Loss of Voting Right by Non-Attendance

Part of Orders of the Day — PARLIAMENT (No. 2) BILL – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 1 April 1969.

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Photo of Mr John Smith Mr John Smith , Cities of London and Westminster 12:00, 1 April 1969

I thought that at the outset you had put the Question, and therefore I was in the middle of my speech.

Since we embarked on this Clause less than six weeks ago we have talked mostly about how frequently peers ought to attend to be allowed to vote, and we have ranged from those who want peers to attend much more to those who do not want peers to attend at all.

When we last met we wound up on the rather surprising note from the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department that the House of Lords was to be run on commercial lines, rather like the Royal British Bank. I am a afraid I have to tell the Committee that the Royal British Bank was blown off course, and indeed that it suspended payment, for ever as it proved, in 1856. I wish the House of Lords, in whatever form it emerges as a result of our deliberations, better luck than that.

I should like to explain, by way of preamble, which is now so fashionable, and indeed because it is so long since we directed our attention to it, my point of view about this Bill and this Clause which is central to the reform of the other place. To my mind the idea that the House of Lords will ever be allowed any power, which is what the Clause in particular is about—it is about voting—is an illusion. It is an illusion that it will have any power, any more than we have here. Its history and its name are too emotive. It is much better, and we should be better if we agreed to this, to settle down to the idea—and as such it is extremely useful—that it is a high-grade debating society, or a Press conference. In my view it is perfectly suitable the way it is for those purposes. It is in a way a high-class version of Speakers' Corner.

This Clause is about voting, and it therefore seeks to give the House of Lords effective power which, as I have said, to my mind is an illusion——