House of Lords: Reform

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Tuesday 21st June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bilimoria]

My Lords, the beauty of Britain is that we have the best of both worlds. We have centuries of history—the mother of all Parliaments that goes back 800 years—combined with a country which is at the forefront of cutting edge, world-class innovation. Last week, I wrote the foreword for Big Ideas for the Future, University UK’s publication showcasing the incredible innovations that are coming out of our universities and changing lives here in Britain and around the world. We have a Royal Family that is a magnet to the world. We are a country that is constantly moving forward and changing. However, we have always been a country that is conscious of the precious, delicate thread that goes back many, many centuries and delicately goes forward into the future, maintaining our link with our wonderful traditions. Break that thread, as this draft Bill and White Paper will do, and we are doomed.

It is this thread that makes us unique and allows us—a country with no written constitution—to have an unelected upper House. No one has mentioned today that it is the only self-regulating Chamber in the world. In my view, it is without doubt the most respected and venerable upper House in the world. Now, this coalition Government want to throw away all that is special about the House of Lords. As has been mentioned before, the draft Bill says:

“The House of Lords performs its work well”.

But the Government state that it “lacks sufficient democratic authority”. Therefore, it is very simple: election equals legitimacy.

But where are the Government’s priorities? What matters? Is it the means or the ends? Are we not meeting our role as the guardian of this nation? Are we not meeting the ends as a revising Chamber that, as has just been mentioned, scrutinises and amends the work of the House of Commons? A huge proportion of our amendments are accepted by the other place. The country at large listens to and respects our views, our scrutiny, our opinions and our debates. Do we not have credibility? The expertise of this House, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe, clearly illustrated, is absolutely tremendous in every field, yet the Deputy Prime Minister, in particular, is willing to push through this badly thought-out reform and sacrifice all that precious wisdom and knowledge.

As has been asked many times, where is the uproar and the demand from the public for this kind of reform? I have not heard it; most of us have not heard it. I am afraid that I disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown. I am sure that the public would feel that we should be focusing on the numerous issues that have us and the world today in a very fragile place. We have the domino effect from the financial crisis. We have a sovereign debt crisis and the eurozone in absolute crisis. We have had a great recession, and we have the Arab spring, the global threat of terrorism, Afghanistan, the welfare of our defence forces, the health service, and welfare-to-work reform. We also have higher education funding and increasing student fees. Those issues need to be addressed. Instead we are trying to break what is special about Britain. We are trying to break something that has taken centuries to build and develop.

Who says that we have not changed? That has been brought up time and again in this debate. In the previous century, we had the Parliament Acts of 1911 and 1949, and the House of Lords Act 1999. We have had lots of change in this House, having reduced the size of its membership. We have just increased the number to 800 and now we want to cut it to 300. Anyone would say that that was absolute hypocrisy. We need a critical mass that delivers the breadth and depth of expertise of people who can bring real-world experience to this House. We have academics, university chancellors, business leaders, doctors and former senior politicians, all with a wealth of experience and at a fraction of the cost of the other place. What proportion of these academics, business people and doctors would run for election? I fear that the answer is very few. This House would instead be filled to the rafters with career politicians—most probably second-rate ones—with none of the precious world-class excellence and expertise that make this House so great.

The Government say:

“We propose no change to the constitutional powers and privileges of the House once it is reformed, nor to the fundamental relationship with the House of Commons, which would remain the primary House of Parliament”.

That has been the essence of this debate so far. We are at the quarter mark with another 75 per cent to go. Which fool’s paradise are the Government living in? There is no way that an elected second Chamber would not vie for powers similar to those of the House of Commons. There is no way that we would not demand that, once again, a Prime Minister came from this House. What happens when there is deadlock between these two powerful Houses? Do we have a president with veto power? Do we have a Supreme Court with strike-down powers?

With this draft Bill, we are playing with fire. In fact, these are not a draft Bill and White Paper on House of Lords Reform. If we are not careful, they may be the first draft Bill and White Paper on the Republic of Great Britain. I question the proposal for the single transferable vote or proportional representation as a method of election after the public would not even accept AV. I question having an election system similar to that of the European Parliament voting in MEPs. We know how useless that is. I bet that 90 per cent of the individuals in this House, let alone the other place, cannot name the MEPs for their region. There is no representation whatever. One mentions legitimacy, but is this the route we want?

Let us make it clear: this is not a case of turkeys not voting for Christmas. This draft Bill is so contradictory, full of holes and not thought through that it lacks complete credibility. All three major parties have a manifesto pledge to reform the House of Lords. However, reform does not mean all but abolishing the House as it stands today. This is throwing the baby out with the bath water. I completely agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. The Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Steel, would deliver a path of evolutionary change, not revolution or the wholesale destruction of one of this country’s greatest assets, as would be the case with this draft Bill.

I go back to the precious thread which runs through the centuries and which we need delicately to carry us into the future. I predict that if we put these reforms to the British public in a referendum, they will be rejected wholesale, because this country is proud of its precious traditions, its uniqueness and its ability never to copy any other country or anyone else but to stand out as a nation that the whole world has for centuries admired and respected. As the noble Lord, Lord St John, said, we are renowned for our great institutions. These institutions have not been built overnight; they have taken centuries to build, and the pinnacle of them is the House of Lords. This unelected House is, ironically, the cornerstone of our democracy.

Talking of cornerstones, as I have said before, the fundamental lesson in home improvement is that you can move the walls and raise the levels but, when you play around with the foundations, you risk bringing the whole House down.