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21 Jan 2003 : Column 201—continued
Mr. Greg Knight (East Yorkshire): May I ask the right hon. Gentleman what will happen after the vote and take him back to the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague)? Has the right hon. Gentleman seen today's edition of The Times, which says:
- "Blair will press his opposition to elected Lords"?
- "Tony Blair is preparing to intervene in the debate on Lords reform to make public his opposition to an elected Upper House.
The Prime Minister is to scupper demands by Labour MPs for a majority elected second Chamber".
Mr. Cook: Personally, I am very keen that we achieve a commanding majority for one of those seven options. Frankly, I cannot abide the prospect of continuing with the issue into another Parliament. I want to get rid of it in this Parliament, and it is in the interests of this Chamber that we do so. What will happen after the votes on 4 February, as the House has already agreed in terms of the Joint Committee's remit, is that the Joint Committee will work up a detailed proposal on the basis of the expression of view in this House and in the other place. I hope that we will give it a clear mandate and a clear steer on what it should work on.
Sir Patrick Cormack (South Staffordshire): Will the right hon. Gentleman confirm that the Government will have to take equal note of the votes in both Houses? Will he make it plain that all members of the Government, whether in the Cabinet or not, will be able to exercise a free vote as well as Back Benchers?
Mr. Cook: I have no doubt that all members of the Government will express their view and that, on many future occasions, their views will be raised with me by those on the Opposition Front Bench, but it is implicit in the fact that it will be a free vote that Government members must be free to express their view. If we were to reach a collective view, we would no longer have the free vote that I seek in this House.
Mr. James Arbuthnot (North-East Hampshire): Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Cook: I have a speech to make, which I would like to turn to at some time, but I shall give way.
Mr. Arbuthnot: Has the right hon. Gentleman just restated the principle of free votes? It is an important matter if he has.
Mr. Cook: Not consciously, and I am sure that if I have done so unconsciously it will be drawn to my attention swiftly.
Mr. John Bercow (Buckingham): Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Bercow: I was rather worried by the way in which, presumably consciously, in responding to the intervention of my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Mr. Knight), the right hon. Gentleman said that he hoped that there would be a commanding majority in this House for one option or another. Will he confirm in terms, as my right hon. Friend hoped he would, that the wish of this House will be reflected in subsequent legislation and eliminate from his reply the weasel word "commanding"?
Mr. Cook: I do not intend in any way to be weasel in the use of the word "commanding". On the contrary,
I hope that I was demonstrating that what we want to see is the settled will of the House. I hope that those who want reform of the second Chamber will not repeat the mistake that we have been through in the past of being too unwilling and too inflexible to find the centre of gravity on which we can all agree. We must emerge from the seven options not with one that has a narrow majority of one or two over the others; we must establish which one of the seven is most likely to reflect the settled will of this Chamber.
Norman Lamb (North Norfolk): Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
The right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks referred to the fact that there was some support in the Chamber for unicameralism. Early-day motion 529 records that 90 Members regret that they are not to be offered the Guy Fawkes option of doing away with the House of Lords in its entirety. I understand their impatience with the never-ending saga of reform, but before we send out for 36 barrels of gunpowder, I remind them that right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber fought the last election on a manifesto commitment to make the second Chamber more representative and democratic. We do not have a mandate to abolish it and it would not be proper for us to toy with abolition without first seeking the support of the electorate—which would mean no progress for the rest of this Parliament. I urge all right hon. and hon. Members who do not want the House of Lords to continue in its present form—including all those who might privately prefer to do away with it—to express their preference for a better second Chamber by choosing between the broad options that will be before us.
Pete Wishart : As the right hon. Gentleman said, this is a matter for the whole House, not just for the Labour party. He has failed to give an adequate explanation for not providing the option of abolition. Can he explain further why we are not being allowed the option of abolishing the House of Lords?
Mr. Cook: Because it is a self-evident fact that only members of the Labour party are bound by the Labour party manifesto. It is repeatedly a distressing experience of mine that other right hon. and hon. Members do not feel bound by the Labour party manifesto. My life would be much simpler if they did.
The options flow from the Joint Committee's recommendations. It would not be proper for me to interfere or second guess what those options should be, but they logically follow from the remit that we gave the Joint Committee—approved by this House—which instructed it to come forward with proposals for reforming the second Chamber, not doing away with it.
Norman Lamb: One likely outcome of the votes is that this House will vote in a very different way from the other place, with a strong majority for a substantially elected second Chamber. Given the importance that the Government place on the primacy of this House in any
future arrangement, will the Leader of the House and the Government give more weight to the outcome in this House than to that in the other place?
Mr. Cook: One reason why the Joint Committee urged upon us this general debate on principle before the vote was so that both Houses could retire to their respective Libraries and study what was said in the other place. I hope that right hon. and hon. Members will take the opportunity of this debate clearly to record the balance of views on a reformed second Chamber, so that the other place may take it into account when it votes. After the votes, in the first instance the matter will go to the Joint Committee, and we look forward to its advice. As Leader of the House, I shall pay particular attention to the views of right hon. and hon. Members. That is partly why it is so important that our decision on reform should reflect commanding and clear evidence of the settled will of this place.
Another point raised by the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks concerned a mixed membership of elected and appointed Members. I offer some comfort to those who are troubled by the idea of a mixed membership. As the Joint Committee observed, the House of Lords has always had a mixed membership. It has happily rubbed along with a mixed membership of hereditary and life peers for half a century. The current House of Lords is a rich kaleidoscope of Members—[Hon. Members: "Very rich."]—They embrace hereditary peers, some very rich; life peers; bishops; and law lords, some of whom are even richer than hereditary peers. They include peers who take a party Whip and a substantial number of Cross Benchers who take none. Nor would it be unusual to have a second Chamber with a mixed membership. About one third of all second Chambers around the world have a mixed membership of elected and appointed members.
The Joint Committee Chairman has just reminded the House that the Committee set out five principles for the second Chamber's composition. It would be difficult to come up with an option that meets all five principles without the result being some form of mixed membership. The first two principles are legitimacy and representativeness. In a democratic society, it is commonly held that legitimacy flows from the accountability and authority that arises from election. No doubt that explains the public's response to consultation on the White Paper, when 89 per cent. called for a second Chamber in which at least a majority of Members were elected.
It might be helpful to remind the House of how we ended up with the current process. It is easy for me to remember because every step along the way is imprinted on my memory. The White Paper's proposal for an elected proportion of 20 per cent. did not command public confidence because it was seen to be too little. Personally, I am deeply sceptical whether we shall capture public confidence by the simple device of removing from the package even the 20 per cent. that was to have been elected. I noticed that yesterday's YouGov poll found that a mere 3 per cent. of respondents favoured an all-appointed second Chamber. That is a slender base on which to build a major constitutional settlement.
Respect for the principle of election is so powerful in our nation that even the hereditary peers have adopted it to fill a vacancy among their ranks: as a result of the
death of Viscount Oxfuird, there is to be a by-election. The essential qualification for candidates is to be have been born a hereditary peer. The right to vote is confined to those who are already peers. So that the choice will be popular among the circles in which hereditary peers move, Country Life is helpfully carrying out a poll of its readers on who they would like to see elected. I understand that the runaway front runner is the Duke of Devonshire. That may be democracy, but not as we know it. It seems to me that we will have difficulty carrying the public with us unless our reforms introduce a more substantial democratic element on a rather wider franchise.Some of my colleagues are concerned that if we let any elected Members into the second Chamber, it will start to get above itself—and the more elected Members, the more uppity it will get. Yet as the Public Administration Committee pointed out, three quarters of second Chambers around the world are wholly or largely elected. Almost invariably, the second Chamber remains the subordinate Chamber—and remains the second Chamber in systems of parliamentary government where the Administration is formed from the majority in the first Chamber.
It is possible to keep a democratic second Chamber subordinate by law and convention; I do not believe that it is sustainable to keep a second Chamber subordinate by denying it legitimacy. That not only weakens the second Chamber, but undermines Parliament.
The Joint Committee pointed out other qualities desirable in a second Chamber. They include independence from the party machine, particularly among Cross Benchers; and the expertise brought to its deliberations by Members who have achieved distinction in professions outside politics. The Joint Committee makes the point that if we are to preserve independent Members in the second Chamber and experts with distinction in other walks of life, it is desirable not to make election the sole route of entry. All of us in this Chamber have difficulty comprehending why that should be the case, but it is a fact of life that only a minority of the population relish standing for election. It would be a mistake if we were to close entirely the door to the second Chamber to people who have acquired a lifetime of expertise but are not attracted to submitting themselves to the roughhouse of the electoral hustings.
The royal commission, the White Paper and the Public Administration Committee all concluded that 20 per cent. of seats in the second Chamber should be filled by independent appointment from outside political parties. As the last of those reports pointed out, a wholly elected Chamber would leave little or no room for people who are independent of party.
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