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Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, the noble Lord has just referred to a lump sum payment for retiring life Peers. Would he like to backdate that to all those hereditary Peers who left a couple of years ago?
Lord Oakeshott of Seagrove Bay: No, my Lords, because life Peers are appointed for life and hereditary Peers are not. I do not propose any particular figure. I just point out that that is another reason why there is no problem as regards moving to a figure of 240. It is another reason why the figures are comfortable.
The Appointments Commission itself certainly needs reform. If I may twist an ancient proverb to ask a modern question, we need to ask, "Quis creabit ipsos creatores?" or, who will appoint the appointers? I suggest three changes there. I do not support gender, race or any other form of quota for democratic elections. If we have an open list system, the people will be able to choose within, as well as between, parties. But, by contrast, for the next 10 years at least I believe that each year's appointments of non-party Peers should contain equal numbers of men and women. The reformed commission should also contain equal numbers of men and women. It would be a good start to have a woman in the chair. If she is a Member of this House, could we please have a reasonably regular attender? And if I had the job, I should make sure that there was a hairdresser in the first list.
There is no room in our proposals for political patronage. The Lord Chancellor said that his proposals signal a huge decrease in the Prime Minister's powers of patronage. That is a proud claim, but if those powers are a bad thing and need to be hugely decreased, why not do the job properly and abolish them altogether? Forget the arguments between Wakeham and the White Paper about who should pick the new party political Peers; the answer is, the people.
Our proposals are practical, realistic and sensibly phased. The directly elected proportion will build up steadily, with existing life Peers keeping our rights, and the House retaining a majority of appointed Members for the next 10 to 15 years. The right time for reviewto revisit composition, as the Lord Chancellor put it yesterdayis when we reach parity between elected and appointed Members, which, under our proposals, should be around 2015. By then we should have had a reasonable period in which to see how the new House and the system of election and appointment will work. Those who believe in maintaining at least half the House as appointed Members will at that stage be able to argue their case. Those, such as myself, who believe in a smaller House along the lines that were proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Richardthe political two-thirds should be directly elected and the independent one-third should be nominatedwould let that happen naturally as the remaining life Peers fade away.
We have shown the Government that our proposals work well within the limits that the Government themselves have set in the White Paper. I hope that they are prepared to give up political patronage by accepting that all new party political Peers should be directly elected. This blueprint is a realistic way forward now which can, I believe, command a majority in both Houses of Parliament. It is democratic and it works.
Lord Selsdon: My Lords, it is with some regret that I remind myself that I have been incarcerated in your Lordships' House for 39 years. I rank very low in the batting order. With my humble background, I am eight years behind my noble friend Lord Ferrers in terms of intelligence, stature and age. We were at the
same school. I am many years behind my noble friend Lord Denham and I am one year behind my noble friend Lord Trefgarne. However, I am the 11th longest serving Member of your Lordships' House.On matters of reform, I have witnessed great minds and great discussions. However, I feel that the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor is probably the Nero of the Labour Benchesall around him things burn and there is chaos and disorganisation.
This is without doubt the most successful White Paper I have ever come across in terms of promoting a wide-ranging and logicalor illogical and chaoticdebate. However, some of us felt guilty when we came to this House; we were told that we had a duty to perform and longed for reform. Noble Lords will recall that the Parliament (No. 2) Bill had a majority of 190 in this House and of 116 in the House of Commons, but the government failed to implement it.
We should think back to 1876, which brought 28 Members to your Lordships' Housethe Law Lords. They were appointed then and are appointed today. It is wrong to consider the 24 Bishops as representing only the Church of England. They have a parish of 39 million people. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford has, I believe, 2,100,000 people in his patch and 856 churches in 620 parishes whereas the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth, who is on the coast with the fishermen, has a mere 715,000 members in his patch and only about 600 churches in 450 parishes. The Bishops were not appointed by us; they are here by right. To assume that they deal only with religious matters and to try to decimate them is wrong. Almost everyone in life at one time or another goes to Church. People may do so to be married, they may go feet first when they die or they may attend a wedding or baptism. Parish councils at local level have a relationship with the Church. Therefore, there is a certain temporal business about the Bishops. I would oppose totally any attempt to reduce their stature or power.
Then we come to the 1958 brigade. They were appointed for life in order to mimic and copy the hereditary Peers. They had no moral right to life status. They had the privilege of being called "Lords", as my noble friend Lord Ferrers said, and of having the nobility thrust upon or offered to them. They should have known what they were taking on under the Act: four guineas a day or less and no hope of any pension.
Hearing noble Lords at present asking to be bought out for sizeable sums requires me to write to the noble Lord, Lord Neill, because that appears to be somewhat corrupt. We have also watched the surreptitious increase in the award of monetary benefits to Members of your Lordships' House. Without taking into account other sources of income, they now receive, for regular attendance, the equivalent of £25,000 a year tax-free. We are becoming a payroll organisation.
As I think back perhaps 400 years to John Rushworth, I wonder whether we are being deprived of our liberty by the weighty iron chains of an arbitrary
government. We have been through governments who have failed to decide or to choose, and we have before us a slightly chaotic system.I genuinely believe that the word "democracy" can only be applied to an institution which is fully elected. That is my definition of it. Otherwise, one is faced with the strange situation in which democracy is not a static thing; it is either coming or going. When it is going, there is a cry for leadership. Who will lead us to the promised landto the land of milk and honey? When it is returning, there is a cry that the leader is too strong and the question is raised as to how we can devolve. At the moment, we hear the cry that the executive and the leader are too strong, and there is an attempt to devolve. That is healthy. But at present I believe that we can have a more democratic House only if it is fully and wholly elected.
The second pillar of this great paper is that we must be more representative. I believe that we should look in the mirror. Very few of us know how representative we are. Surprisingly enough, your Lordships will find that among our numbers are people who represent almost anything that can possibly be represented in life. They have the knowledge and the experience. According to my analysis, more than 72 separate occupations or areas of expertise remain.
One comes to the regionalisation of noble Lords. For security reasons, I have found it impossible to obtain everyone's addresses. When people fill in their expenses form, they write in their principal place of residence. I had hoped that the accountants office would be able to supply me with that information. I believed that I would be able to place pins in a map of the Bishops' dioceses and the constituencies to show that your Lordships come from everywhere, as they do.
Whom do we represent? I have often asked that question. Following the 1999 legislation, I was told that, because I am here under a more modern piece of legislation, I represent myself. I believed that I should represent the people who voted for me, but I did not know who they were. I then considered that I should get my own constituents. Therefore, whenever anyone writes to me, I write back, now that we have free postage, or I telephone them in their lunch hour and say, "Would you like to be one of my constituents? Can I represent you?". I am building a substantial number of constituents, including ranges of non-nationals.
I am one of three people in your Lordships' House who have never had the benefit of a vote. Therefore, I can say to noble Lords that over time they have all had the governments they deserve. My concern is: what do we do next? I have no proposals to put forward other than to say what I would do. I would introduce legislation requiring the mandatory resignation of all Members from your Lordships' House. They would be required to stand for re-election on a due date 14 weeks hence. The legislation would require that new terms and conditions should be laid down, with sunset clauses stating that people may not serve for more than a certain period of time. It would state that those
already appointed might, should their colleagues, compatriots or noble friends agree, be reappointed for a period of two Parliaments after which they would all have to stand for election in a free-for-all and open list.If we are going to talk about democracy we must talk about election. If we are not going to talk about democracy, let us talk about a fully appointed House. But we must keep the Law Lords and we must keep the Bishops and the Archbishops with us. They are the only two groups who have the right of appointment.
I have a great love and affection for this place. Over time I have heard so many wondrous and useless things. I have watched people learn. I have watched people give. But I find that when I sit and listen to debates the one thing that I have is knowledge that I would never have got anywhere else. Your Lordships should realise that if one is as totally undemocratic as I am, not a day goes by without someone somewhere saying to you: How are you there? Why are you there? What are you doing? Why did you deserve it? Now they are also saying: What about all that other lot, because you are one of the elected ones, are you not? What about them? Who will put them down? There are many good veterinarians around who can extend life. Life expectancy in your Lordships' House is far greater than anyone would believe.
I admire the noble and learned Lord, Lord Williams, who, content often with his own thoughts, has the courtesy to sit and listen but is able to absorb. I thank him for it. I asked the noble and learned Lord if he could provide me with a list of all the outside appointments held by noble Lords and how much they were paid. He very kindly wrote back to me and said, "We are open government. Get it off the Internet". My intention was not to embarrass your Lordships or the Government in any way. I was trying to find out the breadth of knowledge and understanding that existed in the House through public appointments. It took me four and a half days with the help of the computer office and others. I probably now have a total list. It is very interesting how the net of your Lordships, your Lordships' friends, relatives and business, is spread.
At the moment I find that my own outside knowledge and relationships have been falling because of the increased commitment of time. I was once told that I should never speak in this House on a subject unless I had outside knowledge. My outside knowledge is fading away. But my incestuous internal knowledge is growing and I am grateful to your Lordships for that.
Lord Winston: My Lords, I am conscious of being the 76th speaker in this debate. So far virtually all the speakers have been ex-politicians, civil servants, special advisers from a political background and a predominance, surprisingly, of hereditary Peers. There have been a few othersa handful of lawyers and one or two academics. What interests me is that although I am the 76th speaker in this very long debate, I am the first and only scientist and medical practitioner to speak.
If I bring any strength at all to this House, it is essentially because I am still very much actively involved in my professional work outside Parliament. That current experience of real affairs affects real peoplefor example, my patients who are greatly concerned about their health; nurses whom I see every day and every week who are concerned about how the National Health Service is affecting them; and my PhD students who are greatly concerned about how their scientific endeavours may be regarded by society and how they may actually get support for their valuable contributions to this society of which we are so proud. I mean no immodesty, but that practical contact is a strength in my representation in this Chamber.
One of the great advantages that has often been claimed for the House of Lords in the past is that, despite the cachet associated with the hereditary peerage, it is actually in some way more in touch with ordinary people. I intend no defence at all of the hereditary system that now must end in this Chamber. The hereditary Peers have often claimed, with some justified force, that they represent, paradoxically, real people much more than many politicians, including those who are elected to another place. We must consider how they may be replaced by a stronger and more robust system. One which will benefit and strengthen discussion inside Parliament.
Since becoming a Member of the House of Lords in 1995 my greatest privilege has been, first, to be a member of the Science and Technology Select Committee and subsequently its chairman. That Select Committee, I maintain, is most valuable, not least because of the serious respect in which it is held by Members of this House, the scientific community, academics, Government and the media. Such committees and the careful reports that they submit to Government represent, and are widely held to be, the best examples of the workings of Parliament. They are respected. Indeed, they are often feared by the people giving evidence because they know that the people to whom they are giving evidence are professionals: working men and women who have huge and unique experience of science, technology, engineering, industry, politics and academia. They have contributed in depth and at length to those subjects which are so valuable and essential to the health of our society.
When I was chairman of the Science and Technology Select Committee, I sat at the head of an oval table with perhaps 18 or 20 members. At no time could I have told your Lordships what affiliation, if any, any member of my committee had. It was almost always irrelevant. During the three years that I sat at that table, I heard only rarely arguments based on party politics. They were based on scientific data or on solid evidence of the social consequences of a particular course of action. On the rare occasions when the arguments became political, they were often relatively valueless, or showed closed thinking and were mostly intellectually unpersuasive and largely irrelevant.
That is also a model for the whole Chamber. It is often at its least effective when it is at its most political. It is often most effective when it is engaged in the technicalities and adjustment of legislation and important social issues. That is why the representation of the Bishops of the Church of England is so immensely valuable in this Chamber. Let us hope that that may be augmented and not diminished by the representation of other religious groups in due course. The moral and scientific problems are well demonstrated by the recent issue of stem cell biology.
In her most powerful speech yesterday, the noble Baroness, Lady Williamsshe is not in her placespoke eloquently in support of a largely or wholly elected upper House. So many countries, she said, have elected upper chambers. France, Germany and the USA are good examples. Their democracies, she said rightly, did not suffer. I agree. But in her excellent speech the noble Baroness did not examine the value of an unelected chamber which involves that element of expertise and working experience of affairs outside immediate politics. That great asset is even more important now because so many of our elected representatives in another place have little or no professional experience beyond professional politics. Such people must engage in politics at an earlier and earlier stage in life. That is not to their disadvantage but it must affect the way we structure the House of Lords.
In recent months, as a scientist interested and engaged in cell biology applied to embryos and stem cells I have been asked to give evidence to parliamentarians in New Zealand, Switzerland, Germany and Francecountries considering legislation in that area. Politicians in those countries have invariably commented on how remarkable it is that in its parliamentary system the United Kingdom has included people with expertise who can advise on such matters from within Parliament and therefore add weight to the arguments before Parliament arrives at sensible legislationas, of course, we have done again and again.
So I contend that Peers who are still involved in active work in their professions are extremely valuable to this House. They need to be working; they would not be likely to stand for election, because they are working. Their contribution would be marred if they were to become political.
That is by no means an objection to age. I must tell your Lordships that during the next century there will be a complete change in the demography of the United Kingdom. It may interest your Lordships to know that the best assessments show that at least 1 per cent of our population will be more than 100 years old. That is a serious assessment based on good demography, which constitutes something of the order of 500,000 people. Close to two thirds of the population will be outside what we currently regard as the working age. It is nonsense to starting thinking about age limits when health and mental agility is improving and when people can conduct their affairs in a way that is essentially valuable to government. While I would
maintain that we need people in this Chamber who are working, we also need people in Parliament who have time to address the issues who are not working.That is one of my problems. I must tell your Lordships as a Peer that the working conditions in this House are a scandal. They are a major problem. I apologise to my Chief Whip, who is sitting on the Front Bench, because I have been a dreadful attendee during the past three months. I have felt deeply guilty about that; it has not been easy for me. The truth is that during the past three months it has been impossible for me to work in the House. I do not have a proper Internet connection. After I ended my chairmanship of the Select Committee, having had the privilege of the chairman's room, I found that my desk had been taken and I had nowhere to work. Working in a room with a dozen other people when one is trying to do serious academic work is, frankly, impossible. For me, having an electronic connection is vital. Inevitably, that means that I end up not attending and doing things whereby I can be more influential and more useful elsewhere.
Finally, one of the real problems with your Lordships' House is its failure to be recognised outside. That has already been referred to by several speakers on both days of this debate. It is a fundamental problem. There is a lack of understanding of what the House of Lords can do, should be doing and how it might be structured to best advantage.
I must tell your Lordships an extraordinary story. Some months ago, I was invited to tea in a part of the House of Lords that is no longer in the House of Lords: the Pugin Room. In my view, it should still be in the House of Lords because it has a red carpet. We need the space and, frankly, the Commons does not. I was having tea with a relatively elderly Labour MP who clearly had his sights on the time when he retired from the House of Commonshaving, as far as I know, never done, forgive me for saying so, much of a serious job outside the House. He was looking to be elevated to this Chamber. He said to me in all seriousness over tea: "Tell me Robert. When you have debates in the House of Lords, do you wear your robes?".
That shows a fundamental problem, and is a real issue for us. Whatever we suggest in this House, our real problem is to explain to the Commons why the structure that most of us envisage is worthwhile, essential for the preservation of the best working of Parliament and, in the long term, contributes to our democracy.
Lord Lucas: My Lords, it is always extremely difficult to follow the noble Lord, Lord Winston. He has given another of his excellent speeches. I enjoyed listening to it enormously.
I shall start by being nice to the Government. They have had a hard time in the past few days and I feel sorry for them. I congratulate them on bringing forward this White Paper and this subject for the
second time since they took office. Being involved in the reform of the House of Lords is a bed of thorns and the Government are displaying immense determination and courage, and I wish that we had had such determination and courage during our time in office.I am also glad that we appear to have reached a consensus that the time of the hereditary Peers has drawn to a close. No longer will it be a qualification to be born with a silver spoon in one's mouth; instead, like the noble and learned Lord the Leader of the House, one must be born with a silver tongue there. That is much better.
I have always been an advocate of having a wholly appointed House. I do not see how we can introduce election into this House without disrupting the way in which it works and endangering the atmosphere that we have. I do not see that we can introduce election without disrupting the relationship with another place. I have always been in favour of a more gradual and gentle evolution. However, my views have been changed by this debate. I have been enormously encouraged by and taken with what has been said by many noble Lords in favour of a substantially elected House.
We must recognise that politics in this country is sick. A change of constitutional underwear will not be the solution. Nothing proposed in the White Paper will make much difference to the way in which politics operates or is regarded in this country. I am enormously excited by what I see as a desire for changeparticularly down the other end. There is a real interest in making politics in this country a more dynamic, more independent, more involving and interesting business. There is real scope for reviving public interest in and commitment to politics. I do not yet have a feeling for what shape that might takemany noble Lords have suggested how it might happenbut I am entranced by the possibility and excited that we might find ourselves going down that road.
I do not look to this Governmentnot now, not everto take us far down the road. It will require a trust in the people that the Government seem to have lost. I must look to my Front Bench for the honesty and courage that are required. Like the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, I shall not hold my breath. I do not know when we will get an answer, but we will be extremely interested to hear what those on my Front Bench have to say when they pronounce on the White Paper. I shall be delighted if there is a real commitment to replacing patronage by election. I would enlarge the independent and appointed elements in the House, but patronage, like the hereditary principle, should have had its day.
In the short term, we should recognise our limitations and recognise that what we will be dealing with will be something along the lines of the current White Paper. We should see what we can do to work with that. There is at least one central good, great thing in the White Paper. That is the recognition that the government of the day should not have an overall
majority in this place and that their representation should be limited to the proportion of the votes cast in their favour and further diluted by a substantial independent element. I believe that that forms the real basis for an independent House of Lords. It is wonderful to have that proposal from a party which in government and opposition objected to being defeated in this House and which recently called its defeats in this House "illegitimate" and "unconstitutional".However, the Government are now proposing to make that the way in which the House operates. They propose to make this a House in which it is certain that the government are defeated, and defeated reasonably frequently, and without too much difficulty. It will require consensus but it will happen and I hope that it will be welcomed and acknowledged by the Government when it does.
Let us not worry too much about the 20 per cent who are to be elected. The system proposed by the Government is a fraud. If we go ahead on that basis, it will be recognised by the electorate as a fraud. There is no difference between a closed list and appointment. The same people will get here on the same kind of conditions and with exactly the same influence of the electorate. The electorate will vote in certain proportions for their MPs and that will affect the abilities of the parties to appoint Members to this House. In exactly the same proportions people will trot in from the closed list, which has been compiled in exactly the same way as the lists of people they would like to appoint to this House if they won the right to do so. There is no difference. We shall be a House that is 80 per cent patronage, just as it is now and in just the same pattern. Perhaps as the measure makes its way through Parliament we can persuade the Government off the closed list system. That will be a great advance. I do not hold out great hope for it but it will be wonderful if we can.
Let us not worry too much either about trying to add powers and responsibilities to this House. During the 10 years I have been a Member we have been successful in adding to our powers and responsibilities. One thinks of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee as an enormous success in that direction and there have been others. These things are best achieved by consensus and by time. I do not believe that we should abandon any of the ambitions that have been outlined today, but we should take them in their due course.
However, we should be enormously careful to preserve the powers and independence of this House to keep the term of membership long. No independence is associated with short membership: not for people who are being appointed and not for people who are being elected. We should ensure that the appointments commission, which will play a crucial role in this House, is strong.
We must take particular care on how the appointments commission is to be appointed, as the noble Lord, Lord Oakeshott, said. We must also take particular care on how the commission is to receive its mandate. We cannot set it in legislation because then
it would be set for all time. There must be a mechanism by which the appointments commission can be given a mandate to create a House after a particular pattern. That must be flexible and it must not be by fiat of the government.In particular, we must keep our powers over secondary legislation. That is so much more important than ever it was. It is not that we should do less but that we should do a great deal better and that amendment should become possible. That is where legislation is these days and we must follow it.
I turn briefly to points of detail. I believe that I understand the Government's position in opposition to the suggestion of the Wakeham commission that the appointments commission should compile the party lists. When I look along the Government's Benches, I believe that they have done extremely well in appointing independent-minded, expert Members to their own Benches. I believe that they have probably done a great deal better than any bureaucratic committee-based appointments commission ever could. One merely needs to look at the Members on the Government's Back Benches who have spoken in the debate to realise what a breadth of expertise and independence exists.
It is an affront to a political party that the appointments commission should usurp its power to have who it wants on its list. However, I believe that the commission mandate to ensure that this House is balanced as regards the sexes, communities and geographical regions in this country must extend in some way to party patronage; otherwise it will have no effect. It must be able to set the rules that parties have to follow and bring parties to book. If a party were to produce an all-male shortlist, it must be possible for the appointments commission to say that that will not do. But I do not know about the appointments commission choosing individuals or saying that a certain member of a party is out of power now but that the commission would like him to sit on these Benches.
Time is a factor. Someone put the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, in this House. He may not be a favourite now. Doubtless in 10 years' time the favourites on the Front Benches now will no longer be favourites. The fact that people are appointed for a long time here allows for changes in fashion. As long as we keep the length of appointment we need not fuss about people with unfashionable views coming to the House.
I have two further minor points to make. It would be ridiculous to continue to call this place the House of Lords after reform. "Senate" would be a much better name and to be called a "Senator" is one of the proudest titles in the world. As the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, said, we should abandon age limits. I remember with great pleasure and happiness being defeated on a vote as a result of the arguments put forward in three speeches from the Labour and Cross Benches. The total age of those three speakers was 286.
Lord Hoyle: My Lords, it is said that all things come to those who wait. It is a long time waiting when one is 78th on the list of speakers. We are debating a White Paper with green edges, and change can result from it.
It has been a good debate, but I must say, too, that often this House believes that the world is listening to it. I am afraid that that is not true. If your Lordships resist change, that change will inevitably come and it may not be the change that your Lordships want. The public believe that this House is irrelevant, outmoded, out of date and out of touch. That may be unfair, but that is how your Lordships' House is viewed.
I represented Warrington for a long time and the people there are far more interested in the fact that I am chairman of Warrington Wolves than that I am a Member of this House. The people in the Railway Club on a Saturday night in Warrington do not discuss the House of Lords at all. If they were pressed to do so, I think that they would say what I have already suggested. They do not believe that it is relevant to their lives but that it is the last refuge of the amateur in our society.
We are on the edge of change and I say immediately, which may not have been said too often, that I totally support the Government's proposals. They are proposing change. Let me explain why I support them. They set up the Wakeham commission. The noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, and his colleagues worked so hard to produce the report which we are discussing today. The Government have been criticised for largely accepting that report. If they had set up the commission and ignored the report, there would have been a public outcry. They are going a little further in relation to elected Members. There will be 120. I believe that the House will evolve. I do not believe that we can go overnight from having a totally unelected House to a directly elected House. After all, it took 100 years to get rid of the majority of hereditary Peers. I would exchange 120 elected members to get rid of the 92 hereditary Peers who still remain.
Having said that, I wish to comment on the method of election. I move away a little from what has been said by the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, and his colleagues. I do not believe that the elections should be held at the time of the European parliamentary elections. The turn-out for the European elections is abysmal. We must do what we can to raise it. However, I should hate to see elections to this House suffering the same low percentages. I believe that the elections should be held at the time of the general election. The Royal Commission stated that it wanted elected Peers to reflect the balance of the parties at a general election. Therefore, what better time is there to hold the elections for Members of this House?
I also believe that a term of 15 years for those who are elected is far too long. Personally, I believe that they should be elected for five years and take their chances in the subsequent elections. It could be argued that some should retire after five years and that some should retire after 10 years. I would not go to the stake on those proposals, but I support a term of five years.
I should like to make a point that has been repeated on all sides of the House; that is, the election should not be conducted under a closed list system. It should be an open list system in order to give the electorate as wide a choice as possible. I really believe that. It would carry more credibility with the electorate at large.
I also believe that, like those who have been elected to represent the nations of the regions in the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and the Northern Ireland Assembly, elected Members of this House should be paid a salary. Furthermore, I do not believe that we shall see the clash that has been suggested by several noble Lords. The noble Baroness, Lady WilliamsI am sorry to see that she is not hereexplained that such a clash is not inevitable. When we look at other democracies around the world, we can see that there is no reason for a clash. There are no clashes in Germany, in France, in the Scandinavian countries or in India, so why should it happen here? Provided that we set out clearly what this House should be asked to do, and what should be its aims and achievements, I do not see why there should be a clash of any kind.
Perhaps I may turn to the appointments commission. A group was set up to select the "People's Peers". Earlier in my remarks I said that there was no interest in the House of Lords, but that proposal marked the first time that I saw the public's interest being generated in this place. Many worthy people wrote to me because they were excited at the thought that, instead of the narrow band of people selected for the present independent element of the Houseall highly qualified and good people in their way, but selected from within a narrow bandthey truly believed that they had a chance. However, they were very disappointed indeed when the list came out. They were not disappointed because of the kind of people chosenformer ambassadors, captains of industry, scientists, educationalists and leaders of charities; all good and worthy of serving in this Housebut rather that none of them really could have been called a "People's Peer".
The one thing lacking in this House is representation by ordinary people. I do not believe that independence can come from the narrow band that we have in this House. Ordinary people generally are independent and they want to take a balanced view of things. What they would bring to the independent Benches is something new in the life of this Chamber. They would bring their experience of ordinary life. I suggest to noble Lords that that is what is lacking in this Chamber at the moment. If we do set up an independent body to look into this, I hope that it will reflect on what is being asked for and that it will seek to represent society as a whole, rather than the narrow strata of society that we have now.
There has been much discussion about the size of the membership and whether it will be too large, and about the position of life Peers. Life Peers are what they are; they are elected for life. I am sorry if I upset some noble Lords by mentioning money and salaries, but if we want people to go we have got to offer them
a package that will attract them to do so. Not all noble Lords have several jobs that they can rely upon and when they come here, they change their standard of living. They are part and parcel of the House and there are parts that they wish to play. They want to be real working Peersand many of them are real working Peers. If we want those working Peers to give up that right, we have to make it attractive to themand the reward would be a retirement package. That is something we can discuss.I should prefer itI believe everyone would prefer thisif all parties were agreed on the way forward. I noticed in this morning's pressI do not believe everything that is in the pressthat it is rumoured that the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, will propose to the shadow Cabinet that 80 per cent of Members should be elected. I am afraid that anyone who reads the debates here will become cynical of politicians if that is what is suggested because although one or two noble Lords on the Benches opposite supported the elected principle, in the main they did not. They either did not want any change at alland I understand that point of viewor they wanted an appointed House. I should like to hear from the noble Lord who will wind up from the Opposition Front Bench whether he can justify that 80 per cent elected because that is the kind of thing that makes people cynical of politics.
Perhaps I may say to my friends on the Liberal Democrat Benchessome of whom I have served alongsidethat I believe that eventually there will be an elected Chamber. But, as I said earlier, it has got to evolve. I appeal to the Liberal Democrats, do not throw the baby out with the bath water. An elected element is comingand that is the major thing. Whether the elected element is as low as 50 or 60 Members, or 120 or a little more, is not the important issue; what is important is establishing that there should be elected Members in this House.
I shall not take up any more of the time of the House at this late stage. I appeal to noble Lords to move forward. The worse thing that could happen is to maintain the status quo. There is unfinished business and I ask the House to consider how we can move forward to the next stage of reformand I hope to see democracy included in that movement.
Lord Goodhart: My Lords, I am the light at the end of the tunnel. The first of the speakers who are to wind up is a sign that the end really is in sight. This has indeed been a long debate. There have been many thoughtful and interesting speeches but, taken together, they do not make the picture of future progress any clearer.
I start by looking at some issues where consensus has emerged. First, there has been general agreement with the proposal, made yesterday in an outstanding speech by my noble friend Lady Williams of Crosby, that reform of your Lordships' House should be looked at in the context of the reform of Parliament as a whole. Secondly, there is a consensus that the White Paper belongs in the Guinness book of great disasters.
Thirdly, although few wish to keep the hereditary element, there has been overwhelming recognition that the remaining 92 hereditaries must go as part of any reform package. Fourthly, any elections should not be by a closed list system.Fifthly, the existing powers of this House should not be reduced. In particular, your Lordships have rejected the proposal in both the Wakeham report and the White Paper that the power to veto secondary legislation should be abolished. We hold that view very strongly. The Wakeham proposal was that a statutory instrument rejected by the second Chamber could be reinstated by a vote of the House of Commons at any time within the following three monthsnot after a delay of three months, but within that time. That could mean within 24 hours.
The suggestion in paragraph 33 of the White Paper that this somehow increases the influence of this House over secondary legislation is, to say the least, disingenuous. Secondary legislation receives inadequate scrutiny in the House of Commons. There is a maximum of 90 minutes of debate, and a government with a working majority are certain to get their way.
The power of this House to reject secondary legislation is an essential power. It is made the more important by last year's Regulatory Reform Act, which means that many more statutes can now be repealed or amended by secondary legislation. It is, of course, a power that this House should use only rarely. On the only occasion since 1968 when it has been usedin relation to election regulations under the London Government Actit was used effectively and achieved what I believe everyone now accepts was a desirable result.
So much for consensus. When it comes to the composition of the House, there is no consensus at all. There are at least three main views. The largest group among those who have spoken in the debate consisted of those who wanted no elected Members at all. That group included some Members on these Benches.
Is it perhaps too cynical to take the view that there is a natural tendency to think that a system that brought us here is necessarily a good system? From time to time I am tempted to think that myself, until I pinch myself and realise that I am wrong. Other views included support for Wakeham in its original formwith the sole exception of the noble Lord, Lord Hoylenot as re-written by the Government, and support for the proposition that all political Members of the second Chamber should be elected. Support for this last proposition came mainly from these Benches, but also in speechesmany of them impressivefrom the noble Lord, Lord Richard, the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, and the noble Lords, Lord Dubs, Lord Baker of Dorking and Lord Lucas.
Speaking for those who rejected elected Members altogether, the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, raised the question: how will elected Members enable this House to be more effective in carrying out its existing functions? It is a fair question, and it needs an answer.
The powers of this House, in practice, depend on public support and approval of what we do. If we do not have that support, the Government would be more than happy to cut our powers further or even abolish us altogether. In recent years, this House has had a pretty high level of public approval. That has been strengthened recently by the removal of most hereditaries and by a balance of voting strengths which more nearly represents the balance of political opinion within the country.
I do not say that the introduction of elected Members would improve the quality of our debates, our scrutiny of legislation or the quality of our Select Committee reports. But widespread public support exists for a much greater elected element in this House; and if, as a result of so-called reform, we end up with no elected element or a small elected element, I do not believe that your Lordships' House will be able to maintain its present level of approval. We shall be seen, rightly or wrongly, as a House of party leaders' cronies, or as a House appointed by a faceless and unaccountable commission. If we lose public opinion, we are in real danger. If we were already a primarily elected House, would the Government have dared to propose removing our power to veto secondary legislation? I am sure that they would not.
Once we are into the business of reforming this House, a half-baked proposal for a small number of elected Members, let alone a suggestion that there should be no elected Members, would lead to a damaging decline in our public support. We would end up like the Canadian Senate, which is wholly appointed and which, in theory, has almost unlimited powers, but in practice does not have the standing and authority to exercise them.
It is argued that an elected second Chamber would be a threat to the primacy of the House of Commons. That is nonsense. The primacy of the House of Commons is established not only by the Parliament Acts, but by centuries of history and convention. If there was a real danger of a threat to the primacy of the House of Commons, it would be very odd that, while many speakers in your Lordships' House are worried about an elected second Chamber challenging the primacy of that House, Labour Back Benchers in the House of Commons are pressing for many more elected Members in this House.
An elected second Chamber would be no threat to the primacy of the House of Commons. It would enable your Lordships' House to continue, and perhaps strengthen, our scrutiny of the executive. The greatest democratic deficit in the United Kingdom today is the inability of the House of Commons to conduct proper scrutiny of what the executive is doing. We in this House can and should play such part as we can in reducing that deficit. I therefore believe that election rather than appointment is the way to select the political members of a second Chamber.
I emphasise that that applies to the political Members. The appointments commission is an appropriate method of selecting the independent Members. The election of the political Members
should, of course, be by STV or an open list system. We reject the appointment of political Members by parties or by independent commissioners.Appointment by the commission would be the worse of the two. The Wakeham proposal is that an electorate consisting of eight peoplethe eight members of the commissionshould choose three quarters of the Members of one House of Parliament. However distinguished and independent-minded the members of the commission may be, that is a truly weird proposal.
How would the commission choose political members? If it chose on the basis of a recommendation from parties, why have a commission at all? If the commission could override the wishes of the parties and could appoint party outsiders, it would be exercising political power without political responsibilityand we know where that leads. Such a power would subject the commission to enormous political pressures and would make the appointment of its members matters of major political controversy.
However, on the length of terms for Members, the Wakeham commission got considerably nearer to the correct answer than the Government did. It is essential that the future second Chamber should retain our ethos of rational and civilised debate. That ethos will be at risk if membership is seen as a stepping stone to the House of Commons and to government office by ambitious young politicians. We would become much more aggressive and confrontational. The Wakeham commission recognised that risk and proposed to eliminate it by providing for a 15-year term of elected office with no right to stand for the House of Commons during that term or for 10 years thereafter. That goes too far to the other extreme. A 10 or 12-year elected term with disqualification until the end of that termthough no longerwould be long enough. Few if any rising politicians would be willing to rule out membership of the House of Commons for as long as 10 years.
By contrast, a five-year term for elected Members, as suggested by the Government, would present a real risk of a fundamental change for the worse in the ethos of this House. A 10 or 12-year term would ensure that Members of the second Chamber are those who are not seeking a career in the House of Commons, regardless of whether they had done so in the past, or those who had had a career in the House of Commons but finished it. Such a term would in fact lead to the membership being rather similar to the current membershipan eminently desirable result.
There has been much support in the debate for long terms for elected Members and for limiting membership to a single term, as recommended by the Wakeham commission. I believe that there is much to be said for a limitation to a single term, although I recognise that there are arguments the other way. I believe that the Government should accept the principle that the term of office of elected Members of your Lordships' House should be not less than 10 years, even if they do not go the whole way with the proposal of the Wakeham commission.
I should like to address two membership issues that have been touched on by some speakers. We on these Benches believe that neither the Bishops nor the Law Lords should be Members of a new second Chamber ex officio. We recognise the great contributions made by the Bishops to debates in your Lordships' House, including to this debate, but we believeit is a matter of party policythat the Church should be disestablished and that an inevitable consequence of that is the removal of the historic rights of the Bishops to membership of this House. Retired bishops would of course be eligible, along with representatives of other Churches and other faiths, for appointment as independent Members of your Lordships' House. We should hope and expect that there would always be some in a new second Chamber.
On the Law Lords, we have long argued that the judicial role of the House of Lords should be abolished and replaced by a proper supreme court with its own building. That view is shared by many of the Law Lords, including the senior Law Lord, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Bingham of Cornhill, although not by all of them. Again, we recognise the contributions made to debates by some serving and several ex-Law Lords, such as the important speech, last Tuesday, on the Export Control Bill, by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Scott of Foscote. Retired Law Lords also would be eligible for appointment as independent Members of the second Chamber.
We believe that the White Paper proposals are gravely flawed. In some respects, they are going in the right direction but are over-cautious; for example, in introducing elected Members but restricting their number to 120. In some respects, the proposals are going in the wrong direction; for example, in removing the power to veto secondary legislation. In some respects, there is no movement when there should be movement; for example, by retaining the rights of Law Lords and Bishops to be Members of the second Chamber ex officio.
We believe, even at this late stage, that there should be a Joint Committee further to consider the proposals. That view is shared by many and was repeated today by, for example, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe of Aberavon. That is something we have always fought for. Yesterday, in a most effective speech, the noble Lord, Lord Denham, pointed out the Government's failure to honour their undertakings to establish such a committee. This indeed may be the right time to have such a committee: we now have the Government's proposals on the table. And yesterday we were promised by the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, that the Conservatives will at last get round to deciding their own policy by the end of this month. Our position has long been clear.
I do not expect that a Joint Committee would actually reach a consensus, but it could perhaps reach an agreed compromise. If we cannot reach such a compromise, and if the Government force through the White Paper proposals, the reform process that began in 1911 will remain uncompleted. This House will
indeed no longer be constituted in any sense on an hereditary basis, but it will not yet be constituted on the popular basis that was promised 91 years ago.
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