House of Lords Reform

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart). I missed her earlier sedentary intervention, and she did not repeat it in her speech. She demonstrated that everyone, whatever their perspective, can get into contortions and adopt tortured logic to defend their position. She concluded that the people are in the best position to determine the resolution of such issues, and she made a cry for democracy to speak out. I entirely agree, but as I shall explain, we are asking the wrong question. I am not hectored in the streets by constituents who want to know what I am going to do about Lords reform. They do want to know, however, what we can do as their elected representatives to hold the Government to account. That is a different question and, as we are starting from a different position, reform of the second Chamber, which must be dealt with at some point, is a long way down the list. I fear that the Government will lead us a merry dance today and tomorrow. We are looking at an entirely subordinate issue, as they have diverted us from the primary issue with which the Chamber must deal. I speak in the debate with some caution and trepidation because I take a different view from those on my Front Bench. It is not that I am unconvinced by my hon. Friend the Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes), or that I cannot be convinced, but I am not convinced yet, because I do not believe we have reached the point where the issues before us need to be decided. We are required to take subordinate decisions before the primary decision has been taken, which is illogical. The problem is that this ““cart before the horse”” approach, the obsession with process rather than product, the infatuation with means rather than end, and the zealotry behind the belief that we should resolve how people get into the second Chamber before we decide what they are there to do, leapfrog the logical decision that we would otherwise have taken, had the Government not sent us down the route of resolving the subordinate issues before the primary one is addressed. The primary issue that we should deal with was addressed by the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Mr. Wareing) in his contribution—he is no longer in his place. We should discuss how we improve the effectiveness of parliamentary scrutiny and revision. That is what we want the second Chamber to do, and we feel that we need to strengthen that because we are incapable of doing it ourselves. If we were able to do the job ourselves, we would not worry quite so much about the functions and composition of the second Chamber and its ability to save our bacon. I am not making an argument for a unicameral system. It would not be appropriate to deal with manifold issues of such weight and gravity as we deal with. I will not vote for it because I believe that a bicameral system is required. We need to start by looking at ourselves. This Chamber should be more accountable than it is. As the House would expect, I take the opportunity to argue that we should have a more representative Chamber, which would inevitably lead to more consensus and compromise. Ministers should respect and fear this place, rather than treating it with disdain, as they seem to do these days. When we have dealt with the matter of what we do in the primary Chamber, we can move on to discuss what we want a second Chamber to do. If we want a second Chamber, as I believe we do, it is not to compete with what we do, but to complement it and add to it. That debate should be held in this place and another place before we consider and decide how best that place is to be composed. That is why I am angry that we have been led by the nose by the Government into lengthy debates about the subordinate issue of the composition of the second Chamber, whereas we should be addressing issues of effective scrutiny, revision and holding the Executive to account. That is not improved by the changes discussed in the White Paper. We should ask ourselves how we can ensure that the second Chamber can provide scrutiny, revision and sober second thought. An element of democracy may well be relevant to such a Chamber. However, I would need to be convinced that we had properly addressed the issues as regards the tension between the primacy of this Chamber and the legitimacy of Members of the second Chamber, and the need for that Chamber to have representatives who complement the skills of this Chamber in being able to engage in sober second thought. Earlier, I asked the Leader of the House whether, in the words of the White Paper, the"““current conventions are the right ones for a reformed house…certainly early in its life””." The implication is that the current conventions will remain, but we do not know whether they will be challenged, as the primacy of this House is likely to be challenged—that is one of the tensions in the debate—if the second Chamber is largely or wholly elected. We do not know what would be the nature of the elections. As party tribalists, we are all aware of the inevitability of how candidates would emerge, particularly in regional list systems. As a Cornishman representing Cornwall, I would say that the Government’s regions were created on the basis of bureaucratic convenience, as there is no community of interest in the south-west region. Of the MEPs representing the south-west, the nearest to my constituency lives about 150 miles away. It would not necessarily be in my area’s best interests to have representatives in a second Chamber who claim to represent Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly but live in Swindon, Bournemouth, Winchester, or wherever. I am not sure that the process would result in people with strong revisionary skills or those capable of independent thought—talents that are clearly needed in the second Chamber. I imagine that the election literature would not be a thoughtful exposition of the need for sober second thought and revisonary skills, but would comprise the usual party political soundbites, attacks on Opposition leaders and claims of loyalty or defiance as regards the Government of the day. I have many concerns about how the debate has been handled, particularly the fact that we are taking it the wrong way round. If we had put the horse before the cart, many Members who have already determined that they will vote one way or another for a Chamber of the composition of their choice may have taken a different view.