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Lord Dean of Harptree: My Lords, I agree with the Power inquiry that people are interested in political issues in spite of the fact that a smaller number of people actually turn out at elections. That suggests to me that other features of our constitution are as important as voting; there are other means of expression and other ways in which people can feel represented.
I begin with a contrast between the two Houses of Parliament. Your Lordships' House is, in my view, very representative of the life and work of this country. Any debate in your Lordships' House is always marked by Peers on all sides of the House who have deep knowledge and experience of the subject concerned. That is achieved without an elected element in your Lordships' House. By contrast, another place is, in my view, less representative of the Great British public than it was in 1964 when I was first elected. I say that because there are a smaller number of MPs now who know intimately the world of work outside politics. That suggests to me that voting does not necessarily produce good representation.
My next point, which has been referred to already, is that the power of the Government has increased dramatically over the years, and as a consequence the power of Parliament has diminished. That is to some degree true, but it neglects the good work that is done by Select Committees in both Houses, which has certainly improved both in quality and in substance
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over the years that I have been in Parliament. We have also now developed the concept of pre-legislative scrutiny, which means that bodies and individuals outside have an opportunity to make a contribution before a Bill is set in concrete. We can be encouraged to realise that the Select Committee process as it has developed is an effective use of the power of Parliament and it helps the people to co-operate.
My next point is the media, which have been referred to by a number of noble Lords. We all in the political business know that the media tend to exaggerate. They tend to get things wrong, and we take that with a pinch of salt. Equally, we know that on many occasions the media are able to find conflict within the Government and to find that the Government have made errors and mistakes. In that sense, the media are a valuable ally to the work that we endeavour to do in Parliament.
There are people who criticise the growth of single-issue bodies. Of course, such bodies do not see things in the round as we in politics have to, but they enable individuals who feel strongly on one particular issue to participate and to bring that concept forward when mainstream politicians would perhaps tend to neglect it. Although they irritate us in politics in many ways, they serve a valuable function.
My final point concerns public opinion. Whether people vote or not, there is no doubt about the strong influence of public opinion. The Great British public do not read manifestos; they leave that to politicians and civil servants. They do not follow every issue that comes before Parliament, but they have a good nose for whether the Government are doing well or badly.
My party, the Tory party, has recently had very good reason to feel the lash of public displeasure. It is uncomfortable, but it is a powerful and good discipline. It may be that the lash of public opinion is beginning to build up again. Such things tend to come around full circle, but there is no doubt that, whether or not people vote, public opinion is able to express itself in a dramatic way that keeps us all on our toes.
I shall be brief. My conclusion is that of course we should take seriously the declining turnout at elections and, particularly, we in the two Houses of Parliament should do all that we can to try to improve turnout. But the other features that I have mentioned are equally important. They provide us with checks and balances, and with stability and continuity, which are the distinguishing marks of the British constitution.
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Lord Smith of Clifton: My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Goodhart on initiating this timely debate on the report of the Power inquiry, which itself was very timely; and I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, her colleagues on the Power Commission and Pam Giddy, its director, and her staff. I also welcome the maiden speeches of my noble friend Lord Lee of Trafford and that of the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach.
I should declare a number of interests. Along with my noble friend Lord Shutt, I was a director of the Citizens' Inquiry trust, which set up and oversaw the
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work of the Power inquiry on behalf of the charitable wing of the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust Ltd and the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, joint sponsors of the Power inquiry. I have been a director of the former since 1975 and was for many years a member of the latter's democracy committee. The Power inquiry is a powerful demonstration of the two trusts' collaboration.
I want to concentrate on the need to create a climate for further democratic reform. The greatest contribution of the Power report lies in its incontrovertible analysis of the parlous condition of contemporary British democracy. It rightly focuses on the growing disjuncture between citizens and the formal institutions of representative democracy. The evidence for this continuing and worrying trend has been there for all who would see. Increasing popular disaffection with conventional politics is evidenced in the regular "state of the nation" polls conducted by Democratic Audit for the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust. This is mirrored in the real world of politics by the continuing decline in voter turnout, as many noble Lords have observed, and the very low memberships recorded by the main political parties.
It is somewhat ironic that the UK model, or, rather, an outdated and idealised version of it, is being promoted by the Westminster Foundation for Democracy and other agencies, when the reality of the contemporary constitutional system is actually approaching crisis. What was once glorified as our unique "unwritten constitution" is now an unravelled constitution, and the public, in their own way, are aware of that. The Power report provides a cogent analysis of that state of affairs.
But the report suggests grounds for optimism. Its most important observation is that all is not lost, for the public are not politically apathetic. They may increasingly eschew and feel alienated from the conventional parliamentary and local government politics, but they nevertheless show a great deal of interest in political issues per se. These cover a wide range of topics, such as the environment, fair trade, third-world development and other single issues in politics. Disenchanted they may be with conventional politics, but people are clearly not politically apathetic.
The IT revolution, referred to in some detail by the noble Lord, Lord Gould, has had a considerable and growing influence on the rise of single-issue politics. That political phenomenon has always been around, as the Anti-Corn Law League demonstrated. In its modern form, it emanates from the prototype of CND and, from the 1970s onwards, can be seen in the appearance of groups such as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Mothers in Action, the Campaign for Freedom of Information, Peter Hain's Stop the Seventy Tour and the like.
The advent of the IT revolution has promoted a mushrooming of interest in specific political issues and has facilitated the easy and speedy mobilisation of particular audiences, each with its own continuing dialogue, often culminating in political demands. The
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internet, in its own way, is creating a new form of direct democracy that challenges our enfeebled and atrophying system of representative or indirect democracy.
I should say, in passing and in fairness to them, that two MPs over 30 years ago anticipated the general thrust of the shape of things to come—although they could not predict the precise nature of the impact of developments in communications technology. In their writings, both Tony Benn and the late Dr Jeremy Bray were alone among politicians in their prescience.
Modern political parties are fully conscious of the state of affairs that has emerged and the challenges with which it confronts them. There is hardly an MP today without his or her own website, but, as the noble Lord, Lord Gould, indicated, such responses by themselves are destined to fail. They are mere sticking plasters. They can become fully effective only as part of a much more profound change in the way that politics is conducted and the institutional framework within which they are operated.
As it is, parliamentarians, for the most part, are part of the problem. They are averse to any change that may affect them. There is little real discussion about Commons reform, as my noble friend Lord Goodhart remarked, and about its size, composition, functions and electoral basis. Similarly, in your Lordships' House, there is much debate about the future, but it is largely a displacement activity. It is significant that the tableau at St Stephen's Entrance that announces the new visitor centre depicts the main events in the history of Parliament without mentioning any of the Reform Acts that extended the franchise. I congratulate the designers, because, unfortunately, but only too accurately, the design reflects present parliamentary opinion—in the main, although I hope that there are exceptions, including myself—about reform.
Our present situation is similar to that which obtained three-quarters of the way through the last century. In the 1970s and 1980s, the tide began to turn, so that, for example, it was only external pressure from without Parliament from groups such as the Scottish Constitutional Convention, led by the redoubtable Canon Kenyon Wright, that succeeded in creating the conditions for a Scottish parliament. Similarly, the Campaign for Freedom of Information, led by Maurice Frankel and James Cornford, led, finally, to the passage of the Freedom of Information Act—admittedly, in too dilute a form. Charter 88, set up by Stuart Weir and Anthony Barnett, and chaired successively by the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, and the noble Lord, Lord Currie, had a tremendous impact on the climate of opinion that influenced the late John Smith, as Labour leader, and whose legacy led to the reforms introduced by the first Blair Administration. The momentum has not been sustained.
The need for and how to create that reformist climate are the questions that the Power inquiry has addressed. Its proposals are useful in continuing the dialogue that the report has restarted. Its ideas regarding citizen initiatives are worth further
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explanation, although my view may represent only a small minority in the House today. Equally, emphasising the need to rebalance the relationship between Parliament and the Executive is indisputable, as is its proposal to rebalance the relationship between local and central government. Both reforms would be prerequisites for the revitalisation of our democracy.
However, I disagree with the suggested mechanism for achieving those changes. So-called concordats are not the answer. Secret deals of that sort are unacceptable. Indeed, I fear that one is being stitched up now as a result of Sir Hayden Phillips's inquiry into party financing. I believe that a concordat will emerge, agreed by the three main parties and eagerly supported by all the parties in Northern Ireland, together with the SNP and Plaid Cymru, which will greatly extend the use of state funding for political parties. That issue needs very careful handling if the public are to accept any suggestion along those lines. A secret deal that gives huge sums of public money to the headquarters of political parties will backfire. That is where the Power inquiry's suggestion for voters to indicate up to, say, £3 from Exchequer funds on their voting forms to a party of their choice provides for an element of individual participation in the allocation of state funds. At this stage, the particular recommendations of the Power inquiry matter less than maintaining the dialogue about the refurbishment of democracy in the UK.
Whatever form the continuation of the Power commission may take, it must, in my view, involve at least two things. First, the various policy think tanks across the political spectrum should be engaged in focusing on democratic renewal. Policy exchange from the centre right and the centre left—from the IPPR, Compass, Demos and the CentreForum—needs to be encouraged to look at the issues in a coherent and focused way. The non-party—or the all-party—Hansard Society and the academic Constitution Unit at University College London could audit the proposals put forward by the more partisan and proactive think tanks. That would be a useful partnership. All of that activity would run in parallel with, and would complement the work of, Kenneth Clarke's Conservative democracy task force, Gordon Brown's constitutional meditations and Ming Campbell's constitutional review.
Secondly, the debate must be conducted beyond the golden metropolitan triangle and extend across England. I say that because Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales have had, and continue to have, robust constitutional debates—in a way, quite different from the situation prevailing in England. For a start, I would suggest building on the pioneering work of Dr Stuart Wilks-Heeg and Steve Clayton in their study of the parlous state of local politics and government. They concentrated on Burnley and Harrogate in their book Whose Town is it Anyway?, which was initiated and sponsored by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. It reveals how precarious local democracy is in those quite dissimilar towns. They may both be north of Watford, but they are as
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different as chalk and cheese. Using a generous definition, local democracy is sustained in Burnley by only 89 political activists and by only 118 in Harrogate. Surely new ways must be devised to increase public participation in public affairs.
The Power inquiry has performed a considerable service in recharging the debate on constitutional democratic reform. I hope that others in the debate might recharge us with the required energy, but so far there has been more than a degree of complacency in some contributions. This matter is urgent and must be addressed as a priority. The new momentum that the Power inquiry has initiated must be sustained.
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