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Mr. Alan Clark: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will allow me to add to his repertoire for the next time that he entertains the House with this list. He might care to remember Lord Farquhar, who elevated himself from a viscountcy to an earldom and was the treasurer of the Conservative party. When it was time to pay for the literature for the 1922 election, Lord Farquhar's cheque bounced because he had used party funds when raising himself from a viscountcy to an earldom.
Mr. Linton: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman, who is my parliamentary neighbour, for casting that light. Lord Farquhar's elevation was a classic case of the trade in peerages that went on throughout the 1930s and may have continued until much more recently. Even though the sale of peerages was made illegal in 1925, it continued apace with the elevation of known Conservative party donors such as Lord Brassey, Lord Palmer of Huntley and Palmers biscuits, Baron Luke the Bovril tycoon and many more press barons. All those families are still represented in the House of Lords.
Mr. Tyrie: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that a good number of the peers appointed by the current Prime Minister are listed as having donated more than £5,000 to Labour party funds?
Mr. Linton: I said at the beginning of my speech that I would stick to the subject of the debate. It is open to the hon. Gentleman to raise his point when we discuss the White Paper, the second stage of reform or the future of life peerages. I may well support him then. I am concentrating on the effect of having a Chamber of this legislature that, for 700 years, has been based to an alarming extent on the sale of seats. All the families whom I have mentioned are still represented in the House of Lords by their sons, their grandsons or their great-grandsons. All those who attend are Conservatives or Cross Benchers. In the next few weeks, they will have a chance to vote on whether to agree to their abolition.
The fourth reason why the Bill is a good reform in itself is this country's need to see the end of the last vestige of the feudal system and the aristocracy before the end of the century. The explanatory notes to the Bill say:
"The Bill does not affect the rights of holders of a hereditary peerage to keep all the other titles, rights, offices, privileges and precedents attaching to the peerage which are unconnected with membership of the House of Lords."
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Why not? Why do we want to keep in existence privileges and precedents attaching to membership of the aristocracy? Once the right of a peer to sit and vote in the House of Lords has been done away with, as I very much hope that the Bill will do, all the rest will disappear like a house of cards. There is nothing to the aristocracy other than the right to sit and vote in the House of Lords.
Mr. Linton: Far from it; the aristocracy in every other European country has no political power. In every country but ours, the aristocracy has lost any meaningful role in society. One or two titles may still be used, but that is all. The French abolished their aristocracy by the use of the guillotine. I do not advocate that in any way. The Swedes did the opposite, and circulated a memorandum to all Government Departments--
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman is straying into byways where he should not be.
Mr. Linton: I merely ask my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House to explain the statement that the rights, titles, privileges and precedents of the peers will remain after the Bill has been passed.
9.11 pm
Mr. Dominic Grieve (Beaconsfield): I shall try to confine myself strictly to the contents of the Bill, and to address my remarks--in so far as they go outside that--solely to the issues that make me take the view that the Bill is seriously flawed. In an interesting speech, the hon. Member for Milton Keynes, South-West (Dr. Starkey) referred to the hereditary principle's lack of justification. I have always taken the view that it is an historical anachronism.
Before I pass on to the contents of the Bill--and because I suspect that this may be the valedictory moment to say something about the hereditary principle--it is probably right to say that, in so far as it concerns the legislature as it has existed in this country, the hereditary principle has served us extremely well, and acted as the principal power to break monarchical tyranny.
The principle was established precisely because it was discovered that when people succeeded to hereditary rights, they tended--because of that--to be more respectful of other people's rights, rather than trample on them. It is for that reason that hereditary peers have tended to act as a check and a balance in the constitution, and why they have tended to be respectful of the rights of others.
That tradition continues to this day, and the various complimentary remarks about the role of hereditary peers--even by the Leader of the House--derive straightforwardly from the fact that most of them have a tradition of service, a good understanding of the limitations on their own rights and an appreciation of the need to respect the rights of others.
There have been occasions when this House has tended to be willing to ride roughshod over the rights of people, simply because it claimed an electoral mandate to do so. We should be grateful to the hereditary peers for having set the ethos in the other place, which has tended to put a check on this House, and has often insisted on rights and liberties that have subsequently been upheld elsewhere--even by the European Court of Human Rights--when we have failed to respect them in this place.
The hereditary principle is an anachronism--particularly when one considers the changed state of society. It was probably an anachronism in the 16th century, when there were comments about certain peers who were becoming too poor and were thought no longer to be able to represent themselves or their proper interests. This is an old chestnut.
The principle has become an anachronism because we live in a fluid society, and there must be good and powerful arguments why this House and the other place should look carefully at trying to find a replacement that might be better. However, this is where we come back to the initial problem. I am happy to go down that road, and I believe that the end result, almost certainly, will be an elected second Chamber. I do not believe that any intermediate stage will prove to be acceptable, or will provide the necessary legitimacy to the other place that is required.
I am even prepared, since the Government established on Second Reading the principle that there would be a two-stage reform process, to accept that we have to regard the Bill as the first stage, but I want to consider whether it is legitimate or could be improved on, given the Government's insistence on an appointed second Chamber. There are some serious flaws in the way in which the Government have decided to proceed.
The major flaw that will never go away is the issue of patronage. Labour Members have said a great deal about the lack of legitimacy of the hereditary peers because their ancestors were simply placed there by the patronage of others, but the new second Chamber will be based purely on patronage, which I find profoundly unacceptable.
It has been suggested, based on some comments in the White Paper that we are assured will be reflected in the way in which the Bill operates, that in certain areas, the Prime Minister's power of patronage will be curbed, because he will hand it to a commission or to other party leaders. That is all very well, but it would have been perfectly possible to preserve the principle of an appointed second Chamber as an intermediate stage and to get rid of the patronage of the Prime Minister and other party leaders altogether, replacing it with an independent commission. That would be the first and most compelling step in reassuring me that the future constitution of the House of Lords will be very different from what it is now.
There appears to be universal agreement among life peers that the much-praised ethos in the other place is entirely derived from the independent standpoint of the hereditary peerage, members of which are dominant there. I cannot believe that if we follow the Government's policy, we shall end up with an upper House that is similar, but with the illegitimate element of hereditary peers removed. I believe that there will be a rapid deterioration in the quality of debate and the ability to provide adequate scrutiny of the Government, because of the lack of that independence. I hope that I am proved wrong, but I have great anxiety about that real danger.
Anything that could have been done to remove the impression and effect of patronage in placing life peers in the other place would have been mightily desirable. It is a major flaw in the legislation which could have been remedied now without in any way interfering with stage 2.
If the Weatherill amendment is to be accepted at some point, our failure to make it now is simply wrong. It is an extraordinary way to legislate for the Government themselves to vote down a proposal that is thought to be acceptable to them.
I took it as a compliment when the Minister described me as being someone who comes up with bizarre constitutional issues. I find it odd, when we are embarking on a constitutional proposal designed to create greater democratic legitimacy--the Government's words--that we should start by failing to respect the established rights under our constitution of others, who are deprived of the vote in return for the right to represent themselves, for the duration of the Parliament in which they sit in the other place. Of course that is a minor matter, as there are only 750 of them, even if their vote might have influenced at least one or two results in seats at the general election.
The Government had available an easy method of passing now the legislation ensuring the oblivion of the hereditary peers at the next general election, and then setting about the discussion of stage 2 with the hereditary peers, who, knowing that they were facing oblivion, might have contributed the most creative discussion of sensible alternatives to succeed them.
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