My Lords, it is with great pleasure that I speak to Amendment 153 standing in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Naseby. On his behalf, I express his regret that he is not able to be here today. He is away on urgent matters, but I am sure he will be here at later stages of the Bill if we need to debate this again.
There is a very simple proposition in this amendment: that Members of this House should be entitled to vote. That is an argument that has gone on for many years. Indeed, I traced it back to 1699, thanks to the excellent report from the House of Lords Library, but it may have started even earlier. They have done a good job. They produced that report when I put forward a Private Member’s Bill on this subject. It passed this House, but I will come on to what happened to it when it got to the House of Commons. The noble Lord, Lord Naseby, also put forward a Bill, but his was talked out. He and I are united in our wish to see progress on this matter.
The situation is anomalous. Part of the debate on this amendment has been covered in that on the previous amendments. I could have extracted some quotations in support of this if I had been quick enough to write them down. Members of this House can vote in local elections. We can vote for the devolved Administrations. We can vote in referenda. Previously, we could vote in European elections. It seems anomalous that there is one election in which we cannot vote. It is quite difficult for local government returning officers to know that we are not entitled to vote when they prepare the electoral list, as we are there for other things. I have never quite understood how they discover that we are Members of this House—they are clever people. At any rate, mistakes are sometimes made. Historically, Members of this House have voted and then there has been a bit of a row about it, because they were on the voting list and were not excluded from voting in parliamentary elections. It is an anomaly.
It is also an anomaly that Members on the Bishops’ Benches can vote. Though they may not exercise their right to vote for other reasons, they certainly have it. If we look abroad, United States Senators can vote for Congress, which seems fairly parallel to the position we are in. Indeed, according to that excellent House of Lords Library report, of the 189 countries in the Inter-Parliamentary Union, the United Kingdom is the only country in which members of the second chamber cannot vote in general elections for the first chamber. We are the only country, yet some of the arguments against must apply elsewhere.
I agree that most of the British population are not aware of this. Indeed, when I talk to friends, I have to remind them that I am not allowed to vote when it comes up in conversation. I am fully aware that the masses who sometimes demonstrate in Parliament Square are not going to assemble there to support our right to vote. However, not every change in this country has to be the subject of enormous demos, much as I enjoy some of the demos and have been on them—that was a debate we had on the police Bill, and it is not appropriate today. The fact is that this is still an anomaly.
In preparing for today’s debate, I had to remind myself of some of the arguments against. There was a debate in 1936. It was introduced by a predecessor of a Member of this House, Lord Hailsham, and the proposal for reform was put forward by Lord Ponsonby, whose son is now in this House, so there is a tradition in this. They had a much longer debate than we will have today, I trust, for the sake of the Front Benches on both sides. The then Lord Chancellor, Lord Hailsham, said in talking about reform that
“it is not a wise thing to attempt to deal with a problem of this character piecemeal because, inevitably, you would get questions the answers to which might affect the attitude which your Lordships would take with regard to one particular proposal and the attitude you were going presently to take with regard to some other proposal on the other side of the picture.”
That is quite a complicated sentence, but I think it means he is against piecemeal reform. It is arguments against piecemeal reform that have bedevilled discussion on this.
I do not understand the argument why opposing piecemeal reform is a good thing. In our British tradition, pretty well all reforms are piecemeal, even from people who are on the political extremes. We normally progress piecemeal; we do things stage by stage. The argument that everything should be done in one go seems rather weak. I cannot resist quoting from the reply by the previous Lord Ponsonby. Admittedly, the proposition at that time was twofold: that we should have the right to vote; and that Members of this House should be entitled to stand in House of Commons elections. I would not suggest that at all, and most of the debate was about that second point: Members of the Lords being able to stand in House of Commons elections. Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede made this comment:
“It is perfectly absurd to say that this is a matter of the reform of the House of Lords or reform of the House of Commons. It is, if I may respectfully say so, an old trick of the noble and learned Viscount”—
that is, Lord Hailsham—
“to use a magnifying glass in order to make a mole-heap into a mountain and then all the more easily to destroy it.”—[Official Report, 12/2/1936; cols. 568-73.]
I liked that phrase, so I had to bring it in somewhere into our debate today.
5.15 pm
The point is that the actual arguments against have been mainly opposition to piecemeal reform, the argument that we should not cherry pick, as if cherry picking was some reprehensible human activity. The second argument is that we already have influence on legislation. Of course we do; so do American Senators. The point in an election is to influence who are to be the Government of the day. Legislation comes later. It is because we do not have the right to influence who will be the Government of the day that I propose this amendment. The Joint Committee on Human Rights wrote some time ago, when there was a coalition Government, to the then Deputy Prime Minister, who again used the piecemeal argument as one reason not to do it.
I shall be brief. I remember that one or two people sitting here today objected to my Private Member’s Bill that passed this House. I know who they are, and I can see them, but perhaps they have changed their minds. I speak like a right reverend Prelate: I like
repenting sinners, and perhaps they are repenting sinners by now. My Private Member’s Bill passed here about nine years ago, but it then had to go to the House of Commons. There is a procedure in the House of Commons—not a very healthy one; most of your Lordships will know it. If a Bill from here goes to the Commons and is called, if one voice says “Object!”, it kills it. No argument needs to be put forward; indeed, the identity of the objector is kept secret, it is not revealed.
I wrote to several MPs who I knew tended to object as a matter of course and asked them not to. I was in the Gallery watching, and I do not know who shouted “Object!”, but somebody did. I have reason to believe that the objection was not Back-Bench but government-inspired, on the argument that the coalition Government did not want piecemeal reform, they wanted to wait until there was reform to everything.
This is such a basic proposition that nobody in their right mind can really object to it. The constitution will not be undermined. We will not change the structure or powers of the Lords. All we are doing is giving us as individuals the right to vote. Many of us canvass and campaign in elections but then, come election day, I have asked people to vote but we are not able to vote.
As a token of my seriousness, the original version of my amendment said that it should be enacted within 12 months. I thought that was pretty difficult for returning officers and local government to get the voting lists right, so I have made one change and it now says that it should be brought into being in 24 months. This is a serious proposition; I urge your Lordships to support it.