House of Lords: Reform

Lord Wills Excerpts

Tuesday 21st June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wills]

My Lords, in following such a magisterial speech by the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, I am even more conscious that I am joining a very select minority in welcoming the fact that this White Paper has finally emerged and welcoming its openness to debate and dialogue—and, yes, in welcoming its commitment to an elected House of Lords.

In my view, whatever the merits of the way in which your Lordships' House currently operates—and they are considerable—they can be replicated in an elected Chamber and there can be no substitute for the democratic accountability of all legislators to those they serve. However, I do not intend to detain your Lordships today by rehearsing again the arguments for that position. The noble Lord, Lord Ashdown, has already done so powerfully, and I suspect that there will be some others at least who will do so. I have no doubt that there will be further occasions when we can rehearse further all these arguments.

Today, I want to confine my remarks to the approach that the White Paper has taken to what is perhaps the most important single point at issue. It is because I want to see an elected House of Lords that I read the detail of this White Paper with a heavy heart. There are many specific proposals, such as the length of term, that are open to question, but I want to focus today on an issue that the Government have once again dodged around, which is fundamental to reform. It is an issue which, because the Government have failed to tackle it adequately, will, I fear, doom this White Paper and draft Bill. That issue is the relationship between the two Houses of Parliament.

In the debates that your Lordships' House has had over and over again on this subject, and again today, this issue has been the focus of concern among those opposed to reform. I have no doubt that over the remainder of the two days devoted to this debate we will hear these concerns articulated again and again. It is a fundamental concern. It really should be beyond dispute, on all sides of this debate, that a democratically elected second Chamber would acquire greater legitimacy, and this could lead it to challenge the pre-eminence of the House of Commons—and that could lead it to the sort of undesirable outcomes that so many noble Lords have so eloquently described in the past.

How does the White Paper address those concerns? It addresses them with a series of heroic assertions for which there appears to be no serious argument or evidence. The Government’s words have already been quoted by my noble friend Lord Grocott and the noble Lord, Lord Steel, but they are worth repeating because they are so very revealing of the flaw that lies right at the heart of the White Paper and the draft Bill. The White Paper says:

“The Government believes that the change in composition of the second chamber ought not”—

not will not, but ought not,

“to change the status of that chamber as a House of Parliament or the existing constitutional relationship between the two Houses of Parliament”.

Again, the “general saving” clause in the draft Bill optimistically states:

“Nothing in the provisions of this Act about the membership of the House of Lords, or in any other provision of this Act … affects the primacy of the House of Commons”.

My noble friend Lord Grocott referred to that as vacuous; I would more charitably refer to it as remarkably optimistic. I am afraid that there is no reason to believe that that will turn out to be the case—none. Indeed, as many other noble Lords have already argued, and I am sure others will argue, there is very good reason to believe that it would not turn out to be the case unless specific action was taken to ensure that it did not turn out to be the case.

The Government say that they believe that Clause 2 of the draft Bill is the best way of achieving the primacy of the House of Commons because it,

“accepts that the position is a matter of convention”.

However, conventions can change, often in response to significant changes in circumstance—and an elected House of Lords would be a very significant change in circumstance. In his opening remarks, the noble Lord the Leader of the House recognised that conventions may change. However, this is not some remote possibility, as he seems to suggest. There can be very little doubt that an elected House of Lords would challenge the existing conventions.

As I have said previously in such debates, I personally believe that the way to resolve this fundamental issue is to codify the functions of the two Houses and put beyond doubt the respective roles of the two Chambers and their relationship. The Government have rejected that approach, although, in my view, not very persuasively. Of course there are arguments against it, but surely the issue is so important that it should have been open to the dialogue and debate that the Government say that they want to have on all these issues. Without that—I say this in a spirit of friendship to the Government’s proposals—the Government have only the flimsiest of arguments against all those who worry about the effect that an elected House of Lords would have on the primacy of the House of Commons.

It is not axiomatic that an elected House of Lords would lead to gridlock in our constitutional arrangements but, if that is not to happen, the Government need to put rather more thought and effort than they have done so far into finding solutions to this significant potential problem. Without that, I fear that this latest attempt to produce a democratically accountable House of Lords will suffer the same fate as its predecessors.