MONDAY 21 NOVEMBER 2011
Members Present
Lord Richard (Chairman)
Baroness Andrews
Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield
Bishop of Leicester
Lord Norton of Louth
Lord Rooker
Baroness Scott of Needham Market
Baroness Shephard of Northwold
Baroness Young of Hornsey
Lord Trefgarne
Lord Trimble
Lord Tyler
Mr Tom Clarke MP
Ann Coffey MP
Oliver Heald MP
Laura Sandys MP
John Stevenson MP
John Thurso MP
Unlock Democracy [Peter Facey and Alexandra Runswick]
(QQ 333-378)
Examination of Witnesses
Peter Facey, Director,
Unlock Democracy, and Alexandra Runswick, Deputy Director,
Unlock Democracy
Q333 The Chairman:
Thank you very much for coming. We are very grateful to you. I
think you have a pretty fair idea of what this Committee is about.
Would you like to make a short opening statement before we launch
into the questions, or would you prefer just to start with the
questions?
Peter Facey:
I think that we would prefer to start with the questions.
The Chairman:
I have one, which struck me when reading your evidence again.
Why do you think that the House can do without the independence
of a section of Cross-Benchers?
Peter Facey:
Our view is that the independence of experts can best be replaced
by having experts attached to Committees rather than as full Members.
Ideally, we think that expertise can come through election rather
than through appointment. We do not have any evidence to show
that you cannot have the type of knowledge that you need through
direct election. If you want to have expertise, it is better to
have that as advisers to Committees than people who end up voting
on every subject rather than simply on the subject which they
are there to be an expert in.
Alexandra Runswick:
I believe that the question was about independence rather than
just expertise. It is possible, although difficult, for independents
to be elected using either of the proportional electoral systems
that have been proposed in the Bill. As we have already said,
we believe that the best way to bring expertise into the second
Chamber is through the Select Committee system rather than as
full-time Members.
The Chairman:
I did not catch the last bit of your answer, I am afraid.
Alexandra Runswick:
Just to repeat what Peter was saying, we believe that the best
way of bringing current, up-to-date expertise into the second
Chamber is through the use of the Select Committee system rather
than making people full-time Members of the legislature.
Q334
The Chairman:
Let me just follow that for a minute. What do you mean by the
Select Committee system?
Alexandra Runswick:
There are different ways in which you could do it. If you wanted
to continue with something that already exists within Parliament
at the moment, you could, for example, appoint expert advisers
to Select Committees, as is the case, for example, with the Joint
Committee on Human Rights. One thing that I would be interested
in would be appointing experts to be full-time members of a Committee
considering a particular policy proposal, but there is not an
example that I am aware of that happening elsewhere.
Q335
The Chairman:
You realise that the Committee system up here is very different
from the Committee system in the House of Commons? We do not have
as comprehensive a number of Select Committees in the Lords as
they do in the House of Commons.
Alexandra Runswick:
No, I am aware of that.
The Chairman:
What we have up here is the European Select Committee, which is
pretty comprehensive, the Economic Affairs Committee and the Science
and Technology Committee—and the Communications Committee.
We do not have a foreign affairs, home affairs or transport Committee;
we do not have any of those. How on earth do you think that you
could fit expertise into each of those Committees?
Peter Facey:
But, with due respect, there is nothing stopping the Chamber setting
up new Committees. If you have effectively moved to an elected
House, there will have to be some changes to the way in which
the House operates.
Q336 The Chairman:
But this would be a huge change, would it not?
Peter Facey:
If you are looking to bring in expertise on an issue, one of the
problems that we see with expertise is that if you appoint someone
because they are expert in A, they are there to deal with all
the other letters of the alphabet. If you are looking for an effective
way of saying, "What we want is the best brains on this particular
issue", we have to find a different way of doing that, and
a way which is current. If you appointed someone as an expert
in 1983, they are not necessarily an expert in 2011. Therefore,
we need to find a different way of doing it. Personally, I have
greater faith than some Members of the second Chamber in the process
of election in bringing people through who are expert in their
field and can gain expertise, but the argument that what we need
is to appoint people for life to get expertise is, I think, extremely
weak.
Q337
The Chairman:
Okay, but let me just turn the argument slightly back on you.
What you are really saying is that if you want individual experts
to come in on individual issues that they are expert in, you will
have to reorganise the whole Committee system of the House of
Lords.
Peter Facey:
Yes, or attach them to Bill Committees or find different ways
of doing it. I think that there are ways of doing it which would
allow you to have more current expertise than the assumption that
you appoint somebody and they are your expert on it, even though
that subject never comes up for 15 years.
Q338
The Chairman:
But why is that a better system than one in which you have appointed
non-party members of the Lords?
Peter Facey:
The fundamental problem is that you are talking about appointing
people. If you appoint experts to a subject area, they are voting
Members—they are full Members—on other subjects. It
is like appointing my mechanic because he is an expert on automobiles
and saying that he should decide on education policy and defence
policy. It is quite a strange way of bringing in expertise. You
would not do it in any other field. You would not say that an
expert in one subject automatically therefore should get to vote
on a whole range of other subjects, but we seem to think that
that is perfectly sensible when it comes to the second Chamber.
Q339
The Chairman:
It seems to me, if I may say so, that you are really saying that
in the interests of psephological purity, which is that everybody
has to be elected, you are against the idea of having independent
experts as full Members of the Lords. That is the base of it.
Alexandra Runswick:
We are against them being full-time Members. We are absolutely
not saying that we do not want expertise to be brought into the
legislative process. We just think that we have to be a bit more
creative about how we do it.
The Chairman:
I understand that.
Q340
Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield:
Thank you very much for your paper. One thought that occurred
to me when I was reading it was the one on which the Lord Chairman
focused—the experts question. Can I ask you how much time
you have spent observing the House of Lords in action, either
in the Chamber or in its existing Select Committees—yourselves
sitting in, watching how it really works, as opposed to reading
Hansard?
Peter Facey:
I do not have a diary of how many times I have done it or have
sat there. I watched most of the two days of the Lords debate
on Lords reform, and I have sat in on a number of occasions, but
I am not saying that I spend my entire life doing that. I would
not be a very good director of the organisation which I represent
if I spent my whole time sitting watching your Lordships.
Q341
Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield:
I understand that, but the reason why I mention it is that I am
still relatively new here—I have been here roughly a year—but
I have been very struck by the degree to which I had not appreciated
until I actually came the level of expertise you get in the normal
exchanges in the House, particularly at the Committee stages of
Bills.
For example, about three weeks ago, there was a clause
in the health Bill dealing with psychiatric services, and we had
three terrific psychiatrists. Having them participate in that
way across the Floor—interleaved with everybody else, many
others of whom had considerable expertise, but not comparable
to theirs—was very special. I simply do not think that you
can replicate that by having people to advise Select Committees.
It is that chemistry which is indefinable; it is one of those
intangibles; you have to see it to appreciate it. That is my point.
Reading your evidence, I get no sense that you have
that feel for the House. It is almost like Kremlinology in the
old days when you could not get into the Soviet Union: you saw
who was standing where at Lenin's tomb on May Day and drew up
extrapolations from it. I do not want to be too unkind, but you
have more than a whiff of that in your paper. We are a foreign
land to you, as well as irritating you very profoundly, quite
obviously.
Peter Facey:
I think that I probably irritate Members of the House of Lords
equally as profoundly as they irritate me on occasions. What I
challenge in your assumption is that you cannot get that expertise
through election. I have watched debates. For instance, there
are Members of the House of Lords who used to be parliamentarians,
some of whom were leading psychiatrists, who were elected. On
the idea that you can get this expertise only through appointment
and that nobody who is an expert would ever deem to dirty themselves
to stand in an election, I probably have a greater faith in the
democratic process than you do. Maybe that is naive and idealistic
on my part.
Q342
Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield:
One tiny remark on that, Lord Chairman, if I may. The problem
arises that it is a 15-year term. Are you going to get psychiatrists
with the depth of experience that, for example, we had the other
day, running in their early 30s for election? That is the problem.
It is a phasing of the career problem as well as a democratic
legitimacy problem.
Peter Facey:
As you will see from our evidence, we think that the 15-year term
is too long, so we have suggested 10-year terms, which deals with
some of the problem you raise. There is evidence from the House
of Commons that people interrupt their careers to participate
through election. There are people who are advanced in their careers
who will do that. I am not saying that it is not a barrier, but
I am not sure that it is the barrier that everybody makes out
that if we moved to an elected second Chamber—wholly or
to the Government's preferred model of 80 per cent—you cannot
have the expertise that people want through the democratic process
rather than through the process of being appointed, predominantly
by party leaders.
Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield:
There is one active research scientist in the House of Commons
out of 650 Members—just one.
Peter Facey:
To be honest, in lots of cases, I do not think that the expert
in the subject is necessarily the best person to frame the laws.
It is important to have them advise the people making the laws,
but I am not sure that they are always the best person to frame
the laws. If you are an expert brain surgeon, it does not necessarily
mean that you are the best person to look at the whole way in
which the NHS works in all its complexity. You have a particular
point of view, and it is an important one to be expressed, but
there is the idea that just because of that you have some magical
insight which cannot be brought in through Committees like this,
with the opportunity to have witnesses, to have advisers and to
debate. The fact is that in lots of cases the people who are most
expert in the subject in terms of law are people who have experience
and do it. I am not normally nice to Members of the House of Commons,
but lots of them after years of service are experts in what they
do and have a level of knowledge which should sometimes be celebrated
rather than denigrated.
Lord Norton of Louth:
You are confusing expertise with specialisation.
Q343
Lord Trefgarne:
You come down very firmly against any government Ministers sitting
in the second Chamber. Whom do you imagine will take government
legislation through the House?
Peter Facey:
We say that government Ministers should be able to speak in the
House of Lords; they should be allowed to be present in the House
of Lords but they should not be Members of it. We think that that
convention should be removed. You can effectively have a Member
of the House of Commons who can present Bills in the House of
Lords.
Lord Trefgarne:
But if he is not a Member he cannot even move amendments; he cannot
do anything.
Peter Facey:
No, but there are plenty of Members who could move amendments
on behalf of the Government; you do not have to be a Minister
to do that. If you are looking to have distinct roles for the
two Houses, one of them is that you want this place to be freer,
to a degree, from the power of the Executive. One way of doing
that, which we have suggested, is to remove Ministers.
Lord Trefgarne:
I am terribly sorry, but I think that your proposition that somebody
else should move government amendments is absurd.
Peter Facey:
Given that most amendments to government Bills are moved by the
party in power—by representatives of the parties or party
in power—even if it is not the Minister who puts the amendment
down, there are ways to ensure that you hold Ministers to account.
They do not actually have to be from the second Chamber. Regularly
I hear your Lordships say, "What we don't want is a clone
of the House of Commons." One way to distinguish it is to
remove Ministers from it and to ensure that this case is about
scrutiny and accountability, not about the Executive. You can
agree with that—obviously you disagree with it.
Lord Trefgarne:
It will not work.
Q344
The Chairman:
I do not want to lose the first point that we were on, so forgive
me for asking one question before we take the next on the list.
On the assumption that a government Bill is going to be enacted,
would you want the 20 per cent nominated to be part-time or full-time?
Alexandra Runswick:
Full-time, I think.
Peter Facey:
We have based our assumptions on a full-time Second Chamber. To
be honest, I do not think that we would dictate to those people
who were appointed whether they served full-time or not. The assumption
would be, given that we are talking about a significantly smaller
House, that they would be full-time. By its very nature, the Government
are proposing a House of 300. Presently, the average attendance
is somewhere in the mid-450s. Therefore, you have to assume that
those 300 people are going to be full-time.
Q345 Baroness Young of
Hornsey: Thank you for
your submission. You make some interesting points, some of which
I agree with, around this issue of expertise and independence,
although I am not sure that I agree with where you end up on that.
I did not find your methodology for assessing current expertise
in the Lords to be terribly rigorous, to say the least. I suggest
that you look again at how you assess current expertise and have
a look in the Register of Lord's Interests to see where people
are really current, because if anybody else's entry has the same
sort of inaccuracy as mine, it is very weak indeed.
I wanted to ask about the issue of independence.
When we look at some of the polls carried out among the general
public, there seems to be a circle that cannot be squared, or
a set of contradictions. On the one hand, the public say, "Yes,
let's have elected Members of the second Chamber," but on
the other hand they say, "Can we have them independent of
political parties to at least some degree?" How do you think
that you can square that circle, particularly if you do not want
to have any appointed independent Peers?
Peter Facey:
The best way that you can square that circle is by ensuring that
the electoral system that you put in place is one which allows
independents to be elected and weakens the power of the party
Whip. The two options which the Government have outlined in the
White Paper of an open list system and a single transferable vote
both, in different ways, can be used to do that. There is evidence
of independents being elected. If you take STV, in the Irish Republic
elections to the present European Parliament—that election
is probably about the nearest you can get to the equivalent size
of seats—one independent has been elected, and in the last
term two were elected, so it is possible to get through under
that system.
Baroness Young of Hornsey:
But we are talking very small numbers.
Peter Facey:
You are talking very small numbers. The evidence is that voters
did not vote hugely for independents. I am in favour of independently
minded people. I am in favour of having an electoral system which
allows independents to be elected if people want to vote for them,
but they have to be popular to get through the electoral process.
Q346 Baroness Young of
Hornsey: But there are
a number of barriers that prevent people who are party-political
independents from standing in the first place, so there is less
choice for the public.
Peter Facey:
We can look at how we remove some of those barriers. We can try
to find ways to ensure that it is as flexible as possible. If
it is a list system, we can look at having counting systems which
benefit independents and smaller parties. We can look at the use
of STV, if we want to, and how we can encourage that. There is
already evidence from the House of Commons that where there is
significant public desire to have an independent elected, they
get elected. For example, there is Wyre Forest, where Health Concern
Kidderminster had a candidate elected for two terms in the House
of Commons. That was under an electoral system which most academics
think was the most unfriendly to independents.
Baroness Young of Hornsey:
But we are always only talking about one or two at a time. The
other thing that I get from your paper is a very different kind
of body emerging from the one that we currently have, which is
of course part of the point. It seems to me to be a lot more technocratic.
I do not have a feel for what the ethos of the body would be.
It feels very instrumental—going through scrutiny and revision
in a very technocratic way.
Alexandra Runswick:
We hope that it would be a deliberative Chamber. That is certainly
the division of the Chambers that we would like to see. Yes, its
prime function would be scrutiny and review, but we would hope
that, because it would be a smaller Chamber, chosen using a more
proportional election system, you would be able to have a more
deliberative and—I would say "consensual", but
I do not necessarily mean agreement—collegiate atmosphere
than there often is in the House of Commons.
Peter Facey:
Maybe our ability to translate our desires into words has not
been effective. I do not want a purely technocractic House. That
is not our desire. We have tried to take what people say is the
purpose of the House of Lords in terms of scrutiny and show how
we address those concerns. We are not looking for people to come
through this who are identikit politicians. We want independently
minded people; we think that they can come through election. You
can have independently minded people inside parties. The idea
that you have a choice of an independently minded person or somebody
from a political party is a false dichotomy.
One thing that we found interesting is that, if you
look at rebellion rates, we always assumed that in rebellions
in the House of Lords the number of people breaking the party
Whip would be significantly stronger than in the House of Commons.
Actually, depending on how you count it, they are either the same,
broadly speaking, or people are slightly more rebellious in the
House of Commons. The size of rebellions in the House of Commons
in terms of the number of people rebelling at any one time tends
to be larger. The evidence that election will not produce independently
minded politicians is not there.
Q347 Oliver Heald:
Do you agree that the sort of House that you want affects the
electoral system that you choose?
Peter Facey:
Broadly, yes.
Oliver Heald:
At the moment, the House has about 25 per cent who are independent
Cross-Benchers. Would
you want those sorts of people in the second Chamber?
Peter Facey:
It does not really matter what I want; it would be what the electorate
want. Would I like them to stand? Absolutely.
Alexandra Runswick:
It should certainly be possible for them to be in the second Chamber.
We would not want to see anything which barred them from that.
Peter Facey:
I would be a very strange democrat if I called for an election
and then said, "This is exactly the outcome that I want from
the electorate." What I want is a system which is flexible
enough to give the electorate the outcome they desire.
Oliver Heald:
Yes, but you are obviously looking at the interaction between
the electoral system and the kind of Chamber that you are trying
to create. If you were trying to create a Chamber that was designed
to produce the Government of the country, you would argue between
first past the post, which tends to produce an emphatic result,
or STV, which tends to be more proportional, because that is what
you are trying to achieve: a legitimate and clear outcome. For
a revising Chamber, which deliberates, you might be looking for
something different. My second point is whether you see this as
a House which represents regions and where people elect a regional
representative to stand up for their region in Parliament.
Peter Facey:
Certainly that should be one of the functions; I am not sure that
that is the sole function. The present House of Lords is dominated
by people from London and the south-east. There is a role for
the second Chamber to have representatives from all parts of the
United Kingdom and represent interests in a different way from
how they are represented in the House of Lords. Most second Chambers
around the world have some function of representing the different
parts of the state or the country. We have always argued that
the second Chamber should have that function and that, therefore,
there should be voices from Northern Ireland, from Scotland and
from the English regions, however they are constructed, ensuring
that it is not a predominantly metropolitan voice that comes through
the second Chamber.
Q348 Oliver Heald:
We have been asking questions of the experts—you have probably
read this in our evidence—about what the outcome would be
of following the Government's model of STV to see what sort of
House it would produce. We
are told that the best example is Australia—this is what
Meg Russell told us. The
STV system in Australia produces about three independents.
Peter Facey:
People get hung up on the differences between STV and list systems.
I would like the Committee to concentrate on the features that
you would like rather than the name of the system, and build up
that way. What the Australians have done with STV is effectively
to turn it into a closed party list. They have made it so difficult
for the voter to use the system that, overwhelmingly, the majority
of people simply tick a box and, effectively, the party decides
where all the preferences go across all the lines. If you want
a system that encourages independence of mind, the Australian
version of STV is the last that you want, because the difference
between it and, say, the system that we have for the European
Parliament in Great Britain is very small. Effectively, it is
a party list. If you compare it with the list system in Finland,
for instance, which was a system that the Conservative Party proposed
in opposition when we were looking at changing the system from
first past the post to PR for the European elections, that is
a very open list system. It is effectively first past the post
within party lists.
You can get caught up here on the labels of things.
You need to look at the components of electoral systems. For us,
the important thing is that the voter had a genuine choice of
individuals, not just parties; that it is broadly proportional;
and that it does not produce too high a bar to prevent non-party
people from being elected. You can do that under STV—depending
on how you do it—and you can do it under various types of
list systems. When we did a survey of our supporter base, they
overwhelmingly supported STV, but they would be horrified if that
was turned into something like the Australian Senate STV, which,
trust me, is not what you want to be basing yourself on.
Q349 Oliver Heald:
Is that not because you are still thinking about this in terms
of the classic debate about electoral systems, which is all about
the Commons? If you wanted
to produce a working Chamber that did revising and deliberation,
why would you not want very much the same make-up as now, and
why would you not want to have the system that they have, where
it is a closed list, in effect, plus selection, because that way
you get a very different composition from what you get from straightforward
STV?
Peter Facey:
I have just been criticised on whether election would produce
independent-minded people. If you go for what is effectively a
closed system, whether it is STV or a closed party list, you are
doing everything you can to prevent that from happening.
Oliver Heald:
You are not really, are you Peter? If you are having selection
for the non-political elements, you will have people of great
expertise—people who know a good deal about particular subjects
and have a lifetime of experience. When
it comes to the elected element, you could get the same sort of
people, but with their political affiliation, as you do now, whereas
with your system you are just turning it all over to the politicians.
Peter Facey:
Actually, I think that you are turning it all over to the politicians.
Maybe I am wrong, but if you are suggesting that you have a selectorate
who suggest and then closed-party lists which decide the balance
in the House, the problem with that is that the voters cannot
effectively change that balance.
To give you an example from Norway—one of my
personal favourites—there was an occasion called the revenge
of the women, because the traditional political parties put men
at the top of their lists and all the women were in lower positions.
The feminist movement of the 1970s in Norway had a very simple
suggestion to Norwegian voters: to cross out—you could do
that because it was an open list system—all the men until
you got the first woman. Effectively, they massacred a load of
male politicians. The effect was that in Norway, not because of
the law but because of the effect of the electoral system, Norwegian
parties now have mixtures of men and women. You do not just have
all the men at the top and all the women at the bottom.
If you go for a completely closed system, you are
depending on parties to be more enlightened than the electorate.
I personally always trust the electorate more than I trust the
parties. If you look at some of the problems that we have in producing
diversity of candidates, it is not the electorate who are resistant;
in lots of cases it is the parties who are resistant. Therefore,
I would like a more open system.
Oliver Heald:
There is no reason why you cannot have rules about what the list
contained.
Peter Facey:
You can, but I would prefer to have an open system in which the
electorate decides that. I am all in favour of parties having
the option of zipping or their own particular ways of doing it,
but the final arbiter should be the electorate, not the selectorate.
Q350 John Thurso:
Can I ask you about your comments on the length of term? You have
criticised 15 years as being too long, and your paper goes for
two five-year terms. You
also criticise the fact that there is no re-election.
If one goes to a 10-year term with re-election, are we not in
danger of replicating the Commons and handing it to the party
system, which is what we are trying to avoid?
Peter Facey:
We thought long and hard about this and we do not think so. We
think that the differences in the electoral system, the size,
the functions, the powers and the fact that you will have a quarantine
period before you can stand for the House of Commons would mean
that you would not replicate. If you followed our recommendations
completely, you would have a quarantine period before you even
go from the House of Commons to the House of Lords. There would
be a gap because we are not proposing to hold the elections on
the same day as the general election. Therefore, you would carve
out a separate niche for the second Chamber. We have to balance
accountability with independence. We think that the ability to
stand only once with a smaller term is better. When we polled
our supporter base, overwhelmingly we were on the longer end,
and they were on the shorter end. The people whom we engaged in
our process were more in favour of shorter terms than we were.
Q351 John Thurso:
Forgive me, because I am largely on your side, but that is a no-brainer.
If you ask people, "Do you want them to have a 15-year term
in all their luxury up in the padded red end?" they will
say, "No, we don't" If you then say, "Do you want
them to be independent of the party system?" they will say,
"Of course we want them to be independent." They then
give us the conundrum to work out.
Let me bring you back to one
thing that strikes me about the Lords in its current form. Given
that the only way out is through an act of God, the Whips really
do not have a great deal of power if someone chooses to say, "Up
with this I will not put." By contrast, in the Commons, although
we have more rebellions, none of them ever gets anywhere, because
they are very carefully managed to ensure that they do not. Therefore,
we are fairly powerless or we are out of a job, as it were. If
you want independence and that independence to have a degree of
power, do you not have to compromise between the purity of constant
election and the objective?
Peter Facey:
I suppose that we would say that we have compromised. If you give
us a choice between 15-year terms and no election, we will take
15-year terms, thank you very much. We are talking here about
what we think would improve the Bill, because this is about pre-legislative
scrutiny to produce the best deal for an elected Chamber. That
is the purpose of the Committee. We think that we have already
compromised. We are trying to balance accountability, legitimacy
and independence. We think that a 10-year term, which would effectively
be two full terms of the House of Commons, does that with one
election and would still produce the level of independence.
One reason why rebellions in the House of Commons
do not tend to get anywhere is that, on the whole, Governments
tend to have relatively large majorities. Therefore, the rebellion
is meaningless. The reason why the second Chamber is, in our opinion,
very good at this is not just the independence of mind and the
quality of the individuals in the House of Lords, in which there
are many great people; it is that on the whole there are not majorities.
Therefore, combinations of groups can defeat legislation. There
is some evidence to show that the House of Lords can be quite
disciplined. Some party groups in the House of Lords—the
Liberal Democrats, for example—can be quite effective, well-managed
groups which deliver beyond their means.
Q352 John Thurso:
One last point on that before the Lord Chairman pulls me up. There
are, effectively, four parties or four big blocs in the House
of Lords, because the Cross-Benchers, although they can in theory
go any which way, on major issues often coalesce around a particular
concept or amendment. When
that happens, which might not be very often, you get a big movement
in the Chamber and a political party, two opposition parties,
or whatever and the Cross-Benchers coalescing. If we went to your
model, the likelihood is that the Cross-Benchers would be reduced
considerably as a proportion. Would we not have thrown out a very
important baby with the bathwater?
Peter Facey:
I think that you would also find that there were more parties,
depending on the electoral system. Let us be clear: at the moment,
in most polls, UKIP is running at the same level as the Liberal
Democrats. I cannot remember how many members of UKIP there are
in the second Chamber, but I think that it is one or two at the
moment. I am not speaking as an advocate for UKIP; I am just saying
that the assumption that if we move to election it will just be
a cosy place where there will be Labour, the Conservatives and
the Liberal Democrats as the third party and that other forces
will not be brought forward is not one that I necessarily accept.
If you go for a proportional system, it is unlikely that you will
have a majority in the second Chamber—in fact, it is extremely
unlikely, especially if you do it either in thirds or in halves,
as we suggest. Therefore, you can produce the same thing through
election rather than appointment. If you are going to have appointment,
let us have it at 20 per cent, but let us have those people not
as party people. If this Committee deems that you want to keep
the Cross-Benchers, let us make sure that that 20 per cent is
Cross-Benchers, not simply people who are appointed by parties
through a second route. Party people should be elected through
the electoral system.
Alexandra Runswick:
Just to add to that, one of the issues about Cross-Benchers is
not whether they can make a difference but that they tend to vote
much less frequently than party-appointed Peers. Meg Russell at
the UCL Constitution Unit has done work showing that they attend
and vote much less frequently than party-appointed Peers. It is
a question of getting a balance. As Peter has said, we were attempting
to get a balance between accountability, legitimacy and independence,
and to look at the international models, whereby 15 years is an
exceptionally long term.
Q353
Baroness Andrews:
I am on a different tack. Thank you for your interesting paper.
In paragraph 5, you state: "It has been asserted that an
elected second chamber would no longer be bound by the Parliament
Acts or the conventions that currently govern the relationships
between the two chambers." Then you make a counter-assertion:
"Unlock Democracy does not accept this argument." First,
I would like you to expand on that, because the example of the
Australian Senate that you give is of course a Senate inside a
federal structure—so I would take issue with that. Can you
explain the basis for your counter-assertion there?
Peter Facey:
Yes, the Australian Senate is in a federal system, but, on paper,
it is a more powerful Chamber than the House of Lords. Its powers
are broadly equal. In some ways, you could say that it is more
like the House of Lords before the Parliament Acts. Even there,
it is clearly the second Chamber of the Australian model. It is
a second Chamber not because of election—you can have the
semantic argument about whether an individual elected from a constituency
is more democratic than somebody elected by a proportional system—but
because of powers and structures. We do not think that, if you
move to a second Chamber with the Parliament Acts in place, elected
by halves and by thirds, you are challenging the primacy of the
first place or producing a duplicate. I cannot see how a second
Chamber could effectively change the primacy without the consent
of the House of Commons to do so.
Q354
Baroness Andrews:
If that is the case, why do you say: "Particularly in the
UK, where the House of Commons is dominated by an unusually strong
Executive, it is vital that a second chamber—democratically
legitimate, and constituted differently from the lower House—exists
to hold it in check." Why are you so concerned to invent
all these methodologies to make sure that that does not happen?
What makes you so sure that an elected Chamber, ostensibly elected
on a more democratic basis, is not going to flex its muscles?
Peter Facey:
It would probably flex its muscles. Let us be clear: a directly
elected or predominantly elected second Chamber would be more
assertive. It would use the powers that it has. That does not
mean that it affects primacy. In some ways, this is a strange
debate. If by primacy you mean that the Executive, dominating
the House of Commons, always gets its way on everything possible,
I am against that definition of primacy. If you are talking about
the House of Commons as the prime Chamber from which the Government
are formed, where votes of confidence are held, from which most
legislation comes through and which is the prime—the stronger—the
two Chambers, under a directly elected second Chamber that will
still be the case. Is it going to be more assertive than now?
Is it going to be more confident than now? Yes. Do I think that
that is a bad thing? No. The fact is that the House of Lords has
become more assertive over the last 10 years because of the changes
that have already happened in the removal of the hereditaries,
the way in which appointments have changed, et cetera. I make
no apology for believing that you could have a stronger Parliament
overall with, yes, primacy of the House of Commons, which makes
the Executive's job harder, so that the quality of legislation
and the quality of governance, which is what this is all about,
are improved.
Q355 Baroness Andrews:
In Clause 2 of the draft Bill, the Government say that the relationship
between the two Houses should not change. You do not agree with
that.
Peter Facey:
We have said that one mistake that the Government have made is
in not addressing the powers issue. We think that the powers are
fine. We do not think that, on paper, they need to be changed.
But the fact is that an elected second Chamber is going to be
more assertive. We think that we should be up front about that
and look at ways in which we can mediate between the two Houses.
But I do not think that the powers need to change. There has been
no change of powers in the last 10 years, even though the House
of Lords has become more assertive. The fact is that it is more
willing to use its powers than it was.
Baroness Andrews:
So you do not think that election is of such qualitative change
that this needs to change. Do you think, for example, that if
the House had been elected, we would have given in at the last
moment on the AV Bill?
Peter Facey:
I do not know. If you look at the way in which the House of Lords
dealt with the AV Bill, you see that it was fairly assertive.
It was probably more assertive than it has been. There are Members
of the House of Lords who have complained that the culture of
the House of Lords has changed because of the increasing number
of former MPs in the second Chamber. I would not say, looking
at the AV Bill, that it was non-political; there was an extremely
politicised debate around it.
Baroness Andrews:
But the key amendments were moved by the Cross-Benchers.
Peter Facey:
Cross-Benchers can be political; they are just not party political.
You cannot be in the House of Lords and not be political.
Q356
Bishop of Leicester:
Let me take us back to the question of the nature of the expertise
in this House and how it functions. We were talking about it half
an hour ago, but I think that it is central to the argument. I
think that you were saying that not only was it likely that you
would have expertise in an elected House but that, further than
that, the expertise in this House at the moment is problematic
in the way that it works. You gave the analogy of a car mechanic,
who might be good at that, taking a view on something else that
he was not good at. Are you arguing precisely that? If so, can
you give an example of where an outcome from this House has been
distorted by experts taking a view on something on which they
do not have expertise? In other words, rather than just discussing
the abstraction, how has that played out in practice and what
has been the consequence of the particular problem that you are
pointing to?
Alexandra Runswick:
No. I cannot think of a particular example of where I think that
somebody who did not have expertise in a particular subject has
necessarily distorted a particular outcome. We have talked quite
a lot about the work that we did on expertise and people rightly
questioned the methodology of what we did. We are in no way claiming
that this is the definitive work on expertise in the House of
Lords. What we were trying to do was, because lots of assertions
are made about expertise in the House of Lords, to look at those
and look at whether or not appointment was the most effective
means of bringing expertise into the second Chamber. We obviously
take the view that it is not. For example, the largest single
group of those appointed to the second Chamber consists of former
councillors, MPs, MEPs and party officials. That is not to say
that they do not have relevant experience or expertise, but those
are a group of people whom we could get through election. That
was what we were trying to look at in our work on expertise. We
were not able to find any other assessments of how expert or not
or what sectors were sufficiently represented in the House of
Lords.
Q357
Bishop of Leicester:
You say that where expertise is needed it can be brought in through
the Select Committee process. Is the logical conclusion of that
that you can buy in expertise when you need it and, therefore,
the last thing that you want is any expertise in the legislating
Members and that expertise is actually problematic—representativeness
is everything and expertise is less than nothing?
Alexandra Runswick:
I do not agree with that and it is not what we are trying to argue.
One of the issues with the House of Lords has always been the
conception of membership. Some Members attend roughly full-time—they
attend on a daily basis and contribute to debates on every Bill.
Others continue a professional career and come in for specific
subjects and obviously some people see it purely as an honour
and do not generally attend the Chamber. What we were trying to
think of in terms of an elected Chamber was what kind of membership
we wanted and how you could bring in expertise that was current
and relevant. One of the challenges, to which Peter has alluded,
is that if you have appointed someone in 1983 on the basis of
their expertise, 20 years later that may not necessarily be the
most relevant expertise that you want to bring to the process.
That is not to say that they do not have a view or relevant experience,
but if you are trying to bring in somebody specifically for their
expertise rather than for their general experience, which may
include expertise on some subjects, we think that there are more
effective ways of doing that.
Q358
Bishop of Leicester:
Perhaps I could just ask one further question, which relates to
the proposal in paragraph 16 of your submission for a Joint Committee
to be set up, as you put it, along the lines of the German or
US models. I am a complete non-expert in this area but I certainly
think, looking across the Atlantic to the US model, that it is
not a very inviting prospect of that being a permanent mechanism
for resolving disputes between two Houses in a bicameral system.
Alexandra Runswick:
The reason why we specifically referenced the US model is that
there are lots of different types of Joint Committee that you
can set up and some are more effective than others. For example,
the French committee system is widely seen as quite discredited,
partly because it meets very frequently but often for a few minutes
and then just refers the issue back to the lower Chamber. We were
looking for a permanent committee, which would enable people to
build up relationships, because, obviously, if you are negotiating,
that is a useful thing to have between the two Houses. We were
looking at something that would be able to have power distributed
between the two Houses. Obviously, one issue is who can call the
committee, what happens to the results of the committee and who
has the final say. For example, in the German system, either Chamber
can call for the Joint Committee and, because they have a federal
structure, which Chamber has the final say depends on the type
of law that is being disputed. The American example is of a permanent
committee. We are not saying that it is the ideal mechanism and
that we should import wholesale the US model of government, but
it is one example. For example, if either House recommends that
there should be a committee, each has to consider it, vote on
it and decide whether to allow that to happen. We thought that
that was a useful mechanism.
Q359
Lord Norton of Louth:
I would like to come back to the point that Baroness Andrews pursued
on paragraph 5, where you refer to the conventions that currently
govern the relationships. We are not talking about conventions
qua conventions; we are talking about specific conventions. Paragraph
6 does not really relate to that in terms of current conventions.
Of the argument about current conventions, you say: "Unlock
Democracy does not accept this argument." Yet from paragraph
12 onwards, it seems to be the very argument that you are developing.
In paragraph 15, you say: "Currently this is managed through
the use of conventions. Unlock Democracy believes that an elected
second chamber would benefit from a more formal structure".
So you are moving away from current conventions and, of course,
the conventions themselves limit the House in its use of the powers
that are vested in it. You are saying that if it was elected,
it would use those powers, which are presently constrained by
convention. Presumably, either you accept your argument from paragraph
12 onwards or you accept your argument in paragraph 5. I cannot
see that you can accept both.
Alexandra Runswick:
It is more that we believe that government should be open and
transparent and that citizens and residents should able to understand
how decisions are taken and where they are taken. We would prefer
things to be set out and for there to be clarity, rather than
it simply to be convention.
Lord Norton of Louth:
So you would move away from the current conventions. I mean, they
would cease to be conventions.
Peter Facey:
Yes. The reality is that a lot of the conventions are being challenged
by the House itself. For instance, on the Salisbury-Addison convention,
the Liberal Democrats have already stated that they do not feel
bound by that convention because they were not part of the deal—they
were neither Salisbury nor Addison. If you move to an elected
second Chamber, will work have to be done? Yes, we are not denying
that. Do we think that the basic powers will change? The reality
is that it will evolve. The fundamentals of the Parliament Act
cannot be changed and the basic powers of the House of Lords cannot
be changed without the permission of the House of Commons, and
I cannot foresee a circumstance when the House of Commons would
give more powers to the House of Lords. Maybe you can, but at
the moment, I cannot; I do not have that crystal ball.
Q360
Lord Norton of Louth:
That might be the political reality, but it does not mean that
it is necessarily justifiable. You advance the idea of a Joint
Committee. Do not forget that in 1911, the idea of a Joint Committee
was offered as an alternative to the Parliament Act, not as a
complement to it. My basic point is that the point you are making
in paragraph 5 does not hold. In other words, you accept the argument.
Peter Facey:
I am not sure that I do.
Lord Norton of Louth:
In that case, we ignore paragraphs 12 onwards.
Peter Facey:
No. I am more than happy to come back to you with justification
of it but no, I do not think that you can ignore paragraphs 12
onwards.
Q361 Laura Sandys:
The paper goes through the Bill, and all the rest of it, but one
thing that you have only just mentioned now—it is not really
in the paper—is that this is a change to Parliament, not
just to one Chamber. Sometimes
we look at this in a rather binary way: one Chamber and another
and the competition between them.
My strong feeling is that this
is an opportunity to strengthen Parliament as a whole. As a result,
I would question your point about the timing of elections—point
96. You and many other people who are keen on reform look at separating
the two Chambers in the public's eye. If one is looking as a voter,
is there not some justification for saying, "Today is the
day I vote for my Parliament. There are two Chambers, and I vote
in a different way for each"? That gives voters the ability
to make different choices, particularly through different systems.
It would build greater understanding of what Parliament looks
like and its two Chambers' functions than there might be if you
separated the elections and put them with the European elections,
where you get a very low turnout. I question your wanting to divide
this up and not seeing this as a place with two Chambers which
has some narrative across both Chambers for the electorate.
Peter Facey:
We are certainly attempting to get rid of the narrative that this
is the whole of Parliament. In fact, we think that, at the moment
that narrative is lost on most people, including people in Parliament.
They tend to ignore the Lords and think about the Commons.
Laura Sandys:
I agree.
Peter Facey:
What we were trying to do is again about the desire to have separate
functions for the two Houses and to protect one from the other.
By having them elected on separate days, we think that overall
you have a better mix. In particular, you create a degree of quarantine
between the lower and the upper House. Yes, MPs can then stand
for the upper House, but they cannot immediately go from one to
another, because the elections are staggered; they are two years
away. It creates, we think, a better mix. Is that something that
I would go to the barricades over? No, it is not. It is a matter
of judgment. In our judgment, having the elections mid-term probably
helps to produce a House which counterbalances the Commons better
and complements it better than having it on the same day as a
general election. The danger is that elections to the Lords will
be lost on that day.
Q362 Laura Sandys:
I fundamentally disagree. I think that it is about the collective
and the relationship between the two—the interrelationship.
I would also say that
one of the problems of having it midway between House of Commons
elections is that you get protest rather than a positive sense
of what one wants out of the Chambers. I
am not unhappy with there being counterbalances—that is
why I prefer a third, a third, a third to a half and a half, but
I think that by separating them you will end up with extreme results
which will not necessarily make for as effective a functioning
Parliament.
Peter Facey:
I suppose that this is a judgment call and our judgment is different
from yours. Ours is that having it mid-term and spaced out is
likely to produce a more balanced House, because it gives a period
of time when the public can pay attention to what they want from
the second Chamber. If it is at the same time as a general election,
with all the concentration in the modern world on leaders' debates
and everything else, the role of the second Chamber will get lost.
You think that it will be more complementary and people will think
about Parliament as a whole. My fear is that they will think about
the Government of the day in the House of Commons, and the House
of Lords will be an afterthought, which is why we would like the
election to be at a separate time. As I said, this is not a red-line
issue for us. We just think that it would be a stronger overall
Parliament if the Lords was elected on a separate day from the
Commons. Again, we are talking from our point of view about improving
the Bill rather than about a fundamental.
Q363
Lord Tyler:
I think that this follows on from the last point. I am genuinely
not sure whether your paper is saying that, as far as you, your
colleagues and your supporters are concerned, it is all or nothing.
If, for example, on the advice of this Committee, the Government
come forward with 80 per cent, am I right in assuming that you
would accept that 80 per cent is preferable to 0 per cent?
Peter Facey:
Yes.
Lord Tyler:
Am I right in assuming that if, in the same circumstances, on
the basis of the advice of this Committee, the Government decide
that they want one third, one third, one third and over 15 years,
again, that is preferable to life?
Peter Facey:
Yes.
Lord Tyler:
Right. Thirdly, then, and perhaps slightly more controversially,
if, on the advice of this Committee, the Government come forward
with a Bill which does not make for a very small House—300
maximum—of full-time parliamentarians, but is advised to
go for a larger House, some of whom, particularly if they are
one of the 20 per cent appointed, are not full-time parliamentarians,
would you again regard that as preferable to the current situation?
Peter Facey:
Yes.
Q364 Lord Tyler:
So if I am taking from your paper that the view that you are adopting
is perhaps rather idealistic and that you think that the pragmatism
of the Government is preferable to the present situation, is that
a fair summary?
Peter Facey:
I would not use those words. We have tried to take this Committee
at face value. This is about pre-legislative scrutiny to produce
the best form of an elected second Chamber. We have therefore
tried to engage with the subject matter seriously. We think that
the things that we have suggested will improve the Bill, otherwise
we would not have bothered to engage 4,100 people in that process
or to spend a long time on our submission. If you are asking me
to choose between the existing system, where, effectively, you
are appointed for life and where, even if you are sent to prison,
you come back to your seat in the place—all the things in
the present House of Lords—and a reformed Chamber as outlined
in the government Bill, absolutely I will support the government
Bill. We live in the real, practical world and we have to make
the best of it that we can. Are there red lines? Yes. Are there
things on which, rather like Oliver, I will come back to ask for
more later? Absolutely. To choose between your two options, yes,
we are on the side of the Government.
Lord Tyler:
What is your red line, then?
Peter Facey:
Our red line would be if it went under 80 per cent, which was
the vote in the House of Commons—the two options being 80
per cent and 100 per cent. For instance, if the Committee said
that it should be 20 per cent elected and 80 per cent appointed,
I do not think that we would be supporting the Bill. In fact,
we would probably say that it was a waste of time.
Q365 Ann Coffey:
I want to follow on a bit from what Laura was asking, because
I am slightly confused about the basis of the timings for elections.
You say in your paper that you agree with the Government that
combining elections is a sensible strategy. The
point that you seem to be making is that you want to separate
out elections to the House of Lords and elections to the House
of Commons, but you do not have a problem with suggesting that
elections to the House of Lords should be on the same day as the
European elections or at the same time as local elections. That
seems to me to be quite difficult to understand. I would have
thought that if you have elections to the House of Commons and
the House of Lords on the same day, you reinforce the primacy
of the House of Commons. People know that in one set of ballot
papers they are voting for a national Government; they can then
put that to one side and turn their attention to what they want
for a House of Lords. The fact that both are on the same day gives
them the ability to do that. However, if you have these elections
on the same day as the European or local elections, they know
that part of that is voting for a national Government—it
is about voting for the UK Parliament in some form. I do not think
that that reinforces the primacy of the House of Commons; it might
actually take something away from it.
Peter Facey:
The difficulty would be that, if you held the elections on the
same day, I cannot foresee circumstances in which the BBC or other
media would pay any real attention to the elections to the second
Chamber. It will be a by-product. There will not be debates about
it. I think that you can hold it with other elections and you
can have that attention. If you do not want that attention on
those elections—you deliberately do not want a focus where
there is public debate about those elections and the candidates
standing in them—you should hold them on the same day.
Q366 Ann Coffey:
I think that the European Parliament is quite an important election.
I think that the local elections are quite important elections.
These are all important elections. Therefore,
your argument about the BBC not covering the House of Lords because
that election is on the same day as the election to the House
of Commons, but they might cover House of Lords elections if they
are on the same day as the European elections, because the European
elections are less engaging, does not seem to me to be very robust.
The BBC are perfectly capable of covering the local elections
when they take place on the same day as the general election,
and the population is perfectly capable of understanding the different
people for whom they are voting.
Peter Facey:
Of course people are perfectly capable, but I think that the reality
is that, if you are looking at the coverage at the same time as
a general election, because the House of Commons and the formation
of the Government become all-consuming, you are competing against
something very strong. I am not at all saying that elections to
local government, to the devolved Assemblies and to the European
Parliament are not important—if you have taken that from
what I have said, I humbly apologise, because that is not what
we are saying. I just think that if you combine the House of Lords
elections with, say, elections to the European Parliament, you
are likely to have a situation where both can get some oxygen
of publicity. The reality is that, if you hold those elections
at the same time as the general election, because you are talking
about the formation of the Government of the day, it is a lot
more difficult to have the same degree of engagement.
Q367 Ann Coffey:
But do you not therefore think that, if they are on the same day,
you will get the explanation of the differences between them?
In fact, it would work to advantage. We
are not going to agree about it, but my final question is whether
you think that there should be a referendum. If so, what question
would you ask? I see you that have done something online. It is
very difficult to frame questions, so what question would you
ask the electorate if you think that there should be a referendum
on reform?
Peter Facey:
We have thought long and hard on this subject. We are not against
referendums. We do not think that, given the fact that all three
parties had Lords reform in their manifestos, there necessarily
needs to be a referendum. As an organisation that does not believe
that Governments always asking people is necessarily the correct
thing—people should be able to ask Governments—we
are minded that, if opponents of reform had enough support in
a petition, say 5 per cent of the electorate, to trigger a referendum,
there should be a referendum in those circumstances. That should
be a straight question about whether you want the reform. It has
to be shown that there is the requirement to have a referendum.
Referendums are very expensive and it needs to be shown that one
is necessary. In this case, all the parties are saying that they
are committed to doing this reform. Therefore, we think that that
is sufficient legitimacy to go ahead and do it. On the other hand,
if the public disagree and there is evidence that they want a
referendum on the subject—as I said, 5 per cent is a reasonable
trigger for that; it would be 2 million signatures—we would
not be opposed to a referendum in those circumstances.
Q368 Ann Coffey:
Would you initiate such a process?
Peter Facey:
Having just come out of a referendum campaign on the wrong end
of history, shall we say, on that particular occasion, I probably
would not initiate it. There are other things on which I would
rather initiate referendums. It is for those people who think
that this reform is a bad thing to initiate that referendum. I
would wish them well. In the same way that we have supported people
who want to trigger local referendums on elected mayors, even
though as an organisation we do not have a view on elected mayors,
we would offer them support. But would I go out on the streets
banging on doors to have a referendum? No, I would not.
Q369 The Chairman:
Could I follow up on that point about referendums? First, given
the passage of the Bill through Parliament, it is at least a possibility
that the Lords will not accept a Bill that contains provision
for an elected House. If you are going to have a referendum, do
you want it before the Parliament Act is invoked or after the
Parliament Act is invoked? Or do you think that, on the whole,
a referendum would be a rather better alternative to the invocation
of the Parliament Act?
Peter Facey:
As I said, our view is that if you are going to have a referendum
it should be triggered by voters. Therefore, I do not see that
it would stop the full use of the Parliament Acts to get this
through. It is one of the ironies about the debate about primacy
that the House that constantly talks about the primacy of the
other is willing to defend the primacy of the House of Commons
to the point of obstructing the House of Commons. I look forward
to the Lords voting for a democratic second Chamber, but I have
to admit that I am expecting to wait a long time. I hope that
your Lordships will all vote for it, but I do not necessarily
expect you to.
Q370
The Chairman:
But do you not think that a referendum would be better than two
or three years of political turmoil on this issue?
Peter Facey:
Given the experience of then having to legislate for a referendum
and all the things that go alongside it, I am not sure that the
turmoil would be any less if we had a referendum. All it will
do is that the issue over which there is a fight will be different—it
will be over the terms of the referendum and there will be clauses
on whether there should be a super-majority, for example. The
idea that simply by having a referendum you will save time in
Parliament and will all be able to move on, leaving it to the
electorate, is a nice one, but from previous experience I do not
think that it would happen.
Q371 Mr Clarke:
I found the paper extremely interesting, but in listening to your
evidence today I get the feeling that you do not have a very high
opinion of elected representatives, from councillors to MPs. If
I am wrong about that, would you tell me?
Alexandra Runswick:
Absolutely. It is not that we have a low opinion of elected representatives;
indeed, part of our mission is to get more people actively involved
in politics within the United Kingdom. We see political participation
as a much undervalued activity. In the evidence that we put in
the paper, it was not that we do not value the work of MPs, councillors
and MEPs—or even party officials—it was simply to
point out that, seeing as they have stood for election, there
is no reason to believe that that expertise could not be got through
elections to the second Chamber. We were certainly not intending
to underestimate their experience or the value of their contribution
to public service.
Peter Facey:
One thing that we constantly say as an organisation is that this
country does not value those people who give up their time to
be part of the democratic process. We should celebrate people
at a local and national level who give up their time to ensure
that our democracy is a real thing. If you have taken from anything
that we have said today that we denigrate people who stand for
election, I humbly apologise, because that is not our intention.
In fact, if anything, we think that an elected second Chamber
could do as good a job, if not better, than an appointed one,
because we have confidence in the electoral and democratic process.
Q372 Mr Clarke:
I welcome those replies, but I would like to go back to some of
the evidence that you gave earlier, when you said—and I
am not saying that I disagree with this—that, as at present
constituted, the House of Lords has more people proportionately
than it should from the south of England and what the BBC used
to describe as the Home Counties. That is your position, is it
not? Tell me, then, about your organisation. When
you had this consultation and 4,000 people responded, how many
were from Scotland, how many were from Northern Ireland?
Peter Facey:
I cannot give you that breakdown now, but I will come back to
you to give it to you. Our membership is spread across the UK.
Is there a higher percentage from the south-east? Yes, there is,
but as an organisation we put lots of things in place to ensure
that we have a balance. For instance, our elected council has
constituencies, so that we cannot simply have people from the
south-east elected who dominate the organisation. We ensure as
much as possible that we are reflective of the whole United Kingdom.
There are limitations on what a small NGO can do, but where at
all possible we do those things to ensure that we are representative
of our membership and supporter base. But I am happy to come back
to you with a breakdown of where in United Kingdom the 4,000 people
came from.
Q373 Mr Clarke:
I am very grateful for that. Elsewhere in your paper, you deal
with appointments. If I have got this right, you were saying that
there should be some kind of Commission and that it should not
consider people from political backgrounds. Why
do you disqualify so many people from making a contribution?
Alexandra Runswick:
We took the view that if you are having elections through a party-political
system to a Chamber and continuing to have appointments as well,
they were performing different functions: the role of the elections
was to get the party-political experience and the appointments
were to get a different type of experience in. Obviously, we take
the view that we would rather have a fully elected Chamber, but
if there was to be appointment, we would see it as trying to get
a different set of people in from the ones through the elections.
Q374 Mr Clarke:
I put it to you—and if you correct me, I will welcome the
correction—that the logic of your argument is that people
like Betty Boothroyd, Paddy Ashdown and Norman Tebbit, all of
them with enormous experience, should not be considered among
the people who you think should be appointed.
Peter Facey:
All those people have enormous experience. We think that they
have also shown a willingness to stand for election.
Mr Clarke:
That is a very good point
Peter Facey:
And they should be elected. If you are going to have appointments,
and the argument for appointment is that it brings in a type of
person who would not otherwise stand for election, let us have
those people who would not stand for election. Let us not have
a process whereby, as well as the experts that everyone seems
to want to have in the House of Lords, we also have people who
are drawn from the parties. That is not because we devalue those
people; we think that they have a huge contribution to make, but
it should be through the democratic process. Given that as an
organisation we support 100 per cent elected, I suppose that you
would expect us to say that.
Q375 Mr Clarke:
Yes, but assuming that that does not happen—I value what
you have said on it—are you really arguing that people such
as those I have mentioned should stand for election representing
political parties? If they are of independent minds, who is going
to finance them? In some
of the other Chambers that you have mentioned where elections
take place, public funding is involved. Have these wonderful people
of independent minds to pay for their own campaigns? Who is there
to support them? Who is going to leaflet? How does the world know
and how do the constituencies know what they stand for?
Peter Facey:
Some of the people whom you are talking about have extremely high
profiles. I cannot see Lord Ashdown standing as an independent;
he would be standing as a Liberal Democrat, in which case the
party structure would be there. But if they did stand as independents,
I guarantee that the amount of publicity they would have would
be greater in a lot of cases than they would have standing as
a party person, because the media would be interested in them
as such. There is evidence from places like Tatton that people
would come to support them. In some ways, it is not for us to
decide how they finance their campaigns. Independents already
finance their campaigns. We are purely saying that the arbiter
of whether they have a seat in this place should be the electorate,
rather than an appointments system. That is our basic, principled
line.
Q376 Lord Trimble:
I want to come back again to the business of independent Members.
The Government assume that if you appoint people on a 15-year
term and cannot then be re-elected, they are for that reason more
likely to take a slightly independent view of the matter. If you
accept that reasoning, is it not then rather strange that the
existing arrangements, with people there for life, do not make
them even more independent-minded?
Peter Facey:
We do not actually accept the Government's logic.
Lord Trimble:
So you are rejecting the Government's original proposition.
Peter Facey:
We think that there is a balance. You have to balance these things
out. If you are trying to create a degree of independence then
you do not want to go for an American-style system where there
is constant re-election—we accept that. But with regard
to the idea that you get independence of mind through lifetime
appointments, if you are appointing from a party someone who is
going to be there for life, on the whole you do not choose the
complete maverick because you will have to live with them for
life. The appointment for life tends to mean—on the whole,
with some exceptions—that you will appoint someone who is
a safe pair of hands. As for a party leader who appointed someone
who was likely to be a complete pain for the entire rest of their
life, as a former party leader, you may have been willing to do
that, but my experience of politics is that parties do not operate
in that way. They do not tend to choose that type of person.
Lord Trimble:
If I may put my interpretation on this, then, you do not accept
the Government's argument that a 15-year term with no re-election
will produce an independent mandate.
Peter Facey:
It is no guarantee. The fact that you do not have constant election
helps. It is about balancing things such as accountability.
Q377 Lord Trimble:
All the arguments that you make about the sort of people you would
appoint apply equally to the sort of people you might select to
run as party candidates. To take a slight tangent here, I am looking
at page 7 and the figures that you produce. Your comments in paragraphs
24 and 25 seem to indicate that the level of rebellion against
party groups in the current House of Lords is not terribly different
from the incidence of rebellions in the Commons. There is a fairly
strong degree of party discipline—obviously self-imposed
within the present House—so there is going to be just as
much, if not more, party discipline in the elected Chamber, whether
the terms are 15 years without re-election or your preferred level
where re-election will be possible. You are going to get the same
degree of party discipline.
We have an argument that we use here with Ministers,
particularly those who are new to the business of how you get
a government programme through a House where you do not have a
majority. We tell them, "If you win the argument, you will
win the vote." This is thinking largely in terms of the Cross-Benchers;
while some Cross-Benchers are political animals, they are not
party-political animals, as you pointed out. While we do not have
a majority, we feel that when we put the argument and listen to
what the Cross-Benchers say and engage in discussion with them,
then if we win the argument we win the vote. We might then have
a wholly elected House where there are no Cross-Benchers and not
many independently minded people. We established from what we
said earlier that where there is a new system, whether it is 10-year
or 15-year terms, those Members will not be more independently
minded than those of us who are here for life, so we will have
a fairly strong party position.
I noticed the comment that you made earlier that,
"Oh well, you'll still have a situation where the Government
won't have an overall majority because we're being elected by
PR", and I would agree with you on that. Third parties—Lib
Dems, UKIP or whoever—are likely to hold the balance. But
in that situation, the proposition that if you win the argument,
you win the vote does not count because you are dealing with party
politics. While you will still have to bargain with small parties
to get the vote through, that will not be done on the merits.
It will be an argument purely on the politics of the situation
and what the small party wants, which will not necessarily concern
the merits of the issue. You will have quite a different dynamic
from the dynamic that is here, and instead of seeing things debated
on their merits they will be determined by the small parties that
will hold the balance of power. That will be done in terms of
what favours are done for them or what particular interests they
want to pursue. Have you thought about how that is going to work
out?
Peter Facey:
I am trying to think of other Chambers in the world. I am not
sure that it would operate exactly in the way that you are talking
about. You seem to be implying that there would be one small party
so that there would be only one combination that could work. In
many cases, it will not be that neat; there will not just be a
small party that gets to decide this way or that. There may be
many combinations that could be formed. The voting turnout of
Cross-Benchers is about 12 per cent. The evidence that we have
is that the reason why this Chamber is effective, as my colleague
said, is that in the previous Parliament it was the combination
of Labour and the Liberal Democrats that, when they coalesced
together, tended to have the effect. In some ways, the operation
of party politics ensures scrutiny.
I am not saying that I want to completely politicise
the House so that it is at daggers drawn, but the idea that it
is purely the Cross-Benchers who produce the quality of the debate
in this place and the quality of decisions does not stack up.
If you believe that, let us go for having 20 per cent appointed
and all of them, effectively, being non-party people. I have confidence
that you can have 100 per cent directly elected but, if not, then
go with the Government's 80 per cent.
Lord Trimble:
You were talking about the percentage of Cross-Benchers but I
do not think that that is relevant. Merely looking at the figures
does not really tell you anything; they will come and vote when
they want to and maybe not when they do not want to. That does
not affect the argument that we were making earlier.
When I was making my argument that the atmosphere
in the present House of Lords is that in order win the vote, you
have to win the argument, I saw heads nodding across the Room;
it reflects our experience. But that will not be the case in the
upper House that you want, because in a wholly elected upper House
it will be the small parties that determine whether the Government
of the day have a majority and those parties will have a price.
You said that one should not assume that it is always one party
that does it and the Government will have a choice about which
small grouping to go to. That is the case and that has happened
here in the past; the Government look at the small parties and
decide which is the cheapest one to buy. I remember this happening
for a vote in the Commons during my time there when the Government
were getting close to losing their majority and were looking anxiously
at the small parties. There was a vote on which they were not
sure whether or not we would support them, so they decided to
insure themselves by going and buying the DUP instead because
it was cheaper than we were.
The Chairman:
Lord Trimble, I wonder if you would like to ask a question.
Lord Trimble:
I am trying to get them to think about it.
The Chairman:
No, come on, enough is enough. Ask a question or we will move
on to the next one.
Lord Trimble:
The Chairman wishes to move on, so I will pursue the debate another
time.
Q378 John Stevenson:
First, in your paper, you make reference to the fact that Members
of the second Chamber should effectively have a cooling-off period
before standing for the House of Lords. What sort of period are
you thinking about? Is it the same as the Government's suggestion
or would you rather have a longer period? Secondly, you are a
pro-democracy organisation. By having a cooling-off period, it
could be argued that you were restricting the choice of the voter.
Why would you put that in?
Alexandra Runswick:
It is partly about ensuring that there were different cultures
in the different Chambers. One criticism that has been made of
the House of Lords recently is that the large number of former
MPs who have joined it have influenced the culture of the debates
and practices, and the AV debate is cited as an example of that.
Members of the Committee may have a better sense than I will of
whether that is true, but that has been discussed in various publications.
So it was partly about making sure that practices were not imported
wholesale from the House of Commons and that there were distinct
functions and cultures in the different Chambers.
To answer the first part of your question, if you
timed the elections in the way that we suggest in our paper, the
cooling-off period would be slightly longer than the Government
propose, but we would be content with the one that they propose.
It is about ensuring and celebrating the difference between the
two Chambers.
Peter Facey:
Are you talking about the cooling-off period before going from
the Commons to the Lords, or before going from the Lords to the
Commons?
John Stevenson:
Primarily from the Lords to the Commons, because that is what
the Government are referring to.
Alexandra Runswick:
Sorry, I misunderstood the question.
Peter Facey:
If it is from the Lords to the Commons, we basically support the
Government's line. If it is from the Commons to the Lords, the
gap that we are talking about would be because we are talking
about holding the elections mid-term. There would effectively
be two years before you could stand. If you left the House of
Commons at a general election, you would have to wait until, say,
the next European election before you could stand for the Lords.
If it is the other way around, then we are proposing effectively
the same thing as the Government are. We accept that to a degree
it is a limit to the voter's choice, but again it is an attempt
to ensure a balance between independence, accountability and democracy.
It is trying to prevent what happens in, say, the Canadian Senate,
which is appointed, where people effectively use it as a launch
pad for careers in the lower House. We have accepted the argument
that what you want is a second Chamber with a distinct purpose,
and therefore we want to protect that purpose.
John Stevenson:
So you see it as primarily a cultural thing within the two Chambers,
rather than a political campaigning tool for someone in the House
of Lords effectively to campaign to get into the House of Commons.
Peter Facey:
It is both. We would not want to see the second Chamber becoming
the place in which you cut your teeth to go into the House of
Commons. We think that that would import a culture, and the whole
way in which the candidates campaigned and how they behaved during
their period of office in the second Chamber, in a way that would
not be helpful. Therefore, we are looking effectively to create
a quarantine period so that, with regard to casework, if you were
elected to the second Chamber and you had no quarantine period
and could go straight from the Lords to the Commons, even though
there may not be an electoral advantage for Lords in doing casework,
there may be a point in nursing your seat to go into the Commons.
We would not want to see that, because we think that it would
bring the Houses too close together. We therefore accept the argument
that there should be a quarantine period.
The Chairman:
Thank you both very much for coming and for the paper that you
produced. The paper was extremely helpful as a guide and your
answers to the questions have been very helpful as well.
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