http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201213/ldhansrd/text/120510-0002.htm

Any views?

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201213/ldhansrd/text/120510-0002.htm

So where do we go from here. Saying ‘no’ to the present Bill is common sense but what is the alternative. Both Houses need reform but if we are not to re write our constitution then it needs to be gradualist. Tony Blair took a key step in restricting the number of hereditary Peers and although many of them do a good job, membership of the House should now be by appointment and no longer based on the hereditary principle. We should also reduce the number of Peers. Over 800 is far too many. There is also a strong case for revisiting the appointments system even though it has improved over the last 15 years.

The present Bill hasn’t asked the most basic question of all. What do we want the second chamber to do? Answer that question first – then ask how the chamber should be constituted. If we want it to carry on doing the scrutiny that is not currently done in the Commons then appointment works – as long as the elected Commons can always have the last word. Democracy requires the elected chamber to have the upper hand and in Britain it does.

A last thought. Devolution is rightly in fashion but please not the independence asked for by the Scottish Nationalists. Why would we want to break up the most successful political and economic union the world has ever seen? But a federal House reflecting all parts of the UK? – now there is a totally new agenda – but not for this post!

This brings me to the critically important issue of the scrutiny of legislation. Select Committees in the Commons do a good job on ministerial departments but on Bills, which become the final laws, the Commons scrutiny is superficial. Most admit that the Lords do an excellent job of subjecting our legislation to detailed analysis – far better than the Commons. Who is going to do this in future if it is not the Lords?
The pressure on MPs is far greater than on Lords. We underestimate just how hard MPs work and how they are torn between conflicting pressures. Many of the amendments made in the Lords are accepted because they improve the legislation and because the Commons want them. If the second chamber is elected are we sure that good scrutiny will still take place? Elected members of a second chamber will have similar pressures to MPs. Would not an elected second chamber become a carbon copy of the Commons?
Only now is the Government beginning to address the question of deadlock between the two Houses. Critics of the present House will say other countries manage without gridlock so why can’t we? Well, we could IF we wrote a constitution – starting virtually from scratch. Consider the implications. You would need to write down the powers and responsibilities of the two Houses. If the Lords is to be only partially elected what is the relationship between elected and unelected members? If wholly elected you would have to remove the unelected Bishops and that means you would have to write a new relationship between church and state and the monarchy. All of this is perfectly possible but is it sensible? Rewriting large parts of our constitution would be a major legislative programme no doubt fought line by line in both Houses. A government that followed that route would find the rest of its legislation grinding to a halt. Any opposition Party worth the name would have a field day. And if the electorate don’t want it and the country doesn’t need it, why do it?

I agreed to go to the Lords in 2005 and I remember going in for the first time and seeing a line of wheel chairs plugged in to charging points – and the debate was on assisted dying! Had I made the mistake of my life? Well, yes I thought I had – but experience has given me a different perspective. For a start those wheel chairs tell you something rather important about how different the Lords is from the Commons. It is far more representative than the Commons of people with major disabilities. Also of ethnic minorities. Tony Blair appointed the first black leader of the House of Lords – Valerie Amos. It is as representative as the Commons for women but less representative on age and geography. One advantage of an appointed chamber is that with the right appointments system you can get representation for groups who would otherwise find it difficult to get heard.

The quality of debates in the Lords is very high. Quality of debate can be very high in the Commons too but it is bound to be more gladiatorial – it is the cockpit of the nation’s politics and you can’t take the strong emotions out of politics. Appointment means you have some real experts in the Lords who would be unlikely to stand for election to the Commons. This is a double edged sword. Experts tend to attend the debates that they are expert in – but the Lords debates the whole range of government policy and general political policy and their expertise is no advantage there. This is one of the arguments that send supporters of an elected chamber straight to the case for election. Who do you represent if you are appointed and why should being an expert in one field allow you to legislate on all other fields? Surely everyone who legislates should be elected?

Well, not necessarily. I don’t rely on the fact that a number of countries have unelected chambers – that’s interesting but doesn’t make the case. It is important to remember that everything the House of Lords does can be overturned in the Commons. The House of Lords cannot legislate without the final approval of the Commons. Quite rightly the elected chamber has a veto. The Lords does of course exercise great influence, but so do civil servants who have far more influence than most of us readily admit.

To be continued…

As a newly elected MP in 1979 it seemed obvious to me that we needed to elect the Lords. No question about it! Unelected legislators in the age of democracy – it must be wrong! So like most MPs I took it for granted that Labour’s election manifesto of 1910 must finally be honoured. I now have a memorial mug given to me by Margaret Becket MP with the quotation from that election saying:
TO THE WORKING – CLASS ELECTORS.
You are again being asked to return a majority pledged to remove the House of Lords as a block in the working of our constitution.
Do it, and do it emphatically.
THE LORDS MUST GO!

So why is reform or abolition of the Lords such a persistent and challenging task? All three parties said in their last manifestos that the Lords should be elected but the closer you get to the arguments the more complex and questionable it becomes. The current Governments Draft Bill has exposed the fault lines.

More to follow!

My evidence for the Health and Social Care Bill being a  mad policy choice is that everyone including the Government will suffer for bringing in a Bill that was quite unnescessary. For those in doubt about the quality of the NHS which is now seen around the world as an efficient system see:

http://www.commonwealthfund.org/Publications/Fund-Reports/2010/Jun/Mirror-Mirror-Update.aspx 

Or the following quote taken from it:

“Among the seven nations studied—Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States—the U.S. ranks last overall, as it did in the 2007, 2006, and 2004 editions of Mirror, Mirror. Most troubling, the U.S. fails to achieve better health outcomes than the other countries, and as shown in the earlier editions, the U.S. is last on dimensions of access, patient safety, coordination, efficiency, and equity. The Netherlands ranks first, followed closely by the U.K. and Australia. The 2010 edition includes data from the seven countries and incorporates patients’ and physicians’ survey results on care experiences and ratings on various dimensions of care.”

Also see: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7672260.stm

All of which leads me to the conclusion that following the painful passage of this Bill Government supporters are into flagellation!

It is bad because it will increase bureaucracy and costs without improving front line services. It is mad because the Government has alienated the very people it wanted to please – the NHS workers and the public. There are some good things in the Bill but they could have been done under the existing flexible legislation. The Bill was unnecessary.

So was the Government  mad or bad to bring in this Bill? My money is on mad. When political party’s try and please the voters on a specific issue and then upset the majority of them I count that as mad.