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Mr. Malcolm Savidge (Aberdeen, North): First, I urge that we should have joined-up thinking on reform of the other House. Okay, it is a Government phrase, but it is one that the Government should apply to the matter. We should ensure that the reform of the other House is considered with the reform of the House of Commons and with the other constitutional changes that are being made. Secondly, I accept the general point that seems to be accepted by Wakeham: the House of Commons should have supremacy over the other House, so that we have a balance of powers without the type of gridlock that has occurred in the United States, Australia and other places.
There seem to be two ways in which the House of Commons can have supremacy over the other House. One is to make the other House less legitimate. I had better say that rather than illegitimate because, contrary to the hon. Member for Teignbridge (Mr. Nicholls), I thought that illegitimacy was one of the ways in which people used to get into the other House, particularly in the time of Charles II. The other way is to limit the other House's powers by statute.
Wakeham chose to make the other House less legitimate. That was a mistake. If making it less legitimate makes it less legitimate for it to overrule the House of Commons, it also surely makes it less legitimate for it to interfere at all in the doings of this House.
However illegitimate we make the other House, it does not mean that its Members will believe that they are in an illegitimate position. For heaven's sake, even last year, there were hereditary peers who did not realise how illegitimate their position had been ever since "Iolanthe" was written. The hon. Member for Teignbridge still does not. There are Members of the present other House, which was criticised so eloquently by the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke), who do not recognise that they are in an illegitimate position because of the present system of appointment.
Other reasons were given for having a predominantly appointed House. It was said that it could be more representative of regional, vocational, ethnic, professional, cultural and religious variations. Of course, the commissioners were aware of the danger that they could be appointing just a quango, but they had a solution: it would be appointed by a superquango. They were aware of the danger that it could be an assembly just of the great and the good, but they solved the problem because it would be the great and good appointed by the very great and the very good.
Therefore, we have the very great and the very good commission appointing the great and the good upper House for all time. Who will appoint the very great and the very good commission? It will be appointed by the great and good upper House, for all time. What could
have been more accurate than the comment of the hon. Member for Chichester (Mr. Tyrie)? It is a recipe for a self-perpetuating oligarchy. It is replacing an old boys' act with an old pals' act. It is replacing a House of privilege with a House of privilege.What was wrong with the old hereditary House of Lords? Well, disproportionate influence was given to the establishment--to the forces of conservatism, with a small "c"; I leave aside those with a large "C"--and to wealth and power. There was uniformity of opinion, but it was a uniformity of opinion that was at odds with public opinion.
What would be wrong with the proposed new upper House? Almost all the same things would be wrong with it. Of course, there would--just to palliate it--be a small elected component. The common people will be allowed to vote--to have a slight influence--once every 15 years, provided that they do not move house. If they do move house, they might get to vote more, or possibly less, than once every 15 years. In other words, the average person who does not move house might reach the age of 30 before having a vote--to have even a slight influence on a slight bit of the upper Chamber.
Why are elections to be held only once every 15 years? That will be done--to paraphrase paragraph 12.16; these are not the exact words of the report--so that Members elected in that manner are not influenced too much by the common hoi polloi. There were times reading the report when I wondered whether the commission had been presided over by Lord Wakeham or by the ghost of the Duke of Wellington.
What is that bizarre formula designed for? It is designed to protect the supremacy of the House of Commons. Why should we do that? We should do that because this place has the representative legitimacy of election in a participative democracy. If that is good enough for the Commons, why--as was so eloquently asked by the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe--should it not be legitimate for the other place?
My own preference is for a democratically elected second Chamber, elected on the basis of proportional representation, to balance the current House of Commons. I do not believe that the risk of gridlock is unavoidable. I also do not believe that there is a risk, as the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Maples) suggested, of an elected upper House not being subordinate to this one. Those risks could be dealt with in statute.
If we were to do that, some people would immediately start shouting that it was the result of control freak tendencies and an elective dictatorship, and the reduction of checks and balances. However, if we combined legitimacy with the current powers of the House of Lords, we would create a second Chamber that had too much power relative to this Chamber. The old House of Lords did not exercise all its powers precisely because it knew that it had limited legitimacy. However, I believe that if we were to limit, de jure, the powers of the new House to those that, de facto, were exercised by the old House, we could retain a reasonable balance.
I believe that one would also have to reform the anarchic Standing Orders of the other place, so that excessive powers of delay were not available for small unrepresentative minorities wasting time. Such powers
should reside primarily in votes of majorities in the other place. Some people might feel that similar reform could be made more widely in Parliament.I should like, ideally, to have a proportionally elected and representative second Chamber to balance the lack of proportionality in this House. Currently, Governments can be elected with absolute majorities and can be re-elected with the support of about 42 to 43 per cent. of those voting in a given election. Currently, because we do not have fixed Parliaments, elections tend to be held at times that are favourable to the Government, so Governments are often re-elected who have mid-term the support of only about 30 to 40 per cent. of the electorate.
Against the background of a Government who have only minority support, the second Chamber can delay controversial, partisan legislation, or the Government can decide to compromise with other parties. Such an arrangement could be good for this country, and it could perhaps have preserved us from the worst excesses of, for example, the poll tax and the peculiar ping-pong over privatisations and nationalisations in previous decades. It could also create a reasonable balance between the majority and minority parties without giving excessive power to either.
Mr. Paterson: Does the hon. Gentleman believe that the balance of power between the legislature and the Executive should be shifted in favour of the legislature?
Mr. Savidge: The hon. Gentleman is raising some of the issues that should be addressed in a fuller debate. Although the overall subject of constitutional change needs to be examined, in this debate, we are concentrating on the House of Lords.
I should prefer, ideally, proportional representation elections for the second Chamber. I am a pragmatist, however, and recognise that we must deal with the art of the possible. I also recognise that the forces of conservatism are applied most strongly in matters of constitutional change.
I believe that the initial changes to the House of Lords that we made last year, such as abolishing its hereditary element, were historic. However, I also believe that the great Reform Act was an historic change, and recognise that it took more than a century for full universal suffrage and proper enfranchisement of all adults to evolve. I recognise that, although the Act got rid of the rotten boroughs, there were still some pretty eccentric constituencies right until the second half of the last century.
In the same way, in local government reform, it took a long time to get rid of aldermen, deans of guilds and other unelected officers, and to risk having full democracy. Four out of five items in the chartists' charter would now be accepted by almost everyone in the House and are accepted as part of our national constitution, but very few of them lived to see it.
There will probably be compromises and we will end up with a spatchcocked second Chamber to make allowance for those who believe that we must retain the involvement of the Church--with religious and secular representatives--of the Law Lords or of experts of various kinds, and that we cannot do that by having witnesses or advisers to Committees, be they Select, Standing or pre-legislative.
People will also be desperately anxious to preserve Cross Benchers and independents. I recognise that there is a need to balance the fear of the slavishly uncritical apparatchiks--not so much wage slaves as page slaves--with independents. As somewhat of an aficionado of "Any Questions?", I find that the independents on the programme can be the worst bigots of all. In some other parliaments, the so-called independents are the worst for vested interests or pork barrel politics. Let me immediately exonerate the hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Bell), who is a very honourable exception.
If we are to have such people, let us go against what the report suggests and have voting and non-voting Members. If we have to have a compromise, let voting Members be in strict proportion to votes cast for political parties. The hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon said that it could be useful for us to have the president of the Royal College of Surgeons in the second Chamber. If so, it would be for his expert arguments on medicine, not for the votes that he would cast on any other issue, on which he might be totally prejudiced.
If the voting strength in the second Chamber is proportional, there should be less need for proportional representation for this Chamber--less need for Jenkins. If proportionality is recognised in what may well be a spatchcocked Chamber, let us not spatchcock this Chamber, which is what Jenkins is trying to do by retaining constituencies, but making up for it in other ways. Let us at least not go ahead with that at present.
We have, rightly, had massive constitutional change and we have brought in various different proportional systems to a point where it is possible that the electorate are getting slightly confused. It would do no harm to delay considering proportional representation for this House until we can at least learn from the experience of other elections. At most, let us consider from Jenkins whether the alternative vote or first past the post should be used while retaining the constituencies.
In summary, I want to see joined-up thinking over our constitutional change, especially across the two Houses. I want this House to have supremacy over the other Chamber. Personally, I would like a second Chamber elected by proportional representation. Certainly, its voting strength should be proportional, to balance this House. For the immediate future, I would like this House to retain constituency elections, by the alternative vote or first past the post.
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