Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

My Lords, this grandly entitled Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill might perhaps better have been entitled the Constitutional (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill. It deals with too many topics and has nearly doubled in size since it was introduced into the House of Commons. However, if the pudding lacks a theme we can, all the same, put in our fingers and pull out some plums. It is to the credit of the Government that, 150 years after the Northcote-Trevelyan report, they are legislating to place the Civil Service on a statutory footing. Indeed, it may make the Lord Chancellor seem to be acting in indecent haste if, as my noble friend promised, he very shortly brings forward proposals for an elected House after a mere 100 years since it was first proposed. I trust that it is not too late to rescue the integrity of the Civil Service and the public service ethos. We have had 30 years in which Permanent Secretaries were to be "one of us"; in which Ministers were told that they should get their hands on management and delivery of policy; in which we have had wholesale marketisation of public services. We now have the antics of the Public and Commercial Services Union. And we have had the proliferation of special advisers. A statutory code of practice for special advisers is long overdue. We can understand that a Minister might want a special adviser—someone to let his hair down with, to do the party stuff—but there are many too many of them. They get between Ministers and their civil servants; they get between Secretaries of State and their junior Ministers. They are neither elected nor appointed through a proper Civil Service process—indeed, under the legislation, they would be specifically excluded from the requirement of appointment on merit—and yet they exercise very considerable power, particularly as a cabal across Whitehall. They inject party politics and interest into too many decisions—that has been true of Governments of both parties—and they spin obsessively, intensifying the unhealthy symbiosis of Ministers and the media. We need a code of conduct, but we also need a strict limit on the numbers of special advisers. I suggest that one per department would be enough. I support a referendum on the voting system. It is right to seek the judgment and authority of the people if the rules by which Members of Parliament are elected are to be changed. It is also right to improve the regulation of referendums. It seems reasonable to suppose that the widespread disaffection with our politics and poor turnout at elections have something to do with people’s perception that their votes are wasted. Now, with campaigning increasingly targeted on a small handful of swing voters and the decline of door-to-door canvassing, I suspect that that perception is deepening. Whether or not the use of social networking techniques in the forthcoming election will change that, I do not know. A merit of the alternative vote system would be that if people felt that their second, third or fourth preference might affect the outcome they would be encouraged to vote. As has been noted, it also has the virtue that it keeps the single-Member constituency. I am afraid that it would not necessarily follow from that that modern Members of Parliament will remember that their first duty is as parliamentarians in the House of Commons. The single-Member constituency is a particularly important influence on Ministers, requiring them, as it does, to touch base in the lives of the people that they govern. AV avoids the anti-democratic feature of proportional representation—that it provides disproportionate power to a minority of Members of Parliament. Would it have unforeseen consequences? Almost certainly—including that voters would find themselves electing a person that none of them actually wanted. However, this is worth a proper debate and it is right to give the people the choice about it. Of course, if at the forthcoming general election we have a high turn-out and a convincing result, the people may decide to keep first past the post. The establishment of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority was a terrible admission by those elected to govern us that they cannot be trusted to govern themselves. Members of Parliament were bounced into this by party leaders in a panic, and reached the conclusion that they did in a fit of guilt and depression. If ever a piece of legislation was hasty and botched, it was the Parliamentary Standards Act 2009. This legislation on the IPSA is hasty; will it be equally botched? But is it for us to save the House of Commons from themselves? I insist that the huge majority of Members of Parliament are motivated by the public good. That, of course, is the opposite impression to that created by the media. The journalists were right to expose abuse, but they were wrong to binge on destroying respect for Members of Parliament, and they have wrought deep damage to our political culture. Both Houses should punish abusers and reform their systems, but Parliament should not lose its nerve. I very much hope that this House will have the self-respect and self-confidence to retain responsibility for its own affairs. I support the reforms to the House of Lords proposed in the Bill, which are based on the work of the noble Lords, Lord Norton of Louth, and Lord Steel of Aikwood, and to which some of us have also made a modest contribution. In modern Britain there can be no justification for the hereditary principle for membership of the legislature. But what is proposed in the Bill is not the expulsion of the hereditaries; it is a much more civilised proposal—if the work of the grim reaper can be called civilised. I agree with the proposals on discipline—for suspension and expulsion—and with the proposal that Members of Parliament and Peers should be deemed "ordinarily resident and domiciled" in the UK for their tax status. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, that the retirement provisions are urgent. This House is bursting at the seams and it will always need to welcome new blood. I support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Steel, regretting the omission in the Bill of a provision for a statutory appointments commission. If this House is to continue to be appointed it should not be on the basis of prerogative or prime ministerial patronage, but on the basis of respectably constituted authority with its independence underpinned statutorily. These proposals for reform of your Lordships’ House have been extensively debated in this House and I believe that they enjoy the support of a large majority of your Lordships. There would not be much point in introducing these measures if an ill judged and bitterly controversial proposal to create an elected second Chamber in place of your Lordships’ House were to pass. However, I do not think that such a proposal, while it may or may not be a useful electioneering gesture, will stand up to scrutiny or pass in due course. Will the provisions for audited public expenditure strengthen the Public Accounts Committee of the House of Commons? The answer is uncertain, and it is one illustration of the need for close examination of the measures in the Bill. The limitation of that admirable committee is that it looks at matters of public expenditure only after the event, after the unsatisfactory event when something has gone wrong. It is the unique responsibility of the House of Commons to grant or withhold supply. Select Committees of the House of Commons should invigilate departmental spending and performance. Will the new Select Committees in a new House of Commons, elected after a new fashion, take that responsibility more seriously? I am not confident that they will, but if better information is available through more transparent financial reporting they will have less excuse for giving the Government an easy ride. There are good plums in the Bill. It deals with major issues, but we are, as has been said, in a dilemma. The Select Committee of your Lordships’ House has provided us with a most useful history of the legislation to date and a description of the process which has been unsatisfactory in important respects. It is the duty of your Lordships’ House always to be sceptical about proposals for constitutional reform—not to be prejudiced against them, but to examine them rigorously. There is an all-too-fashionable illusion that constitutional reform will cure the malaise of our politics and our governance. No mechanisms or institutional tricks will ensure a flourishing democracy. For that, we need well judged policies and courageous and inspiring leadership. We who are parliamentarians hold the constitution in trust. It is not the plaything of think tanks or a consolation prize for Ministers who dart from one brainwave to another and one press briefing to another like March hares. Constitutional change should not be proposed casually, enthusiastically, on a basis of checklists or opportunistically. It should not be considered hastily or superficially but on the basis of thorough and impartial thought. The British constitution of course changes and develops in response to experience and to demonstrable practical need, but constitutional change needs to be absorbed and tested phase by phase. We are privileged to be Peers for life. In the field of constitutional reform, we have a particular responsibility to lay aside all prejudices and partial affections, to safeguard the spirit of the constitution and to advise when proposals are not thought through and fail to reflect the true interests of the democratic nations of the United Kingdom. I very much regret that Commons consideration of substantial parts of the Bill has been incomplete, notably on the Civil Service, referendums and ratification of treaties, and that the Government have not managed this legislation to allow your Lordships’ House in Committee to fulfil its responsibility. I disagree very much on this with the noble Lord, Lord McNally. I do not think that, however much I personally may favour some of the measures in the Bill, its provisions should be waved through in a pre-election wash-up and a last-minute set of deals between the Front Benches.