| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. Nicholls: I shall help the hon. Gentleman. In fact, 104 hereditary peers are left; it is a jolly good deal.
Tony Wright: I accept that intervention on technical grounds. The Government have not yet done what they said they would do and are unsure about what to do next. We know that they are not keen on election, but we are not terribly sure what they are keen on. The Opposition
have viewed the enterprise throughout as a kind of political game. They have been keen on whatever the Government were not keen on so that they could try to out-trump and outflank the Government on the issue.The combination of the Government being uncertain about what they wanted and the Opposition being determined to play games has brought us to this position. That is a tragedy because, earlier in this Parliament, the opportunity existed to create some genuine cross-party consensus on how reform might take place. That is well known; Lord Wakeham has referred to it. That opportunity could have been taken, but was not because of that combination of circumstances. I am afraid that we are paying the price of that now. The royal commission was invented, given an unusual and abbreviated time scale--to which it managed to work--and put in the hands of a great fixer who, allegedly, was to produce a great fix.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) was put on the royal commission, so the dark rumours said, to avoid any flirtation with the elective principle. Well, things did not work out quite like that, as we have heard, and there was not just a great fix, as it happened. Some important work was done. It was not possible to extinguish the grounds for an elective element--that argument was lost. What came out of the commission was different from some of the ingredients that were designed to be put in it, which is greatly to the commission's credit.
I want to say a word about what I take to be the key principles that should inform the debate. Contrary to what has been said from various parts of the House, Wakeham gets it broadly right on those key principles, which I shall describe briefly. Membership of the second Chamber is a job, not an honour. That issue has been the source of endless confusion in the past and it had to be resolved. Wakeham, finally, has resolved it. Without wanting to be difficult, there is no question but that Lord Ashcroft wanted to sit in the second Chamber not because of his desperate desire to take part in Committee proceedings on the Countryside and Rights of Way Bill, but because he wanted a title. Unless we banish that confusion, we shall get nowhere. Wakeham, fortunately, has done that.
The next principle is that strong government needs strong accountability. The second Chamber should contribute to that. This Chamber is good at many things, but awfully bad at accountability. It is good at raw political accountability, but bad at serious scrutiny and serious, continuous accountability. For evidence of that, hon. Members should simply read the Government's response to the Liaison Committee report. If we want an example of how the House and a Government--not just this Government, but any Government--respond to any serious challenge on the ground of accountability, we should consider the brutal dismissal of that report, which asked for more powers for Select Committees. That is the nature of the politics of this institution.
I happen to think that strong government is a good thing, but only if balanced and checked by strong accountability. That is where the deficit in our system has been. We need a driving Chamber and historically that role has always been played by the first Chamber--the House of Commons, which is the Chamber that puts its head on the block. The rascals can always be kicked out of the House of Commons. However, we also need a serious checking Chamber--a controlling Chamber that says,
"Will you think again?" We have not had such a second Chamber as ours has never had the legitimacy to enable it to fulfil that role. We need to strengthen the checks and balances and strengthen accountability. That principle is central.The second Chamber should be neither a rival to, nor a replica of, the first. That has been stated in different ways and both are dangers to be avoided. The roles of the Chambers are complementary. Furthermore, there should be enough election to ensure legitimacy, but enough appointment to ensure independence and expertise. That fundamental balance must be struck. We have a party-driven system and this is a party-driven House. If we simply say that service in the second Chamber--service in public life, indeed--is to be controlled only by those who carry a party card and who stand under a party label in an election, we will disfranchise 95 per cent. of the population and deprive the second Chamber of the independence and expertise that we want it to have. Indeed, if we simply set up a second Chamber that is an imitation or a party clone of the House, we will make overall accountability--the checks and balances in the system--weaker than it is now. I would argue that the secret is balance--a mixture.
I refer to a few of the Wakeham proposals. On powers, Wakeham is clearly right and they should stay broadly the same, although there is scope for more on the constitutional side, perhaps for a constitutional watchdog. Wakeham is absolutely right on the appointments commission. I argued to the first Nolan inquiry that we should set up an independent commission to control all public appointments and end ministerial patronage by taking those appointments away from Ministers. Thank goodness that Wakeham has embraced the principle of ending patronage and setting up an independent appointments commission in relation to appointments to a new second Chamber.
However, Wakeham is wrong on the size and culture of the new institution, which would be far too big, too clubby and too establishmenty. Hon. Members have referred to that, and they are right. The idea that people out on the highways and byways will occasionally drift in to deliberate on the great affairs of state is completely unrealistic. The Wakeham proposal would make the second Chamber 200 Members larger than any other comparable second Chamber. That, too, is completely unrealistic. The second Chamber needs to be tighter, more sharply focused, more collegiate and more full-time, and that flaw in the proposals must be remedied.
The mixed composition is clearly right, but the mix is too ill-defined and the elective element too vague, ranging from 12 per cent. to 16 per cent. to 35 per cent. Those are very different percentages involving very different Chambers. We need a proper balance between election and appointment. I would argue for broad parity, but the mixture must be well conceived, well argued and well thought out and it must meet principles. Wakeham gets the mechanics of election right: the proposals for the organisation of elections and of appointments meet the arguments about the second Chamber being neither rival nor replica as they overcome the disabilities of having two Chambers with the same sort of authority and legitimacy, which hon. Members have identified.
In the language that was used earlier, we need a mixture of rough trade and genteel trade in the way that the second Chamber operates, because one brings legitimacy and the
other brings independence and expertise. However, the mixture is crucial. The denser and richer the mix, the less the threat to the supremacy and the driving role of this Chamber. The two Chambers would be different, but complementary.The Wakeham proposals have clearly ducked some issues, such as the bishops and the Law Lords. The bishops are in the Lords not because they were thought to have a great spiritual contribution to make, but because they were mediaeval landowners. No other legislature in the world thinks that having judges as Members represents a tenable constitutional principle. Those matters were evaded and sit as unfinished business.
On the next part of the story, much of Wakeham--the new committees and the dispute resolution procedure, for example--does not require legislation, and an appointments commission on the Wakeham basis could be established now. We could also move on the delegated legislation and European Union proposals right away. Indeed, there is no excuse for not moving on all those proposals immediately and we should set up a Joint Committee, based on Wakeham, to move further. We need a proper Government response accepting a mixed solution and a Joint Committee further to explore what that means. We should get agreement on that if possible; the Opposition should stop playing games and be constructive. If agreement cannot be achieved, we should move decisively and unilaterally on the basis of what Wakeham has given us for doing just that.
We were wrong to think that there would simply be stages 1 and 2. Partly because stage 1 is still incomplete, it is clear that there will be stages 1, 2 and 3. Stage 2 is the Wakeham stage. That was well stated by the Constitution Unit, the most independent and authoritative observer of these matters, which serviced the Wakeham commission. It states:
- Given the enormity of the task, and the brevity of the timescale, it is not surprising that the Royal Commission ducked many of the difficult issues, and made only tentative suggestions about what part the Lords might play in underpinning our new constitutional arrangements. The Commission was effectively forced by the circumstances and short deadline into delivering what should be regarded as an interim report. It is a report which is as much about the "modernisation" of the Lords in the short term, and improvements to the transitional chamber, as it is about long term reform.
We now have the basis of potential consensus on a mixed House, on the ending of patronage and on powers. From those three secure platforms, it is possible to move ahead. We have within our grasp a means of resolving the second Chamber issue, which has eluded the House of Commons and our country for a century. History will be, rightly, unforgiving if, with all those advantages, we do not do what has to be done. What is now needed is a lead from the Government: this is the moment, but phrases such as "in due course" do not match the moment.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |