Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

My Lords, I must add my name to the list of those confused after the introduction of the amendments. I approached it in a simple way: that this was an opportunity to delay while we had further discussion to find an agreement between the two sides of this House on the size of the Commons, the powers, and the Boundary Commission. All of those are legitimate arguments. If we introduce the idea of the reform of the House of Lords, it will get even more complicated. I was a Member of the House of Commons for 40 years and I have heard the debates about the Lords. I am against reform of the Lords. I do not mind changing its powers; I was very happy to get rid of the hereditaries; but I do not want more powers simply given to the Lords. An elected process would certainly do that. I have had the argument with my noble friend Lord Knight for a long time. He wants a second Chamber with extra powers, which will be in conflict with the elected body. That is a simple enough principle to me, so I cannot support him. My noble friend Lord Grocott talked about the sizes of both Chambers, but both amendments will complicate the main issue of whether there can be a decision about what the Government intend to do about the size of the Lords. Having heard all the debates about whether the size of the House of Lords should be 600, 500, or remain as it is, I will be clear: I believe that it should stay as it is. Some powerful figures were given by my noble friend Lord Kinnock about the changing role of Members of the House of Commons—the other place, I should say. That is undoubtedly true since 1970, when my noble friend Lord Kinnock and I came into the Commons. He talked about the Member of Parliament before him who used to have one meeting a month. I took the place of a man called Commander Percy who had exactly the same role. He made a rather royal visit to Hull now and again, but nothing more was done. He thought he was popular and just came up for the election. Clearly, you could not get away with that now; it has changed. My noble friend Lord Kinnock pointed out that the number of Members has increased since then by about 4 per cent, and the workload by 25 per cent—anyone who has done it knows that that is at least the increase in the effort and time that a Member of Parliament has to put in. In those circumstances, no one has justified why we should reduce the number from 650; I do not think we should. We can change, reform, or even begin an analysis of, what the job of a Member of Parliament should be. As we heard, that is not easy and it changes from constituency to constituency. It is about the character of the relationship between a Member of Parliament and his constituents. I do not mind if we analyse that, but the Government have decided that they will reduce the number by 50 but give us no rational explanation. We would have exactly the same arguments with the amendments to the House of Lords. Although there has been lots of debate about the House of Lords and what the reform should be, there has been very little debate about the reduction in the number of Members of Parliament. Of course, the papers have said that we should get rid of them, we should reduce them, and that seems to be the rationale for the Government's argument. It is popular to say that we should reduce the number of Members of Parliament, but no justification has been made for that. We have asked time and time again: how did you arrive at the figure of 75,000 per constituency, what size constituencies should be and how the number of MPs should be increased or decreased in that process? An independent body has been doing that. The conclusion in this House is that if the Government decide that there should be this amount and then tell the commission to get on with it, they are making a political decision for political advantage. That is inevitably the definition of it. Most independent analysis has shown that that is the case. The justification argued was that there was a democratic mandate. It is already clear that the number was not in the Tory manifesto nor the Liberal manifesto. We are talking about a coalition agreement which was not endorsed by the electorate. So any democratic mandate does not come from simply putting it to the electorate. The principle was there but not the actual justification of these figures. The argument put by our Front Bench is right. It gives them an opportunity to say, ““Yes, you can have the referendum on the day you want, but why do you not split the Bill into two parts?””. There has been lots of talk here about the usual channels working out what those agreements are. That is how we have normally settled business, whether it is in this place or the other place. I think people should be open to the opportunity. But the Government do not look as if they are interested in pursuing that. We wait to see any further movement on their behalf or if we are on this kind of roll of fighting it out—who is going to stick out, who is going to go longest, who is going to blink. We have had an awful lot of that in the House of Commons. I can recall times when we have gone for 24 hours voting on trade union legislation. Perhaps it seems odd for me to say that—perhaps it sounds macho rather than good sense—but it was a process that we got locked into and it appears that we are locked in almost to the same now. There are two positions: you either accept one or the other, or the Government have the power and the majority in both places just to impose that. Let me make this point to the government Front Benches. I think it is important to accept that in all these arguments it is a matter of trust. There can be disagreements but we try to find a way through them. As someone said during this debate, this is the House of negotiation—we find a way forward. I think it is probably one of the main contributions we can make. Trust is absolutely important. I have experience in these matters in the Council of Europe. The council was referred to earlier by the noble Lord. He said that countries which want to come into the Council of Europe have to reach certain democratic criteria. In recent years, members from the central European countries, which were previously communist, have wanted to become, if you like, more socially democratic or European and to join the Council of Europe. The council lays down what it thinks are the standards for democracy and the countries are expected to observe them and agree to them. It appoints monitors to go and see that they are carrying out their democratic obligations to be a member of the Council of Europe. I was appointed to be the monitor to Armenia. It was a communist state which was now claiming to be social democrat. However, it had the old communist structure where the courts were very accountable to the Government, the Government controlled the police, there were no democratic freedoms for the press and the Opposition had no role and were given no responsibilities or powers. When the presidential election occurred three years ago there were accusations from the Opposition, who saw no possibility of getting an agreement with Government. They had no trust in the Government and would often resort to the argument, ““There is corruption and you cannot trust the Government””. When the President was elected by 51 per cent there was a mass rally in which 100 people were thrown into jail; 10 people were killed and the people who were demonstrating were accused of undermining and threatening the state. It became a security matter. I was then sent to see if I could find an agreement. After long talks we managed to get the 100 people out of the jail, change the press laws and reduce the criminal laws—they reformed the law so you could have a protest and the courts were made more accountable. I will not go into all the details but effectively the Opposition had no trust. At the heart of that argument there was a Government simply believing that they had the majority. The coalition of two parties with the majority in the assembly took the view that it was democratically correct to impose their solution without having to consult the Opposition. That is a lack of trust. It leads to a violent reaction. It leads to the corruption of the democratic process. I am not saying the UK is the same as Armenia but there are some similarities that cause some concern, bearing in mind our long tradition of democracy. I am proud of my country. These countries look to us as a good example of democratic practice. We find now that we have a coalition that is prepared to impose an agreement that has not been agreed by the electorate. It is not prepared to consider finding an agreement. That is undermining trust in the democratic process itself. I notice that the Government have not answered the question put. What if we become the Government and there are demands on our side—I would not be surprised if I was leading them myself—saying, ““Right, it is our turn now. We've got the power. The door has been opened for us. Let us change it around””? The poor old 15-year mandate might get us into a bit of a problem, because we will have changed it down there, but we stay up here on the old political system. That will cause tensions, especially as the Lords, despite the conventions, seems to be nibbling at the idea that it can deal with financial matters. We are dealing with a real problem here. At the heart of it is trust. I say to the Government: if you go along this road, do not be surprised if there are voices saying, ““If they can do it, we will do it””, although I know that it is in the nature of the Labour Party to say, ““We cannot do that. We are democratic””. We would not be stupid enough not to do it. Leaving that aside, trust is threatened here. If you open the door with a precedent that any Government who have the majority can do as they wish on constitutional matters without agreement or a sense of consensus, other Governments may be tempted to do the same. I do not think that that will do our democratic process any good. I ask the Government yet again to consider the position put from our Front Bench: can the usual channels have a bit more consultation? We have had bigger differences than this before and have found agreement, but this one is especially difficult. We are talking about constitutional issues. Do not establish the precedent that the Government, simply because they have a majority through a coalition, can enforce things. That is the difficulty that we face, and I hope that the Leader of the House will give further thought to it.