Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

My Lords, the Minister has introduced this Bill with a straight face and has answered all the questions that have been put to him with a straight face. On behalf of this side of the House and possibly the whole House, I congratulate him on that rather difficult task. The noble Lord has presented the Bill as a grand and sweeping improvement to the way in which this country is governed but in reality, as we know—and as was made clear as he introduced the 13 parts of the Bill—it is nothing of the sort. It is a ragbag collection of proposals and ideas that range from the possibly sensible to the absurd. The noble Lord knows this and most of us in the House know this. If the Government had really been serious about presenting this Bill to us in a fit state to be approved, they could have stepped up their efforts to do so. The noble Lord told us that there have been 18 consultations. The Government have been producing White Papers, Green Papers and drafts for several years. The present Bill, however, was quite different when it was first presented in another place in July last year. It was given its Second Reading in another place some time later, on 20 October. Since then, it has been languishing while the Government use it as a vehicle for whatever the latest idea happens to be and whatever other Bills happen to come before it in the queue, despite its alleged importance as a constitutional Bill. The noble Lord will, I imagine, have read the quite damning report produced by your Lordships’ Constitution Committee, which takes great exception to the way in which the Government have behaved. I could, if I wanted, read out great chunks of that committee’s report, but no doubt the noble Lord will be aware of them, as will the rest of the House. If the Government need to make delay after delay in order to insert amendments made in desperate response to bad headlines and unfavourable opinion polls, that is their prerogative. But to insert amendments on the voting system for Parliament, on the tax status of parliamentarians and on changes to the Parliamentary Standards Act—enacted only last year—late in the Bill’s stages in another place so that little debate could take place, to bring the Bill to your Lordships’ House only a few days before what we all know will be the announcement that we are about to have an election, in the full knowledge that there will be no time for scrutiny, and yet still to expect your Lordships’ House to embrace it is wishful thinking indeed. We all know that there is no time available for a Committee stage for this Bill, almost a third of whose clauses were not debated in another place. I repeat: almost a third of its clauses were not debated in another place, yet the noble Lord is suggesting that we proceed with a Bill of this sort—a constitutional Bill—in the wash-up. Having said that, I shall be kind. The whole of the Bill is not junk. There are clauses—indeed, whole parts of the Bill—which are largely unobjectionable, but they still need the scrutiny that this House needs to give to all Bills that come before it. That is what we do. Part 1, for example, places the Civil Service on a statutory footing; it could—indeed, it probably should—have been given a long overdue discrete Civil Service Bill. That is something for which we and many others in this House have been asking for many years. We would welcome greater control over the armies of special advisers, for example, but, as the noble Lord is fully aware, a code already exists. How, in practical terms, will anything be different except, as my right honourable friend Mr Cameron has said, that their numbers would be reduced? Will the Government’s proposals be anything other than cosmetic? Why do the proposals relating to the Civil Service not include quangos and other quasi-governmental bodies? We all know that such bodies cost the Exchequer some £43 billion a year. Where are the controls? Where is the code relating to service in such bodies? These are areas that this House must probe in Committee, but they will, alas, probably have to be dealt with at a later date in another Parliament. Part 1 is perhaps the most important part of the Bill, but it is important that we seek the opportunity to enhance it and to embrace all the government bodies and to get the controls right. However, we must debate that fully, and in Committee; we do not want government or legislation simply by decree, which is what the noble Lord is seeking from us. On another part of the Bill, we will consider carefully, again in Committee—if the Government allow us the proper Committee stage that we deserve—the provisions relating to the ratification of treaties. We on this side of the House have favoured, in principle, the idea of greater parliamentary control, although it is important not to forget the flexibility that is inherent in the application of the royal prerogative in some circumstances. Again, we need to debate that. However, as the Minister also made clear in his introduction, it is not clear how far either House has authority under these proposals ultimately to prevent a Government from signing a treaty if they are determined to do so. The role of this House seems limited. There is a particular lacuna on European treaties. After the betrayal of the promise made at the last election by the Government—and by the Liberal Democrats—to give the British people a say on the draft treaty before it was ratified, it is abundantly clear, not least after the stitch-up behind closed doors with the EU president and the so-called high representative, that it is not enough to rely on the systems set out here. The Government are offering another referendum. At a late stage in another place, as the Minister said, they found themselves pushing for one on reform—if I might put it in those terms—of the voting system to abolish first past the post and introduce the alternative vote system. I understand that that would have been one sure-fire method of voting that would have increased the Labour majority in the 1997 election yet further. The Prime Minister has been entirely unenthusiastic about any such change until—surprise, surprise—an election looms that he cannot duck and obviously feels that he cannot win. Clearly, this has nothing to do with electoral fairness and everything to do with flashing a bit of ankle at the Liberal Democrats, who are leaning forward in eager anticipation even at the very mention of proportional representation—except that we know that this is not proportional representation but the alternative vote. It is pretty clear that many of the Minister’s noble friends are no more enthusiastic than we are at changing to a system that will embed in all future Governments a party that has been unable to win a national election on the strength of its own policies since the days of the Ottoman Empire. I think that we know a gimmick when we see one. I turn to Part 5—to relieve the noble Lord, let me say that I am not going to go through all 13 parts of the Bill, as he kindly did. I do not have time for all 13 parts; my noble friend will deal with some of them at the end. Part 5 seeks to make further changes to membership of your Lordships’ House. We were given to understand in the gracious Speech at the beginning of this somewhat truncated Session—we do not know how long it will last, but it cannot last that much longer—that a Bill would be published providing for general reform of the House of Lords. That would have been the appropriate way to legislate. Instead, we have a risible effort in Part 5, largely pilfered from the ideas put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Steel, who I imagine is here because, to his dismay, they are not pilfered fully enough. The Government have been dithering over Lords reform for some time, but to bring forward the clauses in Part 5, which would create a progressively fully appointed House, is, as the noble Lord is fully aware, in breach of that undertaking made by a privy counsellor, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, to this House on 30 March 1999 and accepted by both Houses as the basis of the passage of the 1999 Act as stage 1 reform. It is also directly contrary to the Government’s pretence in their proposed draft Bill that they want an elected not an appointed House. It is a move away from that objective with no guarantee that reform will take place. Moreover, it would remove from the House a group of Peers with no interest in preserving the life peerage as an exclusive method of coming to this House. The proposal is confused; it is dishonourable in that it breaches that undertaking made a privy counsellor; and, except in the context of the perfectly legitimate point of view of many of your Lordships that an all-appointed House is the right stage 2, it is entirely illogical. It makes reform less rather than more likely. For those reasons we do not support it. The suspension and removal of Peers can, again, be dealt with effectively either in the context of a wider reform Bill or in any legislation that may follow relating to discipline and behaviour after the reports by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Eames, and the SSRB. We do not oppose such a provision; indeed, my noble friend Lord Strathclyde was one of the first to remind the House of the powers of suspension, which were used effectively in the case of the accusations against the four Peers earlier this year. In the most serious cases, suspension can be renewed at the beginning of each Parliament and, while we agree that there should be a clear power of permanent exclusion, it is not a matter of such urgency as to require action in the next few weeks. I move to other provisions, which I confess perplex me a lot, as they appear to have been created for the convenience of the Lord President of the Council and all his other titles—the noble Lord, Lord Mandelson. I refer to Clauses 56 and 57. We on these Benches see little attraction in changing the law to allow this House to be a staging post to a career in the Commons, or to allow defeated Ministers to sit out periods of opposition in comfort here before disclaiming to fight the next election. This House has its role in the constitution, which should not be to provide a warm rest for MPs while they scour the country for another seat. Let us use the existing leave of absence scheme to enable those Peers who do not wish to take part or to be lobbied to absent themselves. We can see no urgency for that proposal except to satisfy the unsatisfied ambitions of the Lord President of the Council and all his other titles. That does not seem to me, or to many other noble Lords, a sufficient basis on which to make such a constitutional reform. On a lighter note, I suggest that, if we did make such a change, there might at least be, as in life sentences for murder, the possibility of recall in certain circumstances and we could bring the noble Lord back if he misbehaved. I have touched on several areas of concern. There are many more in this Christmas tree of a Bill which my noble friend will try to address when she winds up in the time available for a major constitutional Bill that has attracted 43 speakers on one of the last days of a dying Parliament. My noble friend will do what she can, but I do not think that she will be able to satisfy all the questions that need to be asked. I am not sure that the Government will be able to do that either, but perhaps they can when the Bill reaches its Committee stage, if it ever does. I end by repeating what I think is the general feeling throughout the House: this is not the way to reform the constitution; nor is the time right; nor can this House—I stress this House—perform its proper function of scrutinising a Bill of this sort that is brought to us as this Parliament dies.