House of Commons Hansard Debates for 1 Feb 1999 (pt 29)

8.43 pm

Mr. Bill Rammell (Harlow): I am pleased to take part in the debate. I have believed in House of Lords reform and the abolition of the hereditary peerage all my political life. I do not believe that this is a matter for fine argument or fine judgment; it is a matter of right and wrong. It is fundamentally wrong that we still have people voting in our system of government simply on the basis of the families into which they were born.

The hereditary peerage, and the element of chance that it introduces to our system, is worse than governing by the luck of the draw. People who become hereditary peers come, by and large, from one background and from one interest group with one set of values, and support one political party. That is why the hereditary peerage is fundamentally objectionable.

The hereditary peerage is also objectionable because of the fundamental and overwhelming political bias, to the Conservative party, that it introduces to our system. It was interesting to see what were almost smiles on the faces of Conservative Members when they attempted to defend--supposedly dispassionately--that party imbalance. It is indefensible; everybody knows that, which is one reason why we have introduced these reforms.

The reforms are long standing and have been put clearly over the years. Three times this century there has been agreement that hereditary peers should no longer vote in the House of Lords. On the last occasion, the House of Lords itself agreed, by a majority of 5:1, that they should go. However, on every occasion that those proposals for sensible reform have been introduced they have been blocked, because of the vested interests of the hereditary peers and of the Conservative party, and because it was argued that the reform package should come in one package, as a whole. That is why the Government have introduced a two-stage reform. History has taught us that if reform is introduced in a single package, it will be blocked by the powers of the vested interests.

If we believe that it is wrong for hereditary peers to have the right to vote in the House of Lords, it is also wrong that they should have the right to determine who their successors should be and how the successor House should be constituted. We explicitly said in our general election manifesto that we would reform the House of Lords in two stages, and that is what people voted for and what we are delivering.

One issue that has not been addressed this evening, but has been discussed in previous debates in the House of Lords, is the Salisbury convention--the constitutional fix that sanitises the indefensible principle of hereditary peers. The Salisbury convention provides that proposals

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in a political party's manifesto should not be voted against on Second Reading and should not be the subject of wrecking amendments. I maintain that that convention not only does not work, but undermines the current operation of the House of Lords.

The Leader of the Opposition intervened on Lord Cranborne before Christmas. There had been veiled threats from the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Minister responsible for constitutional affairs that this Bill and others would be wrecked, regardless of the fact that this measure was in the Labour manifesto, because the Conservative party disagreed with the Government's proposals on Lords reform.

Lord Kingsland let the cat out of the bag last year in a debate on House of Lords reform, when he said that the abolition of hereditary peers was

"a solution to a problem that I do not recognise. Therefore, in my submission, the Opposition would be entitled to think most carefully about whether or not the Salisbury Convention applied to the Bill."--[Official Report, House of Lords, 15 October 1998; Vol. 593, c. 1054.]

No matter that this measure was a manifesto commitment and that 13.5 million people voted for it. No matter that that resulted in the biggest election victory for any party this century. His Lordship said that this measure was a solution to a problem that he, in his wisdom, did not recognise. The constitutional fix of the Salisbury convention, which many Conservatives use to defend the indefensible, was blown apart.

I contend that, because of its hereditary make-up, the House of Lords is not an effective revising Chamber. As it lacks democratic authority, it does not have the legitimacy that it should have to challenge the elected Government of the day. Because it is the poodle of a political party, it is not respected by Labour Members when it makes blocking proposals.

Mr. Grieve: I may be leading the hon. Gentleman on, but from his remarks I take it that he believes that the second Chamber should, in future, be elected, so that it has a democratic mandate.

Mr. Rammell: I certainly believe that the second Chamber should be democratically elected in part--not wholly--because this Chamber must remain the supreme governing body within the Houses of Parliament. Conservative Members talk about the independence of the second Chamber, but where was that independence when the poll tax and rail privatisation were pushed through?

During rail privatisation, when the Government were decaying and no longer had a parliamentary majority, they did not even command the respect of their own Back Benchers. Massive opinion poll evidence showed that there was total opposition to rail privatisation. Even in those circumstances, when one would expect a revising Chamber to oppose and block the Government, that did not happen.

Mrs. Laing: The hon. Gentleman is factually wrong. That did happen. The House of Lords significantly amended the Railways Bill, and the Conservative Government accepted the Lords amendments.

Mr. Rammell: My argument is that, in the circumstances, the Bill was so fundamentally

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objectionable--and, overwhelmingly, public support was not given to it--that it should have been a matter not of amending, but of blocking the Bill. I bet my bottom dollar that, had a Labour Government been pushing that Bill in those circumstances, they would not have been as reticent.

Mr. Letwin: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Rammell: No; I want to make some progress.

Let me now discuss, in detail, some of the other Conservative opposition to the Bill. It appears, broadly, to be based on the concept that this Labour Government want a compliant second Chamber packed with what the Conservatives describe as "Tony's cronies". According to them, there will be a huge increase in prime ministerial patronage. If that is so, why are we saying that no political party will command a majority in the transitional Chamber? Why are we only seeking parity with the Conservative party in the House of Lords?

The Conservatives argue that we want the second Chamber to become the Prime Minister's poodle. How can that be, given that, on the basis of the current figures, we would have to create a further 15 Labour life peers out of what would eventually be a total of 529 in order to gain parity in the second Chamber? That hardly justifies the language that we have heard from Conservative Members about Labour's attempts to dominate and swamp the House of Lords.

It is also not true that, just because people are life peers, they are compliant in their attitude to the party that nominated them. I do not think that Lord Hattersley, whose "Endpiece" article in The Guardian I saw this morning, could be described as a compliant poodle of the new Labour project; but he has been nominated by this Prime Minister, under this Government. Lord Shore, who opposes every aspect of the Government's attitude to Europe, has also been nominated by this Prime Minister, in this Parliament, under this Government. I do not think that the Conservatives' case adds up.

Let us now examine the Conservative defence of the hereditary principle. My hon. Friend the Member forThe Wrekin (Mr. Bradley) has already highlighted the Conservative party's ludicrous attempts, in its 1997 election guide, to justify the retention of hereditary peers, on the ground that they bring colour, tradition, youth and a wealth of experience to the House of Lords. Lord Cranborne tried to take that a stage further when he said:

"We are well on our way to being a cross-section of society when only 2.5 per cent. of that Chamber are women."

We should remember that recently--in the last Parliament--the House of Lords, with its hereditary peers, had an opportunity to rectify matters. It was proposed that the eldest child, whether male or female, should succeed to an hereditary title. The hereditary peers, with the support of the Conservative party in the House of Lords, blocked that proposal to introduce some form of equality.

I think that the real defence advanced by the Conservative party is more subtle. It is, I think, that these matters are complicated; that it is difficult to come up with an alternative; and that the Lords are not actually