House of Lords Bill [HL]

My Lords, the circumstances in which we debate the Bill today are quite different from those in which we debated it last year. There is now common agreement that there is no realistic possibility of a resolution in this Parliament of the great issue of whether there should be elections to the second Chamber. This House is in a reputational crisis. Wisely, a number of noble Lords who previously opposed the Bill have concluded, as the noble Lord, Lord Low, put it, that the best is the enemy of the good. There is no longer any respectable case for obstructing the reforms in the Bill that are necessary for the good functioning and good reputation of the House of Lords, of Parliament and of politics as a whole. If the reputation and good functioning of Parliament are in question, I put it to my noble friend the Minister that the reputation and good functioning of government are in question. Members of the Government know that the reforms put forward in this Bill and in the Bill tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Oakeshott—reforms which might perhaps be spliced into this Bill—are urgently needed. The Government control the parliamentary timetable and they must make this Bill their own. If they fail to do so, they will be guilty of defending the indefensible and of letting Parliament and the country down. The present non-statutory Appointments Commission has to make up its rules as it goes along. I imagine that that is embarrassing for its members and creates practical difficulties for them. It is not tolerable that they should have to continue to work in such ill defined circumstances and with their duties so hazy. It is argued by those who favour elections to the Second Chamber that an appointed House lacks legitimacy. The detailed provisions of Part 1 of the Bill address that issue usefully. The commission, of course, would not only be created by Parliament but its membership would be nominated by the Speaker of the House of Commons as well as by the Lord Speaker. The criteria that the commission would have to use and the guidelines that would be published would be determined by Parliament. In these ways, government patronage and any suspicion of undue government influence over the workings of the commission would be removed. The broad shape and balance of an appointed House would have to be approved by Parliament as set out in Clause 8(2). An appointed House, if it is not already legitimate by virtue of the knowledge, experience and diversity of its Members and the quality of the work that they do—and those characteristics do confer legitimacy—would have an added legitimacy imparted by parliamentary ratification of the procedures for appointment to the House. The proposal gradually to exclude the hereditary Peers is opposed with passion, and undoubtedly in good faith, by a very small number of Members of your Lordships’ House. But I ask those noble Earls, noble Viscounts and a small number of other noble and idiosyncratic Peers to tell us fairly and squarely how they believe that they can justify membership of the legislature in the 21st century on the basis of heredity. The noble Earl, Lord Caithness, promised us that he would be ready to bespatter the Bill with amendments—no one, I am afraid, will be able to persuade him to forego his right to obfuscate the argument and to frustrate the Bill by taking advantage of those procedural opportunities—but I simply put it to him that, surely, on any reasonable assessment, these reforms are substantial enough to be stage 2 of reform. Those who oppose Part 2 of the Bill should tackle the issue of heredity square-on in debate and give the House their reasons. To do otherwise would be too frivolous and would fail to rise to the seriousness of the situation. The noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, gave the House important advice on Part 3 of the Bill concerning permanent leave of absence. She warned us that there is an imminent and serious problem about the increased size of the House, and it is plain that we need to take urgent steps to deal with it. We need a dignified procedure for retirement from the House by Members who have served long years and are, perhaps, in failing health, as well as to make way for a new generation of Members. These are difficult issues, not least because some noble Lords who joined the House when they were relatively young have given long years of hard work and excellent public service, unsalaried and unpensionable. More thought needs to be put into the practicalities of how we devise a retirement scheme of the kind we need. The issues that have been recently before the Sub-Committee on Lords’ Interests and the Privileges Committee of your Lordships’ House are not the issues that are dealt with in Part 4 of the Bill—nor should they be dealt with in this Bill. Where the House may judge that an individual Member of the House has disgraced himself or brought the House into disrepute, the House should deal with that by means of its own disciplines. I do not believe that statute or the intervention of some external body is an appropriate way to deal with that. Our tradition of self-regulation is very precious and very important to the character and the quality of the House. However, the noble Lord, Lord Steel, is right to include in the Bill a provision that a Peer convicted of a serious criminal offence should be expelled from the House. As he said, it simply brings us into line with the House of Commons. The whole Bill is needed, and it is needed urgently.