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4.8 pm
Dr. Liam Fox (Woodspring): I am grateful that the Leader of the House has finally got round to having a debate on the White Paper and grateful, too, for the tone of her speech, which was much more conciliatory than the one that she used on the launch of the White Paper. It is healthy that the debate is being conducted more in today's atmosphere rather than in that of the unfortunate first opening salvo.
It is rather strange that the right hon. Lady should not only fail to say anything new today, but effectively apologise for the Government having no views on taking forward one of the flagship proposals in their manifesto. We are finally getting to talk about stage 2 of the reform, but all that we are getting is a clear admission that the Government have embarked upon it without knowing what they actually want. We always suggested that that was the case--that the Government had no idea of what they wanted as part of the process that they set out in their manifesto--and today we have heard the clearest possible admission that that is the case.
Mr. Peter L. Pike (Burnley):
If my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House had said exactly what we wanted to do at the second stage, would not the hon. Gentleman have accused us of setting up a royal commission on a totally false basis? The Government have quite rightly appointed a royal commission to look at the issue and the Labour party, as a political party separate from the Government, has submitted views.
Dr. Fox:
The hon. Gentleman, who has attended some of our previous debates, will know that the Opposition's position is that a royal commission could have been set up two years ago, when the Government came to power. We could now have been at the conclusion of that royal commission, and discussing the move towards single-stage reform by consensus. That opportunity was lost by the Government. The Opposition pushed for a royal commission, which the Government did not want, at the outset of the reform process. The Government were pushed into it by the Opposition's demands.
Mrs. Beckett:
Before the hon. Gentleman gets too carried away with the notion that we might have had
Dr. Fox:
The right hon. Lady will know that we have said consistently that we would look at reform that we thought was in the national interest and that improved the way in which the UK was governed. However, we have always opposed stage 1 reform without any idea of what stage 2 would entail. Clearly, the Government have no idea what they are embarking upon, but that goes for all of their constitutional changes. They have not thought through any of their policies, and we will suffer as a result. However, that is par for the course for the Government, who start projects with no idea of how they are to finish.
The royal commission could have been finished by now, but there is delay. The initial deadline was December this year, but perhaps the Leader of the House can tell us whether that will now be as late as March or April next year. There are rumours that the royal commission will be allowed to sit longer if it wishes. How much longer will it be given? How long will the Joint Committee take?
All hon. Members will have worked out that the timetable will take us perilously close to the next general election, almost certainly making sure that no legislation could be proposed to implement stage 2 before that election. Therefore, we will go to the general election not knowing the outcome of that election in terms of the composition of the House of Commons, and not knowing the nature of the Parliament in terms of its structure. That is entirely unacceptable. There is a suggestion that the Government want to kick this matter into the long grass to prevent divisions in their own party on the subject, in the run-up to the next election.
I want to take the Leader of the House to task on some of the points that she raised because--as with the Prime Minister at Question Time today--rather than dealing with the real policies of the Opposition, she simply invented Opposition policies to try to knock them down.
We must look at the role of Parliament as a whole. I fundamentally disagree with the Leader of the House when she says that reform of the House of Lords can be looked at in isolation. What happens in one part of Parliament necessarily impacts on the functioning of the other. Therefore, we need to look at Parliament as a complete entity. We cannot deal with one Chamber in isolation.
The assumption from the remit of the royal commission is that the House of Commons will not be reformed, and that therefore the commission has to make changes to the House of Lords to increase its powers of scrutiny or to get it to work better. Given that the royal commission is not able to look at the workings of the House of Commons, that is the only assumption that I can make. We have said that we must look at a series of relationships, and not only that of the two Chambers in this Parliament. Given the other changes to our constitutional framework, other relationships must be looked at.
The first of those is the relationship between Parliament and the Executive. The Leader of the House said that the Opposition were pretending that, in some way, this Government were not being scrutinised as well as
previous Governments. Our argument has been that Parliament as a whole has been unable to scrutinise any Executive in recent years, and that is a fundamentalflaw. Governments in office--including Conservative Governments--necessarily think that, having got the power, they do not want it scrutinised too much.
If we are to have a meaningful debate on reform, the House of Commons must get some of its self-respect back and decide that the Executive need to be brought to account better for the sake of the good governance of the United Kingdom. We will have to make sure that the House of Lords has suitable powers of scrutiny to bring the Executive to account.
Having spent two years in the Government Whips Office, I am all too aware of the power that the Whips exert, partly because there is no alternative career structure to the patronage handed out by the Executive. We must include that in our consideration of the way in which Parliament as a whole operates.
Mr. Edward Leigh (Gainsborough):
I understand that the Opposition are veering towards having an elected element in the second Chamber. If we give the second Chamber an advise and consent role, we must ensure that the elected politicians in it should not themselves be the beneficiaries of any ministerial or other patronage. It is absolutely vital that we do not create a new cadre of ambitious elected career politicians.
Dr. Fox:
I will deal later with the Conservative proposals under the Mackay commission, but my hon. Friend's general point is extremely important, and I hope that he will expand on it later in the debate.
Parliament must consider other relationships. One of the factors that makes the Leader of the House wrong to say that we can undertake reform of one Chamber in isolation is the role of the judiciary. Given the Human Rights Act 1998 and other changes in the political nature of the judiciary, it is inevitable that there will be a new relationship between the judiciary and both Houses of Parliament. We cannot divorce one from the other.
Mrs. Beckett:
How does the hon. Gentleman square his expressed desire for stage 2 to be implemented before the next general election with his further list of things that he thinks that the royal commission should scrutinise before stage 2 reform takes place?
Dr. Fox:
That has to be part of a wider process. I would welcome a broader remit to consider how the whole of Parliament works and how all the changes are to be implemented. It was not the Conservative party but the Government who set the artificial timetable for the changes. We would all have been better served if they had started the process two years earlier and taken account of the broader arguments. It is unfortunate, in terms of the wider picture, if the Government really think that we can reform one Chamber in isolation.
We must also consider the relationships between Parliament and other bodies that have arisen as a result of Acts of Parliament: not least, the devolved bodies in Wales and Scotland. The hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) mentioned the relationship between the
Presiding Officer's roles in both the Scottish Parliament and the House of Lords. That is a valid point that must be considered, as must Parliament's relationship with Europe.
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