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On the matter of the exchange of amendments between the Houses, affectionately known as ping-pong, again there has been good sense on virtually every occasion that ping-pong has taken place. At the end of the day, the primacy of this House has been upheld.
Mr. David Heath (Somerton and Frome) (LD): I cannot entirely stay with the hon. Gentleman’s argument when he says that good sense has prevailed in the process of ping-pong. Having been involved in far too many rounds of ping-pong for my own good in various home affairs and justice Bills, I know that the process is often extremely flawed because there is no recognition of the value of each House’s consideration, no respect for each House’s consideration, and no attempt at reconciliation of views, which ought to be an essential part of the process.
Sir Nicholas Winterton: I am happy to agree with the hon. Gentleman. In the report, we suggested that there should be improvements in the way that the process was dealt with. I entirely share the view that if the House gets an amendment back from the House of Lords, it is important that it knows why the Lords disagreed with the Commons, and similarly, when the Bill goes back to the Lords, it is important that the upper House knows why the Commons disagreed with the Lords amendment.
On secondary legislation, I support my right hon. Friend the shadow Leader of the House. There is a serious problem in the way the House deals with secondary legislation. I know that the right hon. Member for Swansea, West, the Father of the House, who chairs the Liaison Committee with distinction, is more than aware that the procedures in the House to deal with secondary legislation are totally inadequate. I am disappointed that the Procedure Committee’s recommendation that the Lords and Commons should have a Joint Committee to deal with certain matters relating to secondary legislation was not accepted by the Government. I hope that they will reconsider that and recognise that secondary legislation is inadequately dealt with in this House.
On financial privilege, the House of Lords fully appreciates its limited role in respect of finance. Yes, it can deal with matters of administration, but it cannot deal in any way with policy. That is appropriate. This House deals with matters relating to money, finance and taxation. The Committee unanimously concluded that codification, which the Government had wanted— [Interruption.] The Leader of the House is a very gracious, courteous, amusing man who is held in great respect in all parts of the House—
Mr. Straw: There must be a “but”.
Sir Nicholas Winterton: Yes, indeed. But he knows that the Government would have liked the conventions of the House of Lords to be codified—that is, put down in black and white. That would have destroyed the unique relationship that exists between this House and the House of Lords and be greatly to the disadvantage of both Houses.
Mr. Cash: I hope that my hon. Friend understands that 20 of us forced a Division on 10 May precisely because we found this whole business such a charade.
Sir Nicholas Winterton: I greatly admire my hon. Friend’s dedication and expertise in these matters and fully appreciate why he was one of 20 Members who voted against the provision.
I ask the Leader of the House to proceed very carefully. I do not believe that any element of election in the House of Lords will improve the way in which it scrutinises legislation that we put out from this House, and have the final say on in this House, for the benefit of the people of the United Kingdom. I hugely admire the value for money that we get from the House of Lords. I fully support a system that enables people from every walk of life—the services, trade unions, industry, arts, theatre, academia—to go to the House of Lords, where they can use their expertise to help the House of Commons, which, sadly, is becoming a House of professional career politicians, to do the job that we are here to do on behalf of every man, woman and child in this country. The House of Lords plays a valuable role in that—it does not need fixing.
5.18 pm
Dr. Tony Wright (Cannock Chase) (Lab): Before I make a few observations on the Joint Committee’s report, let me respond directly to the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Sir Nicholas Winterton), who echoed much of what other Members have said during the debate. I should like to tell him a little story. A few years ago, my Government brought a measure before us with which I was not wholly happy and for which I did not vote. The hon. Member for Macclesfield nods. Then it went to the Lords, where it was improved and came back in a form with which I was happy. The Government decided to overturn the amendment from the Lords. I received a call from the Chief Whip’s office. A conversation ensued along the following lines: “These people aren’t elected you know.” I replied, “I know that. What’s more, I know that you don’t want them to be elected.” We were then mysteriously cut off.
The point of the story is that we must ensure that the second Chamber performs a function for us that we want it to undertake, and it must have sufficient authority to do that. Then, when I or someone else gets such a call, we can explain not why the House of Lords should get its way—we have the ability to get our way, and that is right—but that the second Chamber must have enough authority to ensure that we take it seriously. Otherwise, why have it?
I caution against the fear that lurks behind many of the contributions today. There is a spectre at the feast—the fear of creating a monster, which will affect the way in which we do business. That spectre was glimpsed in the speech of the hon. Member for Macclesfield and in the fears that have been expressed about election. It was glimpsed in the speech of my parliamentary neighbour the hon. Member for South Staffordshire (Sir Patrick Cormack), who spoke of a creature that we cannot control. Does that mean that we want a creature that we can routinely control? Those are false opposites.
We want a creature that does a job for us to enable us to increase the scrutiny that takes place in Parliament.
That is what we want the second Chamber to do for us. Then, it becomes a question of how we constitute the second Chamber so that it can do that. There are suggestions for constituting it—including for election—that would make that harder. If we created, through a certain sort of electoral arrangement, a second Chamber that was simply a replica of this Chamber, with the same party disciplines and lack of scrutiny, we would diminish, not improve, effective scrutiny in Parliament as a whole, even though we perhaps believed that election would achieve our goal. If one gets election wrong, it can enfeeble, not strengthen, a second Chamber.
We have to be clear about what we want the institution to do for us and then design it so that it can do that. We could design it in a variety of ways to secure that objective. I caution hon. Members against simply repeating their old favourite mantras about why appointment or election is the only way. Let us be clear about what we want the institution to do in our system and ensure that we get the design features to produce that outcome.
I believe, for what it is worth, that the composition of the upper House should be mixed. The previous Lord Chancellor recently told us that a hybrid House was a constitutional impossibility and I gather that the Prime Minister took a similar view. I am now delighted to learn that the Government appear to believe that a hybrid arrangement is possibly the only or most desirable way forward. We are therefore making some genuine progress. I urge us all to be sure about what we think is the objective of all this—and then to make sure that we get the design features that contribute to it.
Mr. Cash: I agree with the hon. Gentleman about the basic principle of the need for a significant proportion—up to 80 per cent.—to be elected, but does he agree that the question of controls, to which my hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Sir Patrick Cormack) referred, also applies in the House of Commons because of the Whip system? There is a question there that the hon. Gentleman has not quite answered. Another problem is that we do not know what the term “manifesto commitment” means. I hope that I will have the opportunity to go further into that later, but does the hon. Gentleman agree that there are serious problems in all those areas?
Dr. Wright: I think that there are problems in all those areas and I shall deal with the point about the manifesto in a few moments, but let me finish off my argument and make sure that it is clear.
If we broadly accept what I have said, it is possible to argue for forms of election and forms of appointment—and for forms of mixtures of appointments—to secure the objective. It is perfectly proper to argue that because the second Chamber is not going to have the final say, it does not need to be elected—or, at least, elected in the way that the first Chamber is elected. However, it still needs to be so constituted that it has sufficient authority and legitimacy to be taken seriously by the House of Commons. Above all else, we have to be able to answer the question that goes to the heart of the matter for us and for the people we represent. In respect of the House of Lords, that question is, “Who are these
people?” If we cannot answer that question in a way that makes some sort of democratic sense, we shall not finally be able to resolve the argument that has dogged us for so long.
John Bercow: It seems to me that the hon. Gentleman’s analysis is essentially correct, as we must have a clear idea of what the new Chamber would do—a crucial prerequisite of having an intelligible and intelligent discussion about the form of its composition. I put it to the hon. Gentleman, however, that some of those who conjure up lurid scenarios of constitutionally impossible hybrid forms are people who seem to want to be the authors of self-fulfilling prophecies. In fact, we need some compromise if we are to get an outcome—and they know that as well as he and I do.
Dr. Wright: I am very sympathetic to that point. The argument is not helped by conjuring up imaginary monsters that are going to have all kinds of catastrophic consequences. Now is the moment for some clear thinking because, after a lot of difficulties along the way, we may finally have reached a moment to begin to get somewhere. We have got some of the arguments out of our system and if we can agree on what we want reform to do—I happen to think that the Leader of the House is probably the person above all others to lead the House on the matter—we may be able to move forward sensibly with second Chamber reform.
I would like to make a few further remarks prompted by the Joint Committee’s report. I join all those who have paid tribute to the Committee for a very impressive piece of work. I thought it had been given an impossible task, but it has performed it heroically. It has juggled constitutional jelly in a way that I would have thought impossible to do in such an elegant form. The task was impossible because the Committee was asked to codify conventions, and the truth is that once conventions are codified, they cease to be conventions. The task was impossible, but within that impossibility the Committee has performed an extremely valuable service.
Someone once famously said that our constitutional arrangements were based on a series of understandings, but the trouble was that no one quite understood what all the understandings were. That is the context in which we operate. That is why codifying these conventions is such an elusive and impossible task. We can, however, try to understand them a bit better, and the report has enabled us to do just that. It has enabled us to understand them on a deeper level than before. However, the Committee was given the task of telling us whether it would be practicable to codify the conventions, and it has come back and said that it would not. Well, we knew that anyway because that is the nature of conventions. If they were codifiable, they would not be conventions.
The Committee has also told us that if there were to be a radical rearrangement of the second Chamber, all bets would be off in relation to these understandings and conventions. However, the Government have said that that is not true. They would like the understandings or conventions to remain the same. Various Members have pointed out the conflict
between those two positions. Yes, there is a conflict between them, but it is perfectly possible for the Government to say that they would like the conventions to remain intact and to endure into a newly configured second Chamber. They cannot be certain that that would happen, but that is what they would like. That seems to be the only way of bringing the two positions together.
I want to say a few words of congratulation and praise for a particular aspect of the Joint Committee’s work, and for an aspect of the Government’s response. The hon. Member for Stone (Mr. Cash) raised a point about manifestos. The report helps us greatly on this matter. All the stuff that is said about manifestos and manifesto Bills is a kind of fiction. It might be a necessary and convenient fiction, but it is a fiction none the less, and we should acknowledge that. The fact is that we do not know why people vote for or against a particular Government.
When we go to a supermarket, we load up our trolleys by taking things from all the different shelves. When we are presented with the various manifestos, it is rather like going to the supermarket and finding that the trolleys have already been filled up for us. We cannot say, “Actually, I’d rather have something from this trolley, and something else from that one.” It does not work like that. It is a take-it-or-leave-it kind of trolley. Yet, after the election, the winning party says, “We have support for everything in our trolley.” The fact is that we have no idea whether people voted for a party because it had adopted a particular policy, or despite the fact that it disliked another. But, in a sense, that does not matter. All that we know is that the Government have a mandate for governing.
That affects our debate about the second Chamber. The Committee has suggested that we describe certain Bills as “Government Bills”, and that is an improvement, but I think that we should call them “mandate Bills”. That would reflect the fact that the Government had secured a mandate to govern and to introduce Bills, which should be respected in the second Chamber and reflected in the way in which it operates. I am pleased to see that proposal because it represents some truth and progress.
I also very much like an aspect of the Government’s response to the report. In fact, I would almost go so far as to say that this whole exercise has been worth while because of one sentence in paragraph 10, which states that
“overall our reforms have been designed to make Parliament as a whole more effective.”
If only we could have got that from the Government when they responded to the Wakeham commission, to the report from our Committee or to various other reports. This is a breakthrough because it represents an understanding that the purpose of all this is to improve the scrutiny of Parliament as a whole.
Sir Nicholas Winterton: May I ask the hon. Gentleman, who is making a most interesting and philosophical speech, what he thinks the Government mean by that statement? The proof of the pudding is in the eating, but I am not sure precisely what pudding they are proposing.
Dr. Wright: I mean what the Leader of the House referred to earlier when he talked about there being no zero-sum games. Up until this point, the belief has always been that if one makes one part of Parliament more effective, it will make another part less effective. That is simply a misunderstanding. The point is to make Parliament as a whole more effective. The Government are now saying that that is the point of what they are doing in relation to this House, which we have not really discussed but which is an important ingredient. If they are serious in wanting to make scrutiny here better, as I hope and believe that they are, that will contribute to that end. If we can secure a second Chamber that is more authoritative and legitimate, that will also contribute to it. Parliament as a whole will then become more effective at scrutiny. I take that to be a huge gain and a kind of breakthrough.
We are making real progress. We want to preserve our tradition of strong, coherent, effective government, but we must match it with a much better system of strong, coherent and effective accountability. We must set up a second Chamber that is conspicuously a House of scrutiny, which does the kind of things at which this place, a House of government, driven by party, is not very good. This is the place that Government drives and where Government and Opposition meet. It is not the place where intensive scrutiny happens. We must strengthen scrutiny in our system by having a second Chamber that does that. If we do that, it ceases to be a threat. It is not a monster, a spectre; it is our ally in holding the Government to account. If we get that right, other things have the chance of falling into place.
I thank the Government for giving me a chance to vote for a measure that has absolutely no consequences. This is a delightful moment, and I take full advantage of it.
5.37 pm
Mr. Andrew Tyrie (Chichester) (Con): I was very impressed by that speech, and agree with just about all of it. I pay tribute to the work of the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright) and his Committee for having brought more light and less heat to this issue, which will be important when we debate it in the spring.
It was a privilege to serve on the Joint Committee. I enjoyed it and learnt a lot. Some interesting submissions were made to it. I concluded pretty early, however, that this issue is a Westminster backwater. It is difficult to think of anything likely to excite less public interest than the codification of conventions.
The story of what has happened since the Committee was set up can be simply told. The Government, armed with a manifesto pledge, wanted to pin down the existing self-imposed restraint on interference in the House of Lords by codifying and freezing it. They probably had a good go at trying to persuade Lord Cunningham, behind the scenes, to assist in that process.
The manifesto called explicitly for a codification of conventions. Unfortunately, however, the Government did not get what they wanted; they failed. No substantive areas for codification were recommended. Codification itself was explicitly rejected. Let me quote
a passage, which has not yet been quoted today, from paragraph 279 of the report:
“‘codification’ is unhelpful...Conventions...are unenforceable ...codifying conventions is a contradiction in terms.”
Instead, the Committee sensibly abandoned codification and restricted itself to producing various formulae to describe a number of conventions, at paragraph 283—formulae, not codification. As far as I know, that point has so far gone entirely unremarked today.
In the narrow sense that the Government’s intention was to try to codify the existing conventions of the current House, they have clearly failed. They have also failed in a wider sense, in view of the much remarked paragraph 61. As the Committee made clear that its conclusions applied only to the current House, any attempt by the Government to use its work to bind a reformed House has failed. The Government were piqued by that, and produced a four-page response. The Leader of the House dwelt on that extensively today, encouraged to do so by a number of interventions.
Paragraph 9 of the Government’s response contains the key sentence:
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