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Mrs. Beckett: I am sorry, but I have given way to the hon. Gentleman before and I must finish.
I must place on record the fact that the Government are well aware that, apart from the specific issues of replacement and potential by-elections that my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock raised, there are other matters about which hon. Members on both sides of the House are unhappy. The first concerns some of the detail of Lords amendment No. 1--the Weatherill amendment. Some hon. Members also object to the principle of the proposals. I accept that those are valid and legitimate concerns, but the Government believe that the House can live with and accept what are transitional proposals for a transitional House.
Everyone has gained something from the understanding that we have reached. The Government have not only gained but added to their legislative programme, with measures--in particular on food safety--that are of much worth and importance to the British people.
Mrs. Eleanor Laing (Epping Forest):
Will the right hon. Lady give way?
Mrs. Beckett:
I am awfully sorry; I would have given way to the hon. Lady earlier, but I have almost finished.
If we accept the amendment and put the Bill on to the statute book tonight, we can honestly say that Britain will have taken a massive step forward that is at least a century overdue and has been resisted by the forces of conservatism, with and without a capital C, to this day. [Hon. Members: "Hear, hear."] I am pleased to hear that reaction from the Conservatives, because it places their opposition to the change firmly on the record.
We believe that putting the Bill on to the statute book will be an achievement of which we can be justly proud. That achievement will resonate not just down the years, but down the centuries. I commend it to the House.
Sir George Young (North-West Hampshire):
If one wanted an epitaph to the Government's management of the legislative programme and their record on constitutional reform, one could do no better than look at the amendments before the House this afternoon, hours before the Government plan to prorogue. Some badly managed business over the past few days concludes with this half-completed business on the Lords today.
The Third Reading of the Bill, as amended in another place, was on the Thursday before last--nearly a fortnight ago. We could have dealt with the amendments on Monday and Tuesday of last week. The House finished its business early on those days after an interesting but perhaps less challenging debate on whether Acts of Parliament should be printed on vellum or on paper. That would have given more time for the other Bills that we have been dealing with in the past week.
Instead, after those two quiet days we have had guillotines or announcements about them almost every day and an unseemly rush to complete the Government's business, which has at times degenerated into farce. We should be grateful that the Bill was not drafted by the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, which tabled 800 Government amendments to the Greater London Authority Bill in another place.
The Government have held back consideration of this important amendment until the end of the Session as part of some crude pressure on the second Chamber. They invite us to deal with it now, as the lights dim before Prorogation. It was only thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest (Mrs. Laing) that we were able to debate the issue the first time round.
It is possible, as the hon. Member for Thurrock (Mr. Mackinlay) has said, that the second Chamber, whose powers and composition are affected by all the amendments, may last for some time, yet we discuss it in this unsatisfactory way. With the hasty consideration of all the other Bills over the past few days, I have to say that this is no way to manage the legislative programme.
This is a Bill without vision or purpose, without principle or strategy. It is an attack not so much on privilege, but on wisdom, independence, duty and public service. The Bill makes way not for something that is better and permanent, but for something that is inferior and temporary. The Government have embarked on a constitutional journey without a compass. When they were getting lost, they decided to throw overboard many of the more experienced sailors. They then had second thoughts and despatched a lifeboat, manned by Captain Weatherill, to rescue some of them. Then they rang down for Admiral Wakeham to see if he could tell them where to go. That is no way to reform the British constitution.
Mr. Gummer:
Does it strike my right hon. Friend as curious that all previous Governments bent on reforming the House of Lords, led by experienced politicians, have recognised that it was their constitutional duty to propose to the House of Commons an alternative? This is the first Government to produce a reform Bill that proposes no alternative. Is it just possible that all the others were right in their judgment of constitutional propriety and that this Government are wholly wrong?
Sir George Young:
I agree with my right hon. Friend. He makes an interesting point, which sits neatly against that made by the Leader of the House. She asserted that breaking the process into two made it more likely that stage 2 would be reached. One could equally forcefully put precisely the opposite proposition--that after completing stage 1 and disposing of the hereditary peers, stage 2 becomes less likely.
The amendment deals with the so-called Weatherill peers. The hereditary peers, who we are told are an offence to the democratic process, conducted their elections during the past few weeks with a dignity and decorum that has so far been absent from the process of choosing a Labour candidate for the mayor of London; a process allegedly conducted by those more familiar with the democratic process.
The electoral college in the amendment is all the hereditary peers, and most will not be in the transitional House. Frankly, they deserve better than the charmless "thank you and goodbye" from those on the Government Benches in the other place, with the emphasis, as it was, on the goodbye rather than the thank you. I read inThe Sunday Times on 7 November that a spokesman for Baroness Jay said:
History will judge those peers better than fashion now does. Parliament will be the lesser for their going. They deserve better than the graceless and charmless farewell from the Leader of the upper House. If the new House has a shred of the decency, courtesy, independence and open-mindedness of the old, it will be the better for it.
Angela Smith (Basildon):
The hon. Gentleman's comments go to the heart of the Opposition's misunderstanding of the matter. Labour Members have never criticised those active individual peers who have given a great deal of service; it is because they have no legitimacy that we have criticised them.
Sir George Young:
An elementary matter of courtesy should be discharged by those in the other place. That was omitted and I was happy to put that fact on the record on behalf of the Opposition.
Mr. Dale Campbell-Savours (Workington):
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Sir George Young:
I should like to make some progress.
I doubt that the Leader of the House enjoyed delivering the speech that she just made, inviting, as she did, her right hon. and hon. Friends to vote down a clear manifesto commitment. Last week, I heard hon. Members ask where the manifesto commitment for the reductions in benefits for the disabled was. They were referred to some rather general commitments to reform the welfare state, which persuaded enough of them to support the Government.
Today, however, Labour Members must have listened to the President of the Council--a title that has survived modernisation--with some incredulity. The manifesto commitment could not have been clearer:
Many of my hon. Friends will have seen The Sunday Times last Sunday, which stated:
"They'll be getting a glass of champagne when the House prorogues. What more do they want after 800 years?"
On behalf of the Opposition, I want to place on the record our deep appreciation of the work of those hereditary peers who are not covered by the amendment. They and their predecessors have a record of public service to Britain of which they should be proud and for which we should be grateful. We are sad to see so many distinguished parliamentarians leaving the upper House, including scores of people who have given dedicated voluntary services over many years. Time and again, they have stood up for common sense and the rights of the weak against powerful Governments of all colours, and we saw them do that again last Monday.
"As an initial, self-contained reform, not dependent on further reform in the future, the rights of the hereditary peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords will be ended by statute."
Now they will not. Hereditary peers will be sitting and voting in the other place in the next Parliament despite the efforts of the people's party, and that Parliament will be the better served by their presence. Unlike life peers, they will owe nothing to the patronage of anyone living for their place there. Labour Members want to replace time-honoured privilege with modern patronage. They are a party which hates the past, but which is afraid to shape the future.
"Blair wants the Committee on Lords reform to stop discussing policy. He wants it to start discussing tactics. Denis Carter lost his temper. 'Tactics! Tactics! All he thinks about are tactics! He's got no policy at all!"
Policy he may not have; patronage he has. The Prime Minister has created 171 peers in less than two and a half years--more, as we have heard, than my right hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major) managed in seven years. One third of all life peers have been appointed by the Prime Minister. One quarter of the new House will owe its presence there to the Prime Minister. Is that the sort of second Chamber that we want?
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