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4.37 pm
Andrew Miller (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab): This is probably only the third time in 15 years in the House that I agree with the hon. Member for South Staffordshire (Sir Patrick Cormack). One never knows, there may be a fourth time in the future.
If I had been asked 20 years ago, I would probably have argued unambiguously in favour of a fully elected second Chamber. However, after some years in this place, I started to realise that the relationship between the two Houses is much more complex than is perceived from outside. I reached the view that it was important that we had the sort of debate in which I was delighted to participate during the work of the Joint Committee.
In the last debate in the House, with the curious voting system that was presented to us, I decided that because the debate was taking place in a vacuum—we were debating the structure of the House of Lords without considering its purpose—I chose to vote for abolition, not because I was a unicameralist particularly, but because it was illogical to debate structure without debating purpose.
Mr. Fraser Kemp (Houghton and Washington, East) (Lab): My hon. Friend mentioned the curious voting system that we had last time. Does he agree that whatever options are put before the House, it is important that we have the chance to reject all the options if we do not find any of them satisfactory?
Andrew Miller: I totally agree with my hon. Friend, although I am not sure whether we share the same views on the issue. It is absolutely critical that we examine all the options in such a fundamental change to our structure of governance.
John Bercow:
The intervention from the hon. Member for Houghton and Washington, East (Mr. Kemp), and the hon. Gentleman’s response to it, seemed to me to be shots across the bows of the Government. Am I right in supposing that the
Government’s intention is to ensure that any votes that are held will lead to a definitive conclusion about the form of change?
Andrew Miller: I am not sure that the intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Houghton and Washington, East (Mr. Kemp) was intended to be a shot across the Government’s bows. He and I are both devout party loyalists, but sometimes we point out to Front-Bench colleagues that complicated matters facing the House can be explored in different ways.
The right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) expressed concern that preferential voting was becoming a convention, and it is true that, once a system is in place, it tends to become regarded as a given. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House acknowledged that part of his engagement in cross-party discussions involves talking to the bishops. There may be a historical explanation for the bishops’ representation in the House of Lords, but there is no logical one. Even so, they are there, and so my right hon. Friend has to talk to them.
Incidentally, if that debate leads the bishops to invite my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House to ensure that all faiths are represented in the House of Lords, I might have more faith in the faiths. However, my point is that the ground rules that are in place at any given time will determine where a debate will lead.
In an intervention earlier, the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Sir Nicholas Winterton) made an observation about the scrutiny process that needs to be corrected. I do not think that he intended to make a party political point, but he will know that the Committee looked at each Session from 1980 to the present to see how many Bills took more than 61 days. The length of time taken cannot be attributed to any particular Government—
Sir Nicholas Winterton indicated assent.
Andrew Miller: The hon. Gentleman nods in agreement. The number of Bills taking more than 61 days has risen inexorably, from none in 1980-81 to 13 in the period to May in the 2005-06 Session. The average number of days spent on each Bill has also risen inexorably, from 36 in 1980-81 to 63 in the period to May in 2005-06.
Those figures may not have a direct bearing on this debate, but they give us some food for thought. The hon. Member for Macclesfield is a member of the Modernisation Committee, and I hope that it will look at the tables carefully, as they raise serious questions about how we examine the complex Bills that come before us. That might lead us to a view about how amendments ought to be tabled and debated, but it should not impinge on or determine our views about the structure of the other place. That is an important point.
John Bercow:
I think I agree with the conclusion that the hon. Gentleman has just reached—that the scrutiny of legislation should not be dependent on, linked to or the result of a particular structure for the other place. However, in reflecting on the way in which we and the other place scrutinise legislation does he agree that we need to deduce from that not only that we might do our
jobs better, but that there are issues and challenges for the parliamentary draftsmen, too? We have a responsibility to look at the sausage factory as well as at the sausages that emerge.
Andrew Miller: Indeed. It could be argued that more time should be given at the outset to ensure that drafting is correct. Like the hon. Gentleman, I am in favour of greater use of pre-legislative scrutiny, which would help to reinforce some of the processes that can get muddled, resulting in some of the ping-pong issues and in measures drifting down to the Lords that have not been properly debated in this place. We can get those things right in the existing structure.
I want to move on to primacy. There have been adequate exchanges about the gentle contradiction between paragraph 61 of our report and the Government’s response, so I shall not detain the House too much on that point. However, it seems axiomatic that as changes are introduced, the nature of the relationship will change. The right hon. and learned Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Sir Malcolm Rifkind), the hon. Member for South Staffordshire and some Labour Members have observed that we need to accept that there will be a change. I do not intend to debate whether we should have a written constitution, as I doubt you would allow me to do so, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but can we guarantee primacy without one? The House needs to have that serious debate.
My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House may say that the issues can be defined and codified, but that would be quite difficult without first defining the structure and purpose of the upper House. There is a complex interrelationship between the protection of primacy and the nature of the second Chamber and how it is formed. We cannot see the process as a series of simple steps; they are complex and interrelated.
There have been exchanges about the inequality of representatives. Can we have an elected Member of Parliament who is unequal? In this House, we fight vigorously to protect the concept that we are all equal Members of Parliament, and so it should remain. However, in the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly, where list systems are in operation, there are debates about whether all Members are equal, as there are about the relationship between us and our regional Members of the European Parliament.
I suspect that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House has been as annoyed as I have been from time to time to have a Liberal Democrat MEP describe himself as, in my case, the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston, or, in his case, the Member for Blackburn. It might be a matter of semantics, but that MEP is not the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston. He does not have the same mandate as I have. There will inevitably be pressures—as there are in cases such as that—on elected Members of an upper House to claim equality with the rest of us.
My right hon. Friend was kind enough to write to members of the Committee in December. He welcomed the report, described it as significant and thanked us for our role. I am extremely grateful for that letter, but I want to bring one word in it to his attention. He is a distinguished parliamentarian and was an eminent lawyer, and he chooses words extremely carefully. He says:
“The Government believes however, that further reform should not alter the current role of the House of Lords as a revising and scrutinising chamber, nor should it alter the balance of the relationship between the Lords and Commons.”
What does the word “should” mean? Does it mean that, in his judgment, further reform will not alter things, or that it cannot? I think that it is probable that further reform will alter things. Paragraph 61 makes it quite clear that the Committee believes that there will be a change. The question that we need to address, whatever conclusion the House comes to in subsequent debates, is: how can we protect the primacy of this House? Members on both sides of the House need work on that so that, whatever the outcome of the subsequent debate about structures, we protect that primacy, which the Government say should not be altered, but which will be altered, whether we like it or not.
4.52 pm
Sir Nicholas Winterton (Macclesfield) (Con): It was a great honour to be one of three Conservative and Unionist Members who were appointed by the House to serve on the Joint Committee on Conventions. I found it an uplifting experience and one that taught me a great deal about what goes on in the House of Lords. Although I am prepared to confess to the House that I have long been a supporter of the House of Lords and the role that it plays in our constitution and in the way in which Parliament holds the Government of the day to account and scrutinises legislation, I have to say that, at every sitting of the Committee, I became more and more convinced that the House of Lords, as it is currently comprised, fulfils a valuable and important role. I became more and more convinced that my personal instincts about the House of Lords were merely strengthened by the evidence that was given to the Joint Committee.
May I pay my personal tribute to Lord Carter? I knew him before I started to attend the Joint Committee, of which he was a leading member from the House of Lords, but I got to know him a lot better during its sittings. I found him to be an informed, kind and constructive member of the Committee. I thus join in the tributes that have been paid to him for the role that he played in Parliament as a leading member of the Government party in the House of Lords. He made a major contribution to the debates that took place and the production of the Joint Committee’s report.
Perhaps I have established the fact that I do not wish to see any change in the composition of the House of Lords whatsoever. Although we are debating the report of the Joint Committee, which the Government recommend that we welcome with approval, inevitably, as all the speeches made so far have clearly shown, we must refer to what the future of the House of Lords might be. I am sad that the Leader of the House is not in the Chamber. He is working hard in search of consensus on plans for so-called reform of the House of Lords.
A core question at the heart of the debate is that of whether the second Chamber should have an elected element. I fully endorse and support the views expressed by the right hon. Member for Warley (Mr. Spellar). I also fully support the views expressed by perhaps the most experienced man in the House, the
Father of the House, the right hon. Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Williams). He built on the excellent argument put forward by a man who has been a Member for almost four decades: the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman), who has been a Minister.
The more one examines the prospect of an elected element in the House of Lords, the stranger the whole idea becomes. Perhaps significantly, all the parties whose leaderships have been calling for yet more elections, in this case elections to the House of Lords—although this has not been mentioned in the debate, it has been pointed out by my noble Friend Lord Howe of Aberavon—have been piling up debts because of their inability to finance their existing election campaigns.
Again, no one has yet mentioned the amount that a partially or completely elected House of Lords would cost. We would not only have to pay the elected Members, however many there might be, but have to pay out huge sums to the staff and researchers whom such elected Members would inevitably demand as of right. We know the extent to which expenses and allowances have increased in this House in recent times. If the public were really to debate the matter, I wonder whether they would be happy to pick up a large sum by way of the taxes that they have to pay to meet the cost of Members of the House of Lords. At present, Members of the House of Lords receive only reasonable expenses. I will say one thing about the House of Lords that I would say in front of any audience: by goodness, we get value for money from the upper House.
In an intervention on the right hon. Member for Warley, I sought to point out how much expertise there is in the other House. Perhaps there are a number of people whose presence there might well be questioned, but overwhelmingly the people who sit in the House of Lords provide valuable experience and expertise. They have skills and talents that they bring to the scrutiny of legislation.
I should like to lay a myth to rest: even the Prime Minister has said that it is wrong that an unelected House should legislate. The House of Lords is not a legislature, but an amending and delaying Chamber. When the House of Lords sends amendments back to the Commons, it gives this House, which often passes legislation over-hastily, and in some cases actually unscrutinised, a second opportunity to look again at such legislation. To return to the cost of elections, there will be, perhaps shortly, a proposal that party campaign funds should receive much larger subsidies from hard-pressed taxpayers—that is, if we go ahead with the election of Members to the House of Lords. I wonder what the public would think about that.
I shall quote from an article by Lord Howe of Aberavon, who I mentioned earlier. He is a leading Member of the other place and a past Secretary of State, who held many important offices in Government. He said:
“The removal, in 1999, of all but a handful of hereditaries has established a chamber in which neither major party has more than 30 per cent of the seats; the remainder are Lib Dems or crossbenchers, in much larger number; and the bulk of the
membership of the entire House is dominated by diversity, expertise, experience and independence.”
That picks up the remarks that I made a few moments ago.
As a Member of this House, I can say that there have been occasions in recent times—including under a Conservative Government, but more frequently under a Labour Government—when the feelings, aspirations, and expectations of the people of this country have been more accurately and properly represented in debates in the House of Lords than in debates in the House of Commons. That is a sad criticism of this place. As Lord Howe says, in the other House:
“To win a vote you have to secure, by persuasion, a majority of the 40 per cent—rather like addressing a special jury. But the Lords’ role is, in the last resort, advisory and not decisive.”
It is wrong for Liberal Members to talk about democracy, when in fact the other place is an amending and delaying Chamber, a Chamber that gives this House a second chance to consider legislation that was perhaps over-hastily and rather badly drafted when it first went to the other House.
David Howarth: Does the hon. Member not accept that the House of Lords is part of the legislative process? The Members of the House of Lords—Lloyd George once said of them that they were 500 men chosen at random from among the ranks of the unemployed—have a place in the law-making process that no other group of people has.
Sir Nicholas Winterton: Indeed, the Lords are not democratically elected, but I do not think there is any harm in that, given the role that they play in our democracy. Like other hon. Members, the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Andrew Miller) discussed the primacy of the Commons. Final decisions are made in this Chamber—we pick up the tab at the end of the day, and we have the final decision on legislation—but we consult members of the House of Lords who have a particular talent, skill or experience. Without intending any disrespect to the hon. Member for Cambridge (David Howarth), people who have recently come to serve in the House are career politicians, with little or no experience of anything other than politics. They probably went to college before becoming researchers, then advisers and assistants, and then standing as parliamentary candidates before entering the House. They do not have any experience of the real world, but I am grateful to have such experience, as I had to earn a living in the construction industry and I served as a county councillor. I speak, too, as someone with experience of procedure. I chaired the Procedure Committee for eight years, but I ran out of time which is why—and I am slightly disappointed about this—I am not chairing it today. I was an original member of the Modernisation Committee, and we have accepted many of its proposals to update, modernise and improve the way in which the House operates and deals with legislation.
John Bercow:
My hon. Friend’s track record is exemplary, and it speaks for itself. Some people may even think that if the day comes when he chooses no longer to serve as an MP, because he wishes to retire—I
do not look forward to that day, and I hope that it is a long way off—he would be a very suitable Member of the other place.
Sir Nicholas Winterton: I decline to make any comment or observation on that proposal. The only thing that I will say concerns the role of the House of Lords. From my limited experience of debates in the second Chamber, but encouraged by my experience of the Joint Committee, I believe that it is a very civilised place in which to operate.
Mr. Simon Burns (West Chelmsford) (Con): My hon. Friend is making a bid.
Sir Nicholas Winterton: I am not making a bid, but I am not not making a bid. However, I greatly admire the other place.
May I respond to a point made by the Father of the House, who mentioned the number of votes that the Government lost in the Lords and the Lords amendments that the Commons were consequently obliged to consider, by giving some statistics? Between 1999 and 2005, the Government suffered almost 300 defeats in the House of Lords, but in four cases out of 10, the Commons, and thus the Government, accepted the result. The right hon. Member for Swansea, West rightly cited a figure of 40 per cent., so is there not a great deal of wisdom, good sense and good work in the House of Lords? Unlike my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd), for whom I have unlimited admiration and regard, I think it is a good thing that the Government welcome and approve the report by the Joint Committee on Conventions.
As we went through those conventions, there was nothing that led me to believe that at any stage the House of Lords was denying the primacy of the House of Commons or seeking to undermine it. They accepted it and they carried out their work bearing that in mind. The Salisbury-Addison convention was not only honoured to the letter, so to speak, of an unwritten obligation and responsibility, but in many cases applied to non-manifesto legislation that was introduced by the Government of the day.
On reasonable time, another of the conventions, as I said in an intervention on my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May), the shadow Leader of the House, part of the problem of the Lords taking what might seem an abnormal amount of time to deal with Bills from this place is familiar to me as a member of the Chairmen’s Panel chairing Standing Committees, many of which will be Public Bill Committees from the beginning of this year. I pick up the semi-criticism that the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston levelled against me relating to the intervention on my right hon. Friend.
Under successive Governments, whether as a result of guillotines and timetable motions or, under this Government, programming motions, Bills have gone from this House to the House of Lords with large sections of the legislation undebated and undiscussed. Surely that cannot be right. The House of Lords has a constitutional right to take time properly to debate every clause and every subsection of every clause in the Bills that we send through to them.
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