My Lords, like several noble Lords who have spoken, I will focus on the proposal for a constitution, democracy and rights commission. Commissions take different forms. Having chaired one on behalf of the Conservative Party to examine how to strengthen Parliament, I believe they can be beneficial. However, it is important that we are clear as to purpose. I caution against setting up a body that is in effect a constitutional convention—that is, a body created to come up with a set of constitutional reforms or, indeed, a new constitution. I have previously made the case for a constitutional convocation, an informed body able to stand back and make sense of where we are before we embark on further change.
The past quarter-century has been marked by changes to the constitution on a scale not seen since the end of the 17th and early 18th centuries. Conservatives are at one with Burke in accepting that a state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation. What is a problem is when a great many reforms take place quickly. There is not the opportunity, as has been the case before, for a reform to be assimilated into our constitutional architecture before another major change occurs.
The changes of recent years have been several and substantial. They have also been disparate and discrete, often rushed, borne of political expediency and reactive. They have not been grounded in an understanding of
the system of government that has developed over centuries and been confirmed by the Glorious Revolution of 1688. That generated the basis for the emergence of the Westminster model of government. That model has been criticised, and indeed assaulted by some of the reforms of recent years, but it is at the heart of the Conservative view of democracy. It links electors to those they choose to govern the nation, with Parliament as the key buckle between them.
The system is one in which government is accountable to the House of Commons. Parliament under the Westminster model responds to what government brings forward. Because of the Glorious Revolution, the Executive cannot legislate without the consent of Parliament, but Parliament itself does not seek to wrest control of policy from the Government. That came under threat in the last Parliament.
The system has now righted itself, but recent events, on top of the other changes of the past two decades, demonstrate the need to take stock of what has happened and to do so within a clear understanding of the fundamentals of the constitution of the United Kingdom. The Westminster model has been much criticised by those who embrace different approaches to constitutional change. They, at least, have the merit of intellectual coherence—I believe them to be wrong, but they are clear and principled—whereas successive Governments have lacked any intellectually coherent approach to change.
I have previously quoted in debate the words of Sir Sidney Low, who in his short book The British Constitution, published in 1928, wrote:
“In England we often do a thing first and then discover that we have done it.”
We are in danger of spending years playing catch-up to make sense of what we have done. Now is the time to use the opportunity afforded by this manifesto commitment to stand back and assess clearly where we are, and to do so within an appreciation of the need to maintain a political system that has accountability at its heart. Events not only in the United Kingdom but globally demonstrate an urgent need for Governments to hear what people are saying and to be seen to be doing so. The greater demands for people to have a voice make the Westminster model more, not less, relevant to modern conditions.
We have lacked serious thinking about our constitution as such. I trust, therefore, that the Government will see the proposed commission as a means not for short-term fixes but for undertaking a mature, philosophically informed assessment of where we are, identifying any flaws, certainly, but also appreciating the system of government that—despite the critics—has served this nation well. Any change should be informed by a Burkean appreciation of what it is for.
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