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TERRY DIGNAN: Down in the woods today
young warriors prepare for combat. It's just harmless fun. If only the
same could be said of relations between the Labour Government and the Lords.
Purged of most of its hereditary peers, Parliament's Upper Chamber - armed
with its powers to change Government legislation - now feels even better
equipped to do its job.
The Government now has to endure a form of guerrilla warfare in the Lords
with Opposition peers justifying their tactics by quoting the Leader of
Labour's forces in the Lords, Baroness Jay. She says the Lords now has
more legitimacy and votes against the Government carry more weight. Conservatives
call it the Jay Doctrine. It's said Tony Blair is so alarmed, he fears
Labour's promise to carry out further reform to the Lords could make it
even more powerful.
LORD RICHARD: Whatever you did to the House
of Lords, or do to the House of Lords, it will be more troublesome to the
House of Commons, to the Government - no question about that, and indeed
that's what's happening.
LORD STRATHCLYDE: I think they've got a whole lot
of people in the, in the Cabinet - senior members of the Cabinet - who
are saying, what is this monster that we've unleashed? This wasn't part
of the project, this wasn't part the great plan.
DIGNAN: In deepest Surrey the combatants
are dressed for battle and eager for action. Labour ministers feel many
peers are behaving as if they, too, are on a mission to seek and destroy.
Yet because most of the hereditary peers have gone, the Lords now operates
under new rules of engagement. It's all thanks, say Opposition members,
to their latest weapon, the Jay Doctrine.
LORD STRATHCLYDE: What she said was that this House
would have new authority, it would have new, new legitimacy because people
were here on merit, no party had overall control and therefore the Government
would listen more to decisions which this second chamber made. Since November
last year I've been trying to test that by defeating the Government over
a whole range of issues.
LORD ROGERS: It is a more authoritative
House perhaps to an extent which wasn't wholly appreciated, that it's got
a degree of confidence that it, it didn't have before.
DIGNAN: Peers have voted against
the Mode of Trial Bill, which ended trial by jury for some offences, in
favour of allowing candidates for London Mayor to have free postage, and
against the Local Government Bill which compels councils to be run by mayors
or cabinets. Peers could also reject privatising air traffic control,
contained in the Transport Bill. The Freedom of Information Bill, too,
may be changed against ministers' wishes. Plans to control party funding
may be delayed if the Political Parties Elections and Referendums Bill
is held up in a Parliamentary logjam, with legislation passed back and
forth between Lords and Commons.
LORD RICHARD: I think that there will be
more defeats for the Government, there will no doubt be ping-pong on one
or two key issues, between the two Houses. I think it will be a, a difficult
run up to the recess and it'll be a long over-spill.
LORD STRATHCLYDE: They created this House against
an enormous amount of opposition not just from the Conservative Party but
from outside as, as well so they can hardly complain when the House continues
to do its job as effectively as possible.
DIGNAN: In the past, it's argued,
the House of Lords was wary of using its firepower against a Labour administration.
That's because Labour could complain it was an affront to democracy that
hundreds of hereditary peers, many them Conservative, could defeat an elected
Government. But now that most hereditaries have gone, Labour may have to
get used to the Lords behaving as many believe a Second Chamber ought to
behave - as an effective check on Government.
LORD STRATHCLYDE; We often used to win the argument
in the House of Lords but we failed to win the political argument because
the Labour Party always said 'ah well these are the words of hereditary
peers and therefore they have no legitimacy'. Margaret Jay has sought
to legitimise this House, the Labour Party have sought to legitimise this
House so they can hardly complain when we use the existing powers in a
more vigorous way than we did before.
LORD RICHARD; I think it should act like
a proper legislative chamber, which means that, that there are bound to
be clashes between the two Houses. I mean it happens in other legislatures
there are clashes between the two Houses. It depends at the end of the
day what you want your second chamber to be. I mean if you just want it
to be sort of a, a rubber stamp in ermine for what the Government wants,
well then you'd be very dissatisfied if it behaves like a proper legislative
chamber. If you want a proper legislative chamber well then you shouldn't
be surprised at the way it is behaving.
DIGNAN: In the make-believe world
of paintball teams are equally matched. Tony Blair is calling up reinforcements
in the real world and appointing more Labour peers to achieve a balance
of forces with the Tories. Even then Labour would have to persuade a number
of Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, or non-party Crossbenchers.
LORD CRAIG: That puts a lot of pressure
on the Government of the day to ensure that their arguments are sound and
carry weight. There is no question of getting legislation through here
- or shouldn't be - purely on a, a whipped vote.
LORD ROGERS: It must use, get used to working
with third parties and there are some even in the Lords who find it very
difficult to believe that they're beholden on the Liberal Democrats while
Tony Blair in the Commons doesn't have to bother at all about Charles Kennedy's
Members of Parliament.
DIGNAN: But resistance to the Government
could be made futile by the Parliament Acts. Under these Acts, the Lords
is forced to surrender its right to continually block legislation. Ministers
can disarm the Lords and turn a Bill into law after a year's delay. Labour's
real attitude to the upper chamber may be exposed, it's claimed, if peers'
powers are decommissioned.
LORD STRATHCLYDE: In the months ahead when a lot
of the pieces of legislation the Government have been defeated on in the
House of Lords come back, having been re-examined in the House of Commons,
then I think we'll be able to see more clearly what it is the, the Government
feel about this second chamber and its, and its legitimacy. I suspect what
we will see is that the Government have no intention of listening to the
second chamber, to the House of Lords and will reject and seek to trample
over every decision that we have taken.
LORD RODGERS: It's very difficult for Secretaries
of State in the House of Commons who've, don't, really take any interest
in the Lords, very difficult for them to say 'well the Lords has made an
amendment - I will accept it'. It needs a degree of magnanimity, a degree
of wisdom and I'm afraid that some ministers like Jack Straw for example,
the Home Secretary, is, is too proud of his legislation and too unwilling
to recognise that the Lords are only carrying out their constitutional
obligation and he should accept the fact that they're sometimes right.
DIGNAN: Labour's recent treatment
at the hands of bolder, more confident peers may well have affected its
attitude to the next stage of reforming the House of Lords. The Government's
battles with the Lords have raised doubts about Labour's strategy to complete
the reform of the Upper Chamber. Neutralising the threat from hereditary
peers was meant to be Stage One. Stage Two is about making the Lords more
democratic. Tony Blair's dilemma is how to proceed without making the Lords
a more powerful force to be reckoned with. A Royal Commission chaired
by Tory Lord Wakeham said in January the House should have five-hundred-and-fifty
Peers. A minority should be elected. The majority appointed by an independent
Commission. The Prime Minister should lose his power to appoint. Party
numbers in the Lords should be proportional to the votes cast at the previous
General Election. So further reform of the House may not make life any
easier for Labour.
LORD RICHARD: I think that you've got
to produce a, a, a system, in which the second chamber has got the power
to say to the executive, hey you know wait, hold it up, think, you know,
we don't agree with you. Now it is going to make politics in a sense more
uncertain, in the future than perhaps it has been in the past. But I'm
not sure that's a, that that's necessarily a bad thing.
LORD RODGERS: On the whole the prospect
is that a, a reformed House, at the next stage of reform will make the
House of Lords more independent and they don't want that.
DIGNAN: The Government pledges
there'll be no let up in the pursuit of Stage Two. It's set up its own
version of an appointments commission. But it can only appoint a minority
of peers, the Crossbenchers. The Government has yet to act on the rest
of the Wakeham Report. That may not bode well for further reform.
LORD RICHARD: I suspect that they won't
be all that enthusiastic about it, so we may have to live with this for
quite a long time.
LORD WAKEHAM: I think the government would
have trouble if they left things as they were. I mean it would look, look
a sign of weakness from their point. They set the commission up, it's produced
a report which met the criteria that they set in their terms of reference
and I think it does produce a basis for a long-term reform.
DIGNAN: In truth, the Government
is proceeding with the utmost caution. Ministers say they want to avoid
conflict over Stage Two and instead hold talks with their enemies about
how to implement the Report. That may be naive because as in paintball,
in politics the aim is to be victorious over your opponents not rescue
them from their predicament.
LORD WAKEHAM: In my view it's not very
realistic to expect there to be an all party agreement on our report in
the run up to an election. I believe that the Government has to decide
whether it thinks that it's right or not and to set forth it's policy about
implementation.
LORD STRATHCLYDE: They've stopped thinking. I'm
not sure that they ever did very much thinking about the long term. They're
not sure which way to, to, go next.
Do they want to have a stronger second chamber as part of a stronger Parliament?
Do they want to preserve the independent nature of the second chamber?
Do they - are they going to demonstrate how the Government listens more
to what the second chamber is doing as part of a, an integral Parliament?
All these things we need to hear them say.
DIGNAN: Tomorrow hostilities resume
when Parliament returns. In the Lords the Government faces further harassment,
its legislation targeted in an often unfriendly environment. The hereditaries
have gone, yet the Government 's reforms mean the Lords can now perform
with even more deadly effect.
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