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Mr. Phil Hope (Corby): We are concerned that we have not understood the force of my hon. Friend's argument. We want to be persuaded as to what he is really thinking.
Mr. Prentice: My hon. Friend the Member for Burnley (Mr. Pike) mentioned the role of the Church in this new constitutional settlement. That is another matter I find difficult to accept. I believe in secular politics and that we should be governed by a secular Parliament. I live with the fact that we have the established Church along the Corridor because of our history, but it would be ridiculous to move to a position in which the Buddhist, the Baptist, the Jain, the Jew, the Muslim and the Sikh have a place in our legislature while Catholics did not because--as I pointed out to my hon. Friend--canon law would not allow it.
Mr. Pike: If Catholics were to elect a lay person, canon law would not have an effect.
Mr. Prentice: That is probably true.
On the election of regional Members, are we seriously to suggest to the British people that we want a system that will put Members in the other place for 15 years, with the possibility--the probability--that the appointments commission will appoint them for a further 15 years? That would mean 30-year membership of the upper House. That is ludicrous.
We shall be left with a bloated, elephantine upper Chamber. The present life peers will not retire. They will be invited to consider their position, but they will not retire. Every year, there will be an accretion of Members of the House of Lords. It will grow exponentially: 550, 600, 650, 700. When will it stop? In short, it would not be a Parliament for the 21st century.
I shall argue as passionately as I can at the national policy forum next month that the Labour party should abandon its proposals to embrace Wakeham--they would be ridiculed in a general election campaign--and instead propose a democratic alternative.
7.24 pm
Mr. John Maples (Stratford-on-Avon): The debate has certainly livened up during the past half hour with the speeches of the hon. Member for Pendle (Mr. Prentice) and of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke). They have stated as well as can be done the case for a wholly elected House of Lords.
I am about to make a deeply unfashionable speech in favour--roughly--of the status quo. I believe in the old American maxim: if it ain't broke, don't fix it. I think the system works, so there is a strong argument for leaving it alone. However, I agree with almost all hon. Members who have spoken that the issue is immensely important.
If we go for a wholly elected House of Lords, we shall be making a far more fundamental change to the British constitution than was effected by devolution in Scotland and in Wales. The consequences of that change will ripple for a long time and those in favour of it must acknowledge what those consequences would be.
We should move towards a more US-style of government, even perhaps with Ministers who are altogether outside Parliament negotiating with both Houses to pass legislation. In the case of the previous election, for example, the Labour party would have won; the Prime Minister would have had a substantial majority in this place; but even a wholly elected House of Lords--on that extraordinary 15-year rolling basis--would have been able to block substantial amounts of legislation.
The aspect of the Wakeham report on which I agree completely with my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe and the hon. Member for Pendle is the idea that there can be a halfway house--there can be two classes of Member. The report reeks of trying to give a little to everybody; there will be a few women, a few ethnic minorities and a few people who are elected. That cannot be the solution. Either the Chamber must be wholly elected and we must learn to live with the consequences, or we should pretty much leave it alone.
I was in favour of removing the voting rights of hereditary peers--I do not understand how anyone can argue against that. The current compromise whereby
about 90 of them retain the right to vote is unsatisfactory. Let us give them all life peerages so that there are no more hereditary voting rights.When we consider the future composition of the House of Lords, we should first examine what the powers and duties of that Chamber should be. At present, they are to revise legislation; to make the Government think again--inasmuch as the Lords can delay legislation for one Session--and to act as a constitutional long stop: for example, by preventing the Government of the day from lengthening a Parliament by postponing a general election. It is also valuable for a Prime Minister to be able to appoint Ministers who can sit in the upper House; if they do not have to be elected Members of the House of Commons, it gives the Prime Minister a much wider pool of talent from which to draw. The Labour Government have made good use of that--as did the Conservatives when we were in office.
I hope that the reformed House of Lords will be called a Senate, because it should be completely divorced from the peerage. If it is to perform the functions I described, it will need two qualities: independence and expertise. The Chamber should be independent of party politics--although it is bound to contain some party politicians. It needs expertise in a range of subjects which for various reasons we cannot provide in this House.
The reformed House of Lords must not, however, compete with this place for supremacy. The democratic voice of the people is heard in this House. At every general election, we elect a Government, but every constituency elects a Member of Parliament whose job is to speak for the interests of that constituency. This House is where democracy is heard. A wholly elected House of Lords would result in significant competition. It would end up being full of party politicians.
How does one get elected? One has to have a party machine behind one--especially if we are talking about big, regional constituencies or a system of proportional representation. It is possible that one or two mavericks--independents--would be elected. However, as the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) pointed out, most such people would already have made their name as party politicians in one of the main parties.
To get elected to the reformed Chamber, one will have to be nominated. That will create competition. When people have been elected, they will want secretaries and research assistants. The higher the salary and the more secretaries employed, the more people will want to do the job of Member of that House. We know what the competition in parties is like to achieve nomination as a candidate for election to this House. That will happen in the other place.
There will be an increasing tendency--a self-reinforcing process--for party politicians to be elected; they will demand more facilities, more staff and more power. When those people--good party politicians with party political ambitions--have got themselves elected to the House of Lords, will they be satisfied with a revising role? Will they be satisfied with holding up legislation for a year? Let us suppose that a majority of 80 per cent. in a House of Lords elected by, for example, a system of proportional representation are against something that the Government want to do. Will that House not be able to set its democratic legitimacy against that of the Government? Of course it will. Its Members will be free to do that and they will do it.
The next instalment in the process of constitutional reform will be more power--not less. A Government could be elected with a substantial majority--as were the Labour Government at the previous general election--and the clear democratic will of the people that they should be the Government, but they would be unable to get their legislation through Parliament.
Mr. Tyrie: It is beholden on people who take the view that my hon. Friend has expressed to explain how the Parliament Acts would be swept aside. After all, the Parliament Acts were created as a result of the only gridlock conflict that we have ever had between the two Chambers. They were designed to end it, and they have succeeded in doing so.
Mr. Maples: As I said, a situation will arise in which the two Houses will be in conflict and there may be a substantial majority in an elected upper House which has equal, if not better, democratic legitimacy than this House. The Government might be at the tail end of their term of office and unpopular in the opinion polls, in which case public opinion could arguably be better represented in the Senate or upper House. That might happen and there might be a crunch, as there will be on other constitutional matters.
Angela Smith: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Maples: No. I hope the hon. Lady will forgive me, but we have limited time and I am sure that she will have the opportunity to make her own speech.
The next stage in the process is the one that concerns me. If the other House is limited to its present powers, the type of people who will want to be elected to it may not be the upmarket politicians whom my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe wants to see in it: it will become a glorified county council.
I completely agree with my right hon. and learned Friend and the hon. Member for Pendle on one point. We cannot have a halfway house. The other House either will be or will not be elected. I do not accept the idea that we can have two classes of Members and that some of them will have a bit of democratic legitimacy while the others do not. The other House should continue to be appointed.
I also agree with my right hon. and learned Friend and the hon. Gentleman about the appointments commission. It is an absolute farce--and completely ridiculous--that we should take away voting rights from the heirs to people who long ago acquired or fought for a title entitling them to vote in the House of Lords, only to give that power to a nominee of PricewaterhouseCoopers.
If we are to have a nominated House of Lords, I should prefer it if the nominations were made by the Prime Minister, who would have to do that in the open. The Prime Minister is answerable to the House and to the electorate, and there have been--and I hope there will be--conventions that govern the use of the power so that it is not abused. Opposition parties should be given a fair crack of the whip and an effort should not be made to pack the House of Lords with Members who support the governing party. The idea of an appointments commission is awful. I would prefer the Prime Minister to continue to have the power of appointment, but perhaps there should be an annual limit on the number of people whom he or she can appoint.
There could be an unwritten agreement between the two sides of the House that the holders of certain offices should automatically be entitled to membership of the House of Lords. For example, former Cabinet Ministers, former Archbishops of Canterbury and--dare I suggest it, Mr. Deputy Speaker--Deputy Speakers could automatically be considered for membership. Certainly, former Speakers have almost automatically gone to the House of Lords. Other people, such as the Chief of the Defence Staff, could automatically be given the right, but it could be made formal or ex officio. The Wakeham commission suggested that an enormous number of organisations would claim the right to appoint a nominee to the House of Lords, but it should be pretty easy to draw the line somewhere and say that some organisations should have their interests represented in the second Chamber.
However, if the power to nominate is given to a commission, none of us will know how it is being exercised. The commission would be answerable to a Select Committee only once every couple of years, but I would prefer the Prime Minister to be answerable to this House for the exercise of that prerogative power.
At present, many different interests are represented in the House of Lords. One could argue that the Church and the legal profession are over-represented, so I do not see why other interests in the country should not be represented--without our compiling the sort of ridiculous rainbow house that the hon. Member for Pendle mentioned. Perhaps the president of the CBI, the general secretary of the TUC and the president of the Royal College of Surgeons should be members of the House of Lords. They would certainly provide some of the expertise and independence that the institution will need.
I do not particularly mind whether the period of appointment is for 15 years or for a lifetime. It sounds much the same to people of my age, although I hope that one is longer than the other. If the other House is to be partly elected, I cannot imagine that anyone will want to be a member for more than 15 years.
I hold strong views, however, on what the other House should be called. It should be divorced from the peerage and it should be called the Senate. Its members should be called Senators, and their wives and husbands should not thereby acquire titles. Its Members should be happy to be Senators in the same way as we are happy to be Members of Parliament. I feel strongly about that point, but I do not particularly care whether the Senators serve for 15 years or more.
I return to my central point: either the other House is wholly elected or it is wholly appointed. I prefer the wholly appointed option and for Members to be nominated. There is a strong argument in favour of leaving the powers and functions of the House of Lords as they are set out in the Parliament Acts. There would then be no strong pressure to amend the Acts, but--if there were--we would be able to resist it. The other House would be able to perform its functions of asking or making the Government think again, delaying legislation that may be unpopular and bringing expertise to bear on the fine print of legislation, which is something that this House is rather bad at doing. It would also enable the Prime Minister of the day to appoint as Ministers people who have not been elected to the House of Commons.
I can see the attractions of a wholly elected Senate. As the hon. Member for Pendle suggested, I certainly see the short-term political attractions of that for the Conservative party, and that point has not gone without notice. It would be extraordinary if the Conservatives were to outflank the Labour party in making the other House more democratic, but the consequences of that would be very far reaching. We would end up with another 500 or 600 professional politicians, with their staff, research assistants, secretaries and salaries. That would create a process in which those politicians would demand more power and, sooner or later, another constitutional crunch would come in which they would obtain that extra power. If they did not obtain it, the people who would want to continue to be members of the other House would not be likely to be the quality of elected politician that we would like to see.
We have an increasingly presidential style of government. Although the process did not start with this Government, it has got worse under them. The electorate elect a Prime Minister who governs the country and the House of Commons is seen as an inconvenience to him. If we then create a second Chamber that is wholly elected, the Government of the day will have to begin negotiating with that Chamber to get their legislation and business through. Sooner or later, that will create pressures on this House and we shall end up with an American style of constitution. Although there is much to be said for such a constitution, the proponents of a wholly elected second Chamber should recognise that the Government would move away from and outside Parliament, and would negotiate with both Houses of Parliament to get their business through.
I prefer to operate on the basis of the principle, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." The second Chamber works reasonably well with the limited powers that it has. Stage 2 of the reforms should be to remove the voting rights of the remaining hereditary peers, and the power of appointment and patronage should remain with a democratically elected Prime Minister with conventions circumscribing that. However, that power should be out in the open so that we can see how it works.
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