House of Lords Reform

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for mentioning that poll. The reason why the public responded to the question as they did is because of the comparison to this place. Never before has the House of Commons been so unpopular, given the daily kicking we receive from the media and the way that people are encouraged to think about us. If we asked ordinary members of the public to give their predominant image of the House of Lords, they would describe two things. The first would be some belligerent old soul gently napping on those comfortable red Benches while listening to an interminable speech by a fellow octogenarian. A more sinister image would be of the House as a repository for one of the millionaire chums of one of the main parties in the cash for peerage and honours scandal. I am certain that the ordinary public do not view the House of Lords with any great affection; they do not even know what its functions are. We can test that statement. Is it not curious that among all the electoral options before us no one has suggested a stand-alone election to the House of Lords? The election has to be combined with another election. Let us imagine the excitement on Lords election day. The hustings would be packed to the gunwales. There would be no holding back. Everybody would be rushing off to the ballot box to re-elect the Baroness Billington of Boxington, or whatever, to reward that noble peeress for the fine work she had done while gently napping on the red Benches. The major context for this debate on reform of the House of Lords is the cash for honours scandal. Never before has the membership of the House of Lords been under such scrutiny from the public. More importantly, never before has the case for appointment by Prime Minister and by party been so undermined and so tarnished. In its opinion poll, the Hansard Society found that only 6 per cent. of the public favoured a fully appointed House. That shows the public’s grave concerns about the potential abuse of appointment and about political parties stuffing the place full of their cronies and funders. The very suggestion that someone could sit in our legislature on the basis of having given a significant amount of money to a political party is as appalling as it is unacceptable. The defence we hear from No. 10 and others is that those people are in the House of Lords solely as party political appointees, which completely destroys any argument for political appointment. In the course of the next few weeks, days or perhaps hours, the Metropolitan police will determine whether that system is illegal. They should be left to get on with their work, on which I support them. However, we should use the opportunity for reform to ensure that never again will there be a whiff of suspicion that people can enter our legislature solely due to their ability to pay. The Scottish National party will not support any party political appointment and we encourage other Members not to accept that practice. What does the House of Lords cost? Do we get value for money? According to its annual report it cost a cool £106 million in 2005-06. At a time when we are holding back public sector pay, when nurses cannot even have an inflation-rate pay rise and our salaries and expenses are under such scrutiny, perhaps we should suggest that our friends in the press and the public have a look at what is going along at the other end of the building. Does the House of Lords give value for money? I asked the House of Commons Library for a breakdown of the peers’ working day but it could not give me that information, so I put together my own study. I made a list of all the peers and selected all those who had taken the name of a place in Scotland as part of their title—we all know how much peers like their titles. I found 36 such peers and checked them up on the excellent TheyWorkForYou.com website. In the past year, 24 of them had made fewer than five contributions. More staggering and more appallingly, 10 of them had made no contribution at all. There is something quite out of kilter with the view of an over-worked peer even in what I admit was an unscientific, unreliable study. None the less, I believe it is quite representative of what actually goes on down there. There are obvious honourable exceptions. The Lords Forsyth, Foulkes, Campbell and Pearson have made more than 50 contributions each, but with the exception of those four peers the remainder of the 36 made fewer than 200 contributions over a year. To put that in perspective, TheyWorkForYou.com shows that my modest contributions to debates this year amount to 54, which is more than a quarter of the total contributions of those 36 peers. Apart from a few distinguished Members, those be-ermined bods do next to zilch. I am reminded of the chorus of the peers in ““Iolanthe””—I promise I will not sing it to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker:"““The House of peers,""Throughout the years,""Did nothing in particular,""And did it very well.””" That perfectly sums up the House of Lords in its current incarnation. Let us contrast that picture with the House of Lords annual report, where we find that on an average sitting day 400 peers turn up. Of course, as we have heard, they have to turn up to qualify for their allowances, but what happens between turning up and making a contribution? For goodness’ sake, simply asking for the window to be opened counts as a contribution. While Members consider that quandary, they should remember that their lordships’ expenses cost the taxpayer a whopping £15 million in 2005-06. With more than 640 Members of Parliament surely we can find a new 21st-century solution to legislating. We need only look northwards to the Scottish Parliament—as has been mentioned already—to see that unicameralism can work. There are powerful Committees which indulge in all sorts of excellent pre-legislative scrutiny. Why cannot we have such powerful Committees in the House of Commons? We could combine Select and Standing Committees to make new powerful bodies that could take expert evidence and call expert witnesses. That is the 21st-century solution to the House of Lords quandary. It calls for scrapping the whole shooting match and starting the work ourselves. I am disappointed that we shall not have the opportunity to vote on the bishops—I join the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) on that. It is an absolute disgrace that in our multi-faith society we continue to favour one faith over all others. The fact that we are alone among western democracies in having religious representation in our legislature reinforces the view that the House of Lords is some sort of strange, eccentric, medieval throwback. We live in a multicultural, multi-faith society. Modern Britain is a society with great diversity of religions and non-religious beliefs, and continuing to privilege one denomination over others is preposterous and anti-democratic. If we are serious about modernising the House of Lords there can be no place for unelected bishops. I will vote for abolition, because I think it is the right way forward in this new century, but if we are to have a House of Lords I will also support a fully elected House as I favour that over an all-appointed House. However, my colleagues and I will not support any option that gives control of places in the House of Lords to political parties. We have seen how badly wrong that system has gone over the past few years. There can be no place in our legislature for the party funders or the cronies. Cash for peerages should be a wake-up call about the danger of appointments. I hope that the House heeds that call.