Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

With the permission of the Committee, I would like briefly to respond to part of this debate. I commend all who have spoken for the high quality of the debate—it was witty, too—and for the seriousness of the discussion that has been provoked by the important issue sparked off by this relatively modest clause. Let me deal first with the suggestion, made not least by the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Field), that the clause is some partisan device. I say to him and those on his Front Bench: it is not. The only way in which it could conceivably be made a partisan device would be if the Conservative party thought in error that there was some reason, to do with Conservative party philosophy and ideology, that required it to vote against the clause. However, I would suggest that there is no such reason. I do not presume to be as expert on Conservative ideology and philosophy as Conservative Members are; however, I would suggest that the hon. Member for Chichester (Mr. Tyrie) does have some claim to that. I therefore hope that his right hon. and hon. Friends will take note of the fact that he has just said that he intends to vote, on a point of principle, with the Liberal Democrats and the Labour party for the clause. The clause is not remotely partisan; nor is it, just to repeat the point, in any sense designed to harm the Conservatives' representation in the other place. Let us be clear about that. I am glad that the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster is nodding to suggest that he understands that. The clause will not affect any of the existing hereditaries. If the clause becomes law, as I believe it will, it will be open and normal for the leader of the relevant political party to make a nomination in the case of a vacancy following the death of an hereditary peer—as it is in the case of a life peer. Even if those who had been elected as hereditaries had sufficient merit in the eyes of the Conservative party leader, for example, there is every reason for them not to be nominated, for them not to sit in the other place as life peers—measured against the claims of anyone else to sit there in an appointed Chamber—and for them not to be drawn from the completely ludicrous constituencies that have been mentioned. Not a single person who has spoken today has defended that system of election. Indeed, the right hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg) said that he was not going to take to the stump to defend such a system, and he is quite right; the truth is that it is indefensible. Yes, there was a deal, and that is why the 90 ended up in the House of Lords. If the hon. Member for Chichester were to ask whether I would personally have done that deal, the answer would be that I do not think so. I am always careful to say, "I do not think so", because it is one thing to score goals from the sidelines, but quite another to be in the shoes of the person taking part in the negotiations. Something that was not shoddy but honourable, however, was the desire of Lord Irvine and the Labour party of the time to try to reach an agreement, and not to use our huge majority to drive through these measures under the Parliament Acts. I have had to use the Parliament Acts on two occasions, and it is not a particularly happy experience. It has been suggested that we should not do anything until we did everything, or—in the words of my hon. Friend the Member for City of York (Hugh Bayley)—that we should make the best the enemy of the good. All the arguments against doing that remind me of the wonderful skit on academic politics written in 1908 by the Cambridge philosopher, F. M. Cornford. In it, he said""There is only one argument for doing something; the rest are arguments for doing nothing."" He then went through all the arguments for not doing things, which included the principle of unripe time, the principle of the wedge and the principle of the dangerous precedent. He concluded:""It follows that nothing should ever be done for the first time."" Frankly, the arguments that have been advanced by the Conservatives today come down to the idea that the time is not ripe, given that no one has been prepared to defend the principle of elections of hereditary peers. The deal was made 11 years ago, and no one anticipated that we would be here debating this now. We were asked whether we were at the next stage. Yes, we are proceeding to that, and it will happen next month with the publication of the major part of a draft Bill. On the issue of the measures being piecemeal, I would simply say that it is possible to parody any legislation at the time of its introduction. With the single exception of the 1689 Bill of Rights, all legislation has been piecemeal. The Reform Act of 1832 was actually relatively modest in scope. It took another 60 years to get anywhere near a universal franchise for men, and 100 years to achieve a franchise for women. The Parliament Act 1911 was seen as a relatively modest interim measure, yet we now see it as having huge importance. My record on the Freedom of Information Act 2000 has been mocked. The damnation of it by the Opposition was that it was not much more than a recapitulation of the non-statutory freedom of information code, although I did not agree with that. I think that the facts speak for themselves. The Human Rights Act 1998 might have been dismissed as piecemeal, but that is not what is said about it now. So far as the House of Lords is concerned, the Life Peerages Act 1958 could have been seen as piecemeal change—