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5.50 pm
Mr. Robert Maclennan (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross): The right hon. Member for Ashton- under-Lyne (Mr. Sheldon) said that this was one of those occasions when the House of Commons tended to make speeches rather than listen to them. I congratulate him on sitting throughout the debate with evident interest.
I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman is here, because I want to address an issue of great importance, which he raised. He had a somewhat world-weary view about the
prospect of reform of the upper House, based on his 30 years in this House, and one could have a degree of sympathy with that. However, he showed a perhaps surprising radicalism in his belief that the Liaison Committee might succeed in creating a new career track for Members of the House of Commons, which would so transform the work of this place that it might become a significant check on the Executive in a different manner from that which it has exercised during our time here.
One can exaggerate the extent to which there has been a falling off from a golden age of the House of Commons, which has been exceedingly partisan in the past and not just within the memory of those sitting here today. Historically--on issues such as the reform of the House of Lords during the first decade of this century, home rule for Ireland and many other matters--the House of Commons has shown itself to be a partisan place; perhaps that is its function.
As people are anxious to preserve the authority and distinctiveness of the House of Commons as the fount of Executive Government, it would seem likely that that will remain. Our approach to the reform of the House of Lords should take into account the probability that the House of Commons will remain similar to its present form. Whatever may be the developments in the Liaison Committee--about which the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne spoke--I hope that they will be progressed. The House of Lords has the potential to become more effective in the discharge of a different role from its present one.
For that reason, I was glad to hear the Leader of the House say that the royal commission should focus on that role, and should approach the matter fundamentally and--she did not use this word, although she clearly intended it--radically. That is an entirely desirable approach. That caution should prevent the royal commission from being lost in the deltoid sands at the outturn of a river--something that would occur if it waited to see how this House reforms its procedure to make it more effective.
The Leader of the House reflected the approach of the Prime Minister, before he became Prime Minister, in his John Smith speech in 1996, when he said that the Labour party had always favoured an elected upper House. That message would not be appropriate for the Government to enunciate in terms today. Having set up a royal commission, it would be wrong to follow the advice of the hon. Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox) and tell the royal commission what it should do, for the reasons given so effectively by the hon. Member for Burnley (Mr. Pike). None the less, the royal commission will have in mind the fact that the clear view, as stated by the Prime Minister, that the Labour party has always favoured an elected second Chamber.
The right hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr. MacGregor) and the hon. Member for Leominster (Mr. Temple-Morris) produced a kind of consensus, but I hope profoundly that that consensus does not inform the thinking of the royal commission. I could not have disagreed more with the view of the hon. Member for Leominster that it makes sense to go towards a system of election from functional constituencies. For the sake of avoiding academic discussion, I will not address the issue of whether the idea has fascist roots or not. However, it is clear that it is an impractical suggestion.
The hon. Member for Leominster spoke about the sense of giving a member of the Bar Council a position in the House of Lords as of right--but why? I am a barrister, but I cannot see why the legal profession--if that is what the hon. Gentleman is proposing--should be represented by somebody from the Bar. Why not somebody from the Law Society, or from the magistrates' clerks?
Mr. Maclennan:
Why not indeed? We could have six, seven, eight, 10 or a dozen people with some claim from a functional constituency to represent the law in its workings, and that could be true of every other profession. In terms of the medical profession, is it to be the president of the Royal College of Surgeons or the president of the Royal College of Anaesthetists? Are we to get the entire medical profession together? Are we to have the patients, as a functional constituency, electing someone to represent them in the upper House? Tourism is a huge industry, and represents tremendously important earnings capacity in this country. Who is to speak for it?
Mr. Hogg:
I very much agree with the right hon. Gentleman. Is there not an added vice, to which he may shortly come--that the members chosen by some functional college would regard themselves in some way as delegates of that functional college, and would not approach matters in the broader way that I hope that Members of the second Chamber would adopt?
Mr. Maclennan:
I entirely agree. Not only would there be a problem with the latitudinarianism of those who would claim to be the spokespersons for a sector of opinion, but there would be the problem of their becoming out of date. How long can they go on claiming to speak for that functional constituency? The issue has been too easily used as a kind of halfway house towards the election of the upper House.
I think that it is an evasion--an evasion of an issue that was put directly by a previous Conservative commission, led by Sir Alec Douglas-Home in 1978, on the composition of the upper House. That report completely refuted the speech of the right hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr. MacGregor), a former Leader of the House, in terms. It stated:
The Leader of the House talked about the importance of legitimacy, and that is a function of democracy. However, if the new, reformed House is to speak with authority, it must draw its legitimacy from direct elections. If it is not to be a reflection of this House--there is some consensus on that, although not on how that is to be achieved--I would suggest, praying in aid the Douglas-Home commission, that it must be elected in a different manner from the House of Commons.
Douglas-Home was not squeamish about urging a proportional system; nor would I be about advocating the single transferable vote for such elections, as it would ensure the probability that not only would no single party dominate that House but that its Members would represent substantially different constituencies, drawn from a much
wider geographical base. If the experience of other countries with the single transferable vote is any guide, it would also bring in that very mix of people that it is our common wish to see elected.
Mr. Letwin:
I am puzzled by the right hon. Gentleman's remarks because I understood his party to favour that system for this House. How would its introduction in the second Chamber differentiate it from the first if his desires for the first were also achieved?
Mr. Maclennan:
The hon. Gentleman is running a little behind, which is surprising from him, as he is one of the most acute members of the Conservative Front Bench. The Liberal Democrats happily welcomed the Jenkins report's recommendation of alternative vote plus for this House, which would build on existing parliamentary constituencies--that is its virtue--but that is something entirely different from what is being advocated for the upper House. We are observing the rubric of the Douglas-Home commission, which seems to make eminently good sense.
Mr. Temple-Morris:
The right hon. Gentleman knows that I am a supporter of electoral reform, but does he seriously think that the House would create an upper House that could in many ways be argued to be more representative than this place? Does he honestly think that that is on, or practical?
Mr. Maclennan:
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for acknowledging that the single transferable vote is an eminently democratic system of election, but I would not for a minute suggest that it is more democratic than the proposal of the Jenkins commission, which will be the subject of a referendum. That is how the matter should be decided, and how the Government have undertaken that it will be decided. I do not doubt that the House can live with a touch of democracy, if that is what he is inferring that it might not be prepared to accept.
Most of today's speeches have, rightly, focused on what is the point of the upper House, what it should do that it is not doing and whether it needs more powers to do it effectively. It is fair to say that the House of Lords has many powers that it feels constrained from using because it lacks legitimacy. I do not set my face against change, and there are several areas in which I think that it would be desirable--for example, involving the upper House, as has been suggested by many of its Members, in greater scrutiny of treaty making, and giving it more of a role in scrutinising secondary legislation--but the real inhibition on the effectiveness of the upper House concerns not its powers but the sense that, if it were to seek to face down the Government, its wings would be clipped.
"Moral authority can only come from the direct election of its Members."
There is the point. We have not heard enough in the debate about the virtues of democracy.
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