My Lords, I have brought this Bill before your Lordships because, although I have served in this House since 1973, I do not remember a time when Parliament has stood lower in public esteem than now. There is deep unease in this country with not just parliamentarians but Parliament itself. We need to be aware of what lies further down that road if we do nothing: a growing disillusion with not just us—we are expendable—or with the Westminster model, which is amendable, but with parliamentary democracy itself as the safest and surest way for a free people to manage their affairs under the law.
An important function of this House is to give the public reason to be confident in our Parliament, and to do that we need to take action now before that troll begins to stir in its mountain. Noble Lords may think that I exaggerate the danger but I assure them that it is there. It is frequently cloaked by the smoke drifting across the field from the artillery engaged in Brexit, Boundary Commissions, Calais, Syria and so on, but it is there and it constantly emerges, and every time it is stronger. If only we could give eye-catching, attention-getting proof that Parliament knows that it needs mending and is prepared to do the job itself. The attempt in 1999 to carry out wholesale reform of this House proved that every aspect of that reform was highly controversial. Controversy in Parliament takes time—legislative time—which we do not have.
On only one issue that has not already been dealt with in isolation has controversy subsided and consensus begun to emerge in the media, among the public and even in Parliament. The irony of the present situation was highlighted by the debate in the Commons on Wednesday on a complex Motion which brought together the two issues of Lords reform and boundary changes—that is, one big House getting bigger and one smaller House getting smaller. That alone is enough to draw the attention of those who have not been paying attention to the embarrassing position—to say the least —in which we find ourselves today. If your Lordships care to read that colourful debate, which is not at all flattering to them, they may be wiser on this issue.
People agree that there are too many of us. However, that is not the only, or the most important, problem. The reservoir of expertise among rare attenders is a strength rather than a weakness. Against that we have the experience of debates with speaking time limits of
a single minute for Back-Benchers and, indeed, for an Archbishop of Canterbury, of more than a few not being able to get a seat in the Chamber at all on an increasing number of occasions, even of a certain difficulty, which I hope does not yet extend to the Doorkeepers, although it well may, of remembering who everybody is and where they are coming from, in the current jargon.
There is internal unease and growing public resentment of the cost of our numbers at the present rate of attendance. Because of the absolute need for consensus, this Bill addresses only one issue—the number of Members of this House. The prime importance of consensus means that it has to leave intact the Prime Minister’s power to appoint new Peers, which is a position many of my noble friends and others would like to see diminished. However, that is not on the table at the moment. The Bill avoids all the other wasps’ nests stirred up by the great debates on reform in 1999, because every one of them would cause enough disagreement to kill the Bill. It does not affect existing party balances, does not propose an age limit or a limited tenure or any involvement of the parliamentary electorate and does not stake out a particular number of seats for Cross-Benchers or anybody else. It does not even touch the Bishops’ Benches, although we shall be very interested to hear the account of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Birmingham of his brethren’s intentions. The Bill addresses the single question of size and no other.
The Prime Minister’s power of appointment means that whatever limit is agreed will be exceeded as soon as he or she uses it and must be reimposed at the beginning of every Parliament. Therefore, the Bill focuses instead on the Writ of Summons which will entitle its recipient to sit only until the first Session of the Parliament after the one in which he or she was appointed. Membership beyond that point would be determined by elections within each affiliation group. The power to design those elections is delegated, within certain parameters, to the House of Lords and is to be implemented in the new Standing Order. This is, therefore, essentially an enabling Bill, but I anticipate that your Lordships will be more interested for the most part in what we do with the enablement than what is in the Bill itself, which is of course important. The Standing Orders in this House, however, are devised by the Procedure Committee and then put into place by a Motion of the whole House. The draft Standing Order I put into the Explanatory Notes to the Bill is just that—a draft. It is important that we discuss it—our discussion will be helpful to that committee in drawing up the final version—but we cannot amend it in any way at any stage of the Bill. That is for the committee, to which any representations must be made.
The draft is a modification of Standing Order No. 10 under which elections were successfully held to reduce the membership of this House by, I remind your Lordships, just over 50% in 1999: a far bigger task than we face today. Nevertheless, I understand that I stand in the position of a consultant anxiously telling a patient that some form of surgery is necessary. My task is to convince your Lordships that it is indeed necessary and that it need not be unduly painful, and in the end the patient’s life expectancy will be extended by it.
Under the proposal, each affiliation group will hold its election in secret. Each will be allocated the same proportion of the new, smaller total that it had of the total immediately before the election. In other words, every group will be reduced by the same percentage. In round figures, if 800 were to be reduced to 600, the new total would be 75% of the old, the House would therefore have lost 25% of its Members, and every constituent group would be reduced by 25%. The political balance in the House would remain unchanged; as I say, the Bill and the draft order do not seek to do anything except to address the size. There is great discontent about all sorts of other elements of our House, but this is all it touches.
The Explanatory Notes are pretty explicit, but I had better follow the convention and quickly tell your Lordships that Clause 1 limits the period during which the holders of peerages are automatically Members of the House. Their right to sit extends through the remainder of the Parliament in which they were appointed, and ends at the end of the first Session of the next Parliament. Clause 2 delegates to this House the power to grant exemption from this rule and sets the parameters within which it may do so. A lot of this draws on the 1999 Act. Clause 2(1) provides that the disapplication should be by means of a Standing Order; Clause 2(2) limits the exemptions to a specified number and their duration from the beginning of the first Session of one Parliament to the end of the first Session of the next. Clause 2(3) defines the specified number as the number of MPs and not as that number or less—that may have got obscured in my explanation earlier. Clause 2(4) says that the two ex officio hereditary Members are unaffected by the Bill. Clause 2(5)—this is the reassuring one—gives the Clerk of the Parliaments the power and duty to decide whether a person has been properly elected if that comes into question. Clause 3 is necessary to preserve the rights of non-parliamentary Peers to vote in parliamentary elections. Clause 4 is a consequential amendment of the 1999 Act.
That is all I will say at this stage. However, I will revert to the question of the need for consensus. To give your Lordships a glimmer of hope as to the future of this measure I read from the words of Mr Ellis, the deputy leader of the House of Commons, who said:
“It is right that the House of Lords continues to look at how it can work more effectively. Where further possible steps can command consensus, Her Majesty’s Government would welcome working with peers to take reasonable measures forward in this Parliament. If that is possible in consensus with peers, we would welcome doing so”.—[Official Report, Commons, 19/10/16; col. 888.]
Following the continuation of the brawl that constituted the debate—at least that is what it would look like from these Benches—we come to the wind up for the Government of the debate on a Scottish Nationalist Party Motion:
“The Government agree that the House of Lords is too large, but believe that it must be for the Lords themselves to lead the process”.—[Official Report, Commons, 19/10/16; col. 915.]
I invite noble Lords to become the leaders of that process. I beg to move.
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