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Mr. Tyrie: Where in the Bill is a case put forward for genuine democracy for the upper House?
Mr. Hurst: I would hesitate to reply in great detail to that intervention, since I fear that I would move outside
the confines of the Committee debate. The Opposition amendments--this is the clearest that they have tabled--are devices to thwart the purpose of the Bill, and I urge the Committee to vote against the amendment.
Mr. William Cash (Stone): I agree very much with my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd), and I have difficulty in understanding the purpose of the amendments. I cannot understand why those on the Opposition Front Bench cannot grasp the fact that we have conceded--for very good reasons--that the hereditary principle is indefensible, as I said on Second Reading. Having done that, why are we going in for a mish-mash of an amendment, which partly accepts and partly rejects the idea? It is rather like the Abbe Sieyes and his different types of constitutions--some with holes in the middle and some with holes at the bottom, leaking all the way. Why do we not accept the fact that we object to the hereditary principle and convert the 91 hereditary peers--if we accept the proposal to which I thought the Government had committed themselves in their White Paper--into life peers? We all know that there are some incredibly worthy and very distinguished Members of the House of Lords, many of whom are hereditary peers.
5.30 pm
Mr. Grieve: That may be a wise course of action, but does my hon. Friend agree that it would be helpful, while we are debating the interim stage, if the Government had the principle and integrity to tell us that they were prepared to accept the Weatherill amendment? That would at least enable us to know where we stand in the discussion.
Mr. Cash: I was somewhat surprised to hear the Leader of the House prevaricating over that the other day. I do not understand the purpose of that, because the White Paper seems pretty clear on the subject. However, that is not the purpose of my remarks.
I do not understand why we cannot accept that the hereditary principle in the House of Lords is at an end. If we are to preserve 91 current hereditary peers--for good reasons, because some appointment is probably a good idea to prevent competition between the Houses--they should be converted to life peers and should be allowed to continue the distinguished service to which my hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Sir P. Cormack) referred.
Given that the House has accepted the principle of the Bill, I find it difficult to understand how we can move amendments to restrict the hereditary principle in a way that would be inconsistent with the long title, even though there are other amendments to deal with that. The selection of such amendments is a little incongruous, to say that least--although that is a matter for you, Mr. Lord, not for me.
There are some serious questions for us to address. As in many other cases, if we have alighted on a principle, it would not be a bad idea if we stuck to it.
Mr. Patrick Nicholls (Teignbridge):
It is not often that I have the opportunity to tell my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr. Cash) that I seriously disagree with him. We usually find ourselves agreeing on matters European
My hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Sir P. Cormack) made a persuasive case for the amendment. It was also a persuasive case for the preservation of the hereditary principle. He was approaching the amendment from a conservative point of view, working on the idea that, if something is not broken, there is no particular need to amend it. If something is working, it does not matter if there is some illogicality about it. A product of 700 years of history and constitutional evolution is more likely to be worth while than something dreamed up by a temporary royal commission, however distinguished Lord Wakeham may be in presiding over it. All my hon. Friend's arguments, advanced with his usual charm, eloquence and elegance, could have been made in defence of the hereditary peerage.
The wider arguments and those on the amendment have been bedevilled by the embarrassment that even Conservatives feel about defending the hereditary principle, on the grounds that the upper House is not democratic. I shall be ruder about them in a moment, but I have some sympathy with some of the contributions of Labour Members, who have detected some illogicality in the approach to the subject adopted by some Conservative Members.
We have put ourselves into the position of having to say that we cannot defend the House of Lords, because it is not democratic. Obviously, it is not democratic--although it may be a mechanism for delivering a democratic form of government--but that is not the question that we should be considering. The question is whether the Queen in Parliament--the three estates, working together as a sovereign Parliament--is a democratic institution and delivers democracy.
To say of one Chamber--remember that it could also be said of the monarch, as an exercise in historical logic--that it is not democratic, is as true and, frankly, as ridiculous as saying that, in a motor car, one can blame the engine because it is not the wheels, or that, in a body, one can criticise a hand because it is not a foot. We should be considering the totality of our constitutional arrangements.
The House of Lords, as it is currently constituted--and, to a lesser extent, as it would be constituted if the amendment were made--is a practical mechanism for carrying out certain functions that matter very much to anybody who has a genuine interest in, or understanding of, democracy. It can warn, influence, criticise and, if necessary, embarrass, but it can never win against the democratically elected Government as represented in the House of Commons. I should have thought that any true democrat would say that that was about right.
How can one have an upper House that can warn, counsel, influence and oppose, but not succeed, unless it does not have democratic legitimacy in its own right? The moment that it has such legitimacy, it will assert its right to stand up against the House of Commons.
One solution would be to have a purely random process for filling the upper House: one could ask Ernie to choose Lords as well as premium bond winners, so they would be arbitrary and beyond reproach or pressure; but legislators
chosen in that way would not understand for one moment why they were there. The genius of the present system is that those who are there understand why and take their responsibilities seriously.
Dr. Starkey:
I am having some difficulty following the hon. Gentleman's argument. Is he saying that the democratic legitimacy of Parliament as a whole is allthe stronger because this democratic Chamber is complemented by a completely undemocratic one?
Mr. Nicholls:
I see that I should have spoken more slowly. I will try scattering those pearls again. The point that I was making--even some Labour Members seemed able to understand it, although they may not have agreed with it--is that we must consider the totality of Parliament and ask whether it is democratic; it is not enough simply to look at one House of Parliament and ask that question of it. If the hon. Lady talks to her colleagues and reads Hansard tomorrow, she may not agree with my point, but she will perhaps manage to grasp it.
Where are we likely to end up? Conservative Members have advocated an elected upper House, because that would be democratic, have legitimacy and be fine; but it would not be fine at all. A wholly elected upper House would either go the whole way with the Government of the day or it would not; if the upper House had been up for election at the general election, both Houses would be completely controlled by one party. [Hon. Members: "Good."] I thought that that would appeal to some Labour Members, but it would not be an exercise in democracy; it would be the abnegation of democracy.
Mr. Andrew Mackinlay (Thurrock):
The hon. Gentleman's point about elections assumes that they would be held on the same day for both Houses. The difficulties to which he refers could be overcome by having a rolling programme of elections, as with the United States Senate and many other legislatures, so that the Chambers never gain their legitimacy in a snapshot of time; it is also enshrined in our law that the House of Commons is supreme and will prevail. Existing functions of the House of Lords are important, but its constitution is bad. If we have a rolling programme, we can have the best of both worlds.
Mr. Nicholls:
The hon. Gentleman makes a very fair point, which was considerably better than the point made by the hon. Member for Milton Keynes, South-West (Dr. Starkey). The difficulty is that the consequence of what he is saying is that, to avoid having a totalitarian Government in which both Houses of Parliament would be under the control of the same party, there would have to be perpetual conflict in which each Chamber said to the other, "Our credentials are as good as yours." Even if, in due course, we have a cronies' Chamber, in which only 10 per cent. of Members, or perhaps 10 out of 200, are democratically elected, the problem is that those 10 will say to the others, "We have the right to be difficult because we were elected and have greater legitimacy than you."
If the amendment were made, its achievement would be that Members of the second Chamber would still be able to warn, counsel, influence and embarrass. That says something about democracy in a wider sense than simply pointing out that the upper Chamber in itself is not democratic.
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