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Members will need to convince people that they should be re-elected. Is it credible that young politicians will go into the House of Lords and say, “We’re going to run it in the fuddy-duddy way it was run before”? That will not happen. There will be enormous internal pressures for the Lords to enhance their powers, at the expense of this House.
Simon Hughes: So that we are clear, I think that the proposal that commands the widest support among those who wish to see elected Members of the upper Chamber is that they should be elected, but only once. They would be elected for, say, 12 years.
Mr. Williams: That is the most absurd proposition I have ever heard—Members of the Lords being elected for life.
Sir Gerald Kaufman: Recently I was in Syria on a private visit. A leading Syrian, hearing that I was a United Kingdom Member of Parliament, asked me, “How do you become a United Kingdom Member of Parliament? Are you appointed for life?” Now that appears to be Liberal Democrat policy.
Mr. Williams: In fairness, I probably misunderstood. My recollection is that there is a proposition that Members of the upper Chamber should be allowed to stand for only one term.
Sir Patrick Cormack: That is indeed absurd. If Members were elected once and did not have to go back to their electorate or be accountable to them, that would create the most unaccountable set of Members of Parliament possible.
Mr. Williams: I am beginning to realise that I should give way more often. The interventions are making a better speech for me than I can make for myself.
I want to be brief, as there is not enough time to go over the whole range of issues. There is a further problem, but it will not affect me as I am retiring at the end of this Parliament—and it depends whether Members are elected for just one term; I was not aware that there was consensual agreement—in that Members of this House will have another Member of Parliament shadowing them in their constituencies. They may be of the same party, or they may not be. If not, they will not be aiming to do Members of this House any good. Members here need to think of their futures. I am at the stage when I think of my past, and much of it I cannot even remember.
I have merely floated a couple of what I would call heretical thoughts. As my value judgments are no better than anyone else’s, we have to rely on a touch of realism and think about how any proposals would work in practice. When the Leader of the House produces his White Paper, I hope that he will remember that Parliament is not broken and does not need repairing.
3.55 pm
Sir Malcolm Rifkind (Kensington and Chelsea) (Con):
I pay tribute to the wise comments of the Father of the House, the right hon. Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Williams). Perhaps the most memorable
thing that will come out of this debate will not so much be a new Cunningham doctrine as a new Kaufman doctrine. Given the implication of the concept, “If it’s working, don’t fix it”, at first I thought that the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman) was going to make a passionate defence of the idea of retaining an entirely hereditary House of Lords, but I realise that he has also described himself as a fiery socialist, so perhaps that is how one squares that particular circle.
I was privileged to serve on the Joint Committee on Conventions, which was one of those Committees of Parliament that generated more light than heat and was very worth while. Any debate that involves the future of the upper House is bound to be controversial. I hope that the Leader of the House will forgive me if I say that this Government’s record in that regard over the past 10 years has not been one of their more conspicuous successes. It was entirely understandable that a newly elected Labour Government might wish to contemplate the removal of the hereditary peers, but on the principle that if it works, do not fix it, the least that the nation might have been entitled to expect was that the Government would not move towards reforming the House of Lords until they already had a clear view of what they wished to replace it with. Yet here we are, 10 years later, with dramatic changes already having been made to the upper House, but still unaware of what the Government’s proposals will be, although we are promised a White Paper in the near future.
Against that background, when the Joint Committee was first established there was inevitably great suspicion, and rightly so, about the Government’s motives. Some wondered whether they were simply trying to demonstrate that they had a policy, with the establishment of the Committee being part of that process. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) said, some worried that what the Government really wanted to do was to try to freeze the existing conventions in advance of any change in the composition of the House, in the belief that codification would make that much more likely to happen.
If that was the Government’s approach, it completely backfired when the Committee reached the conclusion of its deliberations. There was unanimity not only among the members of the Committee, but among those who gave evidence to it. Politicians and academics, as well as the Clerks of both Houses, made it clear that the Government’s preference for codification was foolish and counterproductive. The Committee not only came down against codification, but inferred, even if it did not say so explicitly, that the whole idea of reforming the composition of the upper House without opening up a vital and fundamental debate about the existing conventions and whether they needed to be changed was something that the Government and Parliament had to take into account.
One would not deduce from the introduction to the Government’s response that the Committee had undermined their central position. The Government say that they are
“very grateful for the work of the Joint Committee”,
“accept the Joint Committee’s analysis of the effect of all the conventions”,
that they accept its recommendations and conclusions, and that the report
“accurately defines the current relationship between the Lords and the Commons.”
One would not think that the whole idea of codification had been blown out of the water. Even more fundamentally in the longer term, one would not think that the Joint Committee is telling the Government that one cannot ignore the challenge that will be made to the existing conventions on the relationship between the two Houses if an elected element is introduced into the composition of the Lords. I want to make a couple of points about that. None of us knows the consequences of introducing a partially or wholly elected element into the House of Lords. However, two things are clear. First, the Government will not determine that outcome by themselves. They are entitled to a view, but they will be only one of many players in determining what will happen to the conventions and the relationship between the two Houses.
Secondly, as other hon. Members have said, the change will not happen overnight. It will be a dynamic process, but that is not especially new. The existing conventions and the development of primacy happened over several hundred years. I have not the slightest doubt that from the moment the upper House is wholly or partially elected, the pressure will begin to build for reassessing the existing way in which primacy applies. The Government are trying to tackle that. However, all the Leader of the House could say today was that if the upper House were elected, it would be more assertive and that the Government welcomed that. I am not sure what he means by “more assertive”.
The right hon. Gentleman tries to combine the declaration that he is happy that the upper House should be more assertive with the assumption that it cannot change the conventions or do anything other than be more assertive. What does assertive mean in that context? The Leader of the House sounds like the Englishman abroad who, on finding that he is not understood, believes that speaking loudly and being more assertive will make people understand the message that he is trying to convey. If that is the nature of the assertiveness, it does not add up to a row of beans and is unlikely to persuade anyone.
However, the Leader of the House also said in his submission and his remarks today that the Government do not mind more assertiveness as long as it does not challenge this House’s fundamental primacy. Again, that sounds reasonable. I doubt whether any Member or anyone in the country would question the basic principle that the House of Commons is more important than the House of Lords, regardless of composition.
However, as I said in an earlier intervention, the right hon. Gentleman’s argument is based on the false premise that primacy is a zero sum business. I used the example of pregnancy. One either has primacy or one does not. However, the message that many of us are trying to get through to the Leader of the House is not that primacy will disappear or that the House of Commons will cease to be the main forum for the nation’s affairs, but that just as primacy changed its
nature over hundreds of years to reflect the increasing democracy of the nation and the increasingly representative nature of Parliament, if and when that principle applies to the upper House a similar process will happen. The upper House will say, “We, too, are representative—not in the same way or with the same mandate, but we can claim the electorate’s mandate to some extent and our powers must reflect that if the democratic principle is fundamental to determining those issues.”
Mr. Cash: Does my right hon. and learned Friend recall that in May, when the matter was previously discussed, several of us forced a Division—the result was about 416 to 20—precisely because we were concerned about codification? I made that point at the time. The motion that we should regard the report “with approval” is extraordinary. That is why some of us tabled an amendment, which has not been selected, to say that we note the report with interest, not approval—
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst): Order. Precisely. I call Sir Malcolm Rifkind.
Sir Malcolm Rifkind: I do not always—and perhaps not even often—agree with my hon. Friend, but on this occasion he makes a powerful point.
In his response to the report, the Leader of the House made a point that, again, appears valid. He said that we should take into account the experience of other countries. He stressed that other countries have bicameral legislatures and that, in some cases, their upper Houses are also elected, but they do not claim primacy over the lower Houses. He asked why, therefore, there should be any change in the United Kingdom if an elected element were introduced into the upper House. Again, the right hon. Gentleman misleads himself. He assumes that we argue for a principle that when there are two Chambers, both of which are elected, they must be equal. There is no such principle; it is a question of practicality—it is for the nation to decide whether, when both Houses of a Parliament contain an elected element, they should have equal or different powers. What we are arguing is not that the upper House should have equal powers, but that if it is elected it will certainly claim a greater share of the power that is available.
The right hon. Gentleman also misleads himself in not taking into account that what is unique about circumstances in the UK is that we are contemplating a fundamental change in the composition of the upper House. We are saying that for centuries we have had an unelected upper Chamber and we are now contemplating the introduction of a representative element into its affairs, so against that background the right hon. Gentleman cannot seriously be suggesting to himself—even if he is suggesting it to the House as a whole—that that does not have implications for the powers of the new upper House that will come into existence.
I do not wish to detain the House. Many of the necessary points can be made very briefly as they are simple and straightforward. In my concluding comments, however, I say to the Leader of the House that this is not just a debate among politicians, and it is
not simply those who take a different view on the composition of the upper House who will argue about the consequences if the change were to come about.
The right hon. Gentleman should look at the evidence that the Joint Committee received, including evidence from the Clerks of the House—people with perhaps more experience in these matters than almost any of we elected Members. The Clerk of the Parliaments said in paragraph 33:
“The introduction of an elected element would undermine”—
“as the House could begin to claim an electoral mandate. It can be argued that the greater the proportion of the elected members the stronger the mandate. If the Lords were elected by a proportional system they might even claim a superior mandate.”
“All in all it is likely to be difficult to ensure that any definition of the convention now would survive a significant change in the composition of the Lords.”
That was the Clerk of the Parliaments. The Clerk of the House of Commons said—I quote his words—that
“it does reinforce the point made”—
by the Clerk of the Parliaments—
“with which I agree, that the principles on which the Salisbury Convention is based would inevitably be undermined by the introduction of an elected element into the upper House.”
Two of our most experienced officials gave their views quite objectively, making it clear, in their judgment, that there will not only be more debate and more assertiveness, but that the very principles of the Salisbury convention will “inevitably be undermined”—that was the phrase that was used. The Leader of the House must take those matters into account.
It is worth remembering—others have made indirect reference to it—that the preamble to the Parliament Act 1911 made it clear that the constraints on the upper House simply reflected the fact that it was not an elected legislature at that time. If that were to change, the whole basis of the Parliament Acts would have to be reassessed and re-examined. I am not one who wishes to challenge the primacy of this House. I believe that, even if there were an elected upper House, it would be highly desirable that most of what we consider primacy to be about should continue to be relevant. We do not want deadlock in our legislative system and we do not want a situation where the Government would feel themselves equally answerable to both Houses, which might stultify the natural business of government.
I conclude by saying that the debate is not about whether primacy would disappear. The question that the Leader of the House has still failed to address is why it would not be reasonable to assume that the primacy that this House enjoys, which has changed over centuries—reflecting greater and greater democratisation—would not begin to be reversed by an upper House that could also claim an electoral mandate. If the work of the Joint Committee has brought this issue into that degree of public debate, we will not have laboured in vain.
4.9 pm
Mr. John Spellar (Warley) (Lab): The previous speaker has just said that this is not just a debate among politicians. Well, most of this is exclusively a debate among politicians. I stand to be corrected, but I suspect that the Leader of the House is not much assailed on his soap box in Blackburn market about what he is doing about House of Lords reform. It is slightly extraordinary that, as was rightly mentioned by my right hon. Friends the Members for Swansea, West (Mr. Williams) and for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman), we are proposing to gridlock Government business for the next two years and override other important business with which we really should be dealing.
I want to deal briefly with two issues that I believe are linked. The first is the evidence of the former Clerk of the House, to which I shall return in detail shortly. The other has been mentioned by colleagues on both sides of the House—the contradictions between paragraph 61 of the report and the Government’s response on the issue of primacy. The key element that draws those subjects together involves the underlying issue—which the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) slightly evaded—of where we derive our mandate from. Just as the underlying driver for capitalism is not so much a desire for profit as a desire to avoid bankruptcy, we are dealing here not so much with abstract accountability as with the ability of the public to change us, and thereby to change the Government, by voting in a clear way. Anything that moves us away from that does serious damage to democracy.
In his evidence, the previous Clerk of the House of Commons, Sir Roger Sands, said of conventions:
“A further difficulty would be the need for adjudication once conventions had been turned into rules. Any set of rules which precisely defines what can or cannot be done must be adjudicated upon by someone. Within the House of Commons, Standing Orders and practices are interpreted and ruled upon by the Speaker; disputes about codified rules governing relations between the two Houses would suggest the need either for the establishment of some new parliamentary machinery or for some form of adjudication outside Parliament, possibly by a specially constituted court as is the case in countries with written constitutions like France or the United States.”
I took issue with him on that matter, because I find the doctrine of an external body adjudicating over a sovereign Parliament particularly worrying.
I asked Sir Roger Sands what the adjudicator would adjudicate on. I went on to ask:
“How could the courts then adjudicate on whether the House of Commons had applied its rules properly or applied the rules of the relationship between the two Houses?”
Colleagues might recall that we got quite close to that situation when a case was brought before the House of Lords over the use of the Parliament Act in relation to the Hunting Bill. It was extremely imprudent to have considered that case, because a certificate had been properly produced by a former Speaker—in 1949, I think—for the amendment of the Parliament Act. He was a Conservative Speaker. Under our constitution, it seems absolutely improper for the courts to seek to rule not on the interpretation of legislation but on its validity. This is a dangerous area, and we need to be alert. We must ensure that we do not go any further in that direction.
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