My Lords, my Motion is not concerned with the practicalities of decanting the Palace of Westminster, nor with the geographical site selected for relocation. My concern is one of constitutional principle. It is one that must be to the fore in considering relocation. The debate about restoration and renewal tends to focus on the physical health of the Palace of Westminster. My Motion is concerned with the health of our parliamentary system of government.
The design of the Palace of Westminster and its use are a means to an end. The end is an effective system of parliamentary government. Parliament exists to respond to the demands of the Crown, for both supply and legislation. Its power lies in its capacity to say no. That power underpins the functions it has developed to scrutinise demands for legislation and money, and for calling government to account. Those are the key functions of Parliament.
Having two Chambers serves a valuable purpose, but they are two parts of one constitutional entity. Each Chamber effectively plays to its strengths: we cannot emulate the House of Commons, but the House of Commons cannot emulate this House. We enjoy distinct legitimacies: the House of Commons, an electoral legitimacy; this House, a functional legitimacy. We complement one another. This is the key point: that complementarity is cemented by the two Houses being collocated in Westminster. We need one another and we need to be together to be effective in fulfilling our functions.
The interconnection of the two Houses derives as much from what we do informally as what we do formally. What happens in formal space, the Chamber and committee rooms, is core to each House fulfilling its functions, but that activity, while necessary, is not sufficient. It is what happens in preparation for formal proceedings that is fundamental to being effective as bodies of scrutiny and in calling government to account.
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow my noble friend, if I may call him that, because we have known each other since our days as undergraduates at the University of Sheffield. His contribution, as we would expect from someone whose standing on constitutional issues is renowned, has placed the beginning of this debate exactly where it should be in terms of a challenge as to whether those putting forward proposals understand both our constitution and the impact on our democracy. Noble Lords will forgive me for saying just one or two words on the practicalities before I get to the constitutional issues he raised.
It is very easy to dismiss proposals that are thrown up for separating the two Houses and placing the House of Lords in—originally—York, Stoke or somewhere else as being just a piece of mischievous politics, a threat or a piece of intimidation, or the throwing of a bit of red meat to people to say, to coin a phrase from the 1980s, “These are the new enemies within”—literally, within. However, it would be very unwise to take that view. Some of those who have been putting forward the notion of splitting our Parliament have a brain and understand exactly what they are doing but are not mindful of the long-term consequences and the spin-off that would occur in the way our democracy works. Therefore, very briefly, I want to make a contribution that I probably could not have made in the House of Commons because eyes would have glazed over—although, because I never see eyes glazing over, that has never stopped me in the past.
I want just to reflect on the history of the make-up of a functioning democracy, which is relevant today to the debate about asylum seekers or non-admissibles being sent to Rwanda. I touch on that because when a democracy and its representative functions do not operate correctly and effectively, people turn elsewhere within the constitution of a democracy to seek redress. In the case of the Rwandan issue, albeit that the Government have powers from previous legislation to deal with claims outside the country—both in the Nationality and Borders Act on admissibility and in previous legislation—neither House of Parliament has authorised the sending of potential asylum seekers to Rwanda, with all the consequences.
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Norton, for introducing this debate.
We should remind ourselves that the Michael Gove initiative to relocate the House of Lords from London was launched on the weekend of 14 and 15 May for the Sunday papers, 10 days after the local elections. I am not sure whether he planned it as a wedge issue to inflame his opponents and firm up his supporters or whether it was a dead cat strategy to divert attention from the disastrous opinion polls and election results which were threatening the Prime Minister. It is this sort of cavalier and short-term approach to public policy which diminishes politicians and politics, and it is surprising that Gove so diminished his reputation for competence and delivery as a Minister. I cannot see the Governments of Callaghan, Thatcher, John Major or Theresa May behaving in this way. I think even the more publicity conscious Governments of Blair, Brown and Cameron would have been circumspect on such a blatant scam. In any event, it is not the Government’s decision as to where we go; it should be Parliament’s.
I have a couple of specific questions for the Minister in addition to the four he has had from the noble Lord, Lord Norton. First, was he or the Leader of the House consulted before Michael Gove sent the letter? To find out a little more about how this Government operate, did he give advice and make representations on our behalf? Did anybody work out the cost of this initiative and whether it could possibly provide value for money, given the already huge cost of R&R? As a personal issue, perhaps the Minister will tell us whether he has worked out how he will undertake his current duties as a Minister while scampering up the railway lines to Birmingham, Sheffield, York or wherever it is to be, at our behest.
I find it slightly ironic that those who were telling us a few years ago about the huge extravagance and duplication of housing the European Parliament in two places are now very keen for Parliament to meet in two locations. Of course, I buy all the arguments that the noble Lord, Lord Norton, expressed and can only say briefly to him and the House, looking at the week I have had, how important those social connections across both Houses are. In fact, I would argue that. even now, the connections are not as strong as they should be; we are operating in two silos. I have been involved with our parliamentary team in the other House this week; I have attended meetings with our MPs and the Chief Whip. I know that my Back-Benchers and Front-Benchers have been in meetings with Ministers throughout the week, and in the coming weeks, I am sure that lots of meetings on the Schools Bill, for example, will have to be had at a very high level, and not just by the Minister in the House of Lords. These contacts and the APPGs are very important in bringing in public opinion and lobbying us, and it would be weakened by being in two locations.
Seriously, first, I thank and congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Norton, on the way he proposed the Motion. I also congratulate him on the way that, over the years, he has fought, week by week for a long time and consistently, for the importance of this House. His contribution has been extraordinarily important.
After the Great Fire in 1834, there was year after year of delay before work seriously began on a new House. One reason for the delay was the shoal of alternative proposals that were continually made. We seem to be going down exactly the same path again, leading to exactly the same destination of indecision and delay. We should perhaps remind ourselves that the original official consideration of the renewal and restoration position was in 2014. There has never been any dispute about the action needed to be taken—the faults, the omissions, the appalling electrics in this place; the dispute has all been about how it is to be done, with every known solution put forward, the latest, of course, as the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham, said, coming from the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.
It is worth pausing on that because his proposal comes in two parts. The first is to change—“veto” is a better word—a proposition made by independent committee after independent committee that, if there is to be a total decant as changes are made, the House of Lords should find temporary accommodation in what is now the Queen Elizabeth II Centre. Years after the proposal was made and repeated in debate after debate, the current Secretary of State says that he is not content and will not allow it. Why? Well, one reason is that he has a commercial interest. That small section of the vast Environment department makes an income from running the building as a kind of convention centre.
It reminds me of one of the first decisions I had to make in the Government of Margaret Thatcher when we found that a nationalised body, the NFC, was running a removals company called Pickfords. We dealt with it, as my noble friend on the Front Bench will remember, but what is a public body doing running what is in essence a private-sector undertaking? It is a question that might be asked but, here, the question is even sharper. There is a limited number of venues where the Lords could take up temporary accommodation. It is not up to one Minister to put his department’s interests in front of what could be a national interest, and certainly a parliamentary interest.
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, for securing this debate and bringing to it his distinguished record as a scholar of our constitution and of Parliament. My own contribution to the debate will, I think, chime with much of what we have heard already from noble Lords.
I wish to make a few simple points. First, we are two Houses but one Parliament, a point that has already been made. Secondly, although Covid has taught us much about the flexibility afforded by current technology, as did universal postage, the telegram, and the telephone in their day, it has also taught us a good deal about the importance of physical proximity. Finally, as has been eloquently pointed out, to separate out what was never meant to be put asunder will mean that the role of this House and its usefulness will diminish, and the capability of Parliament with it.
If I may expand further, the Christian faith is profoundly relational, not transactional. It frames the understanding of God’s relationship with humanity and humanity’s relationship with itself. Both are found in the person of Jesus Christ. However, did we not find in lockdown not only the ingenuity and resilience brought by Zoom, bubbles, essential services and immediate family units, but a profound loss? There is a clue in the word “Parliament”, which bids us to parlay and speak to one another—or, indeed, as our Writ of Summons requires of us,
“a certain Parliament to be holden at Our City of Westminster ... there to treat and have conference with the Prelates, Great Men, Great Women and Peers of Our Realm”.
Further, although we jealously guard our own House, as the Commons do theirs, each Session, we meet together in this Chamber to hear the gracious Speech. Traditionally, messages and Bills travel the Corridor between the Houses. Peers physically watch debates in the other place, and MPs in this. Indeed, I recall the then Prime Minister sitting here on the steps of the Throne during our debate on Article 50.
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark. I hope that he and his colleague, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London, will continue to care for the spiritual health of your Lordships as we remain in the capital. I join others in complimenting my noble friend Lord Norton on his choice of subject, his introductory speech, and his tireless campaign to promote the effective working of your Lordships’ House and, in particular, to prevent us being physically separated against our wishes from our partner down the corridor—a no-fault divorce if there ever was one.
The issue of R&R came up at the Members’ forum last week. These are very welcome initiatives and I hope that more will be held. However, it put the issue before us in perspective. Andy Helliwell made it clear that although the issue of where the House of Lords moves to was important, it was not holding up progress on R&R; it was not on the critical path. Therefore, there is time for us to persuade the Government to think again about their proposals.
Although I am complimentary about the Members’ forum, I am less enthusiastic about the Joint Statement from the two commissions, which was published on Tuesday, purporting to set out the next steps on R&R. I read it twice and confess that I was no wiser at the end, and that I was puzzled by the jargon that was used, such as this:
“The Panel recommends that the parameters ‘should be augmented by clear evaluation criteria’ which are designed to support option assessment, and key trade-offs which will need to be made to arrive at a progressively shorter list of possible options for the works. These criteria should take account of longer-term perspectives and link to the programme’s end-state vision and intended outcomes.”
Turning to our future location, in his Written Answer to a Question from me on 30 May asking why the QEII Centre was not suitable, referred to by the right reverend Prelate, my noble friend Lord Greenhalgh offered no reason why it was not suitable, but the first and last sentence of his reply were that:
“Levelling Up is central to the Government’s mission and the Government would welcome the House of Lords playing a leading role in that effort…. For this reason, the Secretary of State cannot support the use of the QEII Conference Centre, a location in the heart of Westminster, as a decant location for the House of Lords.”
I have two questions arising from this. Is that a statement of government policy, carrying collective agreement, including that of the Leader of the House and my noble friend the Minister, or was it just the personal view of the current Secretary of State, which might not have gone through the normal process of Whitehall clearance, and which might well be altered if it did?
Secondly, if the Secretary of State has his way, £10 million of abortive expenditure will have been incurred. Which unhappy accounting officer will be hauled before the NAO and the PAC to explain this? If it comes off the Parliament vote, will it be reimbursed by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities? Has there been a direction from the Secretary of State that feasibility work on moving to the QEII Centre should stop?
I notice that it is not proposed that the other place should join us in this exodus. If relocation of your Lordships’ House elsewhere would have a leading role to play in delivering the levelling-up agenda, as the Secretary of State asserts, would not that impetus be magnified several times over if we were to be joined by the other place? Sauce for the ermined goose is surely sauce for the plebian gander. R&R can proceed only with the agreement of both Houses. As we have discovered over the past eight years, getting that agreement is difficult. It is made more difficult, unnecessarily so, if there is a pre-emptive strike on options by one party to the discomfiture of the other. One lesson from the events of last month is that there should be no more of it.
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We need to meet not only Members of our own House, essential in mobilising support to pursue amendments and raise issues of concern, but Members of the other place. We have to liaise when Bills are going through and to interact for the purposes of lobbying and exchanging information. Political history can be affected by a chance encounter between Members of the two Houses. The opportunity for such interaction has always been there but, if anything, has been enhanced by the building of Portcullis House—its creation changing the geopolitics of the Parliamentary Estate, and the relaxing of rules on who can use refreshment and dining facilities.
We need to be collocated, not only for the benefit of both Houses in fulfilling the essential functions of Parliament, but for the convenience of citizens. We are an open institution. Members of the public can make representations to Members of both Houses. We are a highly pluralistic society, with citizens getting together to form charities and a range of other interest groups. The number of such groups has grown markedly in recent decades. Those groups seek to influence Parliament, not only by sending briefings electronically but by coming to Westminster to speak to Members in both Houses.
Moving one Chamber to another part of the country does not bring that Chamber closer to the people; it detaches it from those organisations that seek to put their case. They will most likely remain London-based in order to lobby the House of Commons and government. Arranging to see Members of both Houses will be costly and time-consuming and more likely undertaken by the better-resourced organisations. If the two Houses are not collocated, the opportunity for personal interaction between Members of both Houses is lost.
Separating us physically cannot be substituted by the use of technology or even quick transport links. We need spontaneity and the capacity to move quickly to liaise with one another and with Members of the other place. Meeting virtually, or in hybrid form, makes that difficult, if not impossible. I know some take the view that meeting in hybrid form during lockdown was a success and could be the future of how Parliament operates. Hybrid proceedings were a success technically—and the staff did a fantastic job at short notice—but not a success politically.
Members decanting to different parts of the kingdom during lockdown strengthened the Executive. Members operated as disparate and discrete entities and not as a collective body. We were not able to be agile in engaging with other Members and in challenging Ministers at the Dispatch Box.
As my noble friend Lord True acknowledged on 16 May:
“Those of us who have had experience of a Parliament by Zoom know the importance of personal contact within and across the Houses to the good operation of government and Parliament.”—[Official Report, 16/5/22; col 243.]
Separating the two Chambers empowers government. The suggestion that the House of Lords moves to a different part of the country, with the House of Commons in Westminster, is essentially a power grab by the Executive. I am not making the case against the House of Lords moving; I am making the case against the House of Lords alone moving. If one Chamber moves, the other must as well, and so must the Executive. If Westminster decants, then so too must Whitehall.
There is a perfectly coherent argument that can be made for locating Parliament and the Executive in a purpose-built capital, a Bonn or Brasília, or even an existing city big enough to accommodate such a massive ecosystem. My Motion is silent as to location. The essential point is not where, but who: it has to be Parliament—both Houses—and the Executive.
There are obvious practical problems if the two Houses are miles from one another in meetings of all-party groups and Joint Committees. I suspect others in this debate may address this. Committees can meet virtually but it is not the same as meeting in person. In any event, this is to isolate one feature of intercameral contact. One has to encompass the whole range of interactions between the Members of the two Houses to appreciate the necessity of both Houses being collocated in the same city, and ideally on the same site. Even if we move to the QEII Centre and the Commons to Richmond House, there will be problems—quite significant problems—of communication between Members of both.
Recognising the importance of two Chambers being collocated is not something peculiar to the United Kingdom; it is a global phenomenon. As the briefing by the Library records, of the 81 national bicameral legislatures that exist, all bar three are located in the same city and even one of the exceptions appears to be temporary. All major western democracies with bicameral legislatures have the two Chambers located in the same city. There is a particular value in being located in the same building, or at least on the same estate.
It is crucial that we put on record the need for both Houses to remain collocated and for this to be embraced as a prerequisite for the restoration and renewal programme. We need to ensure that it is confirmed now, given the increasing urgency of both Houses decanting. The decision to move out may be taken out of our hands. The Palace is demonstrably deteriorating before our eyes. We have parts variously closed off or covered by canopies because of falling masonry. We are lucky that no one has been killed or seriously injured and that there has been no major fire. The possibility of a catastrophic failure with an essential utility failing increases year by year. Whenever we move out, be it by design or necessity, we have to move as one entity—that is, Parliament.
Successive Governments have demonstrated limited knowledge of our constitution. They variously advance schemes for change which have been advocated on their individual merits and not within a clear intellectual approach to constitutional change. We need to stop what amount to constitutionally incoherent schemes, made without standing back and understanding where we are going. Ministers need a grasp of core constitutional principles, not least those governing the relationship between the Executive and Parliament. The Government are the creature of the constitution, not the other way round.
I conclude with some questions for my noble friend the Minister. First, a practical question: how much public money has been spent exploring the cost of locating the House of Lords in another city, and who authorised that expenditure? Secondly, what constitutional authorities were consulted by government prior to the Secretary of State’s letter of 13 May? Thirdly, was the Cabinet Office consulted by the levelling-up department before the Secretary of State wrote to the Lord Speaker? Fourthly, what study have the Government undertaken of practice in other nations with bicameral legislatures, and if they have undertaken such a study, what conclusions have they drawn? Finally, does my noble friend accept the constitutional principle that I have enunciated?
This debate is not about some secondary issue; it is about maintaining the health and integrity of our parliamentary system of Government. I beg to move.
I raise that because, going all the way back to de Tocqueville—my noble friend the mover of this Motion will remember us learning about him all those years ago—he posed the issue of how, when a functioning representative Parliament will not provide redress and is not operating correctly, people will turn elsewhere. That is why Jonathan Sumption, in his profound Reith Lectures, raised the issue again about the way in which we do not push off the rights and the responsibilities of Parliament and the balance between the two parts of Parliament into other parts of our constitutional checks and balances. In particular, we do not push them off into the courts. The courts and the legal system will always take on what Parliament fails to deal with. We saw that with Article 50 and with Prorogation. I do not believe that we want that to become common practice. I do not sign up to the hysteria about the ECHR—the Strasbourg court—but I believe that people should reflect on why we should have to retain the rights that people have built into our constitution through the courts rather than through our Parliament. That brings me to the following.
If our Parliament is split and the two halves are in different locations, and it is not possible, as the noble Lord properly enunciated, for people to make representations, for us to share those representations with the other House, to hear from experts as well as pressure groups, and to draw down on the expertise that exists across our Parliament and within the confines of the hinterland of Parliament, we will not be able to fulfil our functions. I can easily dismiss the splitting of the two Houses: Black Rod leaping on to a train which gets held up at Milton Keynes and taking a bus through to Stoke-on-Trent to knock on a door that has already been opened, the Queen having been held up somewhere on the M6—that is the kind of nonsense we are talking about. Or there are the practicalities of a relocation of 600-odd individuals working directly in this House, not including those who work for Peers. Nobody has thought through the impact on a community in terms of house prices, rents and the knock-on effects —it is a nonsense.
However, the constitutional issue is the centrepiece and the core of why it is nonsense. That is why the noble Lord moving this Motion deserves enormous credit. We need to get it on the record that those who meddle with our constitution and our democracy without understanding—or perhaps sometimes understanding but not caring about—the consequences can throw red meat wherever they like, setting up false dichotomies and Aunt Sallys that can then be knocked down. We can abuse the legal profession, but it will be there for people if we do not do our job properly. That is why this Motion is so important.
One lesson that came out of Covid, despite all the arguments of those who want to hold on to some of the reforms that we achieved during Covid—which I do, was that what we missed most was social contact between us. Politics is about social contact; it is about gossip and the conversations that take place in the corridors and dining rooms, in our meetings, Select Committee work and so on, and with our colleagues in the other place through the various Joint Committees —of which there should be more—of the two Houses.
Having said that I agree fundamentally with the noble Lord, Lord Norton, and there is no point repeating the arguments made by him, I want to comment on three issues which I think underlie this debate and the proposal that Michael Gove made. On levelling up, gimmicks and PR stunts just do not wash. At the moment, we have a daily publicity stunt from the Government, which I am afraid shows their weakness. Until we have a Secretary of State with the energy, enthusiasm and determination of a Michael Heseltine, the levelling-up strategy will not work. It needs a genuine partnership between central government, business, local government, universities and across all government departments. It needs such a dynamic figure to bring it together.
On R&R, we need to get on with it. If a very long gestation period is required to improve implementation, so be it, but we need to vacate this building. It must not be seen as an initiative simply for our benefit; that is, improving our accommodation. It is to protect our heritage and the safety of the building but, most important, it should be about opening up Parliament and encouraging access and ownership for the public, just like the Germans have done in their parliament in Berlin.
We should stop denigrating this institution of the House of Lords without coming up with genuine plans to reform and improve it, however difficult that will be. I am in favour of reform, obviously, but I must accept that gradual reform seems to be the most likely way forward, and we should increase awareness about that. We have to tackle four issues which I do not think are fundamental but which we have been discussing for years: reducing our size, breaking the link with the honours system, introducing a retirement age and ending the hereditary by-elections. That would be a start, and then we could have a longer-term look at how we make this House more representative of the states and the regions. Sadly, the Michael Gove publicity initiative simply will not do.
We should think very clearly about what is being proposed here. Having set out on his path, the Minister had no option but to propose an alternative, and it appears to be to go for a permanent solution and move the House of Lords to, probably, Stoke-on-Trent. For 31 years, I was a Midlands Member of Parliament. I have nothing against Stoke as a city, although I must say for constituency reasons that I would favour Birmingham or Nottingham. I can see only one argument for such a system: that I would love to be there when the noble Lord, Lord True, goes up to Stoke to explain the hereditary by-election system to the people there. I am sure that they would listen with great interest.
What is proposed does not add up one bit to a levelling-up agenda. The public are not fools. They would see such a move as an empty public relations measure with a range of practical drawbacks, as has been set out in various papers. How would we organise Joint Committee meetings effectively? How would we organise all-party parliamentary group and party-political group meetings? Of course, I have no interest in such things any more, being on the Cross Benches, but there are all sorts of practical reasons that amount to the life of this Parliament, but which have not been considered one little bit. A vast number of questions require answers.
All kinds of public bodies have given their views on the proposal, and they have predominantly been against it. It is not just us in the House of Lords; it is those outside. The argument I found most convincing was put by an independent voice: Mark D’Arcy, a BBC political correspondent whom I think many of us know to be both independent and an objective observer of the House of Lords. He said that Parliament should not be divided by relocation, and that:
“Those moments in the chamber where a minister faltered and opinion crystallised against them are much more elusive if the minister is on a screen rather than standing at the dispatch box.”
I think we all recognise that as being the truth of the situation. He also said that
“question times with online participants are necessarily more scripted and less searching”,
leading to less effective challenging of Ministers. It all adds up to the fact that the major beneficiary of the change being put forward seems to be the Government—not just one Government but all Governments.
My fear is basically this: far from increasing the influence of the second Chamber with government, it will, by the policy of separation, decrease it. Out of the way, out of sight—that is the danger. It will make it much more difficult to hold Ministers to account and the only people who will be happy with that result are Ministers. Let us be clear: Governments, it is reasonably safe to say, do not like independent voices to cast doubt on their policies or oppose their plans—I hope that it is not too controversial to say that; the noble Lord, Lord True, might even agree with that one —especially plans that might have been forced through in the other place by Whips exercising the power of a big majority.
Current Ministers say that restoration of the Parliament building is of course purely a matter for MPs and Back-Bench Lords. One wonders, then, why Ministers such as Mr Rees-Mogg and Mr Gove are so eager to intervene and put their case on the record—and in one case close policy options. We started this process in 2014. A few days ago, eight years after that date, we had a new document, Restoration and Renewal of the Palace of Westminster: A New Mandate. So we start again.
Basically, my view is this: for goodness’ sake, let us stop messing about. We need to keep to one course. What we do not want is to make this a botched project that shows the world—and make no mistake, the world will be watching our progress on this—how difficult it is for this country to make decisions and stick to them. Above all, we should recognise that we are one Parliament, not two.
There is in physical proximity something which one cannot replicate on Zoom or by email. When Charles II sought to gain an advantage by summoning a Parliament to Oxford, he did not send one Chamber off to Harwich, for example, to gain a further advantage, nor would it have occurred to him to do so, and nor would it have been thought consonant with our constitution for him to try.
Our move from the Palace of Westminster, together with the other place, should be organised with the end in view of the understanding and access of this place by the public, and of greater collaboration and understanding between the two Houses in our parliamentary life. That is the opportunity afforded us and we should take it. However, the Government have made it clear, not least in the Written Answer to a Question from the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, that they would welcome the Lords participating actively in its policy of levelling up by moving out of London. For that reason, they will not make the Queen Elizabeth II Centre available to your Lordships, despite nearly £11 million already having been spent on the proposal. I have no doubt that the Minister will again say that our decant and location is a matter for us, but it is clear that the Government will not co-operate unless we separate from the Commons.
There are options for a decant in London. Following enemy action in 1941, the Commons temporarily located itself in Church House, Westminster, and Churchill had his office above where the bookshop is now. The UN later met there. The Church itself considered relocating the function of Church House in the late 1980s to Sheffield, and in the 2000s rationalised its estate within Church House, including selling No. 1 Millbank to your Lordships.
I have no bias against any of locations which have been suggested by Ministers, who have yet to propose Kigali as an option, but we should insist, as an irreducible minimum, that both Houses go together, wherever we end up. It shows little understanding of how a bicameral legislature works to divide it. We would see Ministers only on high days and holidays, the press not at all or rarely, and MPs only on special day trips organised by Parliament’s education department. Our scrutiny would be disregarded, our debates ignored. Our interaction with the other place would wither into desuetude. We risk not levelling up but shuffling off.
In considering the proposition that we should move out of London while the other place remains here, I am reminded of the sketch in which Peter Cook is holding auditions for the role of Tarzan in a film and Dudley Moore hops on to the stage, clearly, in the words of Peter Cook, a “unidexter”, for the role conventionally played by a biped. Having complimented Dudley Moore on his residual leg, Peter Cook then says:
“I’ve got nothing against your right leg. The trouble is, neither have you”.
So it would be under the Government’s proposals: the country’s legislative Tarzan—Parliament—would be unable to play its role effectively, shorn of one limb. In the words of Peter Cook, next candidate, please.