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Mr. Andrew Rowe (Faversham and Mid-Kent): The hon. Gentleman says that it is self-evident that the Members should have the necessary expertise. Would he define what he means by "expertise" and tell us how they acquire it?
Mr. Temple-Morris: All will be revealed as my speech continues. That was a helpful intervention, but if I answered the hon. Gentleman now, I would lose the sequence of my speech. I hope that I will have dealt with it in some depth by the end of my speech.
We also need depth of representation to supplement this place. I am already beginning to answer the hon. Member for Faversham and Mid-Kent (Mr. Rowe) because, however we achieve that depth of representation, we need to deal with aspects such as occupation, region, gender, ethnic origin and so on.
I shall now deal with the mixed Chamber--part appointed and part elected, directly or indirectly.
Mr. Grieve:
The hon. Gentleman has said that he is moving on to deal with a part-appointed and part-elected
Mr. Temple-Morris:
Much as I respect the interventions that the hon. Gentleman makes on my speeches, my answer is no, no, no. One has only to look at the Irish Senate and the political nature of the electorate there to realise that an admirable system can go wildly wrong. The last thing we want is for those who are elected, by whatever means, to reproduce themselves by way of appointment.
Mr. Temple-Morris:
I will not give way again. I have not even answered the hon. Gentleman yet.
It is important that, to a certain extent, the power of patronage, well controlled by way of an independent appointments commission, stays with us in order to get the people we need who would not dream of coming forward under any other form of election.
The proportions within a mixed Chamber have been mentioned. It is important to remain flexible at this stage. On Second Reading, I talked about 70 per cent. being elected--the vast majority--and 30 per cent. being appointed, or one third being appointed, one third being elected and one third being functional constituencies, or colleges of interest as I called them. I am sorry to distress the hon. Member for Beaconsfield, but now I tend to go for more appointed Members. I would even go up to about 40 per cent. We need flexibility of appointment to get the right people in--I return to the point about expertise and independence of view, and the Cross-Bench element.
The period of appointment is directly relevant to the continuity of the House and its independence. It is a difficult subject which was touched on by the right hon. Member for South Norfolk. Particularly if we want younger people in, we have to consider the possibility of reappointment, but that limits independence. I have thought about the matter as, no doubt, have others, but, at the end of the day, rather than any particular term, appointment should be for life or the age of 75. We hope that all the Members have a happy and healthy retirement. I see that element of appointment as the foundation or the permanent feature of the new House of Lords.
I now turn to the elected part of the upper House. Touching again on a point raised by the right hon. Member for South Norfolk, direct election, whether it is regional or anything else, would produce the dreadful danger of party hacks. The upper Chamber would become a second division and, like the Irish Senate, to use an example that I know very well, in some ways it would be a waiting room for those who wanted to get down to this end of the building. In my view, direct elections should be avoided at all costs.
That leaves us with indirect elections, which need to avoid a political electorate. I referred briefly to that in reply to an intervention. The Irish Senate operates by way of functional constituencies. It is lovely on paper and it could work very well. Sometimes the system is criticised without the realisation that it is not the system, but the
electorate that is wrong. The electorate comprises the Members of the Dail and members of Irish local authorities, who form one of the most highly political electorates in the country, and the same would apply here.
There is nothing wrong with functional constituencies provided that we get the electorate right. In regard to the electorate, the answer is quite simple: they should elect themselves. The indirect system of election involves colleges of interest or functional constituencies. They could include representatives of the main areas of activity, such as business, the professions, trade unions and so on. The European Parliament could be a functional constituency, not in terms of electing its own Members, but it could elect a representative. The devolved Parliament and Assemblies of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland could also be involved.
I entirely agree with the right hon. Member for South Norfolk that when Members of the European Parliament were first elected in 1974, many hon. Members standing said that there could be a dual mandate. If I remember rightly, after the first European election in 1979, only one solitary MEP remained a Member of Parliament after 1984.
Mr. Grieve:
I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way again. In the spirit of the debate, which is more a discussion, is there not a difficulty with the system of colleges of election? The Irish one began in the 1930s. Is it not the truth that it derived from a fascist form of government? I do not mean that pejoratively, but that was its origin: the idea of an estate of the realm made up of corporations. Is not the problem that the system typecasts people into categories, whereas all the evidence is that today's society is very fluid and that people are not typecast in that fashion?
Mr. Temple-Morris:
I do not think that bringing fascism into the debate is particularly helpful. I do not find the Republic of Ireland a particularly fascist state. Having dealt with that rather extreme part of the hon. Gentleman's intervention, I should say that the election should be conducted democratically. There is no earthly reason why it should not be--I hope that the hon. Gentleman would agree that the Bar Council, for example, would be perfectly capable of putting people up to go to the upper House and electing such people at its annual meeting. Any professional, business or equivalent body in the country would have no difficulty in doing that. Such an election is a way to get in people in a representative capacity other than by appointing them by power of patronage, from wherever it comes. In addition, it would provide the opportunity for indirect election from regional councils in order to get regional representatives.
With regard to period of office, I do not think that there is anything wrong with having two different types of Members of the upper House. Appointed Members should be for life or until the age of 75. It is a matter for discussion, but a fair term of office for those indirectly elected by way of functional constituencies would be for the duration of a Parliament. Indeed, many of those representing such constituencies may not want to do so permanently; they may want to do a spell in Parliament.
Finally, I wish to make a few specific points about functions and powers. First, the Law Lords have been mentioned. As I said on Second Reading, I do not
believe that the Law Lords belong to the legislature. Their presence is almost an accident of history; at one point, no one else had the skill to try such significant cases. They could quite easily continue as a supreme court of appeal, sitting in the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, as they do today on certain matters. However, that is no bar to senior judges being nominated to the House of Lords. Inevitably, many of them will be and, no doubt, there will be plenty of lawyers in that Chamber.
Secondly, I know that there are constitutional complications in respect of the bishops, but I do not think that they belong in a modern legislature. That problem needs to be addressed. In some cases, they could be nominated. Indeed, the Churches could be functional constituencies. As a member of the Church of England, let me make the point that we need representatives of more Churches and faiths than just the Church of England by constitutional right.
Thirdly, the position of Ministers crept in by way of an intervention. I see no reason why Ministers need to be Members of the House of Lords. The concept of having Government spokesmen, as occurs in most other Parliaments of the democratic world, could easily apply to the Lords. Ministers should be firmly in the House of Commons. There seems to me no earthly reason why Ministers could not, where necessary, have a right of audience in the House of Lords. That occurs in many other democratic Parliaments.
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