Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon
Main Page: Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)House of Lords: Reform
Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon Excerpts
Lord Wakeham
My Lords, like many noble Lords in this House, I have had my say on Lords reform many times in the past. It is 10 years since my royal commission reported, and I still think it was probably the best way forward. At the time, the then Government referred to it with approbation in their election manifesto, and slightly embarrassed me by actually using my name in their election manifesto. I think the Conservative Party would have accepted it, but I accept that the Liberal party did not think it was a sensible way forward.
Our difficulty was that what we proposed then was a compromise, and nobody wanted to make any efforts at all at compromising. We proposed a partly appointed, partly elected House with the appointed part considerably larger than the elected. It was essentially a compromise, and nobody was prepared to make that sort of compromise. That is one of the lessons that the all-party committee ought to bear in mind when it considers this.
One curious fact about the royal commission was that I did not ask any of the leaders of the parties to give evidence, but I waited upon them all and asked them what they thought. I will not recount what they thought. I could not get Ted Heath the slightest bit interested in the subject, but I had a very interesting talk with Roy Jenkins before the royal commission report, and he said he was very happy with the way the House of Lords was working and did not favour any great reform. I pressed him. I said that that was what the royal commission was there to propose and that he must give me some idea. Hard pressed, he did say that he would like there to be a senate; I hope Nick Clegg can take some comfort from that view. Roy Jenkins believed that it should be of 120 Members, but I am afraid that I came away from the meeting convinced that he had put forward that proposal because he thought it was the least likely that Parliament would ever accept.
A number of important things in this draft Bill find an echo in what we said 10 years ago. First, it separates the peerage from membership of the upper House. That is what we said then and I still think that it is probably the only way that we will ever get proper reform of this House. Secondly, it recommends 15-year terms with no re- election, as we recommended. However, we made the quite important point that the House should have the power to reappoint someone who had been elected if it thought that they would be valuable for a further term in the House. If you think of some of the expertise, that ought to be considered.
There was also, on the face of it, no great dispute about the powers of a reformed House and the supremacy of the Commons. The most worrying feature about the Bill, as has already been said eloquently by a number of noble Lords, is the question of whether that will survive in the sort of reform that this draft Bill implies. The fundamental question is—
Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon
I am listening to the noble Lord very carefully indeed. May I ask him to consider this thought? There are, in all, 77 bicameral systems in the world, so the House of Lords Library informs me, of which 61 are elected. Apart from Canada, by the way, we are the only major democracy that does this by appointment. Within those 61, in not one case is the primacy of the lower Chamber challenged. If it is not the case in those 61 elected Chambers, why should it be a danger for us?
Lord Wakeham
I would say two things to the noble Lord. First, I am not absolutely sure that he is completely right about that. If I recall rightly, for example, in Australia there have been moments of considerable difficulty between the two Houses. Secondly, at the time of the royal commission, if I remember rightly we looked into a number of different systems in different parts of the world and concluded that most of them had much more to do with the traditions and history of their own countries than they did with some more academic system. I do not therefore accept the view that this House should be fully elected although, as the House will remember, our royal commission recommended an element of elected Members. We were not absolutely certain. It was partly elected—a much lower part than the Government’s proposal—but partly appointed.
The real worry is that if we have a substantially or wholly elected House, we will have politicians coming here with a view to undermining the position of Members in the House of Commons. I tried to say in the royal commission that anybody who ever served in this House could never serve subsequently in the House of Commons. I was told by the lawyers that that would now be ruled to be a breach of their human rights, so would not happen. We did not think that it was a very good idea to have too many elected Members. Frankly, the sort of House that I envisage is a revising Chamber with, in the final analysis, an advisory role and with the House of Commons always having to be supreme in the end. The most important part of that advisory role is that we have people here capable of giving advice of value.
The House of Lords has of course been reformed many times in the past 100 years and will continue to be reformed if it sets about it in the right way. In my view, one of the most constructive tasks that the all-party committee ought to consider is the way that parliamentary procedure should operate in order to reform this House. We have the example of the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Steel, which is a perfectly good and acceptable measure, but no business manager—I have spent a lot of my life being a business manager—would ever dream of bringing it in because of the chaos it would cause to the parliamentary timetable in view of all the amendments that would be added to it. If one accepts that this measure will probably not be achieved because it is a wholesale reform, we should continue with gradual, piecemeal reform. We should look at how to set about doing that because I do not believe that the present parliamentary procedures are adequate for the task of dealing with incremental changes to this House, which in the past we were able to negotiate and agree. I think it would be very difficult at present.
Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon
My Lords, I apologise to the noble and learned Lord; in my enthusiasm to get at the arguments, I attempted to barge in ahead of him. That was not my intention and I hope that he will accept my apology.
I think it was Oscar Wilde who said that in a democracy the minority is always right. That thought has given me much comfort over the years as a Liberal, and it appears that it will have to give me comfort in this debate as well. I spent an engaging hour and a half yesterday in the House of Lords Library, looking through opposition speeches made in December 1831 to the Great Reform Act 1832 and to the Reform Act 1867. Five arguments were put forward. The first was: there is no public call for such reform beyond those mad radicals of Manchester. The second was: we should not be wasting our time and money on these matters; there are more important things to discuss such as the Schleswig-Holstein problem, the repeal of the corn laws or the crisis in the City that caused Anthony Trollope to write his wonderful novel.
Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon
No, but in 1867.
The third argument, which was put so powerfully—indeed, in bloodcurdling terms—by the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, was that if we were to embark on this constitutional terra incognita, the delicate balance of the constitution would collapse around us; mere anarchy would rule upon the world.
The fourth argument put forward in those debates was, “No, no, let us not disturb the quiet groves of wisdom within which we decide the future of the nation by letting in the rude representatives of an even ruder republic. God knows what damage we shall do if such a thing should happen”. The last and fifth argument was the argument actually used by the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, just a moment ago: “if it ain’t broke, don’t mend it”.
Those are the arguments that were put forward against the 1832 Act, the 1867 Act, the 1911 Act—every single reform that we have ever had—and they are the arguments that are being put forward now. They were wrong then and they are wrong now. Perhaps I might explain before I come to the substance of the argument.
The first argument is that there is no public interest in this matter. Of course there is not; it is our business, not the public’s. The public have made it very clear that they do not trust our electoral system in its present form. Is there anyone in this Chamber who does not realise that the dangerous and growing gap between government and governed that is undermining the confidence in our democracy must be bridged? It must be bridged by the reform and modernisation of our democratic institutions, and we have a part to play in that too. This is not about what the public want, it is about us putting our House in order.
The second issue is that there are more important things to discuss. I do not think so. Frankly, we have been very fortunate to have lived through the period of the politics of contentment. The fragility of our democratic system has not been challenged because the business of government and democracy has been to redistribute increasing wealth. If we now come to the point at which we must redistribute retrenchment, difficult decisions, hard choices, I suspect it will come to something rather different, as we see on the streets of Greece today and as we saw on the streets of London not very long ago. This is very important.
The third is that we are embarking on a constitutional journey into terra incognita. Of course we are. We do not have a written constitution in this country. I wish we did, but we are told that the genius of our constitution is that it is unwritten, that it responds to events, that it develops, that it takes its challenges and moves forward. Oliver Cromwell did not have to say, “We will delay the Civil War until we have worked out the proper constitutional relationship between Parliament and the King”. In 1832 they did not say, “Let us hold this up until we have decided what proper constitutional balances would be achieved”. If you believe in the miracle of the unwritten constitution, you must believe that our constitution will adapt. You cannot argue that that is a good thing and then say that we cannot move forward unless we know precisely and in exact detail what will happen next. Of course this will change the balance between us and the other Chamber. It will not challenge the primacy of the other Chamber, but it will challenge the absolute supremacy of the other Chamber—that is called check and balance.
The fourth argument is that this will disturb the gentle climate of wisdom in this place. I have no doubt that there is unique wisdom here, although I have to say that I do not believe it is necessarily evenly distributed—maybe in some places it is, but not everywhere. However, I am not persuaded that there is less wisdom in the 61 second chambers that are elected, that there is less wisdom in the Senate of the United States, or the Sénat in France or the Bundesrat in Germany. I do not believe that the business of election will produce less wisdom than we have here now—rather the contrary. It is not wisdom that we lack; it is legitimacy. My old friend, Lord Conrad Russell—much missed—used to say, “I would happily exchange wisdom for legitimacy”, and I will tell your Lordships why.
This is where we come to the final point—the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd: “If it ain’t broke, let’s not fix it”. It is broke; it is broke in two fashions. First, our democracy now and our institutions of democracy in this country do not enjoy the confidence of our people in the way they did. That confidence is declining. We have to be part of the reform that reconnects politics with people in this country. If we do not, our democratic institutions will fall into atrophy and may suffer further in the decline of the confidence of the people of this country. If noble Lords do not realise that, they do not realise just how difficult the current situation is in Britain.
We in this Chamber cannot leave this to others to do. We must be part of that reform, modernisation, reconnection and democracy. It is said that this House does its job as a revising Chamber well. So it does. It is allowed to revise, change, amend legislation, but is it allowed to deal with the really big things? It does the small things well, but is it constructed in a way that would prevent a Government with an overwhelming majority in the other place taking this country to an unwise and, as we now know, probably illegal war? No, it would not because it did not. I cannot imagine that the decision to introduce the poll tax and the decision to take this country to war would have got through a Chamber elected on a different mandate and in a different period, or if there had been a different set of political weights in this Chamber from the one down the other end.
The truth of the matter is that we perform the function of a revising Chamber well, but that is not our only function. We are also part of the checks and balances in this country. The fact that we do not have democratic legitimacy undermines our capacity to act as a check and balance on the excessive power of the Executive backed by an excessive majority in the House of Commons. That is where we are deficient and what must be mended.
The case is very simple to argue. In a democracy, power should derive from the ballot box and nowhere else. Our democracy is diminished because this place does not derive its power from democracy and the ballot box but from political patronage—the patronage of the powerful. Is it acceptable in a democracy that the membership of this place depends on the patronage of the powerful at the time? We are diminished in two ways. We are diminished because we do not perform the function that we need to perform of acting as a check and a balance on the Government, and we do not do so because we are a creature of the Government’s patronage. I cannot believe that noble Lords find that acceptable in this Chamber .
Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon
Perhaps noble Lords will forgive me, I will finish now. I have already strained my time but I ask for patience. The Leader of the House is right. We have spent 100 years addressing reform in this House. It is time to understand why that is necessary—both to make our place in modern democracy and to fulfil our proper function to provide a check and balance on an Executive who may get too powerful. We turned our hand to this 100 years ago; it is time to finish it now.
Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon
How can I resist? I ask the noble Lord the following question yet again, because he makes a lot of it. Of the 77 bicameral Chambers in the world, 61 are elected. In no single one of those has the primacy of the lower Chamber been affected. Why then should it be a risk for us if it is not a risk in any one of those cases?
Lord Grocott
My Lords, the noble Lord tried that intervention once before and it did not work then. I shall answer him very simply: the overwhelming majority of other constitutions are written constitutions precisely defining the powers of the two Houses. The difference with our constitution—the noble Lord ignores a statement of fact—is that this House already has powers that are almost equal to those of the House of Commons, yet he expects that elected Members would reject that. He says that an elected House of Lords would be a more effective check on the House of Commons. As an ardent supporter of the coalition, he knows perfectly well that if this House was now elected on proportional representation there would be an overwhelming government majority in this House and that, when proposals came from the House of Commons, they would be rubber-stamped. They pretty well are now, but they would certainly be rubber-stamped if whipped Conservative and Liberal Democrat Members or senators were faced with proposals coming from the lower House.
Despite the interventions, I shall take only another minute. I need to address this issue because the only substantial argument that the proposers of the Bill put forward is that people who oppose the idea of a directly elected House of Lords are hostile to democracy. Many in this House have fought a number of elections—not many have lost as many as I have—and our democratic credentials are fairly substantial. My case, as a democrat, for rejecting direct elections to this House is simple. It is that the absolute heart of our democracy is the House of Commons, which is elected by the people and from where the Government come. We have the people, the Commons, the Government and vice versa: if the Government lose the confidence of the Commons, they go back to the people.
Anything that diminishes the House of Commons diminishes our democracy. That is why I, as a democrat, am so concerned about the proposals in this Bill. It is not because I am concerned about the future of this House, although I am, and it is not because I think that this House is perfect—it is certainly not filled exclusively with the great and good and outstanding people of talent and ability; if it is, then quite a few of us have got here under the wire. That is not the justification for retaining this House as a not directly elected House. The justification is in order to protect the primacy or the supremacy—I do not mind using that word ultimately—of the House of Commons.
With regard to those Members of the House of Commons who are wavering on this issue—I have heard Jack Straw suggest this in the past—and those of us who keep repeating our belief in the primacy of the House of Commons, the argument is sometimes made that we should accept the vote of the House of Commons of a couple of years ago and simply lie down and agree that this legislation should pass. I say simply this: of course, ultimately the House of Commons must prevail. I make no argument about that; that is the heart of our democracy. However, if my friend is determined to jump off the cliff, I will do my utmost to prevent him from doing so. That is the risk that the House of Commons takes if it establishes, votes for and insists on a directly elected House of Lords.