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Sir Patrick Cormack: They would make a very good House.
Mr. Howarth: They would indeed--an upper House, too.
After five months, we are no further on in terms of finding a solution to replacing the upper House. Ultimately, the nation will grieve that this Government have more or less destroyed the hereditary system. They have taken away from Parliament and the governance of the country men and women who were committed to a sense of duty and to service. They carried out their responsibilities with enormous dignity, and had a huge amount of knowledge that they placed at the disposal of the nation. They were cheap, and they turned up to take part in the affairs of state of this country. I for one mourn their loss, and the fact that there is no alternative in place is an indication of how bankrupt the ideas of this Government are.
9.30 pm
Sir Patrick Cormack (South Staffordshire): I am particularly glad to have the opportunity to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Mr. Howarth), for two reasons. First, it is not inappropriate that the final speech from the Back Benches in this interesting, if somewhat curtailed, debate should come from one who was such a stout defender of the former House of Lords. It is also appropriate that we should end with a tribute to those who served there not because they sought to serve there, but because they saw it as their duty, and who rendered signal service in many cases.
The other reason that I am glad to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot is that he, like me, has in the past been a Member of Parliament for Cannock. Indeed, it is 30 years ago to the day that I learned that I had been elected as the Member of Parliament for Cannock. I still have the honour of representing a very large chunk of that constituency for which I was elected, but there was redistribution later, and my hon. Friend had his first parliamentary incarnation as the Member of Parliament representing Cannock and Burntwood. Moreover, another Member of Parliament for the area took part in the debate--the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Tony Wright)--and made an interesting and thoughtful speech.
Trying to sum up a debate such as this is not easy, because where does one find the common threads? The Leader of the House talked about consensus. I completely understand why she has not heard all the debate. With her normal impeccable courtesy, the right hon. Lady let us know that she had to attend to other business. Had she been here--and the hon. Member for Sherwood (Mr. Tipping) will brief her on this--she certainly would have heard a wide array of views; yet three or four things stand out from this debate.
The hon. Member for Basildon (Angela Smith) said how sorry she was that the debate was not better attended. I agree with her entirely. This has been a very important debate, and it is a pity that more colleagues from both sides of the House were not here. My hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr. Tyrie) said that he thought that the debate was three years too late. I believe that he is right. We should have had a debate on the principles of House of Lords reform at the very beginning of this Parliament. If that had been followed by the establishment of a royal commission, by now we could have been within sight of consensus.
My hon. Friends the Members for Teignbridge (Mr. Nicholls) and for Tewkesbury (Mr. Robertson) both talked about our not having a blank sheet of paper, and we must all bear that in mind. We are not devising a constitution from scratch--we are building upon something. I believe that the Government have not handled this well, to put it mildly, but it is in the interests of the country that we now work together to create something that really will serve the people of this country through the coming century.
I will come to the wide range of views in a moment. However, there were one or two matters on which there was a degree of consensus. First, there was a general desire to see the Joint Committee established. A number of hon. Members referred to that. The right hon. Lady said that it would happen in due course, but most of those who commented on that remark, from both sides of the House, did not find it good enough. We believe that that Committee should be established, and established very soon. As the hon. Member for Cannock Chase said, there are matters that it can consider on the basis of a degree of consensus.
There has not been tremendous disagreement on the powers that the second Chamber should have. They should be broadly in line with the powers that it constitutionally enjoys at present, but it should be free and unfettered in the use of those powers, and not feel inhibited and restrained, as it has sometimes in the past. The hon. Gentleman made that point.
Coming through the debate has been a recognition that in the other place there is a degree of expertise and public service that we would be much the poorer without. Those themes have featured from time to time during the past few hours.
When we came to the Wakeham commission, however, not a vast number of Members gave an unrestrained welcome to it. The right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) is not in his place, and he explained why--he is celebrating his 30th anniversary of election to the House. I had to opt out of my dinner but he was able to go to his. I feel slightly envious. However, the right hon. Gentleman would say that, would he not? He was the deputy chairman of the Wakeham commission. He filled that role with his normal skill and aplomb, and he made a spirited defence of the commission.
The hon. Member for Corby (Mr. Hope) seemed to be broadly in agreement with the commission, although he made some churlish remarks about the way in which the House of Lords currently uses its powers. He seemed to want a toothless poodle to be replaced by a children's parliament, if I got him right.
The hon. Members for Burnley (Mr. Pike) and for Cannock Chase were both broadly sympathetic to the Wakeham commission, but they set it in the context of parliamentary reform. It is important that we recognise that we are considering one House of a bicameral system. We ignore that at our peril.
When we come to those who opposed the Wakeham commission, by Jove, what a galaxy of talent we have. Apart from the speeches of my hon. Friends the Members for Tewkesbury and for Aldershot--it sounds like the beginning of a refrain from a Shakespeare history play--we heard from the right hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Mr. Maclennan). By Jove, that was a vicious attack. The right hon. Gentleman is well known as a musician, but this evening he forsook the clavichord for the claymore, and we had a vicious assault on the Wakeham commission. I am sure that when Lord Wakeham reads it tomorrow, he will quake.
My hon. Friend the Member for Teignbridge defended the present system with those qualities of gentle tolerance and sensitivity for which he has become so well known in the House. He did so most eloquently. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke) attacked the Wakeham commission from an entirely different standpoint because he wants full-blooded elections. He wants an entirely elected second Chamber.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Maples) also attacked the Wakeham commission, but from a different standpoint again. He wants the status quo, but he wants to call the second Chamber the Senate. He also wants the Prime Minister to retain the powers of patronage rather than to see them bestowed upon PricewaterhouseCoopers, which he thought was the alternative.
The hon. Member for Pendle (Mr. Prentice), with that emollience which has endeared him to members of the Government Front Bench, said that he thought that the Wakeham commission's report was half-baked and just another new Labour fix. The hon. Gentleman is in his place and acknowledges that I am quoting him accurately. He will be able to bring out his own edition of how to lose friends and not to influence people when he retires from the House.
My hon. Friend the Member for Chichester said that the electorate will accept only a directly and fully elected House. I have seen little evidence of electoral demand for reform of the second Chamber. That was the position before the general election, during it and since. Nor have I seen much disapproval of the other place. However, my hon. Friend made his case, as he always does, with erudition and force. It is a case that must be listened to carefully.
The hon. Member for Aberdeen, North (Mr. Savidge) wants to have a proportionally representative elected second Chamber. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Mr. Fraser) made some discerning comments about the role of the second Chamber, but he believes that we must move towards reform in the near future.
All those disparate views show that there is no consensus either in the House or in either party. Speaking for my own party, it is clear that there are gradations of view at all levels. Those who advocate a full-blooded, wholly elected Chamber--whether Labour, Conservative
or Liberal Democrat--must face the logic of moving towards a system with a separation of powers, fixed terms for Parliament and a written constitution. There is a perfectly valid and legitimate case for that. We do not have such a system in this country at the moment, but I believe that the logic of the argument of those who want a wholly elected second Chamber leads inexorably in that direction.I also think that we have to answer certain criticisms when we talk of a directly elected House, which is why the present tendency of the official Opposition is to have a form of mixture. What about the Cross-Bench element? Most people would agree that parliamentarians who are independent of party make a special contribution to the other place.
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