| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. Rammell: As we are in the business of trading embarrassments, will it not be a greater embarrassment
for the Conservatives and their leader to vote for a proposal for which the Leader of the Opposition sacked the Conservative leader of the Lords?
Dr. Fox: We all make mistakes when we take interventions. The hon. Gentleman fails to understand that the situation at that time had nothing to do with the content of the proposals but arose over agreement to a deal that no one but the shadow Cabinet had the authority to accept.
Mr. Hogg: My hon. Friend has precisely described why this House is failing to discharge its role of holding the Executive to account. It is true of all Governments, not only the present one, that they use their Whips to ensure that Back Benchers do whatever the Government want. In this case, that means either voting for or against the Weatherill amendment. That is what is so destructive of truly accountable Government.
Dr. Fox: What is most damaging about this episode is that the Government have not even pretended to act from a point of principle. They said that they would do whatever was necessary. If that meant countermanding their manifesto, they would tolerate that. If it meant blatantly forcing Members to go back on what they had previously voted for, the Government would force them to do so. Perhaps the Leader of the House will confirm that the Government intend to march their troops through the Lobby to vote for the Weatherill proposals. That seems the only logical position given that the Government backed those proposals in the House of Lords. Will the Leader of the House tell us that?
Dr. Fox: Perhaps it is too embarrassing for her to admit what the Government are going to do to their Back Benchers.
Mrs. Beckett: I certainly shall not comment and nor shall my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary, Privy Council Office. The hon. Gentleman may not have noticed, but the other place has not yet finished with the Bill.
Dr. Fox: What courage, what leadership, what great principle.
Mrs. Beckett: Let me explain to the hon. Gentleman in words of one syllable what I meant. Amendments have been tabled to the Weatherill amendment, and none of us knows whether they will be carried.
Dr. Fox: We have a fair idea of the Government's position. I do not know whether it is appropriate--perhaps it is against the rules of the House--to offer the Leader of the House a wager. I shall wager £10 for her favourite charity that she ultimately forces her Back Benchers in precisely the opposite direction to that which they took when the Weatherill proposals were previously debated in this House.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst): Order. Perhaps it would be better if that wager were kept metaphorical.
Dr. Fox: I am not a gambling man, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I have never even been to a bookie.
Let me return to the point made by the hon. Member for Harlow (Mr. Rammell). The Conservative position has been clear throughout the debate. We saw no need for reform of the House of Lords. There was nothing about it in our manifesto. However, we have accepted that the Government are implementing the proposals in their manifesto and that the status quo is no longer an option. As the Leader of the House has pointed out, I have also said that the Conservative party will not reintroduce hereditary peers after we win the next general election. We must therefore consider ways of introducing an independent element into the upper House.
I commend the Mackay report to Labour Members who have not read it. It is an elegant and extraordinarily interesting discourse that takes the debate on House of Lords reform to levels never achieved by the Government. It proposes two models. It is not a question of an entirely elected or an entirely appointed House. One of the Mackay options is a partly elected House. Members could be elected in many different ways. Another option is to move to an almost fully elected House with a proportion of Members appointed by the Executive so that Ministers could work in the upper House. It is an interesting document and we will consult on it in the Conservative party to find how our party thinks reform should be taken forward.
I hope that the hon. Member for Harlow will give us credit for having moved the debate much further than have the Government. The contributions in print of several of my hon. Friends have added much to the debate on the House of Lords on both sides of the argument. I am genuinely sorry that the Government were not more willing to outline some of the options that the Labour party, if not the Government, might consider for stage 2 reform.
The Government's contribution has been extraordinarily sterile. They have proposed a change with no idea of how to carry it through. They have muddled along. They do not know how they want our constitutional framework to look and have little idea of what the Executive's relationship with people or Parliament should be beyond having more power centralised and more power given to political parties for the Prime Minister to exercise greater control through those organs.
Mr. Robert Sheldon (Ashton-under-Lyne):
I agree with one aspect of what the hon. Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox) said. On the proper use of Back Benchers, there is a need for the alternative career structure that he mentioned. The Select Committee that I have the privilege to chair, the Liaison Committee, is considering that. It is examining what changes should be suggested halfway through a Parliament for the future role of Select Committees and considering how they can carry out their investigative role, which cannot easily be reproduced in any other forum. They can question the people responsible for important decisions and come back at them again and
Dr. Fox:
The right hon. Gentleman has much more experience than most hon. Members. Is he saying that he believes that the House does not have sufficient scrutiny powers to control an Executive who seem increasingly capable of legislating by Executive action through secondary legislation?
Mr. Sheldon:
My view is that the Select Committees are doing very well. They were set up two years ago and this is a suitable time to consider whether there can or should be changes to make them even more effective. That is what is being done through our consultations.
My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House opened this debate in a way that wholly commended itself to me and many others when she said that she is a House of Commons woman through and through. That is what the Leader of the House should be and I welcome that assertion. Of course, I knew it already, but it is nice to hear it once again. My right hon. Friend also mentioned that the powers of the House of Lords are great--far too great in the opinion of many Labour Members. The only limit on the activities of Members of the House of Lords is the way in which they exercise those powers. My right hon. Friend was right to draw attention to that point.
My view of the proposed legislation, as it comes back from the House of Lords, is that it would produce a transitional House; these are the first steps. My expectation is that that temporary scheme is likely to become permanent. I am sorry to disagree with some of my colleagues, but, as time goes on, the enthusiasm for constitutional reform is not likely to increase. In my experience--I have seen a fair amount of such matters in my time--that enthusiasm is likely to terminate fairly early on.
Lord Cranborne showed himself to be a most powerful and inventive person. Given the way in which he carried out his work, he is obviously the lost leader of the Tories in this generation. He knew that, as Sir John Harington put it in the 16th century:
"Treason doth never prosper, what's the reason?
That is the point. The noble Lord's work will almost surely prosper. We may reach agreement on losing the hereditaries, save for the 90 or 92, whatever the number is, but further moves to abolish them are likely to die through the difficulties of constitution making, where there are as many solutions as there are Members of Parliament. The likelihood is that after the noble Lord's work, which he carried out to the annoyance--even the anger--of Members on the Opposition Front Bench, he could see that there was a cause worth fighting for. If he could not save all the hereditaries, he was going to save a substantial number of them.
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason."
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |