Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Cambridge (David Howarth). I do not share his pessimism that we are in a huge political crisis. Although aspects of the public's confidence in this House and the conduct of its Members have been affected, I do not think that it is a huge constitutional crisis. I hope that by the end of the debate we will have cheered him up and shown him that some good work has been done in the past 12 years. I begin by declaring an interest as a non-practising barrister. This is the first debate on constitutional affairs since the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, my right hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Mr. Wills), announced that he will step down at the next election. It is right to pay tribute to him for the work that he has done in this area of policy. He has always been extraordinarily passionate about constitutional affairs. I was delighted when he chose Leicester as the first city to visit on his roadshow. I am not sure how many other places he visited—[Interruption.] Lots, he tells us. It was great to have him in Leicester and I hope that it gave him a flavour of the willingness of the people of Leicester to engage in this great constitutional debate. The Lord Chancellor is absolutely right that this has been a breathtaking 12 years of great changes to our constitution. We have seen devolution and the creation of the Supreme Court, as well as changes to many other aspects of constitutional policy. The Government should be commended for what they have done. However, I am a little disappointed by the Bill—a disappointment I share with the hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve). I had expected, as the Bill has such a grand title, that it would have more to it than the measures that the Lord Chancellor told the House about in his speech. It is like opening the fridge on a Monday morning and finding that all the best bits have gone. Perhaps we have legislated our way into constitutional history and there is nothing left to do, but I had hoped that there would be more in the Bill, because there is still more to do. Perhaps, as we are only five months away from a general election—as fixed a term as is possible, because we know that the election will happen next year—the Lord Chancellor feels that he should keep his best bits for the manifesto and for the fourth term, should the electors of the United Kingdom re-elect this Government, as I hope they will. It is right to pay tribute to all three Lord Chancellors in this Government—to Lord Irvine; to my former boss when I was a Parliamentary Private Secretary at the Attorney-General and Solicitor-General's Department, Lord Falconer; and to the current Lord Chancellor. They have been serious about the need for reform and change, and it is important that we recognise that although the Bill might not be the Bill that we would have liked at this stage, it is part of that process. Let me pick up on two or three aspects of the Bill. I hope that the Lord Chancellor will follow it through in the spirit in which he introduced the Second Reading debate. I have known him now for 30 years, and I know that when he says that he is willing to engage in debate on issues he will do so. The way in which he has dealt with interventions from right hon. and hon. Members and from Front Benchers shows that he will be willing to engage in such debate in Committee. I was interested by the suggestion proposed by the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Field), which appeared to have come from a pamphlet written by the hon. Member for Chichester (Mr. Tyrie), whom I have always regarded as one of the cleverest Members of this House. If he has written a pamphlet about the need for temporary peers, it will certainly be worth reading, and I shall rush off to the Library to do so. Let me take his pamphlet at face value, as it was described by the Lord Chancellor and by the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster. Its intention is to ensure that we appoint peers for a short period, whether or not they serve as Ministers. Such a provision should not be limited to people who serve as Ministers of the Crown; it should extend to those in a particular area of expertise, who could be appointed for a couple of years, as it would be unfair to put them in for a month and hope that they can master the intricacies of the way in which the other place operates. I fully support the principle of temporary membership, especially as there appears, as the hon. Member for Cambridge has pointed out, to be no great difference among the three major parties about the need to make the House of Lords more democratic. I am not quite sure where we are on the percentages, but our position is that the other place should be almost wholly elected. I am not sure of the Conservative position, but I think that the Liberal Democrats are in favour of a wholly elected upper House. Given that there is not that much difference, and accepting what the hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield said about our not being able to legislate in a day, the idea of temporary peers is a good one, especially if they are brought in to serve in a Government for a particular reason. There is no reason why people should be in the other place for life—under the old terms of what life should be—if they are there for a specific purpose. That is why I welcome the proposals in the Bill to allow peers to resign. I do not think that there is a hidden agenda about any particular member of the Government or of the other House, but surely it must be right for a peer who wants to resign and to contest an election to the House of Commons to be allowed to do so. I am not clear whether that would affect the next general election. Perhaps the Minister of State, when he winds up, will be able to tell us. However, it would be pointless to introduce a Bill that allows peers to resign but then not allow them to do so and contest the next general election, if that is what they choose. My second point has to do with judicial appointments. I take the Lord Chancellor's point that removing the Prime Minister from the process would be a technical change, but I have been here long enough to know that the word "technical" can be used about matters that are a little more significant than that. I am not certain that the present Lord Chancellor has been in a position to make a recommendation to the Prime Minister, or whether the president of the Supreme Court was in place before my right hon. Friend took over, but I cannot believe that any serving Prime Minister would have told any of the past three Lord Chancellors, "I'm sorry, but I cannot accept your recommendation." Certainly, I cannot believe that the current Prime Minister would say to the present Lord Chancellor, "Sorry, I don't like your choices for president of the Supreme Court, or for the deputy president and other members. Please let me have some other people to choose from." I am worried that, once the selection process is complete, appointments are merely rubber-stamped. I do not think that they should be, as the appointment of these very senior judges must be accountable to Parliament. I served on the Constitutional Affairs Committee under the enlightened leadership of the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith). He and I, and the hon. Member for Chichester, were very keen to make sure that we had the judges in on a regular basis. Yesterday, we saw how the pre-appointment process in respect of the Children's Commissioner panned out. I am not sure how that process might have affected the appointment of the president of the Supreme Court, but I am sure that at some stage he would have come in to answer questions from members of the Constitutional Affairs Committee. I am not saying that I want to go back to the previous system, in which one man or woman—a man, in the case of the present Lord Chancellor—selected every judge, tribunal president or magistrate. However, our current system has not impressed me with its ability to open up the judiciary in terms of diversity and gender, so I am glad that the Lord Chancellor has set up his review to look at how the Judicial Appointments Commission operates. I am glad too that the Opposition spokesman, the hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield, has said that he supports the review, because it is important to see how the JAC has worked. I am not very impressed with the JAC, in part because there is not enough feedback for people who apply for posts. By and large, the same civil servants who ran the system at Selborne House are running the present system. There has not been a mass recruitment of new people. I hope that those who serve on the Committee considering the Bill will probe Ministers about what is happening with the JAC. I do not want to pick a quarrel with the Lord Chancellor about removing the Prime Minister from the process, but he needs to accept the importance of accountability. We simply cannot have members of the judiciary choosing themselves. There are lay members of the JAC, but they are likely to defer to a senior judge's views on any appointment. The result will be that the same people will select themselves: sadly, that is what we have had in recent months, and that is why the overall balance of the judiciary has not changed. I turn now to the public order provisions in the Bill. I am not sure what they are. The Lord Chancellor said that the present restrictions will be lifted, but that there are to be more restrictions. That will have to be probed in Committee: people have a right to go into Parliament square to have their say about the great issues of the day. I have many members of the Tamil community in my constituency. During the conflict in Sri Lanka, many Tamils demonstrated in Parliament square against the Sri Lankan Government in the belief that they could influence our Government to do more than they were doing. In fact, the demonstration lasted several months and cost the taxpayer £7.5 million. When the Home Affairs Committee took evidence from the Mayor and the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, it was pointed out that police resources for that demonstration had been moved in from other parts of London. I do not want to try to stop people demonstrating, but perhaps we should try to find another focal point where they can do so without causing so much disruption. That would also prevent the amount of resources used on the Tamil demonstration from having to be used in future. Obviously, it would be very nice if people did not shout at Members of Parliament as they moved in and out of the Palace—although I know that the Lord Chancellor is very used to standing on a soapbox and using a megaphone. He does so every week in Blackburn; I have witnessed him standing in the middle of the town square, shouting at everyone who goes past—