House of Lords Bill [HL]

My Lords, I strongly support this Bill and I thought that the noble Lord, Lord Steel, characteristically presented it in a masterly way. I agree with everything he said, apart from his speculation about the result of the next general election. The Bill has characteristics that should be admired in almost any Bill. First, it is short. I, perhaps more than any other Member of this House, am passionately in favour of short Bills. It has specific, limited and attainable objectives. Again, I much prefer those kinds of Bills than those that try to put the world right. Much as I am in favour of doing that, this is a model Bill of that sort. I shall emphasise during the next two or three minutes that the Bill has very wide support; in fact I have heard hardly anyone object to any of its provisions in principle. That is not to say that we will not hear one or two objections today, but the Bill has as wide support as you could hope to achieve. I have to say that it represents a much better approach than that in the White Paper presented last year, which I shall not spend any time on, other than to say that it contained a fundamental problem and flaw, which unless it is addressed will bedevil any attempt towards Lords reform. The fundamental problem is that the White Paper assumes that you can make a huge change to one part of our constitutional arrangements without having a very big impact on all the rest of the constitutional arrangements. I pray in aid of that the Cunningham committee. I remind this House that it was a committee of both Houses whose report was, uniquely as far as I remember, approved unanimously by both Houses and made it crystal clear that, before any move towards an elected House is made, the nature of the conventions governing the relationship between the two Houses must be a settled matter. That is the first job, which has not been tackled or attempted, and it is certainly not in the White Paper. What needs to be said about possible objections to the Bill? In the time that remains, I shall mention two. One objection involves stating, "The Bill is not bad but it does not do enough; it is in no way comprehensive". To me, that is a virtue of the Bill. If we adopted that approach to legislation generally, we would not have, for example, a criminal justice Bill until someone brought forward a criminal justice Bill that solved comprehensively the problems of the criminal justice system; we would be waiting a long time for a criminal justice Bill, although some might think that that was an advantage. That surely applies to all aspects of legislation. The three Front Benches have slightly got into the position of saying, "We should not really do this until we can do everything". They have a kind of proprietorial feel towards the White Paper; that is understandable because long discussions went into establishing it. I hope that they will acknowledge that since the White Paper was published, there have been, as we heard from my noble friend Lord Hunt a couple of weeks ago, 150 responses to the White Paper. I do not know what level of response would be described as wild enthusiasm but I would not have thought that 150 responses comes too close. My view very much is that it is a mistake to say that we must not do anything until we can do everything else. I know that a lot of hereditary Peers—including the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, although not as a hereditary Peer but in his present capacity—are attached to the other objection that I want briefly to deal with, which is frequently raised. It involves the agreement about stage 2. That seems to have two flaws, which we should be honest enough now to acknowledge after 10 years. The first flaw is that it does not spell out, so far as I am aware—I was not here but I have read a lot about it—who determines when stage 2 has been achieved. There is no adjudication about when that is done. Until that is spelt out, everyone will have their own interpretation of it. The other objection is that it involves the notion that there can be a conclusive determination of the constitutional structure and position of the House of Lords. That is not how constitutional change takes place—there never is a conclusive determination of anything. Even if the whole of the White Paper were enacted tomorrow, the debate would continue about the role and functions of second chambers. It happens everywhere; the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, has said that on a number of occasions. The final constitutional settlement has not been achieved in respect of the House of Commons. Some people—not me—want a different electoral system in the House of Commons. Others argue that it should be much smaller; that may have been in the Conservative Party manifesto. We have no final constitutional settlement of the local government structure. There are constant debates about the monarchy—whether there should be succession through the male line—and the role of the Church of England. The nature of constitutions is that they evolve and change. To think that the White Paper or any other document will be the conclusive word on this is to misread how the issues have been and will be dealt with. I conclude with a plea possibly to everyone but to the Front Benches in particular. Please, in addressing the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Steel, do not go beyond thinking about whether or not, in principle, you object to the four specific proposals being made. If you do, fine; do as anyone in that position would do, and try to block the Bill, but please explain why, in principle, the proposals are wrong before you oppose them. That is quite a difficult thing to do, and that is why we should strongly support the Bill.