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Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton: My Lords, I hesitate to intervene, but if all noble Lords speak for three minutes over their time we shall have less time in which to hold my noble and learned friend to account when he replies.
Lord Peyton of Yeovil: My Lords, I am obliged to the noble Baroness for her little lecture. I apologise to the House.
4.44 p.m.
Lord Ampthill: My Lords, I join other noble Lords in thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Crosby, for initiating this debate. It is an important one and so far it has been a good one. On Monday the vote in another place demonstrated that the mechanisms of Parliament, however arcane they may appear to the uninitiated, are the stuff of constitutional rectitude in this country.
I draw your Lordships' attention to a specific case for making Parliament more effective: the future of your Lordships' House. Voters will care more if, on a daily basis, they know that we are reflecting their differences of opinion and enforcing consideration of those differences on the executive. The executive--the Government--will not collapse if Parliament is able to do that. It may even be strengthened if Parliament reflects, more widely than the Government do, the reality of society outside Westminster's walls. In excellent speeches, those points were made by both maiden speakers.
The Government have embarked on a reform of your Lordship's House that I believe is intended to reflect more closely the wishes of the wider society of the United Kingdom. Following the statement in their 1997 manifesto--
- "A Committee of both Houses of Parliament will be appointed to take a wide ranging review of possible further change and then to bring forward proposals for reform"--
On 10th July this year--eight days ago--in reply to a Written Question in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Rees, to which the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, has already referred, the Leader of the House said:
- "We do not see a role for a joint committee".--[Official Report, 10/7/01; col. WA69.]
At the risk of boring your Lordships perhaps I may remind you of the Government's commitment to the process. The White Paper of January 1999 gave the next intimation of the proposed Joint Committee on page 35. On 23rd February 1999 your Lordships debated the White Paper. The Government Chief Whip, the noble Lord, Lord Carter, said:
- "We have appointed a Royal Commission, followed by a Joint Committee which will produce proposals for the final stage of reform".--[Official Report, 23/2/999; cols. 1094-95.]
- "Having done that, a consensus is sought about what should happen next, first, through the medium of the Royal Commission, and, secondly, through the Joint Committee of both Houses".--[Official Report, 29/3/99; col. 189.]
On 20th April 1999 the noble Baroness, Lady Jay of Paddington, the then Leader of the House said:
- "Whether or not we should seek a second stage referendum--if one can call it that . . . is . . . a matter we would hope to proceed with by consent once the Royal Commission and the joint committee of both Houses (which we have no intention of abandoning) have reported".--[Official Report, 20/4/99; col. 1052.]
On 13th May 1999 the noble and learned Lord, Lord Williams of Mostyn, said during the Committee stage of the Bill:
- "If one sets up a Royal Commission, one ought to be prepared to attend to its conclusions. If one invites a committee of both Houses, which, by definition, will have an authoritative composition, one ought to have the courtesy and ordinary sense to listen to what it says".--[Official Report, 13/5/99; cols. 1412-13.]
There have been numerous mentions in another place of the setting up of the Joint Committee, but I believe that the House would prefer it if I rely on what has been said in this House. However, as late as 19th June 2000 the Leader of the House of Commons confirmed that it remained the intention to establish the Joint Committee. I do not suggest that in his Answer last week the noble and learned Lord the Leader of the House reneged on a commitment; nor do I accuse him personally of bad faith. Of course, the noble and learned Lord acts on behalf of the Government. It was, nevertheless, on that basis that all noble Lords read the report of the Royal Commission.
The Royal Commission clearly envisaged no Joint Committee, although it was open to it to do so; but it was not Parliament. I never understood that a Royal Commission, which is just a very grand expression of the Royal Prerogative, should be superior to Parliament or a parliamentary Joint Committee.
On 20th June 2000 the then Leader of the House, the noble Baroness, Lady Jay of Paddington, replied to a Question for Written Answer tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Alli. The noble Lord asked whether the Government intended to set up a Joint Committee of both Houses to consider the parliamentary aspects of reform of this House. The noble Baroness replied that the,
- "Government do intend that such a committee should be established in due course".--[Official Report, 20/6/00; col. WA17.]
Your Lordships will be aware that the Royal Commission, chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, had reported in January of that year. Here we have a working example of Parliament holding the executive to account, or failing to do so.
The British constitution depends on process. The integrity of that process depends above all on undertakings given in Parliament being honoured. If Her Majesty's Government believe that they are allowed, or they are allowed by Parliament, to renege on undertakings that they have given, that process is destroyed.
I thank the noble Baroness for giving me this opportunity on behalf of your Lordships to ask: if the process of reforming your Lordships' House is to be abandoned in so cavalier a fashion, how can Parliament hope to hold the executive to account?
4.52 p.m.
Lord Holme of Cheltenham: My Lords, I start by thanking my noble friend for initiating this important debate and congratulating the two noble Lords for their outstanding maiden speeches. I declare an interest as the new chairman, as of yesterday, of the Hansard Society. Its report last week on parliamentary scrutiny, which has been referred to by several noble Lords, is germane to this debate, and I commend it to those of your Lordships who may not have seen it. At the same time, I pay tribute to, and thank, the noble Lord, Lord Newton of Braintree, who chaired the commission which produced the report. I also draw to the attention of those noble Lords who believe that they are overworked to page 143 of the report. Appendix 4 sets out the amount of time that Members of Parliament believe they work each week: the average is 70 hours. I make no further comment.
Regrettably, a long-standing piece of Hansard Society business which I have inherited means that I must leave the debate before the Leader of the House winds up. I apologise to him and the House for that.
It may be helpful to inquire for a moment why, if accountability is so self-evidently a good thing, we do not have more of it. Is it simply because of the machinations of the executive--the Demon King of this debate--backed up by the sticks of the Whips and the carrots of patronage? Is it because of what some constitutional scholars call fusion; namely, that the executive and Parliament have in a deep way begun to fuse when there should be a greater separation of powers?
I should like to introduce a slightly different thought. I believe that part of the answer is the pervasive and very debilitating culture of blame which so disfigures contemporary life in Britain. The heart of this culture of blame lies at Westminster. As a result of history, our Parliament is constructed and conducted on an adversarial basis. We have political partisanship which too easily overflows--not in your Lordships' House but elsewhere--proper limits. Our media are dependent not only on the personalisations to which
my noble friend Lady Williams referred but the short-term adrenaline of expose and recrimination. How readily the four-letter words "rage" and "fury" leap from the keyboards of the headline writers every day. Each morning there is free-floating anger looking where next to strike as the newspapers are prepared.Following the debate on Monday in another place on Select Committees, I was interested to note that one honourable Member was quoted in the press as saying that,
- "democracy is nothing without culpability".
That confusion serves to highlight the dilemma. If accountability is always taken to mean culpability and nothing more, pin the tail on the donkey, identify the guilty men, name them and shame them and find today's sacrificial victims to be thrown on the steadily burning pyres of synthetic outrage. If that is all there is to accountability, what is the likely, rational response of those in government? I venture an answer: Whitehall will be full of secrecy and Westminster will be full of spin. It sounds rather familiar, does it not? What will be the popular attitude to Parliament and politics? The answer is: apathy and alienation. Perhaps that is also rather familiar.
Yet I believe that accountability is an infinitely precious and indispensable part of good governance for all kinds of institutions--for companies as for Parliament--to ensure not only that power is exercised properly on behalf of those in whose name it is held but, just as importantly, that we learn from experience. The whole governmental system is a learning process. If mistakes are covered up and every new government must start in Whitehall from the year zero, as they do, and the best and brightest in the corridors of power are forced to spend a significant part of their time week in, week out, denying painful experience, with clever words and bright smiles, rather than openly setting out to learn from that painful experience and to do better next time, we shall not have a successful system of learning. To paraphrase the famous biologist Jonas Salk, the organism--the system of government in Britain--will be doomed because it does not have a feedback mechanism to modify its behaviour so that it does better next time.
What can we do to break out of the vicious circle and ensure that accountability is normal and continuing, that power is shared, that there is a good system of learning and that culpability is an exceptional and secondary matter? The first thing we can do is to decide that the mother of parliaments is due for reskilling, retraining and reform. I hope that the modernisation committee in another place will prove useful. The report by the Hansard Society and the Norton report, which is another document pointing in the same direction, show the way to better pre-legislative deliberation and scrutiny.
We need better joined-up thinking between the Houses so that both Houses of Parliament can be seen as one integrated system. Several noble Lords have
referred to the need to learn from good practice elsewhere--we have no monopoly of wisdom--not just legislative assemblies abroad but the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly which are now working in a very interesting and experimental way. We need to learn from local government. Dare I say that the House of Commons might learn something from the House of Lords?We need to develop an alternative career path for those in Parliament who want to be scrutineers and not Ministers and to make it worth their while in terms of status and remuneration. We need to drag the usual channels out of the shadows. Of course business has to be managed through both Houses, but could it not be managed with the involvement and consent of Back-Bench Members? Could we not have, as other legislatures, a business committee which is out in the fresh air and visible and transparent to us all?
Many of your Lordships made the point about power moving to regulatory agencies of one kind or another. Parliament should be at the apex of the system of scrutiny. Similarly, Parliament should be at the hub of public consultation, which is again a matter to which several noble Lords have referred. In that context, perhaps I may commend one piece of work of the Hansard Society; that is, its e-democracy programme. It has already worked with Select Committees in the other place and indeed with the Select Committee here on stem cell research. This autumn there will be a web consultation conducted by the Hansard Society to try and get maximum public involvement.
To conclude, if the Government were serious about modernisation and reform, and were really concerned about apathy and alienation, they would pursue a twin-track policy. They would pursue electoral reform. One would expect that from these Benches, but I hope that the Conservative Party will now be more sympathetic to the idea of electoral reform since it has been so scandalously misrepresented by the results of the recent election. I do not see warm support from those Benches, but perhaps it will come as the Conservative Party registers that in Wales it received 21 per cent of the votes but no seats at all. Those are hard lessons for minority parties which colleagues to my left might want to think about. However, on this twin-track of electoral and parliamentary reform, there is every prospect for the new Leader of the House in another place, who has himself the reputation of being a reformer, to take some steps forward which could produce a Parliament that is really fit for a mature democracy in the 21st century.
5.2 p.m.
Lord Howell of Guildford: My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, made an excellent speech, of which I agreed with 75 per cent. I shall come to the other 25 per cent in a moment. I also enormously enjoyed, as all your Lordships did, the superb maiden speeches of my noble old friend Lord Fowler and the noble Lord, Lord Clark. They were extremely clear. I also enjoyed the splendid speech of my noble friend Lord Peyton about the shackles of parliamentary
party control and the fact that parties are an unnecessary evil, although he put it more bluntly than that. I have not noticed, frankly, that the shackles of party control have restrained much of his natural ebullience. But there it is; some people can wear the whip more lightly than others.Since the early days I have been a very partisan and strong supporter of developing the Select Committee systems of both Houses of Parliament. It always seemed to me that, as we moved into the immense complexities of the modern age, hearings, public hearings, hearings in front of television cameras and hearings where one could come back again and again in question and answer were a much more effective way of establishing who was accountable for what and why, or if public power had been wielded under what responsibilities and authorities, than the traditional methods. In that sense I disagree with my noble friend Lord Fowler about the glories of oral questions. They do not come anywhere near the power of effective Select Committees.
Therefore, I was delighted, as all your Lordships were the other day, and many people in the other place as well, when the fingertips of the whips got sharply sliced and caught over the attempt to over-manoeuvre the membership of Select Committees. That was a splendid moment and I hope that the lessons are learnt, although that remains to be seen.
But the truth is that power is now far more widely distributed in the network age, particularly into the media, as noble Lords have mentioned, and into the Internet service providers, the credit agencies and a variety of other enormous baronies of power. People expect their elected and appointed institutions--anyway Parliament as a whole--to call all these bodies to account. That cannot be done by the old processes. It requires the enormous strength of the committees which have grown up over the years--very successfully in relation to the European Union, which I shall come to in a moment--in your Lordships' House. Within limits--I shall come to those too--they have done a very good job.
I was disappointed that in the Wakeham Commission's report more was not made of the fact that this is now the central issue: the power of committees to hold to account the sources of public power in our society, not just the executive. That is where this noble House can make by far its most effective contribution. That should have had much more emphasis in the Wakeham report. The Wakeham report urges that our committees should have more resources put in. Heaven knows why we did not do that long ago. Our committees are staffed by the most marvellous people, but with impossible workloads. In the House of Lords they have far bigger workloads than in the other place. But they have a pathetic paucity of resources. It is extraordinary that we have sat here long enough and done little to reinforce and strengthen these committees ourselves.
I also agree with those noble Lords who say that if ever there was a case for further powerful committee examination, it should be of the Wakeham
Commission and its proposals. That is natural material for a detailed committee examination. But apparently we are not to have it. I am reminded of the story from my predecessor, who as Energy Secretary went to France to find out how they had succeeded in dotting the whole of France with nuclear power stations without any bother of planning inquiries or consultation. He received the contemptuous reply, "But when you are draining the swamp you do not consult the frogs". I feel that the frogs in this case perhaps should be consulted just once more before the swamp is drained.I turn briefly to my concern about our general desire to call everybody and everything to account. That is fine, provided those we call to account are the people who have the power, the jurisdiction and the control and can initiate and propose laws and can be questioned about them. But the reality--I slightly wonder that perhaps the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, did not give a little more emphasis to this--is that since about the mid-1970s a growing number of powers which affect every citizen in this country have been wielded in camera by the Council of Ministers of the European Union.
A recent very detailed authoritative study stated that by 1997--that is under both governments, so it is not a partisan point--40 per cent of all the legislative flow affecting the citizens of this country was authorised and initiated, and occasionally added to, in the European institutions in Brussels and Strasbourg. It also states that that level is now 55 per cent and suggests that if we go for the Europeanisation of judicial co-operation, if we adopt corpus juris and if we have the full euro-membership, that figure will rise to between 70 and 80 per cent.
Last year, no fewer than 4,000 statutory instruments were pushed through the various scrutiny committees--A, B and C in the other place--and the legislative committee and our own European Union committees, most without any debate at all, and almost all of them without even minor debate.
Therefore, whether or not one likes this project--I myself have doubts about it--we have a serious duty to ask how we control this fantastic flow that now dominates our citizens' lives. We have the scrutiny system. However, I had the privilege of being chairman of one of the committees a year or two previously and I must say that the work is very hard, the reports are excellent and widely admired around Europe, but the scrutiny is perfunctory. In many cases we found that the Minister had acted because he could not wait for the scrutiny to be lifted. The truth is that this can never change unless the national parliaments of all the member states of the European Union have a much earlier look in on the drafting and initiation of legislative proposals.
As someone once said, the duty of democracy is to know then what it knows now. That is the problem--that all the time we are discovering about legislation when it is much too late. We should have the opportunity long before to hear what the Council of Ministers and its increasingly powerful secretariat is
up to. I do not see that we shall change this at all or restore anyone's confidence that we are properly calling our law-makers to account until the Council of Ministers itself, which is the Parliament of the European Union, is far more open and democratic and reports to and has open co-ordination with the national parliaments. We will then begin to see some accountability in the early stages--pre-legislation, pre-draft regulations and pre-instruments. That is the real truth of the matter. However much we set up new groups and bodies, we will not restore public confidence until it is known that we have far greater access to, and are able to call to account, the people who are initiating and authorising the legislation which governs us.Finally, I would make one immediate plea, which again should come into a further Wakeham debate that we are not going to have. This noble House should have its own Foreign Affairs Select Committee. We have our European Union committees. They are excellent. I hear it constantly said outside the House, "Why do not your Lordships look at Russia, the Middle East, Hong Kong, Africa, Latin America and relations with the United States? What is wrong with you?" The House is full of experts on these matters but we have no committee to look at them. It is said that we should not overlap with the Commons. But I can speak from authority and say that the powers and remits of the Commons committees are inevitably limited and that there is only so much they can get through. I believe that your Lordships could add a most powerful addition to the processes of accountability and public debate if the House had its own Foreign Affairs Select Committee.
5.11 p.m.
Earl Russell: My Lords, in listening to the debate I have at moments wondered whether my noble friend Lady Williams of Crosby would have been a water diviner if she had grown up in the Australian outback. She has certainly touched a rich spring today. There is, however, one danger in the theme we have set ourselves. It is the danger of looking for a golden age. My academic colleagues, I fear, have made the mistake of consistently overrating the importance of the legislature and underrating the importance of the executive and of the power of patronage. It is a fundamental weakness of the sovereignty-based way of thinking about politics.
I do not think there ever has been a golden age of Parliament. Having said that, I have been asking myself over the past few days whether I can think of any period since the death of Simon de Montfort when the power of Parliament was clearly less than it is at present. I very much regret to say that the answer to that question is, "No, I am not sure that I can". I do not think it needs to be like that. If this debate can do anything to change it, it will have performed a very signal service.
Those who believe that there is a golden age are, I suspect, thinking of the period of the "invention of tradition", just after the opening of the building in which we now sit. Between 1855 and 1865 the
government were defeated in another place no fewer than 112 times. My great-grandfather, among other senior politicians, hated it. He hated it so much that he actually made his peace with Palmerston. I am not suggesting that we go to that extreme, but pendulums do tend to swing too far. Between 112 and one there is an undistributed middle. It is that undistributed middle which I think we might usefully explore.We have had an extremely good debate in terms of thinking about improvement of our performance. What I have not heard as much as I had hoped to hear is an alarm which we all ought to feel; that we may be improving our performance in a rapidly emptying theatre; the fear that there is no longer anyone out there listening to what we are doing. The drop in turn-out is serious. It is not just a matter of conscientious abstention, which I believe is a legitimate weapon of democratic politics. It is not even any more that people are angry with us. It is that they are not interested enough in what we are saying to bother to be angry with us. I do find that rather alarming.
When I listen to my own pupils, I get what is near enough to be a consistently based sample to add to a kind of tracking poll. I hear as much concern as I ever did about injustice. I hear a rapidly diminishing faith in solutions, which is not just a distrust of our own good will but an awareness of the points made by my noble friend Lady Williams about global governance, global power and the limits of the power of national governments. In that context, it is interesting that, with the exception of a noisy and entertaining minority with whom I enjoy talking, I hear less distrust of the power of the European Union than I do of the power of Westminster and Whitehall.
At a wider level among the electorate, I hear total indifference and sometimes a very deep anger; a sense of people saying, "You're all the same. You're all in it for yourselves". I know that has always been there; but I heard it in the recent election with a volume that I have never heard before--and it worries me.
I do not have very many answers. My right honourable friend Mr Kennedy has answers about language which I think are right and have been proved to be right. I shall not repeat them. The first point I want to make is that I believe we should live in a world in which all votes count equally. I was reading recently Macaulay's speech on the second Reform Bill, protesting that Aldborough was allowed representation when Manchester was not. That sense of proportionality is something which now we lack. My honourable friend Mr Oaten, when he won the first election at Winchester in 1997 by two votes, was asked by a journalist how he explained the result. He said, "I always said that my wife and I were right to go to live in the constituency". On the other hand, at the recent election, my son put me on the spot the way only one's children can do. He said, "What difference does it make whether I come back to vote at this election?" I put up a series of answers which he shot down in flames as only one's children can. I was finally reduced to saying to him that whether he voted would make a small difference to the amount of Short money our
party would be allocated. That is true, but it is an answer that only an aficionado would for one minute begin to understand.That is not all votes counting equally. It is going back to the 18th century days of electoral property when if one happened to own electoral property, one had an amount of power that other people did not have. An electoral system which lets a vote in one place carry equal weight with a vote in another would be very welcome. We should not forget that outside Parliament the overwhelming majority of electors are, in effect, Cross-Benchers. If I think, for example, of the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, and the noble Countess, Lady Mar, the first adjective that comes to mind is not apathetic, but their political passions are not in favour of one party rather than another. They could not express their preferences in an election unless they were allowed to do so through a single transferable vote, by which they could vote for people's policies on something other than just which party they support.
I wonder why the Conservative Party has the masochism to continue its attachment to first-past-the-post when we look at the way in which that voting system has treated it. With a nine-point lead, Mr Blair has acquired a majority of 167. Mr Peter Kellner recently calculated what would have happened if Mr Hague had had a nine-point lead. He would have been 41 votes short of a majority in the Commons. That is perturbing. It perturbs me and I hope it perturbs the Conservative Party also.
More seriously, about once every century--perhaps a little less--the recognition symbols of politics change; the magnetic poles of politics shift. There was one such occasion which Namier immortalised in his study on 1761-- 14 years after the succession ceased to be the motor of political ideology which it had been for a century; and 15 years before the American Revolution began the extension of rank and privileges which became the staple of the 19th century. When the recognisable symbols of politics shift, people do not recognise what they see. They do not understand what divides the parties. They say that nothing divides them, when patently that is not the case. Under those circumstances, they notice only the sleaze. They say, "You're all in it for yourselves".
Since 1997, I have wondered many times whether again we are in a moment of ideological slack water such as described by Namier in 1761. The other two parties each need to redefine their philosophical identity. When they do so, I hope that the voters will be more interested. If they are not, we are all in trouble.
5.20 p.m.
Lord Newton of Braintree: My Lords, I wish to intervene only briefly, because it could be said that others have already said much of what I wish to contribute to this subject. They have also written it, in the shape of the report of the Hansard Society Commission, to which so many friendly references have been made in the course of the debate--or at least, I think that all the references have been friendly.
However, I felt that I should speak for several reasons. The first was that I have been looking at these matters in my role as chairman of that commission. Secondly, I, too, wish to congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Crosby, for introducing the debate and thank her for her kind comments on the report. I should like also to pay tribute to the Nuffield Foundation which financed it, to the Hansard Society for putting the report together, to the other members of the commission and not least--I say this with emphasis because they were hugely helpful--to the two vice-chairmen of the commission, Peter Riddell of The Times and Robert Hazell of the Constitution Unit. They should share in taking credit for the report.
A further pleasure has been added to the debate, other than that of following the noble Earl, Lord Russell. On a previous occasion I pointed out that I have been debating with him in one way or another for some 40 years. I still find myself dazed on each occasion that I listen to him. Today has also been the occasion of two excellent maiden speeches, one of which particularly interested me because it was that of my noble friend Lord Fowler. He and I have been doing business together for as many years as either of us cares to remember. He was senior to me both as an MP and as a Minister. We formed a long-running partnership at the then DHSS. Not to put too fine a point on it, I worked for him for something like six years. It is a pleasure to see him in this House and, indeed, in any place where I can claim to have been around for longer than he.
The customary approach to this subject--I have heard echoes of it in several contributions, in particular in the speech immediately preceding my own--is to talk about the decline of Parliament. I could echo that exact phrase in my notes, but I am suspicious of what might be called the "theory of the golden age". That was recently reinforced for me when I attended a speech day at which the headmaster performed a classic and always effective rhetorical trick by quoting an unattributed source which referred to the monstrous decline in the morals, behaviour and so forth of young people. That account might easily have been written today, but he then revealed that it had been written in the 12th or the 13th century. I believe that Parliament falls into much the same category.
The main point of my contribution is to say that, while I think it is right that we should try to identify the causes of the problems that we perceive--namely, of the fall in the standing of Parliament--we should not spend too much time trying to stop them, remove them or turn back the clock. The noble Baroness, Lady Williams, clearly identified some of those problems. There are difficulties as regards the scale and complexity of government, the growth in the number of agencies, regulators and non-parliamentary scrutineers; the great expansion and development of the media, including the electronic media rather than simply the "Today" programme; the growth of new institutions; the growing demands being made of MPs; and one argument was put forward that the mere
availability of television pictures of what goes on in the House of Commons in offices outside the Chamber itself has diminished its role. However, the fact is that whether we wanted these developments and whether we like them is irrelevant; they will not go away. I hope that the emphasis of our deliberations both here and in the other place will not be on whingeing about them or attempting to make them go away, but rather to work out how best we can adapt the way in which Parliament operates to accommodate them.The biggest problem has not been that Parliament has not changed. For example, the introduction of Select Committees is a huge credit to my noble friend Lord St John of Fawsley, who introduced them some 20 years ago. They represented a major and significant change. The major underlying problem is that Parliament, working in a world that is moving and changing faster and faster--cliche though that may be, it is the case--has not adapted at anything like the same pace. What we need to do now is to spend much more time seeking ways in which we can adapt the procedures and working methods of both Houses of Parliament--although the focus of the report was on the House of Commons--to our fast-changing world. The report proposes--not least in its observations on Select Committees, to which many references have been made--adaptations to the way in which the Chamber of the House of Commons debates matters. These should be undertaken in a shorter and sharper manner, with more topical and focused debates, along with more rapid discussion of Select Committee reports. Those proposals are designed to encourage the speedier adaptation of Parliament to the world as it is today and not as it was or even as we would like it to be.
For reasons of time and common sense it would not be sensible for me to attempt to rehearse the recommendations of the report. I shall not seek to do so. Not all noble Lords will agree with the detail of all the recommendations. It may be that not even every member of the commission would have written the recommendations in exactly the form in which they now appear. But I am encouraged by the overlap of observations from the commission which I had the privilege to chair, the commission chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, and, indeed, those of the House of Commons Liaison Committee, in particular in respect of Select Committees. I believe that a kind of tide is running here which it would be unwise for anyone in politics to disregard, including those in government. New Leaders of the House have taken office here and in the other place, both of whom I regard as having given signals that they intend to bring a constructive approach to these matters. I hope that they will regard these proposals as helpful rather than tiresome.
My final point has nothing to do with the report because it did not cover legislative scrutiny. I should like to add my own words of support to what has been said by my noble friend Lord Fowler and the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, about the scrutiny of legislation. Some years ago, when my noble friend Lord Cranborne and I were respectively Leaders of the
two Houses, we were pleased that we were able to persuade our colleagues to accept much more readily the publication of Bills in draft in the year before they were brought before the House. That is a practice on which we wanted to build. I think that it is fair to say that the present Government have themselves sought to build on it. It is absolutely vital for the improvement both of accountability and of scrutiny that that policy should be further developed.5.29 p.m.
Lord Smith of Clifton: My Lords, this is a vital subject for debate and I congratulate my noble friend Lady Williams for initiating it. Unfortunately, owing to a prior engagement, I shall not be able to remain for the winding-up, which I am sure will be of equal merit to the contributions that we have heard so far. I apologise to the House and crave the indulgence of noble Lords.
I accept the warnings issued by my noble friend as regards the myth of a golden past, but I believe that since 1979 successive governments seem to have pursued actions that have had the disastrous effect of exalting the power of the executive while diminishing both the effectiveness and the status of the legislature. That observation is generally accepted--except, of course, by Ministers in post at any one time. It is heartening to hear the conversion to reform of so many ex-Cabinet Ministers. It was always thus.
Some noble Lords have identified, and doubtless others will be identifying, the increasingly overweening power of the executive relative to that of Parliament as one of the main reasons for the greater alienation of citizens with politics, their growing apathy and the consequential steady decline in voter turnout at elections. As has already been observed, the problems of Parliament's weaknesses have been the subject of two recent investigations: one was led by the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, for the Conservative Party; the other by the noble Lord, Lord Newton, on behalf of the Hansard Society. In their way, both reports are admirable in the proposals that they make to restore the balance between the two branches of government. I see merit in the procedural reforms they advocate and I shall take them as read, so to speak.
However, my main purpose today is not to expatiate further on the uneven ratio of powers between government and Parliament. My purpose is to highlight recent developments within the executive branch of government itself--to which my noble friend alluded in her, if I may say so, consummate introductory review--that are all of a piece with the present era of what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, once called "elected dictatorship", and which contributed in no small measure to the popular disaffection with politics. I refer to what I shall term the demi-monde of politics and government. It is this which has occurred almost unnoticed and is the reason why parliamentary scrutiny needs to be strengthened so urgently.
Were Walter Bagehot to be reincarnated today to apply his penetrating insights into the real workings of the British constitution--as he did so perceptively a
century and a half ago--what would be his likely observations? If he were to employ his twin analytical categories of "dignified" and "efficient", it is not too fanciful to suggest that he would have had little hesitation in transferring most of the erstwhile functions of both Parliament and the Cabinet from the "efficient" into the "dignified". He would have noted that, with the growing assertion of prime ministerial power that has burgeoned under both the Thatcher and Blair administrations, the institutions of Parliament and the Cabinet that he had emphasised--particularly the latter--as the hallmarks of British governance in the 19th century, were but a shadow of their former selves.He would note, too, that they had been superseded in the "efficient" category--though I doubt he would think that the appropriate term nowadays; "de facto" would perhaps be more accurate--by a myriad of persons and agencies that have mushroomed over the past 20 years or so. These comprise what I have called the demi-monde of government. They are sometimes accorded the more sanitised term of "policy networks". They are that part of the British state that is characterised as tentacular government.
These various expressions refer to the host of quangos, task forces, executive so-called "First Step" agencies, ad hoc czars, peripatetic unaccredited plenipotentiaries, regulators and inspectors, all of which comprise a patchwork of governance that is beyond the capacity of Parliament to monitor and is thus effectively shielded from the public gaze.
I suppose that a gifted spin doctor could contrive some sort of rationale for these developments. It might be said, for example, that they introduce a greater measure of flexibility and quicker responses in dealing with items on the policy agenda. Equally, it may be claimed that some represent a degree of administrative devolution away from the deadening clutches of Whitehall departments, while bringing in outside and more relevant skills that cannot always be provided by the conventional Civil Service.
I do not dismiss such arguments out of hand, nor do I think that there is no case for such innovations in particular circumstances. I accept that there may have been some successes. What I am querying is the cumulative effect of these developments and their overall impact on our constitutional arrangements. For each part of this governmental demi-monde that may be justified on the grounds of expediency, in aggregate the sum of the whole cannot be justified in terms of democratic accountability. Taken together, these developments constitute a major by-pass operation on the body politic, effectively immunising it from the checks and balances that ought otherwise to characterise a system of representative democracy.
Democratic and constitutional considerations apart, there is the further problem of discovering the effectiveness of these developments. For example, to judge from the reports of successive chief inspectors, it is not obvious that the state of our prisons has improved following their operations being hived off to a First Step agency.
The emergence of the demi-monde has had, in my view, two other deleterious effects. First, it has spawned a new breed of personnel to serve it; a kind of nomenclatura of fixers, henchmen and renegades who, in many ways, are the emblems of the epoch. They are recruited from the ranks of management consultancy, other parts of commerce and industry, what is left of the higher Civil Service and occasionally entertainment management. If para-state agencies are to be used, it would make for a better degree of public accountability if, say, two MPs were to be members of them ex-officio.
The primary role of the nomenclatura is to serve and advise the handful of senior Ministers who, led by the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, effectively determine government policy. The second unfortunate effect of the demi-monde is to have reduced the traditional role of the higher Civil Service and of local government.
What I have been describing has led to a serious shrinking of the public realm in this country. Too much of governmental activity is now befogged. It is this as much as anything else that has contributed to public disaffection with politics and voter apathy. The familiar saloon-bar Johnny opinion that, "You don't know the half of what goes on in government" is no longer an exaggerated speculation but a valid interpretation of reality.
Form and clarity must be restored to our constitution if popular cynicism is to be reversed. The Scottish Parliament has made a start with its proposed "bonfire of the quangos". Devolution has put the searchlight of democracy on this aspect of the demi-monde. Regional assemblies for England, now the most under-enfranchised part of the United Kingdom, could follow Scotland's example. English regional devolution would stimulate similar democratic impulses and would help to re-engage the elected with the electorate.
5.37 p.m.
Lord Butler of Brockwell: My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, on initiating the debate. It has been well concerted, if I may say so, among her colleagues on the Liberal Democrat Benches in covering most aspects of the subject.
I approach the debate from the perspective of a career in the non-parliamentary executive. I believe that I am the only speaker today who will do so. Perhaps I may catch the attention of the noble Lord, Lord Clark of Windermere, as he leaves the Chamber. As I am the only representative of the Civil Service, I take the opportunity of thanking him very warmly for his generous remarks about the Civil Service. They will, I know, be greatly appreciated by those who, like me, worked with him when he was a Minister in the Cabinet Office.
I begin on a slightly less gloomy note than some other speakers. It is easy, even for parliamentarians, to underestimate the influence of Parliament on the
executive. To a man from Mars, it must appear that a government with a substantial majority in another place can vote through whatever business they like and take no notice of any opposition. But it is not as simple as that.Perhaps I may give an example. The noble Baroness referred to the report of the Hansard Commission and to the fact that 71 per cent of Members of the House of Commons think that Prime Minister's Questions are ineffective. The noble Lord, Lord Weatherill, described that part of the procedure as "farcical". However, it has one very important effect. Seen from the other side, it means that the head of the British Government has to spend some hours each week briefing himself or herself in detail on the policies of the Government. Having had the opportunity of seeing and comparing heads of governments at European Councils and international meetings, I believe that it has resulted in the head of the British Government being better informed on matters of detail than any other head of government in the western world.
Even when faced with a large majority, oppositions have ways of making life difficult for governments. Oppositions have levers in their hands. Deals have to be done, and are done, between the usual channels, as the Whips will know better than I. These often cover policy as well as procedure.
A poor performance by a Minister in defending a government policy matters. It matters when the Opposition get the scent of blood and the Minister's supporters cannot summon up the enthusiasm for full-hearted support. Many times, in returning with a Minister from the House of Commons, I have seen that in such circumstances policy has to be revised.
Civil servants do not take lightly appearances before Select Committees. They prepare for many hours. I have seen careers broken when such events go wrong. When a weakness in departmental performance is exposed, departments have to work hard to see that it is not repeated.
Of course, the power of the Opposition to push attacks home is lessened when a government have a large majority. It is not a coincidence that we hear more of the ineffectiveness of Parliament in the present circumstances than we did during the term of office of the previous Conservative government or during that of the Labour government of 1974-79. When a government's majority is large, the Opposition know that they cannot push through even a good case in the arena where it ultimately matters--on the Floor of the House of Commons. Conversely, when a government's majority is small, the Opposition know that they need only split off a small number of government supporters to win a good case. But there is another side to this coin: oppositions may be tempted to use that power to win bad cases, and I have seen that happen.
So is all well with parliamentary control of the executive? No--I agree with previous speakers--it clearly is not. There are grounds for concern when important legislation is pushed through with no
scrutiny in another place. Mistakes are made, and these matter to our fellow citizens. There are grounds for concern when the proceedings of Parliament are not thought worth reporting in the media except as a source of amusement. There are grounds for concern when Ministers give higher priority to announcing their measures to the public through the media rather than through Parliament--although it is fair to say that that problem is not unique to this country.I believe it now to be true that in the relationship between the executive and the legislature the executive has got too many of the levers into its own hands. I believe also that this situation may be getting worse. There is obviously a case for a user-friendly Parliament in which no one has to stay late at night or attend at inconvenient times. But exhaustion and inconvenience are important weapons in the hands of the Opposition. Their removal weakens the Opposition's negotiating power.
What is the remedy? In considering that question, we need to consider why this situation has come about. Over the past century or so, successive governments have increased their grip on Parliament--not because Parliament is unimportant, but because it is important. If governments could get a similar leverage over the media, they would do so. They may be working on it, but they have not achieved it yet!
If that analysis is correct, I am afraid that another conclusion follows. The executive will not voluntarily give up the power it has established over Parliament. If Parliament is to matter, it must make itself matter. In this, issues of procedure are important; but they are not the whole answer. The exercise of will is also necessary. It was important to establish the departmental Select Committees in another place, but their importance depends on how they are used. It is important, given the dominance of the executive, that the further stages of reform of your Lordships' House produce an independent and representative House. The need for that came out again and again in the evidence given to the Royal Commission. But again, the importance of the House of Lords depends on the way in which its powers are used.
There are certain powers that Parliament has; for example--as was pointed out by the noble Lord, Lord Howell-- it has power over its own expenditure and the provision of advice which it commands. Parliament needs the will to use its powers to exert an influence over the executive. While enabling the executive to govern, Parliament must be prepared to resist the executive's unreasonable behaviour. That depends to a large extent on the will of Members, and particularly Members of another place. Parliament should be more than a waiting room for an appointment in the executive. If Parliament is to become effective, the remedy must lie, as it always has, in Parliament's own hands.
5.46 p.m.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, it is always a privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell. It is a great relief to hear that the executive
can still to some extent control a government--"Yes, Minister" is still alive and well. But are we not primarily concerned with parliamentary control of the executive, which is not quite the same thing?At the outset, perhaps I may congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, on an outstanding speech, which covered the ground for her assertion, with which I unreservedly agree:
- "Thus far and no further and, indeed, we ought to step back".
The presidential style of No. 10, the structure of the Cabinet, with its committees, ad hoc committees and so forth, is simply not in accord with the traditional style of government and is not acceptable, as I now understand it, to either of the parties in Opposition in this House. It may be unacceptable also to those on the Cross Benches, as it assuredly is to some Members on the Benches opposite.
The refusal to consult on stage 2 reform of this House is but a manifestation of the style of government that we oppose. There is no need for any formal understanding between the Liberal Democrats and our party on opposition to such a style of government. In the previous Session, the Liberal Democrats voted against the Government on 256 occasions--well over a third of the number of occasions on which they voted for the Government. There is absolutely no question of any need for a formal understanding on matters concerning control of the executive by Parliament, on consultation and such. A joint opposition to this Government will be spontaneous in this House.
As the noble Baroness recognised, the voter is the determinator of the democratic process of preservation of the body politic. That is our concern. That is what lies at the core of this debate. I liked the way in which the right reverend Prelate expressed it. He referred to,
- "the common good of nation and people".
Parliament will not be in Session for three months. Preservation of the body politic demands that both opposition parties should draw this state of affairs to the attention of the electorate as from now, pending cohesive opposition in both Houses on the return of Parliament. If the voter is to regain interest and enthusiasm, he has to be lured out of his lair of disenchantment and apathy and assume the role of determinator.
The House will also be grateful to the noble Baroness for giving us the opportunity to debate want of control of the executive by Parliament, at a time when we have an over-weaning Administration--an authoritative Administration--the likes of which has not been seen for a very, very long time. A Government who have abused their power, not only in another place but also in your Lordships' House: a
government who have sold the dummy to their paymasters, the trade unions, fiddled with Select Committees to suit their own political ends, and used representatives of the people as their placemen.The Government are due to remain in office until the next general election, save for the extremely unlikely event of a vote of "no confidence" in them. Therefore, this style of government could well become the norm. The Quintine philosophy has all but been fulfilled; but not quite so, as yet. If our traditional form of government is to be restored by the voters, the only effective opposition in Parliament to this style of administration may be made in your Lordships' House, weakened already by design and, by design, to be weakened further without consultation.
I conclude my remarks at this point because the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, made a speech in which he said everything that I would have wished to say, and said it better. I agree with every word, and repetition is idle. However, I shall finish my contribution by reference to the charming and amusing remark that I believe was made by the noble Earl, Lord Russell, "Is there anyone out there that listens?"
5.53 p.m.
Lord Dahrendorf: My Lords, my comments are a mere footnote on the question of what your Lordships' House can do in order to hold government to account. However, I cannot do otherwise than begin by making an observation. I am struck, and actually pleased, by the fact that no fewer than seven of the speakers previous to me on the Speakers' List are former Members of the other place; and in many cases were Members for long periods of time. The other day I heard mention on a radio programme that at this point more than a quarter of the Members of your Lordships' House have been Members of the other place. Indeed, I believe that I am probably not wrong to guess that another quarter of them have been elected somewhere at some time, or are presently in an elective position. If I am not mistaken, that is very different from the House that I joined some eight years ago. I believe that it is relevant to the ability of this House to have an authoritative discussion of issues concerning Parliament in general.
I share the view of those who have indicated in a variety of ways that parliaments everywhere--I repeat, everywhere--are in an extremely difficult position today. Politics have changed; the style of politics has changed. There is the curious development of what I sometimes call "celebrity politics". There is also a development that one might call "throw-away politics", where people make political choices which last about as long as what they have bought in the nearest supermarket, after which such choices are thrown away and ignored. People are capable of electing a government and turning against them a week later, even in active demonstrations.
I believe that there is quite a fundamental change in the style of politics which has moved us away from the deliberative style and a sense of the medium term;
indeed, allowing governments to be unpopular for a period. I take that as a background for pointing to three areas in which I believe your Lordships' House has a very special role to play precisely because, as such, it is not elected at this time. Some noble Lords may know that I am not a supporter of an elected, or part-elected, House. But even if the House were part-elected, it would be different from an elected Chamber. I also think that this House has a special place because it is not distracted by obligations that are, quite rightly, the obligations of Members of the other place. Therefore, in a sense, this House has the time to concentrate, for example, on the detail of legislation.Perhaps I may give your Lordships my three examples, which are not particularly original. Incidentally, the splendid chapter on the decline of Parliament that is to be found in the report by the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, lists them all in one way or another. The first is the growing complexity of legislation, including the strange significance of secondary legislation. The House has tackled that subject in a most effective way. Now that I am no longer a member of it, I can praise the Delegated Powers and Deregulation Committee as a supreme example of holding the executive to account. I am sure that that committee would be prepared to engage to a greater extent than in the past in pre-legislative scrutiny and thereby be involved in the process of legislation at its various stages. Indeed, that is an excellent example. Perhaps I may add to that the scrutiny of European legislation through the European Union Committee.
However, I cannot help but say that we should examine in due course the question whether our European committee is really scrutinising the decisions of the European Union sufficiently or whether perhaps the committee and its sub-committees have become too deeply involved in the undoubtedly more interesting process of producing reports about wider issues that are suitable for general debate. There is a case for scrutiny at an early point. I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, observed that there is a case for becoming involved in European legislation at a very early stage.
The second major area in which this House has a particular function relates to the key development as regards parliaments; namely, the emigration of important decisions from the spaces for which parliamentary institutions and our other political institutions were originally established. If more and more decisions are taken--or not even explicitly taken; indeed, they happen in some cases--beyond the nation state, not just in Europe but in undefined, wider spaces and quite often with worldwide implications, we shall be faced with a whole new set of problems. I am not suggesting that any country, any national parliament or, indeed, the House of Lords can solve them. But there is a strong case for involving national parliaments in the scrutiny of international decisions.
Although I appreciate the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, about a foreign affairs committee, for some time I have felt that my noble friend Lord Lester of Herne Hill, with his
insistence on looking at treaties and getting involved--I put it in those terms--in the process of ratification is one important handle, although not the only one. We should probably do both.The third area I wish to mention specifically is the following. Nowadays we are often faced with situations--I hate to say this as a traditional Liberal--where common sense alone is not enough to take a considered decision. I should love to think that we continued to live in a world in which ultimately common sense judgment could be applied to all necessary decisions. But as one who has the pleasure of being a member of the Select Committee on stem cell research, I know that we are sometimes faced with issues in which political, legal, scientific and ethical questions are intertwined in such a way that in order to take a considered decision one needs the advice of a group which includes all those aspects in its deliberations. The Select Committee on stem cell research may constitute a good precedent for discussing issues of that character. I believe that your Lordships' House is almost uniquely suited to hold the decision makers to account in that area.
There are not many successful second chambers in the world. I do not know a single second chamber this side of the Atlantic which I would describe as a truly effective second Chamber and a model for others. We could become a model in the area of holding government to account if we concentrated on issues which we are uniquely qualified to decide. I prefer a debate on that kind of issue to a further debate on the composition of your Lordships' House.
6.3 p.m.
Lord Desai: My Lords, it has been a good debate and we have had two excellent maiden speeches. There are two ways of considering this problem. We can consider it from the narrow perspective of how we reform the procedures of this Parliament or from the perspective of how we make the executive more accountable. But many noble Lords have already commented on that matter. Not having been in another place, nor having been a Cabinet Minister, a junior Minister or even a civil servant, I am not well qualified to speak on that matter.
I wish to consider a broader perspective which I believe was mentioned by my noble friend Lord Haskel and, to some extent, by the noble Earl, Lord Russell. Parliament is irrelevant--whether or not it is powerless I do not know--because in a sense it has not changed with the times. There was perhaps never a golden age. But in all our minds we have an ideal model of the days when the executive was subject to the will of Parliament and parliamentarians were independent, good people, often of noble character. They were usually all men, but we shall skip that for the time being. Somewhere in 1867 that system disappeared. That was a pre-democratic Parliament.
We are in a much worse situation now because our citizens do not find politics interesting. To the extent that they may have complaints, they do not realise that addressing those complaints to their MP is an effective
way of dealing with them. It may or may not help to locate the Dome in Sutton Coldfield, but when citizens want to complain about fuel prices, for example, they take to the streets. That is a much more effective method of protest. No amount of petitioning Parliament would have changed that situation at that time. The action of citizens taking to the streets abolished the poll tax. Given the parliamentary situation at that time, it could not have been abolished within Parliament. We have to consider Parliament in the broader context of the world outside. We must ask ourselves whether the whole parliamentary system is obsolete and whether that is why people do not respect it and do not bother to vote.Although people are sceptical of opinion polls, and it is de rigueur for the losing party to throw doubt on their findings, the final result of the 2001 election was not all that unpredictable. It could be predicted about three months before the election was held. People could not be bothered to vote because they thought that the result was predictable. As the son of the noble Earl, Lord Russell, asked, what difference does it make whether or not one votes? My friends who study political choice theory tell me that it is not rational for a citizen to vote as it makes not the slightest difference to any outcome. In terms of a citizen's self-interests, voting is not worth the effort. Of course, we have to believe that that is wrong. However, we must ask ourselves whether we are in need not just of procedural reform but of a very sharp look at ourselves.
It is not at all clear to me that the drift of decisions away from the classic executive is all that bad. I believe that that happened because the system was too cumbersome to achieve good results. It is more efficient for decisions to be taken by specialised agencies because Parliament is too elaborate and too cumbersome for that. It constitutes a democratic but not an efficient way of doing things.
We believe that amateur parliamentarians are best equipped to judge matters. As the noble Lord, Lord Dahrendorf, said, that is increasingly not the case. We do not take sufficient account of specialist opinion while legislation is going through. Therefore, increasingly, decisions are entrusted to specialised agencies. That is indeed what has happened in every other walk of life. Why should Parliament continue to be run on an amateur basis with people thinking that their speeches change the world? Parliament is far too large, with far too many Members.
Robert Mackenzie, who was a professor of political science at the LSE, told me long ago that the British Parliament sat on more days than any other Parliament but did less work. That was true then and may still be true. However, if we carried out an efficiency audit on ourselves, I do not believe that it would reveal satisfactory results. I do not believe that anyone has carried out an efficiency audit on Parliament to determine whether it constitutes an efficient way to do business. We must ask these broader questions. Everywhere people are being subjected to downsizing, organisations are becoming less hierarchical and managements are becoming "flatter". But we still want Parliament to be at the apex
of society, as the noble Lord, Lord Holme of Cheltenham, said. I know the great democratic dream that that is what we fought for in 1832. Be that as it may, it is not relevant now.We have to ask ourselves how we can better adapt our democracy to modern times. Our democratic system is old-fashioned and the world has moved on. Our citizens do not have the patience to read an entire speech, much less an entire debate. They want quick soundbites. They have been brought up on television rather than the printed word. If we receive information from the television or the Internet, it has to be fast, well presented and succinct. It cannot include orotund, endless sentences. Newspapers are in competition with television. They have to adopt the methods of television. They must concentrate on leaders and soundbites. No one has the time to read the complete, unexpurgated version of any speech, elegant though it may be. That is not an efficient way of communicating information.
We must rethink our methods of communication and operation, the size of Parliament and what Parliament does. Why does Parliament have to meet in London all the time? Why cannot it meet around the country? Why do we not have more citizens coming not only to listen but also to contribute? Perhaps every week we should bring in 30 citizens to participate in Parliament. In a sense, we have cut ourselves off. That is why governments find it more useful to go to the "Today" programme, "Newsnight" or the newspapers; otherwise the news will never come out from Parliament.
We need to look more critically at ourselves. While the executive may be horrible, and I believe that it is always horrible--and a majority of 167 the second time running can only cast doom and gloom--we must consider democracy in Parliament in a far more radical way.
6.12 p.m.
Lord Lester of Herne Hill: My Lords, I am pleased to note that the depressing commentary of the noble Lord, Lord Desai, on the valuelessness of speeches did not inhibit him from making a very good one.
I shall concentrate in a practical way on some suggestions that have not necessarily been covered in the many powerful speeches which have been made. One of the most powerful was that of the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, to whom I am particularly glad to pay tribute. He and I were members of the same cohort (if that is the right word) in Cambridge 40 years ago; and he has hardly changed since then--and nor have I, I think!
The proper functioning of a modern parliamentary democracy requires that Parliament should be active, professional and inquiring in calling the executive, public authorities and public officers to account. Parliament, through both Houses and the Select Committees, performs vital scrutiny functions--it has been said again and again--as public watchdog and bloodhound working for the public interest of the
people we serve. As the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, said, Parliament is the friend and not the enemy of good government.Since I came to this House eight years ago, I have sought, somewhat obsessively some would say, with noble Lords across the House working together, to enhance the functions of bloodhound and public watchdog, for example seeking to protect fundamental human rights more effectively, to enable the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration to be a more effective watchdog and to scrutinise the prerogative powers of the Crown in ratifying international treaties. I have sought to have a proper independent supreme court for the United Kingdom in place of the hotchpotch of the Judicial Committees of this House and of the Privy Council and, if the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, will forgive me, to create a constitutional Civil Service which is regulated by statute rather than under a scheme devised to rule the British Raj in the 18th and 19th centuries.
I am sorry to say that the pace of reform is painfully slow--a snail's pace. Apart from the notable exception of the Human Rights Act, we have not accomplished very much in any of those areas. Even though the Wakeham Commission supported the creation of a treaty scrutiny committee, that has been kicked into long grass. Even though the under-powered Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration deals with a miserably small case load compared with other powerful ombudsmen in other democracies, there is no indication that the Government intend to give priority to the reform of his office. The Cabinet Office review is already 15 months old and gathering dust.
I am glad that in his interview in The Times on Tuesday the senior Law Lord, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Bingham of Cornhill, said that there is very strong case for having a supreme court that is in the same position constitutionally as the supreme courts of every other country in the world, whether in the United States, Canada, Australia, India or France. He is right to question whether the link with this House is justified. He was right to quote Bagehot indicating that,
- "The Supreme Court of the English people ought to be a great conspicuous tribunal, ought to bring our law into unity, ought not to be hidden beneath the robes of a legislative assembly".
In the time that remains, I wish to mention another important way of increasing the effectiveness of Parliament in calling the executive to account: that is, by requiring that important public appointments should be subject to parliamentary advice and consent. The admirable report of the noble Lord, Lord Newton, for the Hansard Society noted that Parliament should stand at the apex of the scrutiny network which ought to exist. The Chief Inspector of
Prisons is only one of a long list of public office holders and public watchdogs appointed by government to scrutinise the executive and other public authorities with little, if any, input from the theoretically supreme Parliament.Another example is that of the Information Commissioner who plays a vital role in protecting personal information and, when the Freedom of Information Act 2000 eventually--I hope not too "eventually"--comes fully into force, will play an even more important constitutional role. She is officially responsible to Parliament and is often assumed to be a government official, something that she finds wholly unacceptable. Elizabeth France believes, and I agree with her, that her office could contribute much more effectively to holding the Government to account than it currently does if there were some effective mechanism in place through which Parliament could call systematically on her expertise and, I would say, if her appointment could be scrutinised and vetted by Parliament to give her greater authority.
The same applies to the Commissioner for Public Appointments. She monitors, regulates, reports and advises on 12,500 ministerial appointments to public bodies. Surely she should be appointed not by the very Ministers whom she is intended to call to account but by the Crown with the advice and consent of Parliament. One could give other examples. The Comptroller and Auditor General and the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards have some parliamentary input in another place into their appointments. Those examples show that it is entirely feasible to do what is done in other European and Commonwealth democracies. For example, the Police Complaints Authority, the equality commissions, the Director-General of Fair Trading and the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration and other regulators could have a greater parliamentary input into their appointment and their work.
My final point arises from the report of the noble Lord, Lord Newton, with regard to the effectiveness of scrutiny by the Select Committees. I want to emphasise the importance of the recommendation that the core responsibilities of Select Committees should be defined from the outset, if possible by a co-ordinating overall parliamentary committee. My personal experience on three or four Select Committees of the House is that with a changing membership and changing chairs it is very important for a Select Committee to know from the beginning exactly what it is expected to do. For example, I serve with other Members of this House on the Joint Committee on Human Rights. It is important to be clear from the outset whether such a committee is to be a scrutiny committee, a wider debating kind of committee or both; and for the resources for that committee in terms of membership and expertise to be geared to those core functions.
In the interests of good, efficient and accountable government, we must hope that the new Leader of the House of Commons will be able to usher in a new era of much-needed reform sooner rather than later. As
the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, said, there needs to be an exercise of parliamentary will to use the powers of Parliament in those and other ways.6.20 p.m.
The Earl of Dundee: My Lords, I join others in congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, on introducing the debate. Characteristically, she presented her case with great clarity, energy and independence of mind. I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Clark of Windermere, and my noble friend Lord Fowler on their excellent maiden speeches and thank them for their valuable perception of certain shortcomings and remedies of address in the procedures of the other place.
I shall touch on three themes to arrive at a certain conclusion. The first point is the traditional concept, emphasised by many of your Lordships--the role of Parliament as it should be and is expected to be. That means carrying out the function to which the noble Baroness draws attention--holding the executive to account and thereby becoming more relevant to voters.
My second point is the current scope for such balanced parliamentary democracy in Europe. More than anything else, this opportunity has been enabled by two developments: the end of the Cold War in 1989 and the consolidation of peace in the majority of the former Yugoslavia at the turn of the century.
Connected to that, my third point is the benefit and reward arising from the right form of parliamentary democracy. Those benefits include the maintenance of peace and stability and the progress of social development in European states, regions and communities.
From those three themes, once connected, the conclusion may be fairly obvious: that the achievement of much better parliamentary democracy in the United Kingdom is essential and that the example of its practice will also benefit other European states and their collective security. That is so for a particular reason. No outside observer will necessarily be fascinated by British policy towards the European Union, still less by changing British pronouncements on aspects of European institutionalism. On the other hand, the rest of Europe has much respect for and takes a keen interest in the tradition and continuing practice of British democracy.
By example, Britain can exert considerable influence for good in Europe. It goes without saying that we can do so by avoiding one kind of parliamentary democracy and espousing another. The version to be espoused is the traditional concept called for by the noble Baroness today. The type to be avoided is that which may appear to have become entrenched and should now be altered radically, because it reflects an insufficient capacity by Parliament to hold the executive to account. As the noble Lord, Lord Smith of Clifton, has reminded us, my noble and learned friend Lord Hailsham described that system as flawed many years ago and castigated it as "elective dictatorship".
In considering ways to redress the imbalance in this country between Parliament and the executive, we will all be grateful to my noble friends Lord Newton of Braintree and Lord Norton of Louth, both of whose committees have produced very good reports. As my noble friend Lord Newton has said today, those reports emphasise the need for adaptation. For Members of the other place, career prospects within Parliament, as distinct from within the Government, must become far more attractive. Hence also independent-mindedness and the deliberative function must be encouraged far more. My noble friends illustrate how that change of direction and culture will enhance the quality and focus of legislation and debate. As a number of your Lordships have already observed, the reports show how such a change of direction will also improve public confidence in the operation of both party politics and executive control--each often accused of stifling parliamentary scrutiny and debate and each currently held in very low esteem.
My noble friends also distinguish in their reports between necessary expedients and the political resolve to implement them. No doubt political resolve has its best chance of implementation when it is entertained cross-party and if it can be assisted by the Government. Arguably, there is now a strong case for partnership and co-operation on the issue, not only between political parties, but also between Parliament and the Government.
When the noble and learned Lord the Leader of the House winds up today, I am sure that he will concur that that is the best approach in this case: I am sure too that the Government will give all their support to the efforts of the current Leader of the House of Commons to improve parliamentary scrutiny and will support the establishment of new systems for attracting Members of the other place towards a parliamentary career as an alternative to a government one.
This House can give constructive help to that process of adaptation in the other place. There is already a satisfactory balance between Lords and Commons Select Committee work. The two are able to complement each other. However, there are anomalies. My noble friend Lord Howell of Guildford referred to the absence of a Foreign Affairs Select Committee in this House. As the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, said, another anomaly is that, while the Select Committee scrutiny remit applies to the European Union, it does not go beyond that boundary to address Council of Europe conventions, let alone to consider international treaties.
It has been contended that parliamentary scrutiny of relevant matters within that wider area should be set up through a committee in this House. Does the noble and learned Lord the Leader of the House agree that that would be a good and timely development, all the more so in the context of this debate?
My second theme is how improved democracy here can assist reliable democracy in Europe. That is clearly a constant challenge, quite separate from the issue of
European Union membership, although, conversely, it is of particular relevance to emerging and consolidating democracies in the Balkans and in central and eastern Europe.My third theme is the benefit from stability and the progress of social and economic development arising from sustained balanced democracy within Europe. The United Kingdom All-Party Group for Social Development in Europe, of which I am currently chairman, seeks to address that issue. The group is affiliated to the Council of Europe, and thus includes a number of parliamentarians from each of its states. Its purpose is to exchange information and to increase awareness and involvement by European parliamentarians in effective methods and expedients for social and economic developments, which, within regions and communities, are often best evident on very small scales.
In summary, the matter raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, is one of the most important with which we are faced. We must get it right. The combined remedies and adaptations required are even quite simple to set in place. The key to success is partnership and shared resolve by all concerned. The results of success are also very clear. In this country, it will result in much more confidence by voters in their politicians and parliamentarians. Correspondingly, on political delivery, there will be a much more convincing version of social and economic development. For Europe and beyond, this country's example will make a far more valuable contribution towards human rights and security.
6.28 p.m.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury: My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Williams for instigating the debate and I congratulate the two maiden speakers, the noble Lords, Lord Fowler and Lord Clark. My noble friend Lord Lester said that he was a member of the cohort of the noble Lord, Lord Fowler. I was a member of the same college and remember with mixed feelings the way in which he gave me a jack pass in handing over the chairmanship of the Trinity Hall Debating Society. It is a great pleasure to have him here.
The Motion calls attention to the case for control of the executive by Parliament, thereby making Parliament "more relevant to voters". I shall concentrate on the relevance of Parliament to the voters. It is plain that if Parliament is to have the authority to hold the executive to account effectively, it needs the loyalty or allegiance of the electorate.
My particular interest in the subject goes back a long time. Many years ago, I got a headmaster to allow me to experiment with his pupils to see whether politics, democracy and the law could be of interest to typical 15 and 16 year-olds. I believe that noble Lords who said, as many have done tonight, that citizens do not find Parliament interesting--we have heard that phrase on a number of occasions--are wrong. If the problem that we have were one of interest, it would, in a sense, be easier to tackle. However, I believe that the problem is more complex and more profound.
In the past fortnight, three reports have been published which I believe throw light on this matter. One is the Carnegie report on promoting young people's involvement in public decision-making. Another is the report on Bradford, Community Pride not Prejudice, which, ironically, came out just a few days before the Bradford riots. Finally, there is the Parekh report, The Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain. Two of those reports have been debated in this House.
The Crick report in 1998 was the foundation upon which the Government decided--in my view, absolutely correctly--to make, as from autumn of next year, citizenship a compulsory component of every secondary pupil's curriculum. The Crick report concluded a long analysis of all the evidence as to public attitudes towards Parliament and democracy by saying:
- "There are worrying levels of apathy, ignorance and cynicism about public life".
In last year's European elections the turn-out was 23 per cent and the turn-out of voters under the age of 25 was considered to be lower than 15 per cent. We know that in the recent general election the turn-out was 59 per cent but, again, it is believed that the turn-out of those under the age of 25 was well below that. Indeed, an Adam Smith Institute report last year by Dr Pirie and Robert Worcester of MORI found that of that age group--the 18 to 24 year-olds--no fewer than 40 per cent had failed to register. Therefore, the statistics underestimate the problem of "citizen inaction", if I may use that phrase.
The Carnegie report made this remark:
- "young people need to feel they are having a tangible influence, and to perceive the link between their contribution [to civic societies] and real changes".
- "Political parties are more interested in ethnic minorities' votes than their opinions".
- "Rather than concentrate on minorities based on ethnicity or religion, should we not urge the Government increasingly to counter the emergence of an underclass whose deepening exclusion--known to every Youth Magistrate--is a matter of shame to the whole nation?".
Finally, the report of the Bradford working group not only made as its first recommendation the teaching of effective citizenship--it is not a marginal matter--but referred to the lack of leadership in our communities and what it called "white flight". It also made the point that:
- "People at street level are rarely told what is going on by politicians or leaders and therefore form misconceived or wrong views".
I believe that we need to look again at the basics of an effective democracy. As I see it, we need to look at the absolutely fundamental proposition that democracy is a bottom-up relationship with us here. It
is about heart rather than head and about loyalty and relationship. I believe that we should consider the needs of common men and women with perhaps greater acuteness than we sometimes do. We need to look at their hopes and fears and spend less time examining the observations and the often considered conclusions of what is needed of bureaucrats with first-class degrees, professionals with specialist expertise, and the like.We need to look at the whole question of the centralisation of powers. I believe that a relationship exists between the year-by-year aggregation of power at Westminster and Whitehall as against local councils of different types that has a great deal to do with the lack of identification between so-called "ordinary citizens" and the institutions of our democracy.
We need to examine the ethos of central government, which has become ever more corporatist and managerial and increasingly forgetful of the fact that most of us would rather make our own mistakes in our own way and learn in the process than have everything decided for us by our supposedly cleverer superiors. That has resulted in a type of infantilism in British public life, and the consequences run deep.
I believe that we also need to accept that the diminishing power of local government has led to a problem in relation to local leadership. The best in local societies are no longer drawn to local government and its institutions of democracy. That is a crucial element in the democratic malaise from which I believe we suffer.
Then there is what I would call the "culture of detachment and disparagement". If people do not own politics or have a sense of allegiance to it, they will too readily and too easily criticise it and stand back from it in a detached way. Disparagement has become the leitmotif of British life--my noble friend Lord Holme of Cheltenham referred to that--crowding out virtues of affirmation, loyalty and--dare I use the word?--forgiveness, because politicians, too, need forgiveness.
In ending, perhaps I may say a word about the concept of "crowding out". I believe that a problem of indigestion exists in public life. In my view, the British public long ago ceased to feel competent to deal with the everlasting flow of laws, secondary legislation, European directives, regulations, diktats, guidance, the endless creation of quangos and committees, and initiatives and projects. You name it, we have heard it all today. I believe that it has become a serious problem.
The consequence, or, rather, the mode, of dealing with such crowding out is so fundamental that one is apt to be accused of being simplistic if one asks whether or not we should seriously contemplate limiting the sheer volume and complexity of legislation. As the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, said, perhaps we should spend far more time examining the post-legislative impact of legislation and, if it has not achieved what it was supposed to achieve, we should consider chucking it out. There is much that we should do.
I turn to the issue of displacement. We cannot continue to shove a quart into a pint pot. So much of what we do is self-indulgently useless. It does not hit its mark. It adds to the confusion; it adds to the detachment; and it adds to the democratic malaise that we all very much want to remedy. With those few remarks on what is perhaps a slightly different aspect of an enormous subject, I must hold my peace.
6.37 p.m.
Lord Dean of Harptree: My Lords, it is very welcome that at the beginning of this Parliament we should debate how to make Parliament more effective. Many noble Lords have already mentioned the low turnout at the last general election. That is a serious and disturbing matter, particularly for a country such as ours, which is steeped in a parliamentary tradition going back many centuries.
Our forefathers fought many battles in Parliament to extend the franchise which eventually achieved universal suffrage. But we must now face the fact that many people--particularly young people--do not feel that Parliament is relevant to them or that we encourage their hopes or understand their fears. I believe that it is the first duty of both Houses of Parliament to put that right. We must find ways of bridging the gap between Parliament and the people. In my judgment, that is our most important job.
The Government also have a very important role in this matter. As I am sure the noble and learned Lord, Lord Williams of Mostyn, will agree, there has been an increasing tendency for governments of both colours to make major statements outside the House rather than in Parliament, where they can be subject to cross-questioning. Of course, if the government of the day bypass Parliament and devalues its role, no wonder the electors do the same. The noble and learned Lord well knows that criticisms in that regard do not come only from this side of the House; they come from all sides. I hope that he will assure us, with the great authority that he has in Cabinet, that he will do his utmost to ensure that major statements from now on are made to Parliament and not to the media outside.
I turn to rather more optimistic themes--to the procedure and effectiveness of your Lordships' House. I do not believe that we need more powers; it would be unrealistic to ask for them and they would be unnecessary. We merely need to use our existing powers to greater effect.
There are encouraging developments. The Government, to their great credit, are introducing increasing numbers of draft Bills. That is greatly to be welcomed because it enables parliamentarians and people outside to make a contribution before Bills are set in concrete. That should lead to better legislation and people outside will feel that legislation is more relevant to them. That is an encouraging development on which the Government are to be congratulated.
We also have in your Lordships' House a well-developed system of Select Committees, on which we pride ourselves. The European Union Committee and
its sub-committees produce high-quality reports that influence the government and Brussels. We also have what is now called the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, which I had the privilege to serve until I was rotated off it. It gives valuable guidance to the House and the government on the use of delegated powers. Governments of both colours have almost invariably accepted the recommendations of that committee. That again is an optimistic point about the working of your Lordships' House.We now have the new Constitution Committee, which I greatly welcome. I am sure that it will give us valuable guidance on the constitutional implications of Bills. I also hope that it will be able to assist us in developing good relations between Westminster and the devolved bodies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. This is new territory and differences of view are bound to develop between Westminster and the new bodies. It is important to find ways to remove friction and to get those bodies working effectively together. Your Lordships' House can be more effective in that regard than the other place. Of course there will be differences of opinion, but I hope that we can work with the aid of this new committee to produce harmony and that we will strengthen the unity of the United Kingdom. There is much work to be done in that regard. That is another optimistic note that I strike.
The new Joint Committee on Human Rights is much to be welcomed. We need to avoid the dangers of having conflicts between Parliament and the judiciary--we are all conscious of those dangers when we look back in history. Conflict did neither side any good. If the new committee enables us to avoid those dangers it will be very welcome indeed.
Select Committees are one of the jewels in the crown of the working of this House. I make a plea to the noble and learned Lord the Leader of the House and the usual channels: may we have more opportunities to debate those valuable reports in "prime time"? Such debates should not be tucked away on a Friday, as they so often are.
What about procedures in the Chamber? Our general debates are of great value. Unstarred Questions and debates on Wednesdays enable noble Lords to discuss subjects that would otherwise remain unheard. I hope that we shall not move Wednesday's business to Thursdays. If we do, the likes of me would be tempted to go home and we should reduce the number of noble Lords participating and devalue the significance of those debates.
I turn to the revising function of your Lordships' House. That is one of our most important functions, on which we pride ourselves. It is wholly right for the Committee stage of most Bills to be taken here on the Floor of the House. It may well be that not too many noble Lords take part, but that is not the point. It means that our revising role is at centre stage--long may it remain so. Equally, all amendments are discussed if noble Lords so wish. That arrangement should also be retained. There are differing views
about the Moses Room. In my view, the Moses Room is all right for technical and non-controversial Bills but the Committee stage of main Bills should be taken on the Floor of the House.My time is running out. I had hoped to say a word about secondary legislation. I am glad that during the previous Parliament this House asserted its right to vote down secondary legislation if it thought that that was appropriate. That is not a veto; the Government can always come back with the same secondary legislation or with an amended version if they want to. However, it is wholly right to maintain the right.
I am glad to see the noble Baroness, Lady Jay of Paddington, in her place. When she was Leader of the House she was always telling us that we are now more legitimate. We should therefore have greater confidence about using the powers that we have. That is especially necessary when a government, of whichever party, have a big majority in the House of Commons. That puts a bigger onus on us to use all of our powers to hold the government to account. We are well equipped to do so.
6.47 p.m.
The Earl of Listowel: My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, for giving us an opportunity to debate this important matter.
I am concerned that we should not rush to strengthen the Upper House in order to fill the breach created by the lack of an effective opposition in the other place. It is of concern that the Government do not face more challenges from Back-Benchers and opposition parties. However, this House has its virtues and I am concerned that they should not be lost. I have seen a small part of that value during the past three years--three short years.
One important role of your Lordships' House is to sensitise government to the unforeseen consequences of legislation. One might describe this House as a focus group of people with great life experience who are already highly tuned to existence in our society and beyond.
When the Children (Leaving Care) Bill was making its way through your Lordships' House, my noble friend Lord Laming, the chief inspector of social services, attempted to persuade the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, that significantly more protection should be offered to children leaving local authority care. Significantly stronger provision for those vulnerable young people was included in that legislation, which is to the immense credit of the Minister and the Government.
Concern was expressed last week about a new code for children with special educational needs and an amendment to that code was tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch. However, the code was postponed before even reaching your Lordships' House. On another occasion involving legislation to enable further development in human embryo research, your Lordships examined the hopes and
concerns that such research brings with it. That contentious legislation received the full and expert scrutiny that it clearly needed.There are many virtues in this House as it is currently constituted. Of course, one must always be self-critical and consider what could be done better. Let me make it plain that I am not asking for myself and other hereditary Peers to remain, but I am asking that party should be strengthened only as little as possible and that the expertise and experience of individual Peers is given as much play as possible.
6.51 p.m.
Lord Hunt of Chesterton: My Lords, I, too, am grateful to the noble Lady, Baroness Williams of Crosby, for holding this debate on a vital question that is important not only to those affected by government but to those who work in all branches of government who, let us remember, are also voters.
I apologise that I could not be here for the opening speech and for the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, and my noble friend Lord Clark, both of whom have contributed greatly to the public administration and politics of this country. I speak from experience as a former civil servant, a local councillor and as someone who has had other involvements with many branches of government.
I have had no real constitutional education beyond reading Gibbon's Decline and Fall as a student and the excellent textbook that was given to me when I arrived here last year. I do not share the gloom of some noble Lords, but I believe that we can learn from the experience of other countries and perhaps teach them something too.
Electors judge governments by demanding high standards, expecting governments to improve their health, welfare and, to some extent, their happiness. All governments and Parliaments are struggling, and not always succeeding, in meeting rising expectations. The United Kingdom is not unique. I shall read a report from an international newspaper, which I read yesterday, which states:
- "Last summer with its record delays and deteriorating passenger service was a memorably unpleasant ordeal. Business has not forgotten it . . . The current decline in business travel is responsible for the worst year in a quarter century . . . 'We're mad as hell, and we're not going to take it any more'. Several thousand passengers sat fuming for up to eight hours with no food, toilets overflowing and surly employees barking at them".
Governments take on more responsibility and increase expectations--even about how long we should be here. But at the same time, governments want to keep the civil service at a constant level, so they realise that only a limited range of services can be delivered. Therefore, governments have to rely on the private sector, non-governmental organisations and encourage individuals and groups to collaborate in working towards society's goals. That is now as important a role for government and the executive branch as passing laws and running the civil service
and armed forces. Governments and their agencies are so complex that they cannot be closely co-ordinated. They have to be led by general guidance and broad policy directives, rather than by micro-management.Government and Parliament have not addressed how they should best monitor and help this new role. We need to learn from industry how it should be done. The Government do not micro-manage. Indeed, they have abandoned the command and control approach and have to focus on a much more general approach. They no longer focus on detailed matters of maladministration.
I very much hope that the ideas that emerge from this debate will be considered by our reforming Leader of the House and by those from the Prime Minister's office who are responsible for the workings of government. They are now responsible for training in the Civil Service. Reforms reported in the recent annual report are welcome, but further change is needed as the modes of government and Parliament change.
The first corollary of governments operating by guidance and target setting is that there is inevitably some ambiguity, as we have seen from the current debate on the national health service. The Civil Service at every level must be encouraged to understand how to respond, just as in business good managers aim to meet their overall objectives, whether in health, the environment or the economy, through intelligent use of resources and by listening to the overall strategy. This new managerial approach would mean that government departments and civil servants should be monitored more according to how they innovate, and how they generally meet their objectives, and less by the errors that they make. That is the antithesis of the Public Accounts Committee approach.
History records how often government servants in this country were pilloried for their efforts. I was reading recently how Clive of India was scolded by Parliament after his great achievements. Only occasionally do we read of successes like Watson-Watt who invented radar and received £100,000.
This week, Peers on all sides of the House attempted to move an amendment encouraging all government departments to contribute to international development and poverty reduction, but disappointingly, it was turned down. The spirit of the amendment was to ensure that the Government were taking an overall strategic view and encouraging all branches of government to co-operate. I regret that that approach was not accepted.
I believe that Parliament and the Government need to have a completely new approach to legislation and its execution to change the culture, as they say in business. Appropriate rewards and encouragement of innovation is an essential part of that transformation. Parliament should also monitor the executive by looking more closely at how the Government measure their own performance. There is a good deal of scepticism about targets and what information is being revealed, but the Freedom of Information Act should
lead to some improvement in openness. Only a new Select Committee format or genuinely open seminars are likely to produce more confidence and more informed monitoring. My noble friend Lord Desai made some good suggestions in his speech, and yesterday, in a Select Committee in the House, we were considering having a seminar to bring in more people.Currently the Government appear to resist amendments to legislation that call for regular reporting on the grounds that satisfactory arrangements are in place. That was discussed in a debate in the House this week. That is not a widely held opinion outside Whitehall, but Parliament, in its own interests, needs to address that point. The problem of monitoring government intelligently becomes even more necessary when government act more like a broadcasting organisation and funding agency and less like a signal box pulling levers and switching points.
Clear examples of new governmental processes include the openness and guiding procedures of the Food Standards Agency, which is the great success of this Government. Another example is the open publication of statistics and predictions of mathematical models for the spread of foot and mouth disease. Surely Parliament should be studying such developments and considering whether they can be applied elsewhere--even to foreign affairs and understanding arms races, as was suggested in a recent letter to Nature.
There are many new ways through open government and the Internet that encourage wider public involvement and input. Perhaps bulletin boards should be set up by investigating committees for monitoring and developing policy.
The greatest responsibility for government and Parliament is to look after the long-term interests of the country. That requires considering issues that are far from urgent, but which will become so. The House of Lords, through its regular debates and questions raises such strategic issues, many of which are highly controversial, such as Europe and defence, or highly unpredictable, such as the future effects of climate change, rising sea levels, demography, technology, societal change, and so on. The Government's chief scientist says that his job is to scan the horizon for up-and-coming problems. Surely it is the responsibility of the permanent secretary and Ministers in all the departments to do that.
There are several institutes for studying the future in the United States, but there are none in the UK. Instead we have various groups in government that quietly plan future legislation and carry out their own predictions. Surely it would be appropriate to have a House of Lords group at least once in each parliament to hold hearings to get the views of the Government, the executive, the agencies and those outside government about how the Government should be looking into future problems facing the UK and seeking milestones to be set by the Government in their plans to deal with long-term issues.
I agree with all the noble Peers who have said that Parliament must examine its relationship with the Government and the executive. I hope that such a study will not be framed in the slightly antagonistic wording of the resolution. The role and ambitions of government are changing and they are now more complex. With a new openness, new technology, devolution of power and a willingness to listen, as well as investigate, I am sure that we can move forward with new and constructive procedures.
7 p.m.
Lord Roberts of Conwy: My Lords, anyone listening to this debate, as I have been, would certainly agree that the general opinion is that there is something rotten about the present state of Parliament. Almost every speaker has sought to sniff out that rottenness, and some have sought to remove it.
My own analysis is that the Government have certainly given the impression that the only kind of accountability which really matters is their direct accountability to the electorate. Therefore, they have concentrated on direct public presentation of policy and decisions through the press and the media, too often at the expense of the traditional parliamentary procedures for dealing with such matters. But, of course, the trouble is that, as my noble friend Lord Fowler said in his eximious maiden speech, these traditional procedures have been steadily devalued and, I might say, almost banished like boom and bust.
The Government have been very successful in engineering that revolution in their own thinking about accountability. The overall result, in terms of their parliamentary majority, has been astonishingly good. But, of course, judged from a democratic, parliamentary standpoint, the consequences have been disastrous.
The leader column in The Times on Monday last referred to the Government's,
- "apparently obsessive need to manipulate public opinion and control all dissent".
- "MPs and PM both stand to gain from a stronger Parliament".
The change in the Government's approach to presentation is understandable, of course, in this day and age of facile, direct and instant communication. But that, of its very nature, tends to be one way, dictatorial in style, authoritarian and contemptuous of Parliament. It is not without other shortcomings.
The difference in quality between the accountability direct to the electorate system, so often practised by the Government, and the various forms of parliamentary accountability which have been relegated to an inferior role, is truly immense. In general, the electorate cannot question Ministers, except in a very limited way through focus groups, the
Internet or the intermediary priesthood of the media which are always emasculated by time constraints and all sorts of other considerations.Parliamentary scrutiny is, of course, a very different matter and properly done can be much more testing, critical and revealing. It can be helpful to the Government's thinking, as the noble Lord, Lord Clark of Windermere, said in his excellent maiden speech. The Government should welcome parliamentary scrutiny and use it. Parliamentary scrutiny is certainly essential to the public, to enable individual electors to form a proper considered judgment. Therefore, in my view, the Government have a duty to ensure, in their own best interests and those of the country, that the parliamentary system of scrutiny and accountability works efficiently and effectively.
Of course, that duty is shared by Parliament. If the system does not work, the electorate will become increasingly disillusioned with the political process. Parliament itself will fall further into disrepute and so, ultimately, will the Government.
Whether the low poll at the general election was entirely attributable to the Government's alleged abuse of Parliament is questionable to my mind. But it may have been a contributory factor to the general apathy that prevailed. With regard to the election itself, I tend to agree with the analysis given by the noble Lord, Lord Desai.
There is a particular point that I wish to raise which concerns devolved government and the promised White Paper on devolution for the English regions. My question is: what is the relationship between those proposals and the Government's proposals for further reform of the House of Lords? I ask because there is some concern, of course, that our existing devolved institutions, which have had a fair ration of praise in this debate, are drifting away from us here at Westminster and becoming remote. Frankly, we do not know, for the most part, what is going on in those institutions except what we read in the press and that does not always inspire confidence.
The Royal Commission, of course, favoured the representation of the nations and regions of the United Kingdom here in this House, and it expounded a detailed scheme of election with possible variations. The Constitution Committee, also recommended by the Royal Commission, was encouraged to set up a sub-committee to look further into the issues raised by devolution. However, although the main committee has been set up under the chairmanship of my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth, I do not believe that much progress has been made, as yet, on the devolution front.
Nevertheless, some Welsh Members in the other place, addressing the Welsh Grand Committee on 3rd July, appeared to assume that the relevant recommendations in the report of my noble friend Lord Wakeham concerning national and regional representation in your Lordships' House were acceptable to the Government in principle and would be the subject of legislation. Down at the other end, do they know something that we do not know? I should
be grateful if the noble and learned Lord the Leader of the House could throw some light on the situation and perhaps give us the drift of the Government's thinking.Representation for the nations and regions here, independent of the devolved institutions themselves, whose members have a full-time job and cannot serve in two places, might help us to be better informed about what is happening in the regions which are somewhat neglected, and might thereby contribute to the process of parliamentary scrutiny and accountability for regional affairs, which is fairly thin at present.
7.8 p.m.
Lord Roper: My Lords, we have had an excellent debate and on these Benches we are delighted with the response by so many Members of your Lordships' House to the Motion initiated by my noble friend Lady Williams of Crosby.
We have had also two particularly outstanding maiden speeches from two former Cabinet Ministers speaking with the new-found freedom of the Back Benches who demonstrated what additions they will be bringing to the power of this House to scrutinise and control the executive. Both of them entered the other place on the same day as I did, so in one sense we are part of that cohort, although they stayed the course rather longer than I did.
Reference was made to a Cambridge mafia or cohort. However, I had particular pleasure in listening to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Clark of Windermere, because when I started teaching economics at the University of Manchester in the early 1960s, he was one of my first pupils. I am extremely glad that there are now in your Lordships' House two noble Lords who survived at my hands the teaching of economics at the University of Manchester and who seem to be doing quite well.
We have had a rich debate. It is difficult to add much at this stage. Reference has been made to the challenge felt as a result of the poor turn-out and the implications that that appears to have had for the standing of Parliament at the general election. Of course, it was an immediate warning to the House of Commons--this is a matter to which I shall return--and I suggest that it is also a warning to this House, especially as part of the membership of this House is likely to be elected at some stage in the future. The turn-out for that election is something to which we should give thought.
Part of the problem, to which implicit reference has been made during the debate, lies in the structural ambiguity of the parliamentary system, particularly in the other place. Primarily, government Back-Benchers in the other place are there to support the Government. How do they combine that with their responsibilities, as part of the legislature, to scrutinise and to control the executive? To some extent that is linked to the disputes and controversies that arose earlier this week on the formation and nature of Select Committees. My noble friend pointed out the dangers of the scrutinised appointing their own scrutineers.
I have a certain caution about commenting on proceedings in another place, particularly as I have the rather unusual experience of having been part of the usual channels there and now I am part of the usual channels in this House. I hesitate to intrude on the private grief of whips in either place, but I believe that the results of the votes on Monday were very good for Parliament and I trust that lessons will be learned.
In looking at the role of your Lordships' House, we need to look at the complementarity of the two Houses and to pick up an idea developed by my noble friend Lord Dahrendorf, to try to play to the comparative advantages of this House. Although your Lordships, by yourselves, cannot bring down a government, and it is unlikely, in the foreseeable future, that there will ever be an automatic majority in this House to endorse the actions of a government, this House can probe more effectively and more efficiently than the other place.
The point made recently by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Chesterton, was that this House has the advantage of being able to look over a longer time horizon than can the other place. The other place is constrained by the prospect of the next general election. In terms of giving a longer time horizon to public policy, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Chesterton, suggested, we may have a useful part to play.
Turning to the operations of this House, reference has been made to our function in scrutinising legislation. The noble Lord, Lord Fowler, made a most important contribution by suggesting that we should look at our role in post-legislative scrutiny more carefully. However, I believe that we should consider ways in which our scrutiny can be improved. A number of years ago a group of Members, under Lord Rippon, looked at the subject. Some ideas in that report have been taken up, for example in relation to the Moses Room, but others deserve to be revisited and re-examined as to how matters can be conducted more effectively.
The scrutiny of the European Union has, of course, been referred to frequently and most recently by the noble Lord, Lord Dean of Harptree. While it can be said that we have had useful debates in this Chamber in relation to Europe which are read seriously in Brussels and in Whitehall, I am not convinced that we produce the results of those committee's work in a way that is as effective as it could be in improving the debates with our citizens, the dialogue with our citizens to which the noble Lord, Lord Haskel, referred in a different context.
In considering the role of this House, I believe that we need to consider how we project more effectively what we are doing. I believe that when we look at reports of our Select Committees we should consider them not only as reports to this House but as reports that can play a larger part in stimulating a wider debate in the country as a whole.
Turning to the scrutiny of other international bodies, as referred to by my noble friend Lady Williams of Crosby, recently in the debate on the
World Trade Organisation there has been a sense that there is inadequate parliamentary scrutiny in our country. I am unsure how that can be improved; to some extent it has been done already by one of the sub-committees of our European Union Committee. It is a subject that we should examined.On the third area of scrutiny, the scrutiny of the operations of the executive, in the past we have been inhibited, as the noble Lord, Lord Howell, said, by the convention that was agreed, that we should not duplicate the departmental committees that operate in another place. We should consider whether there could be other ways in which we could have more effective scrutiny of the operation of the executive. We have a great deal of talent and competence in this House that I believe could be better used and could provide useful complementary information.
My noble friend Lord Goodhart and the noble Lord, Lord Ampthill, developed at some length a perfectly justified criticism of the decision that was announced last week by the Government not to create a joint committee on the future of the House of Lords. I believe that that announcement was extremely unfortunate. The lack of consultation undermines, in this case as elsewhere, the credibility of government and will not necessarily facilitate the passage of the legislation. I understand what the Leader of the House meant when he referred to not having undue delay, but appropriate consideration may ensure that the passage of the legislation, when it is considered, may be quicker rather than slower. One has to consider the process as a whole.
In his speech on the loyal Address, the Leader of the House made reference to an inquiry into the future working practices of this House. I know that he has taken that matter further. That is no alternative to the proposal for a joint committee, although it is something that could have some value, but--this is an important consideration--it is critical to ensure that we strengthen the mechanisms of scrutiny and the operation of this House rather than weaken them in the name of modernisation. With great interest, I noted the telling and powerful remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, who, I suspect, knows the inside of government better than almost anyone else in this House. He spoke of the importance of the role of parliamentary will to carry out scrutiny of the Government.
We also need to consider how we can strengthen the resources available to do that job. One or two important remarks were made on that. The noble Lord, Lord Clark of Windermere, referred to the particular way in which the Comptroller and Auditor-General was able to provide professional assistance on a permanent basis, on an ongoing basis, to the Public Accounts Committee, the jewel in the crown of the other place. How can we look at ways to strengthen our capacities?
My noble friend Lord Lester of Herne Hill referred to the desirability of creating a supreme court. One important side-effect of such a creation, as referred to in the article of the noble and learned Lord, Lord
Bingham, this week, may mean the departure of the Law Lords from this place and provide us with more space so that we could have more people working here to serve your Lordships' House in order to ensure that there was more effective work in our committees.I turn, in conclusion, to the matter of trying to ensure that your Lordships' House is better understood and known by the people of this country, who, I remind noble Lords, may well be voting for part of the membership of this House within a few years. I note that this country spends about £200 million a year on government information services so that we know what they are doing. When I attempted to find out how much was spent on the information services of this House, the evidence suggested that it was about £300,000 in total. If one assumes that the House of Commons spends perhaps five or six times as much as this place, the executive spends perhaps 100 times more than the legislature in making sure that it is known.
It is important not only that we do good work in this House but that it is known in the country. As we move to a Chamber that is to a greater or lesser extent elected, we need to prove our role to the electorate in ways which have not been necessary in the past. Our procedure and performance must be improved if we are to persuade the electorate that it should participate in elections. But in addition to doing better we should ensure that we are seen to be doing better. It is no use doing good merely by stealth. Your Lordships' House has an obligation to persuade the people of Britain that this Chamber contributes effectively to holding the executive to account if it is to persuade people to take part in future elections of Members of your Lordships' House. Otherwise, it is difficult to know what will be the turnout in an election which will not determine the political complexion of the government of this country or, on the proposals apparently advocated by the Government, significantly affect the composition of this House.
7.21 p.m.
Lord Strathclyde: My Lords, I join all those who have congratulated, rightly, the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Crosby, on initiating the debate today. She is a parliamentarian whose distinction is respected across all parties. The noble Baroness has been prepared to pay a price to stand for what she believes in. I also congratulate my noble friend Lord Fowler and the noble Lord, Lord Clark of Windermere, on their outstanding maiden speeches. I hope that we shall hear much of them in future and that they will continue to participate fully in the workings of the House.
Parliament as a whole should take note of perhaps the most important theme of all to which the noble Baroness drew attention. It is a theme on which I and many others in this House have reflected for some years. As the noble Baroness pointed out, we have probably the most powerful executive in the democratic world. Recently, we read the conclusions of a distinguished commission of the Hansard Society on parliamentary scrutiny chaired by my noble friend
Lord Newton of Braintree, whose speech I was delighted to hear this afternoon. I agree substantially with the burden of what that group had to say, not least on the ineffective ritual of Questions in another place.The findings of the Newton commission followed the notable report produced by the commission set up by the Conservative Party and chaired by my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth. Both reports accurately analysed the same problem. The conclusions of the commission of the Hansard Society were crisp:
- "Serious gaps and weaknesses in the working of accountability were found. Scrutiny of government is neither systematic nor rigorous".
Over the past 25 years, as the noble Baroness said, a dangerous imbalance between the power of No. 10, buttressed by the party Whips in another place and the power of another place to coerce this House, has grown up and an inexorable decline in power and influence of Parliament has emerged. The issues at stake here transcend party. I do not want to divide the House by assailing the party of noble Lords opposite. There are great parliamentarians in numbers on the Benches opposite. How much do we today miss the noble Lord, Lord Shore of Stepney, in his accustomed place for a debate in which he surely would have spoken!
Today, I should have been tempted even to spare those Liberal Democrat MPs who supported timetable Motions and guillotines if I had not then heard what the noble Baroness rightly said about the need for better scrutiny of treaties and only last week had not watched Mr Menzies Campbell on behalf of the Liberal Democrats in another place commending a timetable Motion that limited scrutiny of the Treaty of Nice in Committee. There is no one so pure that he should feel free to cast the first stone. We all dug this hole and together we must dig our way out. Naturally, I accept the blame which lies with my party.
But one wonders whether noble Lords opposite are happy with much that they have seen since 1997: announcements consistently made outside Parliament; Cabinet reduced to a 45-minute pep talk from the chief executive; spin doctors crowding even the cleaning cupboards of No. 10 Downing Street and Whitehall and expanding into No. 12; candidates for the European Parliament, the Mayor of London or the First Minister for Wales handed down by Millbank; procedures "modernised" in another place to timetable and curtail scrutiny at every stage of every Bill; and chairmen of Select Committees in another place who have shown independence and authority and done one of the jobs that Parliament is there to do, lined up for the chop.
Look around us even here. Who would have forecast five years ago that over one-third of this House would be appointed by a single man? That is
scarcely the mark of the "modern and democratic" House of Lords of which the Government talked in 1997. We have seen patronage and spin erected into a system of government. I sometimes ask myself what the Government are afraid of. Is it perhaps that someone may ask what they have achieved? We have seen 16 constitutional Bills in four years. Is our constitution any more coherent? Is Parliament controlling the executive any better today?While Mr Blair has dallied with the constitution, are our hospitals and transport system working better or our education being improved? Is anyone happy about the deluge of red tape that falls as snow on small businesses? How right is the noble Lord, Lord Haskins, to complain about that and the fungus of rules to which my noble friend Lord Peyton referred in his vintage speech!
Why should we believe unequivocally in a stronger Parliament--not to be a nuisance, or to keep some of the newer working Peers waiting when they have more important things to do, but to safeguard the citizen and business against badly drafted law, give voice to the public's concerns about the actions and proposals of the executive and improve the quality of government? Parliament may sometimes be an inconvenience but it does improve the quality of government. A stronger and more independent Parliament will, paradoxically, lead to a stronger government so long as government, after full scrutiny, carries the respect and support of Parliament. Perhaps this Government would gain greater respect if they listened to Parliament a little more and feared it a little less.
What can we do in this House to improve scrutiny? We should be confident about our powers and be ready to use them, and we should be wary of the executive when it talks of "modernising procedure". I give two examples. First, this House has, and must retain, the power to reject bad legislation. We were right to use it on the restriction of trial by jury, and we would be right to do so again. I detected one or two worrying signals in the gracious Speech about further reductions in our ancient freedoms, so we must be on our guard again in this Session.
Secondly, as my noble friend Lord Dean of Harptree reminded the House, we need to keep the power to reject secondary legislation. Today, I read a major article in the Financial Times which clearly relied directly on government briefing:
- "On disability benefits--another flashpoint--Ministers will try to avoid a revolt by making changes by administrative order rather than primary legislation".
I am tempted to coin a Strathclyde doctrine: wherever Ministers openly seek to use secondary legislation to avoid detailed scrutiny in another place, this House should seriously consider rejecting it so as to ensure that the other place has the right to full scrutiny. We would have a better governed country if more appeared on the face of primary legislation instead of being buried in the detail of unamendable
orders. I entirely disagree with the conclusions of my noble friend Lord Wakeham, who sought to reduce the power of this House in relation to secondary legislation.If we had the power and authority in this House, and used it, we would do a service to another place which would then be put on its mettle to test the Government further; and we would also do a service to Ministers. When I stood at the Government Dispatch Box nothing concentrated my mind more than the prospect of defeat, or the sense that, unless I persuaded my colleagues to amend legislation to respond to intelligent scepticism in this revising Chamber, defeat might be the result at a later stage.
Time and again I find that when Parliament, and especially this House, puts up hurdles, the result is better legislation and often better policy. Therefore perhaps I may echo what the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, said in his weighty speech, and I very much hope that we shall be hearing more from him in the months ahead. If what we do in Parliament is seen to carry weight with government and make them think more deeply, then people will take a far more active interest in Parliament and who is sent here.
I am certainly ready to look at changes in procedure in this House. But that does not include ones which weaken the capacity of this House to do its job. Therefore, I shall need much persuading before I agree with the recent suggestion of the noble and learned Lord the Leader of the House that this House is not allowed to amend legislation in Committee without agreement by the executive. Perhaps the noble and learned Lord when he replies will explain how this idea would improve parliamentary control of the executive.
Perhaps too I can now reach my conclusion. I regret that my terms may be a little disagreeable. Making Parliament work better and controlling the executive better will be achieved only if all parties believe in it and if we have cross-party consultation. Like the noble Baroness, I believe that there is the expectation in the House that that will happen. That is why, like the noble Lord, Lord Ampthill, and many others who have spoken this afternoon, I was so bitterly disappointed by the Answer given last week by the noble and learned Lord to my noble friend Lord Rees when he asked about the consultations on the future of this House.
We all heard the gracious Speech with its phrase "following consultation". We all heard the noble and learned Lords the Lord Chancellor and the Leader of the House refer again to consultation in debate on the gracious Speech. I was not alone in thinking that that meant genuine cross-party consultation. In the words of the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, it would be "grotesque"--that was his word--if we acquiesced to the ambition of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Williams of Mostyn. What the noble and learned Lord said in his Answer last week was that the executive would now take over this process, presumably in a White Paper, and then, and only then, let people comment on it.
We heard what the noble Lord, Lord Haskel, had to say about government consultation. Crudely, the noble and learned Lord said that the executive had no intention of adjusting its plans by listening to anyone; and bluntly he said that he would allow no joint committee to consider ideas, even though that was explicitly promised in Labour's 1997 manifesto and has since been promised so many times, as the noble Lord, Lord Ampthill, exposed in his demolition of the Government's position. In the words used by my noble friend Viscount Cranborne in another not unrelated context, the noble and learned Lord's Written Answer "bushwhacked" the House.
The noble and learned Lord is the Leader of the House. As such, he should owe a particular duty to Parliament. I know that he believes he owes such a duty. Surely he must recognise that the Government cannot proceed to long-lasting and genuine reform which will affect both Houses perhaps for a century or more, except on the basis of full consultation with open minds; that is, consultation that we, the Liberal Democrats and others with no party affiliation thought that we had been promised.
The question of the future of Parliament opened up today by the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, is a question without parallel in importance because from an effective Parliament the solution to so much else will follow. The noble and learned Lord now has an opportunity to help craft a great House into something better. To do that he must sometimes lead and sometimes let himself be led. If the noble and learned Lord seeks to go forward alone by publishing the unilateral proposals he wrote of last week he will not be serving this House of Parliament, as many in this House, including me, believe that he should.
7.34 p.m.
Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, I am about to utter heresy: the noble Earl, Lord Russell, was wrong. There was once a golden age. It was glad confident morning. The noble Lord, Lord Fowler, and I were both together at Cambridge. The noble Lord will remember that the sun was always shining. It is lost in the mists of pre-history now. The Conservative Party was still alive, sane and hoping to be re-elected. Things changed so very quickly. More lately--the noble Lord will allow me this personal observation--the friendship between his daughter Kate and my daughter Imogen has illuminated both our lives.
In 1997 I worked with the noble Lord, Lord Clark. The tributes paid to his work on freedom of information are rightly deserved. I was particularly pleased, because I was going to mention it myself, at the reference by the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, to the noble Lord, Lord Shore of Stepney. I have written to the noble Lord on behalf of us all wishing him well, but in particular saying that we would miss his trenchant interventions on occasions such as this. I know that his name was originally on the draft speakers' list, which is why my heart began to tremble. We miss him and I hope that he returns as soon as possible.
I shall come to consultation in a moment or two by being--to use a word used by the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde--disagreeable. I am afraid that I shall have to refer to what I actually said. It is always an inconvenience, but sometimes it is quite a helpful guide. I agree with the spirit of what the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, implied, and with what the noble Lords, Lord Strathclyde and Lord Roper, said. We all want to make this House better, and soon.
My stance is quite plain. I cherish the absolute right of this House to question the Government, to probe their proposed legislation and their activities and to ask the other House to think again. Both Houses have to work together. We want to make Parliament as effective as possible in scrutinising the Government and in holding them to account. The fact that we are not elected makes it easier because there is no Whip, as my noble friend Lord McIntosh will agree, that has any effect in this House; and there are no sweeteners of which I have been made aware. That will come as disagreeable fodder to those who have the purist view. I recognise the honourable nature of their stance that this House should be wholly elected. However, there would be a serious danger--I make no offensive criticism of our colleagues at the other end of the corridor--that this House would contain clones of those elsewhere. We should do our country and our Parliament no favours in that.
I continue to believe that we should be as effective as possible in holding the Government to account. I take the point of the noble Lord, Lord Peyton, that it does not matter who is the temporary incumbent of No. 10. I believe that this Chamber has a distinctive but different contribution to make. I want us, if this does not sound disagreeably inclusive, to create together a House fit for modern conditions and one which will deliver sound, informed, reasoned criticism, recognising that we must complement the Commons and not seek ultimately--I emphasise that qualification--to defy or override the other place. That gives us plenty of room for manoeuvre and allows us to deploy the functions and powers that we already possess.
I said that I would come to the question of consultation. There was a time, rather more recent than the time of the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, and mine at Cambridge, not too long ago when my noble friend Lord McIntosh and I sat on the other side of the House. My memory must be fading, but I think that we had 100 Members in this House. How many Conservatives were there in a permanent entrenched substantially hereditary majority? About 400--or was it 500? One's memory passes so quickly. I do not want to be unduly partisan, but at that time I do not think that I heard a single syllable of desire for improving scrutiny of the Government. Of course it may be that I was just asleep at the time and I missed it, to quote Bob Dylan, but I do not think so.
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