House of Lords Bill [HL]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, has just demonstrated sharply how wise the Appointments Commission was to appoint her, even if she does not know it. I agree with what she said at the end: there is no logical link between the view that you take on whether this place should be elected and the one that you take on the Bill. It is perfectly possible to be in favour of election and in favour of this Bill. A number of noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, have taken that position. It is perfectly possible to be against election and for the Bill and it is perfectly possible to be against the Bill and still be in favour of election, which I suspect is the position that the Minister will take at the end of our proceedings. There is no logical link whatever between those views. However, there is something paradoxical about being in favour of election—of radical reform of this place—and then being against this Bill, which is so clearly a first step towards it. In fact, I would say that it is a bit more than paradoxical. The words that spring to my mind are "cynical" and "immoral". If you took a moral public policy approach to the Bill, what would you do? You would say, "First of all, let us get the appointed House into as good a shape as it can be got"—to the reforms in the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Steel, I would add the Oakeshott reforms and there might be other candidates—and there will be a case for a Chamber of that character. Put against that the alternative—there is a powerful case for it—of a wholly or partly elected House. Let us then compare the best kind of appointed House with the best kind of elected House and let the country—the Government and the people—decide which of those alternatives they want. That is a logical and moral approach to the question. It is grubby to seek to keep this House with as many flaws as you possibly can in the hope that somehow the attractions of elections will be increased so that you smuggle out what may or may not be a desirable proposal under the camouflage provided by the manifest problems that the Bill is designed to address. That is my fundamental view of principle and I am not going to change it. I have been a long time in politics and I find that people rarely change their views for reasons of principle. I just want to do a little crude realpolitik to explain to those who are opposed to the Bill why I think that they are mistaken in terms of the objectives. I shall start with the result of the next general election. I do not know what the result will be, but I can tell you—I have not checked this morning—how a bookmaker would lay odds on it because I know a little bit about betting. I would say that the odds are 2:1 on a majority Tory Government, 5:2 on a hung Parliament, 6:1 or 7:1 on a small Labour majority and perhaps 33:1 against a Labour majority comparable to that which we currently have. That is not saying what I want; I hope that the outsider wins, of course. However, that is what I think the odds genuinely are on a dispassionate bookmaking analysis. If we get a Tory Government, we will not have, in short order, an elected Chamber. That has been made quite clear. I will not go over what many noble Lords have said in the debate. Therefore, 2:1 on—two chances in three—you are not going to get root and branch reform just because of the coming of the election and the likely result thereof. Of course, if we are not going to have it, that makes it even more important that we should get what we can in these circumstances, which is a partial reform that would get us into a better position. At first, you might think that a hung Parliament is a likely situation in which you could get root and branch reform. The Lib Dems support it and maybe they would make that a condition of coming into a coalition Government. There are two considerations. First, a hung Parliament would inherit an economic crisis of unparalleled severity. In itself, it would constitute a sort of political crisis, as we are not used to handling hung Parliaments in this country and a lot of adapting to it would have to take place. It would then be suggested that the Government might precipitate what is potentially a constitutional crisis by adopting root and branch reform of this place, when that Government would have no majority in Parliament and every party is divided about the issue. One can be wrong in politics, but my view is that it ain’t going to happen. A Labour Government with a small majority is most unlikely to go down this route because it would be far too controversial. Therefore, there is only one circumstance in which the great reform favoured by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and by many Lib Dems can take place: a Labour Government with a whopping great majority. Whatever my views as to the desirability of that, I have said that it is a 33:1 shot in my book. Very few outsiders win at those odds. So there we have it. The Government are asking this Chamber and this Parliament to back a 33:1 outsider in order to get any progress. If they get their way, and I hope that they will not, the almost certain consequence is many years when the media can every day of the week plausibly represent our marvellous Chamber as a haven for tax dodgers, cronies and crooks. It must not be allowed to happen.