House of Lords Bill [HL]

My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. I am cheered to see so many Members here on a Friday. At the beginning, I make it clear that this is not a Liberal Democrat Bill, as no doubt my noble friend Lord McNally will point out later. We on these Benches remain committed to a fully elected House. Nor is the Bill strictly speaking mine, even though it has been called the Steel Bill. It is the result of a lot of work by an all-party group that has been greatly concerned that the years of debate about long-term reform are obscuring the need for what we call effective, immediate reform of your Lordships’ House. I pay tribute to that group, chaired by Sir Patrick Cormack, a Member in the other place. It included the Father of the House, Alan Williams from the Labour Benches, and many of your Lordships attended. I pay particular tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth—Professor Norton—who was mainly responsible for drafting the Bill and the Explanatory Notes. He has done that in such a lucid way that I do not propose to weary the House with an introductory speech spelling out all the details in the Bill, as it is quite easy to follow by simply reading it. Members may ask why I am doing this. The answer is breathtakingly simple. I missed the meeting at which it was decided who would propose the Bill. Yesterday, we had a Statement from the new Lord Chancellor on the long-term vision of reform of this place. In referring to this Bill, he said that it did not contain the comprehensive reform that he was seeking. That, of course, is true, but if we are to achieve that comprehensive reform, we need a series of steps. First, we need agreement on all the party manifestos, which as we saw from the exchanges yesterday is not all that straightforward; we need new conventions between the two Houses—the committee under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Cunningham, unanimously and emphatically made it clear that an elected House would require different conventions; we need agreement on an election system, because the party list system did not find much favour in either House when it was last debated; and we need legislation on the Floor of both Houses, which will take time, including for the financial arrangements of an elected House. Those of us who were present during the 1968 and 1969 debates on reform know how complicated that can be. Then there is the holding of elections. Yesterday, the Minister agreed with me that we are looking at 2014, if we are optimistic. There was a delightful moment in the other place yesterday when Jack Straw chided the Leader of the Opposition for saying that, if he came to government, this would be a third-term issue. As was pointed out, that was a bit rich coming from a Government who were clearly making it a fourth-term issue. That was a neat point to score. This Bill offers the prospect of limited but early reform. I shall deal with the four parts of the Bill. Part 1 is very topical and brings to an end the controversy over cash for peerages. Let us be quite frank: despite the decision that we all heard this morning, the damage that has been done, particularly to this House but to the political world in general, by the cash-for-peerages allegations has been substantial. There is a strange symmetry about this in party-political terms. The Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats can point the finger at the Blair Government and say, ““Ah, no smoke without fire””; the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats can point to the Conservative Party and say, ““What about your tax exiles?””, one of whom was recently appointed as a working Peer and then applied for leave of absence so that he could stay in his tax haven; and the Conservative and Labour parties can, in turn, say to this quarter of the House, ““What about Mr Lloyd George?””—the song is, "““Lloyd George Knew My Father””," and he probably sold him his peerage as well. All parties have been tainted by this matter. It is not modern. One can go back to the days of James VI and I, who was well known to dispose of peerages to people who in the school books of history were euphemistically called his favourites. The fact is that appointment to this place in return for favours of different kinds has long been a blot on the landscape. The Bill does away with that by saying that in future there will be a single-entry system into the House as a result of the appointment of a statutory appointments commission. Even those Peers who come here by virtue of the Prime Minister’s continuing right to appoint Members to be Ministers should be subject, even if only briefly and automatically, to the scrutiny of that commission. The commission would be appointed by Mr Speaker, who according to the Bill would have to consult the Lord Speaker and others, obviously including the party leaders. The appointment of a statutory commission has been promised and awaited for some time, so I hope that this proposal will commend itself to the Government. The second part of the Bill brings to an end hereditary by-elections. Much has been made of the statement made in 1999 by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, that hereditary Peers would remain until stage 2 reform took place. He said that stage 2 reform ““will”” take place, but he was talking in 1999 and I do not think that he was contemplating 2014. I do not think that any of us thought in 1999 that we would be having an endless series of hereditary by-elections. The Bill does not propose that the hereditary Peers be dismissed from the House; it simply proposes that no new ones should come in. Therefore, it brings the principle of entry to this House by heredity to an end, which was foreshadowed in the Labour Party manifesto and was part of Mr Asquith’s pledge back in 1910. It is necessary to do this because, although the by-elections that we have had may pass muster in the Conservative Party and, indeed, on the Cross Benches, on these Benches the process was ridiculous: we had six candidates for a by-election and four voters. Before the Great Reform Bill of 1832, the rotten borough of Old Sarum had at least 11 voters. In the Labour Party, there were 11 candidates and only three voters, and we had the spectacle of the Clerk of the Parliaments declaring to the world that a new Member had been elected to the British Parliament by two votes to one. That should not be allowed to continue and my Bill brings it to an end. Part 3 enables Members to retire from the House. That is a very modest proposal, but an important one. When I was a student of constitutional law at Edinburgh University, the late Professor JDB Mitchell banged into our heads—and it became an examination question—that the House of Lords is the only manmade institution that is kept efficient by the persistent absenteeism of the majority of its members. That is not quite as true today as it was then, but it is still partly true. This House has some 750 Members, and our average age is over 68. That means that the great majority of us, including me, are bus pass holders. We do not exactly represent the broad sweep of the nation. The ability to get the numbers in this place down to below the numbers in the House of Commons is an important part of the Bill. It can be no function of a Private Member’s Bill or of this House to make financial provisions, but the hint is there that the Government should come forward with some scheme—it cannot be a pension because we are not paid, but perhaps a gratuity or an annuity—to encourage Members over a certain age to retire if they so wish. The House might decide in those circumstances that such Members should keep the social rights that we have allowed the hereditary Peers who disappeared. There is one other important consequence of this part of my Bill that I draw to the attention of the House: the European Parliament has decided that, as from the next election, it will not permit any Member of a national Parliament to sit in the European Parliament. This House has benefited from having Members who have been in the European Parliament or who currently serve there. They will be debarred from serving in the European Parliament for another term unless we pass the Bill, because temporary leave of absence does not remove membership of this House. That has already been determined by the European Parliament. It is therefore important that we include this provision in the Bill. There is nothing to prevent a Member who has retired from being reappointed at some time in future. This provision would bring down our numbers and the average age. Part 4 is the least important part of the Bill, but I introduce it as a matter of principle. In the Commons, if a Member is guilty of a serious offence involving a year’s detention in jail, he is expelled from Parliament. The principle is that lawbreakers should not be lawmakers. I believe that that principle ought to apply in this House and that it is an anomaly that it does not. I know that this is topical, as one of our number is awaiting sentence, but I do not want the debate to be ad hominem; I want it to be a matter of principle that applies equally to both Houses. The provision in brackets in this part has a tinge of retrospection about it and I await to hear comments from other noble Lords, especially the Minister, on whether it should remain or be removed. In conclusion—I want to be brief and encourage brevity throughout the day—let me reiterate the main point of the Bill: its proposals provide an opportunity for consensus on a more limited range of reforms than those that were outlined to us yesterday. It has the potential to unite a majority in all three parties and in both Houses. Most interesting of all, it has the potential to unite those who seek an elected House and those who are happy with an appointed House. Yesterday, in a timely intervention, the Constitution Unit said: "““Whatever the plans for more large scale reform, the government would be well advised in the meantime to consider proposals such as these, which could move things on, whilst improving public trust in parliament””." That is the basic case, and our plan is to listen to the voices in this debate and reintroduce the Bill, possibly with amendments in the light of comments today, early in the new Session. It would then be possible for the Government to pick it up in the other place and for legislation to be in effect next year. In his answer to questions yesterday, Mr Straw made it clear that he is in a listening mood. We should take advantage of that. The Bill is not the comprehensive reform that he seeks; it does not pretend to be. I am aware that during the past few weeks it has become politically sound to parade one’s credentials as a son of the manse. I happily do so, and end with two lines from a well known hymn: "““I do not ask to see The distant scene; one step enough for me””." I commend the Bill to the House. Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time.—(Lord Steel of Aikwood.)