House of Lords Bill [HL]

"I beg to move that this Bill be read a second time"; that ritual phrase has rather more meaning on this occasion because this is indeed the second time that we will have debated the Bill. With one exception, that I shall come to in a minute, the Bill is the same as the one we discussed in the previous Session. For that reason, I propose to be very brief in describing its contents, since I think these are familiar to the House. Instead, I want to concentrate on where we are on the whole subject of House of Lords reform. In our previous debates the noble Lords, Lord Strathclyde, and Lord Richard, joined together to say that this was not a suitable subject for a Private Member’s Bill. It may surprise the House to know that that is also my view and, I think, the view shared by the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, and all those who have been involved in preparing the Bill. It is intended as a spur to the Government, in the hope that they will take over these measures and proceed with them. It is a convenient vehicle, which they could easily take over. Recently, the Government have been busy taking over lots of other things at vast expense. This one is on offer for free as we are so generous. I shall briefly remind the House of the Bill’s contents. There are four parts to it. The first part proposes the creation of the Appointments Commission on a statutory basis. That should be welcomed by the Government. I quote from the Labour Party manifesto: ""Labour supports modernisation of the House of Lords’ procedures to improve its effectiveness. We will put the independent Appointments Commission on a statutory footing"." That is a direct quote from the Labour Party manifesto, not of the last election but of the election in 2001, and we are still waiting for that pledge to be redeemed. There is no suggestion in the Bill, contrary to some speeches when we last debated it, that the Appointments Commission should choose all the members in the political parties. It would certainly have to approve them and the Bill enables the commission to encourage the parties to develop transparent processes of their own in bringing forward nominations. The House looks forward immensely to the speech today of the noble Lord, Lord Jay, the new chairman of the Appointments Commission, to hear what he has to say on the subject. The second part of the Bill abolishes the hereditary by-elections. We had a lot of fun on this subject on the previous occasion. I reminded the House that twice already members of the British Parliament have been elected by three or four people. It makes the elections to Old Sarum seem positively democratic in comparison. The creation of the hereditary by-elections occurred in 1999, during the reforms made then. It was clearly indicated at that time that this was a temporary measure to last perhaps a couple of years. We are nearing the 10th anniversary of that temporary measure. Perhaps we could combine it with a celebration next year of the 100th anniversary of the Asquith promise to replace this House with one on a popular basis. It really has been waiting around for a long time. The argument that we cannot abolish hereditary by-elections until stage 2 of Lords reform is an interesting one which we have heard many times. My argument is that if the Government were to take over the Bill, this would become stage 2, with stage 3 in the waiting, as promised in the Government’s White paper. The third part of the Bill would enable the House to reduce its size from its existing 700 by encouraging the retirement of those who wish to leave after a certain age. If that came about, I believe that the pressure within each of the parties would be to take aside those who have served long and hard in this place and suggest that perhaps it was time for them to leave and make way for new blood in the House. This brings me to the only new part in the Bill as against last year’s one. Clause 12 introduces a proposal that one way of reducing the size of the House would be to remove those who never come here, apart from those who have very good reason for not coming here because they are engaged in other public work. That is the only new part of the proposal before us today. The fourth part was designed to bring the House of Lords into line with the House of Commons in removing those who have been sentenced to prison for at least one year. It was in the 18th century that the House of Commons passed a resolution making that its practice. At that time, the House of Lords did not do so. It is now agreed that it is time that we had some provision to enable Members to be removed from the legislature if, in fact, they are major wrongdoers. Support for the measures in the Bill has grown since the debate in the previous Session and it has grown for three reasons. First, since that debate, we have had the publication of the Government’s White Paper on House of Lords reform. There were two major objections to that publication, echoed often in the other Chamber as well as here. One was that the proposals are all timeless: they are not imminent, to put it mildly; there is no indication of when they might be brought into effect. The other was that the White Paper is extremely vague on fundamentals. There was no decision about how the House would be elected, no decision as to whether it was to be 100 per cent elected or 80 per cent elected. They had not even decided on a name. For that reason, the White Paper had an extremely cool reception. Moreover, the Public Administration Committee in the other place issued a report at the time of the White Paper’s publication, which said that, ""the failure to find consensus on a comprehensive reform package can prevent progress on the running repairs that are needed now … the next stage of Lords reform should not wait for a consensus on elections"." That same committee has gone further and, just the other week, produced a report reflecting on the Government’s White Paper. At paragraph 8, it says: ""The introduction of a fully or largely elected second chamber would render the changes we propose obsolete. But that moment is some years off even at best. In the meantime, we have proposed changes that should be made with immediate effect to bring fairness and transparency to the interim arrangements between now and the completion of reform"." It goes on to say, in the next paragraph, ""that a decision has been taken that there should a fully elected second chamber—albeit one that will come into being to an undetermined and probably lengthy timescale"." That is the situation that we are now faced with, since we debated the Bill a year ago. On the White Paper’s cool reception, I was in the Peers’ Gallery in the other place when it was introduced, and noted many Members’ comments. I quote only one, from a senior member of the Labour Party, Sir Gerald Kaufman: ""Having read the White Paper, I congratulate him"—" that is, the Lord Chancellor— ""on producing a masterpiece of imprecision, vacillation and obfuscation that cannot possibly lead to meaningful legislation—a consequence entirely to be desired".—[Official Report, Commons, 14/7/08; col. 28.]" I am moderate in my views on the White Paper compared with the Government’s own supporters. There is another factor, of course. I do not want to be in any way party political, so let me put this politely: it is by no means certain that the Labour Government will be re-elected. That is a factor that we have to take into account, and that brings us to the second reason why there is now more interest in these measures: the position of the Conservative Party. The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, has been vocal in his support of the proposals in the White Paper; a bit like the grand old Duke of York except that he does not have 10,000 men behind him. He has been quite seriously undermined, unwittingly, by the leader of his party. We had heard that he had told his MPs that it was a priority for his third term, but we had nothing on the record. However, now we have. Mr Cameron, in an interview for the magazine Total Politics this month, was asked: ""How much of a priority is House of Lords reform for you?"" He replied: ""If you mean, can we please throw out people or suspend them if they are touting for business, then that’s a very high priority. In any legislature there has to be a way of suspending or expelling people who break the law. In terms of reform, having a more elected chamber, which is what I favour, to be frank it is not an urgent priority"." So we have the situation that, even if there were a change to a Conservative Government, it would not be a priority. Let me say, just so that I am totally impartial, that it is equally uncertain that there will be a Liberal Democrat Government after the next election. If, of course, there were, my noble friend Lord McNally would make sure that it was high on the list of priorities. The third reason why there has been a change of mood, and growing support for the Bill, is, of course, recent events. We do not want to go into those while inquiries are going on. However, there is no question that the newspaper stories revealed that this House has no procedure at all, unlike most legislatures, for dealing with people who ought perhaps to be considered, if found guilty, for suspension from the service of the House. For these three reasons, the Government ought to pay much more attention to the proposals in the Bill. But what is likely to happen? We have the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, back with us again. I remember that, when he got his new department, he came to the Dispatch Box and said how relieved he was that he was no longer going to be dealing with House of Lords reform. But here he is again; like a bad penny, he has turned up. What is he going to say to us? Is he going to tell us that he is against a statutory commission? That cannot be, because of the manifesto. Is he going to tell us that he is in favour of continuing these hereditary by-elections? Is he going to tell us that he is against reducing the size of the House? Is he going to tell us that we do not need to consider any disciplinary measures in this House? No, he is not going to say any of these things. He is just going to say that the Government are doing nothing about it. That is an unsatisfactory situation. I suspect that the blockage comes from the Lord Chancellor, Mr Straw. I have had discussions with him on this. He seems to be immovable. Well, he is not actually immovable: he has moved his position on elections to the House of Lords so often that he has more or less said, "These are my principles and, if you don’t like them, I have others".