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Mr. Gerald Howarth (Aldershot): Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Kaufman: I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman in a moment, after I have completed reciting my list of the commission's proposals.
As I said in replying to the hon. Member for Teignbridge (Mr. Nicholls), the commission also said that there should be a statutory minimum of Cross Benchers so that no political party could ever have a majority in the second Chamber. We proposed, as the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire said, that party
representation--but only party representation--in the second Chamber should be in proportion to the votes cast at the previous general election, and that that proportion should be adjusted over time.Now I shall give way to the hon. Member for Aldershot (Mr. Howarth).
Mr. Howarth: The right hon. Gentleman has referred to an independent appointments commission, yet he has given a whole list of prescriptions and caveats. It can hardly be independent if it enters life with all those limitations imposed on it.
Mr. Kaufman: It is to be independent of the Government, but not of criteria that would enable the second Chamber to be much more representative of the generality of the population than the current second Chamber or, it must be said--other than in party terms--this Chamber. That is why we suggested that those criteria be laid down. We also suggested that the commission should be appointed according to the Nolan rules to ensure its total independence of the Government. We insisted on that and regarded it as indispensable. When I say "the Government", I do not mean only this Labour Government, although I hope that it will be in office for a very long time, but a Conservative or any other Government.
The issue of composition preoccupies many people, but we wanted also to decide what a second Chamber was to be for. One of the reasons why we came down against an elected Chamber was not only because two elected Chambers would be a recipe for continual conflict but because, if the election for the other place were held at the same time as one for this place, even under a proportional system, the Government who won here would get the predominant number of Members there, and we would not have a balance; and if it were a mid-term election, with a Government who had become unpopular, the second Chamber would always be skewed against the Government of the day. One could never get it right.
That is why we proposed, as one of two possibilities on composition, to have Members appointed in relation to general election votes as regional representatives on general election day, when the maximum number of people vote. The right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire spoke about the hon. Member for Brent, East (Mr. Livingstone). One of the facts about the latter is that, far from being an independent, he rose all the way through manipulating the Labour party, first from inside, then from outside.
The same goes for the only independent in the Scottish Parliament, who was elected not because he was independent, but because he was Labour, and the people liked him as Labour, but Labour would not choose him. We should be clear about who would get there: they would all come up through the party system and every one of them would be the same kind of puppet of political parties as my hon. Friend the Member for Pendle (Mr. Prentice), myself and all the rest of us.
We proposed greater powers. Because of the way in which the House is organised, there is simply not time for us to scrutinise European legislation and ministerial responsibility in the European arena. That is why we proposed that the second Chamber should have the right to summon Ministers before they go off to a Council of
Ministers, so that they go knowing what a House of Parliament expects of them, and again when they come back, to check on what they have done. We believe that that would make the Government more accountable to Parliament.We believe that there should be a special human rights committee to monitor the Human Rights Act 1998, which this House, with all the good will in the world, is simply incapable of monitoring.
We looked carefully at the Parliament Acts and decided that one of their major flaws is that, with secondary legislation, all that the other Chamber can do is chuck it out, which it very rarely does, or rubber-stamp it. We recommended a system whereby the Parliament Act delay on legislation would be extended to secondary legislation. That would make the Government more answerable to Parliament.
We proposed that the powers over primary legislation be entirely retained, including not giving the Government what I believe they want: the right to use the Parliament Act procedure with legislation that starts along the Corridor, as well as with legislation that starts here. We deliberately said no. The Parliament Acts were passed to allow the will not of the Government, but of the House of Commons to prevail. We therefore said that the will of the House of Commons only, not the will of the Government through the House of Lords, should be enforceable.
We did not idly reject the idea of a wholly elected second Chamber. Indeed, at least two of the people involved, Lord Hurd and Dawn Oliver, to whom I pay tribute for her marvellous contribution--she came from the Liberal Democrats--came into the royal commission wanting a wholly elected second Chamber, but--
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The right hon. Gentleman has had his ration.
Mr. Kaufman: Actually, that rounded off my speech quite nicely.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: I am delighted to have been of help to the right hon. Gentleman.
6.16 pm
Mr. Robert Maclennan (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross): It is customary in a debate of this kind, in which we are considering the report of a distinguished body of people, to pay tribute to their work. I find that singularly difficult on this occasion, as I regret that the commission, in its analysis and recommendations, was weak and unhelpful in carrying forward the debate.
As could be expected, the report produced a few ideas of substance and merit, and I hope that the House of Lords, as it is at present constituted, will think fit to give effect to some of the proposals, which could be done without legislation. I refer, for example, to the proposal that a committee be established to scrutinise treaties, which are important and should be considered before ratification. That was proposed by my noble Friend Lord Lester of Herne Hill and some other distinguished peers.
It was also proposed that pre-legislative scrutiny of Bills should become the norm in the other place. That also seems to me to have a good deal of merit. It was proposed
that a human rights committee be established--not an original idea, and one to which the Government were committed even before the commission reported. The commission also suggested early publication of important statutory instruments, so that they could be scrutinised by people outside the House. That matter is predominantly for the Government, and I hope that they will act on it.It was further proposed--this was a departure--to permit Ministers from the House of Commons to make statements in the House of Lords and answer questions there. That proposal has great merit and I hope that it will be acted on. It lies nicely with another proposal from my party, which the royal commission did not take up, that no Ministers should be drawn from the upper House and that it should be a purely legislative Chamber, with its own ethos and power to hold the executive arm of Government to account.
The royal commission recommended--here again, I think that it was right--that the link between the peerage and the second Chamber should finally be snapped. I hope that the Government will act on that, too. Having mentioned those few good proposals, I have reached the end of my praise for the commission's work.
It is right to look back on the context in which the commission was set up. It was not envisaged in the Government's manifesto--indeed, something different was proposed. Following the agreement on the future of constitutional reform entered into by the right hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) and myself on behalf of our respective parties prior to the election, it was suggested that we should act in two stages. I differ from the Conservatives, because I think that it was right to tackle the problem of the hereditaries separately and discretely, and to prevent them from participating in the debate about the ultimate shape of the Chamber that would follow.
It was agreed before the election, and contained in the parties' manifestos, that a Joint Committee of the two Houses should be set up to consider the shape and functions of the new, reformed House. The Government recognised when they published their White Paper that such a Committee could play an important role in seeking to bring to bear on the issue both Houses' experience of their workings. As far as I can make out, the Government have not resiled from that commitment, although they may have it in mind to confine the Committee's role somewhat. Indeed, the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir G. Young) seemed to suspect that too, when he spoke of the desirability of using such a Joint Committee to find consensus on the powers and composition of the future House. I hope that the Government will not stand back from the use of a Joint Committee of that kind to seek to achieve consensus.
Constitutional reform should, as far as is possible, carry the Members of this House across the parties. It should also carry the country, because it is desirable to have stable change that will last.
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