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Mr. Grieve: Does my hon. Friend agree that one or two of the contributions from some Labour Members today mark an evolutionary stage in Labour party thought? The hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright) was fascinated by the idea of corporatist elected Chamber, but we have a proposal for a corporatist Chamber that is not elected but appointed.
I have got to know quite a large number of Labour Members who strongly support direct elections and I do not want to suggest that I am portraying all Labour Members in that light--far from it. I have had some fascinating conversations with people who follow pretty much the same line of argument as I, in favour of a largely or wholly directly elected Chamber.
What is more, although it is well concealed, the Labour party document rules out a second Chamber of mixed composition. It is worth bearing that in mind. I notice that one Labour Member is frowning, so I shall read the relevant passage. It says:
So where do we stand? The Executive seem to be determined to prevent even a whiff of democracy in a reformed second Chamber. They have issued a Labour party document that calls for a wholly appointed House, but they do not have the courage to say that that is what the document means.
Does democracy stand any chance at all? I have to say that I am not very optimistic, and I share the views of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg) on that. I am sure that the royal commission was originally appointed with the idea of trying to kick the issue into the long grass. None the less, there are two sources of hope. One is the royal commission, which might surprise us by embracing democracy. The other is the existing House of Lords which might force commitments out of the Government with the passage of the stage 1 Bill.
On the royal commission, I am hoping for the best but fearing the worst. I am most impressed with the way in which its members are going about their work and I have already given evidence to them in writing and orally.
It is worth looking briefly at the composition of the royal commission. Some of its members have expressed quite clear views about an elected House. Only recently,
Lord Wakeham was reported as being sceptical about election. That was in The Times earlier this year. The Bishop of Oxford is completely against
I was also greatly heartened by some typically erudite remarks on the danger of appointed Houses fromLord Butler, the former Cabinet Secretary, when he quoted Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire". Gibbon wrote of Augustus:
The other hope--which is a genuine one and not to be wholly ignored--is the possibility that the House of Lords itself in its present form might yet force commitments from the Government for direct democracy. The hereditary peers can do a great deal before they depart. They can and should force through two important amendments. First, they could demand a referendum. The Lords could demand that, whatever the content of stage 2, the Government should be required to hold a referendum on their stage 2 proposals. They should be forced to let the people decide.
Many Opposition Members, including me, are not particularly attracted to referendums as a matter of principle, but the Government have always said that they believe in them. If the Government believe that the end point of this reform should be an appointed upper House, as the Labour party's submission so clearly elucidates, let them take that issue to the people. They have had referendums on Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and London. Indeed, the White Paper refers to them glowingly. They have promised us referendums on economic and monetary union, and proportional representation.
In the local government White Paper, the Government promise to allow local authorities to hold referendums. If local authorities are to be allowed to hold referendums on whether to charge for home helps, what possible argument can the Government have against giving people a chance to decide something as fundamental as the reform of Parliament? Why cannot the people be given a chance to endorse the biggest change in the legislature this century?
The second amendment that the Lords could pass, which would add pressure for direct election, is a democratic one--a clause that would force the Government to bring forward a democratic stage 2 within, say, three years of the passage of the stage 1 Bill. That would open up the debate on democracy in the House and in the country in a big way.
If they did that, the 750 hereditary peers who are threatened by the stage 1 Bill would have an opportunity to be remembered not as a group who were clinging on to what the wider public consider unacceptable privileges in a democratic age, but as the people who brought the Executive to accept some constitutional restraint through election. They could be remembered as the people who checked the Government and reduced the risk that we could be left floundering with unicameralism in all but name, which is what the stage 1 Bill will bequeath us.
So we must hope for the best from their lordships and from the royal commission, but nobody should underestimate the power of the forces acting against democracy.
Mr. Bill Rammell (Harlow):
I welcome the opportunity to participate in a thoughtful debate. I used to be sceptical about the passion that people brought to constitutional issues, but, having attended all the Committee sittings on the Bill and the two days of debate on Second Reading and participated in numerous discussions, I am becoming as obsessive about the issue as many others. It is a bit like becoming a train spotter late in life. I apologise to any of my constituents who happen to be train spotters.
It is an interesting debate and we should not underestimate the degree of historic change that we are witnessing. I should like to follow some of the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright). We are ending the indefensible--people voting in one of our Houses of Parliament simply on the basis of the family into which they were born. We are ending the deformity of one of our Houses of Parliament, whereby its members come predominantly from one background and from one class with one set of beliefs and one set of values, and certainly support one political party. Many Opposition Members underestimate the power of that criticism of the current make-up of the House of Lords and the resentment that many people feel about it.
We are also rightly ending the party political abuse of the second Chamber. It is not about independence and detachment, but about the naked abuse of party political power. Two thirds of peers who take a party Whip in the House of Lords take the Conservative Whip. It is not about independence, scrutiny and a check on the Executive; it is and has been for centuries about the domination of the second Chamber by Conservative peers who have used their power to frustrate the will of democratically elected Labour Governments.
It is also about ending unrepresentativeness. We will have a debate about whether representativeness can be achieved solely by dint of election, but the current make-up of the House of Lords, with only 2.5 per cent. of its members being women and very few coming from ethnic minority backgrounds, presents a real problem. I
hope that the process that we have set in train will bring that to an end. It is worth underlining what we are doing. We are making a change that is long overdue and demonstrates the radical constitutional nature of the Government.
Before I talk in detail about my views on the form and composition of the new Chamber, it is worth dealing with some of the criticisms from Conservative Members. I was interested to hear the right hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg) say that the only positions in public life that are legitimate in the eyes of the public are those that result from direct election. Despite that sincerely held view, elected office is probably held in lower esteem than it has been at any time in recent memory. Therefore, it is at least worth considering that elections--although crucial to the make-up of the House of Commons--are not a panacea and are not appropriate to every nook and cranny of our constitutional settlement.
Some of the comments concerning the domination of this place by the Executive have been interesting. It is at least fair to say that those concerns were not voiced fully by Conservative Members of Parliament when their party was in power. Perhaps opposition releases people from the constraints of office and allows them to think more liberally.
I was interested to hear the right hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham say that he did his duties as a Whip reluctantly--presumably, he told people that what he was doing was hurting him far more than them. Conservative Members would know better than I. However, there are concerns about domination by the Executive, but these come when one party has a large majority.
It is interesting to reflect that in three of the previous four general elections, one party has been elected with a majority of more than 100. It is in those circumstances that concerns about domination by the Executive come to the fore. We could resolve that by moving to a fairer voting system in which views are more fairly represented. However, there are different ways of dealing with the matter rather than by simply looking to elect a second Chamber. That is an answer to a question that is not being posed.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Sheldon) and Conservative Members referred to the need for an alternative career structure within this House. That is a legitimate point which could deal with some of the concerns and tensions about domination by the Executive. However, I do not think that that is in any way dependent on reform of a second Chamber. Such ideas should be debated in any case.
I was interested in the claim made by a number of Conservative Members that, if the Government had simply brought forward the matter immediately after the general election and set up the royal commission at that stage, we could have had consensus on a reformed second Chamber. I hope that Conservative Members will forgive my scepticism about that. The debate about the nature of the House of Lords has been going on for 88 years. In the 18 years in which the Conservatives were in power, they never once proposed any detailed substantive reform for the House of Lords. I do not believe that, immediately following the general election, the Conservative party was serious about reform.
Conservative Members referred to the old chestnut that the Government should have brought forward the two-stage reform in one stage. That is a flawed argument. Over the past 88 years, Members of the Conservative party have claimed to support House of Lords reform, but said that they needed to see the endgame before they could commit themselves. The lack of agreement on the endgame is always what thwarts the process of reform, so I do not believe that that argument carries much credence.
I wish to refer to what kind of second Chamber we want, what its functions should be, how it should be established, what its role and procedures should be and its relationship to this House. The first point, alluded to by my hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Mr. Hurst), was whether we should have a second Chamber at all. I listened with interest to my hon. Friend and, on balance, I think that we need a second Chamber. We need within our constitutional settlement the possibility of asking the Government to think again.
We need a second Chamber to allow us to bring in the outside expertise that we do not necessarily get through bringing in professional politicians. We need a second Chamber in which it is possible to get greater detachment and independence from the party Whips--my apologies to my hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn (Mr. Pope) on the Front Bench--which would come from the second Chamber not having the vast majority of its Members relying for their living on their seat within that House. We certainly need a second Chamber to check abuse of power by the Executive.
Fundamentally--this concern was not addressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Braintree--we need a second Chamber as the ultimate guarantor to stop this House extending its term of office and postponing or abolishing elections.
Having dealt with these issues, the key question becomes one of the composition of the second Chamber. As someone who believes that the hereditary principle is an abomination--a view that I have held all my political life, as has my party--my instinctive reaction is that the answer should be direct elections. I hope now to set out my scepticism about that. The more I have become involved in the process, the greater my concern has been about direct elections to the second Chamber.
"Its Members should have equal standing and there should be no opportunity for some to assert that they have a greater legitimacy than others."
That can only mean that those who might have legitimacy as a result of being elected cannot sit alongside those who have been appointed. I should be interested if the Minister could enlighten me on what that sentence means, if it is anything other than my interpretation.
"even a partially elected element"
in the second Chamber, as he made clear in a speech just under a year ago. I do not know the views of Sir Michael Wheeler Booth and Anthony King. Professor Oliver will almost certainly be in favour of some form of election.
"The principles of a free constitution are irrevocably lost when the legislative power is nominated by the Executive".
Lord Butler went on to say:
"I think it of the highest importance, in the absence of hereditary Peers, for the Royal Commission to find a way in which to select Members of your Lordships' House which does not depend solely on the patronage of the Executive".--[Official Report, House of Lords, 25 November 1998; Vol. 595, c. 42.]
Of course he has had the benefit of seeing successive Executives exercising that power of patronage and I wonder whether that had any influence on his decision to express that view. I am not overly optimistic about the royal commission, but I am not yet overly pessimistic.
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