House of Lords Bill [HL]

My Lords, I take pleasure in echoing precisely the case just made by the noble Lord, Lord Tomlinson. It is important that we focus on the consequences of the Statement made yesterday, underlining as it does the contents of the Green Paper, because that is the task on which apparently our leaders are engaged. As the noble Lord has pointed out, it is not a task for which there is support, nor on which they should be engaged. The discussions of this House start on three premises, which have always been the same. As the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said yesterday, "““this House has performed very well since the major changes made in 1999. We need to build on that and on the incredibly valuable role of this House as a revising and scrutinising Chamber””.—[Official Report, 19/7/07; col. 396.]" That is the premise on which we start. The second premise is to identify the objectives of reform. Not one word written or spoken by the self-describing ““reformers”” is critical of any aspect of the current performance of this House. The third premise is that, again, not one word written or spoken by these so-called reformers suggests any significant improvement that would be made to the performance of this House by accepting their changes. The only word on which the case that is distracting so many people is founded is the mystical word, ““legitimacy””; but it is quite clear from investigations of that, that there can be only one consequence of this House being endowed with and being able to claim legitimacy: an increased risk of conflicts, in two different ways. Elected Members of the other place will be competing with a second tribe of elected colleagues claiming equal legitimacy, and there is a risk of conflict between the two Houses. The risk of gridlock would be bound to increase as this House claims comparable legitimacy. No longer would we hear the magically healing words used as a closing call to a game of ping-pong, ““We have got to face it. They are the elected House””. Finally, I remind the House that for 12 months, now some eight years ago, the commission under my noble friend Lord Wakeham addressed itself to all these matters. Paragraph 10.3 of the report spells out in great detail the qualifications and qualities necessary for the effective working of this House. They are all there already, but they will be put in jeopardy if the great dream of the reformers is pursued beyond that. It is that composition which makes this House incredibly valuable. Beyond that, the premise which appears to have commended itself to the Front-Bench committee has been expressly considered by the Wakeham commission, which at paragraph 11.36 of its report states: "““Our primary judgments are that we could not recommend a wholly or largely directly elected second chamber””." Paragraph 11.9 states: "““Putting it bluntly but accurately, a wholly elected second chamber would in practice mean that British public life was dominated even more than it is already by professional politicians””." The truth is this. Going back to the cash for peerages matter, why was cash being traded? It was because cash was needed to fight elections. How was this illegitimate trading identified? By the wisdom and response of the commission appointed to control entry to this House. The logical conclusion from that is that we would be far better off with a fully appointed lower House rather than a fully elected upper House.