House of Lords (Amendment) Bill [HL]

My Lords, everyone will understand that there is total commitment in the Labour Party to addressing the issue of the 92, perhaps much along the lines that the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, has set out. But this is not the Bill to get that on to the statute book, and I want to explain why. Let me set out a number of assumptions and a number of political realities. If people ignore them, they are either simply being naive or are introducing a spoiling measure. The test of whether a Bill has any chance of getting through the House of Commons in broadly the form that it leaves here is not the least of these considerations. There is a case for a Bill that could in the very near future get through the House of Commons with strong consensus support and could be a significant reforming measure, one which would, incidentally, change some of the caricature images of this House that persist in all parties and all sections of the public. That entails not only doing something like this but a fundamental reform of the appointments system. The Liberal Democrats have done some of that in their own ranks, but a statutory appointments commission would make a radical difference to the context in which people view the role of the House of Lords. I will develop that point a little later. Why do I reach such an unequivocal conclusion about the Bill’s prospects? Everyone understands, as the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, has said, that it would not be possible to rule out fundamental amendments in the Commons to a Bill simply on the 92. I am not just talking about amending the detailed arrangements so far as the 92 are concerned; I am talking about amendments for election in one form or another. That election is what the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, ultimately wants—at least it is what he voted for on a Liberal Democrat three-line Whip, although I do not know whether he did that of his own volition. It is not what the House voted for by a three-to-one or four-to-one majority in the various votes on 14 March. I have the highest respect for the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, in many areas of policy, but I hope that he will excuse me if I am somewhat acerbic on this occasion. Such a spoiling vote in the House of Commons on a Bill with these narrow credentials would produce a dog’s breakfast. It is a racing certainty that there would be amendments to this Bill, but another Bill to be debated on 20 July, that of the noble Lord, Lord Steel, who is the noble friend of the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, is a different kettle of fish. That requires us to look even more deeply into the dynamics and realities of what Parliament as a whole will wear. Perhaps we should try to make a dispassionate assessment of where the Lords reform process has reached after what was—and I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, on this—a rather contrived majority in the Commons, based on a good deal of tactical voting. That preference for electing the lot has being kicked into the long grass in terms of legislation before the next election. After the general election, there may well be a Royal Commission on the constitution, but it should not be a rabbit holedown which everyone disappears in a state of utter confusion and waits to see what comes back out, but an assessment of concrete questions on the checks and balances in the legislative process between the two Houses. We need that careful, dispassionate and cool examination, because many of the people who say ““elect the lot”” by first praying in aid the concept of greater legitimacy, then running away from its consequences of more challenges to the House of Commons and its primacy—which would also be a racing certainty. Those people then say, ““Okay, scrap the conventions approach, meet that earlier point somehow and make these justiciable””. However, as the unanimous Cunningham report pointed out, they cannot be made justiciable and set out in statute, because disputes between the Lords and the Commons would have to be interpreted by the Supreme Court in its new building over the roadin Parliament Square. I can think of a number of statesmen in the past 500 years who must be turning in their graves at that prospect. There is no way of achieving what many in the Commons think they want—and what at one stage Jack Straw told them they could have—that when the House of Commons does not like an amendment from the House of Lords it can simply cancel it out with a snap of the fingers. In summary, and I refer to my speech on 13 March, the policy of ““legitimise it, then castrate it”” is not a runner. That point has now, somewhat belatedly, been recognised by even Jack Straw and, in being forced to reflect on the clear and unanimous analysis of the Cunningham committee, we should now look forward because there will be three, four or five years before a Royal Commission can report following a general election fought on various manifestos. The next logical question is: can nothing happen for the next one or two years? That is my view in terms of this Bill. My answer and that of the cross-party group that includes the noble Lord, Lord Steel, and, prominently, the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, is that, not only is there a Bill to fill that gap, but it is available in the Printed Paper Office. That Bill had its First Reading on the same day asdid the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Avebury—14 March—the day when we all voted. It has its Second Reading in this House in a full day’s debate on 20 July, when, I predict, there will be a considerable number of speakers. So what precisely does the Steel Bill say which the Avebury Bill does not, and why are they fundamentally different? The central point is that the Steel Bill provides for the creation of a statutory appointments commission in place of the present patronage system. Implementing this part of the White Paper is a sine qua non of any early progress to consensus—and I speak for the consensus of a clear, two-thirds majority of the Labour group, although there is a minority with another view. It translates into practical action many of the words that have almost been flogged to death—democracy, legitimacy, transparency and ownership—in the process of elections and appointments. It is a far more fundamental reform than many people have appreciated. A caveat is that the Civil Service authorship of this part of the White Paper shows through because it is very unsure of its footing by neglecting the necessary internal processes of the political parties—presumably because they are outside its purview in some way. Perhaps Jack Straw took his eye off the ball or my noble friends on the Front Bench did not get their heads around this issue. My criticism of the White Paper in this regard, which is germane to what I will say later, is that it often implies that it would be for the statutory appointments commission to select from party lists—not only on grounds of probity, but more generally. It has been recognised that that would bea disaster and be rejected because it would meanthat the great and the good would be perceived by members of parties—this is certainly true of the Labour Party—of doing the job of selecting right-wing or left-wing candidates and so on. That section of the White Paper is, after all, the one that relates to members of political parties who have taken theWhip here. We are not talking about the role of the statutory appointments commission relative to the Cross-Benchers, we are talking about that role vis-à-vis the political parties—people who have to be whipped in this Chamber in the normal way that makes democratic government work. We have to work out how political parties take responsibility in that new world—and I take myhat off to the Liberal Democrats for having more experience than others in this matter—and what the parties’ obligations should be as regards the new process, because they will have to register their criteria and processes with the statutory appointments commission. I predict that it would not be for that commission to have anything to do with, say, choosing left-wing or right-wing candidates or whatever. Desirable as it may be to say that a certain percentage of the Members will be of a certain ethnicity or that so many per cent will be women, surely, if people are to be whipped in this House, that must be down to the political parties. If the parties are to take ownership of the system, which is the key to this, they have to be happy with that. In a sense, it would make them—