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Mr. Tyrie: Will the right hon. Lady give way?
Mrs. Beckett: I beg the hon. Gentleman's pardon; I really must get on. [Interruption.] With respect, he did not give way to me.
My hon. Friends the Members for Harlow (Mr. Rammell) and for Basildon (Angela Smith), like my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet (Dr. Ladyman), accepted the compromise, although with some reluctance, as did the hon. Members for Teignbridge (Mr. Nicholls), for Sevenoaks (Mr. Fallon) and for Aldershot (Mr. Howarth).
The right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer) was pretty rude about everyone else who accepted the amendment, although it turned out in the end that he accepted it, too, because it retained the position of some of those who sat as hereditary peers.
Mrs. Laing:
Will the right hon. Lady give way?
Mrs. Beckett:
I am reluctant, but I will give way to the hon. Lady because she did not speak in the debate.
Mrs. Laing:
I am extremely grateful to the right hon. Lady for her courtesy in giving way. On the point that she has just made about those who accept or do not accept the amendment, I recall that on 15 February 1999, when I was trying to elicit from the right hon. Lady whether she would accept an amendment in very similar terms that I had proposed that day, she said to me:
Mrs. Beckett:
I apologise if I hurt the hon. Lady's feelings, but it is possible that she misunderstood what I
However, the hon. Lady's intervention is perfectly timed, because I was about to mention the right hon. Members for Sutton Coldfield (Sir N. Fowler) and for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth), both of whom have taken exactly the same stance but from opposite points of view, in that they supported her amendment but appear to be saying that they will reject a similar one tonight. That is obviously because of the way in which the Bill's passage has been conducted, and our recognition that we might be prepared to accept the amendment at this stage but were not at an earlier stage.
My hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin (Mr. Bradley) quite properly asked what the Conservatives had done to advocate and promote reform in the 18 years during which they had the opportunity. The right hon. Member for South Norfolk(Mr. MacGregor) suggested that although the Labour party had talked about needing to break the logjam of reform and hence passing the legislation in two stages, previous Labour Governments had not taken action to bring about reform. I believe that I am right in saying that the 1945 Labour Government developed the reduction in the powers of the House of Lords, which was one step towards reform; that the 1964 to 1970 Labour Government famously attempted, and failed, to reform the House of Lords; and that it would have been an act of crass folly for the 1974 to 1979 Labour Government to attempt such a step, given that they hardly had a majority. It has therefore been a consistent theme of Labour Governments to seek reform of the Lords.
The right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir G. Young) suggested that the Conservative party had in fact progressed towards reform because it had invented the notion of life peers. He was reminded several times in the debate that, having invented the concept of life peers, the Conservative party has consistently used it to reinforce and expand its already substantial majority in the House of Lords.
Throughout the debate, issues have been raised that are familiar to those who have participated in these discussions. There was the usual dismissal of the concession made by the Prime Minister, for the first time in our history, to reduce his power of patronage--as though it were illegitimate for that to be done by a Labour Prime Minister. The notion continued to be trumpeted that, by consistently supporting Conservative Governments and attacking Labour ones, the House of Lords has shown its independence. That notion was amply discredited during the debate, if only by statistics revealing a very different picture.
As he came to the end of his remarks, the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire, expressing the Conservative party's attitude to the proposals and the amendments, said in one sentence that the way in which the House of Lords had been dealt with was charmless, and in the next that the transitional House would become inferior as a result of the removal of some 659 hereditary peers.
We have had a re-run of many of the arguments that we heard previously, but a consistent feature--and one that is to be regretted--has been the tendency of Opposition Members to denigrate life peers in order to praise the role of hereditaries. That is wrong; we should not denigrate either. Both groups have given service to our country and to our Parliament, and it is right to recognise that. As the hon. Member for South Staffordshire (Sir P. Cormack) let fall in an inadvertent remark at the end of our exchanges, for the whole of its history the Conservative party has resisted reform, in particular reform of the House of Lords, although some Conservative Members have reluctantly accepted the amendment.
Today, we are discussing a further dramatic and historic step in our constitutional development. The proposal enshrined in the amendment is not the Government's proposal--it came from the Cross Benches. However, we regard it as offering a prudent and sensible route towards the early removal of all hereditary peers. It ends the hereditary principle as the basis of a seat in the legislature. It means that 659 hereditary peers will leave their House when the Bill is passed. To have incurred potential delay would have meant that 750 hereditary peers would have retained the right to sit and to disrupt the Government's legislative programme for a further year.
We are taking an historic step tonight. After 89 years, I suggest to the House that it is time that it was taken.
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Does the hon. Member for Thurrock (Mr. Mackinlay) wish to press his amendment to a Division?
Mr. Mackinlay:
No, Sir. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Does the hon. Member for Chichester (Mr. Tyrie) wish to press his amendment to a Division?
Motion made, and Question put, That this House agrees with the Lords in said amendment.--[Mrs. Beckett.]:--
"I do not know why the hon. Lady is wasting the Committee's time with this nonsense."--[Official Report, 15 February 1999; Vol. 325, c. 681-82.]
Will the right hon. Lady now concede that I was not wasting the Committee's time? I was then urging it to vote for the very measure that she is now urging the House to vote for.
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