House of Lords Bill [HL]

My Lords, this Bill proposes two of the principal reforms needed to re-establish the second Chamber as an effective and legitimate House of Parliament. Courteously and gradually, but inexorably, it would remove the remaining hereditary Peers from our legislature. We would hear not the rumbling of tumbrils, but time’s winged chariot, as, with the discontinuance of by-elections to replenish the complement of hereditary Peers sitting in this House, their numbers gradually dwindled to extinction. No one with a feeling for British history and no one who has observed the practical work in Parliament of hereditary Members of your Lordships’ House will contemplate this change without some sadness, but the changed character of our society, its power structures and our modern polity make inescapable the conclusion that no convincing case can now be made for the hereditary principle for entry into the legislature. The Bill would also legitimise an appointed second Chamber. The appointments commission would be established by parliamentary statute. Its membership, duties, criteria and procedural guidelines would all, too, be established by the House of Commons from time to time, thus vesting the commission and its work with democratic legitimacy while confirming the primacy of the democratically elected House of Commons. The Bill does not preclude moving later to an elected second Chamber, but those who suppose that it is undemocratic for there to be an appointed House of Parliament are wrong. Where, as provided by this Bill, the composition of the House is established by statute and by resolutions of the elected House of Commons, there is no democratic deficit. The role of the appointed Chamber would be advisory and no more than that. The existing conventions, recently approved by the elected Chamber, would persist and would not be threatened by an appointed Chamber as they undoubtedly would be by an elected second Chamber. The appointed second Chamber would have its familiar powers to amend and delay, but these powers would only be enough to ensure that the elected House and the Executive took seriously the advice of the appointed House; they would not in the end thwart the will of the House of Commons. The criterion of conspicuous merit, which under the Bill would be the determining consideration for appointment to the second Chamber, would ensure that the elected House and the Executive would be better advised than they would be by a second elected Chamber. This Bill would create a better informed and better functioning democratic legislature. They are wrong who think that our democracy should be renewed from the top down rather than from the bottom up. No value would be added by having the second Chamber elected. If the primacy of the House of Commons were somehow to be entrenched in a so-called constitutional settlement as adumbrated by the new Lord Chancellor in the Commons—nothing in our constitution is permanently settled—what serious or able politicians would offer themselves for election to the second Chamber? Who would bother to vote for party placepersons unable to exercise any significant power? If the primacy of the House of Commons were not entrenched, we would have a recipe for endless sterile conflict. How much better to renew our democracy at the level of local government, but that is a debate for another day. My one criticism of this Bill is that, in its provisions for leave of absence, it does not go far enough. I hope that I shall not be disharmonious in saying that I cannot see that we can today justify membership of the legislature for life any more than we can justify the hereditary principle. The Government have been right to propose that membership of the second Chamber should be for a fixed term—let us say 15 or 20 years from the point at which the new basis of composition is established. If we can introduce that, too, we shall have a comprehensive reform. This Bill is a serious and major measure to reform the House of Lords for the 21st century. We should approve it in principle today and it should be reintroduced, modified as I have suggested, early in the next Session, when I hope that, with the Government recognising its common sense and usefulness, it will pass through all its stages both here and in another place.