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I turn now to the Government’s response to the report. I agree with hon. Members on both sides of the House that it is inevitable that those who have the mandate from the public will seek to exercise it. After all, why else would the public have voted for them? My right hon. Friend the Member for Swansea, West alluded to the problem that can then arise: which mandate takes precedence?
Mr. Angus MacNeil: There is a matter that we have perhaps not faced up to in the debate this afternoon. Would the right hon. Gentleman concede that without democracy, we should be left with the corrosive practice of patronage and worse, as we have seen from the Scotland Yard investigation that is going on at the moment? I would venture to suggest that the latest new year’s honours list was almost a tacit admission of foul play within patronage.
Mr. Spellar: That is a complete load of nonsense. If the hon. Gentleman saw fit, his party could have an Opposition day debate in which he could move that the House had no confidence in Her Majesty’s Government. Under the American system, the Government—and the President—are elected for four years and there is a balance of powers. Under our system, however, the Government live from day to day. That is inevitable, because the only basis for government under the Westminster parliamentary system is that the Government maintain a majority in the House of Commons. That is right and appropriate, and the hon. Gentleman might wish to change things, but he could not complain if he were unable to win such a vote. That is the crucial issue. If he is right and we are wrong, the public will change their mind at the next general election.
Opposition Members have been criticising the Government for several years, but two elections have intervened since we first won power: in one we won an overwhelming majority, and in the other we won a substantial majority. The hon. Gentleman might be unhappy with the electorate about that and, like Bertolt Brecht and the central committee in “The Workers Rehearse the Uprising”, he might declare a lack of confidence in the people and a wish for the election of a new people. Under our system, however, the public can hold us to account at the general election, as his party has found: it has a little surge and gets a number of seats in Parliament, and then recedes again. It has returned with a few more seats, but never as many as it had at its peak.
Mr. MacNeil: Surely if the right hon. Gentleman has any confidence and trust in the public, he will have no worries about allowing the public a democratic say in electing a second Chamber?
Mr. Spellar:
The problem with that is the need for clear lines of accountability, which is exactly the point to which I was coming. Under our system, the way in which not only a Parliament but a Government is elected is the same. If we have two elected Chambers, where do the Government come from? Which Chamber has the greater mandate? Which, for example, has the more recent mandate? We will come on to the slightly muddled views of the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) in a moment. If, for example,
elections are held at different times, as happens in some countries that have off-peak elections, would those who opposed the Government claim that they had put their views to the electorate more recently, so they had a more recent mandate?
Equally, we must consider what would happen if, as the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey suggested, we had a different electoral system. We know how the jihadists of the proportional representation movement endlessly claim that those elected under such a system are more representative. If the other place had a different system, which was more to their liking, would not they claim that it was more representative of public opinion? Is that a mechanism for getting clear decisions and clearly electing a Parliament and a Government?
David Howarth: The right hon. Gentleman is arguing either for a unicameral legislature or for allowing people who are not elected to have some say in making the law of the land. Which is it?
Mr. Spellar: Within the current conventions, the ability of the House of Lords to revise and to ask the Commons to think again, as outlined in the report, demonstrates that the public ultimately choose a Government, who decide. We can be asked to think again, which can create public embarrassment and put democratic pressure on us. That is what the Parliament Act says: ultimately, we can decide. The conventions say that the doomsday button does not have to be pressed every time in order for the Government, finally, to secure their business.
David Howarth: I am asking a more fundamental question: what entitles that group of people in the other place to have that right, as opposed to any other group of people?
Mr. Spellar: There are a variety of means by which people come to that Chamber. They are nominated by the various political parties. Those parties have the ability to nominate through being represented here, so they derive their authority from the electorate. Equally, it has possibly been generally agreed that it is desirable to have people who are distinguished in their fields; even the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey argued for that. That would not necessarily mean that they were instantly electable under any system, but it might be of advantage to have their specialities represented, perhaps through having a variety of Cross Benchers. My right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton commented on methods of achieving that, and the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey praised the efforts of such Members. I might have some differences of view on that; I might think that they were trying to thwart the views of the electorate, who clearly wanted us to take effective action. However, a system of divided mandates and a variety of mandates is a different matter, as was pointed out by the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Sir Malcolm Rifkind).
According to the Clerk of the Parliaments,
“The introduction of an elected element would undermine this as the House could begin to claim an electoral mandate. It can be
argued that the greater the proportion of elected members the stronger the mandate. If the Lords were elected by a proportional system they might even claim a superior mandate.”
We should not disregard that thought lightly. It is a serious danger, and one about which we need to be clear.
Sir Nicholas Winterton: It has been asked why such people should sit in the House of Lords. Does the right hon. Gentleman not accept that many of those appointed to the House of Lords come from many important walks of life such as the arts, industry, the theatre, the trade unions, science, academia and the financial services? In an amending Chamber, their expertise can add a huge amount to legislation—the good legislation that we hope will emanate from Parliament.
Mr. Spellar: The hon. Gentleman omitted to mention former Chiefs of the Defence Staff and other senior figures in the armed forces, as well as members of the diplomatic corps. They also make a significant contribution.
Then there is the question of what we are able to enshrine. I missed some of the context, but the Leader of the House spoke of guarantees. There are no guarantees, because no Parliament can bind its successor. The Lord Chancellor conceded as much only yesterday, when he said:
“Neither this House nor any political party can bind the House for the future.”— Official Report, House of Lords, 16 January 2007; Vol. 688, c. 578.]
That is true, and it demonstrates that pressure from those who claim legitimacy, aided and abetted by many of their supporters outside in the media, will inevitably start to move in the direction that I have described.
The right hon. Member for Maidenhead spoke of many different ways of electing people to the House of Lords. She referred to an 80 per cent. proportion of elected Members, and also to all those elected being independent Members. I do not know whether that observation was frivolous—perhaps the right hon. Lady’s language is becoming as flamboyant as her dress—but it certainly suggested rather a “year zero” approach to Parliament. The right hon. Lady would not let me intervene on her, but I invite her to intervene on me to say whether what she said represents the view of the official Opposition.
Mrs. May: The right hon. Gentleman should have listened to what I said. As I am sure the Hansard report will make clear, I did not say that everyone elected to the House of Lords should sit as an independent. However, I think it would be an advantage for some Members to be independent, because that would help to ensure that the House of Lords contained people from a variety of backgrounds, not just party politicians. That is my view.
Mr. Spellar: I find it difficult to understand the idea of such a mechanism in a democracy. How, in a democracy, can it be prescribed that those who will be elected by the public will, as of right and by definition, must be independents?
Mrs. May: I did not suggest an element of prescription at any point. I would like some people to be elected as independents, and I hope that that will be the outcome in the event of an elected House of Lords.
Sir Gerald Kaufman: The right hon. Lady has failed to meet my right hon. Friend’s challenge. The electorate are sovereign. We have a House of Commons that contains two independent Members, one of them a Labour Member who was elected because of a row in the Labour party in south Wales. That does not offer a very promising prognosis for the substantial number of independents who the right hon. Lady is sure will be elected to the House of Lords.
Mr. Spellar: I am afraid that I must correct my right hon. Friend. In fact the House of Commons has three independents, one of whom was elected as a Labour Member and then ratted on that commitment.
Let me conclude by explaining why the subject under discussion matters, and what the underlying issue is. We must have a clear understanding of parliamentary democracy and how it works. As I have said, there are differences between the British and American parliamentary systems. The American system elects an executive leader. It also elects two Houses that are representative and which, although they are the legislature, also provide the balance of powers. It also has an independent Supreme Court—although interestingly, membership of it is subject to appointment by the President and ratification by the Senate. In our system, the election of Members to this House decides the Government. Therefore, inevitably, the position of the House of Lords in relation to the House of Commons is different from that of the US Senate in relation to the House of Representatives.
It is crucial that people clearly understand how they can change policy or change the Government. Measures that take authority away from this House and give it to quangos or unelected judges, and measures that divide the democratic mandate so that it is unclear who is to be held accountable, are not recipes for good government. Instead, they are recipes for democratic frustration, and that is when people start to become attracted to extremist parties. When people do not have a clear idea of how to exercise their rights, they either drop out of the political process into apathy or they start to vote for extremist parties.
That is why the Joint Committee report is right to say that if we change the nature of the House of Lords, that will inevitably have an impact and we will have to re-examine the conventions. The Government response does not properly address that fact, although it is good in other respects.
4.27 pm
Sir Patrick Cormack (South Staffordshire) (Con): I am delighted to follow the right hon. Member for Warley (Mr. Spellar) and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Sir Malcolm Rifkind), both of whom made excellent and sensible speeches.
The key words in the admirable Joint Committee report are those in paragraph 61 that have not been quoted as often as others. In paying tribute to
Committee members for working extremely hard on behalf of all Members—I am grateful to them for that—I draw attention to the words:
“We have interpreted our remit as being to define the present reality”.
My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington and Chelsea and the right hon. Member for Warley both quoted the Clerk of the Parliaments and Roger Sands, who gave evidence that if that present reality is changed, we will face a new reality. If we approve the report this afternoon—I approve of it—it is important that we recognise that it applies only to the current relationship between the two Houses as they are currently constituted.
There is an admirable and logical case—although I do not agree with it—for saying that we should have a written constitution and two elected Houses. There is no case at all in logic for a hybrid House; that is the worst of all worlds. However, there is a case for having an elected second Chamber, but we must not delude ourselves into saying that that would be the House of Lords; it would not. Any move towards that is, in effect, a move towards the abolition of the House of Lords as it currently exists and its replacement by something else.
If that were to happen, conventions could, of course, be established, and it might be the wish of the Leader of the House, and of my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) and others, that this House should retain its primacy. I would share in that wish if that unfortunate sequence of events were to unfold, but neither I nor the Leader of the House, nor my right hon. Friend the shadow Leader, nor anyone else in this Chamber or outside it, could have any ultimate control.
The Father of the House spoke very wisely when he talked about the unintended consequences of devolution. I was one of those who were very reluctant to support devolution. I do not want the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr. MacNeil) to jump up and ask, “Do I accept a Scottish Parliament now?” Of course I do. I am not one of those who think that we can un-invent things; it is there, and we have a Welsh Assembly. I remind Members that if my party had handled things rather better immediately after 1979, we might not be where we are now, but that is another story.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer—our possible future Prime Minister—is now making an impassioned plea for the United Kingdom, with which I wholly concur. However, he is doing so without recognising that it is the creature that his Government created—the Scottish Parliament—that has, in turn, created this crisis for the United Kingdom. I deeply regret that. I do celebrate 300 years of Union and I should like to see 300 and more years ahead. I merely use this analogy—as, indeed, the Father of the House did—to say to the House that if we move down the road of an elected or partially elected House of Lords, we will have a creature that we cannot ultimately control. Men and women of real quality and ability may aspire to it, but they will be able to do so, and to have a realistic chance of being elected to it, only if they have a party label. Then, they will legitimately want to have real powers. Alternatively, there will be the worst of all situations—my right hon. Friend the shadow Leader of
the House dismissed this view out of hand, but we should not—a second Chamber that is so cribbed, cabined, confined and constrained in its powers that nobody of any worth or substance will want to sit in it.
John Bercow: Will my hon. Friend allow me?
Sir Patrick Cormack: Very briefly.
John Bercow: I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. Given that he is envisaging a new scenario and warning against change at least in part on the ground that its consequences will be unpredictable, why is he making the one exception that allows him so confidently to predict that in this revised arrangement only a tiny number of independents would be elected? With the greatest of respect to my hon. Friend, who is immensely distinguished, how can he know, any more than I or my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) can know?
Sir Patrick Cormack: Of course none of us knows. The point has been made extremely effectively by others in this debate that, once we give to the electorate the opportunity of electing a body, they can elect whomsoever they choose. All that I would say to my hon. Friend, whose linguistic and forensic skills I greatly admire, is that all precedent teaches us that it is very difficult to get a goodly number of independents elected. In this House, we always have one independent—Mr. or Madam Speaker—but in all the 10 Parliaments in which I have sat, we have not had 10 independent Members in all. We have from time to time had one or two, sometimes as a result of an extraordinary circumstance—a falling out in a constituency, for example, which was why Mr. Bell came here—but we have never had a body of independents.
I do not want to pursue this one and nor do I want to detain the House for long. I have to give the House an apology—Mr. Speaker knows this, as does Mr. Deputy Speaker—in that I am chairing the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee at 5 o’clock. As Members in all parts of the House will recognise, I will be about the House’s business and have to do that, so I shall not trespass on the House by taking more than another couple of minutes.
The point that I wish to emphasise is the one that I have made, I hope reasonably clearly. I welcome the report, which is a brilliant description of, and definition of, the existing conventions. Those conventions have been—perhaps surprisingly—warmly welcomed and endorsed by the Government. I welcome that. But they apply only to the present reality. We will have an opportunity—the Leader of the House suggested that it would be in the spring, either just before or after Easter—to debate proposals that will give us the chance to say whether we want an elected or partially elected Chamber. If we go down that route, these conventions will die. New conventions will evolve. The circumstances and relationships will be different.
If the new Chamber that would replace the House of Lords is to have any worth or substance at all—because it has people of worth and substance in it—it will sooner or later aspire to real power. That will challenge the primacy of this House. I accept unreservedly the
definition of primacy given by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington and Chelsea, but like him I entered the House of Commons because I believed passionately in it and its primacy. We live in a very sophisticated democracy and the historic evolution of our system means that we have in the second Chamber, partly by accident and partly by design, a greater accumulation of experience, wisdom and expertise than in any other Chamber in the world. To quote the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman), who has temporarily left his place, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. That slogan was also used by Lord Howe of Aberavon in the other place in his excellent speech yesterday.
Let us read the White Paper thoroughly, digest it and debate it thoroughly, but we should be under no illusion that if we adopt election for the second Chamber, we will fundamentally, absolutely and permanently alter the nature of our Parliament and the relationship between the two Houses.
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