House of Lords (Amendment) Bill [HL]

My Lords, I wish that I could say that it gave me pleasure to welcome a Bill introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, whose work in this House, both before and after he himself became one of the 92 excepted hereditary Peers, I greatly respect. But I cannot do so. The Bill touches on very important issues: nothing less than the future composition of one of our Houses of Parliament. I share the view of other noble Lords—although not, of course, the noble Lord, Lord Lester of Herne Hill—who do not think that these issues are properly addressed in a Private Member’s Bill. That has never been our constitutional tradition and it is not a modernisation that I would want to see. In the debate preceding this one, my noble friend Lord Howard of Rising made exactly the same point about a Private Member’s Bill, introduced by a member of my own party, which is also on a constitutional matter, albeit, some would argue, a more important one. This Bill, drafted in isolation from any other reform, is not one that my party could ever support. It could create an all-appointed House—by a slow route, it is true, but by a sure route none the less. Over a period, and not a long one in the context of the history of reform of the Lords, this Bill, if passed, would reduce Cross-Bench strength by 16 per cent, Conservative strength by over 20 per cent, Liberal strength by over 6 per cent and Labour strength by less than 2 per cent. Even Mr Straw, in his recent White Paper, acknowledged that to be unfair, as it would benefit Labour disproportionately against the other parties and the Cross Benches. However, a new Prime Minister and a Labour majority in another place may well find that quite attractive, so I suggest that it is unwise of the noble Lord to expose the Government, by trying to send his Bill down the corridor, to temptations that could include amending it to exclude at a stroke the extant 92. I did not think that an all-appointed House was the policy of the Liberal Democrats and I have heard nothing today to suggest that their policy has changed so as to move towards an all-appointed House, asthis Bill would create. It would do so withoutany safeguards against the kind of abuse of the appointments system that we have seen on such a flagrant scale in the past 10 years—a scale not seen since the days of that noted Liberal, Lloyd George. This approach is piecemeal and, as several noble Lords have said, does not even attempt to tackle the main issue of long-term reform. It will be interesting for all your Lordships, I am sure, to hear from the Minister the Government’s new thinking on this matter, following confirmation of the identity of the next Prime Minister. There are many ironies in this debate beyond the fact that the noble Lord, who put himself forward for election in 1999, is now trying to persuade me, who put myself forward for election in 2005, to join him barking in the manger to keep any other hereditary Peers with the wish to serve Parliament and their country from submitting their names to do so. One of those ironies is that we are debating this so soon after we mourned the death of Lord Weatherill, whose proposal to keep 92 elected hereditary Peers on a transitional basis pending enactment of stage 2 reform was carried with massive majorities in both Houses eight years ago. I have seen no concrete and detailed proposal for stage 2 yet coming forward with the support of the House of Commons. While we await it, I feel, if I may say so with all courtesy, that it is perhaps surprising for someone such as the noble Lord, who has himself benefited from a system that Parliament agreed, to seek to force the early termination of that very system. If he felt that the principle was so wrong, perhaps he should not have stood for election in 1999.