Joint Committee on Conventions of the UK Parliament

The Bishop of Chelmsford, The Rt Revd John Gladwin, spoke in a debate to "take note with approval of the report of the Joint Committee on Conventions of the UK Parliament" in the House of Lords  on 16 January 2007.  The Bishop’s said:


My Lords, I join the long list of speakers who welcome this report and congratulate the committee and the noble Lord, Lord Cunningham, on producing it. In a highly disciplined way, it has offered us some real steps forward in the conduct of our parliamentary life in the United Kingdom.

We in Parliament must continually renew our commitment to see power as a trust held on behalf of the people and, I would say from these Benches, under God. In the face of declining public confidence in political life today, we might be tempted to think that we are living through a crisis. We are not. There is little or no energy among the wider public for major constitutional reform. The public want to see our democracy working better than it is, and the quality of governance strengthened and improved. The people are not, however, marching on our streets for the radical reform of Parliament.

This remains the people’s Parliament. It is for us, as their servants, to ensure that it works well for them and builds confidence in our democratic traditions. The report is a welcome, clear and profound statement of how things are between our Houses and what we must agree to ensure an effective relationship between them.

I welcome three crucial features of this report. First, picking up from the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Tomlinson, it clearly understands that we inherit an unwritten constitution: it is interested in flexible ways of working, without boxing us in to rigid procedures of our work. Secondly, it recognises our history and the unique history of democracy in these islands, bringing together the many faces of our common life in one Parliament; holding within one place the tasks of calling the Government to account, legislating and remaining, in extremis, the high court of the land. We hold to a unitary structure. Thirdly, and crucially, following in the great tradition of Edmund Burke, it seeks amendment of our constitution by evolutionary rather than revolutionary processes. That ensures that the future builds on the past, and that a proper sense of history always informs what we do.

It has been commented on right around the House that the Government have picked up on the central issue of this report in their response: its meaning for the reform of this House. While that is not the subject of our debate today, it nevertheless appears both in the report and the Government’s response. As others have said—notably the noble Lord, Lord Higgins—having established the principle of the primacy of the House of Commons, the report goes on to point out in paragraph 61 that a shift in the structure of this House is bound to lead to a fresh examination of these issues. In their response, the Government said:

“The Government believes that whatever further reform of the Lords takes place, that role”— our present situation— “is the right one. The question of composition of the House of Lords does not dictate its role. Function does not follow form”.

That would be the first time that had happened in British history. Function and form are inevitably intertwined; we cannot escape that.

We must talk about this a lot more in the coming days. That is not to say that, on the basis of the present balance of powers, no further reform on the Lords is possible. If we want to maintain the basic balance of powers between the Chambers, however, that will influence how we think about reform. I did not find the Government’s references to Canada, Austria and Germany convincing. We have an unwritten constitution, and shifts of power are going on the whole time. Things are never rigid. That seems to me to underlie this report.

We can consider crisis moments. For example, let us suppose that we had a wholly or mainly elected second Chamber of 500 or more Members elected by what the people thought to be a fairer system of election, that an election took place at a time of great political crisis and that there was a large turn-out. Would that not introduce some element of conflict between the two Houses? We have to think those things through.

I prefer the words of the report to the Government’s written response, but I was greatly comforted by the speech of the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor. It seemed to give us more flexibility in that matter.

Although the principle of the primacy of the House of Commons is important and entirely right, we need to be reminded that the fundamental principle we are dealing with is the sovereignty of Parliament. That means that Parliament must always be free to act as it believes right for the needs of the United Kingdom. From the statements in the report about having flexible and unenforceable conventions, it seems that the committee understands the principle that Parliament as a whole has to be free to act. That is the principle of our democracy. It is at the heart of our constitution, and I believe that we have a common duty to protect and maintain it. I am hugely grateful to this report for making a significant and long-term contribution in that direction.

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