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Lord Kingsland: My Lords, if the noble and learned Lord looks at Hansard tomorrow, I believe that he will find that I excluded Law Lords and Bishops from my statement about a wholly elected House. It may have been in my imagination but I believe that I did say that.
Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, if we have a wholly elected House, that means no Bishops. Let us assume that that small caveat obtains, and we can both read Hansard tomorrow. Perhaps I misheard; I doubt it.
If we have a wholly elected House plus some Bishops, that sounds fairly hybrid to me. But, according to the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, a hybrid House is wholly without value. However, let us put the Bishops to one side for a moment, without unkindness. If we have a wholly elected House with some Bishops tagged on, how do we get any significant independent component?
Earl Attlee: My Lords, we have long terms for the elected Members.
Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, how do we get elected to this House independent Members who are not members of any political party? We cannot get them.
The Earl of Onslow: My Lords, will the noble and learned Lord give way? He is being quite brilliant in answering all the wrong questions. That is why he is such a successful Leader of this House. There is an independent Member of the House of Commons who has been elected by his constituents.
The Earl of Onslow: My Lords, I accept that there is only one. The noble and learned Lord was being just as picky with his facts as I am being, and two people can be picky with their facts. The noble and learned Lord was arguing from a particular to a general in saying that one could not get independence. I am merely showing the noble and learned Lord that one can; it has and it is. Two of us can play picky with facts.
Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, was the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, thinking of Mr Martin Bell?
The Earl of Onslow: My Lords, no, I was thinking of the surgeon.
Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, yes, the single issue candidate in Kidderminster. If that is the noble Earl's best argument, I am happy to rest content upon
my propositions. He has managed to find one single-issue candidate, the doctor in Kidderminster, out of 600 plus. I repeat my proposition—which is not being picky; it is actually condescending to fact—that if we have a wholly elected Chamber there will be no place for the independents. That has been said time and time again by a number of your Lordships.If, on the other hand, we have a wholly appointed House, does that include the continuation of the hereditaries? I heard two voices there. One, the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, said, "Sorry", the other, the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, said, "Don't answer". There is a breathless hush in the close tonight. They are waiting for Strathclyde to come out with the light. But they will have a very long wait indeed, because when my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor ventured—oh, bold creature that he is—to inquire what the Conservative Party policy might be, the authoritative, indeed ferocious, considered answer came back, "We haven't got one", or, "We might have one by 31st August"—"January". I am so sorry, I was being over-generous as always. "But we know that it now has to be one or the other. It has to be a wholly elected House, with some Bishops, unspecified in number, or it has to be a wholly appointed House". I repeat, if one has a wholly elected House one will have no independent components.
This has been a most good-humoured debate. In fact, I have not attended such a good-humoured debate since going to the Parliamentary Labour Party yesterday. The noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, the Lord Chancellor and I—the three of us—have heard virtually every speech. The Lord Chancellor and I will both undertake to reflect carefully on what has been said.
It is true that there has not been universal a claim for our little White Paper. But we still have the pride of paternity in it. The one recurrent theme is that no one can agree on alternatives. In a moment or two I shall divert to the question of the Joint Committee because there are some misapprehensions which should be cleared up.
There are an enormous number of different views across the spectrum. They have been differently expressed. One source, not in your Lordships' House, said that his policy was one Peer, one lamp-post. At the other end of the spectrum was the graceful and amusing summary by the noble Lord, Lord Hurd, of what he had heard from members of the public almost with unanimity—that they wanted an all-elected House but with no politicians here at all. It is difficult to reconcile those two views.
We are grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, and his colleagues on the Royal Commission. I do not say that in the usual conventional way. We have tried to base our proposals substantially on the noble Lord's recommendations. It is true that we have not bound ourselves entirely to that particular chariot, but we have really taken it as the basis of our thinking.
I am personally very grateful to all the hereditaries for all the work that they have done, not simply the remaining 92. I say sorry to the noble Lord, Lord
Palmer, about my misplaced attempt at a mild tease if his feelings were hurt. I apologise for that. It was intended only as a gentle tease.Our essential stance is this: we need a second Chamber in our constitution; and it needs to do its proper work properly. Its proper work is to scrutinise, to revise, to reflect, to advise and also—I agree entirely with the noble Lord, Lord Winston—to have debates on matters of public interest. The quality of such debates—I am not flattering your Lordships—I do not think can be matched in any legislature across the world.
However, we are not to challenge the mandate of the elected Chamber. That is institutionalised in our constitutional statutory arrangements by virtue of the Parliament Acts. It is said that we should have the power to veto secondary legislation. I think that that is misplaced. At present we can either strike down the secondary legislation or accept it. That nuclear option has been used, if my memory is right, twice in the past 50 years. We do not have the power to veto primary legislation; and I do not see the justification intellectually for saying that we should be able to strike down secondary legislation.
I ask your Lordships to consider the reasoning, as I understand it, behind the Wakeham commission recommendation. It is to say this to the Commons: we are not content with this statutory instrument, this piece of secondary legislation. We wish you to think again. Then there is the possibility of up to three months' delay. In practice, noble Lords will recognise that a delay of up to three months would be a distinct inconvenience to any government. But it gives the opportunity for them to think again. I believe that the mechanism offered by the Royal Commission is more subtle and, therefore, likely to be of more practical utility than an unused power.
Lord Goodhart: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord for allowing me to intervene. Does he accept that it is for the House of Commons to decide the timing of when it votes to overrule a decision of the House of Lords under these proposals and that, therefore, that decision could be taken within 24 hours?
Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, I do and, notionally, it could. But I do not think that matters will work quite like that. I repeat: a lot of thought went into the Royal Commission's proposal to give us an effective remedy within the regime that ultimately the Commons is supreme. It is an opportunity to develop our powers and flex our muscles if we want to.
Lord Strathclyde: My Lords, the noble and learned Lord said that he did not see the intellectual case for there being no veto on primary legislation but that there should be on secondary legislation. The intellectual case is this. If a piece of secondary
legislation is defeated in this House, it can be reintroduced in primary legislation where there is no veto.
Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, I still do not see the difference between being unable to veto the primary legislation but being able to veto the critically important secondary legislation which derives from the primary Act. We are entitled, I think, to challenge the detail of legislation and, as noble Lords demonstrated robustly very recently, the principle of legislation, as on the anti-terrorism Bill.
We are here to offer independence of mind and spirit, and experience and expertise. None of the sources of your Lordships' coming to this House—whether by political patronage, heredity or ordination and subsequent progression in the Church of England—has led me to conclude that it makes any one of us more or less independent. The noble Earl, Lord Liverpool, asked a specific question about the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, which I would not have dealt with but it is important to put the matter right. The noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, was not expelled from the Labour Party for anything to do with the House of Lords. He brought about his self-expulsion because he was in breach of internal party rules: he supported a candidate who was running against the official Labour Party candidate. That is commonplace in most political parties. It has nothing to do with his conduct in the House of Lords. It is important that that should be borne in mind.
We should not delude ourselves by drinking too deeply of the belief that we are always in touch, however sweet the cordial may be. On many occasions we are significantly out of touch with significant sections of the public outside this House. I want to be utterly uncontroversial, so I shall just give two examples: Section 28 and the age of consent.
That is one reason why an elected component could bring, to use a phrase used by several of your Lordships, "added value" to this House. It would be an alternative reservoir. It would bring variety. It might bring about a different age profile. It would have the benefit of engaging the regions and the nations, but it would also bring in people from the outside world. As several of your Lordships have graciously conceded, some of our expertise gets rather thin. I think that it was the noble Lord, Lord Hurd of Westwell, who said that when one stops practising a skill, after about 10 or 15 years one has got very rusty indeed. That is a perfectly good reason for having the elected component. It would be legitimate, as would any other Peer who came here under an agreed settlement.
I want to make one proposition: it is not every component of every democracy and every aspect of every democratic institution that has to be elected. The judges are not elected—thank God. Public prosecutors are not elected. Rat catchers are not elected. They are in the United States, which suits them. The monarch is not elected. We do not have a rotating elected monarchy, as does Malaysia, for example. We do not at present have time limits here on how long or for how
many terms one may serve. It is not necessary for every part of a democratic constitution to be elected. The prime body with legislative supremacy and primacy on taxation ought to be elected. I entirely agree with what was said earlier: it is not simply election that matters, it is the fear of being dismissed.
If that is so, there is no need to engage in debate about whether appointed Peers, as opposed to elected Peers, would be legitimate. Both would be of equal validity and legitimacy, as would the Bishops, the Law Lords and the independents, because they would all be part of an agreed constitutional settlement. That gives legitimacy, not the bare fact of election.
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