Contribution
My Lords, excuse me while I find my notes; I am not used to the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, being so reticent. Before I begin, following the injunction of the noble Lord, Lord True, I feel I must declare the interest that I am a life Peer.
I rise to move Amendment 4 in my name and those of my noble friend Lord Wallace, the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Llanfaes, and the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde. The question of whether to elect the second Chamber is one of the longest-standing unresolved issues in British politics. Amendment 32 from the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, helpfully reminds us of the wording of the preamble to the Parliament Act 1911, which says that the Lords should be elected but at a more convenient time than the present. For 124 years, no convenient time has presented itself, and we on these Benches think that at long last we should put that right.
Our amendment sets out a timetable for doing so. It would require the Government, within a year of the passage of the Bill, to publish a consultation paper on methods for introducing directly elected Members to the House of Lords. This would contain a number of options and could, for example, include the option of retaining an element of non-party Members of your Lordships’ House.
Having produced this paper, the Government should then have an intensive period of consultation involving the groups set out in proposed new subsection (4). Importantly, and having taken account of comments made in Committee, the consultees would include members of the general public, possibly involving citizens’ assemblies. I strongly favour the use of the citizen assembly mechanism on an issue such as this; ordinary citizens should have a direct say on how they are governed, and the citizens’ assembly route has proved itself very effective in a number of countries for deliberating on contentious public policy issues. At the conclusion of the consultation period, the Government would then be required in short order to produce a report on the conclusions of the consultation and to come forward with a Bill for introducing direct representation into your Lordships’ House.
This issue was debated at great length in Committee. As the arguments have not changed since then—indeed, some of them have not changed for over a century— I will not belabour them all. In short, we believe that the Lords should be elected on the basis that, in a democracy, laws should be passed by people chosen by the people to act on their behalf. It should be elected because the unelected House has a strong geographical imbalance in which London and the south-east are greatly overrepresented and the north, Scotland and Wales are underrepresented, and because it would almost certainly be more representative of the ethnic and party-political diversity of the country.
I will not elaborate on all these arguments, but I would like to say something about geographic representation. It is unfortunate that we do not even know the geographic breakdown of the complete membership of your Lordships’ House, but on partial evidence collected by the Library we find that, between them, London and the south-east provide 45% of our membership, compared with 32% of the population. By contrast, the north-west, with 13% of the population of the UK, provides only 4% of Peers. All other northern regions, the Midlands, Scotland and Wales lag behind. This severe imbalance is reflected in our debates. At a time when the cohesion of the country is under threat, this is clearly unsatisfactory.
In Committee, noble Lords across the House argued that the Prime Minister had too much power over appointments, and I strongly agree. I think that if people realised quite how much power the Prime Minister already has, they would be appalled. The Prime Minister decides not only how many of his own party should be in the Lords but its balance. There are no rules. Opposition parties have to play the role of Oliver, pleading with the Prime Minister for more. Sometimes they get it; more often, they do not. Either way, this sort of horse-trading over the composition of your Lordships’ House is demeaning to our democracy and should be brought to an end.