House of Lords Bill [HL]

My Lords, there is a fair variety of opinion on this side of the House. I am totally in favour of an elected House of Lords and am optimistic as a result of yesterday’s Statement that we will move in that direction. That is why I so thoroughly support the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Steel. Whether one views it as the opening shot in negotiations or, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, said in her absolutely excellent speech, as the necessary first step, the Bill is an extraordinary offering and deserves to be treated much better than it was in yesterday’s Statement when reference to it was dismissive and derisory. If this Government believe in consultation and consensus, they must show it, they must speak it and they must act on it. If the ears of my noble friend Lord Strathclyde are burning when I say that, so they should be, because that remark applies as much to those on my Front Bench as it does to those on the Benches opposite. We as a House deserve our opinions on this to be taken seriously and, although my opinions happen to be the same as those of Front-Benchers, Back-Benchers must be included in this operation. The idea until yesterday that they should not and that consensus should involve Front-Benchers only is ridiculous and must be stamped on. The Bill is built on consensus in this House and now seeks to achieve consensus outside it. From the point of view of someone in favour of an elected Chamber, it is a tool of negotiation and an astonishingly generous first statement of position. It proposes some undoubtedly good changes to this House. It will get rid of the incentive for political parties to put into this House placemen or money men and it will concentrate the quality of this House on people who will make a real difference. It will improve the balance of this House and bring it much closer to the electorate, because the system of appointment will be much more closely tied to the results in general elections. This Bill is only a clause away from being a Bill for an elected House of Lords. All you have to do is add a clause saying that parties must publish their list of Peers before any election. Then we would have something indistinguishable from the current system for electing Members of the European Parliament. That system may not be to everyone’s taste, but the Government and the Commons consider it to be a system of election. This House, with its rooted objection to a wholly elected Chamber and with its love of an appointed system, has moved to the borders, towards the Commons. We are right to expect that the Commons will respond, include us in its discussions and discuss seriously how we should take this forward. I share with the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, the conviction that passing this Bill is the best first step towards an elected House of Lords. It gets us into the position where we would be much closer to election. The uncertainties that would come from moving towards an elected House of Lords would be much less. It would become much easier to experiment with election, to take it gently and to think carefully about how we deal with all the many remaining difficult questions faced by people like me who favour election, many of which are being canvassed today. This Bill deserves the support of the Government and, particularly, the wholehearted and unambiguous support of my Front Bench. I hope that it will get that.