Mr. David Clelland (Tyne Bridge): In confirming that appointment does not necessarily mean the maintenance of the status quo, will my right hon. Friend also confirm that if Members of Parliament voted for an appointed Chamber, it would not restrict the Committee to existing methods of appointment or indeed to those mentioned in the report, as there would be a wider interpretation of appointment?
Andrew Mackinlay (Thurrock): There could be a raffle.
Dr. Cunningham: My hon. Friend the Member for Tyne Bridge (Mr. Clelland) is absolutely right, and I hear the suggestion that we could have a raffle. Even a raffle might be better than the bagatelle that we have at the moment, so it could conceivably be a step forward.
We said at the beginning of our report that there was an historic opportunity to enact a reform that would enable the second Chamber to continue to play an important role that is complementary to that of the Commons, with its future secured after almost 100 years of doubt about what it was there for and was supposed to do. It is important to understand reform in the context of the broad historical sweep to which I have referred. We have sought in our report to inform the debates and votes in both Houses by clarifying what we believe should be the future role, powers and nature of the second Chamber and identifying the implications of our conclusions for its composition. We welcome the Government's decision to ensure that all the proposals are fully considered here and elsewhere before they table the motions on which they will invite the House to decide.
I mentioned that a broad consensus had been established in this area. For the most part, the Committee, which was always good natured and easy to chair, worked with expedition and quickly reached unanimity on these matters. There was almost no dispute of any sort about them.
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Mr. Clelland: Does the hon. Gentleman suggest that, if the House voted for a partly elected second Chamber, it would inevitably lead to a wholly elected second Chamber?
Mr. Tyler: No, I suggest nothing of the sort, but, as a long-serving Member, the hon. Gentleman knows that no Parliament can commit a future Parliament. We cannot say that there will never ever be a fully elected House. What I am saying is that those who wait for perfection wait a very long time and hand a weapon to those who want to remain with total imperfection. That is important. It may be that the Prime Minister floated the idea that the second Chamber should remain as it is simply to spur those of us who believe that the status quo is not acceptable to move on. I hope that that will be the position of the House.
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Mr. Clelland : Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that if Members were elected to the second Chamber they would represent not regions but constituents - and, particularly under a list system, political parties?
Mr. Arbuthnot: Yes. They would represent political parties, they would represent people, they would represent regions. They would represent all sorts of entities. It would be an answer, to an extent.
The real difficulty with the Committee's remit is that it was asked to look only at the composition of one of the Houses, whereas it should have been asked to look at the settlement as a whole, because there will be trade-off effects. If, for example, there is a hybrid House of some sort, what will be the knock-on effects on the other parts of that House? If the House of Lords becomes more representative, it should surely follow that the House of Commons can be reduced in size. Actually, that ought to happen anyway - this House should have 300 or 400 Members, not 650 - but there ought to be trade-off effects in the whole Palace. The Joint Committee has not been asked to consider that. Some argue that the new House of Lords could usefully contain elements binding our tiers of government together - drawing in, for instance, aspects of European and Scottish representation - but we have not been asked to consider that either.
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5.33 p.m.
Mr. David Clelland (Tyne Bridge): There seems to be a preconception among some hon. Members that elections confer legitimacy whereas appointments do not. I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Maples), because I hope to show that an appointment system can satisfy all the five points relating to desirable qualities described in the report, while elections would not. I shall remind the House of those five qualities: legitimacy; representativeness; no domination by any one party; independence; and expertise. To those, I would add a sixth, which I was surprised to find missing from a report that seems to have been dominated by Members wanting an elected House: accountability. That is not on the list, but I would add it to the qualities needed in the system that I propose, because it is an essential element.
I am not going to be told that I am somehow not a democrat because I oppose elections. As has been pointed out in this debate, we are not a 100 per cent. pure democracy in the United Kingdom. In fact, we believe that democracy is so important that we should not dilute or devalue it by applying it to every aspect of public life. It is reserved for decision-making bodies such as local government, the devolved Assemblies and the House of Commons. They are the democratic institutions. In my view, a second Chamber of Parliament should not be put into that category. As has been said, people would be reluctant to come out and vote for such a Chamber if they were not electing a Government, so we would have all the problems of low turnout and dissatisfaction that apply to other institutions now.
I should explain why I oppose elections, because I count myself as a democrat. Elections for a wholly elected second House would inevitably be fought along political lines, whatever electoral system we might invent for it, and it would therefore divide along political lines. In other words, we would be creating another House of Commons. Much loved though this institution is out there, I see no great demand among the electorate for the creation of another House of Commons.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough): Does my hon. Friend accept that the present House of Lords - largely appointed, admittedly, by means of a system for which no one here has argued - divides on political lines? Does he not believe that any future appointed House would find itself doing broadly the same?
Mr. Clelland: Not always. My hon. Friend should have let me finish: I am going to suggest a system for appointments that may prove attractive to Members who favour election but who are not too blinkered.
We are faced with the possibility of another set of elections to fight and finance. I find no great appetite in the political parties, or indeed in the electorate, for either prospect. We are faced with the possibility of yet another tier of national politicians representing the same people in the same Parliament - MPs who will have fought on the basis of a manifesto and who will have a mandate. Regardless of any attempts to gerrymander the elections, they will have a mandate and they will have constituents to look after.
Mr. Bryant: How does my hon. Friend deal with the fact that the Labour party manifesto committed us to a more democratic and representative House of Lords?
Mr. Clelland: I hope that, if I am given an opportunity to do so, I will demonstrate that that is what we will have.
With an electoral system, the interests of party politics would undoubtedly dominate in the second Chamber. Frustrating and defeating the Government would take priority over scrutiny and good, considered advice. Such a system would be a recipe for parliamentary gridlock - as other bicameral arrangements around the world have shown - and for bad government. Moreover, as has been said, there is the issue of office costs, allowances, secretaries, salaries and so forth.
Members should also bear it in mind that, out there in the constituencies, two or more MPs may represent the same electors - MPs in the same Parliament too busy scoring points off each other to look to the needs of their constituents. That will apply particularly when elections are approaching, on both sides. We can imagine an Opposition Member using this place to try to embarrass opponents.
What of the five qualities in relation to for elections? Elections cannot guarantee no domination by any one political party. They cannot guarantee independence or expertise. In my view, a partly elected second Chamber would be even worse: it would have all the disadvantages of an elected Chamber, which I have just mentioned, while creating two classes of Member. We can imagine the cries of "Foul!" when elected Members are outvoted by unelected Members. It would be only a matter of time before there was a demand for a wholly elected Chamber, if indeed a majority were elected in the first place. That would, I think, become irresistible.
What, then, do I propose? I want the same as the Members who want elections. I want an end to the hereditary system, and an end to a Chamber dominated by patronage. I want all five of the desirable qualities, plus accountability, in the second Chamber. So why am I going to vote for an appointed second Chamber?
Let me make it clear to the Joint Committee that in voting for that I will not be voting for the status quo. In fact, I am disappointed that the Committee showed so little imagination in considering methods of appointment. I am also sorry that indirect elections did not figure in the final recommendations, although they were mentioned in the report.
I must emphasise that, in promoting and voting for a fully appointed Chamber, I will not be supporting the methods of appointment suggested in the report. I want a wider structure for the appointing bodies. My hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, North (Mr. Savidge) should have given way to me earlier, for I would have agreed with him. The idea of an appointments commission has been tried and found wanting: all that we got were people like the commission's members. That suggests that, given such a commission, the composition of the second Chamber would be in the hands of those who appointed it. We would have patronage by the back door.
The problem, as I see it, is that we started from the wrong place. We should have decided long ago what we wanted the second Chamber to be for. We should have decided what it should do before deciding who would sit there and how they would get there. The Joint Committee went some way towards dealing with that question, but it needs more consideration.
I agree with those Members who say that if the second Chamber is to become more embroiled in the legislative process it should be elected, but if it were to do that it would just become a duplicate of the House of Commons. What would be the point of that? Members may as well vote for abolition rather than creating another House of Commons.
There is a role for a properly constituted second Chamber, not as a check on the Executive, as has been suggested - that is the job of the Opposition and Back Benchers in this place - or as a duplicate of the House of Commons, but as an advisory, deliberative and scrutinising Chamber where debates on matters of national importance can be held in full public view, informing and educating. There would still be a role for the second Chamber in the legislative process but not directly. It could suggest amendments, as it does now, but we would not be obliged to consider them. Members in this House would pick them up and move them in this Chamber. We would get far less of what we get at the moment, which is a lot of political posturing and trying to upset the Government's programme. We would get meaningful, helpful amendments that commanded much more respect in the House of Commons.
To achieve that, we must have Members who command respect and are generally recognised as having expertise and experience. How can we assemble those experienced, knowledgeable, respected individuals, independent yet at the same time representative? It can be achieved by widening the responsibility for making appointments, by calling for representatives from bodies such as the Confederation of British Industry, the Trades Union Congress, religious and voluntary organisations, devolved Assemblies, local government and political parties, too - they are an important part of the national system.
The representatives would have a fixed term of office, following which they would either be replaced or reappointed, one third at a time. That would produce a Chamber that had legitimacy and representativeness. It would not be dominated by any political party. It would have independence and expertise. Its Members would be accountable to the appointing body that sent them there. It would be different from the House of Commons, a second Chamber preserving the primacy of the elected Commons but commanding respect in the country and among Members of Parliament.
Such a process of appointment has important advantages, as has been pointed out. Appointing bodies can be required to ensure proper representation of women and ethnic minorities, something that elections have failed to do and will continue to fail to do.
Julie Morgan: Will my hon. Friend give way?
Mr. Clelland: I do not have time.
We can be assured that the appointing bodies will wish to ensure that representatives are knowledgeable, able and can articulate their interests in the second Chamber. That will ensure that it is an effective and useful tool in our democracy. It need not be entirely divorced from the electoral process. Appointing bodies such as the devolved Assemblies may want to appoint representatives by way of indirect elections. In that sense, indirect elections could be introduced into the system.
Once the Government have tabled the motion to deal with the issue, which they have not done yet, it may be possible to table amendments to give clearer guidance to the Joint Committee on alternatives such as those that I have described. If not, I appeal to colleagues on both sides to vote for an appointed House, but on the clear premise that the Joint Committee must examine the contents of the debates, not just the results of the votes, and come up with a more imaginative and diverse system of appointments than is currently the case or is on offer in the report before us.
5.43 p.m.
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Mr. Clelland: The hon. Gentleman suggests that Members should be elected. Presumably, people will elect them, and people are constituents. We cannot avoid that link. If we are to avoid the link between people and election, where is the democracy?
Mr. Thomas: The hon. Gentleman has to realise that what I am advocating is a regional PR list involving large regions, in which it would be very difficult to deliver such constituency business. We could employ the same convention that exists in this House, whereby a constituent with a problem is simply referred to the Member of Parliament for that constituency. That is what happens informally in the relationship between MPs and AMs, and it could well be done in the new reformed second Chamber. Of course, the final part of the reform is the establishment of a supreme court. We cannot allow Law Lords to remain within that second Chamber.
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Mr. Clelland: Does my hon. Friend recognise that the outcome of polls depends on the question that is asked? How does she imagine people would react if they were asked whether they wanted a Chamber full of experienced, knowledgeable people, or a Chamber full of MPs? What does she think the result would be then?
Fiona Mactaggart: That is almost exactly what Lord Norton of Louth asked. He asked in his question, which got the smallest majority in favour of elections, "What do you prefer - a specific expert or an elected person?" and people preferred the elected person. At every opportunity to ask people, they have made it clear that they want election.
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