| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Sir Norman Fowler (Sutton Coldfield): Unlike my right hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr. MacGregor), I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr. Tyrie) on his speech setting out the case for an elected second Chamber, and I agree with him. I also very much enjoyed the speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire(Sir G. Young). He made an excellent case for voting against the measure, but I gather that that is not the instruction. Never has there been a measure for which so many will vote with as many reservations as have been expressed this evening.
Nothing that I say is intended to be in any way derogatory of the peers who have already been elected under the system in the measure. I was delighted that peers such as Earl Ferrers and the Lords Strathclyde, Trefgarne and Denham have been elected. They are great servants.
I was equally delighted by another development. A year ago, for some reason, the Home Secretary attacked Lord Ampthill by name. He said:
To make the obvious point, which should not be ignored, we are debating the principle of the change, not what is best for existing members of the House of Lords.
We are debating the make-up of the kind of second Chamber that we want. Against that criterion, the proposition in the amendment is complete rubbish.
I well understand that Labour Members claim a mandate for the abolition of hereditary peers. I have fought every election since 1970 and I cannot remember the issue having come up once in any public meeting that I have conducted. Nevertheless, they claim a mandate for it. But few Labour Members can claim a mandate for the kind of proposition in the new clause, which states:
Few Labour Members would have set out the extraordinary idea that hereditary peers would have to circulate election addresses among their colleagues. One wonders whether at some stage the same will be necessary for life peers. If it is, the mind begins to boggle at the possibilities. I can see messages coming forward such as, "I was Prime Minister between 1979 and 1990 and nothing much good has happened since", and other election addresses of that kind.
Even Labour Members would not have come up with the by-election system for replacement of those who were elected but have prematurely kicked the bucket. As I understand the system, if one of the two elected Labour hereditary peers dies, the one surviving member selects his successor. That must be the minutest and most select electorate that we have ever put in place.
Mr. Peter Viggers (Gosport):
Will my right hon. Friend give way?
Sir Norman Fowler:
I shall not for a moment. With the greatest respect, I do not think that my hon. Friend has been here for long.
Sir Norman Fowler:
All the same, I shall not give way.
In my national service days--I can speak to my hon. Friend in that way because we were at college together--there was a saying, "A joke's a joke, but I'm against a pantomime", although it was put rather more directly than that. We must understand how we have ended up with the new clause. At this point, there is a wise nodding of heads--a pragmatic compromise, I think one hon. Member called it. More unkindly, it could be described as a fix by political fixers. That is what has taken place, and I use the term with no admiration whatever. The Government wanted to get their legislation through without trouble. They were prepared to throw a bone to the Lords, but the bone was on a piece of string and would
be hauled back if the Lords overdid their opposition to measures such as the Welfare Reform and Pensions Bill.
The issue then became, as so often these days it regrettably does, an issue of spinning. Would it be the Government who got the blame for giving in on the principle of total abolition, or would it be the Opposition parties for going quietly and giving up on the fight?
I say this in parenthesis--it has been touched on and I may be in a better position than most to know some of the things that took place--but one of the worst features of the affair has been the way in which the issue has been decided behind closed doors before the debate could be properly joined, or before people and hon. Members had the opportunity to come to a position--a point made by the hon. Member for Thurrock (Mr. Mackinlay).
I have in mind particularly the part played by Lord Cranborne. When Lord Cranborne agreed to the deal he did so without the authority of the leader of the Conservative party, without the authority of the special committee that had been set up inside the shadow Cabinet to deal with the issue, without the authority of the shadow Cabinet and without the authority of the parliamentary party. For those reasons, he was rightly sacked from the shadow Cabinet. As a member of the committee in question, I would take some persuading to vote for what, in effect, as has already been said, is the Cranborne deal.
But I have even less intention of voting for the amendment on the basis of the choice that we have today. From now on, one of two courses will be followed. The Government may keep their word and reform will take place, in which case the system being proposed today will almost certainly fall to the ground and become a deal not worth the making.
One of the biggest fears in the debate has been that the alternative system will continue because the Government will find the reform too difficult to carry out. We will then be stuck with the worst of every conceivable world--a predominantly appointed House of Lords. That is the position we have been left with--90 or so hereditary peers, dwarfed by the appointed Members.
Some will say that there is nothing wrong with that. We know from the diaries of Lady Richards--which we have all enjoyed--that the Home Secretary believes in an appointed House. He showed that by appointing his own special adviser to it. It is no longer an accident of birth. The argument is that these are men of undoubted distinction and they are being appointed entirely on their merits.
I have been around the table when some of these decisions have been taken, and I must say that it is possible to be too distinguished. If a Cabinet Minister, a European Commissioner or a member of the successful 1966 English football team is mentioned, the Leader of the Lords will say that that person will never have time to come to the House of Lords--"He is too distinguished". He then puts forward the name of Smith, a junior Whip with the best possible division record as a
Back Bencher. He voted for Government policies when they were put forward and, with an equally clear conscience, voted when they were abandoned later.
Mr. Keith Simpson (Mid-Norfolk):
A sound man.
Sir Norman Fowler:
Indeed. In case anyone thinks that this is confined to one party, we know that Labour has asked new life peers to sign a declaration that they will turn up to vote. They have had to go to that extreme.
Mr. Fraser:
I would like to draw my right hon. Friend's attention to the fact that the top Labour fundraiser, Lord Levy, has missed 105 of the 160 Divisions in the Lords. Lord Bragg--who came into the House, according to the Government, to help to change it radically--has missed half of the votes that he could have attended. The Prime Minister's great ally, Lord Simpson, has voted six times out of 157. The billionaire Lord Sainsbury, now a Minister, has managed 38 out of 161 division, and the billionaire Lord Haskins, another Labour donor, has yet to vote.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst):
Order. We cannot have an endless list.
Sir Norman Fowler:
I would like to assure you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that although my hon. Friend makes my case much more eloquently than I could, there has been no collusion between us. It has to be said that, on our side of the Lords, there are also doubtless those who do not turn up.
Sir Norman Fowler:
The hon. Gentleman may disagree. However, the Government are making more permanent that sort of system--the system for which Labour Members will be voting.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer) said that the debate on this new clause could have been avoided had the Government set out what their alternative second Chamber was. Throughout the debate, we have been in a fog as regards where the Government want to go. The trouble is that the Government themselves do not know--they have no idea. Again, the diaries of Lady Richards tell us that some are for an elected assembly, but the Prime Minister and others are not.
It is the job of the royal commission to make sense of this, and I hope that it will come forward with a clear report and proposals, not some compromise which manages to achieve an uneasy agreement among the members of the commission.
I oppose the new clause for these reasons. The Government can claim a mandate for change in the second Chamber, but they have no mandate for this dog's breakfast of a new clause. As a temporary measure, it borders on the ridiculous. All its defects have been set out by Members on both sides of the House. As a more permanent measure, it is utterly indefensible.
"we witnessed the risible spectacle of the fourth Baron Ampthill . . . claiming to speak for the British people . . . what right has Lord Ampthill or any other hereditary peer to sabotage the decisions of this elected House?"--[Official Report, 18 November 1998; Vol. 319, c. 959.]
I am glad to say that under the system that the Home Secretary has supported and introduced, Lord Ampthill has been elected as a permanent hereditary peer in the other place. But that is probably the best that I can say about the measure.
6.45 pm
"At any one time 90 people shall be excepted from section 1"--
that is abolition--
"but anyone excepted as holder of the office of Earl Marshal, or as performing the office of Lord Great Chamberlain, shall not count towards that limit."
I am sure that that was explained carefully in Liverpool and Lambeth during the election.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |