House of Lords Bill [HL]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Steel, on introducing the Bill, which must clearly be put in the context of the Statement which was helpfully made by the Government yesterday. On that occasion I raised the question of representation on the cross-party group, and I have received a ““Dear Colleague”” letter this morning from the Leader of the House. She describes the group as bringing together representatives of the main parties. In fact, of course, it brings together representatives of the Front Benches of the main parties and not of the Back Benches. In the letter, the noble Baroness goes on to ask for comments on how Back-Bench views might be taken into account without the cross-party group becoming in any way unwieldy. I have a simple question for the noble Lord who is to reply: what is the size of the group and how does it compare with the size of the Joint Committee on Conventions, which everyone agrees was a great success? It did not seem to me, having had the honour of serving on it, that that committee was unwieldy. The cross-party group’s recommendation will have no authority if it proceeds in the way that the Government are proposing. I hope the Government will think again about that matter. My second point on the Bill and the Statement is that too much weight is being put on the recent vote in the House of Commons. We all know perfectly well that the first attempt at getting any consensus, or even a vote, took a long while. It is well known that the last vote, the one for a 100 per cent elected House, was a result of tactical voting by those who were actually in favour of a wholly appointed House. Even on the 20/80 vote, the crucial point is that opinion is changing in the House of Commons. Increasingly, both there and elsewhere, there is a greater understanding of the change which has taken place in this House since 1999, particularly in relation to the balance between the various parties. So we must not put too much weight on that opinion, recently expressed, which was, after all, described as an indicative vote. I shall now comment on the two other main points in the Bill. On the case for removing the by-elections, if one reads back on the events of the time one will find that an amendment was suggested by one of our committees to limit the process to five years. That amendment was not carried, unfortunately, but it was certainly never envisaged that it would go on for as long as it has. If the object of the by-elections was to ensure that reform took place on stage two, it certainly failed in that respect. The system has long outlived its usefulness—if it ever had any—because what stage two it was supposed to promote was never made clear. I do not think that the Statement made at the time by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine—we have moved on to several Lord Chancellors since—is relevant in the present context or, in particular, in the context of this Bill. The case for an appointments commission is overwhelming. Mr Gordon Brown is seeking to dissociate himself from much of the past 10 years. There are many things, not least tax credits, from which he certainly cannot dissociate himself. But, whatever the results of the investigations into cash for peerages, it has undoubtedly done great damage to this House. Therefore the case for him dissociating himself from that issue by going along with the Bill is very strong indeed. At Cambridge I was once told by my tutor that he did not mind his students looking at their watches; it was when they got them out and shook them that he got worried. In a digital age that no longer applies. I commend strongly the noble Lord’s Bill and I hope that it will go on to the statute book as soon as possible.