House of Lords: Lord Speaker’s Committee Report

Lord Jopling Excerpts

Tuesday 19th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jopling (Con)]

My Lords, I join virtually everyone who has spoken in congratulating the Lord Speaker, and the committee on its ingenuity in producing the report, which guides us into what I regard as the first step of Lords reform. As many noble Lords will recall, I have been pressing my own plan for the last 12 years—but it would, of course, require primary legislation, so the report, which does not involve primary legislation, obviously represents the way ahead. Some of my own proposals are not a runner in these circumstances, and I am glad that the committee was kind enough to allow me to give evidence before it.

There are many parts of the report with which I strongly agree. Primarily, there is the essential need to reduce numbers; we need to impose a fixed cap of 600 in 11 years. I had suggested 500. I was interested to hear that the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, and my noble friend Lord Caithness both felt that that was reasonable, and I would much prefer a quicker move than one that took 11 years. My own proposals, which, I am afraid, were cancelled out by the need for primary legislation, would have got us there immediately after the next election.

I welcome the fact that no party should have a majority and that the Cross-Bench percentage should remain at around 20%, and I can accept the 15-year term for voluntary retirement, in the interests of making progress. I would have preferred, and have proposed previously, that each party caucus should decide who stays and who goes. The party caucuses know best who contributes and who does not. As I read the report—I would be grateful if the noble Lord, Lord Burns, would comment on this when he sums up—I think it would still be possible within its terms for the party caucuses to do that task.

Finally, I very much welcome what is summarised in Figure 4 on page 21, whereby new party appointments would be based on the average of the percentages of seats won and votes cast at the previous general election. I think I was the first one to propose this, with the help of the Library, in our debate two years ago last September—and I believe it is the best and fairest basis for making the political appointments.

Those are some parts of the report with which I strongly agree, but there is one area that I do not think the committee addressed—perhaps because of the need for legislation. It is the potential problem to which I have tried to draw attention all these years—the fact that the work of this House would come to a standstill if at an election a new party came to power or into a coalition from a small base, or no base. That has happened in recent years in Turkey, in Italy, and more recently in France—and it could happen here, because we all know that politics and politicians are not the flavour of the time. I remember how, in the mid-1980s, the SDP came quite close to being the dominant party in the public opinion polls. A new party in government or in coalition could find itself with few Ministers or Back-Benchers, and only tiny replenishments under the oblique reference in the third paragraph of Appendix 5.

That situation would be one thing that would trigger primary legislation, and I fear that this is one thing I must criticise in the opening speech by the noble Lord, Lord Burns. He said that he thought Appendix 5 would partly deal with that problem—and I stress that it would only do so partially.

My final comment is that I believe we must support the report, and that we must demonstrate tonight that there is a consensus in the House to do so. In order to achieve that consensus, when at the end of the debate the Lord Speaker puts the Question that the report be noted, I challenge all those who do not like it, and who believe that there is no consensus, to cry no at the appropriate moment.