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ON THE RECORD
LORD CRANBORNE INTERVIEW
RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION: BBC ONE DATE: 15.11.98
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JOHN HUMPHRYS: We have heard a lot in the last few
weeks about how the government wants to control everything in sight.... and
we've seen a bit of a backlash developing. Well, it may be that we ain't seen
nothing yet. There is a bill going through parliament which would change the
way we vote in the European elections next year, and a cross-party group of
peers (Tory AND Labour) is trying to block it. They say it will give far too
much power to the parties to decide who gets to be an MEP, central control if
you like. The leader of the Conservatives in the Lords is Lord Cranborne.
Good afternoon,.
LORD CRANBORNE: Good afternoon to you.
HUMPHRYS: Now, you don't like this bill, or the
relevant bit in the bill. You can keep sending it back to the Commons. They
keep sending it back to you. How long can this keep going on?
CRANBORNE: Well, I don't know, is the short answer
to that. There's plenty of time, the government must consider I think on
Monday, what they're going to do to our latest request to think again, and
let's hope that they realise that there's hardly anybody in the country outside
their own front bench including their own back-benchers in both houses, who
agree with this issue, which is of course about whether Mr Blair is a control
freak or not.
HUMPHRYS: So no compromise from your point of
view, you're going to send it back again because it's going - it's
coming, it's going to be in the Commons on Monday, and then it's coming to you
on the Tuesday. You'll send it back again will you?
CRANBORNE: Absolutely, and I think the government
has recognised that there is still plenty of time by putting it on Tuesday, and
of course ..
HUMPHRYS: Will there be time?
CRANBORNE: Oh yes.
HUMPHRYS: Because the parliamentary term ends on
Friday.
CRANBORNE: That is also true, but we play ping-pong
way into the night if necessary. What the Government really wants to do here
is to make out that this is a great constitutional crisis because it wants to
hide what the real issue at stake is. You know and I know that in the end
quite rightly the elected chamber wins in any confrontation between the two
houses, and that is how it should be, but meanwhile it is perfectly right and
sensible that the House of Lords should exercise the job that it is there to do
which is to say: do you really think that this is very sensible. And none of
us do think it's sensible including the backbenches supporting the Government
on virtually everything else in both houses.
HUMPHRYS: Is there any signal from the Government
that they are prepared to give way on this, because I notice reports in the
papers this morning. Well, I mention it because there are reports in the
papers this morning, that they're thinking of going back to first past the post
for the European election.
CRANBORNE: Well, of course I would infinitely
prefer that. The difficulty of all forms of proportional representation is,
that they transfer power from the electorate to the party apparats of both
major parties, which is one of the reasons of course, why the Liberals are so
keen to have the proprotional representation system of one kind or another.
What we would prefer is first past the post, but in the end if the Government
wants to have a proportional representation system we in the House of Lords
can't stop them, and indeed we've accepted that that is in their party
manifesto. What was not in their party manifesto is a form of proportional
representation which gives Mr Blair even more control than he has already.
HUMPHRYS: Closed list - exactly the same.
CRANBORNE: It's the party machine which chooses.
HUMPHRYS: So just to look at the timetable again,
Commons Monday, you Tuesday, you send it back, parliament this term finishes
on Friday.
CRANBORNE: Yes. There is time. We go into the
night.
HUMPHRYS: Time for what.
CRANBORNE: Well, we can come backwards and forwards
a number of times, so long as there is what is known as an amendment in lieu.
If you change the sense of the bill over the matter in which there is
disagreement, then you can keep going theoretically forever, so long as there
is time. There is also the question of the Parliament Act. If we were to run
out of time in this session, this bill is perfectly parliament actable, if I
can use......well, of course under the nineteen-forty-nine Parliament Act as
you know, the House of Commons can insist on a piece of legislation getting
through in the next session, after the one it has failed to get it through.
And there would still be time because this bill was introduced in the House of
Commons in November in ninety-seven. It becomes parliament actable - that
rather ghastly phrase I've just used for which I apologise....
HUMPHRYS: I know what you mean.
CRANBORNE: .... immediately in the new session
after a year, which is November to November, and it would get through the House
of Commons I'm sure very fast, and then we would have no option but to let it
through. But this is a very important symbolic matter, it's not just the
matter of the European Elections Bill, important though that might be, but it's
symbolic of so much that this Government represents. The question is, does Mr
Blair actually trust the people which he won the election on, or does he really
say to the people: well I trust you, I'll devolve party you, I'll let you
choose, so long as you agree with me, and this is something that is worrying
people of all parties, and I think the House of Lords as you said it rightly in
your introduction is very keen to make sure that everybody realises that this
is the sort of issue which is not a party issue, it's something which is if you
can put it this way, from an unelected House of Lords, it is the people against
the control of government.
HUMPHRYS: Yes, well that is the odd thing isn't
it, it is certainly a paradox. I want to touch on it just for a second. But
in the meantime, you're not going to give way on this. As it stands, this
term, this parliamentary term you are saying we will fight you to the wire, and
if that means it has to come back next term....so be it.
CRANBORNE I'm saying that's a possiblity. I don't
know, I hope the Government will realise that they're alone in this. The House
of Lords is doing them a favour, and that we will work out some compromise.
HUMPHRYS An odd kind of favour in way isn't it?
CRANBORNE: Well, would you as an elector, I know
you have no political views whatsoever of course, but just neutrally and
theoretically would you rather choose, or would you rather the upper
apparatchiks of Cental Office and Millbank chose?
HUMPHRYS: I suppose the correct answer to that is
that we had elected members of Parliament. There is a majority in the House of
Commons, a very large Labour majority in the House of Commons and they are the
elected representatives of the People
CRANBORNE: Which is why in the end they will always
win and rightly too. But the purpose of a second chamber is, as I never stop
saying to you and others is to ask the elected chamber to think again
particularly when you think what the power of the government whips office, no
matter which government is in power is. I sometimes think it's the only
competent part of the House of Commons.
HUMPHRYS: Yes, but the thing is it's not as if
they haven't thought again is it? You have chucked it back to them two or
three times and they have thought again and they've said, 'Yeah, we've thought
and thought and thought and this is what we want'......
CRANBORNE: And this is what we think. And isn't it
interesting that the only people who appear not to have thought are the people
who've said that they are which is the government front benches in both Houses.
Not one single backbencher who supports the Labour party in either the House of
Commons or the House of Lords has said that they approved of the system and
even the three people that the government put up in our House to defend their
position all said that they disapproved of the closed list system. They are
merely doing what the government tells them. And if you look at the Liberal
party which is the most hilarious thing of ... part of this whole process is
they put out a three line whip in our House to vote against their own declared
policy for an open list. And we've got here to Alice in Wonderland politics.
HUMPHRYS: But it is Alice in Wonderland anyway
isn't it in a sense because you could argue that you're playing into the
government's hands. I mean if they want to represent this, indeed they have
represented this as a group of hereditary peers, I mean after all you wouldn't
have you majority if it weren't for the hereditary peers.....
CRANBORNE: Well that's up to a point true, by
anyway......
HUMPHRYS: But that's the way the arithmetic works.
If you did not have the hereditary peers to give you support on this issue you
would not be able to keep sending it back and doing your damndest to stop it
happening. Now you're actually here playing it because they want to get rid of
the hereditary peers, of course we know that, you, I gather, are sort of saying
'Yeah, well why not....?'
CRANBORNE: I recognise perfectly well that
hereditary peers must go but what I just want to make sure, of course, is that
we are replaced by something independent rather than Mr Blair's poodle.
HUMPHRYS: But you are playing into their hands
here aren't you?
CRANBORNE: But why? Nobody agrees with the
government except for the government's own members and I'm not even sure that
Mr Straw, looking at what he said several times over in the House of Commons
agrees with himself. And Mr Straw, we know, hates PR systems. He hates PR
systems for the same reason as I do. They give power to the party machine and
therefore he doesn't like this and no wonder he's been so unconvincing and you
know and I know that of course the government must win in the end - that is the
way the British constitution works and quite right too. But equally because of
the power of the whips office it is very important that you have a second
chamber which says, 'Come on, this is silly. before you really force us to
push it through, then please think again.'
HUMPHRYS: So it's Custer's Last Stand?
CRANBORNE: No it's not Custer's Last Stand because
the government wins. What we must look at is the issue not what the government
would like us to look at.
HUMPHRYS: Lord Cranborne, many thanks
CRANBORNE: It's a pleasure.
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