last night, the hon. Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox), who leads for the Opposition on this matter, said:
"We have made it perfectly clear that the hereditary principle in itself is not something that we challenge."--[Official Report, 1 February 1999; Vol. 324, c. 620.]
The hon. Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin)--his co-defendant, as he had been put on the Front Bench--vacillated, but eventually conceded that
"there is not a chance in hell of the Opposition proposing the resurrection"
of the hereditary peers. Indeed, he continued:
"the Opposition would not dream of proposing the hereditary principle as a way forward."
At the end of the debate, he said quite clearly that the Opposition
"do not oppose clause 1 in principle."--[Official Report, 1 February 1999; Vol. 324, c. 654-91.]
The Opposition's position reminds me of the approach that they have taken on all constitutional issues: oppose the Scottish Parliament, oppose the Welsh Assembly and oppose the European Parliamentary Elections Bill. When change is inevitable, however, they sign up and seek electoral advantage. They are sinners who repent, just before the final judgment day.
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