Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

My Lords, at the moment this debate is, I think, about sending signals, not fine-tuning an actual law. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bach, for his clear introduction. I am not sure that the Bill is a Christmas tree. A Christmas tree has a clear shape and a warm attractiveness but I do not really feel that about this Bill. However, that is no reason why we should not state clearly where the problems and principles lie, and clarify one or two particular matters. I have to say to the noble Lord, Lord McNally—mindful that he has made me carry the can for the failures of my predecessors 94 years ago—that the last scene of "Hamlet" has a great many deathbeds but no actual conversions. Perhaps that is what he was hinting at. The problem is far more widespread than the Bill acknowledges. Tackling it in this rushed and piecemeal way fully deserves the scathing treatment it received from your Lordships’ own Select Committee in the report which has already been referred to twice. As it says: ""This is no way to undertake the task of constitutional reform"." For the past few years, it has been easy to distract attention from other pressing issues by saying, "Let’s reform the constitution, and let’s do something with the Lords". That plays well in parts of the press, and there are so-called think tanks which belie their own designation by trundling along for the ride. However, this is a recipe for shallow, short-term thinking. If you translate it into statute, it will produce a muddled and messy public life, because a muddle and a mess is what we already have. The scandals of this past year—the unprecedented crisis of which the noble Lord, Lord Bach, spoke—are only the tip of the iceberg. Our entire constitution has been creaking under the strain of old methods addressing new challenges for at least a generation. Ever since the massive majorities of Margaret Thatcher, we have had Governments who could, and did, ignore parliamentary process, with a tiny group of people—sometimes only one—taking decisions which no one dared to oppose and which were rammed through Parliament without proper debate. A generation ago, Lord Hailsham spoke of the need to challenge and frustrate the tyranny of the elective dictatorship. That was echoed at a meeting here in Westminster last month by Professor Sir John Baker of Cambridge, who spoke of the "absolute monarchy" of the Prime Minister—not the present Prime Minister particularly but any Prime Minister. In calling for an independent constitutional convention, Sir John warned of the danger of constitutional reform being driven by the Government of the day—any Government of the day—who would inevitably tilt new constitutional proposals to suit their own party agendas. The point of a constitution, after all, is to set up a framework within which Governments can govern but can also be held to account. However, constitutional reform has proceeded ad hoc, and at the whim of the Government whom the constitution is there to restrain, without anyone thinking through the larger issues involved. A thousand unintended consequences lurk in the wings. For instance, to cite Professor Baker again, a wholly elected House of Lords would not only rob Parliament of one of its present strengths—the presence of genuine experts—but throw all the weight for scrutiny on to the newly established Supreme Court. In case anyone supposes that I am coming round to a covert plea for the continuation of Bishops in your Lordships’ House, I shall make my own position clear. I would rather have a wholly appointed House of Lords from which Bishops were excluded than a 95 per cent elected House in which Bishops were still just included. Speaking precisely as a Bishop who is concerned for the health of our nation, I would rather have a second Chamber that can do its job without me, if need be, than one which cannot do its job even with me, if you see what I mean. Of course, I would rather have the best of both, and of course Bishops could still be appointed, as have been the noble Lord, Lord Sacks, and the Methodist Peer, the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths. So what about an elected House? We have some excellent MPs, but many observers think that to fill another Chamber with more of the same, whipped to the will of the Government, would be worse than pointless. I am, in other words, much more concerned with the ability of the Lords to scrutinise legislation and hold the Commons and the Government to account than I am with the official place of Bishops within that House, although I believe that matters too. The point is that our fine-tuned constitution is a complex ecosystem, and you can not play about with it without considerable risk. If we are to make changes, elected politicians are not the people to make them. The Canadian provinces of British Columbia and Ontario chose members of the public by lot for their conventions on electoral reform. They did a good job. We could do worse. Some think we already have. Our present confusions have contributed strongly to what I can only call the decline of democracy in the West and in our country. We vote in decreasing numbers; I bet that where I live in the north-east there will be a record low turnout in May, as traditional Labour voters stay away in droves. That is what I am hearing. This breeds a crisis of legitimacy: even if the next Government have a clear parliamentary majority, they are unlikely to have been voted for by more than 35 per cent of the electorate. Faced with that, people who suppose that we can just rumble on and hope for the best, that we can tinker with this or that aspect of public life, that our present elected politicians are just the people to reorganise our constitution, that having a second Chamber consisting of more people voted for by one-third of the public will solve all our ills, or that any of the above will constitute genuine democracy, legitimate government and proper accountability are putting their heads in the sand. The idea that voting every five years constitutes proper accountability is laughable. Most seats in this country remain pretty safe. We need the Government to be held to account by the Commons and the Commons to be held to account by the people on the one hand and by the Lords on the other. Only the last of those is working at the moment, and a cynic might say that the Government are now trying to stop it. What about legitimacy? I find it depressing that speakers in your Lordship's House refer to "the elected House" as though we are somehow ashamed of our own less than fully legitimate standing. We are here according to our ancient constitution, modified as it has been over the years, to do a job that needs doing, which is to rescue the elected House from the tyranny of elective dictatorship and the rushing of important debates, such as this. The idea that voting, and only voting, confers legitimacy is a simplistic modernist slogan which we should resist. When faced with these large issues, the smaller ones in the Bill look like window-dressing. The sideswipe against the 92 remaining hereditaries looks like a desperate attempt to achieve one last old Labour objective before new Labour runs out of steam. It breaks the undertaking that was given. The public perception of why your Lordships' House is so full is because over the past 10 years the Government have sent more people to this Chamber than other Governments in the same timeframe, unless I am much mistaken. The noises off that were made about the Act of Settlement are just that: noises off. Since the unsuccessful amendment was proposed by a Member who believes in neither God nor the monarchy, his plea for the sovereign's religious liberty rings a little hollow. Questions have also been raised about the disciplinary process for those who occupy these Benches. I assure the House that the reasons why there might be a different system for Bishops are because, technically, we are not Peers and because we have our own internal disciplinary system. The one remaining point of great interest to many in the church concerns the possibility of alternative voting systems. Seven years ago, the General Synod of the Church of England voted by a massive majority to advocate proportional representation by single transferable vote. Many of my fellow Bishops have campaigned for this. I am myself very open to it. The discussion needs to be had. However, there is an oddity about holding a referendum on such a topic. Why will there be only two options? Will it be a first past the post referendum? If so, will those who do not like first past the post be acting against their conscience if they vote in the referendum? There is something curiously twisted and peculiar about that. I end by re-emphasising the two basic points. First, any and all constitutional reforms should be undertaken only in the light of a full top-to-bottom constitutional review. Secondly, elected politicians are the last people who ought to be in charge of such a review, whether or not they are in washing-up mode. If there is an argument to be made for Bishops remaining in your Lordships' House it might be that, as well as having deep and constantly refreshed roots in actual local communities, we have the freedom to think outside the dominant secularist paradigm and say clearly what lots of other people are thinking.