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Mr. Linton: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Nicholls: In a moment. The irony is that, in this day and age, hereditary peers are in middle-class occupations. They consist of lawyers, farmers, doctors and working actors. Their social composition is about the same as that of the parliamentary Labour party and that at least ought to endear them to Labour Members.
The Second Deputy Chairman: Order. Has the hon. Gentleman completed his remarks?
Mr. Nicholls: I am sorry, Mr. Lord. I was pausing to collect my thoughts before I gave way to the hon. Member for Battersea.
Mr. Linton: To say that I detest Members of the House of Lords would be a gross distortion of the point that I was making. I merely challenge their right to sit in this country's legislature solely on the grounds that their father or grandfather was made a member of the peerage. I would no more detest somebody for being a Member of Parliament than I would detest my constituents for not being in Parliament, but it is totally different to question peers' right to sit in our legislature.
Mr. Nicholls: I said that the hon. Gentleman loathed the principle of heredity--and, if he considers the circumstances in which some of those hereditary peers of whom he disapproves got into the House and compares them with the present crop of life peers who have entered the House since 1997, he may want to pause and reflect.
Mr. Forth: Some of my colleagues have pointed out the apparent difficulties that we have in reconciling the fact that we are not yet wholeheartedly abandoning the hereditary principle and the fact that many of us are not ready fully to embrace whatever alternative may emerge. The way to resolve that temporary conflict is to emphasise, as my hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Sir P. Cormack) rightly did in moving the amendment, that we are considering, by definition, a transitional arrangement. We are discussing an interim
arrangement, somewhere between what we have now, which the Government want to sweep away, as they said in their manifesto, and the position in the future. We are not sure when that time in the future will be. Ministers have said many times that it is not too far away, but they will forgive Conservative Members for being a little uneasy about that, as we have heard it all before. It is precisely because the Government seem so uncertain about what they want to do and where they want to take us in this vital component of our governance and constitution that we are entitled to the degree of unease that we feel.5.45 pm
That unease is evident in today's debate, and it will remain so. We are trying to hold a constructive and analytical debate about something that is built on shifting sands and about which we cannot be certain. We cannot be sure of the time scale involved, and we certainly do not know about the end-point. That puts us all in great difficulty.
My hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire has suggested that, as part of the transitional or interim arrangement, it would be better to try to hold on to what some of us perceive to be the good, or the best, elements of the present arrangement, even as we try to work out what will happen in the interim and beyond. The debate has focused on the concept of legitimacy as it affects a role in the legislature. All hon. Members readily take it for granted that this Chamber has total legitimacy because it is elected. Yet even that can be subject to some debate, because some hon. Members would say that the degree of legitimacy of an elected Chamber might depend, in some circumstances, on the method by which it was elected.
I stress that it is not for today, but there is a debate to be had about the first-past-the-post system, as opposed to various forms of proportionality. Some of us would argue that many forms of proportionality would reduce or even remove the legitimacy from an elected Chamber--but, as I say, that debate is for another day. I mention it simply in the context of the concept of the legitimacy of Chambers of legislatures, and to introduce the thought that few elements even in that regard are absolute.
We are talking about relative concepts of legitimacy in legislatures in an interim environment. That is the context of the debate, and it is no surprise that there should be a degree of uncertainty among Conservative Members, and of fuzziness of thought among Labour Members, as it is very difficult for us all to relate to the complexity of the issues before us.
So then we must consider the role and legitimacy--or otherwise--of the upper House, and we must take into account its accountability, the degree to which it is representative, the extent of its expertise and its independence. All those factors have a role in the way in which a Chamber in a legislature operates.
Some hon. Members would argue that Members of a Chamber in a legislature who are not elected have no legitimacy. They would say that, although they may have accountability and claim to be representative, those Members may not be independent, given the development of the role of the party and of whipping as we have come to know it in our tradition. So we are already involved in
a trade-off: although we may say that elected Members have the pluses of being representative and accountable, we must also accept that they probably fall down seriously with regard to independence. Whether they qualify on the basis of expertise is another matter altogether.
A member of a group of very bright schoolchildren recently asked me what qualifications were needed to become a Member of Parliament. That was a very interesting question. I had to tell the children--I hope with my characteristic honesty--that there were none that I knew of. I said that all one needed was the gall, effrontery and exhibitionism to put oneself forward to one's party and to battle through the selection process. After that, I said, one needed to get lucky on election and to win enough votes, and that that was about the limit of it.
The bright young person who had asked the question seemed a bit surprised, having expected me to talk about A-levels or degrees, or some such. The one thing missing from a Chamber consisting of elected representatives is expertise. Members may have many qualities, but expertise is not necessarily one of them. That depends very much on their background.
However, the upper Chamber, as it has developed over hundreds of years, has advantages which in many ways complement the disadvantages that I suggest are part of a fully elected House. Those disadvantages include a lack of political independence, because of party affiliation and whipping, and a lack of expertise other than that developed during periods spent not in the House.
The hon. Member for Portsmouth, South(Mr. Hancock) has told us how he acquired an enormous range of expertise during a previous brief period in the House of Commons. In 1987, his constituents, in a moment of madness, denied us that expertise. The hon. Gentleman has told us how he developed further expertise during his 10-year sabbatical, which sufficiently impressed his voters that they sent him back to share it with us.
The hon. Gentleman's story is reassuring, and I shall cherish it and remember it often during our debate. However, it does not quite give us a definitive answer to the conundrum that faces us--what to do about the upper House during the interim period. The amendment forces us to think about the contribution that the hereditary element has made in the upper House.
That brings us to the peculiarity of the 91. We are being asked to accept that the hereditary element is totally unacceptable to Labour Members, a fact that has been reinforced by several speeches today. Yet, the same Labour Members may be prepared to accept that 91 of those totally unacceptable people should be allowed--nay, encouraged--to continue to operate in an upper Chamber for some as yet unspecified period. That forces us to imagine how we should distinguish between the validity of the contribution that the 91 may continue to make, as opposed to the contribution that the other 600 or 700 will be unable to make.
We have not been told, except by suggestion--we do not yet know what will happen because none of the suggestions is definite--whether that conundrum will be resolved by some electoral process. It seems that people who until now have been unable to vote at all will be given a vote for the first time in their own House. They will, it seems, in some mysterious way, elect from among
themselves a representative group. That group need not necessarily be elected according to expertise, but will perhaps be elected on some other form of representation. We are not sure of the basis on which the 91 will be elected, but they will continue to operate in the upper House.
The trouble is that we are in danger of undermining, or losing, some of the valuable contributions to which the amendment relates. Those contributions include the independence that the hereditary element gives to the upper House--an independence that I do not think has yet been stressed enough. They include a balancing of the representativeness and accountability in which the House of Commons takes such pride.
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