Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

This is a relatively modest proposal that I worked up last year with my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young). New clause 47 and the consequential amendments will create a new class of peerage: term peers. As their name implies, term peers would be appointed for a fixed period rather than for life. The length of their term could and probably should be based on the approach already agreed by the major parties in their discussions on the make-up of a democratic Chamber—namely, that a predominantly elected second Chamber would comprise those serving a single long and non-renewable term of probably three Parliaments. The term length was a proposal that came out of the talks on the White Paper, but I recognise that, in the search for consensus, some further changes could be considered for the way in which term peers are appointed, which concerns the Liberal Democrats. I am proposing a modest step—certainly much more modest than the democratically elected second Chamber that I believe the British people deserve. If I thought that a democratic option could get through by consensus at this time, I would support it wholeheartedly, but I know that it will not. If we tried, the result would be a controversial Bill leading to a huge row. As I said, the plain fact is that the British people would find it extraordinary if the next Government, faced with the biggest economic mess since the 1930s, with the highest level of debt to GDP and the highest deficit since the second world war, decided to embark on a major constitutional upheaval. As my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Field) said, such a reform would absorb all the political energy of this place for at least a year. It would be irresponsible to engage in that with so many crucial economic questions facing us. However, all three major parties support democracy for the Lords. It is also true, although the figure is not often mentioned—my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) did mention it—that 59 per cent. of Conservative MPs voted in 2007 for a largely or wholly elected second Chamber. There were even higher majorities in favour of democracy in the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties. The point has been made that some of that voting might have been tactical; of course that is true, but some of the voting against democracy might have been tactical, too. That tells us absolutely nothing. The fact is that there is a clear majority in this place for democracy—there probably has been for a long time. It is regrettable that using their large majorities the Labour Government have not found an opportunity to take us further down the road. The problem is that any major Bill simply would not get past the Lords. I have no doubt that the Lords would oppose it. An early Bill to introduce democracy for the second Chamber would lead us straight into a constitutional crisis that the public would not understand, even though two thirds or three quarters of them support such a measure. They will rightly expect the Government to get on with the economic crisis in front of us. By contrast, the term peers measure will not cause a constitutional crisis. Its advantages would be relatively modest, but they are at least straightforward and I hope that colleagues will agree that they are worth having. First, they would take the House of Lords a step along the road of what Lord Jay, the Chairman of the House of Lords Appointments Commission, described as moving along the curve from honour to job. We need a Chamber of people who are committed to fulfilling a parliamentary role and to doing a job of work in the 21st century, not a status House or a legacy status House. There is an increasingly important job for the second Chamber to do and the term peers proposal will increase the chances of getting a higher degree of commitment and quality from the people who are put there to do the job. The second argument in favour of the proposal is that a major problem of the existing House would be addressed: the inevitable upward ratchet in the size of the House, given the way that it is presently constituted. The Government have been concerned about that problem, which occurs because an incoming Government inevitably want to make sure that their party is the largest single party in the Lords. The first thing that they will do under the existing rules—they have no choice—is to appoint a large number of life peers. Of course that life term is likely to be longer than the average life of the incoming Government and so those peers will still be there afterwards, leading to a ratchet effect each time and to an ever larger House. That becomes even more true as parties, as they have begun to do, seek to appoint somewhat younger lifers in order to get plenty of work out of them. That means that the peers will be there for even longer, even before we take into account increased life expectancy. The Lords will continue to grow. At 740 Members, the Lords is already the largest democratic Chamber in the world—if we exclude the Chinese national party congress, which is the only other chamber as big. Britain, as far as I know, is also the only bicameral democracy with a second Chamber larger than the main Chamber, which is quixotic. Ending the ratchet will be hugely valuable and term peers will take us a long way down the road to dealing with it. A third reason for supporting term peerages might seem paradoxical—particularly coming from me—but it is that the proposals would leave the existing life peerage wholly unaffected. That would minimise the risk of friction as term peerages are introduced. Should the parties decide so to do while in government, life peerages could be phased out or brought to an end, so the life peerage could be replaced by the term peerage, albeit quite slowly. That was how, gradually—not immediately—the hereditary peerage was phased out after life peerages were introduced in 1958. Given that, for various reasons, neither party has the stomach for fundamental reform of the Lords and that this is probably an inappropriate moment in the economic cycle to attempt such reform, we need to make the best of what we have—the existing House—and I hope that this modest proposal will achieve that. It will provide the maximum benefit with the minimum disruption and it will address the ratchet, so I hope that it will be supported by Members across the House.