House of Lords: Reform

Lord Lawson of Blaby Excerpts

Tuesday 21st June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lawson of Blaby]

My Lords, I agree entirely with everything that the noble Lord, Lord Luce, has said except his offer of retirement. That is the last thing that I would like to see. Apart from that, I agree entirely with every word that he so wisely spoke.

When my noble friend the Leader of the House opened the debate today, he did it with his customary good humour and elegance—and a complete lack of merit. However, he did say one thing that had some merit, which was that the way ahead should be by consensus. It is clear already, in what we have heard so far, that the closest thing we have to consensus is that this is a thoroughly bad and wholly undesirable Bill and that the only thing we should agree on is how we can best give it a decent burial—and the sooner the better—not merely, incidentally, in the interests of the country but in the interests of the Government themselves. As my noble friend Lord Steel said, this is going to gum up the Government’s important legislative programme and the other important things it has to do on the economic front in a way that cannot make sense, even from the Government’s own narrow point of view.

The starting point for this debate needs to be the recognition that all these countries—the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown mentioned 61 or 41 or whatever it was—are the products of their own history. For historical reasons, we possess, in this country, the weakest second Chamber of any mature democracy in the world. This is arguably all the more serious because we lack the protection of a written constitution. The question is whether the powers of the second Chamber can in practice be significantly increased and, if not, how they can be most effectively exercised. The plain fact is that any significant enhancement of the powers of the second Chamber can only be at the expense of the Government in Whitehall and the relative powers of the House of Commons. Even in the unlikely event of a Government wishing to tread this self-denying path, the Commons would never permit it to do so. That was the lesson of the fate of the Crossman proposals in the 1960s—it was precisely that. The Government of the day suggested that in return for moving towards a more democratic form the House of Lords should have some small increase in powers; the House of Commons said no, and killed it.

In that overall context, and only in that context, can the question of the composition of the second Chamber be sensibly addressed. The unanswerable case for democracy—and it is unanswerable—is that the people should choose by and large the Government whom they desire and, much more importantly in practice, that at regular intervals they should have the opportunity peacefully to remove a Government whom they no longer want. Since the Government are formed by whatever party or parties can command a majority in the House of Commons, it is self-evident that the House of Commons has to be wholly elected. There is no dispute. But this democratic imperative no more applies to the method of selecting Members of the second Chamber in this country than it does to selecting either the judiciary or, indeed, the very important members of the Monetary Policy Committee of the independent Bank of England, whose legitimacy is not in dispute.

I concede that it would be a different matter if, as in most other countries, the second Chamber had the power to reject government legislation. I fully accept the case for two wholly elected, broadly co-equal Chambers, as in the United States, where the ever-present possibility of legislative gridlock, which some fear, does not seem greatly over the years to have held back the prosperity and security of the American people. But that is not on offer, nor ever will be. So the practical question is, given the puny powers of the House of Lords—and the Government are adamant that they should remain as puny as they are today—how can the House of Lords best be equipped to exercise most effectively its threefold role of expertly scrutinising legislation, providing an informed debate on the great issues of the day and acting as the watchdog of the constitution, even if it can only bark and not bite? That is where the considerations of power and composition are, in practice, most obviously interconnected.

Understandably, most people of ability are disinclined to enter the overexposed hurly-burly of electoral politics. Some of us have been sufficiently mad to do so, but there is a limited supply of such mad men and women. The best of those few who are prepared to take the plunge will rightly seek to enter the House of Commons, where political power overwhelmingly resides, at least in principle, on whose support the Government of the day depend and from whose Benches high government offices are filled. There may also be some men and women of ability who, recognising the importance that the institutions of the European Union now play in our national life, may be attracted to membership of the European Parliament. In Scotland and Wales, the devolved Assemblies offer another possibility of a worthwhile and high-profile role. Even local government in England provides a greater opportunity to influence real events on the ground than does membership of the second Chamber at Westminster. That is the reality.

So which would serve our country best? Would it be an elected senate composed of, at best, second-rate but, more realistically, third or fourth-rate politicians, or a House made up of men and women of proven achievement in all walks of life, appointed for life and thus crucially possessing the robust independence that life tenure confirms? The answer is clear.

In conclusion, there has been some discussion of whether, if and when the Bill embodying these foolish and misguided proposals comes before the House, it should be whipped or not. So far as I am concerned—and I am sure that I am very far from alone in this—there will be free votes whether or not the whips are on. As a former Whip myself in another place and as a great admirer of our Government Chief Whip here, I hope that the Government, of whom I am a strong supporter, will have the courtesy and common sense to spare her and themselves the embarrassment that will otherwise ensue by not attempting to whip what will in any event be de facto free votes.