Lord Strathclyde: Labour is preparing to deny the people of this country their say on whether AV should be used to elect MPs

Lord Strathclyde is Leader of the House of Lords.

Whilst the Commons may head home just after 10.30pm on most Monday evenings, the Lords is a little less predictable.

The Lords, unlike the Commons, (rightly) doesn’t possess what some may see as the luxury of a guillotine to end the day’s business. Nor are there motions to programme its business. Labour is still the largest single political party in the Lords. Business is therefore enacted on the basis of consent and agreement between the main parties and with the crossbenches. And so the key to getting a Bill through all its stages in the Lords is an agreed timetable and respect for historical convention. And with the passage of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill this week, that’s where the problem lies.

This Bill, a flagship part of the Coalition Agreement, delivers two key pledges. First, that a referendum should be held on 5 May 2011 to allow the people of this country to determine which system they would prefer to be in place at the next general election to elect MPs. Secondly, that at that general election, the number of MPs should be reduced from 650 to 600. Both provisions relate to the same future election. Both provisions draw on the coalition government’s key commitment to democratic renewal. Both provisions are therefore contained within the same Bill.

Exceptionally in the case of this Bill, Labour has refused discussion about timings. The Bill having passed through the Commons is being delayed in the Lords by a clique of self-interested, go slow Labour ex-MPs. They are determined to look after their old friends, determined to retain the inbuilt advantage for their own party in the current status quo, and determined to fight the principle of equal constituency sizes, and with that, fair and equal votes.

Lord Strathclyde: The House of Lords is clean and decent but must act against Labour sleaze

Lord Strathclyde leads the Conservatives in the Upper House.

The allegations of Labour peers discussing what fees they might charge for promoting changes in legislation are shocking.  The rules of the Lords are explicit.  Peers “must never accept any financial inducement as an incentive or reward for exercising parliamentary influence”. And they “must not vote on any bill or motion, or ask any question…or promote any matter in return for payment or any other material benefit.”

How on earth could experienced former MPs and Ministers, like Lord Taylor and Lord Truscott, boast they had changed the law for fee-paying clients? I find the idea incredible. Would anyone really demand such eye-watering fees to whet their appetite to use behind the scenes influence to ‘bend’ the rules? It is vital we establish the facts.

The House of Lords is proud of its high reputation for integrity. Like any other body over the decades it has had those who have let the House and public down. But day in day out peers, who are unpaid except for expenses and without the army of research assistants and secretaries that throng the corridors of the Commons, work hard to improve draft bills and safeguard the public from bad law.

Lord Strathclyde: There is no prospect of 42 days passing the House of Lords today

Lord Strathclyde leads the Conservatives in the Upper House.

We are told that spinning is dead, yet these last few days we’ve seen the doctors hard at work on the question of 42-day detention in what was once the freest county in the world.

The public deserve far better than that such a vital question be played with in this way. Are the government serious about forcing through this further restriction of liberty – or aren’t they?  This is no issue for political posturing.

Let me at least be clear. There is no prospect of this draconian idea passing the House of Lords today. There is no prospect of the Conservative Party softening its opposition to a proposal for which not a shred of credible evidence has been advanced – and which is opposed by a former Labour Lord Chancellor, a former Labour Attorney-General, the former Head of MI5, a former Chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee and the Director of Public Prosecutions. These are not liberal activists. They are people who know the realities of the terrorist threat. We should heed their views.   

A six-week lock-up without charge would go far beyond almost every other free country. Parliament has already quadrupled the time suspects can be held, something never done even at the height of the IRA campaigns.  There is no evidence any terrorist has succeeded as a result of the present limit.

Lord Strathclyde: The proposed reforms to the Lords are quintessentially New Labour

Lord Strathclyde is Leader of the Conservative Party in the House of Lords.

In his dying days in office Tony Blair has rushed out “legacy” plans for “reform” of the Lords. As ever with a Blair reform, nothing important has been worked out properly, except New Labour’s self-interest.

Who but Mr Blair would have penciled in as his first principle of “reform” that every one of his friends should stay in the House for the rest of their lives? An army of over 150 Labour backwoodsmen, like Lord Levy, would remain for a generation and more, ready to vote down any proposal that might be favoured by a majority of elected peers.

Predictably, Mr Blair has opted unerringly for the system of “election” that keeps power in the hands of party bosses.  In his proposed “reformed” House there would be 540 peers alongside all existing life peers, swelling the House to over 800 members, at a time when the public are crying out for fewer politicians. 

50% of these would, by about 2020, be elected on party lists in immense Euro-constituencies, utterly remote from connection with the people. Another 30% would be drawn from lists submitted by party offices, then selected by an unelected Commission charged to fill the House according to politically correct quotas.