My Lords, I am too polite to return the noble Lord’s words to him, but his entertaining speech rather reminded me of why I joined the Conservative Party. I do have a beef, which is that the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, came first in the ballot for Private Members’ Bills and I came 60th out of 61. Therefore I am a little vexed that he has used this privilege of coming out top to rehash last year’s mashed potatoes—the Bill that failed. The garnish is different but the effect is the same. I am a member of the Procedure Committee of your Lordships’ House but I do not speak as a member. However, we might, in looking at the ballot system, see that it does not privilege someone who had a Bill the previous Session to bring it back in the following Session. Perhaps, as we have been told by many noble Lords in this debate, opportunity should be spread a little wider.
The noble Lord Bill has several defects. First, in my judgment—many have spoken on this—it removes the incentive for agreement on final reform that was deliberately left in the statutes of this land in 1999. The 1999 agreement secured the programme of the Labour Government, in which the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, was PPS to the Prime Minister. Perhaps he knew something about it. Under that agreement, hundreds of our Members left. However, the basis of it was that they would remain and be replaced, in the words of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, as “a guarantee” that a final reform of the House would be agreed. That agreement was, as the noble and learned Lord said,
“binding in honour on all those”,—[Official Report, 30/3/1999; col. 207.]
who came to subscribe to it. As one who played a part in negotiating the details of it, I feel so bound and I oppose the Bill.
I am always interested to listen to my noble friend Lady D’Souza when she speaks on matters that affect the reputation of the House. However, I strongly reject
her statement that this sense of honour is any sense contrived. It is not contrived, and many people hold it firmly. I also disagree with the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, which was a typical lawyer’s point—a correct point—that of course Parliament is not bound: the law can be changed by Parliament. But there is a world beyond the square mile around the Inns of Court, and in politics it is sometimes not what you can do but what you should do. This agreement should not be repudiated.
I agreed with the speech made by my noble friend Lord Cope of Berkeley, which I thought was extremely interesting, as did many others in the House, and a matter that might be looked at. The original reason for the strange colleges is because, I recall, it was pressed for by the Government. The Labour Party was concerned that Labour Peers would not be elected. That would not be the case, and it could be re-examined.
My second objection to the Bill is that it would create an all-appointed House by stealth. That has never been put before the British people at any general election this century and it should not be accomplished by a Private Member’s Bill in the Lords. Others have spoken on that. The third matter is that the Bill is partisan in its effect. It would strike disproportionately at the Conservative Party, and quite fast. Some 26 Conservative elected hereditary Peers are over 70, nine are over 75, five over 80, and five over 85. They would no longer be replaced. When I raised this with the noble Lord last year, he said that that could be dealt with by appointing another couple of dozen Conservative life Peers. That is not a tune we hear some very much from the Benches opposite, nor would it be welcomed by the House. Will the noble Baroness on the Opposition Front Bench say whether that would happen—would Labour support Conservative life Peers to replace hereditaries that went?
The final defect of the Bill is a glaring one, which is that it attacks the speck of dust—the by-election system—but spectacularly fails to tackle the most glaring defect in numbers in this House: the massive overrepresentation of Liberal Democrat Peers, who are sworn to use their unelected position to foil the will of the British people in the referendum. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, agrees with me on that. If only he had used his luck in the ballot to introduce a Bill to deal with that, they might have cheered him on in Tory Telford, where the candidate wearing the rosette of the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, lost her deposit with a reasonable 900 votes. The threat of obstructionism by those Benches over there is a major and present constitutional danger to what the people of Telford voted for by a majority of 24,000. Hereditary by-elections are not. I oppose the Bill.
11.44 am