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Mr. MacGregor: I should have thought that the four areas that I listed showed where I thought that the upper Chamber, and to some extent this House, was deficient in its scrutiny of the Executive.
Mr. Maclennan: I acknowledge that the right hon. Gentleman has argued that there are deficiencies, but he has not said how he would give the upper House the authority to deal with them effectively. By espousing the minimalist changes that he has recommended, he fortifies the belief that he is broadly content with the current balance of power between the Executive and the legislature.
Mr. Hogg: The right hon. Gentleman is asking, fairly, whether those who have been in government can identify measures that we think that the upper House should have rejected. I most certainly can: for example, the ability that we instituted to try people for war crimes committed during the second world war; that was wrong in principle and I wish that the second Chamber had voted it down. As a rather more dramatic example, with hindsight, the community charge was a disaster and I very much wish that the other place had voted that down, too.
Mr. Maclennan: Not for the first time, the right hon. and learned Gentleman has shown himself to be more robust and outspoken than some of his colleagues, but his example of the war crimes legislation was a rather surprising one, because it was an occasion on which the upper House did indeed vote down the Government, although it was not of course able to carry its way because, ultimately, the Parliament Act was invoked.
We have not had a debate about the Parliament Act and whether it should be more widely open to the House of Lords to have the last word. If the pre-eminence of the House of Commons in our polity flows from anything, it is first from the fact that it is the bed from which Ministers are plucked, and secondly from the fact that we have the last word on legislation, save in the extraordinary case, referred to specifically by the Leader of the House, of the possibility of extending the life of a Parliament beyond five years.
There are other matters over which it might be reasonable to consider that the House of Lords should be able to exercise such a power. The essence of the power that it has is in respect of major constitutional change, and that principle might be embraced for issues such as any suggestion of tampering with the Representation of the People Acts and the provisions for secret voting.
Mr. Grieve:
I earlier said that I did not consider the Irish model a particularly good one, but may I extol one virtue of it--the possibility of a conflict on a constitutional issue being the trigger for a referendum?
Mr. Maclennan:
That is an entirely sensible suggestion, and I would be happy to endorse it.
On constitutional matters, because of the dominance of this Chamber by the Government, which I believe to be virtually inevitable, it is valuable to have another
Chamber with a checking power. It should not be a power to stand in the way for all time if there is consensus for reform, but if there is doubt about that consensus--about the view of the public--it would seem appropriate to give the House of Lords the ability to block legislation. For example, it would have been appropriate to block the winding up of the government of London without the calling of a referendum of the kind referred to by the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve).
The composition of the second Chamber should embrace the principle of democratic legitimacy. The argument deployed against that by the proponents of a partially, or even predominantly, appointed upper House is that the great virtue of the House of Lords as it stands is its expertise.
It is true that there are people of quality of mind and of experience--business experience, and so forth. I do not deny that we have been able to enjoy contributions of great merit and moment from such people in the past. I think they have probably given the raft, or the afflatus of oxygen, that has kept the place alive, but I feel less certain whether we should look to that as the crucial test in the future. That is partly because of the difficulties associated with functional constituencies, which will spill over however we decide to appoint, rather than to elect, the Members.
If we are to appoint people of experience, how do we choose them? That is made no easier by removing the political element from the choice and putting the function at arm's length from the Government by setting up an appointments commission, itself perhaps appointed by the Government. There is still a real problem of choice. The wisest people in the world, choosing among the wisest people available, would still not be able to satisfy us that those people were, by virtue of their expertise, more legitimate than many who were not appointed. That is an impossibilist course to advocate.
It makes sense for people to put their trust in democracy. If the upper House is drawn from a different base, and elected by a different franchise and method of election, and if it has clearly demarcated functions, it will attract a different kind of person.
I have heard the arguments across the Chamber about whether there should be Ministers in the upper House. Personally, I think that there are powerful arguments against their being there. If there were no Ministers in the upper House, that would remove at a stroke people who desire to be involved in the career patronage there, which is a pale reflection of what happens in this House but still to some extent colours that House's proceedings. That is a meritorious argument, worthy of consideration.
If the avenue of the revitalised upper House is not the primary route to ministerial office, that House will in any event have a different flavour and function, and could attract different people. It might prove attractive to public spirited people who have made their mark in other walks of life, and who wish to give some direct public service at a later stage, perhaps, than the younger professional full-time politicians who, it has been suggested, now
dominate our debates, although to me that charge seems a slight exaggeration. That would certainly be a different sort of upper House, and that is where I would put my trust.
I hope that, in considering the functions and the reform of the upper House, Lord Wakeham and his colleagues will not be too sensitive about the possibility of the House of Commons bolting because of its fear of what a revitalised upper House might do. It would be a discreditable stance for this House to say that the legitimacy of the other House should, in perpetuity--or even as far ahead as we can see--remain tarnished by other than democratic principles. To put it more simply, the upper House should become as democratically legitimate as this House.
Sir Patrick Cormack:
The right hon. Gentleman is making an interesting speech, but how, in his directly elected upper House, would he ensure that those who do not belong to a party would have the opportunity of being elected? How could he ensure that elections would not be conducted on party lines? If he could not, he could not guarantee the presence of any independents.
Mr. Maclennan:
That problem has exercised me; that is why I have retained a residual commitment to an element involving appointed Members. There is a case--perhaps not a very strong one--for such an element, to accommodate just such people. That has always--or at least, for the past decade or so--been my party's position, and I see the point of it.
When we consider the performance of the upper House today, we see that one can exaggerate the significance of that independent element, as it now exists, in shaping policy and reactions to the Government. The participation rates of the so-called independents and Cross Benchers, both in votes and in other ways, are substantially lower than those of the partisan Members who accept a Whip. We also have to weigh in the balance the concern that the more one increases the independent Cross-Bench element, the more one decreases the right of the House to be listened to on equal terms with this House as an expression of genuine democratic opinion.
Mr. Grieve:
May I ask the right hon. Gentleman the question that I asked the hon. Member for Leominster (Mr. Temple-Morris), about co-option? Surely there would be more legitimacy if the Members who had been elected, by whatever means, were required to co-opt a certain percentage of Members of the upper House to deliberate with them. That would introduce the independent element that is so desirable.
Mr. Maclennan:
It is asking too much, even of altruism, to expect people to co-opt independents. Even in the sort of House that I am talking about, I cannot imagine that the Whips would play no part.
Mr. Grieve:
Suppose that we had a system in which co-option was done by two-thirds majority voting, with the aim of ensuring that independent Members were brought in. That might work quite well, and we would be mistaken to ignore the possibility.
Mr. Maclennan:
I ignore nothing, and I shall certainly explore that idea--but I tend to think that if partisanship
On the other hand, it is right to emphasise to the Wakeham commission our overriding desire that the main defects of the upper House should be removed. Despite its expertise, the quality of its best debates, and the assiduity of its tireless Members, who sit through the night and sometimes long into the summer, the importance of the House of Lords is diminishing in our scheme of things, because it is not democratic. There is no way of reversing that by tinkering. Either we accept the need for democracy in that Chamber or we shall have to start thinking in terms of unicameralism and other ways of bringing the Executive to task, for we cannot look to that House in its present form to do that.
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