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Lords Kaput?The following articles examine the constitutional position of the House of Lords as at April 11th 2006Lords in danger We’re teetering on the brink of an elective dictatorship Lords reform left in disarray See also Daily Telegraph:
11/04/2006
Tony Blair has appointed more peers than any other prime minister in history, but yesterday he contented himself with sending only six Labour nominees (or seven, if one includes the Scottish Lord Advocate who sits as a crossbencher) to the Upper House. He had, of course, planned to send four more, but the row over loans for peerages, now the subject of a police investigation, put paid to that. It would be nice to conclude that the Prime Minister has finally realised that his Government's blatant abuse of patronage needs to end. But given the bad smell that this scandal has generated, many people are likely to think that Mr Blair has simply run out of candidates who are not compromised in some way. Unfortunately, this is not the end of this sorry affair. In the hope that we will all forget about it, Mr Blair has decided to dust down his reforms of the Upper House. When the hereditary peers were evicted, we warned that stage two of the reforms might be a long time coming; and so it proved, while Mr Blair enjoyed the convenience of appointing a series of cronies and major donors. But following his established pattern of reaching for legislation without thinking through the consequences, he has now decided that an elected Lords might be a good idea after all. There are many reasons why he is wrong, not the least of which is the likelihood that an elected upper house will create an additional, utterly superfluous class of political placemen - not so very different in character from Mr Blair's appointments to date. An elected second chamber that would in effect fall under the control of the whips in the Commons would also lose all purpose as a revising chamber. Having made a mess of getting his preferred candidates into ermine, Mr Blair is in danger of stumbling into an even greater mess. So far, he has only had to put up with the removal of four rich men from his benches in the Lords; if the Prime Minister now brings in hasty and ill-considered changes, he risks removing the remaining legitimacy and credibility of an Upper House that he has already badly damaged. Simon Heffer: 05/04/2006
From time to time I, like many of us, muse on what is wrong with the people who run our country. Are they stupid? Are they naïve? Or are they actually downright wicked? Being a charitable sort, I have always tended to the first two options: and, because I rather like him, I have especially always tended towards them when considering the occasional and usually absurd pronouncements of the Lord High Chancellor of England and Keeper of the Queen's Conscience, Charlie Falconer. Yet Charlie's observations about the House of Lords, aired in this newspaper last Saturday, start to make me feel my charity might have been excessive. The old boy, by all accounts stone-cold sober at the time, said: "The right position for the Lords is that it should amend legislation to give the Commons the opportunity to think again but… then it should give way." Now, of course, Charlie was too polite to go further, so let me point out what this really means. It means that the point of a House of Lords, or indeed any second chamber, would be at an end. The Commons could inflict any legislation it liked on the country and, however much the House of Lords might like to protest, that would be that. Lord Hailsham's elective dictatorship, of which that distinguished predecessor of Charlie's warned 40 years ago, would be here. To some of you, this might not seem too much of a departure from current practice. After all, the Lords lost its unconditional power of veto in 1911, when it passed Lloyd George's People's Budget rather than suffer the imposition of up to 500 Liberal peers by Asquith. This would have wiped out the Tory majority in the Lords, and would have enabled any measure the government wanted. Parliament Acts in that year and in 1949 ensured the Commons could get its own way if the Lords rejected a Bill twice in successive sessions. In fact, those Acts were hardly ever needed. After the Labour landslide of 1945, something was invented called the Salisbury-Addison Convention - named after the Tory and Labour leaders of their parties in the Lords at the time - which ensured that any government manifesto commitment would not be obstructed by the Tory-dominated Lords. There are, though, in these arrangements something subtly different from what Charlie is proposing, and something infinitely more constitutional and democratic. The House of Lords has, in the past century or so, always been a far wiser and less partisan body than the House of Commons. In its wisdom, it has always known when to stop obstructing the Commons. It has not only abided by the Salisbury-Addison Convention, it has also only stuck to its guns on other matters when it has sensed that its view, and not that of the House of Commons, was more in tune with the people. For example, it provoked a Tory government into using the Parliament Acts by refusing to pass the War Crimes Bill. This was a remarkable state of affairs, since the naked purpose of the Parliament Acts was to protect the other parties from domination in the Lords by Tory hereditary peers. The Lords sensed that most of the public would not relish the spectacle of the state pursuing senile 85-year-old Latvians, even for allegedly hideous crimes committed in another jurisdiction half a century earlier. They stuck to this position, heard no great public opposition to their stand, and so the Tory government had to suffer the embarrassment of being heavy-handed and getting its own way through the Acts. Similarly, by the time the Bill to abolish foxhunting had been held up in the Lords for a couple of years, the Lords knew that the debate on the civil liberties aspects of hunting had helped turn public opinion considerably, and that, if there had ever been overwhelming opposition to the sport's continuing, it no longer existed. Charlie cited this Bill as an example of how the Lords should not behave. In doing so, he exemplified his own utter wrongness, and suggested into the bargain that Labour, deeply embarrassed by the sheer inoperability of a law that they devoted months of parliamentary time to enacting, is simply out for a crude form of revenge. However, to emasculate the Lords by removing what is left of its veto is not simply a revenge on peers who stood up for hunting. It would be a revenge on everyone who, for a variety of noble reasons, holds out against the concept of elective dictatorship. And that is why it cannot be allowed to happen. Consider, for example, the likely outcome of possibly the nastiest Bill to go before Parliament since the Six Acts of 1819, the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill. The Commons has given a second reading to this Bill, which would increase the already great ability of ministers to bypass Parliament in enacting, repealing or amending (according to Clause 2 of the Bill) "any legislation". The Bill would especially be used, if enacted, to import EU law into our own without any parliamentary scrutiny, but could be used for even worse things besides. The House of Lords constitution committee has expressed the fear that it will "markedly alter the respective and long-standing roles of ministers and Parliament in the legislative process". The Lords may well, despite Mr Blair having packed it with so many mates since 1997, defeat it. It may require the Parliament Acts to be used to put it into law, but then only after a long delay, with high-profile press coverage of the row alerting the public to this potentially massive loss of their liberties. That might in turn be so damaging to the Government that it backs down altogether. Yet if Charlie's proposals had already been implemented (presumably, also, with the Parliament Acts), none of this would be possible. The Lords would have lost its power of veto entirely. It would not be able to hold up the passage of a Bill as illiberal and dangerous as this for more than 60 days. In 1968, when the last serious attempt was made to reform the Lords, Labour and Tory backbenchers united to stop proposals that would have put the Lords under the control of the Commons' whips. Parliament must think very carefully and urgently about mounting a similar mission to prevent Britain from sliding to dictatorship. So far, Labour backbenchers have been quiet about the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill. They must ask themselves: do they really want to hand to Mr Blair and his friends the power to make laws that have the status of despotic fiats? Would they be happy for a Conservative administration, if we ever have one again, to legislate in this way? Would they be happy for the House of Lords to have an entirely ornamental function, whether or not its members are partially or wholly elected? Or do they trust a combination of their own loyalists and the Prime Minister himself to make laws that not only bypass the Lords, but can, if necessary, bypass the Commons, too? I address this question to Labour backbenchers, because it will be they who have the power to stop such nonsense. The Lords wisely decided not to die in the last ditch in 1911: but they might as well die there now, in the cause not of partisan self-interest (as was the case 95 years ago), but of defending liberty and our constitution. Frankly, these plans are so absolutist that one could make a strong case that the Queen should abdicate rather than give her assent to either of them. To obviate that horror she, Parliament and the British public must demand a straight answer to a straight and vital question: what is so wrong with our democracy that Labour wishes so ruthlessly to end it? Charter 88 protested in favour of elected Lords Tony Blair's plans for reforming the House of Lords lie in tatters after MPs rejected all of the options available to them, ranging from a fully elected chamber to a fully appointed one. The prime minister's preference for a fully appointed "revising" chamber gained the least support while an 80% elected, 20% appointed Lords was the least disliked option. Among those voting against were four cabinet members and 21 ministers out of a total of 179 Labour MPs. The cabinet ministers were Education Secretary Charles Clarke, Trade Secretary Patricia Hewitt, Welsh Secretary Peter Hain as well as Commons' Leader Robin Cook. A spokesman for Mr Blair said: "This shows there is no consensus on any of the options in the House of Commons. "The task now is for the joint committee to examine the votes in both the Commons and the Lords and bring forward their conclusions." MPs went on to reject every other alternative in a series of free votes. The prime minister's desire for a fully-appointed House of Lords was rebuffed by 323 votes to 245. Elected rejected Members also rejected the idea of a wholly-elected upper house by a slim 289 to 272 margin. An 80% elected, 20% appointed Lords went the same way with MPs voting by 284 votes to 281 against. Then they rejected a 60% elected, 40% appointed house by 316 votes to 253. The House of Lords, however, backed the option of an all-appointed chamber by an overwhelming 335 to 110 votes as the reform debate reached a critical stage. But a series of proposals that involved partly elected, partly appointed versions of the Upper House were roundly rejected. MPs rejected without a division the options of an 80% appointed, 20% elected chamber or a 60% appointed, 40% elected upper House. Ahead of the votes, Mr Cook stressed his desire for a largely elected second chamber as he argued it was crucial MPs came to "one single commanding view on the way forward". But once all the options were rejected he conceded that it might be a good time to "go home and sleep" on the events of the day. Abolition calls MPs rejected a bid by Labour left-winger Dennis Skinner to abolish the Lords by 390 votes to 172. Mr Blair made it back from his summit with French President Jacques Chirac in time for the key votes. Number 10 says the whole point of a free vote is for MPs to be free to express their opinions, but it is rare for ministers to challenge the prime minister's views openly. Leading that challenge was Mr Cook, who restated to the Commons his belief that a largely elected second chamber was right in principle. It was the only way to create a system that had both public support and would stand the test of time, he argued. Opening the Commons debate, Mr Cook said: "The house has an opportunity to bring down the curtain on what has been the longest political indecision in our history." In the event there was no conclusion in what is likely to have been an extremely embarrassing episode for the government. Legitimacy Mr Cook said MPs should "celebrate" the fact that there would be differences of opinion over the shape of reform. "I think what is crucial is that the Commons does come to one clear, single commanding view on the way forward," he said. In the modern world, legitimacy was conferred by democracy, said Mr Cook. The leader of the Conservatives in the Lords, Lord Strathclyde, said the government's strategy had "backfired". "Conservatives want to see a stronger second chamber, trusted by the people and better able to hold ministers to account," he said. All the results of Tuesday's votes will be examined by the joint committee of MPs and peers looking at the issue on 25 February. Committee member and Labour MP Joyce Quinn: "During the course of the debate and vote it became clear that a number of members back the idea of indirect elections but their votes were split between elected and appointed," she said. See also Reforming the Lords British Constitutional Changes Britain - what is it? Parliament's doomsday machine The UK Parliament Charter 88 Crime Pays |
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