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The Chairman: Order. I must help the hon. Member and the Committee. The debate on the new clause cannot be widened into a general debate about the functions of the House of Lords. The issue must be referred to only in the context of the job specification for life peers in the terms of the new clause. The hon. Member has started to go outside that issue, so I ask him respectfully to come back within the narrow definition that I have given.
Mr. Fallon: That guidance is extremely helpful to the Committee, Sir Alan. It is important that we ventilate this issue, because the role of the interim House will be significant when we eventually decide the role of the House after stage 2. There is no point inviting people to serve in the interim House unless we are clear about what they are there to do.
You have rightly ruled out, Sir Alan, any further discussion of what Labour Members think those who will serve in the interim House should do, but I am sure that that does not preclude us from stating clearly in the statute what they will do. My hon. Friend the Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox) has laid out those functions very clearly. The new clause states that there should be
Mr. Forth:
Is my hon. Friend satisfied that the wording
Mr. Fallon:
Later in my speech, I shall identify a number of respects in which I feel that the new clause is rather modest. As my right hon. Friend says, it is possible that the willingness indicated by the ticking of a box on a form at the beginning of a Session will be no guarantee of the number of sittings that the peer in question will attend. I know that, if there were a league table for attendance, my right hon. Friend would be in the premier division. He is an assiduous attender not just of this Committee, but of our sittings generally.
The drafting of the new clause may need to be examined, but I am sure that, if it is accepted, my hon. Friend the Member for Woodspring will deal with that on Report. Perhaps, when he winds up the debate, he will tell us how "willingness" might be defined.
Let me return to the functions that we are discussing. Unless we reassure Members of the interim House that they have a proper role to play, they will inevitably be overwhelmed and cowed by the need to ensure that they survive to become Members of the stage 2 House. That applies regardless of whether they consider standing for election should all or even part of that House be elected. They will, of course, want to assure those who select them for election that they have been good boys, or good girls, in the interim House--that they have not been too aggressive towards the Executive. It will also apply if they wish to stand for membership of the nominated element of the stage 2 House. I believe that they will feel cowed by the knowledge that the Government want a weaker stage 2 House, and that they must not prejudice their membership of that House.
Dr. Fox:
There is, perhaps, a more pressing reason for the functions of an interim Chamber to be detailed. The interim Chamber may, in effect, be stage 2. Page 29 of the White Paper states:
Mr. Fallon:
That is another powerful argument in favour of the new clauses--so powerful, indeed, that I begin to puzzle why my hon. Friend did not include it in his speech.
I have studied these matters for some time--ever since the publication of the Home report in 1978--and I have never believed that any interim House could become the stage 2 House. I think it was Freud who, when told that the Russian revolution would begin a period of chaos that would eventually lead to a paradise on earth, replied, "I half believe it." I half believe that the Government were originally serious about reforming the House of Lords; but, as the process has been unveiled, along with the peculiarly cack-handed way in which they have approached it, it has become apparent that we are likely to be stuck with an interim House for a long time.
The Chairman:
Order. Freud is dead, and I think that this part of the hon. Gentleman's speech should die with him, because it is well beyond the scope of the new clause.
Mr. Fallon:
I apologise, Sir Alan. I fear that my hon. Friend the Member for Woodspring slightly misled me by drawing the Committee's attention again to paragraph 21 of the White Paper, where it is made clear that there is no binding commitment to legislation in the current Parliament. That is why it is important that the Committee should focus on the functions to be undertaken by the interim Chamber.
Dr. Starkey:
As I understood it, the argument that the hon. Gentleman was advancing before the previous intervention was that Members of the upper House would be incredibly cowed by their need to be selected for either election or nomination. Does that not apply to all Members of the upper House, at least half of whom will be selected by the Conservative party? They will not all be selected by the Government.
Mr. Fallon:
Those Members will be selected for the interim House, of course, but Members on both sides of the interim House will have to have an eye on their eventual selection for the stage 2 House. We all in the Committee anticipate that the Government will change at the next election, so exactly the same argument will apply to Members on each side of the interim House.
Mr. Andrew Stunell (Hazel Grove):
Did I understand the hon. Gentleman's argument? Does he feel that membership of the House of Lords should be permanent and not subject to review under any circumstances, with no elected component at any stage?
Mr. Fallon:
That is not a proposition that I have advanced either today or at any previous sitting of the Committee. What is important is that those whom we now invite to be Members of the interim House should be clear as to what their functions are. That is why those functions are spelled out in the new clauses.
My hon. Friend the Member for Woodspring has hit the nail on the head. Consideration of Bills is obviously a primary function of the upper House. It is all the more necessary that it is exercised properly because of the number of Bills and the haste with which they are pushed through the House. The scrutiny process in the House of Commons has been curtailed by the use of timetable
motions at the drop of a hat. Therefore, it is all the more important that the interim House takes that legislative function seriously.
Mr. Graham Brady (Altrincham and Sale, West):
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way, not least because I notice that my parliamentary neighbour, the hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Bell), has recently entered the Chamber. My hon. Friend's point is particularly relevant following an exchange at Prime Minister's Question Time yesterday, when the Prime Minister said that he did not believe in parliamentary scrutiny, and that he believed only in the mandate that his Government had to implement their business. That is precisely why the new clause is so important.
Mr. Fallon:
You would rule me out of order, Mr. Martin, if I repeated a section from my Second Reading speech, but it was Baroness Jay who let the cat out of the bag. She said that the Bill was all about "modernising government". It is not. The new clause is about ensuring that a reformed second Chamber--there are many arguments for reforming it--has a clear statement as to the functions that it is supposed to perform. Better consideration of Bills, particularly legislation that is rushed through the House of Commons, must surely be one of those primary functions.
"a willingness to participate in . . . the consideration of Bills".
That will be enormously important in the interim stage, not least because, if the Government want a weaker House on stage 2, those who participate in the interim House will
do so in the knowledge that only a small number of them will eventually graduate to membership of the House at stage 2. Unless we include in the Bill a clear definition of their role, they may feel cowed and unable to exercise even their present functions properly and without fear. Without such a definition, they may feel constrained: they may feel that they will miss out on the transition to stage 2.
"shall indicate a willingness to participate"
is strong enough, and is likely to be effective enough? It strikes me that it would be possible to make such a declaration, and do precious little afterwards.
"If there is consensus, the Government will make every effort to ensure that the second stage of reform has been approved by Parliament before the next election."
Given the difficulty that has been experienced during this century in securing any form of consensus on reform, there is a good chance that the interim Chamber will become at least a semi-permanent Chamber, and there is, therefore, all the more reason to detail what it will do.
5.30 pm
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