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Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael J. Martin): Order. We must be able to hear the Minister.
Mr. Straw: The Conservative party must face up to what happens once someone is removed from the list.
The fact that 131 hereditary peers voted in favour of the change to closed lists provides the clearest possible mandate.
Sir Norman Fowler (Sutton Coldfield): Is the Home Secretary seriously suggesting that the hon. Member for Battersea (Mr. Linton) was in favour of the closed list?
Mr. Straw: Yes. I listened to his speech with great interest, and, if he was not in favour of the closed list, he could have voted in the No Lobby.
Mr. David Lock (Wyre Forest): Will my right hon. Friend give way?
Mr. Straw: I will in a moment. I have some more illuminating remarks to make to Conservative Members first.
Beyond the issue of a review, little has changed since Monday, except that the British people now see more clearly than ever why they were so wise to approve another categorical Labour manifesto commitment--the commitment to remove the right of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords. The more the public see of them, the stronger they make the case for abolition.
On the one o'clock news on the BBC, we witnessed the risible spectacle of the fourth Baron Ampthill--a Cross Bencher, as it happens--claiming to speak for the British people and British democracy. He, of course, voted with the Conservatives, as nearly all Cross Benchers do. [Interruption.] Thirty Cross Benchers voted on the Tory side--because most of them are Tories--and six voted against.
It was a stunningly difficult case for the fourth Baron Ampthill to make, and it was made no easier by the fact that his main claim to fame is that for four years he was general manager of the co-operative stores to the upper classes, Fortnum and Mason. His great-great-grandfather received the peerage, in 1881, for being no more than British ambassador to the German empire. I ask the hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Mr. Hawkins), or any other Conservative Member, in the 117 years since creation of that barony, what right has Lord Ampthill or any other hereditary peer had to sabotage the decisions of this elected House?
Mr. Nick Hawkins (Surrey Heath):
I am grateful to the Home Secretary for giving way. While he is being gratuitously offensive to a Member of the other place--first because he earned his living working for a perfectly reputable company; and secondly because an ancestor gave distinguished public service--will he remember that the claim to fame of his noble Friend who has been appointed to lead another place is simply that she is the daughter of a former Labour Prime Minister and was married to a former ambassador?
Mr. Hawkins:
Will the Home Secretary--
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will calm down while I am speaking. First,
Mr. Straw:
We now have a statement from the hon. Member for Surrey Heath, who speaks for the moderates among Tory Members--God protect us from the rest of them. He is a serious Conservative Member. It is therefore interesting that he is claiming that hereditary peers have the same status--the same right to sit and to vote in the other place--as those who are appointed on their own merits. I note that, and file it.
I was casting no aspersions on Lord Ampthill, except to say that I find it risible that he was claiming to speak on behalf of the people of the United Kingdom. It is important to examine the background not of individuals who are currently in the other place but of those who were "elected" there initially. The 26th Baron of Mowbray, Segrave and Stourton--
Mr. Peter Bottomley (Worthing, West):
On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The House will have heard what you said about not dealing with personalities. If that applies to Conservative Members, may we assume that it applies also to Labour Members and to the Home Secretary?
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Hon. Members on both sides of the House will have heard what I said. May I tell the Home Secretary that it does not help to talk about the personalities of individual office holders. We should be temperate in our language. I also tell hon. Members that I want to hear the Home Secretary. He is a very nice Home Secretary, and I want to hear him, but I have not been able to.
Mr. Straw:
Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I note that I had only to read out the name--the fact that he is the 26th Baron. That is all I said about him.
Mr. Andrew Robathan (Blaby):
Will the Home Secretary give way?
Mr. Straw:
They rise to the point. I shall give way to the hon. Member for Blaby (Mr. Robathan). I should like to know whether he is making the same point as the hon. Member for Surrey Heath--that hereditary peers have the same right as life peers to sit in the other place, and that those who are appointed on the merit of some long-dead forebear have the same right in the other place as those who are appointed on their own merit. Is that the point?
Mr. Robathan:
I am grateful to the Home Secretary. I shall not talk about personalities, but simply ask whether the Home Secretary believes that one criterion for being Lord Chancellor, for example, might be having been the Prime Minister's pupil master, or that one criterion for being appointed Solicitor-General might be having shared a flat with the Prime Minister?
Mr. Straw:
There is a serious point to make, which is that people on both sides in the other place who are
As I reminded the House on Monday, the great Tom Paine, whom the Tory party at the end of the 18th century was trying to have locked up, and who had to go off to America, said, in a phrase that is as right today as it was then:
Mr. Straw:
I have given way a lot. I just want to make a couple more points.
Mr. Straw:
Well, if the hon. Gentleman wants to ask me about Tom Paine, I shall give way.
Mr. Cash:
The Home Secretary is making an analogy with the 18th century. Does he not think that the new system that the Government are devising for replacing the hereditary peers is going back to the 18th century? Instead of rotten boroughs, he will be creating rotten peers.
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. We are not debating the replacement or removal of peers. [Interruption.] Order.I am stating to everyone in the House that that is not what we are debating, and everyone on both sides will have to listen.
Mr. Straw:
We are not replicating a system that existed in the 18th century, for one incontrovertible reason, which will be acknowledged by hon. Members on both sides: Mr. Victor d'Hondt was not born until the 19th century, and without him none of this would have been possible.
Sir Peter Tapsell (Louth and Horncastle)
rose--
Mr. Graham Brady (Altrincham and Sale, West)
rose--
Mr. Straw:
I shall give way to the two hon. Gentlemen, then I shall get on.
Sir Peter Tapsell:
I should like to bring the Home Secretary back from the 18th century to 1998, and back from personalities to the constitution, which he, as Home Secretary, is partly responsible for protecting. We rightly hear a great deal from him about the need to protect the rule of law in this country. Whatever may happen to the House of Lords in the next Session of Parliament, for the moment the law of the land says that hereditary peers
Mr. Straw:
It is certainly not open to me to change the constitution by diktat, and I should not have the impertinence to try to do so. The creator of modern so-called Villa Conservatism--Lord Salisbury--devised the Salisbury doctrine in the late 1880s, recognising the right of an elected House of Commons to meet its manifesto commitments. We have an unwritten constitution, so there is nothing in tablets of stone and no formal basic law that describes the powers of the other place or this House. We are dealing with carefully crafted conventions.
"The idea of hereditary legislators is as inconsistent as that of hereditary judges, as hereditary juries; and as absurd as an hereditary mathematician, or an hereditary wise man; as absurd as an hereditary Poet Laureate."
Mr. William Cash (Stone)
rose--
4.45 pm
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