Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

It is extraordinary that English gentlemen in revolt against the Crown two centuries ago could form a constitution with a second Chamber. They did so for good reason. We are taking for ever, under the Lord High Panjandrum's ministrations, to gain an inch, and then we are retreating. The proposal before the Committee is that the only elected part of the upper Chamber should be abolished and all the appointees should remain in place. What is the difference? I start from a proposition that has always informed democratic debate: those who make the laws should be accountable to those who bear the laws. Yet we have this extraordinary anomaly that the second Chamber, which this Chamber voted to democratise, remains an appointed House. How can that be, and how can it be that I want an elected House down the passageway there—past the tumbleweed? An important point needs to be made. Nearly 35 years ago, the father of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg) gave an important Dimbleby lecture in which he looked at the conventions and party arrangements in this Chamber that made tolerable a concept called the sovereignty of Parliament—all the little checks and balances within our procedures and arrangements. We are driven by the desire to legitimise the House of Lords, so that it can be a proper check and balance. I have been a Member for nearly 31 years, as has my right hon. and learned Friend. During my membership of this House, it has increasingly become a tyranny. Largely, there are no checks and balances within this Chamber—it is the rule of majoritarianism. So it was to the House of Lords that my party turned when, looking forward to an age more democratic than was ever envisaged by the present Government, it voted to accept the concept of an 80 to 100 per cent. elected second Chamber. In answer to the hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick), I give praise in the extraordinary situation where those Lords act gently as a small check and balance. The cry goes up from whomever is on the Government Benches, "This is ridiculous. What legitimacy do they have? This is about the legitimacy of the arrangements in the Lords." Over the years, I have been frustrated by the grip that Governments have had on this House—it has strangled our very legitimacy. We need to have a debate about that. We need checks and balances. That is what all our revolutions were about—to check and balance the power of the Crown. It has taken us a long time to get where we are. One hundred years later, we are still trying to grapple with the proposition put forward by the Liberal Government early in the previous century of an elected House of Lords. I do not think that that was cynical. I enjoyed the cheerful cynicism of my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh)—but that is all it is, in the end. This is a serious proposition regarding the ship of state and the nature of the construction that enables the people of this country to hold to account their Governments. Do we honestly think that we do that? So I look beyond this place—I think that many other Members do so, too—for a remedy in the other place. For some years, the few checks on this long cavort have been in the hands of the Secretary of State, sitting on the Bench there. The matter has been danced around, but there is no consensus, and I am as frustrated as anyone about this reform stuck in the Bill. What is it? To get rid of the one elected element of the House of Lords? Are we not to question why 40 per cent. of the Members of the House of Lords come from the south-east of England? Of whom are they representative? They are professional people representing special interest groups. Yet they stand as our last defence in the sorts of causes mentioned by the hon. Member for Walsall, North—our freedoms, 42-day detention, and our historic rights and liberties. That was our function, but it has gone. So I support my Front-Bench colleagues on this matter. I do not want to trade off, for a gesture by the Labour Government—sinking fast as they are—the little block and niggle that might one day drive us to find a solution for a properly elected, accountable House of Lords. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham made a point about franchise. We do not want to replicate this Chamber. We want to give the Lords the democratic legitimacy to say, "We think you are wrong. We do not agree." The oldest democratic constitution of which I know is the American constitution. It has survived for more than 220 years, and we are still fiddling with the abolition of the elected Lords, who constitute a small proportion of that House—I say "we", but I am not! What do the Government do? Who appoints these Lords? Look at it. I presume that a swathe of retired Conservative Members will be pushed into the Lords, although, of course, that will be to give some balance, and undoubtedly they will be the most competent Members. But why? I do not share the cheerful cynicism of the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright). It startled me in a sense, because it was so weary a speech. Where is the fire and belief that we can accomplish something? "Oh, experience of this tired old House has taught me", he told us, "that we muddle along, and what difference does it make? Somehow we'll get through it all." That is true, but there is no sense of an ideal there. This place was built in the democratic age on the ideals and aspirations of the party that he represents and on behalf of which the Lord High Panjandrum, the Secretary of State, is now promoting his ambitions. That party was an agent for change. It was not the only one by any means. My own party has had a role in this, as too did the Liberal party and the trade unions. That was the voice of the people. This House used to march to that tune. I want checks and balances, so I will not support the clause. By removing elections, the Lord High Panjandrum will feel that he has accomplished something, but he will not have. This has been at root a failure. I cannot discern any successes in any of the policies that he has promoted to the House over 11 years. I will give a prize to whomever can name one. Here we are, dug in, making no progress whatever. We have to reach out and stand for something. Those who make the laws shall be accountable, and furthermore there must be more of the checks and balances that make for proper exchange and debate across this Floor. I shall, therefore, support my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) in the Lobbies.