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Mr. Hancock: The right hon. Gentleman argues powerfully against support of amendment No. 2, which relates to the 91 hereditary peers. He has convinced the Committee that he will join those of us who vote against that amendment when we reach it. However, is he advancing the option of having all or none of the hereditary peers, thus supporting the line that I would take?
The Second Deputy Chairman: The right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) has been very careful in the way in which he has referred to the next group of amendments, and I should be grateful if he would maintain that course.
Mr. Forth: I am grateful, Mr. Lord.
I was referring to the opening speech of my hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire, who outlined the contribution that we have come to expect from the hereditary element in the upper House. My hon. Friend wishes to retain that, at least for the interim period. I cannot overstress the fact that, as long as we are uncertain about the length of the interim period, we owe it to the people of the United Kingdom to be extremely cautious about how we change the upper House before settling the arrangements for its final composition. That point is the key to the amendment.
My hon. Friend's amendment allows us to consider--allowing for the views of Her Majesty's Government, their manifesto commitment and the Second Reading of the Bill--our obligation to ensure that the upper House serves the people in the best way possible during the interim period. My hon. Friend, elegantly, and with typical ingenuity and fairness, has found a way in which to allow us to continue to draw on the contribution made by the hereditary element.
Mr. David Heath:
Would the right hon. Gentleman consider how his argument applies to amendment No. 23,
Mr. Forth:
Simply, they are there, and they have an accumulation of experience with which to judge the point. Amendment No. 23 would allow the hereditary peers to stand as a guarantee, a backstop and a safety net against the possibility that a Government with an overwhelmingly large majority and an arrogance and contempt for the parliamentary process would be able to take the final step that some of us fear, of trying to put themselves in power indefinitely.
Sir Nicholas Lyell:
Does my right hon. Friend agree that there is yet a further reason why an upper House--including one of the present constitution--should be able to prevent that? When the House of Commons seeks to extend the length of a Parliament, it does not act democratically. The House of Commons is elected for a period of up to five years, and it would be not by the will of the electorate, but by the will of the House and the majority party that it sought to extend the Government's power. That decision would come not from the electorate but from the Government's own majority.
Mr. Forth:
My right hon. and learned Friend makes a typically incisive and important point, and I may explore the contents of amendment No. 23 in a moment. We have before us a difficult mixture of convention, unwritten constitution and flexibility in our constitutional arrangements. All that poses certain real problems. Let us imagine that we were faced with a national emergency. Parliament might want to retain the right to alter its electoral arrangements. However, we have the safeguard that Parliament can do that only if it is agreed both by the elected House and by the other place, on which we rely for a degree of independence of thought--independent even of the electoral process--to give us the safety that we have enjoyed over many centuries. That balance is under threat, and that is another reason why my hon. Friend seeks to restore balance through his amendment, and to give us the reassurance that we need in the present changing circumstances.
Let me return to expertise. It is often suggested that the upper House contains a range of expertise. In an earlier exchange, it was pointed out that it contains people from the arts, the military, the business world, the Church, farming and so on. However, that argument is something of a double-edged sword. I have always been slightly uneasy about the idea of people with expertise, as they may also have a narrowness of view that limits the contribution that they are able to make. The whole point is that the people who arrive in this Chamber--by whatever process, and however qualified or unqualified they may seem to be--seek in the best way we can to represent many constituents. It is because we are accountable and have daily to cover a wide range of subjects that we can be beholden to no single group but must take a broad view.
6 pm
One of the dangers is that Members of the upper House are able to take just one view, and that their contribution may in some respects be limited. I submit that that is so in the case of life peers. Funnily enough, that argument does not apply to the hereditaries, who may have a broader view precisely because of their rather odd background and their independence.
Mr. Linton:
Why does the fact that someone's great-grandfather was a custard powder manufacturer give that person a broader or more incisive view of events now?
Mr. Forth:
Because of the element of independence that I am trying to stress. The peculiarity of the system of life peerages is that such peerages are often--more often than not, I suggest--given because of experience or expertise in one particular sphere. It may be a very worthy and central sphere. Church Members of the upper Chamber have a very particular role to play, but it is in many ways a narrow role. Given the complexity of modern society, it is--many might regret this--an increasingly unrepresentative role, although they are not supposed to be there in a representative capacity.
Mr. Edward Garnier (Harborough):
No doubt the hon. Member for Battersea (Mr. Linton) thought that he was being highly amusing by referring to a custard powder manufacturer, but surely the important point is not what the grandfather did then but what the hereditary peer does and knows now. It is his life experience, not that of his grandfather, which is important. The fact that the hon. Gentleman used to be, I understand, a writer for The Guardian has no bearing on his ability as Member of Parliament. If his grandfather had been a custard power manufacturer, what would the editor of The Guardian have made of that?
Mr. Forth:
I will not be tempted to follow on from what my hon. and learned Friend has said. If I were, I might digress into a discussion of what some Labour Members did in their earlier life or what some of their predecessors did, and I am not sure that that would be a very productive route to take. My hon. and learned Friend has made his point.
I have tried to emphasise the fact that the amendment raises some very important issues. It gives us an opportunity to reflect on where we as a Parliament want to position ourselves in the vital phase before us and in the face of the uncertainty ahead as we go from where we are to where we might end up. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire for giving us the opportunity to think about the contribution that we want the upper House to make and the way we want it to be made, and to flush out some of the details of the mysterious 91--who they might be and where they might come from--in the context of the contribution that we have rather come to assume from the upper House, and particularly from its hereditary element.
I yield to none in my admiration for the contribution that the hereditary element has made, is making and will, I hope, continue to make. I support the amendment in the expectation that that invaluable contribution can continue until we resolve properly the role of the upper House.
Mr. Kenneth Clarke (Rushcliffe):
I agree with my right hon. and hon. Friends who have said that those on our party's Front Bench have tabled a curious amendment, but it is a curious Bill. It has rather more to commend it than some of my colleagues with whom I have agreed have said.
I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Sir P. Cormack). Once we have embarked on the process of reforming the second Chamber, we must move on to have a wholly elected second Chamber. I cannot believe that any second Chamber will have lasting political legitimacy until we go that far. Indeed, I should go so far as to say that if we put some halfhearted measure in place, the result will be that future generations will regard this Parliament as something of a laughing stock for putting a quango in place, believing that that is the kind of senate that should be created for British democracy in 1999.
Mr. Clarke:
I shall give way in a moment. Like me, my hon. Friend appreciates the fact that the Bill is a result of the Government not having a policy to amend the constitution but making ad hoc changes to the constitution and then being driven by events to make it up as they go along. The dog's breakfast that we have before us is designed to create a dog's breakfast of an institution to be known as an interim House of Lords. I share the suspicions of many that the interim period might be quite lengthy. It is in that curious context that we have to consider its composition.
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