My Lords, of course, actually, it is the second time that I have had the privilege of putting an identical Bill before the House. Indeed, the last time was only six months ago. But for the intervention of a general election, I am sure it would have made substantial progress.
First, I thank some of my predecessors who tabled if not an identical Bill, then one very closely reflecting the same thrust. I see that the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, is in his place, as is the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, and I say a sincere thank you to both of them for the contribution they have made to this cause. We will eventually be successful at some point.
I should like to go back in history just a little because there is a historical dimension to this, which is why we find ourselves in the position we are in. I took the name “Naseby” simply because I was the Member of Parliament for Northampton. Obviously, I could not take “Northampton” because we already have an Earl of that name. I had been involved in the Civil War commemorations, and in particular for the Battle of Naseby itself. All of the wounded from that battle came into my constituency, and therefore it seemed appropriate for me to take the name. That battle on 14 June 1645 was for me one of the key moments in the creation of our democracy. Yes, the “Commonwealth” did not last very long—due, dare I mention it, to the hereditary principle in the sense that Richard, the son of Oliver, did not actually have the wherewithal to run the country. That eventually led to the restoration of the monarchy, and basically that is where we stand today.
I suspect that at the time, Peers were viewed with a degree of suspicion by those in the other place, which is why some restrictions were put on the upper House. I shall quote a number of aspects of that—not at great length, noble Lords will be pleased to hear. The principle that Peers cannot vote in elections to the House of Commons has a long history and the Library has kindly prepared some data. At least between 1699 and 1998, the House of Commons would pass a Sessional Order at the beginning of each Session to the effect that no Peer had any right to elect a Member of Parliament. Then of course we have the well-known case of Earl Beauchamp v Madresfield in 1872. We began to see some progress around that time, and again I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, who dug out the quote from Benjamin Disraeli, who said that he sought support for extending the right to vote in general elections to Peers because they were taxed by votes cast in the House of Commons.
Things do slowly move forward; that is the principle of life in this great Parliament. In 1999—I was here then, as were a number of other noble Lords—it was held in common law that it was the status of being a Peer that precluded one from being able to vote. Since 1999 and the House of Lords Act, it is the fact of being a Member of the Second Chamber that prevents one from voting. Under the terms of the 1999 Act, hereditary Peers who are excluded from membership of the House are able to vote and, as we know, Members of the House of Lords can vote in all other elections.
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, on obtaining a place in the ballot, particularly the number two slot. I hope it is a good sign that we can make progress in this Parliament to get this Bill approved. I echo his congratulations to those who, over generations, have sought to return to us the ability to vote in general elections—including my noble friend Lord Dubs, who is here this morning.
I have shared the experience of people’s incredulity, as the noble Lord has just expressed, that we do not have the right to vote in a general election. In the last general election, for some of us on this side it might have been an interesting cop-out when people on the doorstep asked us what we were going to do. Of course, it was not. I speak for myself in saying that, were I able to vote, I would have voted Labour—I just want to make that absolutely clear.
I do not intend to delay the House too long, because there are many speakers on this Bill and the subsequent one. The fundamental issue that the noble Lord has raised is that the basic right of any citizen is the right to vote. It has been fought for over generations. The extension of the franchise way beyond what it was in 1699 enabled people who had fought for that right to exercise it. To take it away from those who are ennobled is a historic anachronism that does not bear thinking about.
I tried to examine what arguments have been put in the past. The history of the anachronism does not stand up to scrutiny, nor does the argument—quite a bizarre debate has been had in this House in the past about our right to vote in general elections—that we can represent ourselves. Let us leave aside that before sittings in both Houses, we have Prayers that enjoin us not to look after our own personal interests, and just consider the practicalities of whether people represent themselves in this House. We legislate for the country in a way that enables people to open up the issues and debate. We do not legislate or sit on Select Committees in any sense on our own behalf. I have never heard anyone raise a Question such as: “My child”—or, more appropriately in this House, grandchild—“hasn’t got into the school they put as their first choice. What is the Minister going to do about it?” Frankly, it is a non-starter. No one is ever arguing for their own personal rights or raising their own personal representation in this House. They are seeking to do a job—a duty, an obligation—on behalf of the people as a whole.
It is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, who speaks on this issue with a powerful voice, as he does on so many issues. I too congratulate my noble friend Lord Naseby on bringing forward this Bill again. A similar Bill was debated on 19 July last year. The Minister who replied to that debate was my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham, who I see is in his new place today. He gave a less than positive response last July. Of course, he was speaking on behalf of the then Government. Five days later we had a new Government and today we have a different Minister, so dare we hope for a more positive response?
I have just reread the speech my noble friend made last year. As noble Lords would expect, it was delivered in the most mellifluous and elegant way. But even that could not disguise the shallowness of the Government’s arguments. How could we quarrel, he argued, with the principle enunciated in 1699, which he quoted from the Commons Journal of that year:
“That no Peer of this Kingdom hath any Right to give his vote”?
If that was good enough for us 300 years ago then surely, he implied, it is good enough today. He went on. The principle was justified by the
“ancient, immemorial law of England.”—[Official Report, 5/7/1858; col. 928.].
Here the Minister was quoting admiringly the Lord Chief Justice in 1858. And then, lest we had forgotten, he prayed in aid cases and judgments from 1872. It is a strange line of reasoning which asserts that if that is what the law said in 1699, 1858 and 1872, then that is what the law should say in 2020.
In my speech last year, I said that I supported this Bill for many reasons, but for one fundamental reason, which is taxation. I argued that while everyone in this House pays tax—income tax, VAT, excise duties and no doubt many others—we have no say whatever on taxation. That is decided by Members of the House of Commons, for whom we cannot vote.
My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Lord, Lord Sherbourne of Didsbury, whose forensic examination of the case was quite flawless. However, I shall argue that this should not, perhaps, be seen as our highest priority.
The Bill proposes a very modest measure of constitutional reform. It is at the opposite end of the scale from the Great Reform Act 1832, the second Reform Act 1867, the third reform Act 1884 and the Representation of the People Acts of 1918, 1928 and 1969. Over 150 years, those Acts extended the franchise for elections from about 214,000 people—about 3% of the population—to the 47.6 million people who were registered to vote in the general election last December. That figure did not include the approximately 800 Members of the House of Lords, which is why we are here today.
In moving the Second Reading of an identical Bill here last July, the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, made much of the fact that the House of Commons has primacy in legislation, has total control over financial matters, and that its membership effectively decides who forms the Government. If Members of this House have no say in the membership of the House of Commons, then we have no say in who forms the Government of the country, and that cannot be right.
The noble Lord, Lord Naseby, also said, and repeated today, that out of nearly 200 countries with second Chambers, ours is the only one in the world that does not allow its Members to vote at general elections. Recent legislation has confirmed that we are disfranchised in this way, and in replying to the debate last July the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, cited the House of Lords Act 1999 in particular. But when I voted as a new Member of this House for that Act, it was on the basis that it was to be only an interim measure before a second and more fundamental phase of reform. That reform did not happen under Tony Blair and we are still waiting for it because of the failure of the other place to agree a timetable Motion for the House of Lords Reform Bill 2012. That was despite that Bill achieving its Second Reading by a massive 462 to 124 votes of MPs. The process of reform is therefore very frustrating.
12:14 pm
Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood (CB)
My Lords, three weeks ago, on 16 January, the new President of the Supreme Court, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Reed of Allermuir, was introduced into this House in succession to the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hale, and I welcome him to our Cross Benches. However, that very same day, by the very fact of his ennoblement to this House, he found himself wholly disenfranchised. He had already served on the Supreme Court for eight years and, during those eight years, like almost all his colleagues, he enjoyed the right to vote in parliamentary elections, but now, ennobled, although, of course, under our rules, immediately disqualified from speaking and voting in this House, he finds himself without a vote here or in parliamentary elections. So too does the Lord Chief Justice, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Burnett of Maldon, who was ennobled in November 2017 and immediately disqualified. They are worse off in terms of the parliamentary vote than a Member of this House who is convicted of a crime and expelled under one of the extremely desirable bits of incremental legislation—I say that in response to the noble Lord, Lord Rennard—which is gradually improving the situation here. The Bill is another manifestly desirable incremental improvement in our position.
I wonder what those who oppose this Bill say about these judges? Do they say that it is merely an anomaly—possibly a regrettable anomaly, but do not worry about it? I suggest that these anomalies are symptomatic of the deeper illogicality of denying us the vote in general elections. In fact, not all Members are denied the vote; one must recollect that it is only temporal Peers. The Bishops continue to have a vote in general elections. Is that perhaps just another anomaly?
I do not pretend that this is a first-order issue. If and when we get the commission on the constitution that is promised—or do I mean threatened?—it will not be item one on the agenda. No doubt there will be an awful lot of issues, such as those the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, outlined, including the voting age, but this is no occasion to debate all those wider issues. We are here concerned to try to eliminate finally one absurd lingering anomaly. Of course, we retain our seats from one Parliament to another and, if not disqualified like our serving judges, we play some part in the legislative process, most usefully perhaps in the scrutiny and revision of Bills that come from the other place, but we all accept—nobody doubts—that the real power lies there. It has the democratic mandate and its policies, particularly the manifesto promises of an elected Government, rule, and rightly so. As has been pointed out, money Bills—taxation—are for it alone. The old adage “no taxation without representation” is waved aside as an historical accident.
My Lords, I cannot quite believe that we are having this debate and wasting Parliament’s time on such a monumentally inconsequential reform. However, I at least congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, on producing what I think, in my 15 years in this House, is the most minor change to the statute book of any that I have yet been a party to. By my calculation, there are 794 Members of the House of Lords and the total electorate of the nation is 45,775,800. That means that the noble Lord’s Bill would add 0.00173% to the electorate. If we were able to give an hour or two of debate to every issue in the country that could make a 0.00173% improvement to the relevant public policy of the country, we would sit continuously. Maybe we would do some good but we certainly would not give so much scrutiny to this issue.
Indeed, I was trying to work out whether it would make any difference at all to any constituency. It is just possible that it might have done, although I fear perhaps not in Northamptonshire. However, I note that in Kensington, where many noble Lords live, there was a majority in the 2017 election of only 20. So maybe, if the Bill had become law, in one constituency in the nation in one election in history, it might have made a difference. Perhaps all those who are residents of Kensington should be allowed to cast their vote retrospectively in the 2017 election and we might have a different Member of Parliament. Otherwise, it will not make any difference. As Ernest Bevin famously said on another occasion:
“If you open that Pandora’s Box, you never know what Trojan horses will jump out”.
This Bill is not of any great consequence—I could not really care whether it passes. Maybe in Northamptonshire people stop the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, in the street and ask why this great scandal of him not having the vote is allowed to perpetuate. However, I admit to your Lordships that no one has ever said that to me. Far more often, they have said, “Why are you there at all?” What on earth is the argument for the noble Lord, for the noble Earl, Lord Howe—
Who forced my noble friend Lord Blunkett not to have a vote in a general election? He accepted the peerage and, by virtue of that, he does not have a vote. The reason that the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, does not have a vote is not that some great constitutional outrage is taking place but because he chose to become Lord Naseby. None of us is forced to be here, because we no longer have hereditary succession without the right not to accept the peerage. Everyone is here by choice. The argument made by the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, whom we hold in great respect, and an argument that I assume the noble Earl will make again from the Front Bench—that in our democracy everyone should have a voice, which I argue noble Lords have by virtue of participation in this Chamber—is completely correct. If people want to vote for the other House, they should not come here. The idea that somehow there is a parallel with other Chambers in other countries is completely false, because this is the only second Chamber in the world, apart from China, in which people are here simply by virtue of who they are rather than by virtue of any representative credentials whatever.
As I said, I do not think that the Bill would make any difference one way or the other, apart from to the 794 of us here, but it raises principles. The noble Lord, Lord Sherbourne, said that incremental reform is a good thing. I am in favour of incremental reform that improves things. The reforms that he mentioned—the introduction of life Peers, for example—improved the working of this House significantly, but this Bill will not of itself improve anything at all. It deals with what is arguably an anomaly or arguably not an anomaly—it depends how you look at it—but it would do nothing whatever to improve the operation of the constitution. Indeed, it would do nothing to address any of the issues that were very well put by the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, concerning the working of our democracy. He raised very timely issues such as the right to vote at the age of 16. We should spend the time of this House debating issues such as that, not minor issues of this kind.
The noble Lord, Lord Naseby, has tabled the Bill and we are doing him the justice of debating it, although, as I said, I think that it is entirely inconsequential. My first point concerns our contribution. We are all here by virtue of being individuals who have been given peerages. I speak as someone who wrote a book on the subject of the operation of the House of Lords in the late 19th century when it was under the almost dictatorial control of Lord Salisbury—the portrait of him addressing the House of Lords on the rejection of the Irish home rule Bill faces the Bishops’ Bar. One striking and extraordinary thing about the House of Lords as an institution is how little the operations of this House have changed to enable Peers to make an impact.
In most areas of public policy that matter to this country where we could have an impact, we have zero impact because we have no committee system. We have been here for about eight centuries and have had time to put this right but the only developed committee of this House is our European Union Committee. It is arguable whether over 45 years it made any difference to our membership of the European Union but, unfortunately, it has had no impact at all on most areas of public policy. I was a Minister for five years in this House—indeed, I was a Secretary of State for one year—but never in that entire time did I appear before a Select Committee of the House of Lords because there was no Select Committee of the House of Lords to appear before. I appeared monthly before the relevant Select Committee in the House of Commons, which conducted very good scrutiny, but the great potential in this place, where there were many experts in all fields, was completely neglected.
The way that we organise our business has changed very little since the 19th century. All the changes that have taken place in the House of Commons in the last 50 years have passed us by. We have no proper departmental Question Time; we still have the haphazard business dating back to the mid-19th century of individual Peers tabling Questions that are entirely random, depending on their interests; and there is no proper Question Time. The way that we consider Bills has not changed, including the extremely cumbersome Committee stage process, which is entirely unintelligible to people outside. In particular, the fact that it takes place in the Chamber is a very great occupation of the time of the Chamber that could be spent on other matters. The size of the House has increased but our procedures have not changed at all. We do not really have debates which, by the standards of the House of Commons, constitute debates. We simply divide whatever time there is, no matter the number of speakers, which often means that we have literally four or five minutes in which to speak. For the most part, we read speeches that are reported in Hansard, and there is almost no give and take in debates.
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More recently, we had the disqualification updated again. The House of Lords Reform Act 2014, which is not very long ago, and the House of Lords (Expulsion and Suspension) Act 2015 extended the right to vote in general elections to Peers who ceased to be Members of the House in a way other than under the 1999 Act, for example through retirement, non-attendance, conviction of a serious offence or expulsion. So I conclude from all that that this is a pathway and that we are making slow progress. I am 83. We do not yet have a retirement age here. To the best of my knowledge, I am fit and well, so I am going to take another look at this particular objective which I share with a number of other noble Lords—and indeed perhaps I may say that I share it with a large number of Members of Parliament in the other place as well.
My basic tenet is still the same: all of us here give leadership in our own communities. There must be very few Members of this House who do not provide leadership in the community in which they live. The very word “Lord” gives us a passport to that. However, we are denied a view about our own elected Member of Parliament. We cannot stand in front of them and say, “I am supporting you … or you.” We have to stay quiet. We are denied the right to vote on a manifesto for the political party that we might support—a manifesto that will affect our family and children. Is that not part of our human rights? Only through a general election do the electorate have the opportunity to vote on different spending plans. Yes, we are in the upper House, but we have no voice on these issues, particularly as we do not debate taxation matters and only very rarely do we vote on statutory instruments of a monetary nature. And yet in the society we are in today, money and expenditure are absolutely vital to our everyday lives, as they are in any democracy. We all know the clarion call, do we not? We learned it as schoolboys: no taxation without representation. But about 800 men and women are denied that opportunity to vote in our democracy. The only other people who are denied it are certain categories of criminals, and that of course I find irksome.
In the recent election, 47.56 million people had the absolute right to vote—except for the 800 that we are—and 67.3% of them people took advantage of it. The following is interesting, but if I am honest, I only discovered it yesterday when I looked at a breakdown of voting. There is a category of “anonymous voters” and nationally there are just over 2,500 of them. If we are worried about our names appearing somewhere because we voted, perhaps we could join those 2,500 anonymous votes. I say that just as an aside.
However, matters have shifted since the last election. Here, but with great care, I will draw a parallel with the monarchy and what has been happening there in relation to politics. We know that the Queen by dint of time does not vote—but she can vote. We know that members of the inner circle of the Royal Family are encouraged not to vote—but they can vote. In fact, we do not really know if they vote or not, but all other members of the Royal Family can. There is something of a parallel with our position today, and I am grateful to a lady called Helen Thompson for what she has written in the New Statesmen—colleagues may be interested to note that I read it. The following was written in the 31 January to 6 February issue, and it caught my eye:
“The prorogation crisis last September showed the obvious dangers in blurring the line between the monarch’s passive role and democratic politics. By asking the Queen to perform an act that would inevitably be subject to legal challenge, the Prime Minister condemned her to act politically. That the High Court of Justice for England and Wales, an appellate panel of the Court of Session in Edinburgh, and the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom could not agree on the legality of the use of royal powers, or the relevance of Boris Johnson’s motives, demonstrated how hard consensus is on constitutional matters involving the Crown, once a political crisis requires them to be scrutinised.”
Well, I would suggest to colleagues that there is no political crisis yet, but I draw a parallel to a degree with the slow passage of the Bill of my friend the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, to remove by-elections for hereditary Peers. This whole process has been exceedingly undemocratic, but the last couple of Governments have shilly-shallied around it and delayed it. It is a small but significant measure, as is the measure before your Lordships this morning.
As it happens, the Bill from the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, was number one in the ballot. This Bill was number two. Colleagues will know that I have a great interest in Sri Lanka, where they have a phrase, “auspicious”. I think that this was an auspicious happening that may well be beneficial to both parties in the end.
My Government now have more than four years to get on and look at this Bill and at the Bill from the noble Lord, Lord Grocott. We have on our side the same young man, who is my research assistant—although I shall not use the same quotes I used last time. These are a few of the reasons he thinks this Bill should go through. He says in a note to me:
“Another reason used to defend this appalling law was the scepticism around reform. This came in two main forms, one being that it was a sort of ‘slippery slope’ to further reforms, and the second was that in 2013 it was not the right time to do such a reform. Well, rather simply there is no evidence for there to be further reforms following this one. It is a single bill, on a single issue, so this line of argument is discounted. Finally, in response to the other side of the reform argument, we are now seven years down the line”.
Now is as good a time as any, and he sees no reason why anything should be put in the way to prevent this Bill going forward. That is from Alex Wilkins, and I thank him for the work he has done on that.
We now know that the vast majority of the electorate are on our side. How do we know that? A good number of us have been out on the doorstep recently, and people are amazed. Those who know me say, “You don’t have a vote, Michael?” Those who have forgotten that I am here now say, “You don’t have a vote, Mr Morris?” I say, “No.” No one out there understands it—which is incredible in itself, is it not?
We have lots of friends across the world, and many of us visit other parliaments. In every single second chamber anywhere else in the world, they all have a vote. We are the only Parliament in the whole world where those in the upper House do not have a vote in the key general election.
I am all for tradition—I dress fairly traditionally—but we know the electorate do not understand it; I have just said that. To recap for the benefit of the Front Bench, I am not necessarily saying this morning that the tradition that we do not vote on money Bills should be removed. What I am saying is that we should have the right to vote in a general election. This is a short, small, targeted Bill. In my judgment it deserves to make progress through the House. As I said near the beginning, I have talked to many friends in the other place and believe there is substantial support there for the Bill. I beg to move.
I hope that, in the reply today, we set aside any of this kind of nonsense and address the central issue: should any citizen have their right to vote withdrawn? There are exceptions, although very few: those who have committed a felony and are in prison, and those who, through incapability, have been described as unable to exercise a meaningful vote. But being ennobled does not fall into either of those categories. As described by the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, if you commit a serious criminal offence or are expelled from this House under the 2014 and 2015 Acts, you regain your right to vote. If you are suspended, you have the right to vote. I wonder whether we are exercising the Fixed-term Parliaments Act in the way originally intended when it was brought in nine years ago. People who really care, as we this morning all care, might get themselves suspended as a general election arises, vote and then return. This is the kind of nonsense we have now got ourselves into. Therefore, recent legislative changes should result in changes in practice in this House to restore our democratic rights.
I have one further thought. If we believe that playing our part in the legislative process and in our scrutiny in any way justifies taking away a democratic right, that could lead to a debate in the country about the role of this House which could take us down very dangerous avenues indeed. Common sense should prevail. This is a simple Bill, as the noble Lord said, with a simple purpose: restoring to those who sit in this House a right that other people take for granted. How can we enjoin them to exercise that right and plead with them to uphold a right that has been fought for over generations, and then have that right withheld from us? How could the Government, who consider themselves to be democratic, actually deny us that right by voting down this Bill? I entirely support the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, and I hope that this House will do so as well.
How did the Minister try to justify the anomaly that Members of this House who pay taxes are not allowed to vote for the MPs who impose taxes? He said that taxation is
“not connected to democratic representation in the UK”,
and, as if to prove the point, he said:
“An American or Japanese citizen of voting age who works and pays taxes in the UK does not have the right to vote in parliamentary elections”.—[Official Report, 19/7/19; col. 486.]
Well, of course they do not, for the rather obvious reason that they are not UK citizens. Members of this House are UK citizens, so that argument just does not stand up. By the way, the so-called principle that a Member of the legislature, because they are a lawmaker, should not be allowed to vote for an MP, does not apply to MPs. A sitting MP who, for example, is a registered elector in a seat that he or she does not represent is entitled to vote in a parliamentary by-election in that constituency. If Members of the Commons have the right to vote in parliamentary elections while they are MPs, why should Members of the Lords not have that right?
When he replies, will my noble friend the Minister tell the House what it is about this Bill—you could not wish for a more modest Bill, as my noble friend Lord Naseby said—that worries the Government? What is the worst thing that could happen if Peers were given the vote? What is the downside? What is the danger? What precisely are the terrible consequences that would flow if this Bill were to pass?
The truth is that there are no robust arguments against giving Members of this House the vote. The only argument that the Government have left is that they are opposed to piecemeal reform, and no doubt we will hear that this proposal would best be done as part of a wider and more comprehensive reform of the House of Lords. But if we had set our face against piecemeal reforms we would never have had life Peers or women Peers. It would be much better if the Government stopped trying to argue the unarguable and were a little more honest with the House and just said to my noble friend Lord Naseby, “You’ve made a good case. Logic is on your side. Let’s talk.”
It is 109 years since Asquith was Prime Minister and the Parliament Act 1911 promised to replace the hereditary principle with the popular one. It has not happened yet, so those of us who believe in the value added by a second Chamber and that lawmakers would have greater legitimacy if they were chosen by voters must argue for piecemeal reform until we can get what we consider to be real reform.
What this Bill proposes would be a tiny step in a process of incremental reform, but it is not one that we should be making our priority. People will say that it would be inconsistent if we were to demand the right for us to vote for MPs, while voters have no right to elect Members of this House.
There are also other more important issues of democratic legitimacy to address and which must have greater priority than this proposal to add Peers to the voting registers for electing MPs. There are, for example, around 9 million people not on the electoral registers who should be included or who are not correctly registered. The failure properly to include such a large number of people distorts election results and constituency boundaries. We should also be giving more consideration to the uncertain fate of the 3 million EU citizens presently living in the UK. There would be no better way of guaranteeing the promises made to respect their rights than to give them the right to elect MPs in the same way that they have been able to vote for local councillors and members of the devolved Assemblies. You do not need to be a UK citizen to vote in our general elections. More than 300,000 Irish citizens and nearly 1.2 million qualifying Commonwealth citizens resident in the UK are eligible to vote in our general elections. As we continue to debate our future relationship in Europe, we should ensure that the 3 million EU citizens resident here should be able to help choose our MPs.
The Bill addresses an inconsistency in electoral law, but before we think about our own voting rights while we are already Members of this Parliament, we should consider properly the growing inconsistency in the age for inclusion on the voting registers. In Scotland, you can now vote in Scottish Parliament and local elections at the first election after your 16th birthday. In Wales you can now vote from 16 for the Welsh Assembly, and you will soon also be able to vote in local elections there. At the very least we must consider all these issues before we consider letting us vote in a general election which is not due until May 2025.
Finally, I refer, as other noble Lords have, to the excellent speech by the excellent former Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham. I am sorry he is no longer in his place. In response to the gracious Speech on January 8 he spoke about the proposed commission on the constitution, democracy and rights and how it is supposed to examine the broader aspects of the constitution in depth and develop proposals to restore trust in our institutions and in how our democracy operates. He said that
“it will have to sit for a very long time and cover a wide range of subjects, including the royal prerogative, judicial review, party funding, the voting system, the future of the union, the ECHR, the role of House of Lords, the freedom of the press, franchise for 16 year-olds and appointments to the judiciary, to mention but a few.”—[Official Report, 8/1/20; col. 217.]
I suggest that the proposal in this Bill should be considered together with those issues. I hope that in his reply to the debate the noble Earl, Lord Howe, will tell us more about how this commission will be established, its timescale and whether it will consider the issue in this Bill.
What, then, are the arguments? The noble Lord, Lord Sherbourne, demolished those based on history and tradition. If ever it was justifiable to deny Members of this House the vote, it is impossible to see that it is so now. Can it really be regarded as a privilege of our membership here? I suggest that it is conspicuously elitist. It is implicitly suggested that we are just above all that sort of thing—that we are too important to need a vote and should let the democratic burden fall on lesser folk.
I suggest that, although, as I said, we are not dealing with a first-order issue today, there is a genuine point of principle here. Universal suffrage is the badge and symbol of a healthy democracy. It would help the public to recognise that fact if, finally, it were accepted that your Lordships should indeed have not only the benefit but the responsibility of the vote, thereby playing their part in the democratic process of electing the all-powerful other place.
As we are being forced to have this debate, perhaps I may make two points.
We have not undertaken all the incremental changes of the kind that the noble Lord, Lord Sherbourne, referred to. We are a fossilised, atrophied institution that massively plays below its own weight and it needs reform, if we were capable of that. However, the bigger issue that I hope the noble Earl will tell us about is the wider context of reform, which might lead to the replacement of this House, as should surely happen in due course.