House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Brady of Altrincham Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 2nd July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby (LD)]

Across Yorkshire, and to say to people, “I am standing for election here to fight for the things that I believe in on the economy, the health service and so on; and I am doing so because I think there should be a group of people who represent the whole of my region, not just a small proportion of it”. I believe—indeed, I know—that there is a raft of issues being dealt with at the moment at a regional rather than constituency level, for which there is no accountability. I would have been extremely confident in standing and making that argument anywhere in Yorkshire. I am only sorry that the delay in getting a democratic basis for the House of Lords means that I will be far too old to exercise that opportunity if and when it comes.

I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Brady, that I have not been able to do it in a coherent manner because of the interruptions, but I was attempting to say that his suggestion of holding elections metronomically, two years after the Commons, would not work. We could have in future, as we have seen in the past decade, periods of instability or situations such as we found ourselves in in 1964 and 1974 when the Government had a slim majority and called a second election soon after the first. In these circumstances, having a second Chamber that is elected independently from events in the Commons would give a degree of stability, rather than adding to the level of instability. The noble Lord, Lord Brady, is right to want this Chamber to be elected but wrong in his recipe for how to do it. Our amendment sets out a clear process to consult and then decide upon a method of electing the House of Lords, and I commend it to the House.

[Lord Brady of Altrincham (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Newby, is right to want to see an elected upper House but completely wrong in the way that he wants to see it enacted. However, the reason I want to speak briefly to my Amendment 22 and, I think, also to support his Amendment 4 is that the principle is correct that we should have an elected House. The kind of process that he suggests in Amendment 4 would be valuable and important, but it is also important to make it clear that there is a very wide divergence of views, both about the appropriate powers of the two Houses and indeed the way in which they should be elected and put together. I favour geographical constituencies—not as big as the whole of Europe, which he appeared to want to represent—but that is obviously very different from party list systems and the PR system of election that the Liberal Democrats want to see.

I am delighted to speak here with my noble friend Lord Hailsham sitting in front of me because one of the great authorities on this issue who is always cited is of course his ancestor—his father—who famously talked about an “elective dictatorship”. My concern, having spent 27 years as a Member of the House of Commons, is precisely grounded in that worry that a Government with a significant majority in the House of Commons—unless it has completely lost control—can get its legislation through with almost no impediment. It is also free to ignore amendments sent from this House, precisely because we do not have the legitimacy that an elected House would have.

I discussed this a little while ago with the great constitutionalist, Professor Sir Vernon Bogdanor. He said to me, “I completely disagree with you. It would be quite wrong to have an elected upper House”. But his next comment made, for me, the argument as eloquently as anybody could for an elected upper House. He said, “I’ve written many times that what we have achieved in Britain is the perfect unicameral Parliament, just with two Chambers”. I am afraid that, all too often, that is how our Parliament operates. For this House to have effect, we depend entirely on a Government with a large majority in the House of Commons deciding whether they will accept or take an interest in amendments and improvements that come from the often excellent revising work done by the House of Lords.

I do not want to detain the House for long, but I do think that, in principle, it is right to move to an elected House. I completely disagree with the prescription from the noble Lord, Lord Newby, for how to go about it—and I am greatly reassured to find that he disagrees so profoundly with me. This is a debate that has been going on for over a century, as he said. It will continue, but it is important that we engage with it in the spirit of accepting that it is not a given that the House of Commons operates so well as a democratic assembly that it automatically deserves unquestioned precedence. My time in the House of Commons tells me that it works very poorly in most ways. Its principal function is to select a Government and, most of the time, it then then lets the Government get on with pretty much what they want to do. More challenge in our Parliament, which comes with democracy, is the way forward.