I have listened with great interest to the number of speeches in which we have been told about the expertise in the other place, how wonderful their lordships are and so on. I wonder why, then, when the results of their deliberations in the other place come down here, we rarely accept anything that they say. I think of the most recent example of the Welfare Reform Bill. There was a great deal of expertise over there and nobody in this House, or very few—certainly among those on the Government Benches—listened to them.
I would have thought that the Liberal Democrats would have been able to come up with a better Bill than this; after all, they have been thinking about it for 101 years. I feel as though I am at a seminar about the Parliament Act. We are talking about an increase in accountability, but in order, apparently, to assuage criticism from those who would argue that the House of Lords should be a forum for the expertise that I have mentioned, which we rarely actually accept in this House, we have before us a proposal to appoint 20% of the new Chamber. This morning, I received the document I am holding, “Lords reform: a guide for MPs”, to which some distinguished colleagues have contributed. As well as a hybrid Chamber and a new electoral system—many other colleagues have mentioned this—we have before us, in this supporting document, the statement that
“members elected in large, multi-member regional constituencies would be able to take a more strategic view of the needs of a whole part of the country. They would not be expected or resourced to take up a litany of individual cases on behalf of constituents”.
I come from Scotland, where we have regional MSPs. I can see my colleagues from Wales nodding in agreement with what they anticipate I am about to say. The reality is that if a politician is shown an electorate, they will react like a politician. They will not say, “Sorry, I cannot deal with that, because I have been elected for 15 years and I am not going to be re-elected.” Of course they will be politicians, and that is what they will do.
I have been in this place for 15 years, which is a long, long time in politics. Many of the people who came in with me are no longer here. I say to those Government Members who think they will still be here in 15 years: in your dreams. I am not talking about your dreams, Madam Deputy Speaker, because I know that you do not dream about the Government Benches.
The Deputy Prime Minister made great play of the new House of Lords, new Senate, or whatever on earth we are going to call it, having greater regional and national representation. He obviously has not looked at or seen the implications of what Lord Strathclyde has
said about the way in which it is expected these that new Senators or Members of the House of Lords will operate; as the Joint Committee also said, the new situation should allow individuals to “maintain relevant professional expertise”. The Government have also said that the
“appointed members and elected members should be able to vary their level of participation…so that they can maintain outside occupations”.
So I say to the House: how on earth is an elected Member of the House of Lords from Newcastle, from Scotland or from north of the inner circle of London going to be able to maintain another job and still attend the House of Lords? It is utter nonsense.