House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) (Abolition of By-Elections) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2017-09-08
Topic: Government Operations
Merlin Hay (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I am in favour of reform of the methods of getting into the House of Lords, but this Bill will ensure that we have an appointed House of Lords within a generation or shortly after. This has not been the clearly expressed intention of the House of Commons whenever it has voted on this issue. That is my major stumbling block because I, like many others, think that lawmakers must have democratic legitimacy and therefore be elected. This is not satisfied by an appointed House The trouble is that there are Members of both Houses who think that the other place might lose its primacy if we end up having an elected, or majority- elected, House over here. That is why they want to see an appointed House, even if it is via the back door as is happening here. The composition of an appointed Chamber will inevitably be heavily influenced by the Civil Service, which will end up drawing up the guidance for the appointments body and, probably, determining the membership of it The next challenge is that the Prime Minister is actually the head of the executive branch—the Civil Service. He or she may also sit in the House of Commons as the leader of the majority party, but these two roles should not be confused. It is democratically indefensible that this person should be able to exert immense influence on the membership of one of the Chambers of the legislature, whose purpose is to pass laws which are there to control their own Executive. That is not a good idea in any way at all. If we want greater democratic authority, and we should, we should first remove the Prime Minister’s powers of appointment via the honours system and then we can see how a replacement appointments system works in real life. If we like it, then the hereditary Peers could retire I had thought that most Members of both Houses of Parliament would be believers in a two-chamber democracy with checks and balances, but I now realise that a lot of people are either Commons supremacists or they think that central state control is not a problem. However, that is not why we are in Parliament I agree that the by-elections process is flawed, and we should consider the thoughtful ideas put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Cope, for reform of the Standing Orders. We could also alter the balance of places between the parties based, say, on the total number of votes cast for each party at the last election, while preserving the 20% of independents through the Appointments Commission. All of this would be possible without primary legislation. By the way, the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, might be amused that I am sitting here because of my mother who sat before me: I am a Scottish Peer. The Queen sits on that Throne as Queen: the royals can also do this because of James VI—I think you call him James I Our small proportion of hereditary Peers was put here with a purpose: to ensure further democratic—I remember those words being used—reform of the House of Lords. It is my duty to try and see that. The fact that it is taking a long time for the other place to come up with an acceptable reform is not our fault, but until they do we hereditary Peers must stay or it will not happen. I will vote for a satisfactory, sensible, sane solution which encapsulates democracy at its core. This Bill is not that and is a dangerous step in the wrong direction.