House of Lords Reform

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

Let me make a little progress, if I may.

If we are to continue in the spirit of co-operation, it is essential that we are pragmatic. House of Lords reform has constantly been blighted by an inability to compromise, because of either pessimism on the one hand or purism on the other. Both must now give way. When we differ on the detail, we must not lose sight of our overarching aim, which is a more democratic and legitimate upper Chamber.

Members know my preferences for reform: I support a fully, rather than mostly, elected House and believe that Members should be elected by the single transferable vote to give the other place greater independence from party control. I shall continue to argue strongly for both, but I will not make the best the enemy of the good. I shall remain open-minded and realistic, and I hope that Members on all sides of the debate will do the same. On that note, I give way to the hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis).

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

The Deputy Prime Minister is being very courteous in giving way. Does he accept that to elect two Houses by different electoral systems will lead to arguments over relative legitimacy? Will he put this particular voting system to a referendum? Why should we have a referendum on the voting system for this House and not one on the voting system for the other House?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

On the first point, we have an array of different electoral systems already in this country, from that used for the European Parliament to that used here in London and those used in the devolved Assemblies. Those systems all co-exist. I do not think that we need perfect consistency of electoral systems, as we do not have it anyway. On the second point, when all three parties have committed to something in their manifestos, such as House of Lords reform, the situation is unlike that with electoral reform to this place, so there is not a similar case for a referendum.

A range of issues will no doubt come up today, and many of them have been brought up already. There are two particular areas of concern, however, that have frequently come up in debates so far, and I want to address them in turn. The first is that the Government’s proposals risk creating a second Chamber that is too powerful and the second is that Members will be elected but not properly accountable.

On the question of the balance of power between the two Chambers, it is simply not the case that the other place will rival the Commons—with 300 Members, it will be half the size. That is the number that we judge to be right, although we are listening to views on that question. Whatever number we settle on, however, the Commons will remain significantly larger, as is the case in the vast majority of bicameral systems around the world. Members of the other place will serve long single terms of 15 years with no prospect of re-election, keeping them a step removed from the electoral cycle of this House. They will be elected according to a different voting system, which will be proportional and will have, we propose, larger multi-Member constituencies, giving them an entirely different mandate from MPs. Their elections will be staggered, so that they will be either elected or elected and appointed in combination in thirds. That will mean that they will never have a more recent mandate than the Commons.

The two Chambers will remain entirely distinct. The Commons will continue to assert its authority through the Parliament Acts, through MPs’ decisive right over the vote of supply and through the Government’s need to retain the confidence of MPs in order to remain in office.

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[Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

I believe in a fully elected House of Lords. It is right and proper in this day and age that both Houses of Parliament are directly accountable to the electorate. I would like to remind the House where Labour stood on Lords reform at the general election. Labour’s manifesto stated:

“We will ensure that the hereditary principle is removed from the House of Lords. Further democratic reform to create a fully elected Second Chamber will then be achieved in stages.”

The Deputy Prime Minister has often suggested that the best is sometimes the enemy of the good—he used the phrase today—as justification for the proposals contained in the draft Bill presented to Parliament, which falls short of his own party’s manifesto commitment, but I feel very passionately that there is a principle at stake, the fundamental principle of having a 100% elected upper House. That is the right and proper outcome, and one which will deliver the democratic system that the people of this country deserve.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

Does the right hon. Gentleman not accept that the single most important function of our second Chamber is the revision and improvement of legislation? If we remove hundreds of people who are experts in their field and substitute them with hundreds of professional party politicians, what will make the latter better qualified to revise legislation in that Chamber than we amateurs are in this Chamber?

[Sadiq Khan]

I do not think that the second point necessarily makes the first point impossible; it is possible to have a second Chamber that is a revising Chamber and for all its Members to be elected. Of the 61 other bicameral Parliaments, none has an appointed upper Chamber. All of them are elected and seem to be doing a pretty decent job.

I am concerned that in other areas of constitutional change the Government have shown themselves willing to be less principled and more partisan. For example, we will see the number of MPs reduced from 650 to 600 at the next election, with no evidence for why we should lose 50 Members, which will simultaneously increase the power of the Executive. We have had 117 new unelected peers appointed to the House of Lords since last May, with more promised. Each peer costs £108,000 a year—we can all do the maths. There are now almost 830 unelected peers in our Parliament. We have seen boundaries re-fixed according to out-of-date electoral data that exclude 5 million eligible voters. We have seen Parliaments fixed at five-year terms, which was mentioned by neither coalition partner before the election, but is now mysteriously favoured by both. We have seen the political fudge of establishing a commission on a Bill of Rights, papering over the cracks between the coalition partners on human rights, and we have seen a failed referendum on the alternative vote. Those are some of the reasons why those of us who should be the natural allies of the Deputy Prime Minister’s plans to reform the House of Lords are suspicious of his plans and of him.

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[Conor Burns]

I can think of many, and it is not often that I am accused of being on the same side as Lord Heseltine. I remember telling Lady Thatcher a couple of years ago that he had not made his maiden speech, having been in the Lords for nine years at the time. Her reply was, “Well, look on the bright side, at least we haven’t had to listen to it.” Lord Heseltine is a very good example of my point—he says that he took his membership of the other place because he wanted the honour, but he did not want to participate. He has participated in fewer than 20 Divisions in the 10 years that he has been a Member of the other place. That was why I found it absolutely disgraceful that he came in the other night to vote against the referendum lock in the European Union Bill, which is going through the other place. Such examples show that the other place needs some reform.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

Does my hon. Friend accept that there would be no more accountability under the current proposals than there is at present, because someone who underperformed in the other place would have been elected democratically for just one term of 14 years and could not be voted out again?

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[Andrew Griffiths (Burton) (Con)]

Thank you for calling me, Mr Deputy Speaker, in this important debate. By speaking today, I am breaking a little pledge that I made to myself: I assured myself, when I was elected just over a year ago, that rather than be tempted to speak in every one of the interesting and exciting debates that we hold in this Chamber, I would limit myself to those debates concerning a particular constituency issue, or where my constituents were particularly concerned. I wanted to be the voice of the people of Burton and Uttoxeter, and in order to do that I was going to champion their views in Parliament.

By speaking in this debate, I am breaking that pledge, because not a single constituent has contacted me to discuss Lords reform. Not one e-mail, either pro or anti, not one telephone call, not one letter and not one person attending my surgeries has brought the burning issue of Lords reform to my attention. That is why I am so concerned to speak in this debate, because not only has that not happened in the past 12 months of my being an MP, but it did not happen in the previous four years, when I was busy knocking on doors and kissing babies as a parliamentary candidate. Indeed, in the 10 or 20 years that I have been an active member of the Conservative party, campaigning regularly, nobody has ever raised the issue of Lords reform with me.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

In support of what my hon. Friend is saying, let me point out that in response to a Liberal Democrat comment in The Southern Daily Echo in favour of House of Lords reform, I wrote an entire column saying why the House of Lords should remain appointed and not be elected in any way, shape or form. Not only was not a single blog post or letter of dissent directed towards me, but nothing was put in the paper, which only goes to show what a non-issue this is, in either direction, for the electorate.

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[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

May I start by warmly endorsing that suggestion, although I am afraid that a referendum would result in the triumph of hope over experience? I fear that the knowledge that this proposed reform of the House of Lords to a primarily elected or all-elected Chamber would not get past a referendum ensures that no referendum will be offered to the British people.

I have been trying to think of what I might contribute to this debate that has not been said before and that might not be repeated subsequently, and in the end I have come up with a little personal experience, which I hope the House will indulge me in discussing. It has often been my silent boast to myself that I did far more in affecting legislation before I became a Member of Parliament than I have managed subsequently. In fact, I have only once managed to affect legislation going on to the statute book since I was elected to this House in 1997, and that was over the issue of MPs’ home addresses not being made public in response to freedom of information requests. I was able to win that change only because the then Labour Government had the decency to give the House a free vote.

I influenced legislation on three occasions prior to becoming a Member of this House, however, thanks to the House of Lords and the way in which it functions. The first of the three occasions was to do with the Trade Union Bill of 1984. The then Thatcher Government did not propose to make postal ballots for trade union elections compulsory. The issue was passionately raised in the House by Conservative Back Benchers, and most prominently by my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh)—who was in the Chamber until very recently but has sadly slipped out just at the wrong moment—but their arguments were brushed aside. In the House of Lords, however, an amendment that trade unions should conduct their elections by postal ballot rather than the raising of hands in unrepresentative branch ballots was discussed in great depth and at great length, and that amendment was carried on the strength of the argument. Of course, there was no question of that surviving into legislation without the agreement of the democratically elected lower House. Precisely because Members in the upper House had recognised the strength of the argument and had taken the trouble to amend the Bill, when it came back to the lower House, although the Government did not accept the amendment in full, they at least made a determination that trade union postal ballots should become the norm. In subsequent years they did not become the norm, however, so in 1988 that measure was brought in against that test, which would not have been in place but for the intervention of the upper House. Subsequently, trade union postal ballots were made compulsory in the 1988 Act. My hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough has now returned to the Chamber, having just missed my recent reference to him.

The second campaign was to do with the fact that in the 1980s many ideological disputes and divides were finding their way into the school classroom. Once again, we could not get an amendment considered seriously in the lower House, but it was taken very seriously in the upper House. The Bill that became the Education Act 1986 was amended in the upper House to ensure that political issues were raised in the classroom in a balanced and responsible way. When the Bill returned to this Chamber, the amendment’s merit was recognised and it was kept.

Finally, the same thing happened with the Bill that became the Broadcasting Act 1990. Questions of due impartiality for politically controversial subjects were enshrined in law as a result of changes made in the upper House.

The whole point is that in the upper House there are not only experts but people who can make changes to Bills that would be whipped out of existence if they were introduced in the lower House. If we go down the road of having a fully elected upper House, we will simply increase the number of Members of Parliament by a total of 300. They will be whipped in that place in the same way as they are in this place and the prospects of their being able to make changes that will survive the process in the democratic lower House will be lost.

[Gavin Barwell]

I am partly giving my hon. Friend an opportunity to finish his argument in the time allowed to answer my intervention, but I also ask him to consider the model in the draft Bill, which is 80% elected and 20% appointed. That does not seem, at least from the study I have done of the appointments since 2010, to be that different from the ratio in the upper House at the moment between political appointees and those who might be classified as independent experts. Why does he think there is a danger with the 80:20 model?

[Dr Lewis]

My hon. Friend makes a fair point, which was made by Lord Ashdown in his article in The Times. He said:

“As for wisdom versus democracy, well I concede that there is a reservoir of expertise in the Lords.”

He went on to say that

“maybe we should preserve this 20% if they are independently appointed”,

much though he would prefer to follow the 100% model.

On the question of experts, nobody is denigrating the potential expertise of people who become party political professionals when they enter this House. I am not saying that the average level of intelligence or articulateness in this House, whatever people might think, is lower than the average level of the same qualities in the other House, but the fact remains that those of us who chose in our 30s or 40s to become professional politicians gave up the chance of reaching the pinnacles of expertise that we might have reached if we followed other careers. If we make the proposed change, we will find that people who reach the pinnacles of their profession will no longer be part of the legislative process and that will be our loss.

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[Chris Bryant]

I will not, if the hon. Gentleman does not mind, because he has only just spoken. Some 34 Back Benchers spoke, and I want to reply to as much of the debate as possible.

The current system is also unsustainable simply because of the numbers. There are already more than 800 Members down the other end, and if we do not make reforms towards an elected second Chamber, we will end up with another 269.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

Reduce the number!

[Chris Bryant]

I hear the hon. Gentleman say, in a rather Tudor way, “Let’s just reduce the number.” What? A kind of cull? Beheadings? We should have Acts of Attainder, perhaps, down this end just to get rid of particular named Members down the other. I am not sure that that is right, and I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones), who said that there are too many Members and we need to ensure that there are fewer. The proposals are right in that regard.

A system that is based on appointment always leads to patronage. It was ever thus, and surprise, surprise, whoever we get to appoint people, they end up appointing people who are rather like them. When Lord Home of the Hirsel announced that women were to be introduced to the House of Lords, he rather bizarrely said that

“taking women into a Parliamentary embrace would seem to be only a modest extension of the normal… privileges of a Peer.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 30 October 1957; Vol. 205, c. 590.]

People did not quite understand what he meant, but the following year, when the first four women peers were introduced, one was the wife of a viceroy, another was a daughter of a viceroy and a third was already a Dame of the British Empire.

It was exactly the same in 1997, when the Labour Government decided to ask somebody to draw up a new system of appointments. We asked Herman Ouseley to do so, and he came forward with the House of Lords Appointments Commission, which we now enjoy. Guess who was on the first list of people whom the commission appointed—Herman Ouseley, now Baron Ouseley. To recite an old Robin Cook joke, there is of course Elspeth Howe, who became a Lady when her husband became Sir Geoffrey Howe, a Lady when her husband became a Member of the House of Lords and was then, herself, made a people’s peer, so she was “Once, twice, three times a lady”—[Interruption.] Sorry!

Appointment for life is also, in the end, reactionary. It often means that the wisdom and experience that goes into the House of Lords sits there for 20, 30 or 40 years and then becomes out of date and refers to a society of many years before. It was suggested earlier that the House of Lords should be a place of debate for an older generation. My hon. Friend the Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound) said that that is effectively the Saga version of the House of Lords. We need a far better system to ensure that what it does reflects the will of the whole country. One of the other problems about appointment is that over the past few years the vast majority of appointments have come from London and the south-east of England. It is almost inevitable that those who end up doing the appointing end up appointing in their own likeness.

The system of by-elections for hereditaries is unsustainable, as is reflected by the elections that take place when one of them dies. As I am sure that all hon. Members know, earlier this year, on 11 May, there was a by-election following the death of the 11th Baron Monson. Fourteen hereditaries stood; seven got no votes at all; five—the Earl of Oxford and Asquith, the Earl of Shaftesbury, the Earl of Drogheda, Lord Cromwell and Viscount Colville of Culross—were eliminated because the single transferable vote is already used for the House of Lords; and the Earl of Lytton beat the Duke of Somerset by 15 votes to nine. I have to say that my favourite is still the 2005 by-election in which there were 28 electors, 26 stood, 19 got no votes at all, and in the sixth and final round Viscount Montgomery of Alamein defeated the Earl of Effingham—you couldn’t make it up, could you?—by 11 votes to eight. It was pure “Blackadder”. I am delighted, however, that in the other by-election that took place this May, a Labour candidate, the third Viscount Hanworth, stood against a Liberal Democrat, the Earl of Carlisle, and the Labour man got 233 votes while the Liberal Democrat got only 26. Interestingly, it is sometimes said that people will not stand for election to a second Chamber, but the Earl of Carlisle has not had much luck, as he also stood for the Commons in 1987 and 1992.

Incidentally, it is inappropriate that we still combine the peerage with the legislature. If the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) wants to be a baron, a viscount, an earl or whatever, it would make far more sense for him to make his bid and start to get a bit less rebellious, because the Government will not be doling it out to him, and I am sure that Her Majesty will end up giving him a suitable honour.

Several hon. Members referred to experience and expertise. As the hon. Member for Carlisle (John Stevenson) has said, we should not undervalue the expertise and experience in this House. Many of us look to people such as the hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart), who have a degree of experience in certain fields, to bring that to this House. It is true that there are not many generals here, but there are majors and people who served in the ranks. One of the best speeches on the military covenant that I have read or heard in either House was made by a Member who has never been a member of the armed forces—my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton North East (Mr Crausby)—as I think that a lot of hon. Members who heard it would agree. As regards the NHS, we have GPs and a gynaecologist, who is in the Chamber now. We have teachers, people who have run their own businesses, people who have built their own businesses and people from the shop floor—we even have a vicar and a former Member of the House of Lords. We should not undervalue the experience that people like to see getting elected to this House.

On the bishops, it is inappropriate that they should represent only the people of England. For me, one of the great moments of the debate was hearing my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Paul Murphy), who is a well-known papal knight and a respected Roman Catholic, acknowledge that the bishops of the Church of England are actually bishops—so the job of the Reformation is done. I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough (Sir Stuart Bell), who served with distinction as one of the Church Commissioners, that the bishops were originally here because they were one of the major land tenants in the country, then because we took into Parliament the business of deciding on religious matters such as transubstantiation and now because people argue, as we have heard, that we need them for spiritual support.

In Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, neither the spirit of the land nor the Churches have collapsed because no bishops represent those areas in Parliament. Although some of my best friends are bishops, I honestly think that the time has come for them to depart the House of Lords. That would not signal the disestablishment of the Church of England, just as the fact that there are no representatives of the Church of Scotland in the House of Lords does not prevent it from being established. I say to my bishop friends that they can make a far more effective contribution to society by editing the New Statesman. If that has not helped Conservative Members join my cause to take bishops out of the House of Lords, I do not know what will. I hope that we will see an end to bishops in the House of Lords.

There are some problems with the legislation, as hon. Members have said. First, the powers of the House of Lords must be addressed. I do not think that clause 2 will stand the test. The Salisbury-Addison convention, to all intents and purposes, is now non-existent. It cannot hold water when there are more than two political parties in Parliament. It is frankly not worth the paper that it was not written on.

I think that 15 years is too long for somebody to be elected for. It is very difficult to see how somebody can be genuinely representative and accountable when they sit for fully 15 years. As the hon. Members for Crawley (Henry Smith) and for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) have said, it is important that we have a system of recall. If somebody is elected and hardly ever turns up, abuses their position or gets into some kind of trouble, there should be some system of recall, just as there should be for this House.

Many Members have said that this issue is not a priority and that we should not deal with it, but I profoundly disagree with them. In the end, it is about how we use power. All the other issues that my constituents of course talk far more about, such as jobs, unemployment, benefits, creating a successful economy, transport, teachers and hospitals, depend on whether we distribute power properly. That is why it is important to have change. Having just a system of appointments is reactionary. It means that we always reflect the past and do not offer a greater future, and it also creates the problem of patronage.

The hon. Member for Gainsborough hopes that the radical left and the radical right will combine to see off the proposals. I hope that everyone unites to improve the proposals, because they certainly need improvement. If the Government are too intractable, the measures will die. However, let us not lose sight of the unsustainability of the present arrangements. Surely, if one wants to tell other people how to live their lives, which is in essence what a Member of a legislature does, the least one can do is to put oneself up for election.