| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
21 Jan 2003 : Column 209—continued
Mr. Clelland: Does the hon. Gentleman suggest that, if the House voted for a partly elected second Chamber, it would inevitably lead to a wholly elected second Chamber?
Mr. Tyler: No, I suggest nothing of the sort, but, as a long-serving Member, the hon. Gentleman knows that no Parliament can commit a future Parliament. We cannot say that there will never ever be a fully elected House. What I am saying is that those who wait for perfection wait a very long time and hand a weapon to those who want to remain with total imperfection. That is important. It may be that the Prime Minister floated the idea that the second Chamber should remain as it is simply to spur those of us who believe that the status quo is not acceptable to move on. I hope that that will be the position of the House.
I want to deal with two myths. The first, to which reference has already been made, is that strengthening the second House of Parliament automatically weakens the first. I draw the attention of hon. Members to the excellent letter from the members of the Select Committee on Public Administration. It is not a zero-sum result. We can create an improved situation for our House and for the other House if we see it as a total parliamentary improvement in our ability to scrutinise both the legislation and the executive action of the Government of the day. The Committee wrote:
- "Reform is not a zero-sum game in which advances for one chamber are inevitably threats to the other."
It is extremely important to emphasise the point made by the Chairman of the Committee that a great deal depends on the type of appointment and the type of election. I hope all hon. Members have examined paragraph 53 of the report, in which we say that we want the two Houses to be distinct and complementary, so the method of election needs to be distinct and complementary. One of the few matters on which I disagree with the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks is that I do not believe that if the elections for the two Houses are held on the same day, where one election is by definition to create the assembly that will appoint the Government and the Prime Minister of the day, that will be a healthy context in which to elect the other House to do a quite different job. We still have to think that through carefully. A distinct system and a distinct day for a distinct purpose will help to differentiate the two Houses, and I believe that to be extremely important.
I believe that the second Chamber can perform an excellent complementary role to that of the first, and I believe that by making sure that those distinctions are adequately covered by the detail, we can make real progress to achieve that purpose. A former member of a former Administration, the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks, made an interesting comment about the nature of our responsibilities in terms of the Government of the day. I shall quote him, as I thought that his remarks were an admirable summary of the point. He said that a Government with authority do not need to legislate with impunity. I hope that I repeat his words correctly, as that view comes from experience in government, not just on the Opposition Benches.
Mr. Tyler: The other myth is the myth of cost. I suppose that we in the House should not be surprised that the media reacted to the Joint Committee report not by considering the major constitutional issues, but by going on about how many hundreds of thousands or millions of pounds it might cost to introduce an element of democracy into Parliament. For goodness sake, what do they want us to do? Do they want us to be more effective, or just cheaper? There is an extremely important issue here that we need to address this afternoon.
The Leader of the House said that a House of 600 would be over the top. I entirely agree. I have expressed that view in Committee and I hope to continue to do so. That figure was a notional possible long-term aim, rather than a transitional short-term necessity that we could remove as soon as possible. It was based on the anticipation that there might have to be a considerable number of appointed part-timers. The two are not necessarily synonymous, I agree: very often, the part-timer may not be appointed, and the appointed Member may not be a part-timer. However, the assumption was that, if there were a large number of appointees, the workload of the second House would require a big House. That applies only if there are a large number of appointees.
Having made that decision, we could not differentiate between the two types of Members in terms of the way in which they are paid. Imagine an elected Member saying, "Look, I am a full-timer in this job. I need a salary comparable to that of House of Commons Members. They are getting £50,000-plus"—this is in a few years' time—"so I must get £40,000-plus." We cannot differentiate between different types of Member, or at least I hope that we will not, so once the elected Member has £40,000-plus, all the appointed Members, who may be part-time, will also demand £40,000-plus. Whatever the total number of appointees, 600 Members will necessarily mean a very expensive House.
However, the opposite applies. The larger the number of elected Members, the smaller the House can be, because it is anticipated that more of them will be full-time.
Let us suppose that, as the Leader of the House suggested, there is a House of some 300 or 400 Members at most. The cost would then come down. I have some figures to illustrate the point. If 80 per cent. of a larger, 600-Member House were appointed and each of them
were getting £40,000, the total bill would be £24 million. If one reduces the size of the House by having more elected full-time Members, the bill immediately comes down.Even in the terms that we set out in the Committee's report, the media have completely misunderstood the point. The more elected Members, the cheaper an effective second Chamber. I hope that we can now dispose of the myth. The expensive option is clearly a continuation of the current flawed patronage system as a component of the second Chamber.
Mr. Tom Watson (West Bromwich, East): Is the hon. Gentleman suggesting that there should be 400 Members paid £50,000 a year? Is he including their secretarial and research allowances in his proposition?
Mr. Tyler: I am sorry if the hon. Gentleman misunderstood my point. If we have a smaller House because the Members are elected and full-time in the main, it will be cheaper. There is no way that we could differentiate in salary between the elected Members and the appointed Members. Everybody is agreed that if Members of the second Chamber are to be on equal terms, we cannot make such a distinction. I personally believe that our elected second Chamber need be only 100 strong. If the Senate of the United States of America can manage with 100 members, I see no reason why we should not have 100, but I accept that, with that number, it will be difficult to get the mix of appointed and elected Members that some hon. Members wish to achieve.
Mr. Stephen McCabe (Birmingham, Hall Green): The hon. Gentleman says that a smaller but fully elected House would be cheaper, and he bases his assumptions solely on potential salary figures. Has he read paragraph 59 of the report, or does he recall discussing that in Committee? Would he care to comment on the figures quoted there—£85,000 as opposed to £380,000 per Member to support elected Members? I think that he will find that that comes to rather more than the figure that he just gave the House.
Mr. Tyler: The hon. Gentleman misses the point. It would be possible to have a very cheap house only with retention of the status quo. I suspect that he may be one of the dinosaur fraternity and wishes to retain it.
If there is any elected element in the new second Chamber it will inevitably set the level of remuneration for everybody. Therefore, a larger number of appointed members will necessitate a higher-cost second Chamber. We do not want democracy on the cheap, but we want it to be cost-effective. The most cost-effective House would clearly be one that is predominantly elected and therefore enabled to be a smaller House.
Mr. Bercow: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Tyler: I am about to conclude, and I am aware that many hon. Members wish to speak.
The votes on 4 February will clearly be extremely important. We have had a reassurance from the Leader of the House that his party at least will have a free vote.
I understand that the Conservatives will have a free vote. I should emphasise that my party will have a free vote. We are rather more united, I suspect, than the other two parties. There will, I hope, be one or two dissidents, just to demonstrate that I am not exerting any undue influence on my colleagues. We believe in the main that, as we have said for a very long time, the elected component should be 80 per cent. or more. That is an absolute minimum. We hope that it will be a smaller House. It would be largely democratic, but it would also be more hard-working.When we hear people enthusiastically endorse how Cross Benchers bring so much to the House of Lords in its present form, we should bear it in mind that they are not good attenders or good voters. Therefore, it is important to recognise that if we are to expect a second Chamber to exercise a degree of effective scrutiny of legislation and executive action, we need more members taking an active part in its activities.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |