Orders of the Day — LIFE PEERAGES BILL [Lords]

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 12 February 1958.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Mr Cledwyn Hughes Mr Cledwyn Hughes , Anglesey 12:00, 12 February 1958

Certainly not, although it is not necessarily popular in Wales. But the Labour Party must use all the weapons of propaganda which are at its disposal. It is only in the same position as hon. Members opposite, who vote against an increase of salary but accept the money in due course. The Upper House still remains a source of power to the party opposite. That explains the affection for it and for the Bill by hon. Members opposite.

It is also quite unreasonable that there should be in the Upper House a number of peers who hold important offices of State and who cannot be engaged in debate or questioned in this House by the elected representatives of the people. They are the Lord Chancellor, the Lord President of the Council, the Minister of Power, the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations and the First Lord of the Admiralty, and, to the chagrin of the Welsh Members of this House, we now have the Minister of State for Welsh Affairs there as well.

We cannot engage those Ministers on the Floor of the House, or in Committee upstairs. The Lord Chancellor has always been out of reach. There is a wide range of subjects upon which we should like to tackle him from time to time and upon which it is right and proper that we should. Indeed, there was an important occasion last week when his presence in this House was very desirable, but we could not reach him. Is it anticipated that now that the prestige of the Upper House is to be enhanced, more Ministers will be appointed there? The House should have an assurance about this. Lord Hailsham spoke of the dictatorship of elected Members. He did not speak thus when he was struggling to keep his seat in this House. What we dislike and fear is the domination of hereditary Members.

I wish to examine the Bill from two other standpoints: first as a nonconformist; and secondly, as a Welshman. In this context, I wish to ask two questions. First, what connection has the other place with Wales? Secondly, what relevance has the Upper House to nonconformity and the Free Churches? There are not more than two or three Welsh peers who know anything about the Principality. The Scots have 16 elected peers, but the Welsh are a democratic nation and our aristocracy faded out in the sixteenth century. There are, of course, many peers who carry Welsh names, but they are no more Welsh than the Sultan of Zanzibar. As the late David Lloyd George once said of a so-called Welsh peer, the only Welsh thing about him was his rent roll. Wales, however, is affected by the behaviour of the Upper House. All this is manifestly undemocratic. Whoever else is enfranchised in the Upper House, the Principality is not.

Another anomaly is the representation of the Church of England in the other place. The Prelates of the Church of England intervene from time to time in debates on major issues, and I often agree with what some of them say. But what about the Church of Scotland? What about the nonconformist denominations? What about the Roman Catholics? If we are to have ecclesiastical representation at all, let it have some relation to reality. In Wales, we disestablished the Church over thirty-five years ago, and it has been a good deal healthier and more virile since it was disestablished.

As a Welshman and a nonconformist, I say that the Bill does not touch the fringes of the real constitutional problem. There are arguments in favour of a limited revising Chamber on some nonhereditary basis, and there are strong arguments for one-Chamber government, but we shall make no real progress towards unity in this matter until the party opposite shows a willingness to abandon its attachment to the majority which the present hereditary Chamber gives it and which this unfortunate Bill does nothing at all to modify.