Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Like my noble friend Lord Young, I have not spoken in this debate at all. Were it not for the issue in these two amendments, but particularly in that of the noble Lord, Lord Knight, I probably would not have done so, but there is a fundamental point here that I would like the opportunity to explore. I was very grateful to hear from my noble friend that during the passage of the Digital Economy Bill, in which I also had some involvement, he sought compromises with those moving amendments on the other side of the House. I had very strong views about part of the Bill and, if I had known that he was looking for compromises, I would have knocked on his door and applied to have one or two myself. I am not allowed to describe the noble Lord, Lord Mawhinney, as a noble friend, but he is certainly a friend. I remain a perpetual optimist, and I still hope that some things may be changed by means of a sensible debate in your Lordships' House. My reason for wanting to say things that are supportive of the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Knight, are these—and they follow very closely from the views expressed by my noble friend Lady Sherlock. Before I came to the House—although I was deeply involved in political life, with responsibilities in the organisation of the Labour Party—I was intrigued by the way in which the House worked and in particular by how the definition of the role of Members of this House was contrasted with the roles understandably played in another place. The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, in the course of the night, has said how hard it is to define those roles, because so many things would come along that you had never seen before and make you question whether you had ever really understood the extremities of the role that you might play. I understood very well that it was difficult to define those roles precisely. The then Leader of the House was Lord Williams, who was most certainly a good and treasured friend and a very great guide to so many of us in the ways that the House works. Gareth Williams was kind enough to describe to me the complementary character of the roles played by the two Houses—that is, the jobs which were done in the Commons and the Lords, even if it would have been hard to write down a job description particularly for Members of the House of Commons. None the less, you could understand that process. I respected that because I understood it, which is what brings me to follow the proposition put forward by my noble friend Lady Sherlock. In almost every debate that I have had the privilege to attend in your Lordships’ House on the future of this House, the conversation has focused almost entirely on how many people should be here; very rarely has the debate been about how many people should be at the other end of the building, though of course that issue has come round in this legislation. However, it has always been about the numbers. I find that an extraordinary way to describe any system, or to consider what might happen in such a system. Perhaps it is because I am a pragmatist, too narrow in my vision or whatever, but I always start by asking the purpose that we are intended to fulfil, and whether we are fit for that purpose. Is it possible to work out what each of the different elements of our parliamentary system is supposed to do to the benefit of the people of the United Kingdom? The answer to those questions seems to lead almost inevitably to a better specification of who and how many people you need to do that. There cannot just be a random answer. There will of course be different opinions about the answer and the qualities of the answer. However, there will be an answer about how many people there should be so long as you know what you are intending to do and whether you think you can make those functions fit for purpose. Yet that has rarely been part of our debate. I am not criticising any noble Lord for that because the propositions have generally been put to us in those terms. I am not sure that, had this House had its way, we would ever have discussed the subject from that end of the telescope. We would have started with a more rational discussion about function. Every so often, however, we have had an element of that discussion. I am deeply concerned now in part because I think that the atmosphere here has become awful and sour. I do not want to contribute to that at all. It is certainly an awful transformation from the time when I had the privilege of sitting on that Front Bench and experienced great courtesy right across the House in our deliberations on the issues with which I was concerned. It is not just because of that. It is because I think that we can identify some characteristics of the changes in the system that should make us all pause and really think about whether we can do this without a proper reflection on the whole issue of the numbers here and the function that we are supposed to perform. I am not making this argument because I think it will produce an impossible circle in which we cannot do one thing without the other, and then we cannot do the other without the first. I truly understand that argument. We have tried to elaborate our constitution over probably centuries but certainly decades, since the reforms following the Budgets of Lloyd George. That has been done at a pace at which it has been possible to assess the constitutional impact of one set of proposals and to digest those before moving to the next set of constitutional propositions. There has been the time to do it. In other words, we did not say that it was impossible to do it all together because you would never know where to start or where you would break deadlock, but we have had the luxury—if I can put it in this way to your Lordships’ House—of digesting it and thinking about the impact. So, even if we did not write the constitution down in a very specific form, we had the chance to grasp the fundamental elements of it and to develop conventions which I think are sadly now missing for the most part, which allowed a degree of organic development of the relationship between the two Houses. Those are not the circumstances in which we find ourselves now. We are in circumstances where it is obviously intended, and I understand why, to produce a swift and dramatic set of reforms to your Lordships’ House in the wake of the reforms to the other end of this Building, and there will be no time for any iterative process in which people can compose, even in that rather more organic way, any kinds of constitutional arrangements. I just say this: were it to be the case, for example, that the reforms of this House led to a wholly elected House, a partially elected House or some other hotch-potch, I am convinced that anyone who runs for an election—I have run for a good few in my time—will stand by their rights as an elected person to answer to their constituents as an elected person because you cannot really ever do anything else if you intend to carry on doing the job. There will be two sets of elected people in this Building, two sets of numbers without a proper digest of any constitutional issue, because we will not have allowed ourselves the time for the necessity of making that analysis—it is not a luxury—and there will be constitutional deadlocks. I do not like using overdramatic language, but in my view there is likely to be chaos. That chaos will be compounded by the arrangements with the European Parliament and the devolved legislatures around our country—they may increase in number, but there will be chaos even with the current number—and, certainly, by the relationships with local government, because we are not doing ourselves the courtesy of thinking through what the framework of these constitutional arrangements ought to be. That can hardly be the way in which a genuinely mature legislature, as we have, approaches questions of this size and this importance. It cannot be right to do it this way. So, even if it is thought by some to be a lost cause, I ask that we pause and consider. In doing it in the way that we are, we will probably end up with something about which in a year, or in 18 months, every one of us will say, hand on heart, ““I never wanted that; it was not where I intended to go or what I think was desirable for the legislature of this country””. Everyone will repent it, not with ease but with great regret, and what is lost will be irreplaceable. I apologise for speaking even this once in the debate.