Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

My Lords, these two amendments rather bring it all together. The effect of my noble friend Lord Knight of Weymouth’s amendment would be that the Bill did not decide the number of Members in the House of Commons until the membership and powers of a reformed House of Lords had been agreed by both Houses of Parliament. As I understand the amendment, once we knew what we wanted the Lords to do and how their membership was going to be selected—and, presumably, once we knew what its relationship was with the Commons—then, and only then, would we decide what the numbers in the Commons should be. The thinking is that if, for example, we were completely satisfied that all the House of Lords did was scrutiny and nothing else, that would tutor us in how large both the House of Lords and the House of Commons should be. My noble friend Lord Grocott’s amendment is, with respect to my noble friend, slightly more opaque. Its effect would be that this Bill never came into force, as I understand it, until the Lords was smaller in number than the Commons. My noble friend’s amendment is opaque because it gives no indication, although this may come in his next amendment, of what the size of the Commons should be. These amendments raise principled issues. First, there is the basis for the reduction in the size of the Commons—that is, are we trying to change the function of the Commons in any way? The noble Lord the Leader of the House has put that to rest; in the interview that he gave to Sky Television, where he gave his clearest exposition, he said that the public want fewer politicians, especially around the Commons, and 50 is about right. That is a précis of what he said to Sky yesterday, and that, as I understand it, is the reason. The noble Lord is saying not that the function of the Commons should be changed in any way but only that the numbers should be reduced because people do not like politicians any more. The logic of that must be that if people do not like politicians any more, we should also be reducing the number of politicians in the Lords. However, as many of my noble friends have pointed out, the number of noble Lords since 5 May 2010 has gone up by 117. So it is quite difficult to see what the logic is of the Government’s position with regard to the Lords. Perhaps that is not surprising, because the noble Lord the Leader of the House has not told us what the detailed plans are. I understand that we will be seeing them in the next few weeks. I do not know what he can tell us but it would really help us to know, first, what he envisages as the role of the Lords. Does he envisage its role to remain the same as it is at the moment? Secondly, does he envisage the size of the House being smaller or larger than it is at the moment? If so, what size will it be? Thirdly, what does he envisage as being the process for becoming a Member of this House? Will the House be wholly elected or substantially elected, or will there be some other form of entry? If election is to play a part in it, which I understand it is, how will he ensure that the Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, indicated, does not become a competitor to the Commons? Why is election to the Lords any less valid that that to the Commons? How will the Government ensure, if they want the Lords to be a scrutinising House, that it remains exclusively so? The noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, who made an excellent speech, said that she had discovered that this House is more attentive to the concerns of people who need help. Is that because of the structure of the House? Will that be lost in what the noble Lord proposes? I do not think the amendments of either my noble friend Lord Knight or my noble friend Lord Grocott are sustainable, but they allow the noble Lord to indicate to us how the Bill relates to his proposals for Lords reform. They come together because the Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Nick Clegg, has said in many speeches that his great reform programme—the most important since the 1832 Act—includes, co-linked with this Bill, the reform of the House of Lords. I say that they come together, because the relationship between the Lords and the Commons is also affecting the position in which we now find ourselves in this House. My experience of being in this House during the past 13 years is that we have made progress in substantially amending Bills and occasionally stopping them altogether, including those which the Government of whom I was a member proposed, because we have understood when we had to reach agreement and when it was possible to block things. This is an occasion when we need to make progress and agree things, but, because we are a self-regulating House, it inevitably involves give-and-take on both sides. That is quite easy to achieve when there are three separate parties. Where, however, two of the parties come together, as they do in the coalition, it has two effects: first, it gives those two parties much greater power and enables them to refuse to make concessions that would otherwise be made; secondly, and just as significantly, once an agreement has been reached between the two members of the coalition, its ability to make significant concessions becomes more difficult, because both parties become dependent on each other to stick by the agreements that have been reached. We now need better skills than in the past to find a way forward. I said at the beginning of yesterday that the leadership of the Labour Party is willing to sit down and find a way out of this new position. I make it clear that we will do so with good will by negotiating either a process or the substance. We should, as Members of this House with substantial responsibilities for its continued success, both recognise that more is required than previously. I completely endorse what my noble friend Lord Prescott said: that our survival depends on our ability to negotiate effectively.