House of Lords Bill [HL]

My Lords, for many reasons it is a pleasure to follow the brief but important speech by the noble Baroness, Lady Jay. I will follow her example and speak for six minutes. Although I may appear to sit on a Front Bench, we are both essentially Back-Benchers, so six minutes should be enough. I second her proposition that we should enthusiastically support the Bill introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Steel. It has been through the mill once already. I do not think that anybody challenges its provisions. There may be room for amendment and change and that could well happen, but all the other propositions that the noble Baroness discussed are further steps, so to speak. The most important thing to recognise is that reform of this House, like many other things in this country, takes place through an incremental process, and never more characteristically than in this House, which started the process in 1911. In more recent times, there were two important steps: the invention of life Peers and the removal—if one has to use such a harsh phrase—of the majority of the hereditaries. The remainder have given such value to the House in this period of transition, by ensuring its continuity, manner, tradition, style and, for that reason, civilisation and authority. So we all favour incremental change. We all appear to favour—I say "all" but it applies to most of us—all the propositions in the Bill. Most importantly, it has the support of the noble Baroness, Lady Jay. Therefore, I wonder profoundly why the Government do not now join the incremental crew and help to get the Bill through. The virtues of this House were endorsed in the very first government White Paper (Cm 4183) produced by the noble Baroness. It stated: ""The most valued features of the present House"," and added that they were summarised by the following epithets: ""real expertise … distinctive … well regarded … distinguished … particularly valuable"." Those epithets were endorsed in the fifth report of the Commons Public Administration Committee, referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Steel, which stressed the, ""considerable virtues which should be preserved"," and set the objective of: ""Building on the strengths of the present Chamber"." There have been similar endorsements of the incremental process from the government Front Bench in this House. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, for example, on 7 February 2007, expressed his belief, ""that the quality of what this House does is very high … what this House does well is significantly to amend legislation without gridlock and generally without conflict with the other place".—[Official Report, 7/2/07; col. 722.]" The House is not in need of other areas of reform. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, when presenting the last-but-one government Statement on this issue on 19 July 2007, stated that, ""this House has performed very well since the major changes made in 1999. We need to build … on the incredibly valuable role of this House as a revising and scrutinising Chamber".—[Official Report, 19/7/07; col. 396.]" One can hardly start from a more auspicious premise, which, I dare to say, the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, helped to create. That is why we should welcome her support for the proposals that the noble Lord, Lord Steel, is putting forward. The case for further deliberation on the one fly in the ointment, if I may mix a metaphor or two—the possible role of elected Members—remains a case that has not been put. There are three questions that many of us have posed time and time again when challenging that case. What is the reason for any such change? The only reason that goes up is the cry of "legitimacy", but there is no unique quality about that. I have never heard an answer, when one thinks of all the other functions carried out by non-elected people from High Court judges to chief constables. There is no answer to that question. Is there any fault in the performance of this House that would be corrected by the arrival of elected Members? The burden of proof remains upon those who advocate the change. They have not begun to discharge it. Is there any improvement in the performance or authority of this House that would be achieved thereby? No wonder we are pausing at this point. This particular incremental step is lying there ahead of us, and all we need to do is to step up the support of most of this House, with the benefit of clarification that its consideration could contribute. The other question could remain. I have no enthusiasm for its early solution but I have huge enthusiasm for the rapid passing and enactment of this Bill.