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Mr. Grieve: I am interested to hear the hon. Gentleman's figures. What exactly was the question asked--whether there was a need for total Lords reform, or for the abolition of the hereditary peerage without knowing what the total reform will be?
Mr. Bradley: My constituents have a great deal more sense than Opposition Members. We asked them whether they support the Government's plans to reform the House of Lords. They gave us a resounding yes, just as people have done throughout the country when asked the same question. People want a Parliament that is representative, democratic and accountable. The Lords as currently constituted are none of those things.
My colleagues have made much of the statistics, and they bear repeating. Of 635 hereditary peers eligible to attend the House of Lords, 304 take the Conservative Whip; 60 per cent. are landowners; 45 per cent. went to Eton; only 16 are women. The Conservative election guide of 1997, with which I am sure Opposition Members are only too familiar, stated:
The Conservative election guide went on to state that hereditary peers were "an asset to democracy". It continued:
Mr. Grieve:
That is a bad point, is it not? On that basis, old-age pensioners are badly represented in Parliament, so the balance is redressed by the other House.
Mr. Bradley:
The hon. Gentleman misses the point. The point is that in your election guide in 1997, your party made great play of the fact--
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. The hon. Gentleman should use the correct form of address. He is addressing me at the moment.
Mr. Bradley:
Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The conventions of this House require attention, like the conventions of the other House.
The Conservatives' election document stated that hereditary peers bring colour, tradition, youth and a wealth of experience to Parliament. If that is what they value in the upper House, they are failing to meet that objective. What commends the hereditary principle to Conservative Members of Parliament is the undeniable fact that the hereditary peers in the upper House are male, from privileged backgrounds, and Conservatives.
The Conservative party has lost its grip on government, it has been ejected from council chambers throughout the country, and it has virtually been banished from Scotland and Wales. It has lost the argument, it has lost its credibility, and it has lost the plot. No wonder it is clinging to the only institution where it does not have to fear elections; where it has a majority without a mandate; and where it can defy the Government and the people who elected it--and it does.
In 1997-98, 33 Government defeats were sustained in the House of Lords and the margin of defeat was smaller than the number of Conservative hereditary peers who voted for it. In 1974-79, when Labour was last in government, 85 per cent. of the Divisions led to Government defeats. In the past 30 years, since the beginning of the 1970s, there have been on average eight Conservative Government defeats in the Lords per Session, compared with 63 Labour defeats.
I notice that the hon. Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox) is again absent from his seat. I wonder what he meant when he told Charter 88 in a recent interview:
It is not just a question of tidying up the history books; it is part of a radical programme of reform and enfranchisement. Devolution to Scotland and Wales has been mentioned. Once again we are to have a democratic metropolitan authority in our capital city; and there is a move to regional development agencies and chambers, and ultimately to the assemblies that go with them. We are modernising local government and experimenting with proportional representation. We are building a consensus on important constitutional issues with the Liberal Democrats, which I welcome. We have incorporated the European convention on human rights in our legislation, and I hope that there will shortly be a Bill on freedom of information.
All those measures extend and strengthen the rightsof individuals to have a voice in their government. Decentralisation empowers individual citizens and transfers government from the few to the many. There are no victims of those reforms. The Lords can return to their stately homes and grouse moors, and if they wish they can prepare for government. They can stand for election and, if the people choose them, they can have their say in this Chamber. If they have a contribution to make and have talent at their disposal, some will doubtless come here.
Mr. Desmond Swayne (New Forest, West):
I came here some 21 months ago with absolutely no appetite for constitutional change of any kind, but the experience of the past 21 months has given me an appetite for radical constitutional change. Of one thing I am absolutely certain: as they are set up, the Houses of Parliament are not working effectively. Our system is designed for primary legislation, yet 3,200 pieces of secondary legislation go through the Houses of Parliament every year. The vast majority of our laws are statutory instruments or orders. It is a kind of administrative government. We have truly become a bureaucracy rather than a democracy.
I am convinced that that deluge of legislation is not being properly scrutinised and that we should change our parliamentary processes to ensure that it is. I am equally convinced that Members of Parliament are failing in their duty properly to hold the Executive to account, and that this House is very much the Prime Minister's poodle.
I suspect that that process has accelerated, largely under this Government, but I am certain that it did not begin with them. These events have been in train for some time. They require radical reform, so I have become something of an advocate of change and of reform.
It strikes me that the question of reform of the House of Lords opens up a great opportunity for us to address some of these issues, but in order to address them, and in order to ask the House of Lords to take on some of the functions that this House is now unwilling or unable to perform, we would have to change the composition of the House of Lords.
As the hon. Member for Corby (Mr. Hope) has pointed out, the House of Lords is undemocratic and unaccountable. If we want it to perform functions, certainly some that I want it to take on--functions that we are no longer capable of carrying out, not always because we are unwilling, but simply because we are incapable of addressing the sheer volume of administrative legislation that goes through the House--and if we want it to play a part in that reform, we must address the issue of its composition to give it some democratic legitimacy.
I can safely say to the hon. Member for Corby--before he rises to ask me the question that he has asked so many other hon. Members--that, although I could support the principle in it, I cannot support clause 1 of the Bill. The reason is simple: any informed discussion of the composition of the other place must first be informed by discussion of what the proper functions of the other place are.
"It's important to defend the hereditary principle in its own right."
I shall be fascinated to hear hon. Members on the Conservative Front Bench uphold that principle.
"Hereditary peers bring colour, tradition, youth and a wealth of experience to Parliament."
Colour--two black hereditary Members of the House of Lords. Tradition--oh yes, there is tradition. It is the tradition of a 3:1 Conservative majority. Youth--54 per cent. of peers are old-age pensioners, and 24 per cent. are over the age of 75. That contrasts strikingly with the composition of the House of Commons, where 6 per cent. of Members are over pensionable age and only 0.5 per cent. are over the age of 75.
"we won't be ditching our core values".
Those are the core values of privilege, power and the right to abuse that power. Would Conservative Members defend the hereditary principle if Labour had a majority of three to one in the House of Lords? I very much doubt it. It is time for hereditary peers to go, for they have neither legitimacy nor credibility. We can no longer allow this most democratic and respected--indeed, imitated--of Houses of Parliament to remain shackled to that most ridiculous one.
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