House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Committee (2nd Day)

Amendment 11

11: After Clause 1, insert the following new Clause— “Duty to take forward proposals for democratic mandate for House of Lords(1) It is the duty of the Secretary of State to take forward proposals to secure a democratic mandate for the House of Lords.(2) In pursuance of the duty under subsection (1), the Secretary of State must carry out the steps set out in subsections (3), (4), (5) and (6).(3) Within 12 months of the day on which this Act is passed, the Secretary of State must lay before each House of Parliament a consultation paper on methods for introducing directly elected members in the House of Lords.(4) After laying the consultation paper under subsection (3), the Secretary of State must seek the views on the matters covered by that paper of—(a) each party and group in the House of Lords,(b) each political party represented in the House of Commons,(c) the Scottish Government,(d) the Welsh Government,(e) the Northern Ireland Executive,(f) local authorities in the United Kingdom,(g) representative organisations for local authorities in the United Kingdom, and(h) such other persons and bodies as the Secretary of State considers appropriate.(5) Within 16 months of the day on which this Act is passed, the Secretary of State must lay before each House of Parliament a report on responses to the consultation. (6) Within 18 months of the day on which this Act is passed, the Secretary of State must lay before each House of Parliament a draft Bill containing legislative proposals on the matter mentioned in subsection (3).”Member’s explanatory statement This new Clause imposes a duty on Ministers to take forward proposals to secure a democratic mandate for the House of Lords through introduction of directly elected members.

My Lords, Amendment 11, standing in my name and those of other noble Lords, seeks to take forward proposals for a democratic mandate for the House of Lords.

When we debated Lords reform last November, I set out the reasons why I thought the Lords should be elected. I said then that it should be elected on the basis that in a democracy, laws should be passed by people chosen by the people to act on their behalf. It should be elected because the unelected Lords leads to a geographical imbalance in membership in which London and the south-east are greatly overrepresented and the north, Scotland and Wales are underrepresented. It should be elected because it would almost certainly be more representative of the ethnic diversity of the United Kingdom, and it should be elected because it would be more politically representative. It would contain members of the SNP and almost certainly more members of the smaller parties. By doing all these things, it would help restore the trust that the people have of Parliament—currently at a low level.

We realise that this Bill is not the place to introduce detailed proposals for an elected second Chamber. Instead, the amendment requires the Government to start a process that would lead to the House having a democratic mandate. It requires the Government to produce a consultation paper on methods for electing the Lords. It suggests who should be consulted—including the nations and regions of the United Kingdom—and it sets out a timetable for undertaking the consultation and then for the production of a draft Bill containing legislative proposals for reform.

I do not intend to dwell on the imperfections of the current system of appointing people to your Lordships’ House. Suffice it to say that if we had elections, we would not be worrying about many of the issues that will concern us later today and on further consideration of the Bill. We would not be worrying about the Prime Minister overriding the Appointments Commission to appoint cronies. We would not be worrying about whether Peers did their jobs properly or about the balance between different groups or types of people. In short, it would cut through the Gordian knot of problems that bedevil the current system.

11A: After subsection (3) insert— “(3A) The consultation paper under subsection (3) must assess the implications of securing a democratic mandate for the House of Lords for its powers and conventions, which may include—(a) the powers of the Lords in relation to money bills;(b) the powers of the Lords in relation to statutory instruments;(c) the Salisbury Convention;(d) the Prime Minister being drawn from the House of Commons;(e) the limitations in the Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949 on the powers of the House of Lords;(f) the role of the Lord Speaker and their relationship with the Speaker in the House of Commons.”

My Lords, Amendments 11A and 11B would amend the Lib Dem Amendment 11 to say that we should first consult on the role of the Lords, if it were elected, and have a referendum to see whether the public actually wanted an elected Lords.

Let me reassure my noble friends that I am completely opposed to having a consultation paper on this, and to having a referendum. My amendments are a response to the usual deliberate attempts to advance the case for an elected House without first working out how the whole balance of powers between the Lords and the Commons would change if this House were composed of elected Members.

My Amendment 11A seeks to deliver what the Government Chief Whip, the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, said to the House magazine on 13 July 2021. He said:

“We have to be very clear, what are the powers of the Lords, what do you want the Lords to actually do, and why is it there? Answer those issues, and then we can decide”.

Those were very wise words from the noble Lord. Even the commission chaired by my noble friend Lord Wakeham avoided this by suggesting just 150 elected Peers, so that their membership was so small in comparison to appointed Peers or hereditaries that the supremacy of the Commons would not be challenged.

Then we had the ludicrous Gordon Brown proposals suggesting an assembly of just 200 elected Members from the regions, with our current powers reduced and the Lords just a regional talking shop. I can do no better than quote the words of our new noble ambassador to Washington, who described the Brown proposals as

“a sort of multi-layered cake with an assortment of very diverse ingredients in it with a thin layer of icing at the top, which is called a new second chamber of the regions and nations, which has barely been put in the oven yet, let alone fully baked”.

I have always predicted that in 10 to 15 years’ time, a bunch of new MPs with no institutional memory will say, “Let’s invade Afghanistan and sort out the Taliban. What could possibly go wrong?” The greatest error in politics is no institutional memory.

Those likely to offer themselves for election and be selected by political parties will be the same sort of young political animals some of us may have been in the past. Some will be using it as a stepping stone to the Commons, and others will have failed to get into the Commons. Those 300 full-time political animals will, more than anything else, change what this House does and how it interacts with the Commons.

How many of us, as new Members of the Commons, had a clue about the Lords’ powers and conventions? Newly elected Lords senators will not know, nor have any regard for, the conventions I have listed in my Amendment 11A. Let us imagine that we are one of these new male or female young Turk senators with an electorate and a majority twice the size of MPs’, and therefore with twice the moral authority to legislate. If our constituents write to us asking us to vote against the national insurance increase, we say, “We agree entirely, but we can’t vote on that because there’s a convention that we don’t vote on money Bills”. If they want us to amend or vote down a statutory instrument, again we say, “While we are not permitted to amend it, we could vote it down, but the Commons will not like it”. The last time that happened, my noble friend Lord Strathclyde was called in to write a report on the constitutional crisis that that created. That is another convention up with which elected senators will not put.

How long will our self-imposed restrictions last when our constituents say that a newly elected Lord is just a waste of space if we will not vote on the things that matter to them? Why would democratically elected Lords senators accept the 1911 and 1949 limitations on stopping legislation for just one year? They would demand equal powers to the Commons to vote down a Bill, and could and would hold up legislation until they got that power.

Then we have the Salisbury convention, which both parties, sometimes reluctantly, adhere to. If the elections to both Houses were on the same day, there might be a possibility that the majority party forming a Government in the Commons might also have a majority in the Lords. But if elections were at different times, as Gordon Brown proposed, there could be a majority of elected politicians in the Lords opposed to those in the Commons. If there were a regional PR system, it is highly likely that the governing party in the Commons would never have a majority in the Lords. As we know, that does not matter as long as the Lords adheres to the Salisbury convention, as we currently do, but I suggest that a highly politically elected Lords Chamber would never endorse the Salisbury convention and we would have a US-style Senate/Congress deadlock.

If we are democratically elected Lords senators, why should the Prime Minister come from the Commons? It is only 60 years ago that Sir Alec Douglas-Home—Lord Home of the Hirsel—was Prime Minister. In the United States, 17 Presidents have come from the Senate and 19 from Congress—not that I am holding up the United States as a fine example of democracy in action at the moment. The Conservatives and Labour may make a party rule that the leader can come from only the MPs, but they would soon ditch that if polling suggested that some charismatic young Turk from this place was an election winner.

Of course, our Lord Speaker gives precedence to Mr Speaker, but that would have to change. The speaker of an elected upper House would inevitably have superior status to the Speaker of an elected lower House. The names are res ipsa loquitur. All the items in my amendment are things that fanatical advocates of an elected House deliberately do not talk about because if they are properly considered the public will reject them, as the Commons would.

My Amendment 11B calls for a referendum on whether the public want an elected House. I love the hypocrisy of the Lib Dems’ Amendment 11. It is to introduce a democratic mandate and give the public a say in who is sent to a new House of Lords. They propose consulting all political parties in both Houses, all territorial Governments, 400 local authorities and goodness knows how many organisations that are supposed to be representative of local authorities in the UK. Everyone is to be consulted, except a little group of people—48,200,000 of them—who are the electorate of the UK. They will have no say whatever on whether they want an elected House of Lords foisted on them by the great and the good, who know what is best for the plebeian herd, and we know why: because once the public get the facts, this Lib Dem proposal will face the same fate as their PR plan—soundly rejected in a referendum.

That proposal will be rejected not only for the reasons I have advanced but on cost grounds. Last year, according to the figures produced by IPSA, MPs’ salaries cost over £64 million, staff costs were over £133 million and other costs were over £34 million. The total cost for 650 Members of Parliament was £233,138,000. We can assume that elected Lords senators will have the same salaries, staffing and accommodation allowance, so at just £300 instead of £650, that will be a cost of £100 million for an elected Lords.

There is a rather nasty petition by the Electoral Reform Society, which says inter alia: