Address in Reply to Her Majesty's Most Gracious Speech

Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 3:35 pm on 2 December 2003.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Lord Strathclyde Lord Strathclyde Conservative 3:35, 2 December 2003

My Lords, I admit that it is unusual for us on this side to move such an amendment to the Motion for an humble Address. It is equally unusual for the Liberal Democrats so to do. The fact that both parties have done so this year says something striking, of which all noble Lords are all too well aware: the exceptional degree of unease—to be blunt, even anger—about the cavalier way in which the Government have treated this House and the senior judiciary. If the Government plunge on with their ill-conceived Bills, that anger can only deepen.

Why are we where we are? In June, the Prime Minister had a row with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, the then Lord Chancellor and a scrupulous respecter of his office of judicial independence in your Lordships' House. The Prime Minister was having problems in his now famously botched reshuffle. Then some bright spark popped up and said that he could look more modern by scrapping the office of Lord Chancellor, or, as the Prime Minister so intellectually put it, getting rid of the wigs and women's tights.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, was summoned. No doubt he told the Prime Minister what the Judges' Council, the Lord Chief Justice, the majority of Law Lords and the Society of Black Lawyers have since told him—that his plan was unnecessary, potentially harmful and patently ill thought-out. His reward was dismissal. As the noble and learned Lord was led away, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, glided in smoothly from the anterooms of power.

What an astonishing way to take a decision to kick out the Law Lords, scrap the Lord Chancellor and spend who knows what on building a new Supreme Court, who knows where—all to solve a problem that no one really thinks exists at all. When the Prime Minister met the Liaison Committee in another place, Mr Alan Beith said that it seemed that neither the Cabinet, Law Lords, senior judges, Parliament nor the Scottish Administration had been consulted. He asked:

"Prime Minister, was it just two or three people in Number 10 . . . and they discussed it with you and you just made the announcement?"

Did the Prime Minister hit back with an angry denial? No, he shrugged his shoulders and said:

"It is in the very nature of changes to do with the reshuffle that obviously there is a more restricted discussion".

So it is official: a reshuffle dictated this massive constitutional change. The policy was cooked up in the kitchen cabinet and served in a hurry half-baked; it is now to be force-fed through this House. There was not a shred of consultation with anyone here. The House still has no date for a debate on any of these sweeping proposals, except the speakership, where the noble and learned Lord seems in a hurry to be on his way.

Many noble Lords opposite have told me that they share my view on this sorry episode. It is surely inconceivable in any other free country, where big constitutional changes must follow wide debate, often a referendum and a two-thirds majority in Parliament, that such far-reaching changes could be bounced through in this way. Other countries require consensus. That, if nothing else, would justify support for the amendment that I submit today.

We will hear from the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor. No doubt he will tell us, "Sure, on the one hand, we could have consulted before. But then, on the other hand, we are now consulting after". "Let us be absolutely clear", he might say, "there can be a big conversation". Cannot we be part of this big conversation before our House is changed? Does not the senior judiciary qualify to be in on the big conversation?

The noble and learned Lord may promise a spanking new Supreme Court building to try to win over the noble and learned Lords, who want a bigger home than we can give them, however much many of us want them to stay here in this House. Now he is even dropping hints on safeguarding judicial independence. But does it not strike him how utterly ludicrous it is that the safeguards that he talks about are safeguards against his own proposals? It is a funny old world, but it shows how right the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, and others are to be deeply wary. If safeguards are given on a judicial appointments commission, will the same be given on an Appointments Commission at your Lordships House?

The noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor is a loyal man—there is none more so—and he is not a foolish man, but he must know that his policy is falling apart. It looks like a recipe for chaos and confusion. It risks far too much, far too fast, for far too little gain. The Lord Chancellor should consider a constitutional commission on this great subject. He should think again and consult more widely, more openly and more deeply. If he did that, he could save the Prime Minister from what was bad government and a bad error and he might even help to preserve a judicial system of unique authority and unquestioned independence which is also an adornment to this House. The House should invite him to do so tonight.

I now turn to the other element of the amendment, which relates to the composition of this House. I say with all respect to the Government that this issue does not belong to them. It belongs to Parliament and it matters to everyone in Parliament and in the country. There is no point in harping on old myths and ancient wrongs. We should deal with the situation as it is now. In 1999, the Government achieved a long-held objective to end the right to sit here by virtue of an hereditary peerage. That right no longer exists. The backwoodsmen have gone. Those who remain are elected. Now the Lord Chancellor says that he must act decisively against them.

A wise man decides where he is going before he acts—something the Government have never managed to do when it comes to constitutional change. The Lord Chancellor is surely at his most spurious when he says that purging elected Peers will deliver stability. If he thinks that this Bill will deliver stability, I fear that he is sadly wrong. To judge from Mr Robin Cook's reaction last week to what he denounced as a Bill to create an appointed House, opening this box again could do precisely the opposite. The Government may think that they can confine debate to old war cries about hereditary toffs, but that will not wash any more.

The Bill is also sadly short of the real question before us. The real question that we should be addressing is not a narrow, partisan Bill, but how to make Parliament work better in controlling the executive. Purging 20 per cent of non-government Peers—those of whom the noble and learned Lord said:

"Many of them are among its most active and effective members".—[Official Report, 18/9/03; col. 1058.]— does not seem to be the obvious place to begin, but then I do not think that this Government ever wanted a stronger Parliament. If they did, they would not have given house room to the idea in paragraph 41 of the consultation paper which suggested that appointments to this House might reflect the number of seats won in the Commons. Doubtless, such a House—with 62 per cent of its political Members hand-picked by the Prime Minister—would have loyally waved through restriction of jury trial.