Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

My Lords, in order to keep my own speech within a tolerable length, I propose to talk only about Part 5 of the Bill, tempted though I am to refer to other matters. As other noble Lords have already indicated, the Government have adopted three of the four central points of the Bill that I twice presented to this House in the previous two Sessions of Parliament. The point that is missing is the creation of a statutory appointments committee. I am grateful, as I am sure are most noble Lords, to the hardworking Library of the House, and I am grateful for the paper that it produced showing the commitments made by the present Government to reform of the Lords since we last made changes in the 1999 Act. I shall list these so that we know exactly where we have arrived at. The first reference was in November 1999 in the Queen’s Speech, when the Government said that they were committed to further reform and looked forward to the publication of the report of the Royal Commission. In January 2000, the Wakeham commission duly published its report, and I agree with my noble friend Lord McNally that it is a pity that that was never really pursued. The second reference was in May 2001 in the Labour Party’s election manifesto: ""We will put the independent Appointments Commission on a statutory footing"." The third reference came in the Queen’s Speech following that election, in June 2001, which said that the Government would, ""introduce legislation to implement the second phase of House of Lords reform".—[Official Report, 20/6/01; col. 6.]" The fourth reference was in November that year when the White Paper was published that included the creation of a statutory appointments commission. The fifth reference was in July 2003 when the Government published their response to the Joint Committee on Lords Reform and included a commitment to consult in the autumn on proposals for a revised appointments commission. The sixth reference was in September 2003 when the Government published a consultation paper that said that they would establish a statutory appointments commission, accountable to Parliament rather than to Ministers. The seventh reference came a little later, in the next government White Paper in February 2007, which referred to, ""a new independent … Appointments Commission, reporting directly to Parliament"." The eighth reference came in December 2007 when the House of Commons Public Administration Select Committee said in its report: ""Our main proposal is for an immediate House of Lords reform measure, clearly defined in scale and scope. Its primary purpose would be to put the independent House of Lords Appointments Commission onto a statutory footing, and empower it to take decisions on the size, balance and composition of the House against agreed and explicit criteria. A mechanism is also needed for peers to resign from the House—or, in some circumstances, to be compelled to leave"." The ninth reference was in July 2008, when another government White Paper was published that included proposals to establish a new independent statutory appointments commission. So there we have it: nine specific references to Lords reform in over a decade which include a statutory appointments commission. Yet the noble Lord, Lord Bach, with a completely straight face—I wrote down his words; I could not believe them—said that the Government have "kept up the momentum". That is a completely new definition of "momentum" for me. Suddenly we have the Bill, and all these promises have been dropped. The statutory appointments commission has disappeared. I submit that this is a fatal mistake, for two reasons. First, it is important that the appointments commission should have statutory powers—I look forward to hearing from the noble Lord, Lord Jay, as current chairman of the commission, who will follow me. The fact is that the commission has had to make its own rules as it goes along; they have never been debated or discussed in this House. I do not want to open up a can of worms, but we are all now well aware that undertakings were given to that commission by the noble Lord, Lord Laidlaw, and the noble Lord, Lord Ashcroft, that were simply not followed through. The commission itself has no means of ensuring that undertakings given to it are implemented, and it has no power of redress if they are not. That is a fact. The second reason why I tabled this amendment is that the timing is all important. I have no doubt that the noble Lord, Lord Bach, in summing up, will tell us that we do not need an appointments commission now, because Mr Straw is going to produce not even a draft Bill but sections of a draft Bill, suggesting that this House should be replaced by a wholly elected House. Let us be realistic. We are about to have an election. If the present Government are re-elected, everybody accepts that this will be by a very slender majority. Are we seriously to believe that a Government re-elected with a tiny majority, in the middle of a financial crisis, given its past record of immobility on these minor reforms, are suddenly going to plunge into the creation of an elected Chamber? I simply do not believe it. It is much more likely that the publication of that Bill will simply prove that Mr Straw has caught up with Mr Asquith. That is all that it will show. If the election produces a Conservative Government, we have already quoted Mr Cameron saying that it is not a priority and telling his MPs that it might be a matter for a third term. The last time we debated this, the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, got so agitated during the Committee stage of my Bill that he said he would rush off and see Mr Cameron to see that this could be put right, and that an elected House could be brought forward as a matter of haste. Since then, the noble Lord has maintained a discreet and careful silence on that subject. The fact is that we are not going to get an elected House in the very near future. That is why appointments are going to continue, whether we like it or not, and that is why the appointments commission should be, as promised, put onto a statutory basis. That is all I want to say on that topic. I turn to the other three issues which appear in the Bill and which I call running repairs. I pleaded, publicly and privately, with Mr Straw for the Government to take over my Bill. If they had done so, we would have had these provisions on the statute book by now. We would have made progress. Unfortunately, they did not. Clauses 54 and 55 deal with the matter of expelling serious lawbreakers, on the simple basis that the House of Commons already does that, and that we cannot accept the principle that lawbreakers should be lawmakers. I do not think that there is any great disagreement in the House that those clauses are therefore desirable. Clauses 56 and 57 deal with the retirement of Members from the House. This was taken up from my Bill, but unfortunately it was slightly mucked up, because they have introduced into the Bill something which was not in mine, which is the wholly new idea of disclaiming peerages. If they went back to the wording which the noble Lord, Lord Norton, drafted in my Bill, they would find that there is no reference to disclaiming peerages. The noble Lord, Lord Henley, suggested that the provision in the Government’s Bill would enable what I call "flipping Houses"; that is, enabling people to move from one to the other. He may be totally unjustified in that accusation, but I beg the noble Lord, Lord Bach, to pay attention to what the noble Lord, Lord Henley, said, and to listen to what Mr Dominic Grieve said in the Commons in the debate on the Bill there. Talking about allowing life Peers to resign, he said: ""There must be a period between resignation from the House of Lords and return or re-embodiment in this Chamber. There should be a period during which that return is not permitted. It is likely that that matter will be returned to in another place. If there ""is no time, and we get to the wash-up and there have to be discussions about issues in the Bill, that is one that will have to be sorted out to our satisfaction if the Bill is to go on the statute book."—[Official Report, Commons, 2/3/10; col. 905.]" I simply plead with the noble Lord, Lord Bach, to pay attention to that, because it is important, for the interests of this House and for the reasons ably described by the noble Lord, Lord McNally, and indeed by the noble Lord, Lord Bach, about the size of the place. We cannot seriously contemplate having over 800 Members, so the right and means to retire from the House is an important provision which should not be lost because of a minor disagreement about the wording in the Bill. I hope that the Government will get this right and pay attention to what the Conservative Party has said. It is too important to lose that item from the Bill. We must get the numbers down. As we well know, Members have not been able to retire; my noble friend Lord Phillips of Sudbury made an attempt, but the fact that he is still here today shows that he failed. We look forward to what I call his resurrection maiden speech. This really is an important issue, too important to be lost in the wash-up. The third item from my Bill which is included here is much more controversial—the question of ending the hereditary by-elections. Here I must admit that during the debates on my Bill, I missed one very important point, which I want to dwell on today. The undertaking that was given by the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor in March 1999 referred to the 90 hereditary Peers remaining; it did not refer to the by-elections. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, talked about, ""the interim retention of one in 10 of the hereditary Peers, 75 out of the existing 750, plus 15 hereditary office-holders, until the second stage of House of Lords reform has taken place. The amendment reflects a compromise negotiated between Privy Councillors … and binding in honour on all those who have come to give it their assent"." That has been used frequently to defend the by-elections. The fact is, that was referred to in the Second Reading of the 1999 Bill which did not contain any reference to the by-elections. The noble and learned Lord went on to argue: ""The compromise will enable the elected 75 to participate in our counsels and to vote as the stage two plans are developed and debated".—[Official Report, 30/3/99; col. 207.]" Indeed, in the wind-up to that Second Reading debate, my old friend, the late and much lamented Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish, said that the Conservatives would table later amendments to the Bill to try to improve it, especially concerning arrangements for maintaining the number of excepted hereditary Peers in the House, should the transitional phase endure for longer than expected. That underlines the point that the whole question of the by-elections came later and was not subject to the undertaking given by the then Lord Chancellor which we have quoted so often during debates on my Bill. When Lord Weatherill was introducing his amendment two months later, he said: ""We did so because we envisaged that the arrangements would be temporary".—[Official Report, 11 May 1999; col. 1089.]" Later in that same debate, the Lord Chancellor said something that I want to quote in full because it makes interesting reading. He said during the Committee stage of the Bill: ""The traditional House which will be created as a result of the Bill will be exactly that: transitional and not permanent. The Government are absolutely committed to moving to stage two in the reform process. Press speculation that that may not be so is fanciful and without any foundation at all. The notion that the Government would even contemplate the notion of the Weatherill amendment becoming a permanent settlement, as distinct from a short-term compromise, is fanciful.—[Official Report, 11/5/99; col. 1092.]" That was 11 years ago. In the debate on this Bill in the Commons, Mr Straw said that he wanted to correct me for suggesting that this was intended as a temporary measure. I hope that the quotations I have given will sustain my argument that it was intended as a temporary measure and that the by-elections have now, in Jack Straw’s own words, become risible and long since outlived their usefulness. It would be wrong of me to end my quotations without referring to my noble friend Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank, who is sitting beside me. He was leading the Liberal Democrats at the time and was almost a lone voice on this issue. He said: ""The noble Lord, Lord Weatherill, referred to them as ‘temporary provisions’. The noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor made it plain today, using strong words, that this would last only through the transitional House and that the transitional House would be brought to an end in the next Parliament. However, if I were a betting man I would lay long odds that if Amendment No. 31is carried"—" that was the by-election amendment— ""there will still be hereditary Peers in this House in 10 years’ time and possible for much longer".—[Official Report, 11/5/99; cols. 1099-1100.]" How right he was. In view of all that, we really should rescue what we can of the limited reform proposals, which the House debated so many times, during the wash-up. The by-elections have become ludicrous; they have made the rotten borough of Old Sarum look positively respectable in comparison. It is important that, during this inevitably long debate, Members can express themselves in favour or otherwise of the four items which I have put forward for repair of your Lordships’ House. I beg to move.