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Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. As I have frequently told the House today, we should concentrate on this group of amendments. That is what the hon. Gentleman should be doing.
6.15 pm
Mr. Bradley: I am trying to argue that we should support amendments producing a transitionary Chamber, in order to create a more democratic upper House than we have now. The provisions will create an upper House without vested interests and without, as is currently the case, a block vote against the Government of the day, who are seeking quite legitimately to exercise their democratic mandate and pursue policies spelled out in their manifesto.
Mr. Fallon: The hon. Gentleman could certainly argue that the Bill and Lords amendment No. 1 will provide for a different Chamber, but how can he argue that either will provide for a transitional Chamber? Where in the Bill or the amendment is there any commitment or promise to create a reformed Chamber?
Mr. Bradley: At the beginning of his speech, myhon. and learned Friend the Member for Medway(Mr. Marshall-Andrews) talked about a "measure of
permanence". I was hoping to be able to challenge him on that expression and ask him if it did not mean temporary, what would constitute a measure of permanence. The Bill's clear intention is to move, in two orderly stages, to a comprehensively reformed upper Chamber. I do not understand why the hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Mr. Fallon) has any difficulty with that.
I also suggest that the hon. Member for Sevenoaksand other Conservative Members have been entirely opportunistic and unprincipled in their opposition to the Bill. Do they want a reformed upper Chamber? In both today's and previous debates, I have had great difficulty in defining exactly what Conservative Members stand for on the issue. If they support a reformed upper Chamber, what did they do in their 18 years in government to bring it about?
It is extraordinary that we should be hearing arguments against a transitional Chamber from Members such as the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal, who belong to a party that has waited 1,000 years for change but now want change to be accomplished at a gallop. They have waited a millennium for change to our constitution and political system, but want it to be completed in the twinkling of an eye. There is a tradition among Conservative Members, and their Tory forebears, of opposition to constitutional reform. They opposed it in 1832, in 1867 and in 1884, until they were forced to accept it.
Today, some Conservative Members have been talking about one man, one vote as if we did not have women's suffrage--which they also opposed. They have had to be dragged kicking and screaming into every constitutional reform that we have ever had in Britain.
Sir Patrick Cormack:
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Bradley:
No; I should like to make a little progress and keep my comments brief, so that other hon. Members will be able to speak.
Conservative Members support the upper Chamber because they enjoy an in-built majority in that place.
Mr. Fraser:
Will the hon. Gentleman give way on that point?
Mr. Bradley:
No, not on that point; but the hon. Gentleman may intervene on the next one, if he cares to.
If Labour had enjoyed for just 10 years the type of majority in the House of Lords that the Conservatives have enjoyed for 100 years, the previous Government would have abolished the House of Lords in one fell swoop.
Mr. Fraser:
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Bradley:
No; I am sorry. [Interruption.] I tried to intervene previously in the debate to ask questions, but was not allowed to.
I wanted to intervene, for example, on the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal to ask him which chair in Cabinet he occupied when the previous Government
abolished the Greater London council. Where was he then? Was he arguing for plurality in th debate, which he says is so healthy?
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. The hon. Gentleman is wide of the group of amendments that we are considering, and many of his arguments would have been better suited to Second Reading. He is not the only hon. Member who is guilty of going wide of the amendments.
Mr. Bradley:
I apologise, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I spoke in the Second Reading debate, and these are just the bits that I could not get in--
Mr. David Taylor (North-West Leicestershire):
My hon. Friend used all the jokes in that speech.
Mr. Bradley:
Yes; I remember the joke about "The Scarlet Pimpernel". [Hon. Members: "We seek him here."] Yes, but that Pimpernel has now shuffled off to health and I hope that he is faring better there.
I would have preferred a clean break. I would have preferred us to move straight from the present House of Lords to a comprehensively reformed upper Chamber, but matters of constitutional reform are extremely sensitive. They demand deliberation, consideration and, indeed, compromise. Even when a Government enjoy a majority of the size that we enjoy, there has to be room for compromise; but I would rather we have this change than none at all. For that reason, and despite its flaws, I shall support the Weatherill amendment.
Mr. John MacGregor (South Norfolk):
I will be brief, as I spoke when the amendment was last before the House. Then, it was ably proposed for the Conservatives by my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest (Mrs. Laing).
I partly disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr. Tyrie)--I am sorry that he is not here at the moment--but I strongly agree with him on two points. The first is in the tribute he paid to the work, dedication and contribution to our public life that the hereditary peers have made for many years. I pay a personal tribute as I was delighted that my non-voting constituent, Earl Ferrers, came top of the poll among the elected Members. That really is a tribute to his service on both the Back and Front Benches, but mainly on the Front Bench, for many years.
Secondly, I agree with my hon. Friend that the biggest charge against the Bill is that we are to get phase 1 without phase 2, which is fundamental to the amendment. That argument was ably made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer). It has been made time and again throughout our debates on the Bill; it is supported by many commentators outside the House; and many people across the country have latched on to the argument.
The Leader of the House attempted to justify the situation in her opening remarks by saying that she very much hoped that there would be agreement on how to proceed to stage 2, so it was most unlikely that the mechanism of by-elections would ever need to be used. That mechanism is the point of amendment (c), tabled by the hon. Member for Thurrock (Mr. Mackinlay).
However, the right hon. Lady later introduced a note of caution, giving herself a considerable let-out when she admitted that there might never be agreement on how to proceed. That is terribly important. She attempted to justify phase 1 without phase 2 on the ground that the Government had to break the log-jam of delay in reform of the past 89 years. The hon. Member for Harlow (Mr. Rammell) made the same point and suggested that Conservative Governments had delayed reform. In the 15 years since 1945 that previous Labour Governments were in power, they did not make any moves either. They attempted to do so on one occasion, but failed totally.
The biggest problem, and the cause of what the right hon. Lady described as the log-jam, has always been phase 2. That is why there has been no agreement on how to reform the House of Lords since the Parliament Act 1911. The argument about what should replace what we are putting in place through the Bill remains most germane. We are going towards the end of a plank with no idea of what is at the end of it and may well stay on the end for a very long time.
I suspect that there will be no phase 2 for a long time. As for the amendment, we must proceed on the basis that there is a considerable probability that there will be no phase 2, or at least not in the lifetime of the right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) as he put it, although I, too, hope that that will be a long time. We have heard some indication of that from those on the Labour Back Benches. That fact is very much in everyone's minds as we consider what we are putting in place.
If that is, indeed, the case, as I believe it will be, the biggest threat that we face is an increasingly appointed second Chamber. Reference has been made to the fact that 171 life peers have been appointed by the present Prime Minister--a high proportion in only two and a half years. I have heard rumours from more than one quarter recently--I have no idea whether there is any truth in them--that the Prime Minister is minded to appoint 200 life peers as part of the millennium celebrations. That may or may not be true--it has a certain resonance--but, even if it is not true for that occasion, one can well imagine that that is precisely the sort of thing that the Prime Minister would be tempted to do on another occasion, not least if the country had the misfortune to find him Prime Minister after the next election. It is the sort of step that he might well take, if he had a second victory, shortly after the election when it could be done swiftly without being a feature of the election campaign after that. That is a particular threat because the Government are yet again refusing to allow a statutory appointments commission to be included in the Bill. One must ask why. Naturally, one suspects that they do not want such a commission because the Prime Minister's pledge not to have patronage of his own could easily be broken and he might not necessarily follow it through later. We only have his word for it.
Therefore, the threat of an increasingly appointed second Chamber remains strong. That is why I support the Lords amendment. At least it preserves the element of independence and experience until we get to phase 2. It is that independence which is so important. As long as there is a risk of an increasingly fixed Chamber, the 92 hereditary elements are vital. As we may well have phase 1 for so long, I totally reject the amendment tabled
by the hon. Member for Thurrock, which could mean an increasingly small number of hereditary peers in the Chamber.
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