Ukraine, Syria and Iran

Lord Elystan-Morgan Excerpts

Monday 24th February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Elystan-Morgan (CB)]

My Lords—

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, that is a question that I have asked myself inside government. We are concerned about the movement of funds whose origins are not entirely clear. I am assured that the Government are monitoring these movements, but of course it is a matter of concern.

[Lord Elystan-Morgan]

My Lords, it is utterly laudable and understandable that the United Kingdom and the other countries of the European Union should commit themselves to substantial economic aid for Ukraine. However, will the Government give an unreserved commitment to abjure every temptation to try to involve Ukraine in any militaristic alliance or allegiance with western European countries, bearing in mind that the chief port of Ukraine, Sevastopol, is the base of the Russian Black Sea fleet and that such a militaristic course, though tempting on the face of it, would be utter insanity?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I have seen the base of the Russian Black Sea fleet in Sevastopol with the Ukrainian Black Sea fleet, such as it is, not far away. I recall that someone for whom I used to work, Admiral Sir James Eberle, was invited in the early 1990s to advise the Russians and the Ukrainians on how the Black Sea fleet should be divided between the two. His recommendation was that the best thing was to scrap the entire fleet. Unfortunately, the advice was not taken.

Chilcot Inquiry

Lord Elystan-Morgan Excerpts

Tuesday 11th February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Elystan-Morgan (CB)]

My Lords, the House is deeply indebted to my friend, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris of Aberavon, for initiating this debate.

Of course, it is a very great pity that, whenever the Chilcot inquiry reports, it will be more than 11 years since the military operations occurred in Iraq, but that is not the issue before the House tonight. We are not considering whether Prime Minister Blair involved this kingdom in an illegal war or whether he is as pure as the driven snow as far as that matter is concerned. We are not concerned in any way with the issue of weapons of mass destruction or what was genuinely or not genuinely believed in that regard. We are concerned only with seeking to ask the question: why has the Chilcot inquiry been held up in the way that it has?

The truth is that the Chilcot inquiry has run into a massive roadblock. As described by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris, this is the release—not to the members of the Chilcot inquiry because they have seen them already but to the public if the opportunity arises—of three groups of documents: 25 notes passed between Prime Minister Blair and the President of the United States; 200 Cabinet or Cabinet-style discussions relating to the relevant matters; and 130 conversations between either Prime Minister Blair or Prime Minister Brown and the President of the United States. That is the issue.

The relevance of those documents is not that they have been seen by the Chilcot inquiry but that the Chilcot inquiry wants to use them for a very specific and very significant purpose: the so-called Maxwellisation principle, which was established in relation to the inquiry following the death of Sir Robert Maxwell. In other words, a body such as the Chilcot inquiry wants to be able to say, “We have examined all the evidence. We have come to the conclusion that there is a prima facie case against A, B, C and D—the finger of blame appears to point to them as persons who ought to be criticised. But we are not going to do that without giving them the opportunity of replying to that situation and calling evidence if they wish”. That seems an unimpeachable principle of fairness.

However, the Chilcot inquiry goes one step beyond that and says, “It is not enough that we should be able to do that. We should be able to show to the public, if our conclusions remain the same, why we regard those persons as blameworthy; in other words, that they should be condemned not out of the generality of our conclusions but out of the specific evidence that is contained in these particular pieces of documentary evidence. Unless Maxwellisation is made public and those documents are produced and published at the time the report is published, Chilcot will not be regarded as having full validity”. I absolutely say amen to that.

Who is holding up this disclosure, which, in my submission, is utterly essential to the fairness of this inquiry? It is apparently the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Jeremy Heywood. He is saying, “I am opposing this on grounds of sound precedent, a precedent laid by my predecessor” —the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell—“that is, the law of the Medes and Persians”. I would challenge that completely and make the following submissions. First, it does not matter what the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, or any other civil servant in the past 1,000 years has said. It can make no difference whatever. It is not a matter for a civil servant to decide.

Secondly, it is a matter for the Government, as the sovereign and ultimate legal authority, to decide, and nobody else. The Prime Minister, making a statement on this matter last year, said that Government were responsible for disclosure. It does not matter what pressures there might be from the United States or the Civil Service. The Government are legally and morally responsible.

Thirdly, a long, long time ago when I was a law student—it almost seems like 1,000 years ago—the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris, and I were in the same department at Aberystwyth and we were taught sound principles of equity. One of the principles of equity was: no man shall be a judge in his own suit. In other words, there are certain people who should not adjudicate in this matter. Who would be the last person who should ever be allowed to adjudicate on the question of whether or not these documents should be made public? Clearly, that is either Prime Minister Blair or Prime Minister Brown. Who would be the next? You might say someone who was the alter ego of one of the two persons. Who was the alter ego of Prime Minister Blair? It was Sir Jeremy Heywood—one of the main protagonists in this confused, complicated and altogether very strange story.

I am not saying for a moment that Sir Jeremy is other than a fair, honourable and thoroughly decent man, but there is a principle of law which says that justice must be done and must be manifestly seen to be done. Unless the Government intervene here, as it is their moral and legal responsibility to do, this matter will fester and I think it will contaminate and poison the whole body politic. The confidence that people have in parliamentary democracy, already injured, will be further demeaned.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I suppose I ought to declare an interest in this debate in that I worked at No. 10 at the time of the Iraq war. Indeed, I sat opposite some of the foreign affairs private secretaries whose minutes are now to be found on the Chilcot inquiry website. I saw some of it pretty much at first hand, although I was not directly involved with Iraq. It was not a very easy period, I can tell your Lordships.

I do not think it is right for our debate tonight to get into the substance of the issues that the Chilcot inquiry is addressing. It has been an extremely good debate and the speeches, as usual for the House of Lords, have been of exceptionally high quality, and I thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris of Aberavon, who obviously put an awful lot of thought into what he had to say in opening the debate.

I will confine my remarks from these Benches to the question of delay and the view the Government take of that delay and of the questions relating to the disclosure that are at the heart of that delay. It is important to be clear: as I understand it, it is not that written evidence has been withheld from the inquiry; the inquiry has seen all the relevant papers. The issue at stake is how much of that evidence it can actually quote in its final report. So the question is: does the committee base its conclusions on the public taking it on trust that it has read the material and this is what it concludes, or is it able to quote from the documents?

Everyone will agree that the Chilcot process has been very thorough. If you look at that website, you will see that far more government papers are available than for any precedent that I can recall. The comparison with Suez, where no one was told about the secret deal that was done with the French and the Israelis, is very striking.

However, there are questions about the extent of disclosure. I want to see the Iraq question and as many of these issues as possible put to rest, but even then there are three areas in which questions of disclosure raise awkward issues. These are questions not just for civil servants, but for any responsible Government of any party acting in the national interest.

I think one of these questions has already been sorted out: the question about dealing with the use of intelligence, and the worries as to whether disclosure of anything to do with intelligence compromises sources. I should like the Government to confirm what I think to be the position: that in the case of Iraq those questions were sorted out in the Butler inquiry in 2004, and that there are no new intelligence issues arising in the case of Chilcot. These issues relate to national security. From our Benches, as my party leader said only yesterday, we support greater scrutiny of the way in which intelligence operates. There are obvious limits as well.

The second issue concerns relations with our allies. The committee wants to quote from private correspondence between the Prime Minister and the President of the United States. If we see ourselves as America’s closest ally there is a real question, not just of the past but for the future, as to the obligation that places on us to protect confidences in that relationship. On that point I am sure a lot of people would say, “Damn the Americans”. I do not take that view. If we are serious about our alliances—and the same would be true of our close partners in Europe in other situations—we do have obligations to our allies and partners. How do the Government see that question? Time makes a great difference, but we are talking about something that happened a little over 10 years ago. What view do the Government take of what is a reasonable time to disclose things that affect our closest allies?

Thirdly, there is the issue about freedom of information and what are called Cabinet-level discussions. Whatever decisions the Government make on disclosure as far as the Chilcot inquiry is concerned could have long-term implications for freedom of information more generally. This is a serious issue. My party introduced freedom of information in 1998. We are proud of that achievement, but there were always boundaries that had to be set. I have always thought of freedom of information, in simplistic terms, as meaning that expert advice should be open but confidential discussion should remain confidential. How do the Government see this question about disclosure of discussions right at the centre of government on the basis of papers provided? Much of the content is now available on the website, but how do the Government see this question of disclosure of Cabinet-level decisions? This will have an impact on all future Governments. This is not just about dealing with the Iraq issue. This is about whether disclosure is going to affect the relationship between Ministers and civil servants for decades ahead. We have to get that right.

[Lord Elystan-Morgan]

Two points arise. First, if it be the case that information of a confidential nature between states is always to be kept in the background, that is an end to any question of transparency. Does the noble Lord accept first of all that many of the thousands of documents that have been disclosed to Chilcot on the basis that they are declassified and therefore open to publication come into that particular area that he mentions?

The other matter is that it appears—if the responsible press is to be believed—that Mr Brown, in so far as his position as Prime Minister or as Chancellor is concerned during the period from 2001 to 2009 that is covered by the inquiry, says that he has no objection to the disclosure of any of the three groups of documents that have been referred to.

[Lord Liddle]

I am arguing here that these are very difficult decisions and that we have to have a clear view for the future. I am not looking to the past; I am wondering what the impact of this will be on future relations between Ministers and between Ministers and civil servants. I would simply be grateful if the Minister was able to give us an answer.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, for that extremely constructive and helpful speech, which took a number of themes which I, too, wish to cover.

Perhaps I, like others, should admit that I am not entirely a neutral observer in this. I was my party’s defence spokesman at the time, and I was involved in the development of what was then Liberal Democrat opposition to the war. Part of my reason for being so was that I had been a relatively frequent visitor to Washington both before and after 9/11. I met there people whom I had known when I was a graduate student in the United States in the early 1960s and who had become some of the leading neo-conservatives within the Administration. It was because of what I knew of some of their underlying assumptions and of my participation in two National Intelligence Council-sponsored conferences in Washington, one in the autumn of 2001 and one in the summer of 2002, that I concluded that the Bush Administration were determined to go to war with Iraq against the advice of some of their own intelligence analysts who knew the Middle East well.

Having said that, I should say that this is a very different inquiry from the Franks inquiry. It starts with the examination of the Government’s Iraq policy papers in 2000, before 9/11, and concludes with the withdrawal of British troops from Iraq 10 years later. It therefore covers a much longer period than the short period of the Franks report and deals with a coalition war in which we were only a secondary contender. Franks was concluded in six months, but evidence was taken in private; the report covered only the period before the conflict; it did not publish many of the documents. I again declare an interest: I was one of those who reviewed it very critically on publication because it seemed to me that it had distorted the actual situation. The intelligence community had indeed got it right. The only mistake that it had made was in thinking that the Argentinians would not be unwise enough to try to invade the Falklands before the winter; it thought that it would do it six months later.

I also looked back at the Dardanelles inquiry, and reference has been made to the situation after Suez. What we now have with the Chilcot inquiry is a very much more thorough examination in which we are talking about several thousand documents—I must correct the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan: they have not been declassified by being released to the Chilcot inquiry. This is an inquiry by privy counsellors; they have access to everything that they wish to see, including intelligence documents et cetera. The question at stake is not access; it is publication.

I am informed that, when we see the eventual publication, a great deal will be published that it has not been the custom of British Governments to publish before. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, said, when you get into the question of how far you publish Cabinet minutes that appeared less than 20 or 30 years ago, clearly, whatever happens, you will be seen to have been setting a number of precedents. Another question is how far you publish documents which relate to conversations with some of our closest allies, whether or not you have their permission. There are here some very large issues of national policy and national interest which we all have to consider.

[Lord Elystan-Morgan]

I quote here from the Prime Minister’s letter of 5 November in reply to the letter of the day before from Sir John Chilcot. He states:

“I am aware of the scale of the task declassification has presented to a number of Government departments, and it is good to have the acknowledgement of the work that has been done by the Cabinet Office and other departments to deal with the disclosure requests, involving several thousand documents, including many hundreds since the summer”.

That seems to me to say—I may be wrong and I apologise if I am—that thousands of documents have been declassified, but I will be corrected.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I would distinguish between access and publication. The delay is very much about working through thousands of documents, many of them very lengthy, and deciding how much can safely be declassified for publication—how much therefore can be published, how much some documents should be redacted in part and whether there are documents which it would be safer not to publish at all. That has taken a good deal longer than was hoped, but it is now well under way and is what we are currently considering.

West Lothian Question

Lord Elystan-Morgan Excerpts

Tuesday 4th February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I think that I took part in my first debate on the question of an English Parliament at a conference in Edinburgh in 1968. It is not a new question for any of us here. The problem is that while you can begin to carve up parts of northern England into recognisable regions, once you get down to the south-west and the south-east there is not easy agreement within England about the sort of devolution you would have.

[Lord Elystan-Morgan (CB)]

My Lords, while it is undoubtedly the case that the West Lothian question in its many guises deserves consideration, does the Minister not agree that many other constitutional conundrums cry out for resolution? In particular, under the Barnett formula, the Welsh people are unjustly deprived of about £300 million per annum. Looking at it in the wider context, is there not an overwhelming case for setting up a royal commission to look comprehensively into the relationship of this House to the Commons and the Commons to this House, and of Westminster to the devolved Parliaments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the noble Lord may be aware that the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee of the House of Commons has, indeed, recommended the idea of a constitutional convention in a recent report. As someone who used to study the British constitution, I have to say that, on the whole, we have preferred to patch it, make do and then put a bit more in rather than attempt a complete redesign.

Credit Unions

Lord Elystan-Morgan Excerpts

Thursday 16th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I think that we are about to trespass on the next debate. The Cabinet Office nudges other departments; whether it can direct them is a question on which the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, will no doubt touch in a few minutes.

[Lord Elystan-Morgan (CB)]

The Minister will be well aware of the popularity of credit unions in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and particularly the Republic of Ireland, where I think the figure of support is of the order of 50%. Am I right in thinking that the equivalent figure for the United Kingdom is somewhere between 1% and 1.5%?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I have 2% in my brief, but that is still a very small figure. Given the reduction in bank services in a number of areas in this country, this is an issue that we should all encourage. Noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, will remember the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury talking about the Church of England becoming more extensively involved in the credit union movement.

Government Communications Headquarters

Lord Elystan-Morgan Excerpts

Monday 10th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I am not entirely sure that I understand the full transition to cloud computing. A very small number of people in this House understand it, and I run to them from time to time to ask for their advice. Certainly, we will find that the new global standards on attempts to regulate cloud computing will be thrashed out in negotiations between the United States and the European Union in the context of the transatlantic negotiations. So far we are a long way from discovering how those will turn out. I read in the New York Times the other day that one of the differences across the Atlantic is that in the United States most people distrust the state much more than they distrust companies, whereas in Europe more people trust the state and distrust companies. That raises implications for what sort of regulation people really want. Clearly there will be some extremely difficult negotiations, first on the EU data protection directive, and then within the transatlantic negotiations.

[Lord Elystan-Morgan]

My Lords, in quoting the words of Sir Malcolm Rifkind, the chairman of the security committee, the Minister referred to a statement by him which said that normally only information which had been the subject of specific ministerial request would be used. The word “normally” suggests to me that there may be exceptional circumstances. Can the Minister, without embarrassment, suggest the sort of situation in which that might operate? It is a constructive and relevant question, which I am sure the House would wish to have an answer to, if possible.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

The noble Lord tempts me to go down a lane which I think that I would prefer not to go down. It is, of course, the case that, in moments of absolute crisis, a short cut may possibly be taken, but this country attempts in all circumstances to go through the correct procedures and hold to the legal framework.

EU: Reform

Lord Elystan-Morgan Excerpts

Thursday 16th May 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

We have already had extensive discussions, particularly with the German Government but also with a number of others. There is the potential here for a like-minded group. Of course one has to work in shifting coalitions on many of these issues. On some issues, some member Governments agree strongly with the British Government’s proposals; on others, we have others to work with. On changing the culture of the EU institutions and perhaps changing the balance of portfolios in the next Commission, et cetera, discussions are already well under way.

[Lord Elystan-Morgan]

My Lords, perhaps I may ask the Minister a question concerning Article 50 of the European treaty. As he will know, that is the provision that deals with the renegotiation of the treaty. Will he kindly tell the House whether any member state has invoked the provisions of that article, and, if so, with what result? Furthermore, will he tell the House that the Government will publish a list of the powers that they seek to have repatriated, so that the British people will be able, in the light of reason, to determine what the issues are rather than having to fumble about in a miasma of popular clichés?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I welcome the noble Lord’s support for a reasoned debate. The question is not about unilateral repatriation but about the multilateral reform of the EU.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Elystan-Morgan Excerpts

Monday 14th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon]

Of course we should. The draft legislation that was put before us made it perfectly clear that the House of Commons should have primacy. That is not a contentious item. By the way, I said that we participated in the making of the laws. We contribute to the making of the laws. That should be done only by the power that is derived not from the Prime Minister or from patronage but through the ballot box.

My noble friends in the Conservative Party often ask, “Why should we address this constitutional issue at a time of crisis—is this not a distraction?”. Those noble friends should have a care as they, too, are interested in constitutional reform. As the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, has just said, they introduced mayoral elections. Now we must vote for police chiefs across the country, whether we like it or not. It seems to me that my noble friends are interested in every constitutional reform except the reform of this place. They want to see the election of mayors and chief constables but not of anybody in this place. I say to noble Lords who love to make that point that it is a dangerous one to make.

It is also dangerous to make that point as we are facing not just an economic crisis but a democratic crisis. We should look at what is happening on the streets of Egypt and at what has happened here. Our economy is in crisis but so is our democracy. We should look at the turnouts in the local elections last week. You cannot solve the democratic crisis unless you can create more respect for, cognisance of and at least trust in the democratic process. We need a process of democratic renewal in this country. I do not claim that the House of Lords represents all of that programme but it is certainly a crucial part of it. You cannot resolve the deep economic crisis of this country if you do not also address the democratic crisis, and that is what we seek to do.

Another point that is often made is that famously there is no public call for reform of this place—we have heard it in the Chamber today—and that campaigners have knocked on many doors but not one person has called for democratic reform of the House of Lords. But they never do. This is not the people’s business; it is our business. There was no great public call for the Great Reform Act 1832. There was a campaign up and down the country, but in the Dog and Duck and other pubs around Britain in the 1830s there was no great public call in support of that or, later, the suffragette cause. The campaigners believed deeply in that cause and they fought for it, but the public did not, being largely uninterested in it, if not opposed to it.

The noble Lord, Lord Luce, said the other day that there have been four reforms of this place—in 1911, 1949, 1963 and 1999. None of those reforms was called for by the public. We initiated them to put our House in order. This has nothing to do with the public calling for reform. It is entirely to do with the fact that we should recognise that we have grown out of touch with democracy and that we have to put our House in order—no more and no less.

[Lord Elystan-Morgan]

The noble Lord says that there was no great public demand prior to 1832. What does he think brought together the 100,000 people who risked life and limb at Peterloo about 10 years previously?

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon]

My Lords, I did not say that there was no great campaign. I made it very clear that among the ordinary people of our country there was no great public cry for this, as indeed was the case with the suffragettes. I had a look at this in the Library only the day before yesterday and I assure noble Lords that that was the case. However, if noble Lords will not accept that, and it seems that they are not inclined to do so, I repeat that on the four occasions that this House has reformed itself it did so because it needed to, not because the public demanded it. So it was then and so it is now.

Finally, I turn to the question of the written constitution, because this has come up a number of times. Let me see if I may address it directly. Perhaps I may pick up on the statement, or perhaps question, of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, during the debate last Thursday. He is a man for whom I have a great deal of respect and admiration, but he made an odd statement. He said that if we were to be a democratically elected second Chamber we would be the only one in the world with an unwritten constitution so to do. There are only three countries with an unwritten constitution—not a huge number. There is New Zealand, Israel and Great Britain. His argument was, “How could we make such a change when there is no model for us to work from?”. I looked at his statement in Hansard and could read it out to him; I have it here.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Elystan-Morgan]

My Lords, I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, will forgive me for not following him in his masterly tour d’horizon of many of the massive issues now confronting Her Majesty’s Government. I wish to speak on the issue of the draft Bill for the reform of this place and to ask two simple questions. First, what was the end product that the Government desired in drafting the Bill? What net result were they aiming for? Secondly, what was the principle that they sought to espouse in trying to achieve that result? Those are two simple but pertinent questions.

Concerning the first question, what was the end product contemplated? It seems that the Government have been saying quite consistently over the last few years that they wished a situation to develop whereby this House would have greater authority—greater moral authority than it has at the moment to conduct its duties, but greater authority vis-à-vis whom? Not vis-à-vis Europe; it can only be vis-à-vis Her Majesty’s Government and the House of Commons. Yet that seems a very strange proposition when one considers the way in which Her Majesty’s Government and the House of Commons have reacted in the last two years to the assertiveness of this House.

I will not go through any list in detail, but we know exactly what has happened. There has been a reaction to practically every worthwhile amendment that this House has passed, irrespective of its merits. There has been the use of the subterfuge, as I would describe it, of overemphasising the privilege which that House has in relation to financial matters. Of course it must retain that jurisdiction, but to use it even where that result is minimal in its effect upon an amendment amounts to bullying and almost to tyranny. That is one of the very great problems. Is it the case that if this Bill were to be carried, the House would adopt a different situation and, if so, on what basis? It is for the House and for the Government, in my respectful submission, to spell that out.

In so far as the question of the principle is concerned, probably every Member of this House present would say that there is one thing that we agree upon: that the primacy of the House of Commons should be maintained. In the course of these debates over the last few months, I have never heard anybody argue to the contrary. Very few people, however, have defined primacy. Primacy, to my mind, can mean one of three things. First, it can mean the acceptance that there is an overwhelming moral authority and sovereignty vested in the House of Commons itself. That is one possibility, but for it to succeed there has to be a common subscribing to a moral code and the willingness to abide by it, which is something rather difficult.

A second possibility is that it is a legal concept, which means that on all matters large and small where there is conflict between this House and the House of Commons, the House of Commons swiftly and peremptorily establishes that authority—and that our situation disappears, as it were, in so far as any status in that connection is concerned. The third possibility is that one does not apply such a rigorous determination as in the second instance but that nevertheless the House of Commons is entitled, in the long run and over a reasonable period of time, to have its own way. I cannot conceive of primacy that does not fit into one of those three categories.

With regard to the attempt to deal with the issue of primacy, Clause 2 of the Bill is of course a disaster. It has been savaged. I may be using a term that is too harsh to describe the efforts of the noble Lord, Lord Richard, and his Joint Committee, but the clause has certainly been heavily and fairly criticised, even more so in the alternative report. I can well understand that, because if the primacy of the House of Commons is to be maintained, and that is the wish of everyone, then there are only two ways in which that can be done. One way—a dangerous one, to my mind—would be to put the Salisbury/Addison convention on a statutory basis. That convention was developed in very different circumstances from those now prevailing, at a time when there were about 20 members of the Labour Party in this House and many hundreds of Conservatives. Then, it was necessary either to abolish this place or to have a convention of that nature. However, if you put such conventions on a statutory basis, you are in grave trouble. I know that noble and learned Lords who are in a far better position to judge than I would say that you immediately place yourself at the mercy of the courts and do the very thing that Article 9 of the Bill of Rights wished to avoid—in other words, that there should be a conflict between the jurisdiction of Parliament and that of the courts.

A convention is no more than a convention. The moment that it ceases to be a convention, it becomes a great peril. Again, noble Lords may say that we could use the Parliament Acts, but why should you use two pieces of legislation that were passed in very special circumstances to deal with a wholly new circumstance? Those Acts were passed when there was a deadly conflict between a House of aristocratic origin—an hereditary House—and an elected, democratic House. That is not the situation now, nor would it be if the Bill were to be passed. Although of course there is every justification for the broad rules regarding money Bills and taxation to be abided by, the Parliament Acts were nevertheless created in a special situation that would no longer obtain in the event of the Bill being carried.

What are we left with? A situation where the only sane, reasonable and safe choice is either A or B. A is to maintain an appointed House, possibly with many, though not all, of the reforms that were so properly advocated by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman. B is to have an elected House, but one that operates within a written constitution. If you have an elected House without one, there is always the certainty of deadlock—although perhaps I put that too strongly. I suppose that one can be a very great optimist and say that it may be possible that two elected Houses could live in a situation of total amity and concord, but I doubt very much whether—

[Noble Lords]

Order!

[Lord Lamont of Lerwick]

Some of the jury is on this side of the House.

[Lord Elystan-Morgan]

I am sorry. However, it seems to me that I am surrounded by many people who subscribe to the same ideas as me. That may very well be the choice. Although the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown, and others may argue that there is no great significance in a written constitution, I believe that it makes all the difference. I would put it, very humbly, in this way: if you have a written constitution dealing with two elected Houses, it is very much like having two rail tracks running parallel with each other. With luck, no great disaster will ever occur. If you do not have a written constitution, with two elected Houses you have an open highway where each of those heavy, dangerous vehicles is competing with the other for road space and where there is, in the long term, the certainty of disaster. That is the situation.

If I am right that those are the stark choices now confronting our community, then we have gone about it the wrong way altogether. We have sought to deal with this matter in a piecemeal, tunnel-vision manner. That is a fair criticism. The 1911 and 1949 Parliament Acts dealt solely with powers. Since 1949, virtually all the discussion has been about membership. How can you possibly deal with membership save in apposition to powers or with powers save in apposition to membership? How can you possibly deal with a tripartite entity, such as parliamentary government—the House of Commons, the House of Lords and the devolved Assemblies—through totally changing the character and the constitution of one of them?

I believe that one of the most unwholesome proposals in the draft Bill is the 15-year term. I can well understand, and have sympathy with, the motives behind it. I came to this House 31 years ago, although I am sorry that I have not been here for the entire intervening time, having very improperly played truant for a period. I can well understand why a modern legislator should feel that they should have the independence to be able to deal with an issue as they see it on merit without having to look over their shoulder to the next election or to dictate into the columns of the local rag. It is a perfectly understandable and decent motivation, but I think it is a very wrong one. Democratic representation means two things: it means being elected in a democratic way and being answerable in a democratic way. It is not the fact of election that is so important but the fact of facing re-election: that is the mandate that has sovereign value, if you look in a purely tunnelled way at popular election.

I end with this: I believe that the most sensible answer to this situation has come from the alternative report. It states that, bearing in mind all these issues and more, there is only one place to start, and that is with a constitutional convention to examine all these matters in depth with maturity, common sense and statesmanship. To start anywhere else would be wholly unthinkable.