My Lords, I pay tribute to a number of noble Lords who have paved the way for me, if I may put it that way—in particular and most recently my noble friend Lord Dubs, whom I have known from the other place for a considerable number of years; the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, and the work he is doing in relation to hereditary Peers; and of course the noble Lord, Lord Steel, who has played a pioneering role in the broader field of reform of the Lords.
Noble Lords will recall that I had the privilege of being the 58th Chairman of Ways and Means in another place. The first appointment was made originally because of the restoration of the monarchy. It was felt by Parliament that your Lordships’ House at the time had a particularly strong influence—many at that time felt that it was an unhealthy influence—on the other place. Of course, the whole matter is described in the 25th edition of Erskine May, which has just been published. What good work was done by David Natzler, whom a number of noble Lords will know personally. If you flick through that book—although it is not the sort of book you flick through, because it is quite a thick volume—you will find the key part on page 930, paragraph 37.6. The title is, “Basis of modern practice with respect to privilege”. The paragraph is not very long and states:
“That all aids and supplies, and aids to his Majesty in Parliament, are the sole gift of the Commons; and all bills for the granting of any such aids and supplies ought to begin with the Commons; and that it is the undoubted and sole right of the Commons to direct, limit, and appoint in such bills the ends, purposes, considerations, conditions, limitations, and qualifications of such grants, which ought not to be changed or altered by the House of Lords”.
The central theme of my submission this morning is that I am here as an appointed Peer, but that there are portions of policies affecting our former constituencies, if we were previously elected, and ordinary people on the electoral role. We are precluded here from interfering in certain policies.
I took a close look at and pay tribute to Conventions of the UK Parliament by the Joint Committee on Conventions, which was produced in 2005-06. A number of your Lordships served on that committee. In paragraph 99, it concluded:
“In the House of Lords:
A manifesto Bill is accorded a Second Reading;
A manifesto Bill is not subject to ‘wrecking amendments’ which change the Government’s manifesto intention as proposed in the Bill; and
A manifesto Bill is passed and sent (or returned) to the House of Commons, so that they have the opportunity, in reasonable time, to consider the Bill or any amendments the Lords may wish to propose”.
That is quite clear. It re-emphasises the fact that your Lordships as individuals are restricted, and that we cannot take part in a proportion of the work that the other place is doing.
My Lords, we are all grateful to the noble Lord for raising a very acute constitutional question. It may surprise many Members of your Lordships’ House to hear that I am very conflicted about it, because I am not at all sure that whatever activity I indulge in in my own constituency or in the country by way of politics necessarily qualifies me to vote in an election. The central fact is that we are an undemocratic House. Having arrived here, we are given the privilege of legislating, and we have to pay a price for that—it is very simple. The fact is that an undemocratic Chamber that is able, in a democracy, to legislate and lay down the law without any reference to the people has to pay a price. I am an economist: if you have a benefit, you pay a price.
The idea that every vote counts is really frightening. If a seat went one way or the other due to the vote of a local grandee, people would be outraged. Part of the Brexit rebellion and so on is that people are asking, “Who are these people laying down the law?” I am sorry but when we came here we gave up certain rights. If you want to vote, the way is open: leave the House and renounce your title. Everybody has that choice. Yes, the Members of this House should be able to vote but only after the House has been reformed and is an elected Chamber.
My Lords, I very much enjoyed the account from the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, of recent very close election results. His message was that every vote matters—so, I think, it should.
The principle of this Bill has support from these Benches, but from them we note the irony of demanding votes for Peers to elect MPs without demanding votes for people to elect Peers. In 1911, Asquith’s Liberal Government introduced the Parliament Act. The preamble to that legislation said that,
“it is intended to substitute for the House of Lords, as it at present exists, a Second Chamber constituted on a popular instead of hereditary basis”.
When its drafters included the phrase,
“such substitution cannot be immediately brought into operation”,
I doubt that they thought we would still be waiting for that substitution of principles 108 years later.
The case for giving Members of the House of Peers the right to help elect Members of the House of Commons was recognised by the first Earl of Beaconsfield, better known as Benjamin Disraeli, when he was Prime Minister 150 years ago. However, more recent legislation has confirmed the principle that Peers should have votes to choose MPs only when they cease to have votes in this place.
It seems to me, however, that since the Parliament Acts of 1911 and 1949 ended the powers of this House in relation to financial measures, and restricted its power over all other legislation, being able only to delay it, the denial of a vote to its Members in general elections has been anomalous. Of course, the Liberal Democrats sought seven years ago to achieve a full reform of this House—one which would have completed the aspiration of the 1911 legislation after only a century of delay. However, we failed, so we have to accept incremental reforms until we are able to argue again for what we consider to be basic principles of democracy.
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, quoted one paragraph of the Parliament Act 1911 but he did not then quote the next paragraph, which recognises that, if you change the composition of this House, you also have to revisit the powers of the House.
I congratulate my noble friend Lord Naseby on introducing a Bill that has the merit of brevity. I would normally begin by addressing the merits of the argument, but on this occasion I shall look first at the level of support for the measure. How much support does it enjoy, be it from the public or from Members of the House?
Proposals for change to your Lordships’ House, be they great or small, rarely excite interest outside the House. I have in various writings on reform of this House quoted Janet Morgan, who once wrote:
“On Summer evenings and Winter afternoons, when they have nothing else to do, people discuss how to reform the House of Lords. Schemes are taken out of cupboards and drawers and dusted off. Speeches are composed, pamphlets written, letters sent to the newspapers. From time to time the whole country becomes excited”.
Well, the political classes may become excited but there is little evidence of the whole country ever doing so. Even in 1910, when there were two general elections, with Lords reform ostensibly being to the fore, the electorate remained as uninterested as it had been before the House rejected the 1909 Budget. As George Dangerfield wrote of the December election campaign:
“The country was indifferent, and politicians were hard put to it to stir up its lethargy”.
I am not sure that Lords reform was to the forefront of popular concerns either when the House of Lords Reform Bill was before the Commons in 2012.
Given that, it is not surprising that the issue before us today attracts no obvious public interest. I did a post on my blog about it and invited comments on the Bill. It attracted a grand total of two responses, the first of which was:
10:34 am
Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood (CB)
My Lords, I support this Bill just as I supported the same Bill when the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, was promoting it six years ago, in June 2013. I have reread the Second Reading debate of his Bill then and noted rather to my surprise that I managed to speak for eight minutes; I am not sure I shall manage that today.
I recognise, of course, that this is perhaps not the most burning political issue of the day. But it has for some time been, and remains, an issue worth raising and one which should finally be resolved—in its favour, I suggest—and put to bed. I invite your Lordships to look at it this way: suppose that our present bicameral system was being devised and established for the first time today, long after the passage of the Parliament Acts of 1911 and 1949, with an elected House of Commons being rightly accorded the primacy it is recognised to have; it alone having the power to impose taxes and deal realistically with money Bills; it alone having the right by convention to implement its policies, particularly its manifesto promises; it alone having the power to bring down government; and so on. Suppose all that, and that those setting up the system of government then asked themselves—after looking around the world at other bicameral nations where the second Chamber invariably has the vote—should the Members of the upper House have a vote in deciding who should be the Members of the House of Commons? I suggest that one cannot seriously doubt that the answers would be: of course they should; why on earth not?
It is quite wrong to suppose that the mere fact that we have a limited say in scrutinising and refining Bills from the House of Commons, and occasionally promote Bills ourselves, should disqualify us from voting in parliamentary elections. One point I made in the debate brought by the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, is that the 11 of us who in October 2009 ceased to be Law Lords here and were recreated as Justices of the new Supreme Court became at that point totally disfranchised. For so long as we remained Supreme Court Justices, we ceased to have any vote or voice whatever in national political life. We were disqualified from speaking or voting here in the Lords, yet as Members of the House of Lords we had no vote either in parliamentary elections. Still now, 10 years on, there remain in the Supreme Court two such Justices, the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hale, the President of the Supreme Court; and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Kerr of Tonaghmore. There are, I think, two Scottish law officers similarly placed.
This does not apply to Peers who retire, nor indeed any Peer who may be expelled from the House under the provisions of the House of Lords (Expulsion and Suspension) Act 2015, although no doubt it applies to other Peers statutorily disqualified from active membership. Should we simply write off those cases as mere oversights or regrettable anomalies in an otherwise sensible, logical voting system? I suggest not. It seems to me rather that, as a matter of principle, we should finally end the wider anomaly, which consists in the disqualification of all Members of this House from voting in Commons elections. The right to a parliamentary vote should be regarded as a basic fundamental right that should be denied to citizens only for compelling reasons. It is no longer denied to mental patients. It is, as we all know, still denied to all convicted prisoners. Personally, I regret that, but I suggest that today is not the occasion to debate again its pros and cons. No more is it, pace the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, the occasion to debate the Liberal Democrats’ cause of a wholly elected House of Lords or indeed the question of votes for 16 year-olds.
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, on having introduced the Bill. He and I had a chat about it beforehand and I very much welcome the fact that he has introduced a Bill on the same principle as the one that I introduced into this House about six years ago.
I want to comment on one or two of the speeches that we have heard. I was slightly surprised; I say to the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, that I have never argued that, by giving Members of this House the right to vote, we could significantly tip the balance in parliamentary elections. It may be that that would happen, but I think it is a slightly way-out suggestion. I would welcome it if we could tip the balance in close votes, but that is not the way it is.
I am more concerned about my noble friend Lord Desai, who said that we have to pay a price to be here. I find that an extraordinary comment. There are enormous privileges in being here, of course, but the idea that we should somehow be penalised by not having our democratic say seems to be slightly odd in terms of our parliamentary democracy.
I have enormous respect for the noble Lord, Lord Norton, and I often agree with him, but I must say I part company with his thesis today. This may be a distraction for some, but surely a principle is worth talking about even if there are not demonstrations in Whitehall and Parliament Square in support. The noble Lord is putting forward the theory that there has to be a lot of public feeling and there have to be demonstrations out in the streets before we should make a change. I am sure he does not really mean that, but that is what his argument sounded like.
There is a fundamental point of principle here. I like helping in elections, and at the last general election I helped in about five constituencies. Whether or not one does that, though, I actually felt a sense of pain, I was hurt, that on polling day I was not able to vote. I regard that as my right as a citizen and a fundamental democratic point, even if only 800 people would be affected by changing the law. Maybe I am being sentimental, but I have felt hurt, on every general election day since I was privileged to join this House, that I was able to help, to knock on doors and ask people to go and vote but could not do so myself.
My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Naseby, and I support the Bill. Before I come on to the main point that I want to make in my speech, I shall pick up one of the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Dubs. He made a very fundamental point about the privilege of voting in general elections. I have always been struck by the empowering way in which general elections happen. Millions of people go into their local library, village hall or church hall. They go into a booth, take the stub of a pencil on the end of a piece of string and put a cross on a scrap of paper. They put that scrap of paper into a tin box and, very often, the next day the entire Government leave office. That is the most empowering thing that we do in a democracy. I happen to like the fact that it happens the next day, because it reminds people that they themselves did it; it was not done in smoke-filled rooms. I remember how empowered I felt when I first voted, and I have voted in every single election, as I suspect most people in this House have. However, the one thing we are not allowed to do is vote in general elections. We are denied that empowering and unifying experience, which is so important to our country.
I support this Bill for one fundamental reason, which is taxation. Everybody in this House pays income tax, VAT and excise duties; they possibly pay capital gains tax; their families might pay inheritance tax. Quite rightly, we in this House do not decide taxation—I agree with that. Members of Parliament in the House of Commons decide that, but we cannot elect those Members. We cannot have any say at all on the levels of taxation imposed upon us. If we were talking about some third-world or newly independent country where they denied certain people the right to elect the people who impose taxes on them, we would be horrified.
I want to give the House two figures. At the last election, there were 46 million people on the electoral roll. Every one of them was entitled to vote for the Members of Parliament who decide taxation. There are 778 people who cannot do that—Members of this House. We are denied that right. This is more than just a minor anomaly; it is fundamentally wrong.
I want to put this point to the Minister, and I would like him to answer it if he would. Does he at least accept the fundamental principle that there is something wrong when people who have taxes imposed upon them have no right to decide who imposes them?
10:54 am
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I wondered what further evidence I could find that would be helpful to your Lordships. These days we spend a great deal of our time talking about what the young think. None of us here is young, but I am quite sure that in our normal lives, we talk to young people where we live. I had the opportunity to be approached by a student at Bedford School, where I went as a boy; and where, incidentally, Erskine May was also a pupil. He approached me and asked whether he could shadow me for a period of time. So I said, “Have a look at this Bill. You’re taking A-level politics, are you not?”. He said yes, so I said, “Have a look at the Bill, do your own research and give me some comments. I don’t mind what you come up with; I’m not worried one way or the other. My views are clear, but you can criticise, et cetera”.
I will now give a few quotes from what he wrote to me, because they are quite interesting—quite forthright, as most young people are. He writes:
“I was appalled to hear members of one of our two great Houses do not get a vote on who the future government should be, which will, of course, have as much of an impact on their lives as it will on everyone else’s.
I find it is an embarrassing stain on the democracy we boast of in this country. As one of the world’s leading powers, it is nothing short of shocking that our second chamber is the only one in the world that does not allow its members to vote at general elections. This means out of nearly 200 countries with second chambers, ours is the only one that doesn’t. The only way to describe that is shameful!
The only two arguments used to defend the law in the 2013 debate”—
my noble friend Lord Dubs’s debate—
“were; that this is the way it is done so leave it that way and the other was the scepticism around reform.
The first argument is, quite frankly, ridiculous. Archaic laws can have no place in our society, or politics, just because it’s the way we have always done certain procedures doesn’t mean it is right and should carry on … However, when the original resolution was made there was a need to limit the powers of Peers … So, if members of this House do not have a say on financial bills here or in general elections, where do they have their say on how they want their economy to be run? As you are all aware, you don’t! This is a complete failure, especially as it is a basic right within our nation for the majority to be given the right to vote … If members of the House believe they should not be granted the vote, then they can make a conscious decision not to vote. However, their unwillingness to vote should not then stop others in an attempt to further participate in the political system they play a key role in. As a 17 year old who is politically active and waits with eagerness to exercise whatever democratic rights and privileges we enjoy in our country I can only imagine the pain and anger it must cause that simply because of one’s job they are then unable to vote, despite the fact that they have enjoyed voting and campaigning for, or even serving, previous governments. Considering all of the facts that this is an outdated law, and was made against predecessors long before those who now sit I feel very strongly and passionately that this bill must be passed”.
That is the view of a 17 year-old reading A-level politics.
Then I asked myself, what is the position today on royalty? I asked the Library for a little help on that. Before I got any evidence from the Library, I was sure that they were not allowed to vote. What did I find? On investigation, I found that while the Head of State—the Queen—has to remain strictly neutral with respect to political matters and is unable to vote or to stand for election, that is only a convention. There is no law that prevents Her Majesty or the Royal Dukes voting. Indeed, after the Act we passed in 1999 the Royal Dukes were allowed to vote. The advice from the Palace is that those who are close to Her Majesty—I think “inner circle” is the phrase that is used—are asked not to take part, and that is very understandable. But the rest of the royals can all vote. It is entirely up to them whether they do so—nobody is forcing them to vote—and I think that that is of considerable relevance.
A number of friends in the House will know that I started my life in the other place with a majority of 179. On the first count, it was around minus 200, so we had a recount. On the second count, I think I won by three or four. On the third count, I won by 179. I shall not go into the detail of how or why that might have happened—that is not relevant this morning—but it is interesting. If we look at more recent elections, how many of us remember Harmar Nicholls in Peterborough in 1966? After seven recounts, he was elected by three votes. Brighton Kemptown was won by seven votes in 1964. Winchester was won by two votes in the 1997 election. Even more recently, in 2017 North East Fife was won by two votes. I put it to your Lordships that it is a weak argument to say, “What difference do one or two votes make to the situation on the ground?”. What would have happened in Fife if three of our colleagues from across the border could have voted and might have chosen to vote for the candidate who came second? That is worth thinking about very seriously.
My view is that one vote counts, so I put it to your Lordships that the time has come to recognise that we take part in our local communities. I suggest to noble Lords that every one of us sitting here this morning is active in our own community. We take part. We take a responsibility—yet we are precluded from voting in the key vote that any person in our society can have. This is an important Bill that should move forward. I beg to move.
This Bill proposes a very minor reform but it is one on which we may well be accused of special pleading by putting our own interests ahead of those of other people who are also presently unable to elect Members of what we sometimes still refer to as the other place. People who are not UK citizens but are presently citizens of the EU have a right to vote here to elect local councillors, if they live here, and they presently have a right to elect MEPs if they can get past the bureaucratic barriers put in their way, but they do not have a right to elect MPs unless they are citizens of the Irish Republic, Cyprus or Malta. I believe that the best way of ensuring that the rights of the 3 million EU citizens living here are protected if we leave the EU is to ensure that they can vote for MPs as easily as they can vote for local councillors.
In my view, there is a need for a fundamental review of the franchise for all our elections, going well beyond the scope of this Bill. A few yards from where we are now, I sometimes take questions from school groups visiting Parliament. I suspect that many of us do that. It is a delight to try to answer very many good questions. They vary a great deal. From the youngest ones, I always get, “Have you ever met the Queen?” There are questions such as, “What is the one thing in the world that you would most like to change?” Recently I was asked, “What is the longest debate in which you have ever taken part?” My description to a group of six year-olds of an all-night sitting a few years ago, with camp beds and sleeping bags laid out in the Library, led to much excitement about the holding of sleep-overs in the House of Lords, as they understood it to be.
From sixth-form groups, I generally experience questioning as intelligent and as informed as from any group of people over 18. The noble Lord, Lord Naseby, quoted the eloquent words of a 17 year-old in support of the principles of his Bill. I would say to the sixth-form groups that I frequently address that the Liberal Democrats believe that they should be able to vote to choose MPs at the first general election after their 16th birthday. That is at least as important a principle as it is for Members of this House to be able to vote to elect Members of the other House.
We now have a different starting age for the franchise for local elections and devolved elections in different parts of the UK, so it must be time to consider properly the voting rights for everyone living here, for UK citizens living abroad and for young people from the age of 16—as well as for Peers of the realm.
“It’s a non-issue. The Lords sitting in the upper house are small in number (and should be much smaller still—I suggest by drawing lots) and relatively balanced politically, so it’s unlikely to affect any election, so who cares? It’s not worth three sentences to discuss”.
Public indifference is matched by apparent indifference on the part of Members of this House. The speakers’ list for today may be notable for quality, but not for quantity. There is no clear, swelling demand for change on the part of Members, and in my view, that is significant. I notice also that the issue has not been the subject of much study. Even the Library briefing note relies on a blog post I did some years ago on the legal position of the prohibition.
I turn to the issue of principle. The argument, which has been made since the 19th century and is repeated today by my noble friend Lord Naseby, is that the House of Commons has powers denied the Lords, not least in terms of taxation, and Peers, the same as other citizens, should be able to vote for those who determine taxation. As my noble friend has mentioned, members of appointed second chambers elsewhere get to vote for members of the elected house.
In this country, we are now almost the only citizens not able to vote for MPs. I say almost, because certain other categories, notably prisoners, are also disfranchised. Once released from jail, they can vote—as indeed can anybody in this House who retires from membership. Mention of prisoners brings me on to the rights argument. We cannot argue that we are denied a basic right without conceding that prisoners are as well. In the Hirst case, the ECHR did not hold that prisoners should have the right to vote but that a blanket ban on prisoners being able to vote was in contravention of the convention.
There is a key difference between us and prisoners, which leads me to address the case against the Bill. Prisoners have no voice in Parliament; we do. It may not be as great as that of MPs, but we have a security of tenure denied those in the other place. The votes of Peers in a general election are not likely to swing the outcome, even in the closest of contests, but the fact of having the right to vote in addition to a place in Parliament—and a secure one—may seem a privilege too far. We may not vote on issues of taxation, but we have privileges that are denied to citizens. We can debate finance Bills at Second Reading. If a Bill is certified as a money Bill, we can offer amendments. Although the Commons is not obliged to consider them, there have been occasions when it has accepted amendments. In short, we can engage government in a way that the ordinary citizen cannot.
As I have said, the Bill will not excite great interest but, if passed, it may contribute to perceptions that we are seeking more for ourselves and do nothing to increase public understanding of the role played by this House. We add value to the political process, and we do so at relatively little cost. Indeed, if one could ascribe monetary value to the raft of changes we achieve to public legislation, I believe it would more than offset the costs of running the institution.
As my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham is well aware, I am keen to ensure that we improve our scrutiny of legislation. We do a good job, but I believe that we could do it even better. As I have stressed before in this House, ensuring that we deliver good law is a public good. That is what we should be focusing on, and ensuring that our scarce resources, including time, are devoted to it. That is what the public should see us doing. We should be thinking of public service, not self-service. We need to focus on raising awareness of the work of this House and what it contributes to the nation. This measure is, I fear, something of a distraction and may prove unhelpful if—it is a very big if—it gets noticed.
I accept that there is a stronger case against prisoners voting than there is against Members of this House having the vote, but I suggest that there really is no coherent case for denying us the vote simply because we have a limited—though, I recognise, valuable—role in the overall legislative process. It is not a sufficient role to justify our being denied any say in those who have primacy in legislation, the Members of the House of Commons.
The vote is a symbol of a healthy democracy whose value should be recognised. The Bill would assist in that recognition, and I wish it well.
One of the fundamental points is this. Yes, of course we are in a privileged position in that we can influence legislation, initiate legislation and change the laws of this country if the Commons agree with us, as they often do, but we do not have the right to influence who would be our Government, and that surely is the difference between influencing legislation on a day-to-day basis and actually having a say in who we want to govern the country, which we would do through voting in parliamentary elections. I would have thought that was absolutely basic. Bishops have a vote, as do Members of other second Chambers in the world, but we do not.
I would like to refer to what happened last time. After quite an extensive debate in this House, we agreed to the Bill, and off it went to the Commons. I should be careful before I criticise the procedure of the Commons but, gosh, I am going to. There is an odd procedure under which, if a Bill works its way there, any Member of Parliament can shout, “Object!”, without there being any ability to identify who that person is. So I took the trouble to write to all the known objectors on the Back Benches who might object explaining what the Bill was about, that it did not affect their rights in the Commons and so on. I thought I had covered everyone, but someone still shouted “Object!”. I do not know who it was, but I am going to tell the House what my suspicion is, and I am looking at the Lib Dem Benches. When I was moving my Bill last time, the Lib Dem Benches did not like it and said it was not appropriate—I will come on to that in the moment—so, when it got to the Commons, it is my strong suspicion that the notorious objectors did not shout “Object!” but someone did so on behalf of the Lib Dem Benches.
Why was that? After all, we have had a conversion on the road to Damascus from the Lib Dems; I believe that they are now totally in favour, and I welcome that. However, their argument then as I understood it—and this was Nick Clegg’s view—was that we do not change anything about the House of Lords unless we change everything. This was a dramatic revolutionary principle that piecemeal change was no good: “Don’t touch the Lords unless you change it in all sorts of ways”. Frankly, that is an absurd approach to politics. The evidence of British parliamentary history is that progressive change bit by bit is the most effective way of achieving change, so I was surprised when the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, who six years ago was speaking for the Lib Dems, suggested that they did not want this. As I say, I have a strong suspicion that there was one objector in the Commons; I was sitting in the gallery but could not identify who they were. This is a great fault in the procedure of the Commons. We should have the right to identify anyone who shouts, “Object!” and blocks a Bill. I say this to the Lib Dems: I welcome a conversion, and if they are all converted then that is wonderful.
The Bill is about something important. There will not be cheering in Parliament Square and people will not be marching down Whitehall, but as a fundamental principle of democracy we should have the right to vote. My only regret is that the Bill says that this is to happen a year from now, but we might have an election before then, so even if the Bill went through, that would be another election where we were denied the right to vote. Still, I very much welcome the Bill, and I hope this House will give it a welcome and warm passage.
I want to pick up some of the arguments that I suspect—I may be wrong—my noble friend the Minister will deploy in arguing against this Bill, as I am sure he will. The first is that we should not do this via piecemeal reform. This is how House of Lords reform has been done for the last 100 years. There is no prospect of a coherent, comprehensive piece of legislation coming forward. We have changed the composition of the Lords, we have allowed retirement and we now have an attempt to reduce the size of the House. I looked back to see what excuses had been made against individual piecemeal reforms of this House in the past, and I was fascinated by the arguments used against the policy proposed in the 1960s by Viscount Stansgate, better known as Anthony Wedgwood Benn, who wanted to allow hereditary Peers to renounce their peerage. One of the arguments used against that was deployed by the Garter King of the day. He argued that allowing Peers to renounce their peerage would subject their wives to what he called “social demolition”. Very weird arguments are used against piecemeal reform, but the only way this House will reform itself in the foreseeable future is precisely by piecemeal reform.
The other argument that will no doubt be used is that there are some technical flaws in the Bill. I do not know if there are or not, but if there are, they can be corrected. This week, we had the Northern Ireland Bill that went through the House in two days. There were technical flaws that had to be corrected, and they were corrected extremely efficiently and swiftly.
The third argument will no doubt be that this is not the right time. Of course, I fear that this Bill will not reach the statute book, because we will come to the end of this Session at some point.
Extension of Franchise (House of Lords) Bill… · Order Paper · Order Paper