Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

I warmly support my noble friend Lord Grocott. I bow to no one in your Lordships’ House as a reformer. I was hoping to speak to the earlier amendment of my noble friend Lord Kennedy because, for the first time in 13 years, I was attracted to the idea of supporting the status quo. However, I could not get in. My reforming zeal has always been focused on better government. I have tried very hard never to be a knee-jerk reformer and I have been hugely indebted to and informed by the work of the noble Lord, Lord Norton, over the years. Taking on this role has involved two things. As many noble Lords know, I do not speak that often in the House. I do not much like speaking in the House; I am not very good at it. However, I have gone out to schools, colleges and universities to talk about democracy and the possibility that this House has a role to play in improving our democracy and, indeed, the governance of this country. I have spoken in almost 400 schools and about 350 other institutions. That is a lot of institutions. One of the points I should like to make to the noble Lord the Leader of the House is that not once in the Q and A sessions in 13 years and almost 800 occasions has anyone ever said to me, ““What we really need is a smaller House of Commons and a cheaper House of Commons””. In fact, they have, if anything, said the exact opposite. Some years ago I had the honour to chair two Hansard Society reports on the relationship of Parliament with the people. The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, was a member of that committee, as was the noble Lord, Lord Renton of Mount Harry. The reports were absolutely unanimous. I wish to quote a couple of important lines from the first of those reports. It stated: "““The level of informed, transparent and engaged democracy that any citizen of the 21st century has a right to expect is, of necessity, comparatively expensive. Cut price democracy will never represent much of a bargain””." The leader of the Liberal Party in the early part of the 20th century, AJ Balfour, once said: "““Democracy is government by explanation””." I think that is precisely right. I would argue that far from trying to find £12 million worth of savings, a responsible Government should explain to the electorate that good democracy and good government are expensive. Therefore, if it needs to cost another £12 million or another £50 million, it is a bargain if it results in a better Government and a better run country. Therefore, I absolutely reject the notion that any part of this Bill should have to do with saving money. If it is, it is frankly a disgrace because that is not what the people of this country want and no one in any of the bodies I have talked with has ever given me that impression. A remarkable event took place here on 10 December. No one present in the Chamber was there but the Lord Speaker was there, as were the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, and the Convenor of the Cross Benches, the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza. Two hundred and eighty sixth-formers from all over the country attended this House to debate reform of the House of Lords. All four of the options with which we are only too familiar were debated. The debate lasted for three hours and was very stimulating. At the end of it, to my jaw-dropping amazement, by a margin of two to one the vote went in favour of an all-appointed House. It is worth mentioning why the debate went in that direction. These young people decided that they were interested in judgment, objectivity, expertise, people with a hinterland, people who had done other things in their lives and decisions made on evidence. They rejected the notion that politics should have anything to do with what they termed—this was their phrase, not mine—the party Whip. They rejoiced in the notion that the House of Lords did not seem to be dominated by the party Whip. For example, there was a lot of concern about environmental issues. I was very interested to learn from my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours that the Environmental Audit Committee has an average attendance of 37 per cent. If you told these young people that the Environmental Audit Committee, on which their lives may well depend, was being attended by a little over one-third of those appointed—