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We come to the point about what happens if people are elected to the other end of the building in a way that is more representative of the views of the public than the way in which we are elected. The change in my lifetime is that when I was born, in the ’50s, 95 per cent. of the votes went to the two largest parties—Conservative and Labour—whereas now only two thirds of the votes go to the two largest parties. In the case of the great ’45 Government, during whose tenure the famous Salisbury-Addison doctrine was agreed between a Conservative Lords and a Labour Government with a majority in the Commons, something in the order of 35 per cent. of the total public voted Labour. At the last few elections, as the hon. Gentleman knows, just over a fifth of the public voted Labour. Parliament and the Government do not have the same authority in terms of the number of voters or the share of the voters supporting them.
There will be an argument and that will force this House to think about whether it can sustain Governments on the basis of so small a share of the electorate. The issue that will come on to the agenda is how we can give more authority to the Government elected here. The hon. Gentleman knows what my answer will be: a more proportionate electoral system. Let me say as a postscript that I am not against single-Member constituencies being represented here. That is not my party’s view, but it is my view. I understand the argument. For me, having a proportionate Commons does not necessarily mean that we have to lose the link with our constituents, which we all value. The Roy Jenkins commission, commissioned by the Labour Government, came up with a proposal that would answer that conundrum satisfactorily and that could command consensus.
Simon Hughes: I will give way to the eminent Chairman of the Public Administration Committee and academic.
Dr. Wright: The hon. Gentleman has been involved in the Committee thinking about conventions. Does he think that we have an established convention—this relates to his last remarks—that says that no single party from now on will properly have an overall majority in the House of Lords?
Simon Hughes: I do. The evidence given to us and the evidence as to what people wish suggests that in other than the most exceptional circumstances—that is my caveat—that is now the status quo and the agreed convention. [ Interruption. ] Let me finish. One of the interesting debates that is linked to that is how we guarantee that as far as we can. One of the ways of doing that is to retain a proportion of people without party allegiance. If that proportion is 20 per cent., for example, by definition we reduce the chances of any one party having a 50 per cent. share or more, because the 20 per cent. are a block and would help to prevent that.
Sir Malcolm Rifkind:
The hon. Gentleman has got himself into a bit of a muddle. If that is a convention, it is a convention that might be wrecked by an elected upper House if the electorate so voted. Surely he would
not suggest simply appointing new life peers each time the electorate inconveniently chose to elect an overwhelming number of Members of one party.
Simon Hughes: The right hon. and learned Gentleman tries to lead me to anticipate a debate that we will certainly have. The hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright) asked directly whether I thought that the arrangement was a convention. The Committee was not asked to adjudicate on the matter, so it did not formally propose that there should be such a convention. There were proposals on which we reached a unanimous view. The right hon. and learned Gentleman was an eminent member of the Committee, so he heard the evidence and he will remember the debate. That debate was held on the basis that it was the settled will of those involved in the House of Lords at present that no single party would be expected to have a majority in the second Chamber in the foreseeable future. That is the best answer that I can give him about my interpretation of the general view.
David Howarth: Surely the answer to the question lies in paragraph 61 of the Committee’s report, as do the answers to most of these questions. The paragraph shows that the Committee was not saying what the conventions would be for a reformed House, only what they are now.
Simon Hughes: Of course that is the answer, and the purpose of my earlier intervention on the Leader of the House was to point that out. Paragraph 61 set out the position at present, but made it clear that it was not for the Committee to predict the position after a change to the structure. We were not asked or given the authority to make such a prediction, and we did not do that. We recognised not that the relationship would change, but that it would be questioned. We recognised that the question would come back, not that the answer would be different.
Let me make a last postscript on the future—
Simon Hughes: If the right hon. Gentleman will allow me, this will relate to something that he said.
Part of the description of where Labour will go next was given at the end of the last Labour manifesto, which says:
“Having refused for decades to accept any reform of the archaic House of Lords, some”—
“now claim to support a fully elected House. The choice is forward with new Labour to modern institutions and more power than ever devolved to communities and successful local authorities. Or back with the Tories to a government indifferent to the health of our democracy and negligent of our institutions.”
That was an unfair representation of the progressives in the Conservative party, but at least it committed the Labour party to going “forward...to modern institutions”. In the year 2007, no one can suggest that a House of Lords elected by nobody is a modern legislative chamber. One cannot humanly, possibly, even begin to argue that—
Sir Patrick Cormack: Oh yes you can.
Simon Hughes: No, it is not possible to argue credibly or with authority that such a House of Lords is a modern institution. It might be authentic, a good idea, or wonderful history, but it is not a modern institution.
Liberal Democrats are in favour of a two-chamber Parliament. We want the legislature to be stronger vis-Ã -vis the Executive. We want better pre and post-legislative scrutiny. My noble Friend Lord Wallace said yesterday that fast legislation is like fast food: both are bad for citizens’ health—we agree. We believe in reforming the other place. We very much believe that it was right for the Committee to conduct its exercise and reach its conclusions.
Mr. MacNeil: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Simon Hughes: Not at this second. The hon. Gentleman will rightly wish to make a speech if he catches your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, as will other hon. Members.
Let me add to what I have said about the primacy of the Commons. That primacy will be secured by the fact that nearly all Ministers, including the Prime Minister and the principal Secretaries of State of the main Departments, are Members of this House. By definition, that means that this is the prime Chamber. Additionally, this is the only Chamber that anyone contemplates being elected at one time. This is the place where Governments are made and unmade, the place where the Ministers are and the place that votes Supply.
I disagreed with what the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton said about the Salisbury-Addison convention. I am absolutely against junking history when there is no need to do so. I studied history and I love it, and it is important that we remember our history. However, the Salisbury-Addison convention, named after two Marquesses of Salisbury and one Viscount Addison from the past two centuries, has changed, so we need a new convention. In parenthesis, the Salisbury-Addison convention did not bind our party, because we were not party to it. It was a convention between two parties only, made in entirely different political circumstances. Under this convention, it was agreed that manifesto Bills, as the term is generally understood, would not be blocked by the Lords, and that Government Bills would normally not be blocked by the Lords.
Occasionally, the Government try to misrepresent things, as they did in the case of identity cards recently. They pretended that it was a Government Bill, because they had said that they would introduce identity cards, but the manifesto clearly said that the scheme would be voluntary, and rolled out slowly. However, the Government then came back with a Bill that said that the scheme would be compulsory, so we cannot always take them at their word. The convention is different now, and we Liberal Democrats accept, as does the Committee, that the convention should bind the House of Lords and the House of Commons.
The right hon. Member for Maidenhead made a strong point about secondary legislation, and the Committee was very clear on the subject. It is
important to note that the Lords do not normally reject secondary legislation, but they have the power to do so. The Committee set out six occasions on which the Lords must have, and retain, that power. The first occasion is when special attention has been drawn to the importance of the instrument by the relevant Joint Committee. The second occasion is when the order is a skeleton Bill, and Parliament was told, “The detail will come later; that’s when you can decide”. The third occasion concerns orders made under the Regulatory Reform Act 2001 or the Human Rights Act 1998. The fourth relates to orders that specifically require super-affirmative procedure—that is, double-lock yes votes in both Houses. The fifth occasion is Northern Ireland orders, because of the unusual lack of democratic decision making and scrutiny for Northern Ireland legislation, and cases in which we are devolving primary legislative competence, for example to Wales or Scotland. The sixth occasion is when we are persuaded to delegate a power on the basis that we will have a vote later, as was the case with the provisions on jury trial included in the Criminal Justice Act 2003.
The Committee hinted that we need a process for considering the whole issue of secondary legislation, including European legislation. I support that, as do my colleagues; there is too much legislation of that kind, and there is not enough parliamentary control of it. I support the idea that we should be able to amend secondary legislation, as that would help us to do our job better.
There was agreement that we will not do what Labour’s manifesto wants us to do and set a fixed time in which pieces of legislation must go through the Lords. The current system has not been abused. The long time that it has sometimes taken to get a Bill through the Lords has normally been due to the fact that the Government held it back at various stages. The danger is that if there were fixed times, or a limit to the number of times that the Lords could reject a Bill, the Government would play games. They would delay things until the last minute, and manipulate the timetable. We must allow the Lords ultimately to say no. The result is not that the Government lose their business—the Parliament Acts are their safeguard—but that they may have to reintroduce the Bill in the subsequent Session, as happened in recent times with legislation on jury trial for serious fraud cases. If we had fixed-term Parliaments, things would be different, but we do not have them yet, and until we do, we must keep the right of the Lords both to decide what is a reasonable time, and to send work back for us to reconsider.
I pay tribute to the Lords, who have done a fantastic job. They have often saved the country from legislation that was far too authoritarian or oppressive. They have upheld human rights when the Government of the day persuaded the House of Commons not to do so. That is not to say that if there were elected people among them, they would not do just as fantastic a job. The fact that they are not elected is not a precondition of their doing a wonderful job. I hope that they will continue to be confirmed in the importance of their secondary but hugely important role of helping us to legislate well and hold the Executive to account.
We sign up to the final two conclusions, too. It is absolutely correct that there was no proposal that we
should legislate for conventions, as there must be flexibility. Such legislation would be a straitjacket; it would be nonsense and a ridiculous inhibition. There was no suggestion that there should be a change in the financial privilege of the House of Commons, or that it should not have pre-eminence in such things.
In the end, the report turned out to be an important piece of work and, surprisingly, it commanded consensus in a large Committee of both Houses. It gives a clear statement of the position—a “state of the nation” view, as it were, of Parliament in 2007. Having made that clear, we can improve procedures, do more to hold Government to account, and improve the way in which we scrutinise legislation. We need to do all those things, but, knowing the facts, we can do away with prejudices and decide whether we want to reform the second Chamber. My colleagues and I hope that we will create a senate that is wholly or predominantly elected. It would not change the primacy of the Commons, but it would change the nature of Parliament, which is a good thing.
3.45 pm
Mr. Alan Williams (Swansea, West) (Lab): I am for the opportunity to make a few random, rambling and sceptical observations. I start, like every other Member who has spoken, by thanking the Committee for producing an excellent report, which is overwhelmingly important in its unequivocal emphasis on the primacy of the Commons.
Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman), I remember the strange alliance of two great parliamentarians—the Labour Member, Michael Foot, and the Conservative Member, Enoch Powell—that was forged to frustrate attempts to introduce such changes in the 1960s. They were both House of Commons men and they both valued the standing and the unique status of the House of Commons. We must take account of the points made by my right hon. Friend, who offered us the criterion, “If it ain’t broke, why fix it?”
In yesterday’s debate in the other place, Lord Falconer said that the House of Lords performs “exceptionally well” and
“does a hugely impressive job”.
He said that the second Chamber has been “transformed” and is
“an effective revising Chamber that adds substantial value”.—[ Official Report, House of Lords, 17 January 2007; Vol. 688, c. 577.]
I assume that, as a fellow member of the Government, the Leader of the House supports all those observations.
Lord Howe put the role of the Lords into perspective by giving two simple facts. First, 40 per cent. of amendments tabled in the Lords are subsequently accepted. I suspect that many Members here wish that 40 per cent. of their amendments were accepted. More revealingly, he pointed out that on only seven occasions in the life of the Parliament Act, which is nearing its century, has the Commons had to call on its powers. The notion that something is broken and needs to be repaired is not borne out by the experience of
Government Ministers or by the historic facts about the relationship between the Lords and the Commons.
Mr. Williams: I am sorry, I will not give way.
In 1997, the former Labour Back Bencher Tam Dalyell and I were equally sceptical about devolution. In one of my speeches, I said that the trouble with the devolution proposals before Parliament was that they were a “constitutional...mystery tour”. That is precisely what has taken place.
Mr. MacNeil: It is not over yet.
Mr. Williams: I should be grateful if the hon. Gentleman would allow me to make progress.
In the past two weeks, the Presiding Officer in the Welsh Assembly said that by 2010 he would like the Assembly to be in the position that the Scottish Parliament is in now. In Scotland, an election is being fought on a proposition to move from devolution to independence.
Mr. Jim Devine (Livingston) (Lab): The nationalists are all over the place. On television last night, the leader of the Scottish Nationalist party, the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond), stated that if Scotland became independent it would still use the pound. Is that not extraordinary?
Mr. Williams: I am grateful for that information. All is not lost. I should have thought that as good Scots, any Scottish party would cherish its pounds.
If we move to the process of election, the big question is whether it sustains consensus. None of us knows. All we can do is make value judgment assessments. We may be right; we may be wrong. No one can produce in advance evidence to prove the case. All we can do is draw upon experience.
This is my 43rd year in the House, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton has been here nearly as long. As a politician, it seems to me beyond credibility that if Members of the other place are elected they will not try to push the boundaries, as Wales is pushing for more and as Scotland is pushing for more.
Mr. Williams: Please—I ask the hon. Gentleman to let me finish my point.
In its new form, the Lords is unlikely to want just to fulfil the role of second-thinking the House of Commons. Indeed, Members of the House of Lords will be there because they are politicians, and as politicians they will have to be re-elected, so there is a democratic imperative. They must be seen—
Simon Hughes: They will have to be elected, but only for one fixed term.
Mr. Williams: Will there not be a democratic imperative? I see—I thought the proposal was about democracy.
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