House of Lords: Reform

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Tuesday 21st June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester]

My Lords, 41 down and 63 still to go. It is hard enough at the tail end of the first day’s debate to manage to find anything fresh to say but I will do my best in the time available to me. It is certainly salutary, looking back on the day’s discussion, to see just how little support this draft Bill has in your Lordships’ House.

After all, it is a Bill that is remarkably short of pretensions and the Leader of the House was remarkably modest in his description of its virtues when he introduced it. It does not seek to claim that it will produce a House that will work better, or one that is more representative of the nation, or one that will cost the taxpayer less to run. There is no suggestion that the Bill has been brought forward because there is a huge public demand for change. Indeed, the reverse is the case: this House is seen as the body which gives the elected House the opportunity to think again—once, twice, possibly three times—and genuinely manages to hold the Executive to account.

Some of my noble friends have argued that the Labour Party has a settled view on the future of this House. Indeed, one of my most senior and distinguished noble friends argued at a private meeting yesterday that the party’s position has changed little since 1911. That is not the case. For example, in 1983, the party manifesto—described as the longest suicide note in history—proposed the outright abolition of this place, with nothing put in its place. More tellingly, in the 1960s, party policy was adamantly to oppose an elected House. I recently unearthed a copy of an official Labour Party publication from November 1968 called Talking Points, devoted to the Wilson Government’s attempt to reform the Lords. It was written at a time when the noble Lord, Lord McNally, and I were members of the Transport House staff. In a section headed “Why not an elected House?” it says:

“It has been suggested that the Lords should be directly or indirectly elected, perhaps by larger constituencies or for longer or shorter periods than the House of Commons. Those who make this criticism totally misunderstand the new role the House of Lords will be playing in our constitution and they are failing to give proper credit to the independence of mind and action that existing life Peers display. The scope for control by the party machines is extremely limited, and even if a Peer is nominated by his party leader, there is no certainty that he will support him for ever”.

You can say that again. Remember, this is 1968. It continues:

“If the upper House is elected, it would inevitably become a rival to the House of Commons, as it would then also possess a mandate from the people. It would be able to claim greater or even equal powers, and in particular to challenge the present control by the Commons of finance”.

My final quotation is:

“An elected House would violate the central principle of the British parliamentary system by which it has been recognised, at least since the beginning of the 19th century, that the Government stands or falls in the House of Commons”.

Those arguments are as valid today as they were 43 years ago. This was a genuine cross-party attempt to reform this place in the late 1960s—based on appointment, not election. The political parties understood that the legitimacy of an assembly can be derived in a number of different ways. Certainly, elections are one route—and a number of noble Lords have made that point tonight—but they are not the only one, and legitimacy would not be achieved if we just became a second-rate shadow of the other place, or consisted of a bunch of placemen and women who got here through being put high up on a party list. I would much rather that an independent statutory appointments commission did that job than unaccountable party apparatchiks.

Central to this whole debate is the relationship between this House and the other place. A number of noble Lords have referred to the comments of the president of the Liberal Democrats during the AV referendum campaign when he was quoted in the Times on 23 April. He said:

“Voting ‘no’ to electoral reform will make the House of Commons subservient to the House of Lords”.

He said that Peers with a new-found legitimacy would refuse to bow down to MPs in battles over policy. I wonder whether the Leader of the House agrees with that. I suspect that he does, which may be one reason why he supports the creation of an elected senate. The only reason why we defer to the will of the Commons now is because we recognise that because it is elected and we are not, it is entitled to the last word.

Finally, I ask your Lordships to consider the relationship between an elected senator and a Member of the House of Commons at constituency level. Since May 2010, the city of Worcester has been represented in the other place by Robin Walker MP, the son of the late and much respected Lord Walker of Worcester. Both Mr Walker and I care greatly for the city and its people, and we do our best for them but in different ways. I have made it clear to him that, as long as he is an elected Member of Parliament and I am an appointed one, I will not get involved in party politics in Worcester. I do not criticise him or his party colleagues locally. However, I have made it clear to him that all those bets would be off the moment I have to seek election as the senator for Worcester. Whether it was me or someone else who occupied that position, that person would be endlessly vying for local media coverage, and interfering in matters which are currently and correctly the domain of the elected MP. In the case of the senator, he or she would not even have to think about the prospect of being re-elected because there is no prospect for re-election under the terms of this draft Bill.

The solution is not to abolish this House as this draft Bill does, but to complete the process of reform begun in 1911, continued in 1949, strengthened in 1958 and 1962, and significantly changed for the better in 1999. I urge the joint scrutiny committee when it gets going with its work to look carefully at the Bill put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Steel, and to endorse it. I hope that the Government will in due course come to realise that that is the correct way forward. If the noble Baroness tomorrow night decides to test the opinion of the House on her Motion, I would have no hesitation in supporting her.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

I beg to move that this debate be now adjourned until tomorrow.

Motion agreed.