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Mr. Michael Fallon (Sevenoaks): Does not that also strengthen the case for excluding the composition of the future House from the remit of the Parliament Acts? It was not excluded from the Parliament Act 1911 because the Act was supposed to be temporary.
Mr. Grieve: My hon. Friend makes a good point. There might well be compelling arguments for so doing, although I accept that this Parliament has the right to settle and regulate how a future Parliament might be constructed. My objection, which I shall return to in the debate on the next set of amendments, centres on our right to do that during the course of this Parliament, rather than leaving it to a future Parliament after the next election. That is why I suggested on Second Reading that we should have been wise to legislate and then defer the changes until after the next election.
I hope that the Minister will consider my point. I shall raise several times in Committee the constitutional propriety of the way in which we are going about our business. I was promised last time that the Government would give some indication of how they view the matter, but they have not yet done so. On that basis, I am happy to bring to a close my contributions on the amendments.
Mr. Hoon:
May I belatedly welcome you to the Chair, Mr. Martin? You have not had the excruciating, or exquisite, pleasure of sitting here throughout this fascinating and ingenious debate. I say "ingenious" because of Conservative Members' efforts to get across their arguments and--dare I say--their previously prepared speeches while staying within narrowly drawn amendments. As ever more Conservative Members turned up to make their contributions, I wondered whether the real ingenuity was taking place somewhere else in the building, with Conservative Whips encouraging their Members to contribute, but perhaps not always telling them the precise nature of the amendments on which they were expected to speak.
I congratulate the hon. Member for South Staffordshire (Sir P. Cormack) on setting the style of the debate with the ingenuity of his speech. He used all his considerable eloquence to circle round the central question of why, although he accepts that hereditary peers should not vote on legislation--as I understand that he now does--he believes that they should have the right to attend, sit and speak in the legislature simply as a result of the accident of their birth. The same argument that applies to their right to vote must apply to their right to sit.
I know that the hon. Gentleman is a great student of history and literature. While listening to his speech, when he demonstrated his considerable enthusiasm for the
hereditary peers, I was put in mind of the words of Walter Bagehot, with which I am sure the hon. Gentleman is familiar. He wrote that the cure for admiring the House of Lords was to go and look at it. Bagehot was writing in very different times, of course, making observations that are no longer strictly relevant. He was writing in the 19th century, calling for a fundamental reform of the second Chamber.
Mr. Crispin Blunt (Reigate):
There is a distinction between the right to vote and the right to speak. I was not able to take part in the earlier exchanges because I was detained on matters concerning defence and foreign affairs, which are my areas of interest and knowledge. If the amendment is not accepted, we shall throw away all the knowledge and expertise that is sitting in another place before we come forward with plans for stage 2 that tell us what the final nature of the Chamber will be.
Mr. Hoon:
We have heard some descriptions of the 1968 proposals. The Government have been taken to task because the Labour party then supported the idea of having two sorts of Member. Unfortunately, the hon. Member for Chichester (Mr. Tyrie), who is no longer present, did not follow that point through. The 1968 proposals failed because the Conservatives withdrew their support on the grounds that they were too complex and would have produced two sorts of peer. That completely answers the hon. Gentleman's point.
The Government will resist the amendments because we stated categorically in the manifesto on which we were elected that the rights of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords would be ended by statute--not just the right to vote, but the rights to sit and vote. We made it abundantly clear in the manifesto, the White Paper and recent debates that hereditary peers should not be allowed to sit or vote in our Parliament solely on the basis of their birth and without any consideration of their personal qualities and achievements.
Mr. Forth:
In that case, how can it be that the Government may be conceding the principle of keeping a certain number of hereditary peers in the interim stage? We do not know whether they will, because the issue has not shuttled back and forward yet, but perhaps--
The First Deputy Chairman:
Order. That is a matter for the next debate.
Mr. Forth:
On the other hand, the Minister is saying that the Government have a manifesto commitment that there can be no hereditaries in the upper House.
The First Deputy Chairman:
Order. Perhaps it is time to let the Committee know that interventions should be brief. There should not be any lead-ups to a case. Hon. Members should just put their case.
Mr. Hoon:
The Bill is designed to ensure that the House of Lords is a modern, capable and effective second Chamber, fit for a Parliament of the next century. There is no place for hereditary peers in such a Chamber. There is no case for them to be allowed to vote, to speak, to sit or to participate.
Mr. Oliver Letwin (West Dorset):
If the Bill is meant to do all those wonderful things, why have a White Paper and a stage 2?
Mr. Hoon:
Because, as Conservative Members have said, we have failed in the past to deliver any reform of the House of Lords. As several Government Members said on Second Reading, successful reform can be achieved by a series of stages. We have set out the stages and a timetable, and we intend to deliver on our manifesto commitment.
Mr. Nigel Evans (Ribble Valley):
This has been a good debate. Including myself, 20 right hon. and hon. Members have spoken. The Minister quoted Bagehot saying that those who admired the House of Lords need only come to look at it; Conservative Members feel that those who admire parliamentary democracy need only come here to see how badly reforms are needed, not only for the upper Chamber but for the whole Parliament. We need the checks and balances that a properly constituted second Chamber will provide. That is the purpose of the amendments.
We have been told time and again that we are promoting the hereditary principle for the long term or that we want to delay reform and pack the second Chamber with hereditaries. That is not the case. We have already conceded the fact that the second stage House of Lords will have no place for the hereditary principle, but, as yet, we do not know what the second stage will be and we are concentrating on stage 1.
Page 4 of the White Paper breaks with the manifesto commitment to abolish all the hereditary peers. It says that the Government will be minded to accept the Weatherill amendment in another place, so the Government have already conceded that the hereditary principle should be part of the first stage reform. The amendment expands that one step further, suggesting that hereditary peers should have a role in stage 1.
The President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mrs. Margaret Beckett):
That is not the point at all.
Mr. Evans:
The right hon. Lady may disagree, but page 4 of the White Paper says:
Mr. Hoon:
The Government are committed to abolishing the remaining hereditary peers and moving quickly to stage 2. Conservative Members have consistently said that they are suspicious about our determination to get on to stage 2. Surely the fact that there will be a residual number of hereditary peers demonstrates how determined we are to get to stage 2 quickly.
Mr. Evans:
Some people, more cynical than myself about accepting what the Minister says, might argue that the Government are holding a pistol to the head of the
Mr. Shepherd:
I hope that my hon. Friend will be very cautious about the argument that has just been advanced. A White Paper on freedom of information was published well over a year ago, with many promises of a draft Bill, and we are still waiting.
"Legislation being introduced in this Parliamentary session will create a transitional House of Lords. If, as has been proposed, an amendment to the legislation is supported to allow a small number of hereditary peers to sit temporarily in the transitional House, the Government is minded to accept this proposal at an appropriate stage."
The Government have conceded the principle and we have expanded it in the amendment to take heed of the fact that there are so many hereditary peers who could make a contribution--by voice, not vote--in the transitional upper Chamber.
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