House of Commons Hansard Debates for 17 May 1991

Hansard

House of Commons

Friday 17 May 1991

The House met at half-past Nine o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. Speaker-- in the Chair ]

Points of Order

9.35 am

Mr. Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) : On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. The Chancellor of the Exchequer yesterday treated the unemployed with contempt by uttering a slur against them and telling them that it was necessary for them to be thrown on the scrap heap, creating a pile of human misery, in order to carry out the Government's policies. Has the right hon. Gentleman approached you with a view to making an apology in the House to the unemployed? Because he attacked them in so severe a fashion yesterday, he should before this day is out do his duty and come here to apologise to the unemployed.

Mr. Speaker : I have had no such intimation. Indeed, I do not recollect that speech. Was it made here?

Mr. Simon Hughes (Southwark and Bermondsey) : Further to a point of order that was made yesterday, Mr. Speaker. You will recall that last night, after 10 o'clock, the Government moved that the Planning and Compensation Bill [Lords] debate be adjourned, and when you asked what day it would be resumed, the reply was, "tomorrow".

That measure appears not to feature on today's Order Paper. I wonder, first, whether that is proper--that having said that it would be on today, it is not down for debate today--and, secondly, whether we can take the inference from that that, like the general election, it has been postponed indefinitely.

Mr. Speaker : I explained last night--the hon. Member has been here long enough to appreciate this--that "tomorrow" was a kind of code for any day. In any event, the Bill appears as item 43 on page 3213 of the Order Paper today, where it says "to be considered."

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Constitutional Reform

9.37 am

Mr. Archy Kirkwood (Roxburgh and Berwickshire) : I wish to call attention to the case for constitutional reform and I beg to move, That this House, noting the results of the recent MORI opinion poll on the State of the Nation, calls on Her Majesty's Government to introduce measures designed to effect an extensive modernisation of the United Kingdom's democratic institutions and constitutional provisions.

One of the funniest things to happen to me in the House since I was elected in 1983 occurred in the last Parliament. Unusually, I was sitting with some friends and visitors from my constituency in the public gallery. The House was crowded, as it had been throughout the debate. We were sitting behind an eight-year-old who was obviously, by his accent, from the west coast of Scotland.

I nipped down into the Division Lobby and afterwards returned to where I had been sitting. The little boy was clearly watching the scene of apparent chaos with dismay, with hon. Members elbowing their way into the Lobby from a crowded House. The division bells were ringing throughout the precincts of the Palace of Westminster and, according to tradition, Mr. Deputy Speaker, who was in the Chair, shouted, "Lock the doors." I heard the wee fellow turn to his mother and utter the immortal words, "Mam, one of them has escaped." I often think that people have a strange perception of what goes on in this place. Perhaps children have a way of cutting through the cant and nonsense that some of us cannot see.

Indeed, people have strange perceptions of the whole process of government. They may not have a perfect grasp of all the subtleties of our unwritten constitution and they may not fully understand the relationship between the judiciary, the Executive and the legislature ; they may also have many false expectations of what can be politically achieved and what is realistically possible. For example, people regularly tell me in the same breath that they are in favour of strong government and united parties, and that they believe that Members of Parliament should exercise their individual consciences in the Division Lobbies. Those, surely, are mutually exclusive objectives.

There is one issue, however, on which people are sufficiently wise and sufficiently tutored to decide : the question whether our system of government serves their needs. The current public feeling is that government is not working. We must, of course, ensure that proper respect is paid to our democratic institutions, which must be assiduously fostered and defended. None the less, a great deal of nonsensical cant and mystique surrounds much of our constitutional baggage and I feel that that should now be discarded.

Is it not more than a little strange that we have no permanent, open and accessible machinery to allow constant review of our constitutional arrangements? Can any hon. Member recall when we last engaged in a debate on constitutional reform, apart from Consolidated Fund debates in the middle of the night? The most recent such debate, as far as I know, took place in 1968, when the former Liberal leader Mr. Jeremy Thorpe--then Member of Parliament for Devon,

North--introduced a debate on the Kilbrandon report when the House was dealing with the Gracious Speech.

That is a long time for which to leave such a subject undiscussed. Is it not more than ever necessary for effective

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checks and balances to be applied and constantly reviewed at a time when our country is experiencing exponential rates of change in social and economic matters? Statutory provision now regulates every aspect of our private lives from the cradle to the grave ; information technology threatens to make slaves of us all. Our ramshackle, amateurish, muddle-through mentality is now holding the United Kingdom back. Our system of government is shot through with administrative myths and political fictions, and is no longer adequate to carry out its task. The lack of a clearly defined, modern framework for our constitution is now one of the most urgent problems that face the country. I feel that hon. Members, representing as they do so many disparate constituencies, have a duty to respond clearly to the need for change.

I freely acknowledge that the body politic has been wrestling with the task of modernising our system of government for the past three decades. Much ingenuity and considerable energy have been expended, but, according to any test, the extent to which lasting results have been produced does not measure up to the effort deployed. Little real progress has been made, as a brief review of recent reforms will show. It is, in fact, a disappointing and depressing saga. It could be argued that the Macmillan Government were the first to recognise the need for change. That Government looked specifically at economic and industrial policy making, and set up the National Economic Development Council as a national forum for policy discussion. That was potentially a very important reform ; the Germans have used a similar mechanism with great success in the recent past. Over the years, the fortunes of the NEDC may have waxed and waned, but it is still with us, endeavouring to do good by stealth when it can--which, admittedly, is not often nowadays. Macmillan also introduced the short-lived National Incomes Commission--together with new techniques for controlling public expenditure, following the recommendations of the Plowden report in 1962. The pace of reformist change gathered momentum as the Governments of Lord Wilson--as he now is--and the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr. Heath) vied with each other in a bid to be seen as the real architects of the modernisation of Britain's political institutions. That time, when I first became politically aware--the period of the white heat of technology and the Heath Government's dash for growth--was a heady one for anyone who was interested in politics ; but its reforming achievements did not amount to a row of administrative beans.

In the mid-1960s, the Labour Government invented the Department of Economic Affairs, introduced its still-born "national plan", instituted the Government Economic Service, empanelled regional planning boards and set up the Industrial Reorganisation Corporation, the Prices and Incomes Board and the Commission of Industrial Relations. They also introduced a system of ministerial cabinets, in which political advisers were allowed to help Ministers at Cabinet level and within the civil service system. In the wake of the Fulton report, the Wilson Government also modified the running of the civil service substantially.

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All those changes were focused on economic and industrial policy making. Another common feature was the introduction of quangos : the great and the good were appointed to do the bidding of the political Administration.

In their turn, the Heath Government reorganised local government, established the Central Policy Review Staff--a potentially important administrative and political reform which did not come to much--spawned both a Prices Commission and a pay board and invented the Manpower Services Commission and an industrial development executive. Amid all that economic and industrial change, the Kilbrandon commission on the constitution reported in 1973, but no one seemed to take much notice of its recommendations.

There was, however, no slackening of reformist zeal on the industrial and economic front when Mr. Wilson returned to office in 1974. He rapidly formed the National Enterprise Board, the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service, the Health and Safety Commission, the National Consumer Council and other similar bodies. A tinge of consumerism was beginning to appear on the agenda, although a good many quangos--publicly appointed bodies--were still being set up to carry out the changes that were then being recommended. I have given those examples to try to give the flavour, and show the nature and range, of the modernising endeavours--such as they were--that were implemented in the 1960s and 1970s. The spirit, or motivating force, that prompted those endeavours may well have been similar to that which prompted the era of mid-century reform experienced by the Victorians. The difference lies in the fact that they lack the impact and substance of the 19th century's far-reaching constitutional reforms. To be fair, that lack was all too apparent to the right hon. Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher) when she entered No. 10 Downing street. She actually diagnosed the problem : the institutional changes put in train by her predecessors had largely failed in their attempt to update the system of government to serve the needs of our people.

Apparently, our former Prime Minister needed advice from no one ; quangos were out and strong men were in as the main agents of change. Tripartism-- the whole system of across-the-board, collective consultation and discussion--fell from grace, to be replaced by accountants, management consultants and retailers : the likes of Lord Rayner and Sir Roy Griffiths. The modernising gurus of the Thatcher era had arrived with a vengeance. Market forces would achieve all the change that was necessary and devil take the hindmost. Unfortunately, as is now all too apparent, while these business people, acting in good faith, as I am sure they were, had some impact on public policy, as often as not it was for the worst. The results of their ministrations can be seen all too clearly in the deterioration and demoralisation that are now widespread in the public sector. The notion of public service as an honourable and fulfilling activity with a degree of job satisfaction and of public status was gradually being replaced by the business ethic. Education, local government, health, transport systems, the prisons, the police and the law court services have all been blighted by their attentions.

The former Prime Minister correctly saw the failures of previous Governments, but she did not learn the proper lessons or draw the right conclusions. Instead, her attempts to change things made the problems worse. They

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culminated in the great irony that, for all the rhetoric about freedom, her Government took more power to themselves, arguably, than at any other time in our history since the Tudors, with the difference that the Tudors were nation building while the former Prime Minister was apparently creating a personal empire within the realms of central Government. The hon. Member for Wantage (Mr. Jackson) once sought to excuse his Government's overweening centralising tendencies with a stock -in-trade quip, to the effect that

"it had to nationalise in order to privatise."

The proportion of nationalisation, in the sense of greater centralised Government, to privatisation as a surrogate for greater freedom remains, in my view, excessively skewed in favour of nationalisation.

The former Prime Minister lauded Victorian values, but from my perspective she picked very selectively from them. She seized upon the tenets of economic Liberalism, but what she failed completely to do was to recognise that it required to be complemented by the principles of political Liberalism, based on participation, partnership and decentralisation. She opted for an economic system unfettered by any constitutional constraint. Thus, the political economy that is necessary for economic success totally passed her by. That has cost this country dear.

Mr. Bob Cryer (Bradford, South) : I have been following the hon. Gentleman's argument with interest. I share his criticism of the former Prime Minister, but her vices were not hidden from view in 1979. One wonders, therefore, why the Liberal party joined with the Conservatives to vote against the Labour Government, particularly as it was poised to introduce a private Member's Bill promoted by Clement Freud to achieve a degree of freedom of information. Why, therefore, did the Liberal party sabotage that opportunity and instead join the Conservatives, led by the woman whom the hon. Gentleman criticises?

Mr. Kirkwood : That takes us a long way back into history. I believe that that Parliament--like this Parliament--had run its course. I believe that at that stage it was right to take the issues on to the hustings where points such as that raised by the hon. Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer) could be argued openly and in public during a general election. That point should be addressed to the Prime Minister at this stage. We are at a similar point in this Parliament. The sooner we have a general election the better.

Mr. A. J. Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) : Ought not it to be placed on record that the Labour Government's willingness to intoduce a freedom of information Act, which they had previously failed conspicuously to do, depended entirely on the willingness of my then hon. Friend Mr. Clement Freud not to vote against them? A freedom of information Act was the price that they were prepared to pay out of desperation, at a very late stage in their Government, in the knowledge that it had no chance of getting through.

Mr. Kirkwood : My hon. Friend makes the point very well. One of the worst criticisms that people could make of the last Labour Government was that they set their face so rigorously against legislation that I think is now so necessary.

I was arguing that the attempted and largely abortive reforms of the last three decades have either come to

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absolutely nothing at all or have proved to be counterproductive. When they have not ended in tears, attempts at reform have ended in tantrums. The reason for this pathetic record and why all their energy has been dissipated is because successive Governments have been obsessively introspective. They have concentrated their efforts at reform on themselves, in the form of the Executive branch of government. Changes were often made on account of the siege mentality of the last Labour Government. The Executive started to do things, the motivation for which was to try to make things easier for themselves and to dig themselves out of holes. That is managerialism running absolutely riot. It led directly to ludicrous levels of state secrecy--to the Clive Ponting affair, Cathy Massiter, Peter Wright, GCHQ and the whole debate that surrounded the replacement of the Official Secrets Act. It also led to an increasingly political and politicised civil service. That led to all sorts of problems that we are now reading about--Westland and the unattributable briefings of Bernard Ingham. In addition, it led to the browbeating of the broadcasters- -the "Death on the Rock" fiasco, the Zircon case and all these other incidents and issues that caused a great deal of concern for those of us outside government who could see what was happening. In all three areas of our policy--the judiciary, the legislature and the Executive--we need to throw open the doors and windows of Whitehall, Westminster and the courts and let light and air into the innermost recesses of the processes of government. The proper ordering of our polity requires not just recasting the activities of the Executive but renewing the roles of both the legislature and the judicial branches of government. Modernisation, properly conceived and executed, is not just about efficiency, narrowly defined. It is about democracy in the very widest and most generous sense. Equally, and just as important, it is about contriving a framework where the one can operate effectively in relation to the other. We need to renew the context in which the requirements of the Government machine can be accommodated alongside the needs and rights of, and the ability to serve and protect, individuals and communities. In the recent past, discussion and practice have focused almost exclusively on management techniques rather than on constitutional remedies. Against all the innovations undertaken in the name of improved efficiency, I can think--other hon. Members may be able to assist me here--of only two offsetting reforms of a truly democratic and constitutional nature : the appointment of ombudsmen to cover various aspects of public policy and the modifications and improvements to the Select Committee procedures of the House. Welcome as both those modest steps are, they are modest indeed in comparison with what is required.

One of the major drawbacks and the main reason for the very limited success of recent reforms of the Executive branch of government is that they were imposed from the top down. Objections and criticisms were rejected, on the basis that they were no more than dinner table talk at the soirees of the chattering classes. The debate, such as it was, about the inadequacies of the Government system and the shortcomings of the constitution was seen as being conducted between two elites--the Government Front Bench and readers of The Guardian. The mass of voters were said not to be in any way interested in any of these questions. That perception is now shown to be wholly

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wrong. The general public are fully aware of the parlous state of the machinery of government and of the inadequacies of constitutional provision. They hold strong and consistent views about how they should be redressed. The reason for the public's apparent silence on these great matters of state is simply that they had never been asked.

A recent MORI poll--a substantial piece of work that is bed-time reading for hon. Members--was commissioned by the Joseph Rowntree reform trust, of which I am a director. I therefore declare an interest, although the office of trustee has no financial reward. It carried out a national survey of public opinion on the state of the nation. It was the first time that such extensive soundings had been taken on the subject, and the results showed a widespread and profound desire for democratic constitutional reform.

A clear majority would like to see improvements in the system of government. Three quarters think that a freedom of information Act is needed. Seven in 10 think that we need a Bill of Rights. Six in 10 think, not surprisingly given the Thatcher legacy, that the Government are too centralised. Three quarters favour greater use of referendums for major decisions, and more think that a petition of 1 million signatures should trigger a referendum. That is a plea for more consideration and participation if ever I heard one. There is considerable popular support for electoral change. Eight in 10 think that national campaign spending should be limited. On a topical note, perhaps, the Prime Minister might like to be aware that more than half the electorate support fixed-term Parliaments--amen to that. Half the voters favour electoral reform, and the momentum for a change to a system of fair voting is gathering speed at such a rate that it is reluctantly engaging the attention of the Labour party. The House may be interested to know that 59 per cent. think that Parliament works well, and 16 per cent. disagree. That might be a direct result of the positive impact of television. When the same question was asked in 1979, only 54 per cent. thought well of the workings of the House, while 39 per cent. thought that it worked badly. Significantly--this correlates closely the feeling of overcentralised government--50 per cent. think that Parliament has insufficient control over the Government. Only 23 per cent. disagreed with that proposition. Forty per cent. favour an elected second Chamber to replace the House of Lords, while only 29 per cent. disagree, and 54 per cent. believe that the Government can change citizens' right too easily, while 22 per cent. disagree. Thirty eight per cent. think that citizens' rights are less well protected in Britain than in the rest of the European Community, and 24 per cent. disagree.

There is strong and growing support among Scots for a devolved assembly. In September 1989, 44 per cent. of Scots favoured that reform, but now 51 per cent. do so. More generally in Britain, six out of 10 favoured devolved assemblies for Britain.

The motion is clearly timely. The MORI poll revealed general disquiet among the public about the state of the nation, especially about the functioning of government and the need to review our constitutional safeguards. It is equally clear that, in many instances, those who campaign for improvement-- many organisations democratically

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campaign for change--speak for a majority constituency of our fellow citizens. With help from the Freedom of Information Campaign, I have had the privilege of steering two freedom of information Bills through Parliament. They dealt with small but important aspects of public access to files held by various bureaucracies. In this Parliament, we managed to establish the same right for access to national health service records.

The Freedom of Information Campaign is an important organisation. In their different spheres but in similar ways, the Constitutional Reform Centre, Charter 88, the Scottish Constitutional Convention and the Electoral Reform Society are resonating with the spirit of the times.

No quick fix or big bang will adequately modernise our constitutional provision. I well understand that the Government are taking action, such as inquiring into the future pattern of local government, and have recently appointed a royal commission into the working of the legal system. Both announcements are welcome but belated signs of the Government's still too dim awareness of the crisis of governance that confronts us.

Much more than these measures is called for. Constitutional reform is a multifaceted matter. It requires sensitivity to the inter-relatedness of the organs of government and the need to keep in balance one with the rest. It requires vigilance and it is, rightly, a continuing process. Of late, the House and the country have been deficient in that regard.

The modern nation state, and Britain is no exception, is threatened by pressures from above--the European Community and the international community--and from below of growing regional and local awareness. Those pressures must be accommodated and reconciled. We must seek to create a coherent and codified new constitutional settlement that will decentralise power and yet be consonant with, and contribute to, the development and democratisation of the institutions of the European Community.

We must apply nationally the sustained energy and effort that has been shown by the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in the past few weeks. In an apparently intractable political situation, he has been trying to achieve positive, lasting change. Such commitment is needed to solve the problems.

Sooner or later, the Government, of whatever colour, and the House, whatever its composition, will have to apply themselves to a systematic review of the constitutional framework of the United Kingdom. Liberal Democrats will continue to press for such a review and robustly to argue our party political agenda to establish the need for change. I hope that the debate will allow the House to express a view. I have deliberately avoided a partisan, party-political approach. I hope that we shall be able to test opinion in the House. I remind hon. Members of the adage coined by George Bernard Shaw on the need to get one's jacket off and fight for what one believes in. He said that people have

"to be careful to get what they like, or they might have to like what they get."

10.7 am

Sir Rhodes Boyson (Brent, North) : The House owes a debt to the hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Mr. Kirkwood) for raising the major issues of constitutional change. I quote George Bernard Shaw, who

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said that he could suggest improvements when he got to heaven. Some hon. Members would undoubtedly concur with that view.

I speak as a reactionary. I make no apologies for being a reactionary ; if there had been a few more reactionaries among the Gadarene swine, they would have lived a little longer. The sweep of progress took them over the hills and to their own fatal destruction.

In 1641, Lord Falkland, speaking on an episcopal matter, said : "When it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change."

I repeat that for the benefit of those listening :

"When it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change."

In other words, if something is working, the case has to be made for change --and considered very carefully. Often, the best is the enemy of the good. In trying to make a good system perfect, one tends to pull it to bits and nobody wants the end product.

The hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire, in his scholarly and informed speech, mentioned changes in the past 25 years. Most of the changes have been disasters and the relics of those disasters are littered round the place. An example is comprehensive education, which was introduced with the best of intentions by the Labour party. It presumed that it would lead to a more egalitarian and learned society, but I do not believe that it has. It has handicapped working-class children more than any legislation this century and has lowered education standards.

Mr. Jim Sillars (Glasgow, Govan) : In Scotland, comprehensive education has been broadly accepted by the community and operates to the satisfaction of most people. By any measure, we far outscore the English education system. If comprehensive education is so fundamentally flawed, why is Scotland doing so well educationally?

Sir Rhodes Boyson : I am grateful to the hon. Member for Glasgow, Govan (Mr. Sillars) because he makes my case. Comprehensive education was a natural growth in Scotland. In this country it was implanted by a Government against the wishes of the majority of people and it does not work. The hon. Gentleman must regularly come along when I make my speeches and we can perform a twin turn.

Mr. Robert Maclennan (Caithness and Sutherland) : Will the right hon. Member for Brent, North (Sir R. Boyson) relate his views to the constitution that brought about the system of education that he dislikes and which, according to him, allowed a system to be foisted upon a country that did not want it? Does not that suggest that there is something wrong with the constitution?

Sir Rhodes Boyson : I rather like that--the hon. Member has made a good point. I cannot win them all so I shall merely nod cheerfully to him on that issue. What he said bears out what I said first. As long as the system works overall, that is all that we can ask for--we cannot have a system that works all the time.

Local government was mentioned and I believe that my party's local government reorganisations in 1964 and 1972 were disasters. Similarly, conglomerates were built up in business and it was the fashion for them to buy up everything. Another fashion that swept the country, which

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was not a constitutional issue although it came from the House and from a desire for change, was that for tower blocks, which have probably harmed family life more than anything else in the past 25 or 30 years. They came about because people wanted change and said that the walkways in the sky were a good thing.

There is now much talk about regional assemblies--a Scottish assembly, a Welsh elected chamber and others--which appear to be the fashion of the time of the month. I believe that, overall, our system of one-Member constituencies with a Member who is responsible to the electorate and who is a member of a party, works well. Usually, it means that elections result in firm government and at by-elections along the way--I believe that there was one yesterday--there is a chance to test public opinion. By-elections tell the party in power that it should consider what it is doing if it wishes to remain on the Government Benches after the next general election.

Let us consider minority Governments. There were minority Governments in 1923, in 1929-31 and again in 1974-79, and each was a disaster. There was not a Government with a working majority about which everyone could grumble or which everyone could praise, but a mishmash. When we vote in a general election under a one-Member constituency system, we at least know for whom we are voting--we are voting for a member with a name ; he is a member of a party and the party has a leader. We cannot give everyone a view ; that would be an idyllic situation. I have no idea what the system is in heaven and I sometimes wonder what the economic situation is in heaven, let alone the constitutional system. If the system does not give a clear majority, one cannot know who will be the Prime Minister, or which parties will come together, and decisions are taken not by those who cast their votes in the ballot box but by those in what used in America to be called "smoke-filled rooms" and what are now "non smoke-filled rooms" or "no-thought rooms".

Mr. Simon Hughes (Southwark and Bermondsey) rose

Sir Rhodes Boyson : I shall give way as I see that there is great agitation on the Opposition Benches, probably in agreement with me.

Mr. Hughes : The right hon. Gentleman argues that we need a Government with a clear mandate. The fallacy of his argument is that we consistently have minority Governments who represent minority views, but who impose policies that the majority of people do not like--the poll tax is a good recent example--and which then have to be changed. There is a strong argument for strong government, but there is a much stronger argument for government with majority support. With respect, it is all very well for the right hon. Gentleman to defend the present system on the basis that it works well, but it does so only from the point of view of minorities that get power, but not from that of the people who are not given power under the present system.

Sir Rhodes Boyson : If 100 people get together, there will be 100 opinions. It is difficult to define the majority view, but there is more likelihood of attaining a majority view with a clear two-party system under which each party must appeal to the mass of the electorate than under a system where each party appeals to minority social groups. There is no ideal system--I am not saying that we have the best

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system that the world has ever known, but I am saying that it works. If we mess around with it, we shall worsen it. I know that the hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) and his party believe that they can change the world overnight in an astonishing way so that we should all be wearing rose-coloured spectacles. I began with a quotation and I shall finish with a quotation to round off my speech. I said that our system works tolerably well, so we should realise how fortunate we are to have this Chamber and all our arrangements when we look at history and other systems around the world. We have not always had one- Member constituencies--we had two-Member constituencies until fairly recently. There are arguments for two-Member constituencies, especially those with two votes for all, but the one-Member constituency has two advantages. First, it ensures that the Member stays in touch with the people who have elected him and, secondly, it acts as a defence against an over-powerful party system especially if he keeps his links with those people. Proportional representation could be disastrous, where the party is in charge, and the Member moves up and down a list and bows to the people in power and does not argue. If the Member stays in touch with his constituency, he knows what is going on and there is a chance that the majority will be satisfied, and there is a defence against an overwhelming party system.

Mr. Tony Banks (Newham, North West) : The only difficulty that I have with the point that the right hon. Member for Brent North (Sir R. Boyson) is making is that it is not true. The individual Member of Parliament is not a bastion against an overweening party system. If the right hon. Gentleman, with all his distinction, flamboyance, knowledge, and --let us say, for the sake of argument--his popularity in his constituency, were to change party and stand as Sir Rhodes Boyson, Independent, he would lose, and he knows it.

Sir Rhodes Boyson : The hon. Member makes a tempting offer, but I must resist it and not make another constitutional change along the way. Marginal seats are held or lost according to the service of the individual Member. It is important that people know who their Member of Parliament is- -he should be identifiable. Last night I was in my constituency to deal with a road-widening scheme and I shall be there tonight and on Saturday and Sunday. The same is true for most hon. Members. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Newham, North West (Mr. Banks), for whom I have the greatest respect, for bringing another matter to my attention although he may later wonder how he did so, but he can think about that for the rest of the day.

This week there was an illustration in Brent of what happens when we move too far from a two-party system. Last year, the election in Brent was hung and we could not elect any chairmen of committees. The council was hung in more ways than one--by its behaviour and by the way it was regarded by the electorate. There were no chairman of committees--it depended on who got there first. Some people stayed up all night in hammocks to get inside first and as soon as the clock struck, they became chairmen for that meeting. The electorate in Brent did not like that.

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I do not want to hurt the Opposition's feelings, Madam Deputy Speaker, so I shall speak more quietly and we shall whisper between ourselves. Two Members of the Labour party in Brent formed a new party called the Democratic Labour party, which is an improvement. Great thought was given to what the new party should be called. There is now a majority in Brent again and I noticed as I came through the streets this morning how different things are. People are whistling on their way to work because one party now has a majority. Who knows what may happen nationally? There may be an alliance of the Conservatives and the Democratic Labour party. The idea may sweep the country.

Mr. James Arbuthnot (Wanstead and Woodford) : After the attractive intervention by the hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks), I was thinking that he made a point that was no doubt true for most of us. The one person of whom it would not be true would be my right hon. Friend. That is a point against my own party, so I hope that he will not leave our party and stand as an independent.

Sir Rhodes Boyson : Who knows? If there are constitutional changes, what may arise? At 2.30 pm today, the whole country may change in its way of doing things.

I want to make another point in a puckish and helpful way. It is always interesting to realise that the parties in the House that are most interested in constitutional reform are those that do not have a majority. It is surprising what a change there is when there is a majority. I have great respect for the 19th century Liberals. I wrote a biography of the brother-in-law of John Bright and the closest confidant of Cobden. It is a good book which I can recommend to all hon. Members. If hon. Members want a present for the new Democratic Labour party or whoever, the opportunity is there.

If the Liberal party had replaced the Labour party as the second party in the 1983 election, would the attitude of Liberal Democrat Members be the same? It is nice to see Liberal Democrat Members in their places. Similarly, is the reason why some Labour Members support proportional representation the fact that Labour has lost three elections? What would Labour Members' attitude be if the misfortune arose that they won an election? I make that as a puckish point. I may be wrong in my deductions, but they are worth putting forward.

Mr. John Butterfill (Bournemouth, West) : Is not it the case that the Liberal party, when it was last in power, was very much opposed to proportional representation? Liberal Democrat Members' enthusiasm for it is far more recent.

Sir Rhodes Boyson : I believe that that is the case. I did not want to push the point too far because I did not want to hurt anybody's feelings.

We live in a fallen world. I accept the garden of Eden and the fall of man both spiritually and politically. There is no ideal society in this world and people who try to make society ideal, eventually burn people to keep it that way. We are privileged when we get a system that works and we must be careful that we do not make it fall apart by trying to improve it even further. Many of the electorate--in what we used to call the public bar-- are suspicious of change.

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I end where I began with Lord Falkland's statement of 1641, which was repeated in the debate on the 1832 Reform Bill.

Mr. Tony Banks : Whose side would the right hon. Gentleman have been on?

Sir Rhodes Boyson : The hon. Gentleman is trying to divert me, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I must have your protection against being interrupted when I am trying to make a minor peroration. My compass bearing is to believe that when it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change. I see no need to change the political system at present.

I am also very concerned about the pressure coming from Europe for a change in our voting system. I agreed to the economic market in Europe, but I am not interested in the European Community legislating about the crisps that I can eat or about the way that we vote. If Europe continues to do that, there will be a backlash in this country against the Common Market.

10.23 am

Mr. Tony Benn (Chesterfield) : I strongly welcome the debate. It is the first time in the 40 years in which I have been here that there has been a day devoted to constitutional reform as a whole. I welcome the spirit in which the hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Mr. Kirkwood) introduced the debate. I also welcome the theological note introduced by the right hon. Member for Brent, North (Sir R. Boyson). I first remember him when he strongly advocated comprehensive schools. The hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan) was a member of the party that introduced those schools. I am reminded that this debate cuts across party lines. Some people outside may hear the words "constitutional reform" and wonder what they mean. I heard Professor Norton say the other day that he had never met anyone who was in favour of constitutional reform. I thought therefore that I would look back at our history and mention one or two examples that will be familiar to the House. When William the Conqueror arrived in 1066, he was engaged in constitutional reform. He was the second man to try to get us into the Common Market. Julius Caesar was the first and William the Conqueror was the second. The right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr. Heath) was the third. When William the Conqueror made his coronation oath in Westminster abbey on Christmas day 1066, he laid down how he was going to govern the country. He gave all the land to his Norman friends. When the barons went to Runnymede in 1215, they insisted on constitutional reform and the king had to yield to their pressure. A few yards from where we are sitting, in Westminster hall in 1649, Parliament tried King Charles I and later executed him a few feet along Whitehall. That was an act of constitutional reform.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Peter Lloyd) : I do not think that the barons in 1215 were seeking constitutional reform ; they were seeking to restate what they believed were their traditional rights.

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Mr. Benn : It could be argued that the present case for constitutional reform is exactly that. It could be argued that we have lost rights that we had and I shall come to that point in a moment.

When there were great debates on the Reform Bill in 1831, which led to the Reform Act of 1832, they were about constitutional reform. When the Chartists had their major march for the petition in 1839, they were demanding constitutional reform. When the suffragettes demanded votes for women, they were engaged in constitutional reform. I have now put up a little plague in the broom cupboard in memory of Emily Wilding Davison who hid there on the night of the census. When there was a conflict between the Lords and the Commons in 1910 over the Parliament Act, which allowed the present Government to carry the War Crimes Bill against the opposition of the House of Lords, that was constitutional reform. When American forces were allowed here after the war, when we joined the European Community and when the Greater London council was abolished--they were all constitutional reforms. Let no one have any doubt that constitutional reform is central. Democracy is a process. If one discusses the process and wishes to change it, one is discussing constitutional reform.

It is widely agreed that there are now many issues on which people are interested in change. Proportional representation has been cited. The argument that a Government elected on 42 per cent. were able to enforce their will and that those in opposition to it were a majority, although a minority in the House, must have attention given to it. However, those who advocate proportional representation should consider one or two other points. In the Labour party national executive recently, I expressed my doubts about proportional representation. I said that if we had a list system, on that list my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) and I would be 649 and 650. One of my colleagues--I will not mention his name--asked whether we wanted that in writing.

There is also the question of a hung Parliament. As the right hon. Member for Brent, North rightly said, people would go into a room and come out with a policy and a Government for whom nobody had voted. Zero per cent. would vote for a Government emerging from a negotiation after an election. We have a view which I strongly share--and which may be rather old fashioned--that everyone should know the policy before polling day and not after it. I am doing no more than trying to raise some serious questions about the matter. The matter is not as clear cut as the hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire makes out. After a hung Parliament, when constituents asked "Why did you do this, Mr. Benn?" I would say that I was afraid that it was forced on me by coalition partners. MPs would then not be responsible for what they had done.

I am in favour of the matter being discussed and I do not want to exclude anything. There are people who favour proportional representation. Mr. Arthur Scargill is a strong advocate of proportional representation on the principled ground that you should not have any power until you have a majority of over 50 per cent. The Prince of Wales is a strong advocate of proportional representation and so is the Liberal Democrat party now, although it was not in favour when it had a parliamentary majority.

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Mr. Simon Hughes : The right hon. Gentleman has been assiduous in campaigning for constitutional reform for many years, and properly so. Does he agree that given that, under our present system, two bodies decide the law--one not elected by anyone and the other supported by a minority not of 40 per cent. but of just over 30 per cent.-- the fundamental matter on which to agree is whether those who pass the laws should be elected with the support of the majority? I should be happy to dispute with the right hon. Gentleman the secondary question whether we should have single-member or multi-member constituencies, if we can agree on the principle of a democratic majority for legislation for Britain.

Mr. Benn : I am coming to that, although personally I think that changing the voting system would not change very much, for reasons that I shall give in a minute--and not least because this House is overridden by the Commissioners in Brussels, whom we do not elect at all.

Then there is the question of people's rights. We have no rights in Britain. We are subjects, not citizens--I shall come back to that matter when I refer to the Crown--and there is an argument for a Bill of Rights. Women are grossly under-represented in this place. The 300 Group, which thinks that half the House of Commons should be made up of women, has a case. I am not personally in favour of what is called positive discrimination, but I am in favour of equality of representation, which is quite a different principle. I have no doubt that you, Madam Deputy Speaker, will move to higher things and that you, along with Edith Cresson, the new Prime Minister of France, will help to redress the balance.

I have always believed in the case for home rule for Scotland. We are talking about the old Keir Hardie principle. Freedom of information, devolution, local democracy, civil liberties, relations between Parliament and the Common Market are all massive questions which must be discussed. The hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire had it right when he tabled his wide motion. People are interested in constitutional reform because they want this place to serve them. Very few people have an O-level or an A -level in government, but they know that, if they want something done and this place will not do it, something is wrong. I always think of this place as a steam engine. It needs some steam to move, but if there is lots of steam and the engine is defective all that happens is a great release of hot air ; the engine stays where it is, which means that our mechanism is defective. I think that people are beginning to realise that.

There has always been opposition to reform. The remarks of the right hon. Member for Brent, North were in line with those of many of his predecessors. Opposing the Reform Bill in 1831, Sir Robert Peel said :

"I am convinced it is not founded on the acknowledged principles of the constitution--because it does not give security to the prerogative of the Crown--because it does not guarantee the legitimate rights, influences and privileges of both Houses of Parliament."

Of course, Robert Peel was wrong.

Let me refer to other demands for reform--for example, the demand for votes for women. Mr. Asquith--the former Liberal Prime Minister--was a bitter opponent of votes for women. On 12 July 1910, he said :

"In the long run, if you grant the franchise to women, you will have to grant it on the widest possible basis, and with all the consequences to which I have referred."--[ Official Report, 12 July 1910 ; Vol. 19, c. 250.]

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