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Mr. John MacGregor (South Norfolk): I warmly congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest (Mrs. Laing) on the way in which she moved the amendment. Her arguments were splendid, and the spirit and passion with which she advanced them were entirely commendable.
I shall make two points in support of what my hon. Friend said, but first I shall make my position clear. I do not defend the hereditary principle either, and never have done. The real problem, as we are discovering and as has been discovered in the past, is what to put in its place.
My first point concerns the attitude of the Government and the Leader of the House. I find her position astonishing, hypocritical and intolerable. I should think that many Labour Back Benchers feel the same. The White Paper is full of phrases about the primacy and supremacy of this Chamber, yet what are the Government proposing to do? They will leave it to the other Chamber to carry through something which, in the same White Paper, they say they would be minded to accept. Frankly, that is treating this House with contempt.
If it were not for my hon. Friends who tabled the amendment, we would not even have debated such a vital issue in the Chamber before the Bill went to the House of Lords. No doubt, when it came back with an amendment that the Government were prepared to accept, we would have had a very limited debate. It is much, much better that it is debated here in the Chamber, where it should be debated.
I shall be interested to hear what the Labour Back Benchers who are present will say in defence of the principle. The right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) is entirely consistent in his arguments. He will vote against any such amendment both times. However, the Government have indicated that they are in favour of the amendment, but will accept it only if it is
first put into the Bill in another place. We all know why that is so. It is because the Leader of the House is trying bully-girl tactics, if I may say so, to get the Bill through the other place by allowing the amendment as a concession. That is an astonishing way to treat Labour Back Benchers. They are forced through the Lobby tonight to vote against the amendment but, in the other place, which is regarded as secondary from their point of view in terms of Parliament, the Government will turn round and accept the amendment when it is proposed.
I do not understand why the Leader of the House cannot say from the Dispatch Box, "We shall accept the amendment." The Government may have the odd technical objection to it, but that is not the point. The point is that the spirit and principle of the amendment should be accepted tonight. I cannot understand any reason for not accepting the amendment other than that the right hon. Lady wants to apply a certain amount of pressure on the other place to take the Bill through quickly. That is simply intolerable.
Mr. Winnick:
Is it not interesting that the amendment comes from the Opposition Back Benches and not from the Opposition Front Bench? We know about the row that resulted in Lord Cranborne being sacked. I am entirely opposed to a totally elected second Chamber--we shall come to that argument in due course--but in this instance we are dealing with an Opposition Back-Bench amendment.
Mr. MacGregor:
I am sure that my colleagues on the Opposition Front Bench will make the Opposition's position on the amendment perfectly clear. However, I am delighted that the amendment was proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest, because it could not have been better put. I think that all her arguments were superbly well advanced.
I seriously think that the Leader of the House is in an astonishing position and one that she will come to regret. The right hon. Lady has treated the Chamber with contempt.
My other point was simply--
Mrs. Beckett:
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. I know that he is making a series of party points, and that is perfectly legitimate. We do that in the House. However, he has thrown about, with great casualness, accusations of my despising the House and things of that sort. He is surely aware that the proposal put forward by the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs. Laing) is one that she is advancing and one which the House can debate. It is a proposal that may be put in another place by Cross-Bench peers. It is not the Government's proposal, so why should the Government put it forward?
Mr. MacGregor:
I am not making party points. I am making a point about the House of Commons, and I shall explain why. The right hon. Lady has made it clear in the White Paper that if such an amendment comes forward in another place the Government will be disposed to accept it. The amendment is before us this evening, so why is she not disposed to accept it--yet if Cross-Bench peers in
Mr. Malcolm Savidge (Aberdeen, North):
The right hon. Gentleman has told us that it is intolerable, astonishing and hypocritical to reject the Weatherill proposal in the House of Commons but to accept it in the House of Lords. I take it that he is describing his right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition on the day when he sacked Lord Cranborne.
Mr. MacGregor:
I am describing precisely the Government's position on this issue. I would expect all of my right hon. and hon. Friends to support the amendment this evening. I am describing the Government's position, and that is why I find the right hon. Lady's position astonishing. It is astonishing for her to ask Labour Back-Bench Members to vote against the proposal when it is put forward in the House of Commons, but to accept it if it comes from another place.
It is not only that--and this is the answer to the right hon. Lady. She has signalled in advance what she would do in the other place. There is no question of the arguments being different or of her changing her mind. The arguments will be acceptable only if they come from the other place and not from the House of Commons.
Mr. Dalyell:
The right hon. Gentleman will forgive me if I say that, from our point of view, when we were on the Opposition Benches he was one of the most satisfactory and kind Leaders of the House with whom we ever had to deal. I ask him, therefore, what would he do if he were Leader of the House at this point. I am just curious to know.
Mr. MacGregor:
I think that it must be fairly obvious what I would do. I would certainly not produce a White Paper in which I had more or less made it clear that I was minded to accept an amendment, but only if it came from the other place, and then stand at the Dispatch Box refusing to accept such an amendment because it had been tabled in this House. I simply cannot imagine myself ever being in that position, which is why I feel so strongly that the Leader of the House is in a very odd position indeed.
Mr. Letwinr:
Does my right hon. Friend agree that an even more extraordinary fact is that the Government appear to think that the proposal would be good for the constitution if their lordships had behaved themselves, but is bad for the constitution if their lordships are not behaving themselves?
Mr. MacGregor:
That is why I said that the position of the Leader of the House is hypocritical. It has nothing to do with the merits of the argument, but is purely to do with what I described as bully-girl tactics applied to the other place. That is the reason for her holding such a position tonight: it has nothing to do with the merits or
Mr. Savidge:
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. MacGregor:
In a moment. I should have thanked the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) very much for his kind remarks about my tenure in the post that we are discussing.
Mr. Savidge:
Might the right hon. Gentleman accept the possibility that, rather than there being bully-boy tactics from this House, we are resisting the possibility of bully-boy tactics in the other House?
Mr. MacGregor:
The Government must be in a weak position if they think that they would not be able to get the Bill through the other House unless they applied pure bully-boy tactics.
My second point relates to the substance of the proposal. I entirely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest, who made it clear that many different views and solutions had been suggested during consideration of the alternatives for reform of the House of Lords. That was also made clear in the debate on Second Reading, which I was able to attend only spasmodically.
My hon. Friend was also right to say that the one solution that no one seemed to favour was an entirely appointed second Chamber, which is what we would have if the amendment were not passed. Having been in the same position as the Leader of the House, and having had to get legislation through the House, my fear is similar to many others that have been expressed: this solution will not be short-term and interim, but it will last for some considerable time.
I disagree with the right hon. Member for Chesterfield on that point. If the situation is not purely interim but longer term--I will come on to that point in a moment--it will not be satisfactory to have a solution in which patronage is concentrated so heavily in the hands of the Prime Minister, or even with the appointments commissioner. We would have no further independent element, so the proposal makes some sense if we are to have an interim House of Lords for some considerable time.
I use the words "some considerable time" because there have been considerable delays with a number of the Government's proposals or in areas on which they want to move. I will not stray out of order, Mr. Lord, because I am giving an example of why the amendment is necessary. The Neill committee, of which I am a member, has introduced proposals on party political funding which have widespread support in the House and which it ought to be possible to take through fairly quickly. We will produce a draft Bill and proposals may be introduced next year.
One could give many other examples of delays, but the reasons for delays with the second Bill, which will deal with full reform of the House of Lords, are likely to be much more formidable. There must be some doubt whether the royal commission can meet the deadline of the end of this year, because many different proposals will have to be argued through.
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