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Mr. Crispin Blunt (Reigate): On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I have been listening to my hon. Friends' arguments and your rulings from the Chair on points of order. They have convinced me to prepare a manuscript amendment that is real, rather than hypothetical. I hope that you will accept it as an amendment to the motion.
Madam Deputy Speaker: Manuscript amendments are for the consideration of the Speaker, and if it is sent to his Office, it will be considered in the usual way.
Mr. Heald: The Government have made their allegations, but they should do the responsible thing and use this time for reflection. Instead of being stubborn, arrogant and intransigent, they should listen, learn and look at what all sides are saying. Then we could move forward on the basis of the constructive proposals made by the Opposition and others. Unless the manuscript amendment is accepted and there is some change during the course of debate, we shall divide on the motion.
2.2 pm
Mr. Stuart Bell (Middlesbrough): I congratulate the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald) on his new role: he clearly enjoys it and has kept the House amused and lively.
I have not fully understood the terms of the contingency motion, but I am assuming that in the light of the Lords' behaviour the Prime Minister will use the next occasion available to him to visit Her Majesty to recommend that more peers should be created so that the House of Lords respects the will of an elected Parliament. In that way, if we are here on Monday and Tuesday, we shall be debating the possibility of a new
Parliament Bill that will limit further the powers of the other place to prevent the will of the elected representatives from being respected.
Mr. Redwood: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Bell: I will be happy to give way in due course. We have plenty of time. The Conservative Benches are galvanised and I look forward to hearing from the right hon. Gentleman. The Lords have voted once, but they have to vote again, so we have plenty of time to have a full debate. Before I give way, however, I will set the foundations of my contribution: I am assuming that we may expect the Prime Minister to recommend the creation of more peers, and that on Monday and Tuesday we shall be looking for a new Parliament Bill.
Mr. Redwood: Can the hon. Gentleman explain to the House how that could possibly work? The problem is that once Her Majesty has graciously agreed to create a peer, there is no requirement for that peer to follow the Labour Whip. Indeed, most of them do not seem to bother.
Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. We are straying wide of the motion.
Mr. Bell: I shall stick with the motion, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I remind the right hon. Gentleman that in 1911 there was no difficulty in the Prime Minister advising the Leader of the Lords that the recommendation had been made and that the King had graciously accepted it. There followed a Parliament Bill. There is no logistical difficulty about such a recommendation, and given the attitude of the other place, I imagine that Her Majesty would graciously accept it.
As the Leader of the House said, this is not a question concerning the principle of Government legislation. That was debated last night and we shall not go into it again. Many of my hon. Friends voted with the Conservatives. That is a matter for them and their conscience. If they can sleep at night, that is fine. They have made their point. Now we face a constitutional question: the upper House is preventing the elected House of Commons from exercising its will in the interests of the people.
Mr. Evans: Is the hon. Gentleman saying that if the Prime Minister created sufficient peers from among his Labour cronies to sit in the House of Lords to ensure that there was a sufficient majority to get everything through that the Government wished, there would be no need—
Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. We are not going into the merits of various ways of selecting or electing members of the House of Lords now.
Mr. Bell: I am grateful for your protection, Madam Deputy Speaker.
In response to the hon. Gentleman's question, it was a Liberal Prime Minister who recommended to His Majesty the creation of peers. That was accepted and there followed a Parliament Bill. That would not change
the nature of the Parliament Act 1949. There would still be a pause in the passage of legislation, and certainly the Lords would have the right to amend legislation, fulfil their constitutional function and send legislation back to us. That constitutional position is not being altered. If we are here on Monday and Tuesday, I would like to debate the reasons why we should have a new Parliament Bill; why this House is sitting on Monday and Tuesday under a contingency motion; and why this elected assembly should never again put ourselves in this position.
Mr. Nick Hawkins (Surrey Heath): As the hon. Gentleman knows, I have a great respect for his interest in the way in which both Houses operate. Would he be interested to know—I can send him the details later—that one of the peers appointed by the present Prime Minister to the upper House recently wrote to me to say that she was unaware that she was still listed as a Labour peer, having moved to the Cross Benches because of her professional position, and that she rarely had time to sit in the other place? Does he agree that if we are considering the role of the upper House we must look at whether those appointed by the current Prime Minister are doing the job for which they were appointed?
Mr. Bell: The same holds true for those who owe their peerage to what happened 400 years ago under Charles I, but I respect your counsel, Madam Deputy Speaker, and will not get into that debate.
The powers of the Lords have been referred to. I mentioned the Parliament Act 1911 and I will refer briefly to the Parliament Act 1949. If on Monday and Tuesday the House sits under this contingency motion and if we debate the possibility of a new Parliament Act, it would not interfere with the Parliament Act 1949, which gives the Lords a delaying power. It would be perfectly possible for the Prime Minister to visit Her Majesty on Sunday, for her to accept the recommendation and for us to debate a new Parliament Bill on Monday and Tuesday. That could be done in such a way that the Queen could refer to it in her speech on Wednesday.
Mr. Bacon: Will the hon. Gentleman say who he thinks should be the arbiter on whether the House of Lords is correctly fulfilling its constitutional functions? Should that question be determined simply by the majority, for the time being, in this House, or by wider considerations, including public opinion and a sense of consent throughout the nation? If the answer is the latter, surely it is worth listening to what the House of Lords has to say.
Mr. Bell: Without diverting into a debate wider than the motion before us, I can tell the hon. Gentleman that the answer is very simple: the Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949 provide the upper House with certain clear powers. Those are revising powers and powers to delay within a set time. As we have heard today, the House of Lords has respected that situation, and it made some 90 amendments, which the Government have accepted. That is the constitutional position.
What we are seeing today and what we saw last night, as my hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley (Kali Mountford) said, is that the House of Lords no longer
respects the will of the people. Without getting into a wider debate, I can say that this House gave a clear view last night; a majority of 17 is quite sufficient. The late Winston Churchill said that a majority of one is enough. The will of this House was expressed, and this motion is a result of the Lords not wanting to respect the wishes of our elected representatives.
Mr. Greg Knight (East Yorkshire): May I take the hon. Gentleman back to the terms of the motion? Many hon. Members on this side of the House would agree with it if it did not contain paragraph (1). Why can we not have questions next week?
Mr. Bell: That, of course, is a matter for Madam Deputy Speaker, not for me. We have already had a suggestion for a manuscript amendment, and the Corridor and the Speaker's door are open if anyone wants to pursue that course. If manuscript amendments were to be accepted by the Speaker, I would be happy to move one saying that we ought to be here on Monday and Tuesday to debate the prospect of a new Parliament Bill.
Mr. Bryant: My hon. Friend strongly made the point that on two separate occasions this House has already made its views known extremely forcefully on both the Bills that have still to return from the House of Lords. Opposition Members have said that the Lords has every right to make the House of Commons think a second time, and it surely does, but not a third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh time, because in the end it should be the democratic Chamber that wins through. Would my hon. Friend suggest in his new Parliament Bill that there should be only one opportunity for the Lords to ask the Commons to review its position?
Mr. Bell: Again staying within the terms of the debate, I shall answer that by referring to a point made to me by my right hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge and Chryston (Mr. Clarke). Not in this Parliament, and certainly not since 1997, have we seen the House of Lords acting in the way that it did last night. Getting to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Mr. Bryant), certainly a new Parliament Act should reduce still further the delaying power of the Lords.
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