House of Lords: Reform

Lord Dobbs Excerpts

Tuesday 21st June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dobbs]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow my old friend the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey. We have shared many adventures together over the years. I remember once sharing a private plane with him on the way back from a successful business trip to Germany. He opened a bottle of champagne—in an unpressurised cabin at 10,000 feet. It proved not to be a wise decision. Since those days I have tended to sit a little apart from him, as I am afraid I shall do today.

I hope I will be forgiven for intervening in this debate, particularly after the many very fine contributions that we have heard. As a very new Member of this House, I have so much less experience than almost anyone else here. However, perhaps because of that, my impressions are fresh and may be of some value. When I first arrived here, I thought I had returned to school, with my coat peg, a locker for my books and an older boy to show me around. I quickly discovered that, instead, I had fallen into the finest place of learning that I have ever attended. The wealth of experience here is extraordinary and is so warmly and freely shared. I have made many new friends, discovered new views and tested old assumptions, even with those I would regard as being on a different face of the political cliff. As a result, I have felt personally enriched; but so much more important is that I am certain that my contributions, as limited as they have been, have also been enriched.

I think I understand my duty in this place: it is to listen, to learn what I can, to contribute to the best of my ability—although not too frequently—and to assist the Government to get the best out of their business. My rights as a Peer to inquire are almost without limit yet my right to pursue the conclusions reached are strictly limited. I am unelected and have no right to do any more than to ask the Government to think again. I am oil for the wheel, not a spanner in the works. However, if I were elected, it would be very different. I would have a duty toward those who sent me. I would have rights and powers, given to me by them, that I could not cast easily aside. If that electorate numbered more than half a million, I would regard my duties and my rights as being at least on a par with those in another place.

In my few months here, I have followed the principle that we in this House are servants, not slaves. Occasionally, I have indulged that implied independence in the Division Lobby, to the discomfort of my noble friends on the Front Bench. They may have come to the conclusion that I can be a bit of a pain—but if they think that now, let them wait until I am elected.

On a recent Radio 4 programme I described this White Paper as stonkingly silly, although that is not the sort of language for this place and the sensitive ear of my noble friend the Leader of the House. Instead, I would say that this White Paper lacks the courage of its convictions: 80 per cent here, a dozen bishops there, mixed together with a little afterthought and a whole lot of muddled previous. Nowhere does the White Paper mention the word “abolition”, which is what it proposes. Nowhere does it define the shortcomings of the present arrangements, except that they are not democratic; yet nowhere does it talk about taking the opinion of the people, through a referendum, even though it pretends to act in their name. I am confused, but perhaps it is my extreme innocence and I hope that my noble friends will put me right on this. Last week we agreed to hold referenda on all sorts of matters, but this week one might be forgiven for concluding that the authors of this White Paper regard the appointment of a European public prosecutor as being of considerably greater importance than the abolition of one entire half of Parliament.

This is a dog’s dinner of a White Paper for a pretty scrawny mongrel. There is a suggestion that this White Paper is acting in the public name, but it is only a suggestion. The noble Lord, Lord Steel, has previously described these proposals as a private obsession. I think he is entirely right—and about his insistence on the need for reform, too. To me this is like the work of some latter-day Baron Frankenstein, tucked away in the isolation of his laboratory, who has built this thing out of bits and scraps from whichever corner they can be got; then sewn, stapled and screwed them together to form this monstrous bit of bulk, battling through the AV storm and waiting only for a bolt of parliamentary lightning to bring this monster to life. As the noble Lord, Lord Steel, pointed out, the obsession is with process. No thought has been given to the likely outcome.

The White Paper insists that there is to be no change to the powers of the upper Chamber. I doubt that there is a person in this House who truly believes that. I ask forgiveness of my noble friends on the Front Bench for saying that I do not know what is most likely to embarrass them—the suggestion that secretly they do not agree with the White Paper or that frankly they do, every word of it. An elected upper House will and must be a more powerful upper House, and that power can only be taken from the House of Commons. That fundamental point cannot be ducked, so I hope that my noble friends will be able to provide answers where the White Paper has none. For instance, why is there no mention of a referendum in this White Paper? Why is there not even the slightest hint of what it might all cost? Where is the evidence that the people want the abolition of this House? There are so many more questions, so many of which have already been put. We need specifics, details—not, if I may say, the bucket of whitewash that has been used to give this document its most distinctive colour.

Despite rumours to the contrary, the much quoted coalition agreement does not insist on this Bill. I downloaded it again this afternoon to remind myself. While the agreement did insist on a referendum Bill and stated that it would be whipped, the clause governing the changes to this House simply gives a commitment to establishing a committee to bring forward proposals for reform. It does not anywhere, in any line, specify what should happen to those proposals. There is no commitment to specific changes or to whipping and absolutely no commitment, not even a suggestion or a hint, of using the Parliament Act.

In some respect, it could be argued that we have already fulfilled the requirements of the coalition agreement, but we are not parsimonious nitpickers and we will not shirk our duty. It is our duty as a responsible House to give these proposals the fullest, most careful and unstinting consideration, and I hope that we will do exactly that and ensure that this White Paper gets precisely what it deserves.