“WE ARE PASSIONATELY committed to preserving and enhancing the integrity of the institutions that make this country great and which guarantee our most precious British birthright: freedom under the law.” Certainly not the cry of a mindless moderniser. So, all the more important that the speaker was none other than David Cameron.
The strength of Mr Cameron’s “passionate” commitment is likely before long to be tested more severely than he might have expected. For one of those institutions, the House of Lords, has been forced into potentially hostile limelight by the “cash for honours” uproar.
The manner in which peerages are conferred is, of course, crucial to the perceived integrity of our House. No one knows better than existing members how damaging to our reputation even one or two “corrupt” cases can be. So we are anything but dismayed that current misconduct has been unveiled. And we should welcome implementation of the seven-year-old proposal, by the Wakeham Commission, that all nominations for the Lords should be made through, and vetted for propriety by, a clearly independent, statutory commission. This would certainly “enhance the integrity” of the House.
There are, however, two other much more substantial, and quite different, propositions, which should certainly not be accepted. First, is the introduction of elected members to the House of Lords; and second, a curtailment of the powers of that House. Neither of these ideas is in any way related to the current scandal, nor has either previously appealed to Tony Blair. They surface in this context now, one must suspect, only as a means of diverting attention from his own responsibility for the present crisis.
Each proposal requires closer examination than before because the balance of arguments has been shifting substantially against them both — not least as a result of changes made by Labour since 1997.
The most important has been the removal of the great bulk of the hereditary peers. Out of some 652 who were there in 1997, only 92 have been allowed to remain — and then only for life. This huge change instantly, and decisively, disposed of the three most “undemocratic” features of the former House: heredity is no longer a passport to membership; there is no longer a permanent hereditary majority; and, most important of all, no longer an in-built Tory majority. One rubs one’s eyes with disbelief that such features were allowed to survive so long.
One other important change has taken place in the past nine years — and this too with all-round consent. No one has challenged the Prime Minister’s appointment of some 156 Labour life peers (alongside a smaller number from the other parties: 103 in all) so as to give Labour — for the first time — the same total membership as the Conservatives. As a result, the House has been transformed. Neither of the two main parties now has more than 30 per cent of the membership. The remaining 40 per cent consists of Lib Dems or crossbenchers. Theirs are often the crucial votes.
Party arithmetic is far from being the only factor that counts. There are two other significant features of Lords’ membership: first, a formidable diversity of expertise and experience and, second, instinctive (and increasing) independence of judgment — even for party members.
No longer dominated by a majority of backwoods hereditaries, the Lords have (as Baroness Jay of Paddington, then Leader of the House, predicted when she expelled the hereditaries) been gaining confidence. This has most often been displayed on the very issue that Mr Cameron has emphasised — guaranteeing freedom under the law — most recently, for example, on the Identity Cards Bill. Such debates routinely engage contributions of remarkably diverse expertise — from former home, defence or foreign secretaries, chiefs of the defence staff, MI6 officers, police commissioners, lawyers and so on.
It was performance of this kind on an earlier Terrorism Bill that prompted the late Hugo Young to comment: “Something important is being said about democracy when the only legislative chamber to perform the functions that people expect — deliberation, revision, improvement — contained not a single elected politician.” This is why it is surprising that the case for elected members is still being pressed so keenly. One looks in vain for any argument that suggests that their arrival would effect any practical improvement in the present structure.
The only ground advanced for change is that the very process of election would enhance the legitimacy of the Lords — but no one has attempted to argue that it would in any way improve the performance of the Lords. The opposite would indeed result.
Thus far there has been no real doubt about the balance of authority between the two Houses. The Lords — rather like a trial judge — can ask the Commons to think again — and more than once. However, it is still the Commons — rather like a jury — that has the last word.
But now that the historic marks of “illegitimacy” have been removed, the arrival of elected peers could have only one result — a claim by the Lords to parity of authority with the Commons, and so to a growing risk of recurrent gridlock between the two Houses, with consequent calls for change in the present balance. Then where next? And next?
Mr Cameron has very sensibly been making it plain that these are not issues on which he has any intention of rushing into policy decisions. We must all hope that his passionate commitment, after recent years of ill-considered constitutional upheaval, might be a six-word manifesto: “For Heaven’s sake, leave us alone”.
Lord Howe of Aberavon is a former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Foreign Secretary, Deputy Prime Minister and Leader of the House of Commons
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