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Prevention of Delay in Trials
Miss Anne McIntosh accordingly presented a Bill to provide that a person indicted for a serious criminal offence shall be brought to trial within a period of 110 days; and for connected purposes: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Friday 23 April, and to be printed [Bill 64].
House of Lords Bill
Order for Third Reading read.
6.2 pm
The President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mrs. Margaret Beckett): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
In my speech on Second Reading, I described the Bill as exquisitely simple, although momentous in its effects--a description which, for some inexplicable reason, seemed to trouble some commentators, as though simplicity were incompatible with significance.
The Bill is a clear fulfilment of our manifesto pledge to remove, by statute, the right of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords, as an initial self-contained reform. It deals only with that point and with its essential consequences, most notably conferring on peers who leave the House of Lords the right to vote in elections to the House of Commons, and indeed to stand for election without having to relinquish their title.
After a two-day Second Reading debate, and four full days in Committee, the Bill reaches its Third Reading with its simplicity unimpaired. It has been fully--some might say extensively--debated, and those debates have been, for the most part, good-humoured and constructive.
There were one or two slightly desperate attempts to pretend that the Government were trying in some way to curtail or obstruct debate, but those claims foundered on the clear evidence to the contrary. There were also attempts to take our discussions beyond the Bill itself--to draw in proposals that might be made at a later stage in Parliament's consideration of the Bill, and that, if made, would be the focus of further debate in the House--or to dwell on other issues raised by our White Paper, including those now before the royal commission. I take the opportunity now to assure the House that the Government do, of course, intend to provide time to debate the White Paper later in the Session.
One evident feature of our debates so far has been the difficulty experienced by the official Opposition in knowing how they should attack the Bill. On Second Reading, the hon. Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox) managed--as he did in response to my statement on 20 January--in the course of one opening speech to accuse the Government first of undue delay and secondly of undue haste, or perhaps it was the other way round.
The hon. Gentleman complained that the timetable for the royal commission was too short, but he also said
Mr. Dominic Grieve (Beaconsfield):
The right hon. Lady seems to be maligning my hon. Friend the Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox). The delay and the undue haste are perfectly compatible. The delay was in setting up a royal commission, and the undue haste was in proceeding without one.
Mrs. Beckett:
That is a helpful re-interpretation of what the hon. Member for Woodspring would argue that he meant, but it is not, I fear, what he said. Far from maligning the hon. Gentleman, I was quoting him.
It was not at all easy to be clear about the nature of the charge that the Opposition were striving to lay against the Government, or of the evidence on which it might be based. Nor was it clear whether the Opposition did or did not support the hereditary principle.
Sterling work was done to help Opposition Members make up their minds by many of my hon. Friends, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Mr. Hope), who pursued the issue with a tenacity that all on the Government Benches--and even, in the end, some on the Opposition Benches--admired.
Support for the hereditary principle had, after all, featured in the Conservative party's 1997 campaign guide. Despite attempts by the hon. Member for Woodspring to put a slightly different gloss on it, there is no question but that it appeared there squarely in the context of a discussion about the House of Lords. That is the element of the hereditary principle that all candidates for the Conservative party were sent out to defend in 1997: the right to sit as a Member of Parliament by inheritance and birth. As to whether Conservative Members still support that principle, on that question, too, in our debates, first they did and then they did not--at least, I think so.
It seems that we may have arrived at the position where the Conservatives have, for the most part rather grudgingly, reaffirmed that heredity cannot be the basis for a place in our legislature. I say "reaffirmed" because, in theory, their party came to that view at least 88 years ago. The problem is just that, in all their ensuing decades of power, they never got round to doing anything about it. I think it was the hon. Member for Woodspring who said, with commendable frankness, that it had not been a priority.
Although Conservative Members will, I am sure, affirm yet again that that is the view of the modern Conservative party, it has been noticeable how frequently during the days of debate the amendments that they moved just happened to have the effect of retaining for a few more years or reinstating after a couple of years the existing House of Lords, complete with its in-built Tory majority.
St. Augustine, with his plea to be made holy, but not quite yet, had nothing on the Conservative party. At least he was asking to be made holy within the lifespan of an adult man. The Tories have already strung the matter out for longer than that. As I recall, St Augustine's reported words were
The nearest the Tories have got to a justification for yet more procrastination is the argument that has sustained debate and delay for all those 88 years--the less-than-perfect nature of every alternative that has ever been proposed. That that argument is disingenuous is demonstrated by more than the decades over which it has been advanced.
In this Parliament, in which the life peers have been appointed by eight Prime Ministers over 40 years; inthis Parliament, in which only just over half of the appointments made by the present Prime Minister were of Labour peers, whereas Tory Prime Ministers have usually
taken the opportunity to add still further to their in-built majority among hereditary peers; and in this Parliament, in which, for the first time in our history, a Prime Minister has volunteered to reduce his own powers of patronage, the Conservatives continue to claim that what they fear is a House of Lords made up of what they dub "Tony's cronies". What would they have done for an argument if the Prime Minister had been called David?
Mr. David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden)
rose--
Mrs. Beckett:
A David! I am delighted to give way.
Mr. Davis:
That is as good a cue as any.
Some Conservative Members have concerns about the lack of independence of a future House of Lords. Three categories of public servant--High Court judges, the ombudsman of this House and the Comptroller and Auditor General of this House--are subject to dismissal only by a vote of both the House of Commons and the House of Lords to protect them from influence by the Executive. What does the right hon. Lady propose to do with a House of "Tony's cronies" to protect them in the future?
Mrs. Beckett:
I expect that the right hon. Gentleman will know that the Government envisage that the central Cross-Bench group, which is always regarded as independent by all commentators, including Labour Members, and so described, will be appointed by an independent appointments commission. It will comprise a smallish number of people, one nominee from each of the political parties made by those political parties, and others, with an independent chairman, all appointed on Nolan principles. The members of that central Cross- Bench group, as we know them, will continue to be appointed by that appointments commission, not by the Prime Minister. We have also given an undertaking that the individual political parties will be able to make their own nominations without the Prime Minister having, as he has had to up to now, a veto. All those things preserve a proper measure of independence.
It has been rather a feature of our debates here that some Conservative Members, although not, I think the right hon. Gentleman, have argued that independence in the House of Lords can come only from the hereditary peers. We do not accept that argument, and I am pleased to see the right hon. Gentleman shaking his head. We are determined that the House of Lords shall have a proper measure of independence. What we do not wish is for it to remain, as it has always been, in the control of the Conservative party.
Sir Patrick Cormack (South Staffordshire):
The thrust of the arguments from many Labour Members, including the right hon. Lady, during these debates, has been that the Cross Benchers are not properly independent. I am delighted that she now admits that they are. We now have her affirmation that she regards the Cross Benchers as being truly independent. Is that right?
"that the Government want to scrap the hereditary peers and then kick the whole process into the long grass"--[Official Report, 1 February 1999; Vol. 324, c. 619.]
and that the Government have no intention of reform before the next general election.
"Give me chastity and continency--but not yet".
If earlier generations of hereditary peers had shared his wish and practised chastity, we would all be spending this evening doing something else.
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