House of Lords Bill [HL]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble lord, Lord Steel, on his stamina in bringing the Bill forward in substantially the same form for what I think is a third time. So far, despite support from all parts of the House, that has proved a pretty thankless task concerning the Government's response, which must be the pre-condition of its making progress in this House, let alone the other place, but it is to be hoped that his persistence will be better rewarded on this occasion and that the Government will want to give the Bill a warmer welcome today. The Bill should certainly be supported. For a start, all the things it contains are things the Government want: a statutory Appointments Commission, an end to further accessions based on heredity, and the possibility for Members to retire from the House and for the House to exclude those sentenced to more than a year's imprisonment. To be sure, it does not contain all the things the Government would like, but it is equally clear that the Government cannot get all they would like—not in this Parliament, anyway. The Government have made it clear that there is no question of enacting the comprehensive package that they would like until after a general election. Mr Cameron has described major House of Lords reform as a third-term issue. In their manifesto for the 2005 general election, the Government promised to complete the reform of the House of Lords. The only way in which they are going to be able to leave a legacy that goes any way beyond the removal of the bulk of the hereditaries in 1999 is by picking up this Bill, or something like it, and running with it. There is broad consensus in favour of the measures that the Bill contains. It does not create any impediment or comprehensive reform at a later stage, but it is the only practical way of making progress with the reform agenda at the present time. As it is, 10 years have already elapsed since the Government’s last and only attempt at Lords reform. The Government have conceded that it will be 2014 at the earliest before anything can be implemented if we wait for the comprehensive package, and others have speculated that it could well be much longer. This is the central case for supporting the Bill now, and it is unanswerable. If there are detailed aspects of the Bill that people do not like, it can easily be amended in Committee. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Steel, has already amended his earlier attempts in order to take on board constructive criticisms. However, the process of never-ending amendment should not be used as a device for killing the Bill. That was plainly what was beginning to happen the last time the Bill had a brief outing in Committee, and I am bound to say that it did not show the House at its best. It is even more important now in the light of recent events that the House should be seen to be adopting a responsible approach to putting its house in order and getting rid of the more obvious anachronisms in its constitution, which can easily be tackled. The case that an interim package of widely supported and sensible reforms should not be held up indefinitely pending the enactment of root-and-branch legislation was unanswerable the last time that we made it, and it is even more unanswerable today. Things have moved on. The reasons for saying this are threefold. First, the Government have published a further White Paper as a result of discussions in a cross-party group that was more like the magic circle than a genuine process of consultation. Many of its conclusions were indecisive, the response that it received could be described as "underwhelmed", to put it mildly, and the Government have not felt confident enough of such proposals as there were in the White Paper for a comprehensive package of reform to move to a debate on them in either House of Parliament. Secondly, the recent allegations of misconduct in this House have pushed the question of House of Lords reform up the political agenda and made it imperative that action be taken without delay to remove at least the more glaring defects in our constitution. If the Government have particular measures that they wish to introduce to deal with this situation, the Bill presents just the legislative vehicle that they need. Finally, the Public Administration Select Committee in another place has published two reports strongly endorsing the case presented by the sponsors of the Bill. I did not want to weary the House with lengthy quotations, and I want to weary it even less now that the noble Lord, Lord Steel, has quoted from the report, but I will quote a couple of passages from the first of the Select Committee’s reports, Propriety and Peerages, which it published in December 2007. One is specific and one is more general. The first relates to the specific need to put the Appointments Commission on to a statutory basis. At paragraph 135, the report says: ""One of the major lessons to be drawn from the events of the last two years is that the rules for entry to the House of Lords are far too ad hoc. They must be clear; they must be widely agreed; and they must be of unquestionable legitimacy. In short, they must be statutory. We call upon the Government to legislate as soon as parliamentary time allows to put the House of Lords Appointments Commission onto a statutory footing"." In support of the more general proposition, I was going to quote briefly two paragraphs, but as the noble Lord, Lord Steel, has already quoted the passage about running repairs not being held up pending agreement on elections, I shall simply quote from paragraph 180, in which the Select Committee said: ""We believe that we propose a package that can be supported by all major parties—many of its elements have already been supported—and by those who have very different views of the future of the second chamber. We hope that recent events will provide the impetus to make these proposals, much discussed but never implemented, the political priority they need to be"." If the Government do not respond positively to these calls, they are in serious danger of making the best the enemy of the good.