House of Lords — House of Lords, 2015-01-06
Topic: Government Operations
Ivor Seward Richard (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Williams on raising this issue. It is one that we have skirted around many times in this House for a very long time—I still bear the stripes of past debates on this subject; no doubt there will be others to come—without facing up to it The chief attraction of what my noble friend Lord Williams had to say is that it can be done without primary legislation. I am in favour of an elected second Chamber and have been for a very long time, as the House probably knows. I do not resile from that position one scrap. Indeed, if some of the noises that are being made by the leadership of my party in favour of an elected second Chamber based on strong regional connections were to come about, I would welcome it with open arms and be delighted to support it We are not currently faced with that issue, however, but with a problem that has arisen from the way that the size of the House has grown. One can set out the issues very simply in a number of questions: is there a problem with the size of the House? The answer to that is clearly yes. It is too big for the work that it does. We do not need 800 people to do work that 400 or 450 are perfectly capable of doing. Is the problem going to go on unless it is resolved? The answer to that is clearly yes. Is the problem going to get worse? The answer to that is clearly yes I echo and totally agree with the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Butler, in his somewhat apocalyptic view as to what will happen after the next general election. An incoming Government are bound to want to rebalance the House of Lords. It is asking too much of any Prime Minister to say that he would be prepared to leave the House of Lords unbalanced, particularly if the number of Liberal Members of Parliament declines and there are more than 100 Liberal Democrats sitting on the Benches of the House of Lords. That is not something that any Government will view with equanimity or pleasure. He will want to do something about it. After all, this is a legislative Chamber. We are generally here not to advise the Government, but to pass laws, in which case the Government have to get their business through this House as well as through the House of Commons. To do that, any Government will want the House of Lords broadly to represent the political situation in the country at the time, and therefore I think that the problem will get worse rather than better What can we do about it? It seems to me that there are basically three alternatives. One is an age limit, which the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, and various other people have proposed. Secondly, people can be persuaded to go, presumably through a scheme of voluntary retirement, the outlines of which at least are on the statute book. That, coupled with some sort of financial inducement, might produce a mad rush out of this Chamber on the part of many of our colleagues, although personally I rather doubt that. Thirdly, the numbers can be reduced based on the service that people have given I understand the superficial attraction of an age limit—it is a simple way of dealing with the matter. However, it is brutal and blunt. It might be fair but I am not sure that it would be effective. A system based on an appreciation of what people do in this House, how often they appear and how often they participate in the affairs of the House would be a much more sensible way of approaching any sort of scheme for a reduction in numbers.