Lords Sitting of 3 February 1953

Preamble
The House met at half past two of the clock. The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers

EAST COAST FLOOD DISASTER
2.35 p.m.
EARL JOWITT: My Lords, may ask Her Majesty's Government the Question of which I have given private notice? We have all read what was said yesterday in another place, but may I ask whether the Government have any further statement to make on the tragedy of the recent floods that have taken place in this country and in the Netherlands?
THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR COMMONWEALTH RELATIONS (VISCOUNT SWINTON): My Lords, of course if the House had been sitting yesterday I should have made a statement similar to that which was made in another place. I am not quite sure whether another statement will be made to-day. Everything that can be done is being done, but if the Home Secretary or another Minister is making a report on progress in another place later on to-day, I will gladly repeat that report in this House. I am at the moment trying to find out whether a statement is being made to-day. I think your Lordships would wish that if any statements are made in another place, and this House is sitting, then those statements should be repeated here. I am sure we are all anxious to know how this tragedy is being met. Our deep sympathy goes out to all those who have suffered, not forgetting the Americans, some of whom, unfortunately, have lost their lives and others of whom have been, with our own troops, most active on the spot in rendering such succour as is possible.
EARL JOWITT: I am grateful to the noble Viscount for his reply. I asked this Question because I thought the House would like to have an opportunity of identifying itself with what the noble Viscount has just said and in expressing deepest sympathy with all those who have sustained loss during this tragic
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week-end, a week-end which has seen the loss of the British Railways ship and also these terrible floods. I know that the House will desire to extend sympathy not only to the people of this country and to the Americans who have lost their lives here, but to the people of the Netherlands and of Belgium, and also to express their appreciation of the untiring efforts which the military and civil authorities have made to alleviate the distress and the damage which has been caused.

TAX PAYMENTS FROM CAPITAL
2.38 p.m.
LORD MONKSWELL: My Lords. I beg to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper:
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will give an estimate of how much capital was sold out and paid away in taxation—not only in death duties but in all forms of taxation—in each of the years after 1945.]
THL EARL OF SELKIRK: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Monkswell, has asked for an estimate of the extent to which, in each of the years since 1945, taxes were paid out of capital. I regret to have to tell your Lordships that the information in the possession of Her Majesty's Government is insufficient to justify the preparation of such anestimate. In the case of income tax, surtax and profits tax, the taxpayer should not need to sell out his capital, except to the extent that he failed to make adequate provision for the tax at the time that the taxable income accrued. Some realisation of capital is, however, frequently necessary in order to pay death duties and was also probably necessary, in the higher income ranges, to pay the special contribution which was imposed by the Finance Act, 1948. The extent to which the capital has been sold in any particular case will, of course, depend on the rate of duty payable and the proportion of the assets already available in the form of cash, including the proceeds of insurance policies.
LORD MONKSWELL: While thanking the noble Earl for his answer, I must

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say that I regret very much that the Treasury have not any more precise information on the subject.
LORD OGMORE: Arising out of the last part of the answer, may I ask Her Majesty's Government in what ivory tower they are living if they think that it is unnecessary to sell out securities to meet income tax and death duties, particularly in the case of parents who are educating children? I would ask Her Majesty's Government to remember that I raised this point in the debate on the last Finance Bill, and I hope the Chancellor will recognise this very important fact in his next Budget.
THE EARL OF SELKIRK: What I have said this afternoon is that the information is not available—which I think is perfectly fair. The payment is frequently made from bank overdrafts and the extent to, which securities are sold cannot be made known to those who collect the taxes.
LORD OGMORE: I understood the noble Earl to say that it should not be necessary for people to sell out securities to pay income tax. If Her Majesty's Government really think that, they are living in an ivory tower.

SENIORITY OF ARMY OFFICERS
2.42 p.m.
LORD JEFFREYS: My Lords, I beg to ask the first Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government why National Service officers are, on joining the Army, given seniority over those who, though in the same age group, have, after passing into the R.M.A., Sandhurst, completed the course at that establishment.]
EARL FORTESCUE: My Lords, this situation arises from the differing ages of these two types of officer on first commissioning. It is rectified on promotion to the rank of captain when the Sandhurst trained officer becomes senior to the National Service officer of the same age group. If all National Service officers were junior to all officers of the same age groups commissioned from Sandhurst, some National Service officers would
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have to serve three or four years as second lieutenants instead of two.
LORD JEFFREYS: My Lords, while thanking my noble friend for his answer, may I ask whether it is not the case that the War Office are anxious to encourage candidates for commissions to take the examination and go through the Sandhurst course of eighteen months? Is my noble friend aware that the present system discourages candidates from taking the examination or from undergoing the course, and also discourages their parents from causing them to do so? Equally, would not the difficulty as to age be overcome if the second lieutenants from Sandhurst were granted an ante-date of, say, eighteen months, as was done with university candidates before the war?
EARL FORTESCUE: My Lords, I regret that I am not able to add anything to the answer which I have already given, but I will bring the remarks of the noble Lord to the notice of my right honourable friend.

OFFICERS' RETIRED PAY
LORD JEFFREYS: My Lords, I beg to ask the second Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what would be the annual cost of restoring to all officers, who retired under the provisions of the Royal Warrant and corresponding instruments of 1919, the basic rates of retired pay of 1919 plus 20 per cent. as provided in those instruments.]
THE MINISTER OF DEFENCE (EARL ALEXANDER OF TUNIS): My Lords, I am afraid that the information for which my noble and gallant friend asks involves a great deal of research into a number of individual cases of retired officers. For this reason I regret that I am not in a position to let him have it to-day. If the the noble Lord cares to put down another Question in a week's time, I hope that I shall then be able to give him an approximate estimate.
LORD JEFFREYS: My Lords, in thanking my noble friend for his answer, may I say that I will accept his suggestion, and put down a further Question in a week's or a fortnight's time?

LIFE PEERS BILL [H.L.]
2.45 p.m.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
VISCOUNT SIMON: My Lords, I rise to move the Second Reading of the Life Peers Bill, the text of which is in the hands of your Lordships. It is a short Bill, and I hope it will be found that it is clearly drafted. The object of the Bill is to authorise the creation by Her Majesty, on the recommendation of the Prime Minister, of a limited number of persons to be Members of this House during their lives, without transmitting their right to be Lords of Parliament to their heirs. The Bill suggests that ten should be the maximum number of Life Peers to be created in any year. If that maximum is thought to be too great, then the figure can be reduced in Committee.
The Bill also provides that persons to be nominated for this purpose may be either men or women. That also is a Committee point, for if any noble Lord objects to lady Life Peers he can raise his objection by Amendment in Committee. It seems to me, however, that the argument for including women in the scheme is a strong one. In the last half-century, women have been given the vote—for, as Lord Hugh Cecil once saidin the Commons, voting is quite a ladylike occupation. They have become Members of Parliament and members of the Cabinet, and Privy Counsellors. Every profession is open to them, and the one place where they have no right to be is in your Lordships' House, in this year of grace when a woman is occupying the Throne.
These, however, as I have said, are Committee points, and I am concerned to commend to your Lordships on Second Reading the principle of this Bill. There are, as it seems to me, two solid arguments in its favour, to which I would draw attention. The first derives from the history of the efforts that have been made to reform the composition of this House. The second argument depends upon the merits of the proposal itself. Let me briefly state the arguments under both of those heads.
What is the history of efforts to reform the composition of the House of Lords?
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The Parliament Act of 1911, which was so fiercely denounced at the time and is now regarded by Conservatives as a pillar of the Constitution, began with a Preamble which stressed the urgent need for reform in the composition of the House—a reform which Mr. Asquith himself declared would not "brook delay." Well, that was forty-two years ago, and, in the meantime, nothing has been done. If the composition of this House was then open to attack, it remains as vulnerable as before. Many schemes for its reform have been propounded, but there has been no change, and, be it observed, many of these schemes have proposed reform on the lines that membership of this House and the right to be a legislator should depend on the personal qualities and experience of a Lord of Parliament.
But, while that is so, since the passing of the Parliament Act, 1911, one very significant change has taken place. The reputation of the House of Lords as a useful, and, indeed, necessary element in Parliament has grown. It no longer claims to set at naught the deliberate and reiterated decisions of the popular Chamber, but it devotes itself to the work of revising and improving legislation and of suggesting amendments which the House of Commons can reconsider. This is the proper work of a second Chamber, which is necessarily subordinate to the popularly elected House, and we owe much to the present Lord Salisbury for the wise advice which he gives us on these matters. May I be allowed to express what I think everybody here feels?—my regret that the noble Marquess is not here this afternoon. I think we may all wish to send him an assurance of our affectionate regard and our wishes for his speedy recovery and return to duty. Men of all Parties acknowledge that our legislation is constantly improved by the work of the House of Lords, and our debates are conducted, as Labour members amongst others are never tired of admitting, with a tolerance and a respect for other people's opinions which make it a model of Parliamentary efficiency. Nobody intervenes in our debates for the mere sake of talking, or unless he has something to say.
The question is whether some improvement is not needed in its composition. Nothing is so good that it cannot be

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made better. Would it not be an advantage to have amongst us, to take part in our work, members who are selected for their personal fitness to do so? I remind your Lordships that in the Spring of 1948 there was a Conference of Party leaders, suggested by the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, at which House of Lords reform was discussed. An agreed statement of conclusions reached at that Conference was issued. It is Command Paper 7380, presented to Parliament in May, 1948. The Conference did not reach agreement on the question of the revision of the powers of the House of Lords; but, assuming that agreement could be reached on that point, the Party representatives at the Conference would have favoured a revised constitution of the House of Lords which would include a provision that members of the Second Chamber—I am reading From the document—
"should be appointed on grounds of personal distinction or public service. They might be drawn either from hereditary Peers or from commoners who would be created life Peers."
Such is the history of the efforts to improve the composition of the House during the last half century.
The Conservative Manifesto at the last General Election, which was signed by Mr. Winston Churchill, contained this sentence:
"We shall call an all-Party conference to consider proposals for the reform of the House of Lords."
When is that Conference going to be called? My noble friend, Lord Samuel, has put this question more than once to the Government Bench and has not yet got a very definite answer. If the Conference is called and arrives at a scheme of reform which includes the creation of Life Peers, I should rejoice; but if it is not called or if, when called, it produces no result, I submit that the argument for this Bill is considerably strengthened. So much for the first argument, which I submit strongly supports this proposed measure.
Secondly, let us consider the merits of the proposal itself. For the House of Lords to do its work of revision and amendment, it must contain those who are best qualified to contribute. There is nothing shocking or revolutionary in the proposal that it contain a limited number of Life Peers. Even as it is, the
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House is not composed of an exclusively hereditary element. It includes Law Lords, who do not transmit their membership to their eldest sons. It includes ecclesiastical Members, and the son of a Bishop does not inherit his father's place in our Assembly. They day has gone by when the services of men well qualified to contribute to the work that this Chamber can do can be secured by making them hereditary Peers. It is notorious that in some cases well qualified individuals hesitate to accept peerages because of the consequences which that would involve when they die. Let me put a case. Why should not the acknowledged leader of tile trade union movement or the acknowledged head of an important industry or profession he brought into the work of the House of Lords without imposing on him what might be perhaps a handicap to his descendants? That is the argument for the Bill.
I must deal briefly with one or two of the objections which have been raised in some quarters. Some of your Lordships are a little concerned, I think, about the possible effect of this proposal on the predominantly hereditary character of the membership of this House. As I have already said, if the number ten contributes to these fears, we can reduce the number in Committee. I certainly do not deny the value of heredity, either in statesmen or in racehorses; but not every descendant of a Derby winner will emulate his sire's performance. Anyone who considers the history of the Peerage will see how frequently the descendant of a Peer proves his political capacity, from Chatham, in reference to whom Burke quoted the famous line,
"clarum et venerabile no men Gentibus et multum nostrae quod proderat urbi,"
to the house of Cecil, which from the reign of Queen Elizabeth I to the reign of Queen Elizabeth II has contributed so much of guidance to the British State. We have only to look at the Front Benches, and the other Benches, to see how younger men who are Members here by hereditary right worthily justify the Peerage of their ancestors.
I do not at all concede that if Life Peerage is authorised, the creation of hereditary Peers will necessarily cease. There will be men who will accept the second in preference to the first. The

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object of the Bill is to provide a new source of contribution to this House. Let me point out this fact. It is by no means certain that, as time goes on, our democracy will regard it as natural that a man should be a legislator merely because he is the son of his father. Public opinion, in the light of recent events, is prepared to acknowledge the need for a Second Chamber. But, as The Times newspaper observed in a remarkable leading article yesterday,
"Its composition must be such as to command the respect and confidence of the electorate, and it is a major tragedy that Lords reform, the need for which is universally admitted, should have been so long delayed."
My Bill does not seek to alter the distribution of powers between the two Chambers, but it does seek to bring into this House a new kind of Member, selected for his personal worth, without compromising his descendants. I should hope that a convention would soon arise by which the Prime Minister, in recommending these appointments, would consult the Leader of the Opposition in another place, just as a Convention has already arisen that Peers whose occupation and interests do not lie in the political field should, as a rule, abstain from taking part in our discussions.
There is another objection which has been brought to my attention, and with which I should like briefly to deal. It is suggested in some quarters that this watering down of the hereditary element in the House in some way brings into question the hereditary character of the Monarchy, which we all desire to uphold. A moment's reflection will show how misleading is the analogy. The hereditary character of the Crown persists, and is everywhere accepted, because the Sovereign acts on the advice of her Ministers. If the Sovereign claimed to behave like Henry VIII, and alter our law by Royal Proclamation, or, like Charles I, to dispense with Parliament altogether, the hereditary character of the Crown would long ago have been in jeopardy. It is the circumstance that we have a Constitutional Monarchy, where the Crown always acts on the advice of Ministers, that guarantees the stability of the Throne, with the result that the Sovereign is never involved in controversy and the burden of criticism is taken upon the shoulders of her advisers. We have the
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latest illustration of this situation in the mistaken notion that Her Majesty can be appealed to for the reprieve of a criminal. But the claim of hereditary Peers to be legislators raises questions which have nothing to do with the hereditary character of the Crown, and which does expose this House to challenge, to which the creation of life Peers would provide some answer.
Lastly, among the objections it is said that the proposal contained in this Bill would prejudice the discussions on the reform of this House which Her Majesty's Government have suggested should take place between the Parties. I do not myself see why my proposal should prejudice the Conference. I see from the Order Paper that the noble and learned Earl who leads the Opposition proposes that the Second Reading should be rejected on that ground. I hope the House will not take so summary a course. But it is interesting, to notice the reason which the noble and learned Earl urges. His Amendment objects to the Bill, because it will alter the constitution of this House by authorising the creation of Life Peers
"without any consideration of such wider changes as Her Majesty's Government have suggested should be the subject of discussion between the Parties."
I should think that the noble Viscount, Lord Swinton, who is leading the House to-day, and who will speak for the Government, will derive considerable satisfaction from the language of the noble and learned Earl's Amendment, for it surely implies that he and the Socialist Party are willing to join in these discussions, and that the Conference will start with Socialist good will, as well as with the support of the Liberal Party.
Those of your Lordships who are interested in the dialogues of Plato may recall that certain of them are classified as the "Maieutic dialogues." that is to say, the obstetrical dialogues, for ileac(is the Greek word for midwife. Socrates claimed that his method of raising questions brought about the safe delivery of concepts which lay in the minds of others. If this little Bill of mine should have the effect of bringing to birth proposals for there form of your Lordships' House, which include the creation of Life Peers, I shall feel that my intervention has not been without result, and shall acquiesce in the proposal that, after those of your

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Lordships who wish to take part have spoken, the debate should be adjourned and we should await the upshot.
I may remind your Lordships, in conclusion, that the proposal for the creation of Life Peers goes back a long way. In 1856 the Government of Lord Palmerston proposed to Queen Victoria that Sir James Parke should be granted by Patent a Life Peerage which would not descend to his eldest son, if he had any. There-upon an ex-Lord Chancellor, Lord Lyndhurst, who was in his eighty-third year and nearly blind, made a remarkable speech in which he sought to establish that a Life Peer could not be a Member of the House of Lords—not, indeed, on the ground that the Crown had never been able to appoint to the House of Lords on these terms, but on the ground that the practice had fallen out of use. And the House of Lords, through its Committee for Privileges, adopted that view. Constitutional lawyers have debated ever since the correctness of that decision, but there is no doubt that it needs an Act of Parliament to correct it.
May I remind your Lordships that Mr. Walter Bagehot, in his well-known book on the English Constitution writes this about the Wensleydale case—there is a cops of the book in the library of the House:
"Lord Lyndhurst said the Crown could not now create Life Peers, and so there are no Life Peers; the House of Lords rejected the inestimable, the unprecedented opportunity of being tacitly reformed. Such a chance does not come twice.…Thirty or forty such men, added judiciously and sparingly as years went on, would have given to the House of Lords the very element which as a criticising Chamber it needs so much: it would have given it critics. The most accomplished men in each department might then, without irrelevant considerations of family and of fortune, have been added to the chamber of review; the very element which was wanted to the House of Lords was, as it were by a constitutional Providence, offered to the House of Lords, and they refused it."
Mr. Bagehot goes on to say:
"By what species of effort that error can be repaired I cannot tell; but unless it is repaired, the intellectual capacity can never be, what it would have been, will never be what it ought to be, will never be sufficient for its work."
My Lords, this Bill is an effort to correct that error, and I beg to move that it be read a second time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Viscount Simon.)
3.14 p.m.
EARL JOWITT EARL JOWITT rose to move, as an Amendment to the Motion, "That the Bill be now read 2a," to leave out all the words after "That" and to insert:
"this House declines to give a Second Reading to a bill which purports to alter the constitution of this House in any one particular without any consideration of such wider changes as Her Majesty's Government have suggested should be the subject of discussion between the Parties."
The noble and learned Earl said: My Lords, I rise to move the Amendment which stands in my name. I thought it well that I should put a reasoned Amendment on the Paper because I want to make it quite plain that I am not opposed to the creation of Life Peers, and I am most heartily in favour of the acceptance of the principle that women should be Members of tills House. But, at the same time, I consider that this Bill at this particular time is completely inopportune, and I think it a great pity that it was introduced. May I remind your Lordships of some of the dates, to which, of course, the noble and learned Viscount has referred with complete accuracy. It is a long time ago since Mr. Asquith made use of the famous phrase that the reform of this House "brooks no delay." That was somewhere, I suppose, about 1911, but I have not verified my references.
Over a considerable time the noble and learned Viscount who has just moved the Second Reading occupied as his position in life—and his contribution to our public life fully justified it—prominent posts in all sorts of Governments: Foreign Secretary, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Home Secretary and so on, in the Governments of Mr. Ramsay Macdonald, Mr. Baldwin, Mr. Neville Chamberlain, and, finally, Mr. Churchill. During all those years he seemed to get on very well and take his daily nourishment, in spite of the fact that no one was doing anything about reforming the House of Lords. The matter was not raised at all until, in the days of the Labour Government—due, it is perfectly true, to the fact that the Labour Government were interfering with the powers of the House of Lords—a Conference was called between the Parties. I should like to refer in a little greater length to the result of that Conference, because it very nearly achieved

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a remarkable success. We failed over powers, and powers, as we all thought and as I think to this day, cannot be separated from composition. You must look at the whole picture.
On composition, although we did not agree and were not seeking to agree, we did agree to this extent: that we arrived at some principles which we would each of us recommend to our respective Parties ad referendum so that the Parties might consider whether or not they should be accepted. Now what were they? First of all, we thought that this House should be complementary to and not a rival to the Lower House, and that the reform of the House of Lords should be based on a modification of its existing constitution as opposed to a completely new Chamber. Secondly, we wanted so to revise it that a permanent majority was not secured for any one political Party. Thirdly, we accepted the principle that the right to vote and be present here should not be based merely on heredity. Fourthly, we said that the Members of the Second Chamber should be appointed on grounds of personal distinction or public service. They might be drawn from hereditary Peers or from commoners who would be created Life Peers. Fifthly, we said that women should be capable of being appointed Lords of Parliament in like manner as men, and then we said that Peers who were not Lords of Parliament should be entitled to stand for Election to the House of Commons. Seeing the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, opposite, may I say, parenthetically, that I have always thought it a grievous injustice that a man who was a Member of the House of Commons and who, owing to the accident of death of his father, became a Peer, should therefore be deprived of his right to continue with membership of that House. Those were the proposals which were then agreed upon in that sense.
I now pass to November 25, 1952. It was on that occasion that the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, moved a Motion dealing with this matter. He called attention to the statement in the manifesto of the Conservative Party, and he asked a specific question. He said (OFFICIAL REPORT, Vol. 179. col. 525):
"To sum up, I trust that the work done by the Conference of four years ago may not prove wholly valueless."
He suggested that thus we might not perhaps
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"'recapture the first fine careless rapture' of that Conference."
At least we should try. I followed, and I ventured to make it plain that I should like to see the composition of the House altered and in particular that I should like to have women here. I said this (Col. 531):
"I, for my part, and I hope also for my Party, shall be prepared, if and when invited, to embark on further discussions when the noble Marquess thinks the time has come."
Then the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, in his speech (I quote from column 557) said—and may I here say that I am perfectly certain that in what the noble Marquess said he would be more likely to be guilty of understatement than of overstatement: I cannot believe that he said what he did say without having good ground for saying it—that he did propose to call an all-Party Conference, and that he would infinitely prefer to obtain this reform by general agreement.
May I pause there? I should like to add that our constitution is a very flexible constitution. The only way you can get anything like stability is by getting the agreement of all Parties; and I believe, therefore, it is very well worth while to see if we can get the agreement of all Parties. If I were in the Government—and I expect I speak for the noble Viscount who is going to answer in the most regrettable absence of the noble Marquess the Leader of the House—I should rather accept the second best solution which did not quite come up to what I thought right, if I got it by agreement, rather than a perfect solution which I could impose on the other side. When the noble Marquess said he intended to call this Conference—it is true he did not state a definite time—he suggested, in answer to the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, that (Col. 557):
"…it may be—sooner perhaps than the noble Viscount expects—we shall be able to take the first steps to secure a further examination of this vitally important subject."
He went on to ask for:
"the co-operation of all in your Lordships' House, irrespective of Party, to whom the stability of this country is dear."
and he hoped that that co-operation would be fully and sincerely given.
It is a fact that down to the present time we have not received any invitation to take part in any Conference, and

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until we do I cannot say what answer my Party will return. On the other hand, I still believe, although we have not received any invitation as yet, that we shall receive one, and I invite the noble Viscount, Lord Swinton, to give us some information about that matter. I accept to the fullest extent the sincerity of the statement that Lord Salisbury made, and I anticipate that in the near future we shall be asked to take part it some Conference; and I ask the noble Viscount to tell us whether that is true. In the attitude I am taking with regard to Lord Simon's Bill, I am assuming that that is the position. If it is not the position, I shall take a very different attitude with regard to this Bill.
On December 4 the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Simon, moved for an humble Address to Her Majesty, as it was necessary for him to do in order to introduce his Bill. He indicated the nature of the Bill which he was seeking to introduce: and I ventured to call attention to the fact that Lord Salisbury had said that he intended to call a Conference. I said, with regard to the proposals of the Bill, which of course we were not then discussing:
"For aught I know, they may be wholly admirable. If they are, that is all the more reason why they should be propounded at the Conference which may hereafter be arranged."
I went on to ask the noble and learned Viscount whether he would not consider deferring the consideration of these proposals to a later date—until after the Conference. He did not then think fit—as was his right—to give me an answer: he abstained from making any reply. I still feel the same thing. I still feel that if it is the intention of Her Majesty's Government to call a Conference all these proposals should be discussed at the Conference. I do not see how you can discuss these proposals, save in the wider setting. For instance, what is to be the size of the new House of Lords? I have the impression—though this is not, I think, in the White Paper—that the all-Party Conference envisaged a House of round about 300 Members. I do not know whether I am right in that (no doubt Lord Samuel will correct me if I am wrong) but that is my impression. It is obvious that you must have some idea of the size of House proposed before
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any useful opinion can be expressed as to the number of Life Peers to be created.
Then it is necessary to think out what proportion of the 300 Members, if that is to be the number, are to be drawn from the present hereditary Peers and what proportion are to be appointed from the Life Peers appointed ad hoc. I think then that it is necessary to consider what steps shall be taken so that the ultimate constitutional theory can apply—namely, that in the last resort the obstruction of this House can be overcome, if, necessary by the creation of new Peers. You also need to consider to what extent it is desirable to inject, as it were, Life Peers into a House so constituted. In short, it seems to me absolutely impossible really to apply a useful mind to those proposals unless we have the wider picture before us. No more could you illustrate a book without knowing what the book was about or who the characters were than you could embark on these discussions just before the Conference. With the greatest respect to the noble and learned Viscount, whose eminent services we all recognise, I cannot understand why he has selected this particular moment of time, after all these years when nothing has been done, and after, be it observed, also, Lord Salisbury had said that he proposed to call this Conference, to introduce his Bill. It may be, perhaps, to see that there is no backsliding—to see that the Government really do intend to carry out their intention to call an all-Party Conference.
I remember very well that when I was Lord Chancellor I indicated to this House that I hoped in the near future to be able to introduce a Bill to deal with the right of civil proceedings against the Crown; and I remember that thereafter, about a fortnight before I introduced my Bill, the noble Viscount introduced his Bill to deal with civil proceedings against the Crown. I remember, too, being in some difficulty as to whether we could have two Bills dealing with the same subject before the House in the same Session—a matter which, thanks to him, we satisfactorily dealt with. It may be, of course, that the noble and learned Viscount wants to make certain that the Government do not go back on their promise. For my own part I am satisfied that the Government mean to keep their promise:

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I believe they are going to call a Conference; and I very much hope that the noble Viscount, Lord Swinton, will be able to give us to-day a clear indication of when that Conference is to be called.
Suppose the Conference does not take place. Suppose one Party or the other refuses to take part in it. What then? I do not want to put ideas into the Government's head, and they do not want any assistance from me in that matter, but I should suppose that, if they think it is as important as they have indicated, it would be their duty, as a Government, to indicate their own proposals, whatever they might be. What I feel can be summarised in this way. This matter is so important that I do not think it is the task of any private Member, however eminent he may be, to introduce his own Bill dealing with this subject on the eve of either a Conference or an attempt at a Conference, or (what I presume is a corollary that would probably follow) some proposals by the Government themselves. It is for that reason that I put down a reasoned Amendment to try to make it plain that I am not opposed to the principle of Life Peers which, indeed, the leaders of all the Parties accepted in the sense which I have indicated—that is, a Conference—nor am I opposed to women being Members of this House, a principle which the leaders of all the Parties also accepted. But I think that this Bill is inopportune at the present time. It is entirely a matter of timing and, that being so, I have put down an Amendment to the effect that we decline to give a Second Reading to a Bill which purports:
"to alter the constitution of this House in ally one particular without any consideration of such wider changes as Her Majesty's Government have suggested should be the subject of discussion between the Parties."
When the noble Viscount the acting Leader of the House deals with this matter, I shall be interested to hear what he finds wrong with this Amendment. I quite agree that it is a way of killing this Bill; but I am not certain that the Amendment to the Amendment which he has put down is not an equally effective way of killing the Bill. After all, if you have a premature infant, you can kill it in one of two ways. You can either (to use Mr. Churchill's historic
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phrase on another occasion) "take it upstairs and wring its dirty neck," or you can put it in cold storage; and the effect of cold storage on a premature infant is almost certain to prove fatal. That being so, I cannot pretend that I am greatly concerned about whether the form of Amendment which this House adopts is the Amendment which I have put upon the Order Paper and which I humbly think is the more logical Amendment—and I shall ask the noble Viscount to tell me why he does not like it—or the other Amendment, that we postpone all further debate on this Bill, which will have, I venture to think, precisely the same effect. So I am not going to try to be eloquent, if indeed I could be eloquent, on the alternatives before the House.
All that matters is that, in some way or other, we kill this discussion at the present time, not because we are opposed to the proposals in this discussion, but because we think it is inopportune now to discuss these matters unless and until we get the full setting in which we can discuss the Bill. I know that the noble Viscount, Lord Swinton, has some statement to make. I am coming to the end of my speech. I shall be only a moment or two more. For these reasons, I venture to say this. I expect that the Government are going to invite us to take part in a Conference. We have not yet received the invitation and I wish to make it plain that until we receive the invitation I cannot say what attitude my Party will take, but I suppose that, even if my Party declines to give its approval, the Government will have some proposals of their own. That being the setting in which we are discussing this matter, I think it a pity to deal with it in this piecemeal fashion. Therefore, though I am not at all opposed to the principles which are indicated in this Bill, I venture to think that we had much better not discuss the Bill now. All these ideas are available to the Conference table, if Conference there is, and that is the place where they should be discussed. For my own part, I believe that the introduction of a Bill on what I venture to think is the eve of the Conference is much more likely to do harm than good. That being so, I beg to move the Amendment which stands in my name.
Amendment moved—
Leave out all the words after ("That") and add ("this House declines to give a Second Reading to a Bill which purports to alter the constitution of this House in any one particular without any consideration of such wider changes as Her Majesty's Government have suggested should be the subject of discussion between the Parties").—(Earl Jowitt.)

EAST COAST FLOOD DISASTER
3.37 p.m.
VISCOUNT SWINTON: My Lords, perhaps I might intervene for a minute or two to make here a statement which the Home Secretary is now making in another place. It is as follows:
"A meeting of Ministers under my chairmanship"—
that is, the chairmanship of the Home Secretary—
"was held this afternoon to consider reports from the damaged areas. The most up-to-date information is that there are 220 reported dead but there is no exact information as to the number of missing, though several hundred people are believed to be missing. Some 30,000 people are believed to have left their homes, of whom some 6,000 are in rest centres, the remainder having found accommodation of their own. It is reported this morning that the floods are slowly subsiding, except in the case of Lincolnshire.
"The police report that no persons are now in danger in Canvey and Foulness Islands.
"The local measures for relieving distress are proceeding satisfactorily. The Government are concentrating their attention primarily on co-ordinating measures for repairing the breaches in the sea and river defences as quickly as possible and according to a system of priorities. The important thing is to get the emergency repairs carried out as quickly as possible, and
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the cost of work which can properly be regarded as emergency work will be met by the Exchequer. Financial control appropriate to these serious circumstances will be instituted as soon as possible.
"The greatest use is being made of members of the Armed Forces, who are being deployed as and when use can be made of their services. I should like to take this opportunity of expressing my appreciation of the help which has been given by the United States Service authorities in this country, and of putting on record our sympathy with the relatives of the United States airmen who lost their lives—if that is confirmed. The various civilian services of this country, to whom tribute was paid yesterday, are continuing to give most efficient help. So far as can at present be foreseen, there is no shortage of the necessary labour. Many offers of help have been received from Commonwealth countries and from France, for which Her Majesty's Government are very grateful.
"Except in a few cases, the essential services, such as gas, electricity, water and fuel, are working, and all possible steps are being taken to make good any deficiencies. Food supplies are adequate.
"The Government have decided to make no charge in respect of parcels of clothing sent through the post to the depôts named in the public announcement and similar arrangements have been made in respect of bedding sent by rail to such depôts.
"The Government recognise the importance of repairing the damaged houses so as to enable people to return to their homes, and the matter will be tackled as soon as the flood conditions permit and as soon as the necessary repairs to the sea defences are in a more advanced state."
EARL JOWITT: My Lords, I am greatly obliged to the noble Viscount for making that statement to us.

LIFE PEERS BILL [H.L.]
3.40 p.m.
Debate resumed.
VISCOUNT SAMUEL: My Lords, your Lordships to-day are invited to choose between three courses which are set out on the Order Paper. The first is the Motion of the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Simon, that we should agree to the Second Reading of his Bill to-day. The second is the Amendment of the noble and learned Earl who has just spoken, to reject the Bill on Second Reading; and the third is an Amendment to be moved on behalf of the Government, that this House should not at this stage pronounce either for or against Lord Simon's Bill but should await the result of conversations which are intended to be begun before long between the political Parties to see whether an agreement can be arrived at. As to the first course, the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Simon, has said that he would be quite willing to accept the adjournment of the debate, as proposed by the Government, if he had reason to think that a Conference would be held and would be proceeded with in a business-like fashion with a view to arriving at results.
With regard to the second course, I do not accept the argument of the noble and learned Earl, that this is an occasion on which we should pronounce for or against the proposals in the Bill—for the reason that a Conference is to be held. Suppose that the Conference is held, and again proves abortive. What would then be the position if the House of Lords to-day had rejected this Bill? Its action would be misunderstood; it would be represented as having refused to reform in any particular its own constitution, even to the extent of so modest a measure as the creation of a maximum of ten Life Peers a year. It would be said that, the Conference having proved abortive, it might have been an excellent thing to revive the debate on this Bill, to proceed with it on Second Reading, and perhaps modify it in Committee. Therefore it seems to me that the right course is that which is proposed by the Government. And if, as I hope, the noble Viscount who is leading the House to-day is in a position to give definite assurances that the Conference will be held forthwith, and that
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the Government have an earnest desire to see it proceed to a successful conclusion and to produce a measure which they themselves will be able to present to Parliament in the very near future, it seems to me that the best course is that your Lordships should neither reject nor accept this particular Bill now but should leave the matter over for consideration until we see the result of the Conference.
So far as this particular Bill is concerned, on merits it appears to me to be right so far as it goes; but it goes such a very little way. The principle of Life Peers was one which was accepted unanimously by the previous Conference. The principle of the admission of women to your Lordships' House is accepted with such unanimity that it is unnecessary to argue the matter further. But if the Bill of the noble and learned Viscount were passed, it would still leave us with a Second Chamber swollen to the excessive dimensions of a membership of over 800 and rapidly increasing towards 1,000, a vast majority of whom do not attend your Lordships' debates, and four-fifths of them sitting by hereditary right. Even if we had ten Life Peers added every year it would be a long time, perhaps a decade, before the proportion was altered from four-fifths to three-quarters; this House would still be overwhelmingly an hereditary Chamber. A seat in the British Parliament would still be a matter of inheritance, like the ownership of a house or a farm.
By general consent the constitution of this House is not conformable either to political science or to political good sense. It has been well said that in a democracy nothing is ever settled until it is settled right. Each organ of the Constitution ought to be as perfect in itself as we can make it; and, looking round at our institutions, we can see that in the course of centuries, and by dint of great efforts, often of vehement controversies, violent conflicts that have convulsed the nation, most of our institutions have been brought to a high degree of perfection. We have a Monarchy such as none of us would wish to change in any particular. We have a Judiciary which I think is usually agreed to be the best in the world. The same is true of our Civil Service. Our local government is in its general principles as good as we could wish. The Parliamentary franchise

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has been made universal, and although many of us think that the system of election is not as it should be and prevents the representative Chamber from being truly representative of the whole people, still in the main the House of Commons is not such as we need desire to see radically changed. Only the Second Chamber, your Lordships' House, amongst all our institutions is regarded by the overwhelming body of public opinion (I feel sure that one can say that with truth), and of individual political opinion, as urgently in need of fundamental change. It is not enough to say that it renders useful service in legislation by dealing effectively with the Committee stages of Bills, providing as it were, a second Committee stage to that of the House of Commons. It is not enough to say that we hold interesting debates on subjects in general which so far as they are reported—and they are very little reported—have a certain degree of influence on public opinion.
The noble and learned Viscount, in moving this Second Reading, quoted from a leading article in yesterday's Times, written with a view to this debate, which I agree with him in thinking was a thoughtful and, indeed, remarkable pronouncement. He read some sentences from it. I will expand the quotation a little further. The writer of the article said that the founders of our present democratic constitution—now I quote:
"believed not in snap decisions by the majority but in the supremacy of a deliberate public opinion, and they looked to a second Chamber to provide that element of deliberateness. To do this, however, the House of Lords must not only be equipped with adequate delaying powers; its composition must be such as to command the respect and confidence of the electorate, and it is a major tragedy that Lords Reform, the need for which is universally admitted, should have been so long delayed. The position of the House of Lords is at present the most serious mechanical defect in the constitution.…"
I feel that every word of that pronouncement is sound. But some of your Lordships say that there is no strong feeling about it in the country, that we are much more concerned nowadays with questions of international politics, with the grave economic situation of the people, the danger of inflation, of collapse of our currency, the ability to buy imports and the cost of living. Those are things with which the whole country is concerned,
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but I venture to suggest to your Lordships that this is just the time, when domestic political issues are arousing no great bitterness throughout the nation, for us to have a calm review and to reflect on such a question as the greater perfecting of our Constitution. This is just the time when we are more likely to agree to sensible conclusions, acceptable to the whole country, than if e waited for a time of seething excitement over political issues.
There can never be any political progress in large matters if whenever the weather is calm you are to say, "It is unnecessary to do anything," and whenever the weather is stormy, "It is impossible to do anything." I suggest to your Lordships that this is the best time of any we could have to carry to fruition a reform of this kind. We cannot expect that this, a comparatively halcyon period of calm, compared with what it could be and has been, will continue indefinitely. Unless all past history is to be belied by future events, we shall again have periods of political excitement, of crisis, and perhaps even of extremism. It may be found that at some General Election—not fought on any of these issues, perhaps, but on some international question—in a moment of temporary electoral aberration, an extreme group is swept into power to command a House of Commons in which dangerous measures are proposed. Then, indeed, the nation would deeply deplore that in this year 1953 its legislators neglected their duty to provide in advance, so far as they could, against such a situation. The noble and learned Earl who has just spoken, in the last speech he made on this subject—a speech to which he himself has referred—used these words:
"…I am strongly in favour of Double-Chamber Government, I believe the Second Chamber is of great value. But I should like to see a Second Chamber which is a Second Chamber all the time; not only when the Liberals or the Labour Party are in power, but equally when the Conservatives are in power."
That comment is very sound. Observe the word "equally." So I assume his comment applies not only to Conservatives, when they are in power, but also to the Labour Party when in power.
We had our three-Party Conference, and though it seems to those of us who took part in it to have happened only the other day, yet looking at the calendar we find that it was five years ago. Since

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then, among the principal events in relation to this matter has been the declaration of the Conservative Party at the last General Election that if returned to power they would summon an all-Party Conference to consider proposals for the reform of the House of Lords. There was a General Election in 1951. That year it was too soon after the Election for them to act. In 1952 they were too completely occupied with other questions for Ministers to be able to give attention to this one. We are now in 1953, and we await the Government's pronouncement. If no action is taken this year, we shall find ourselves in 1954, and then it will be said, "It is too late now. Parliament is becoming moribund; a General Election is at hand, and we must wait until after the electors have given their verdict." The years 1951 and 1952 were too soon; the year 1954 will be too late. Surely this year, 1953, is the designated moment. I hope that the Government will give us satisfaction as to the immediate prosecution of this matter.
As the noble and learned Earl has said, forty-two years have gone by since the first Parliament Act was passed. I was one of the Cabinet of that day, and one of the team of Ministers who had that Bill in hand. Looking at the events which have occurred since then, and taking a bird's-eye view, I thought that the whole process reminded me of something of which I had had experience; and I came to the conclusion that the course of events with regard to the House of Lords question resembles nothing so much as a State Ball at Buckingham Palace, with its quadrilles—in which I had the honour to participate, gorgeously arrayed, at that distant date, forty years ago. We took dignified steps this way and that way; we would advance and retire, take two steps to the right and return to our places, take two steps to the left and return to our places again. The comparison is made the more apt because, as now, in one of the figures ladies took the centre of the floor, and, turning round to the gentlemen, dropped a graceful curtsey to which the gentlemen responded by respectful bows. Then we marched round in couples, and once more returned to our places. The whole ritual—for it was more a ritual than a dance—was very satisfying and impressive. It was
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a performance, a charming performance; but nothing was done. Nothing ever happened; no one ever went anywhere; it was a performance without achievement. And so it has been in the case of the House of Lords question.
I have no doubt that certain members of your Lordships' House are quite content in their hearts that the present situation should continue indefinitely. They say, in effect, "Let us have an all-Party Conference; that will hold the situation for five years. Let us then have another all-Party Conference, and that will hold the situation for another five years." Then they will say to one another, "What happens after that is for the next generation: it will last out for my time." I remember that in a life of the great scientist, John Dalton, it was mentioned that, so far as politics were concerned, he was a "Liberal-Conservative." And the writer of the biography said:
"A Liberal-Conservative is a man who thinks that things ought to progress but who would rather they remained as they were."
I rather suspect that some of your Lordships, if they were to look into their hearts, would find that that is very much their attitude. I see sitting opposite me my noble friend Lord Teviot, who is the principal spokesman of the Liberal-Conservatives in this House. His Liberalism cancels his Conservatism, his Conservatism cancels his Liberalism, and his politics are left with nothing but the hyphen.
I do not propose now to enter into the merits of this Bill. I do not wish to discuss the defects or the virtues of Life Peerage, or the clauses proposed by the noble and learned Viscount's Bill. I am content with the conclusions of the last Conference. It was a remarkable thing that a Conference so composed should have arrived on such a question at unanimous agreement as to what they should recommend to the parties. As the noble and learned Earl has said, it was ad referendum; they were not in a position to commit their Parties, but they did arrive at agreement. I would remind your Lordships again of the membership of that Conference. For the then Government there were present, Mr. Attlee, the Prime Minister; Mr. Herbert Morrison, the Lord President of the Council; thin noble Viscount, Lord Addison, who was the Leader of your Lordships' House; the

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noble and learned Earl himself, Lord Jowitt; and, not least important, Mr. Whiteley, the Chief Government Whip in the House of Commons; while for the Conservative Party there were present the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, Lord Swinton, who is about to address us, Mr. Eden and Sir David Maxwell Fyfe. For the Liberals there were Mr. Clement Davies and myself. The basis on which the Conference agreed was this very basis of Life Peerage as a predominant feature of the new House of Lords.
As to its powers, we all agreed that it should not be a rival to the House of Commons and should not be put on an elective basis. We were all content to go on as we had been since 1911, under the Parliament Act of that year. The Government of that day insisted on reducing the period of delay from two years, as provided for in the Parliament Act, to one year, and it was on that point that the Conference broke down. Efforts were made to arrive at a compromise. The Conservatives made a slight concession, the Labour Government made a slight concession and I myself proposed a further concession which would have reduced the time further to three months. Nevertheless, when we reached that stage, both the other Parties said, "This is an important question of principle, on which we cannot give way." I said, in properly respectful and demure terms, that it was not a question of principle at all; it was a minor matter which could easily be settled, one on which it was not worth breaking up the Conference. However, they persisted. I think both were a little afraid of what their own Party would say to them outside. The Conference broke down and the situation remained as it was before.
I shall be sorry if the Government do not announce that they are to go on with this Conference at once. I was glad to hear the noble and learned Earl, Lord Jowitt, say that he and his Party would be prepared to enter into the Conference. I was afraid that he was going to say they would not go into it unless certain conditions admitting their point of view were agreed.
EARL JOWITT: My Lords, I do not think I said that. The noble Viscount had better read what I did say.
VISCOUNT SAMUEL: I am sorry. I did not hear the noble Earl qualify his statement. At all events, he did not say what I was afraid that he might say: that "Only if you agree with what we want shall we be prepared to enter the Conference." He did not say that. There is still a divergence between the two sides, and it is because there is a divergence that there has to be a second Conference. If there were no disagreement there would be no need to hold a Conference. What would happen in a strike were the employers or the trade unions to attempt to say that they were prepared to arbitrate, but only on condition that the other side agreed to their position before they went to arbitration? It is not admissible in diplomatic negotiations for each side to manœuvre to secure its own way before a conference begins. No negotiation is possible on that ground.
That is all I have to say on these matters. We await with the greatest interest the speech which the noble Viscount, Lord Swinton, is now about to make. I trust that it will be such as to satisfy all of us of the recognition by the Government that this is a matter of urgency and real importance and of the desire to secure a solution of it, by general agreement if possible. If that is so, I hope that at the end of this debate your Lordships will unanimously pass the Amendment which the noble Viscount, or someone on his behalf, will move.
4.4 p.m.
VISCOUNT SWINTON: My Lords, I am sure that all your Lordships regret that my noble friend Lord Salisbury is unable to be here, and still more the reason, not only because he is the Leader of the House but also because, apart from his official position, both he and his father before him have always taken a deep and wise and broad interest in this matter. But can assure the House that in what: I have to say to your Lordships to-day I shall be entirely expressing his views—we very seldom differ—and, indeed, I shall be able to give you the considered opinion of Her Majesty's Government.
I entirely agree with the noble and learned Earl the Leader of the Opposition that these are matters far too grave and

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important to be dealt with by a Private Member's Bill. Matters of such importance and high consequence are proper matters for action by the Government of the day unless they are unable or unwilling to act at all. Obviously, the Opposition share our view. I think it is convenient that I should state the whole of our view now. I can do that quite shortly and clearly. As your Lordships know, it has always been the intention of the Government to invite the other Parties to a Conference to discuss the reform of this House. In his Election Manifesto, the Prime Minister stated:
"We shall call an all-Party Conference to consider proposals for the reform of the House of Lords."
The noble and learned Viscount, Lord Simon, and I think the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel—certainly Lord Simon cited Lord Samuel—appeared rather shocked because we had not taken action more rapidly. It was appositely observed to Lord Simon that he had had forty-two years in which to take action. That is an adequate period of gestation, even for a noble and learned Viscount.
During those years, when he was Home Secretary and held all sorts of other offices, and was at that time in unity with the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel—even in that happy juxtaposition and in the plenitude of his power and influence—the noble and learned Viscount allowed year after year to go by after the 1911 Act without doing anything, so far as I am aware—although, of course, we do not know what happened in the Liberal Cabinet. Perhaps it was like the quadrille which the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, was describing. That would be truly liberal in its beauty and in its other qualities. So far as we know, nothing happened at all. Therefore, I must say quite frankly that my noble friend Lord Salisbury, and, indeed, all of us in the Government, were slightly surprised when, after my noble friend had said (and he does mean what he says, as the noble Earl the Leader of the Opposition recognised, and certainly does not overstate his case) what we were going to do, and had even satisfied that noble Viscount, Lord Samuel (which is a pretty difficult thing to do) of our intention and integrity, the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Simon, at that moment after forty-two years, thought it desirable suddenly to present this Bill to your Lordships.
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We meant exactly what we said and repeated: that we intended to call a Conference. And I can give the House the firmest assurances of our intention. I am glad to tell your Lordships that invitations from the Prime Minister have actually gone out to-day to the Leaders of the two Parties in another place. I hope sincerely that a Conference will take place. But such a Conference must be free to range over the whole field and consider all suggestions, including Life Peerages. A number of proposals have been put forward and canvassed from time to time, and it should be open to the Conference to consider any or all of these and any other proposals which may arise during the discussions. The Government hope most sincerely that the invitations will be accepted and that an agreed and lasting solution may result. That is greatly to be desired. But should the Conference fail to agree, or (as we sincerely hope will not be the case) should the invitations not be accepted, then the Government must have time to consider the position; and, as the noble and learned Earl the Leader of the Opposition anticipated, time not only to consider, but to make such proposals as they may think right. In either event, in the opinion of the Government no useful purpose could be served—indeed, in our view, the whole position and prospects might be prejudiced—if the House were to proceed with this Bill.
It is a Bill which deals with only one aspect of this matter, and in a particular way. It is quite true that Life Peerages figured in the discussions we had, but they figured in a context which was comprehensive, and it is quite wrong to consider them in isolation. A hundred criticisms could be advanced of the proposal to make ten Life Peers a year. What opinion are they to reflect? The noble and learned Viscount says: "If you do not like ten, why not one?" Anything from one to ten, apparently, is satisfactory. Surely, that is rather a loose and lopsided way to discuss these matters. The Bill could be partial in its character, and it might well not be what most of your Lordships would desire. The noble and learned Viscount could not understand why it would prejudice the situation. I can tell him at once. People who are really anxious to get a settlement of this matter by agreement will do their best to

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get a Conference, and to make it a success. But there are people—there may be some in this House, and certainly there are many outside—who, for one reason or another, may say: "We do not want to see this Conference called, and we do not want it to succeed." There would have to be a strong argument given if they are able to say: "This Bill is going forward. We had better wait and see what happens to it. We had better wait and see if it is passed and, if so, if it works in practice." That is just the way in which good intentions make practical results impossible, if the noble and learned Viscount will allow me to say so.
Even when no wider solution was in prospect—as I hope it may be to-day—I have often heard the view expressed in this House that the reform of the House of Lords is a subject which particularly ought not to be dealt with piecemeal. Some of those who have been keenest on the reform of the House of Lords, like the late Lord Salisbury, took that view. I think I am right in saying that this led to a slight family difference of opinion in the noble House of Cecil. There was a proposal in a Bill or in a Motion that Peeresses in their own right should have the right to sit. Though quite a number of Peers thought that that was a good thing in itself, there was a general consensus of opinion in this House, and voiced by those who commanded the greatest respect because they were those who had rendered the greatest service, that we ought not to deal with these matters piecemeal. If that argument applied rightly then—and it certainly appealed to your Lordships—with how much more force does that argument apply to-day, when we are seeking, and when I hope we may find, a solution in conference?
If this Bill were to go forward at this time, and still more if it were passed, it would, in the view of the Government, make wider plans impossible. Obviously, from the thoughtful and helpful speech made by the noble and learned Earl, Lord Jowitt, that is also the view taken by the Opposition. I am sure that that is the last thing any of your Lordships want. Therefore I think we can on this occasion have an interesting and informative debate, which I have no doubt, in accordance with the admirable practice
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of this House, will range far beyond the scope of the Bill or any Motion on the Order Paper—indeed, it has already done so, and we have had reminiscences and excursions which are delightful and excellent. As we add to this anthology, it will be of increasing value to any of us who may take part in the Conference when it is held. But when all the discussion is over—and I am glad to say we are going to have two days of it: we cannot have too much of a good thing—I am sure that most of your Lordships will agree that We should do no more than adjourn the Second Reading of this Bill indefinitely.
The Leader of the Opposition has moved the rejection of the Bill. He rather twitted me by saying that there was not much difference between his Amendment for the rejection of the Bill and the Amendment, standing in the name of my noble friend Lord Salisbury, that the Bill should be put indefinitely into cold storage. He may very well say that the conclusion of the speech which I have ventured to address to the House might well lead to my accepting his Amendment, as his speech would equally well have led him to accept mine. That only shows what good alternatives we are offering to the House. We are an essentially practical if not wholly logical body. My noble friend Lord Salisbury and I thought it wise that we should put on the Order Paper this Amendment for an indefinite adjournment, so that at the end of the debate your Lordships might have a choice—and it is for your Lordships to express an opinion. I hope that nobody, perhaps not even the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Simon, himself, will wish to proceed to put to the Question the Motion foe the Second Reading of the Bill. If lie were to do that, I must say, quite frankly, that I should advise your Lordships to vote against it. But I think it is right that your Lordships should have the opportunity of adjourning the Second Reading sine die, as an alternative—the perhaps more courteous alternative—to the more brutal course proposed by the noble and learned Earl who leads the Opposition.
I will not speak longer. In a speech which has been, I hope, commendably short, and certainly quite definite. I have given to your Lordships, in the statement that the Conference is invited

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to assemble, information that the whole House will have welcomed, and I am sure all your Lordships will hope that I the Conference will take place and will succeed.

FORMOSA
4.19 p.m.
THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (THE MARQUESS OF READING): My Lords, I apologise for intervening in the debate but, with the leave of your Lordships, I desire to make a statement on Formosa. The President of the United States announced yesterday, in a State of the Union message, that the United States 7th Fleet, which has been enforcing the neutralisation of Formosa since the outbreak of the Korean war, would no longer be employed to prevent Chinese Nationalist attacks against the mainland of China. Her Majesty's Government were informed in advance by the United States Government, and at once made known their concern at this decision, which, they feared, would have unfortunate political repercussions without compensating military advantages. This continues to be the view of Her Majesty's Government.
It is important, however, to keep this matter in its correct proportion and perspective. The neutralisation of Formosa was a unilateral act of policy, with which Her Majesty's Government were not associated. It was made before Chinese intervention in the Korean war. President Eisenhower has now decided that, in his own words,
"there is no longer any logic or sense in a condition that required the United States Navy to assume defensive responsibilities on behalf of the Chinese Communists."
He has therefore issued instructions
"that the 7th Fleet no longer be employed to shield Communist China."
Mr. Eisenhower went on to say:
"This order implies no aggressive intent on our part."
The step announced is, in consequence, a unilateral decision by the new United States Administration to amend a unilateral decision taken by their predecessors.
EARL JOWITT: My Lords, this is a very important matter, and I am anxious not to say anything which is in the least
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degree embarrassing, but I should like to ask this question. In view of the possible grave repercussions, are the Government assured that this country will be consulted before any important steps are taken?
THE MARQUESS OF READING: My Lords, as the noble and learned Earl may know, we have made representations asking for consultation. I think the noble Earl knows equally that to-day the new United States Secretary of State arrives here for consultations. Perhaps at this stage I may leave it at that.

LIFE PEERS BILL [H.L.]
4.22 p.m.
Debate resumed.
LORD MORAN: My Lords, after the noble Viscount's statement, it would appear that further debate is irrelevant, but perhaps I might remind the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, that on former occasions, when he spoke of the independent members of this House who have no close Party affiliations, he said very flatteringly that they were the strength of this House and carried great weight. As I say, that was, of course, a very flattering way of speaking of our political innocence. At the same time, it encourages me to ask whether those Members were represented in the 1948 Conference and are to be represented in the Conference which is about to take place. It is natural, in the circumstances, that we should like to state our views, however unimportant, before possibly an agreed report comes back from the Conference.
It has been said, I think by John Stuart Mill, that
"On all great subjects much remains to be said."
but I think it would tax the ingenuity of any noble Lord to say anything very fresh upon this subject of Life Peerages. It has been debated six times on six separate occasions in the last hundred years, on the grounds that Life Peers would strengthen and invigorate the House, would add weight to its deliberations and, in Lord Rosebery's phrase, "promote its efficiency." I trust this may be the sixth occasion on which your Lordships will require to be satisfied,

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before you change the composition of this House, that these benefits will in fact follow. The case put by the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Simon, appears to me to be based upon two arguments. The first implies, I think, that this House needs strengthening with a new kind of member, and that the Life Peerages would in fact strengthen it. The noble Viscount argued that there are a number of able and distinguished commoners who are reluctant to accept hereditary Peerages because they would be a burden to their descendants. Since there are, of course, no figures available, I can only state my impression, which is that if there were any, the numbers would not justify legislation.
When the noble Viscount talks of strengthening the House, or says that the House needs strengthening, I ask, is that well-founded? It was certainly true when Lord Russell first brought this proposal forward in 1869. Bat conditions then were totally different. It was a time when the Industrial Revolution had driven home its iron wedges into the fabric of society, when the incidence of power was shifting from the territorial aristocracy to the rising middle classes. It was a time of doubt and uncertainty and even of insecurity. Lord Russell may well have felt that the House of Lords, which was then predominantly a Chamber of hereditary Peers, was vulnerable. At any rate, he felt that it could be strengthened by attracting to it twenty, thirty, or even forty, commoners, business men of great ability, over several years. Lord Wensleydale was to be the first, and Lord Macaulay was to be one of the first.
But the conditions of to-day are very different. Whereas at that time one or, at most, two Peers were created in a year, in the five years from 1945 to 1949 seventy-five peers were created, an average of fifteen a year. Of the 857 members of your Lordships' House, 176 are Lords of first creation—that is to say, about one-fifth. Not only is that a substantial fraction, but it displays an activity out of proportion to its numbers. I have been through Hansard for the four Sessions 1947 to 1951. In those four Sessions, 318 noble Lords addressed the House, and 147 of that number were Lords of first creation. Not only is it
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clear that these Lords are playing a part—perhaps I might claim a substantial part—in maintaining the admittedly high level of debate, but I think it is true to say that they are an essential element of this House. It not true, as the noble Viscount said when he introduced this Motion (I quote his words), that the composition is as vulnerable as ever. Is it not true, on the contrary, that what he is trying to do has already been done: that there is in existence at the present time a Chamber which is speaking with great deliberation and with great influence upon the fabric at the present time? This point has been raised before, by the noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Burleigh, in the 1948 debate. But to bring conviction to the agnostic it should be documented.
The noble Viscount's second argument is that if Life Peerages were created they would gradually do away with the hereditary right to sit in this Chamber, and so, it may be said, put us right with the public. I do not lightly dismiss a consideration of that kind, for all government stands on opinion. But if it is right and proper that we should be conscious of the necessity of popular support, that does not mean that we must listen to every idle critic. There is a light-minded section of the Press and public who say that there is no necessity for a Second Chamber and no need for second thoughts. Why should they, when they have never in their lives had a thought of any kind? I address myself to serious critics of the hereditary principle. They begin by finding not so much a chink as a gap in our armour, a gap that was noticed more than eighty years ago by Bagehot. In his saber judgment he declared that the slack attendance of noble Lords would in time destroy your Lordships' House. An Assembly, he said—a revising Assembly especially—which does not assemble, which looks as if it does not care how it revises, is defective in a main political ingredient. It may be of use, but it will hardly convince the public that it is so. Nevertheless, there may be support for the proposal of Lord Salisbury, who in 1888 suggested that noble Lords who were not interested in the proceedings of this House or found it difficult to attend should be released from their obligation to attend.
The crux of the whole matter, however, is that the hereditary Peerage is

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conservative in temper and tends to walk through the same Lobby. Our sin is not so much that we are a hereditary Chamber as that we are predominantly of one Party. Life Peerages will not remedy that defect in any way. Governments come and Governments go; the Left succeeds the Right, and the Right the Left; and each in turn will create Peers in its own image, so that in ten years' time things may be much as they are now. It is something of a paradox that Life Peerages not only make things no better; they actually make them worse. Your Lordships are very sensitive to the disparity in numbers of the two great Parties in this House, and in consequence you have come to exercise an admirable restraint and self-discipline in the self-imposed task of not giving offence to another place. If you are going to alter the composition of this House, with the idea of putting things right politically, that restraint is likely to be loosened. Bagehot himself saw danger here. He said that if in a new House every member were chosen for his ability only, that Chamber would presently begin to think that ability was the only thing that counted and would begin to challenge the findings of another place.
For these reasons, if I am right in thinking that our main offence is that we are predominantly of one Party, I do not believe that Life Peerages are any remedy. What is the remedy? We can leave the House as it is or we can reform it. If we are to remodel the House, I would ask: Who is to do the remodelling? That is not an idle question. When Lord Rosebery brought up this matter of Life Peerages in 1888, Lord Wemyss rose in his place and moved an Amendment. He said this:
"It is not a safe thing to place the constitution of this House in the power of a committee; if any changes in the constitution of this House are to be made, they should be debated and made by the House itself."
Lord Wemyss had in his mind a problem which is troubling me; and it is this. If you are going to have a remodelled House, you will get nowhere unless you devise a way of life which does not bring the House into conflict with the other place. Would it not help, in devising such a House, to call in the advice of those who have very slight political affiliations? I feel that there may be something in what the noble and gallant
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Lord, Lord Chatfield, said in 1948, though I would not go so far as to agree with his suggestion that the value of this House is in direct proportion to the lack of Party politics here. Any new Chamber, he said, that was going to work would have to be full of cross-Benches. He saw no other way in which the House could work. I am not suggesting that Party is not an essential part, but I think it is when we are non-political. when we are debating some high non-political issue, that we are most convincing.
Perhaps I may be allowed to go back for a moment to the report of the 1948 Conference and to remind your Lordships that the report recommends that
"The present right to attend and vote, based solely on heredity, should not by itself constitute a qualification for admission to a reformed Second Chamber."
I interpret that to mean that this House, as it has been constituted, would cease to exist. As the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, once said, there are many noble Lords of considerable ability who would find themselves in the new Chamber; nevertheless it is still true to say that no single member of this House can be quite certain that he will be there. I think that that is true. But what is to take the place of the present Chamber? Perhaps I may be allowed to quote to your Lordships these words:
"Members of the Second Chamber should be styled 'Lords of Parliament' and would be appointed on grounds of personal distinction and public service. They might be drawn either from hereditary Peers or from commoners who had been created Life Peers."
That might give you a better House of Lords or it might not, but it would certainly be a very different one. I think your Lordships will agree that the present House works, and works well. We are asked to exchange it for a House which may or may not work well. Is that altogether wise? In England we say of our Constitution that it works. If Burke were living at this hour what would he think when he heard that a Chamber had been hastily invented, as it were, overnight, to take the place of your Lordships' House which had grown up over the centuries?
Your Lordships may remember a story of Lytton Strachey's, of Gilbert Scott, the architect, who, when his hopes of building Government offices in Whitehall in

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the Gothic style were frustrated by the tiresome Lord Palmerston, found consolation in building the St. Pancras Hotel in a style of his own. Are we trying to rebuild this House in a style of our own? That would not be a very evolutionary process. Is there nothing in tradition, which is our way of passing on experience? Is there nothing in the regal force of custom? Burke said of our Constitution that it was a prescriptive Constitution, whose sole authority is that it has existed time out of mind.
"Your King, your Lords, your Judges, your Juries, grand and little, all are prescriptive"
said Burke. All these (if I may summarise this argument) are ordained by custom. You cannot tamper with one without endangering all the others. Prescription is the most solid of all titles to government. I say so much because noble Lords have recently heard custom, which has the force of law, somewhat summarily dismissed, though it seems to some of us the cement without which the whole edifice could fall to pieces.
My Lords, we are in a most singular position. On the one hand, the need for a Second Chamber has never been more obvious. In the press and hurry of the time, the art of government tends to become more and more empirical. We are al ways discussing symptoms without being quite clear what is the disease. That is on the one hand. What of the other? The public are growing increasingly conscious that there is something, after all, in a Second Chamber, but it has not given its mind to whether in fact it has got the Second Chamber it needs. Mr. Asquith, in 1911, said that a Second Chamber should be free of partisanship and that it should conduct its proceedings with a fair mind and an even hand. Is that not exactly what this House has been doing during and since the war?
Again, the Conference in 1948 put on paper its idea that the Second Chamber should be one composed of men of mature judgment and experience, gained in many spheres of public life. Has that not already been achieved by the happy combination we have here of the hereditary element and Lords of new creation? Is it not maddening that though every noble Lord in this House knows that we have a House that works, the public
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does not know it: that we know that the composition of this House has been radically changed of recent years, but the public does not know it: that we know the limited nature of our powers? I am not one of those who believe that if the people of England choose to be possessed and rushed down a steep place into the sea, this Chamber is going to stop them. We know exactly what we can do.
Nevertheless, we need not be discouraged. It seems to me that things are changing and that time is on our side. There may come a time when we shall have carefully to remodel your Lordships' House, but I am convinced that that time has not come yet. During the last twelve years the influence of this House has plainly risen. Would it not be wise to let that go on? Then, when the day comes when more must be done, we shall find the public much more responsive, much more sympathetic and much more understanding of our concept of what a Second Chamber should be. Not that the public is oblivious to what the House of Lords has done in the last decade. It is true that, when the public see your Lordships' House doing what is perhaps better done in another place, they are not particularly impressed; but when they find your Lordships' House sitting as a Council of State, engaged in high argument on some august theme—it may be the fate of India or the future of broadcasting—they are plainly impressed; and then it is that the cumulative sagacity of our elder statesmen, each sentence wrought out of their experience hardly won in every walk of life in many lands, seems for a moment to transport us into regions of lasting wisdom. My Lords, cannot we leave well alone?
4.45 p.m.
THE EARL OF HALIFAX: My Lords, in the constructive and thoughtful speech to which the House has just listened there may be, I doubt not, observations which at the appropriate occasion would lead many of us into argument. However, I do not consider myself obliged to follow the noble Lord in detail at this moment, because, as I see it, the task of the House as the debate has developed has become somewhat more simple and straightforward than it was when we began the debate, Speaking for myself, I certainly

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feel that, however admirable might have been the speech that I had thought of asking your Lordships to listen to, I am not sure now that it would be entirely appropriate. Therefore your Lordships may console yourselves by feeling that what I shall say will certainly be more brief and possibly more directly to the point than what I had had in mind at an earlier stage to inflict upon your Lordships. Because, as I see it, the speech that was made a few moments ago by my noble friend who is leading the House has effected a complete transformation of the position, even from what it was when my noble friend Lord Simon moved his Motion an hour or two ago, If, indeed, my noble and learned friend Lord Simon entertains any wish to feel that he has earned a reward, I think he may well feel that his Motion has been amply justified by the occasion it has afforded to my noble friend Lord Swinton to put the House at this early stage in possession of the Government's thought and purposes on this great subject.
LORD BALFOUR OF BURLEIGH:And action.
THE EARL OF HALIFAX: And the news that, as my noble friend intimated, if I heard him rightly, the invitations to the Conference on this great question were sent out on behalf of the Prime Minister to-day or yesterday—
VISCOUNT SWINTON: To-day.
THE EARL OF HALIFAX:—is an extremely satisfactory piece of information which my noble and learned friend, Lord Simon, has been instrumental in eliciting. The fact that this debate was imminent may not have been without its influence in the acceleration of such a decision.
The situation, therefore, moves into the shape that my noble and learned friend Lord Simon foresaw when he made his speech—namely, that if he had reason to expect an early assembly of such a Conference and action by the Government, he would be entirely ready to concur in the suspension of further proceedings on this Bill. As I suppose the situation that he foresaw has been brought into being, I presume that when this debate finishes we shall, by general agreement, see the matter adjourned.
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Incidentally, I was pleased to observe that my noble friend who leads the House saw a difference between his Amendment and the Amendment moved by the noble and learned Earl who leads the Opposition. I should have found it impossible to vote for the Amendment moved by the noble and learned Earl, but no difficulty in voting, as I should vote now if a vote were required, for the Amendment moved by Lord Swinton. But, from what has fallen from those who have taken part in the discussion, I presume there will be no need for noble Lords to register their vote in the Lobby. Therefore we must concentrate our hopes and prayers upon the success of the Conference, when it meets.
Watching the history of the last forty years, to which reference has so frequently been made, I conceive that never has agreement been so close as it was in 1948. I think the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, would wholly support me in that belief. I must honestly admit that I am one of those who feel that it was a disaster that the minor difference that the noble Viscount described should have become elevated into a point of principle, rendering agreement so elusive. I hope that this time we may be more fortunate. Incidentally, however, I did not understand the noble and learned Earl who speaks for the Labour Party, to pledge his Party, or to answer for his Party in any way, as to what their reply will be to this invitation, and I was surprised to hear the noble Viscount assume that the noble and learned Earl had answered affirmatively for his Party, I hope he may; but I was under the impression that he had saved his position in that matter not once or twice but many times.
My Lords, this is the only reference that I want to make to the general problem. We have all become accustomed over these years to watch the action and inter-action of the double element of powers and of composition. It has become increasingly plain, I think, that those who were concerned to revise the composition of the House were frequently reluctant, and often, indeed, restrained from any action at all by their reluctance, to do anything through revision of composition that might possibly give the House greater power. On the other

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hand, those whose principal interest it was to see the House enjoy greater power were apt to be sharply divided on questions of composition. Therefore it was that those two questions, not easily separable, were yet uneasily linked together, producing a difficulty not infrequently like that of the elephant in the country pantomime, when the forelegs and the hindlegs do not always synchronise and go the same way at the same moment. It was no doubt that sense of impatience with the situation that led my noble and learned friend, Lord Simon (and I certainly do not find myself in disagreement with him), to feel that it was desirable and definitely useful to bring the House up to the point of considering, as a practical proposition, one definite piece of reform. As I say, the situation has moved beyond that now, and we may all hope that success will emerge.
One point I should particularly like to make. I think it is possible, although undesirable, for one Parliament to undo the work of its predecessor in the case of an ordinary domestic issue, whether it be the nationalisation of transport, steel or anything else. One Party can go on doing that, and no doubt the other Party can do it, too. It is undesirable, although it may be necessary. But I do not think it can be done with a constitution. That is why I thought particular importance attached to the remarks which fell from the noble and learned Earl who speaks for the Opposition, when he emphasised (and I was glad to hear my noble friend who leads for the Government emphasise also) the importance of securing agreement on this, the constitutional issue. I thought the noble and learned Earl spoke words of great wisdom when he said that he would sooner have the second best by agreement than an ideal scheme imposed on the other Party. I hope that on this question we may find ourselves moving to agreement, because the issues that hang on successor failure are great, far transcending the importance, the history and the work of this House by itself, important as that is; and I am sure that not one of your Lordships would wish to say a word at this moment to impede what may be the new possibility of a beneficent agreement.
4.55 p.m.
LORD KENSWOOD: My Lords, like the noble Earl who has just spoken, I find myself in the difficult position of having to remodel my speech, following the statements made by the noble and learned Earl who spoke for the Opposition and the noble Viscount who is the acting Leader of the House. There are, however, just one or two points that I should like to bring out. The noble and learned Viscount, Lord Simon, pointed out in his speech, with approval, that men and women who would become Life Peers should do so on account of their distinction or on account of public service, as they would be best able to contribute to the deliberations of this House. When, however, he goes on to say that these nominations should be made irrespective of family or of fortune, I begin to wonder whether his Bill is not even more meagre than it seemed to me at first. When it was first notified that this Bill was to come forward I felt that there were points in it which greatly commended themselves to me.
VISCOUNT SIMON: Would the noble Lord forgive me one moment? The reference to "without consideration of family and of fortune" was in the quotation from Mr. Walter Bagehot's book; it was not my own phrase. Perhaps I may be excused for pointing that out.
LORD KENSWOOD: I thank the noble and learned Viscount for the correction, but I took it for granted that that quotation was made with the noble and learned Viscount's approval. If that is the case, then surely the Bill comes under criticism, for this reason: that while today it is all very well to appoint people to this House, can we be sure that they will be able to attend? If the nominations are made irrespective of fortune, I am of opinion that many of the people we should like to see here would not be able to come because they are not in a position to give the time to this work. Therefore I have the feeling that the Bill, as it stands at present, would be largely abortive.
A further criticism I have to make is one which has already been touched upon. There are two aspects of the reform of this Chamber: one is function, the other is constitution. It seems to me

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that before we can say who should do the work, we must first be fairly certain as to what we want this House to do. The analogy is that of a machine. We do not devise a machine and then afterwards ask, "What work shall we give this machine to do"? We first of all think what work has to be done, and then create a machine to perform that work. Here again, in spite of everything that the noble and learned Viscount has said, I believe that there is at least a tacit assumption that the functions of this House should remain more or less as they are.
Now one final point on the Bill itself. I agree with the noble and learned Earl the Leader of the Opposition that, if we pass this Bill, the Conference, the appointment of which has been announced to-day, and which is to meet, I hope, very shortly, would inevitably find itself embarrassed by a decision of this House taken so very shortly before the meeting of the Conference. The question now arises, should we accept the noble and learned Earl's Amendment, or should we accept the Amendment of the Government? I think it would be more satisfactory to reject this Bill outright, and for this reason. There is a feeling—at least with me, and possibly with other people—that if the Conference were to start with a suspicion that it might fail, that would be a bad beginning. I think that everyone concerned should go into the Conference with complete confidence that it will succeed. If that is the case, it is bound to succeed. Therefore I hope that the noble and learned Viscount will see fit to withdraw this Bill.
5.2 p.m.
LORD TEYNHAM: My Lords, I feel that I can agree with a great deal that has been said by the noble Lord who has just sat down. However, I think it would be a mistake not to give this Bill a Second Reading, because if we were to throw out this Bill now it would indicate to the country at large that this House did not want any reform at all. I am sure that that would be a mistake. Nevertheless, with all due respect to the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Simon, who has introduced this Bill, I cannot support it in its present form. I was glad to hear from him that the question of men and women Life Peers was a question for Committee, as was also that of numbers.
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I agree also with the noble Viscount, Lord Swinton, that if we accepted this Bill to-day it might prejudice any reform which might be proposed in a Conference between the two political Parties. But I suggest that the noble Viscount was perhaps a little hard on the introducer of the Bill, because the kite-flying measure which the noble and learned Viscount has put before us to-day appears, in fact, to have woken up the Government, and we hear that invitations have already been sent out for a Conference. I suggest that the idea behind this Bill is a good one, but I should prefer to see the maximum number of Life Peers who may be created in one calendar year reduced from ten to five. I also suggest that it would be far better—for reasons which I will give in a few minutes—not only to limit the number of Life Peers who may be created under this Bill but also to provide that their nominations for submission to the Crown should be by a Joint Standing Committee of both Houses. Those of your Lordships who have studied the Report of the well-known Bryce Committee on reform of this Chamber will remember that this was the method put forward for the nomination of Life Peers, and I suggest that it would go a long way to prevent any kind of partisanship in nominations.
Now what must be the ultimate result of the proposals in this Bill, with the possibility of the nomination of ten Life Peers every calendar year? By the process of time, the Life Peers would outnumber what one might call the present working population of this House, which is certainly not a very large one. This result may be a good thing or it may be a bad thing, but what does history teach us in this respect? I think we should not forget that when the House of Lords was abolished in 1649 by Cromwell, and restored eight years later, a right of nominating Peers was retained by Cromwell himself; and, in fact, a very large number of Life Peers were so nominated, outnumbering the number of hereditary Peers. But what happened? In a very short time it was found that the nominated Peers had the disadvantage of being largely partisan and of doubtful benefit. So much so that after the new House had been in Session for only a fortnight it was found necessary to reassemble it on the old hereditary lines.

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Of course, present-day conditions and circumstances are entirely different. But I suggest that we should beware of creating a large number of Life Peers, either by this method or by any other method which might tend to submerge the present working population of the House. If we did that, we should inevitably tend to make this Chamber overshadow the First Chamber. This House would be bound to become more assertive and critical, and eventually a rival to the First Chamber. If the country were seeking to establish an entirely new Constitution, a form a Senate might be an admirable thing. But to try to build up one, however limited, and interpose it on the present Constitution, would be doomed to failure. On the other hand, I suggest that there are certain reforms which could be undertaken which would not destroy the inherent advantages that exist in this House and which would, at the same time, meet some of the objections frequently levelled against it. I would mention one very great advantage of the present composition of this House—that is, that it is a good cross-section of the common man, because so many of us are not Field-Marshals or experts in any particular line.
It is perhaps true to say that the most complete and detailed reform which has ever been devised was that produced by the Bryce Committee—to which I have already referred—in the year 1917, which envisaged a large number of Life Peers in addition to a proportion of hereditary Peers. Why was this plan never proceeded with, and why was it allowed to drop by all Parties? I think the words of an historian—none other than Harold Nicolson—give the answer. He said:
"These recommendations were not carried out because it was felt that no Second Chamber, however carefully devised, would prove either as vulnerable, and therefore as unassertive, as a hereditary chamber, or more honourable, experienced and intelligent than the existing House of Lords."
I cannot help feeling that these reasons against a radical reform of the House of Lords largely hold good to-day. The two main reproaches which are sometimes levelled against this House are, first, that there is always a large and permanent Conservative majority; and, second, that Members sit by hereditary right. I am sure the Party opposite will agree that while their Government were in power
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recently, the Conservative majority in this House was not used at all unfairly. And I suggest that, to that extent, the magnitude of the reproach on this score has been lessened, though no doubt the fear remains that the so-called "backwoodsmen" might appear on the scene.
I am certainly not one of those who rule out any reform of this Chamber. In fact, I would say that an internal reform is badly needed—a reform which could well be devised to meet the case of the "backwoodsmen" and, at the same time, improve the attendance of the House, I suggest that some 200 Peers should be elected by Members of this House to sit and vote during the period of each Parliament. They should be elected on the same lines as those on which the Scottish Peers are elected, and might be known as Peers of Parliament. The method of election might well be left to a Joint Standing Committee of all Parties of this House with a proviso that all Peers who have taken their seats and who are not Peers of Parliament should have the right to attend and speak in debates but not to vote on legislation. I should also like to see a further proviso, that Peers of Parliament who do not attend a minimum of, say, 25 per cent. of the Sittings in each Session, should forfeit their right of voting on legislation for the next Session. As your Lordships are aware, we have something similar in connection with our railway fares from home.
It is interesting to recall that powers to deal with absent Peers were taken in 1820. A Resolution was then passed in your Lordships' House:
"That no Lord do absent himself, on pain of incurring a fine of £100 for each day's absence, pending the first three days of such proceeding, and thereafter £50 for each day's absence, and in default of paying the fine he should be taken into custody."
I have examined the Journals of the House, but I can find nothing to say that this Resolution has been rescinded. Moreover, if we examine the Journals of the House we find that during the 18th Century the Lord Chancellor was frequently engaged in writing letters to noble Lords, exhorting them to attend to their business. I would mention one more point. If payment is at any time to be made the rule, I hope that it will be made for attendances—say, five guineas a time—and not by an annual

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salary. I would suggest, however, that Peers of Parliament would be in a different position from what I might call the "Petrol Peers" made not long ago, because if Peers of Parliament did not attend the Sittings properly, no doubt they would not be re-elected for the next Parliament.
I submit that the reform of the House on the lines that I have suggested would to some extent lessen the hereditary right to sit and vote in the House, and would go a long way to meet objections to the present sole and unfettered rights. I see no reason why Peers who did not wish to be elected Peers of Parliament should not have the right to be candidates for the other place. Perhaps that would meet the wishes of the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, who sits behind me here to-day. I am sure that we shall make a great blunder if we endeavour to carry reform much beyond the suggestions I have outlined. I was much struck by the remarks made by the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, who I regret has not been able to be in his place to-day. What did the noble Viscount say during the debate on the Parliament Bill in 1948? The noble Viscount said:
"There is a case for leaving the matter alone—why not leave it alone? Is it really necessary that it should be altered at all? You can have something that is too symmetrical."
I must say that I am inclined to agree with the noble Viscount to a certain extent, but I feel that an internal reform of the Chamber, something on the lines I have suggested, is long overdue. I submit that the Bill which is before us to-day, when amended, might well be complementary to this reform. This Bill would undoubtedly be the means of bringing into the House a number of outstanding men in the professional and business worlds who would be a welcome addition to our debates. But I hope the noble Viscount will not press his Bill to-day.
5.14 p.m.
VISCOUNT HAILSHAM: My Lords, when I have the temerity to speak in your Lordships' House, I try to come with a fairly definite idea of what I want to say. That has certain advantages, if one is at a loss, but it also has a disadvantage. Events in your Lordships' House sometimes follow one another with such
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kaleidoscopic rapidity that one's original intentions become inapposite. That has been the situation this afternoon. What started with the Second Reading of a Bill to promote Life Peerages up to the number of ten has changed miraculously, first into a debate as to the means by which the Bill can be killed without revealing the real motives underlying the action of either Party Front Bench—a most interesting and revealing discussion—and then into a somewhat academic debate on the general subject of the reform of the House of Lords. I should like to offer, with great diffidence, something to both parts of this debate.
I fully share the views of the two Front Benches that, ideally speaking, a reform of the House of Lords should take place after an all-Party Conference, whether agreement is arrived at in the course of that Conference or whether it is not arrived at, as I should personally expect to be the case. For that reason, and since the noble Viscount, Lord Swinton, who leads the Government this afternoon, has announced that invitations to such a Conference have now been issued, I must say it would be difficult not to proffer to the noble and learned Viscount, who proposed the Second Reading, the advice that the Second Reading should be, at any rate, postponed until the Conference has taken place. But, at the same time, I would say now that as between the alternative sponsored by the Government, of adjourning the debate, and the alternative of rejecting the Bill, sponsored by the Opposition. I should prefer the adjourning of the debate rather than the rejecting of the Bill, if only for the reason indicated by the noble Lord, Lord Teynham, who has just preceded me, that the rejection of the Bill, for whatever reason and however reasoned the argument, would be interpreted by the public at large as a rejection out of hand of the proposition underlying the Bill. And as the noble Earl, Lord Jowitt, was careful to make it plain that he did not reject the principle underlying the Bill, I think it would be a great pity if the Bill were rejected, even on a reasoned Amendment. Therefore, upon the purely practical problem with which we are faced, I myself feel that the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Simon, should take the alternative offered by the Government of adjourning

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the debate after a suitable discussion in order to enable the Conference to take place.
I must say that I thought some of the criticisms of the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Simon, by the two Front Benches, were both a little less than gracious and less than funny. The noble Viscount who leads the Government, speaking, as he always does, with all the enthusiasm and vigour of an extinct volcano in violent eruption seems to consider that criticism was to be levelled at the noble and learned Viscount because for forty-two years he did nothing about this problem. On the lips of noble Lords opposite that argument is inapposite enough, but on the lips of the noble Viscount, who for nearly twenty-five years of his distinguished career has been amongst the leaders of the Party which has corralled Lord Simon into its own counsels, it is less than gracious. The noble Viscount, Lord Swinton, was himself a member of those Governments which in successive Administrations used to urge out of doors the urgency of the reform of the Second Chamber but made themselves responsible when in office for the very policy of non-feasance which they condemned. I thought it was rather less than funny for the noble Viscount, Lord Swinton, to level this argument against his noble friend. For my part, I, who played no part in any of those Administrations, feel that the arguments are entirely sound in so far as they are criticisms of successive Administrations in which both noble Viscounts played such distinguished parts but in so far as they are designed as reasons for continuing delay on the part of the present Administration, I consider that they are a little less than convincing. When they are produced by an Opposition belonging to a Party which for years stood for the abolition of the House of Lords, as a reason for continued delay in its reform, I am still less convinced of the cogency or sincerity of these considerations.
Both the noble and learned Earl, Lord Jowitt, and the noble Viscount, Lord Swinton, in glorious unison, turned and rent the unfortunate Viscount below the gangway because he ventured to bring forward his proposals now, when the Government had so manifestly and sincerely promised to call a Conference, to
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which up to this afternoon no invitations had been issued. That is really a little too much to expect Back Benchers on either side to swallow. After all, it is not the beginning of all our political careers, humble though we may be. We are quite sure that those invitations would not have been issued this afternoon had it not beer for the initiative of the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Simon. However much the two Front Benches may try to explain that Lord Simon's intervention was very inapposite, because they were always intending to do it on February 3 anyhow, I remain certain that we ought to be grateful to the noble and learned Viscount for having intervened in this particular way. Each Front Bench is completely convinced of the sincerity of the other. I frankly confess that I am not convinced of the sincerity of either. They are neither of them sincere.
I have studied this question with great interest, personally and publicly, for twenty years. Most people in any way interested in public life have at one time or another, with a great degree of frankness and cynicism, made known their own views to me, although it would be wrong for me to betray any of the confidences I have received. I can make only this confession to your Lordships. I am quite convinced that the Labour Party will, if they can, preserve the present situation, because they wish the composition of your Lordships' House to be vulnerable in the light of public opinion, and not as good as it ought to be, in order, in fact, to prevent your Lordships from discharging the responsibility which rests upon you by law. I am equally convinced that there are many members of the Conservative Party who will go on playing with House of Lords reform as a kind of facade—a kind of ritual dance, as Lord Samuel suggested—in order to prevent anything ultimately from being done. Indeed, it is less than twenty-four hours since a prominent member of the Government discreetly informed me that he was not going to have any change made if he could possibly help it.
So much for the sincerity of the two Front Benches: the Labour Party designing to retain an anomaly in order to abuse it when it has nothing better to say for itself, and the Conservative Party designing to enter into a ritual dance for the purpose of avoiding a necessary reform. I hope that the marriage which is

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proposed in a Conference between these two entirely insincere parties will prove fruitful and produce a child of which the noble and learned Earl opposite will not desire to wring the dirty neck. I hope sincerely that the pressure of public opinion on this matter may drive both political Parties into a certain measure of decency, which so far I do not think they have shown.
Having said that, I should, with respect, like to indicate why, and to what extent, I favour the proposals put forward by my noble and learned friend Lord Simon. As he rightly pointed out, forty-two years have passed since we were told that this problem brooked no delay, I do not think we need complain too much of that, because two facts have gradually emerged during those forty-two years. The first is that the House of Lords as a practical institution works extremely well, although it may be open to every kind of theoretical objection; and the second is that the actual details of reform are a great deal more difficult than was originally thought. To begin with, I think it is fairly clear—I speak in the presence of the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, and he will correct me if I am wrong—that when Mr. Asquith originally thought that the problem brooked no delay, and permitted the preamble to the Parliament Act, 1911, to contain a phrase to the effect that it was designed to substitute for the present House of Lords a Second Chamber appointed on a popular basis, he envisaged some kind of assembly which would draw its authority either from ex-officio membership, or from election. Forty-two years' discussion has, I think, convinced us that that proposal will not do in any form. There are two good reasons why that should be so. The first was defined as long ago as 1857 by Walter Bagehot, when he pointed out that the existence in the British Constitution of two Houses of co-equal authority would lead inevitably to deadlock; that the Second Chamber must always defer to the popularly elected Chamber, and a proposal to have two popularly elected Chambers, each of equal authority, would never pass the House of Commons, and, if it did, ought to be killed by the House of Lords. Therefore, that will not do.
Moreover, there is another reason which applies to proposals of a wider kind. The Parliament of this country
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was not created: it grew. It has always consisted of King, Lords and Commons. Much of its authority depends on its mystique, which could never be recaptured were we to substitute for the Parliament which has grown a Parliament which was manifestly made by the temporary membership of two Houses. If we are going, to reform the House of Lords, then it follows that we must not substitute another Chamber of any kind at all. It has got to be, at the end, something which men will call, and think of as, the House of Lords. It would be fatally easy to abolish the House of Lords. But to reform it, it is necessary to maintain a continuity and mystique which will command the respect which your Lordships undoubtedly do command, despite defects in the principle of composition.
Therefore, at the end of forty-two years' discussion there are only three broad possibilities for the reform of the House of Lords. One is to leave it alone. There are many people who, in practice, are working to that end, but nobody has ventured to say so in public. The second possibility is to abolish it altogether. That, in my view, would be a very serious and great mistake. The third possibility is to follow, more or less, the general lines of agreement between the Parties in 1948; and that, for the reasons I want to give, quite shortly, is the alternative which I favour. I have not disregarded the powerful plea put in by the noble Lord, Lord Teynham, in the speech immediately preceding mine, for another type of assembly. In his case, what he would favour would be an assembly in which the hereditary principle was modified by the principle of election, much as the Scottish Peers now elect their representatives to this House. In my view, with respect, that is another proposal which, although superficially attractive, is not likely in the end to satisfy public opinion.
If it be true, as I believe and as I shall try to show, that the hereditary principle, as such, is something of which public opinion does not fundamentally approve (although we are assured that every Englishman loves a Lord, I am bound to say that since I have been a member of your Lordships' House I have found certain exceptions to the rule) it will, on the whole, be more and not less

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offensive if what is done in future is to concentrate or distil the hereditary element in this House in such a way that the hereditary principle elects its most effective members always to attend. There is something to be said for the backwoodsman. I sometimes think that I am something of a backwoodsman myself, owing to professional engagements. There is much to be said for the noble Lord who comes to the House when he feels that his public duty demands it, and not simply when he wants to bore his fellow Peers. But there is nothing to be said, at least in my belief, for a House composed, rather like the House of Commons, of those who are compelled by conscience to attend because they have been elected by their fellow representative Peers, to represent nothing except the hereditary principle—a principle which is, at any rate in my view, vicious, at least in the eyes of the public. That is the reason why, with all respect, I do not concur in the view of the noble Lord, Lord Teynham.
Nor, in fact, would it do, as a great many people also ingeniously suggest, to have a number of ex-officio Peers. It is all very well for Her Majesty, on the advice of her Ministers, to summon the Chairman of the Trades Union Congress and make him a Peer, either for life or with the right of succession, as the case may be. But for ex-officio Peers to be created, one would do two things which are wholly alien to the nature of our Constitution. In the first place, we should place important and controversial political functions in the hands of people who do not wish to accept them. In the second place, we should produce exactly the same evil as an elected House of Lords—we should set up a body which would have the moral right to challenge the House of Commons, a principle which is intrinsically vicious in a Constitution like our own. For those reasons, I do not think that will do.
Therefore, we are driven back on proposals rather similar to those which are contained in the Bill and which are also similar—as my noble friend Lord Simon pointed out in his Second Reading speech—to those which were supported by the 1948 Conference. I will come back to that, as I believe it is the only way to a satisfactory reform of the House of Lords. "But why not leave it alone?",
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as I think the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, said in a former debate. Well, I think very serious disadvantages would be attended by doing nothing, although I am quite aware that there are powerful, if subterranean, influences in both Parties designing to leave it alone as long as they possibly can, which is why I am grateful to my noble and learned friend for having introduced this Bill.
I believe that your Lordships' House is doing invaluable work at the present time, but I also think it is largely prevented from carrying out its work, or hampered in its work, precisely because, of the principle upon which its composition is based. The public do not give, moral support to the, hereditary principle, (or so I believe) and for that reason, even with our present powers—and I want to say a word about powers in a moment—I believe that the work of the House of Lords is largely hampered by the suspicion which the public holds of the hereditary principle. If exactly the same noble Lords and right reverend Prelates met together and discussed in exactly the same terms the legislation which they do at the moment, I believe they would carry a far greater degree of public influence and prestige behind them if the public knew that they were there for what they are and not for what their fathers were. I believe that the reason which the public has in view there is basically perfectly sound. I have never been a critic of hereditary Second Chambers as such. There was a tine. I believe, when the hereditary principle did a great deal of good in our Constitution. That was the time when the danger was that the Crown could easily corrupt the Commons—and it did—and that the commercial principle, easily discernible in those times and easily represented in any metropolis in an age when transport and other services were less easily obtained, might become excessively predominant. The possession by members of your Lordships' House of great landed estates and hereditary titles largely counter-balanced those two dangers. It was not easy to corrupt the House of Lords. They were too numerous and they were too rich; and both those things were very valuable in those days. But death duties have put an end to all that.
It may well be that there was a day when the possession of a great landed

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estate, passed down from father to son, ought to have conferred the right to a seat in Parliament. But even if every Englishman loves a Lord, no Englishman has ever loved a poor Lord. Indeed, as long ago as the reign of Edward IV this House, and, indeed, Parliament, passed an Act depriving the then Duke of Bedford of his Peerage precisely because he was too poor. There are many people who think this decision ought never to have been reversed. But however that may be, it has always been supposed that the one argument, if any, for the hereditary principle was maintainable only so long as the Peers were rich. They now no longer are, and I myself feel that the hereditary principle is no longer appropriate to the present day.
As a matter of fact, I feel convinced that there are a number of men in public life—I think I may say without offence that I know there are a number of men in public life—who have been inhibited from accepting Peerages for themselves because of the serious disability which the title would impose upon their potential heir. That is no criticism of your Lordships' House. Your Lordships' functions are now well ascertained and the subject of almost general agreement. It is not easy—and I say this with all diffidence—for a young man who has his living, to make, to come at 2.30 in the afternoon simply because he is his father's heir, and for no better reason, to attend your Lordships' debates, knowing all the time that he must never press his views to a Division if they are in contrast to the views of the majority in another place; that his ultimate responsibility runs solely in the imposition of delay, or the insertion of minor Amendments in Bills, or the taking part in debates which have about the same influence in public affairs as a leading article in The Times. These are legitimate and proper functions and they are, by almost universal consent, the functions of a Second Chamber. Nevertheless to impose upon such a young man, with his living to make in a profession or business, or in trade, the obligation to perform these functions, is something about which a father might well feel doubts if he were offered a Peerage; and it is within my knowledge that some fathers have felt doubts to an extent which led them to decline an offer when an approach was made.
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I think, therefore, that there are serious disadvantages in maintaining the present situation. I can sum them up in a single sentence by saying this, which I think I can say without causing offence to either Party. Both Houses of Parliament have entrusted to your Lordships' House certain important and, at times, controversial political functions. It is morally wrong for members of any Party, on either side, to permit those who are charged with such functions to carry on, in the knowledge that they will be hampered from discharging them by the presence in the composition of that Chamber of a principle which will rob them of public authority if for any reason they take a controversial line. I believe that the House of Lords, even without greater legal powers, would play a much more vigorous part in the life of Parliament if it were not for the fact that public opinion did not support the principle upon which it was based.
That leads me to say one more word on the subject of powers. I share the view of the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, when he appears to have told—because he told us this afternoon he had—the Conference in 1948 that the difference of three months which separated the Parties was not perhaps so deep a difference of principle as the protagonists supposed. This House has never exercised its legal powers to the full, even under the Parliament Act, except in one or two isolated instances, when it was overridden. What it has done has been to express a strong opinion about matters, some of which have had to be sent back to the House of Commons and some of which were not required to be sent back. But if this House exercised its legal powers, even in the mutilated form of the Parliament Act of 1949, it could make government impossible, and it could render double-Chamber legislation impossible. Unless I am mistaken, we have the right to stop, by simple Resolution, every act of delegated legislation which the Government desire; and no one doubts that if we exercised that indubitable legal right we should bring about a constitutional crisis of the first magnitude. But we do not do it; we do not need to do it; and we should be wrong if we tried to do it.
The point I am leading up to is that the actual legal power of the House of

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Lords is a relatively minor power so long as the House appreciates its true constitutional function. If it does not appreciate its true constitutional function, it does not matter what powers are given to the House: they are all too big and will all lead to a constitutional crisis. The reason I say that is that I am convinced—and I speak here to the members of my own Party and others—that, if we want to see a House of Lords sufficiently vigorous to be able to act as a trustee of the Constitution in an unlikely event—an event which may never happen, and which we hope will never happen: it was mentioned by the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel—then the thing which we have to be sure of is not that we have adequate legal powers but that we have adequate moral authority; and I think we can get adequate moral authority by a reform of the kind which is now before the House and which will be before the Conference if and when it takes place
I should like to make one last observation on this part of the subject. I should very much deprecate an attempt to put a legal maximum on the numbers of this House. I feel that there are too many Lords of Parliament. I do not think 857, if that be the correct number, is a suitable number. Nevertheless, to put a legal maximum on the number would be to deprive the Government of the day of a most important political safeguard. I know that I am now treading on ground which has been fought over many times—even to-day people can be barely reasonably courteous towards each other in discussing it. I was born after the controversies of 1911—or, rather, I was born before then, but it was not until later that I became interested in them. For this reason, perhaps, I do not feel quite so strongly about them. Nevertheless, I always thought that Bagehot was right in saying that the power of the Crown to create Peerages in such a way as at least to influence the House of Lords if it shows itself oblivious in its duty to the Constitution—that is, to defer to the Commons—is a valuable right which ought to be preserved by both Parties. And any House of Lords of the future is going to be a House of Lords in which one Party does not always have the
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advantage. It is, in a sense, an embarrassment for a Conservative to speak in this House, because one is always in a majority.
In a sense, the Second Chamber is bound to assist the Conservative Party—and there always will be a Conservative Party—in this country so long it retains Parliamentary democracy. A Second Chamber is bound to help a Conservative Party because its object is to make people think again sometimes; and that is not altogether a bad thing. There are other elements—plenty of them—in our Constitution which always favour the Radical Party—as Conservatives think, unfairly. There is the fact that it is impossible to reverse the trend of legislation, and therefore a mistake, once made, can almost never be repealed. I speak without reference to current controversies, which will be very much in the minds of noble Lords, and in the hope that no one will take advantage of my frankness. But whatever may be said about the Transport Bill and other great Bills, those are the elements which enter in to help the Radicals. The game of politics may not be a ritual dance, but it is rather like a game of picquet, in which two sides hold major and minor hands. That, of course, is why Conservatives have to be more intelligent than Socialists.
Therefore I ask noble Lords opposite, when they enter this Conference, to enter into the attempt which I am sure both Parties will honestly make to see that in this House both Parties will be honestly and fairly represented. But I ask them at the same time not, to block any proposal for reform simply on the ground that in some circumstances Conservatives may gain a trick and that in no circumstances whatever are they prepared to see a reformed House of Lords discharge its full constitutional function, All know that they will have to work very hard in their own Party for that appeal to have any effect whatsoever on some of those inside them. I apologise for having detained your Lordships for so long. I should like to, reiterate my gratitude to the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Simon, for having introduced this subject at this most timely moment and having precipitated the issue by the Government of the invitations to a Conference which I hope most sincerely will be conscientiously accepted.
5.47 p.m.
THE EARL OF MANSFIELD: My Lords, some twenty years ago, when I was a member of another place, the late Lord Salisbury did me and another fairly young Member the honour of asking us to join an unofficial committee that he had set up of something over a dozen senior Members of your Lordships' House to consider the question of House of Lords Reform. The Committee met on a good many occasions, and eventually arrived at no very definite decision on the powers; but as a result of the deliberations and the vast amount of historical and other material laid before us. I became convinced that no alteration in the powers or composition of your Lordships' House, other than in minor details, was feasible, necessary or desirable. Nothing that has taken place since then has in any way shaken that conviction.
On the question of powers, let me make clear at once that I entirely agree with all those speakers this afternoon who have stressed the danger of a clash between the Houses, should this House ever be given, or at least use, the powers which would enable it seriously to curtail the wishes of the Commons. For myself, I should not like to see us enjoy any greater powers than we do at present, save the restoration of the previous period of two years' delay. But when it comes to the question of the hereditary principle, my belief is that the country as a whole accepts that principle. If for forty-two years nothing has been done about a question which was then said to brook no delay, what is the reason? I think the answer is quite obvious. It is that the question, so burning in 1911, is now purely an academic one. In 1911, the fires of controversy were blazing high and bright. To-day, those fires are not even embers. Their very ashes have been dispersed by the winds of subsequent history, and to suggest that any considerable proportion of the people of this country to-day are wildly excited about the iniquity, so-called, of the hereditary system in your Lordships' House is, I think, to take a view which it would be extremely difficult to substantiate.
Indeed, I know of only one enthusiastic and persistent defamer of your Lordships' House, both as an institution and in regard to individual members, and that
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is a Member of this House who never ceases to take the opportunity of squirting venom through the daily periodicals which he owns and controls. But, with this quite unimportant exception, your Lordships' House is, I maintain, regarded with admiration, and indeed reverence, by a very large section of our population, and not a very appreciable number would wish to see a radical change in its composition. It is for that reason that my quarrel with the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Simon, is that he has stirred up both Front Benches from their, to me, entirely convenient and appropriate torpor. I wish that he had left well alone. But, so far as his own Bill is concerned, since the matter has been raised, I could wish that the Bill were given a Second Reading, because I feel that in some respects the composition and certain functions of your Lordships' House might with advantage be amended in minor detail.
In spite of the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Moran, I feel that there is something to be said for the creation of Life Peerages. I would agree also with the criticism that ten new Life Peerages in any one year would tend to be too many. In regard to the question of the admission of women, that I think is a point that might well be left until later. The noble and learned Viscount said that voting had now become a ladylike occupation. One might be forgiven for wondering whether sitting in another place could equally be considered a ladylike occupation. In fact, from various episodes that took place when I was there, and others which have occurred since, it might possibly be considered hardly a gentleman-like occupation—but I imagine that it would be unwise to pursue that topic further. But there is one way in which improvement could be made: the creation of a limited number of Life Peerages every year.
Another possible improvement would be to enable Ministers, by invitation, to address the House of which they are not members, to answer Questions there. I brought forward a Motion on this point in your Lordships' House some time before the war, but received, I regret to say, very little support, though no one, at least in my opinion, was able to put forward very cogent arguments against it. Also, I should like to see that, when

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anyone succeeded to a Peerage, he (or, if necessary, she) should have the chance of electing whether he should take up that Peerage or leave himself free, so that it might be legal for him to stand for election to another place. These small points are ones which I think could well be introduced by the piecemeal legislation which has been commented upon so adversely, and, to my mind, unfairly to-day. The whole history of our Constitution has been that of evolution and not revolution. The one revolution we have had was a ghastly failure, and the country took pains to put the situation right and to forget it as quickly as possible. To alter the composition of your Lordships' House in the drastic ways that have been suggested would be, to my mind, a revolution in every respect out of keeping with our history and our traditions.
The best advocate for the hereditary system this afternoon has been the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, who unwittingly blew his own case to smithereens when he pointed out that your Lordships' House, as at present constituted, had never made use of the still fairly extensive powers which it possesses under the 1911 Parliament Act. That is a tribute to the good sense and moderation of the hereditary element in your Lordships' House. Were that element to be replaced by persons more in the nature of, we will say, professional legislators—I will not say "professional politicians"—then I think it quite unlikely that they would exercise anything like the same restraint. Furthermore, no member of the Party opposite would claim that the action of your Lordships' House as a whole was in any way improper when their lamentable Government was in office from 1945 onwards. Then, if ever, was the opportunity, and indeed the justification, for "backwoodsmen" to descend in swarms to prevent the passage of legislation for which, in a number of cases, there was no mandate. But where were such "backwoodsmen"?
"Sound the clarion, fill the fife!"
Where were the men from the Norfolk fens? Where were the fur-clad men from the Welsh mountains? Did strange, kilted figures, mouthing Gaelic epithets, appear from North of the Border? No; nothing of that sort
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happened. Your Lordships' House has always accepted what was obviously the will of the people, and legislation was permitted to go through which was obviously entirely uncongenial to the great majority of them. But I repeat, I very much doubt whether, in a House which did not contain such a large hereditary element, such moderation would have been observed.
There is another point in regard to the possible limitation of the numbers which I think should be borne in mind and which has not been raised, so far as I can remember, this afternoon. That is that one of the weaknesses of nearly every Chamber of a senatorial character is the excessive age of the majority of the people composing it. In making this remark. I fully recognise that the first three excellent speeches this afternoon were made by noble Lords whose average age was, I think, closer to eighty than to seventy; but I do not think that anyone would claim that such noble Lords or their like would be found in large numbers, even in this House, let alone in any other legislative assembly. If we had the ordinary type of Senate, in which the only representatives there are persons who have already distinguished themselves in various walks of life, it is obvious that it would mean raising very sharply indeed the average age of such an assembly. In your Lordships' House, there are at the present time, and always have been since I have had the privilege of being a member of it, a considerable number of young men, some of them very young men; and I think it will be agreed that a number of those have amply proved themselves worthy of membership. Again, the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Simon, truly said that some members who might sit by right in your Lordships' House but might be considered as not worthy of doing so never appear here. Can any noble Lord remember being present at, or even hearing of, any scene in your Lordships' House caused by some young Peer who did not know his place? I do not think so, and that in itself is an added justification for having young men present.
My noble friend Lord Teynham put forward the suggestion which I myself had intended to make. It is one which should be very carefully borne in mind if there is any serious question of the

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curtailment of the number in your Lordships' House. I refer to the proposal, which I think should be insisted upon if reform ever takes place, of allowing all existing members of your Lordships' House to speak, if not to vote. This House contains such an enormous wealth of experience, much of it undoubtedly concentrated in those who might be described as "backwoodsmen," many of whom, often for reasons beyond their control, do not come frequently to your Lordships' House but who have this wonderful experience which, on the right occasion, they come and impart to your Lordships. Few of them would have any chance of being elected or nominated to the type of Second Chamber that many people seem to envisage.
Although it has been mentioned more than once, I do not think sufficient attention has been paid this afternoon to the fact that it is not as a voting Chamber but as a debating Chamber that your Lordships' House plays its principal function. Our Divisions are not very numerous, but I am glad to say our debates, of a very high level, take place fairly frequently. If we are going to cut out these "backwoodsmen" and all these young men we are going to alter radically, and to my mind lamentably, the whole character of your Lordships' House. Anything which would prevent any of the present or future hereditary Peers from being able at least to voice their opinion is something which should be strongly condemned. It is not the vote that matters; it is the expression of free opinion, and the fact that in the great majority of cases here Peers speak with complete freedom of thought and of interest. If your Lordships will permit one personal experience, a short time ago I was approached by a railway man acquaintance of mine whom I knew to be a strong Socialist. He asked me for advice about a certain matter. I gave it to him, I believe with satisfactory results, and then asked him why he had not approached his own Member of Parliament. His reply was, "I came to you because I knew I should get a straight answer. You do not have to think about votes." That, my Lords, goes a long way to reinforce my contention that quite apart from politics, even the hereditary Peer still possesses the respect of the people of this country. They know that your Lordships' House
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is an independent body, not dependent upon votes and therefore able to discuss matters at a very high level.
It is for that reason that I have always regretted that the Conservative Party made any mention in their election manifesto of reform of the House of Lords. It is for that reason that I regret that the noble and learned Viscount has, if I may use such a term, stirred them up to activity in this way, because it is obvious, as has already been said, that now the noble and learned Viscount has produced his legislative bantling this afternoon, both Front Benches are determined to slaughter it, one by direct infanticide, the other by just permitting it to die. The suggestion contained in the Bill for Life Peerages would, I believe, as I have said, be a good thing, in addition to the various small emendations that I have suggested; but when both Front Benches are agreed upon this policy of infanticide, simply in order that they may go forward to a Conference designed to bring about some radical alteration in your Lordships' House, then I say to them,
"A plague o' both your houses!"
Why cannot you leave well alone?
6.5 p.m.
LORD ELLENBOROUGH: My Lords, I intervene to say only a few words in this debate. While certainly no expert on Constitutional reform, I have developed some interest in the matter that we have been discussing this afternoon by reason of my having spoken at various meetings on subjects connected with Parliament, which have, of course, inevitably touched on House of Lords reform. I must say that I have been rather surprised to find considerable agreement and enthusiasm amongst the various audiences that I have spoken to, that there should be some strengthening, if not of the powers, at any rate of the composition of your Lordships' House. Therefore, I welcome this Bill as a start towards settling this problem, even if, as some noble Lords have said, it may be rather inopportune. At any rate, it does seem to have brought an all-Party Conference nearer, and if that is the only function that it has served I think it is an extremely useful one.
After all, the reform of this House is an idea to which all Parties have paid lip service for forty-two years, but somehow or other have always found

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some plausible excuse to put it off until another day. It occurs to me that now there is no friction between this House and another place this might well be a good time for such a Conference, and I hope that any such talks will be entered into, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Kenswood, said this afternoon, in such a spirit that the talks will not fail, but will succeed. I think I am right in saying that the last all-Party Conference, in 1948, could hardly have been held at a worse time. The Government of the day had just introduced a Bill which necessarily led to friction between the two Houses, and Party controversy was running high. Even so, it was remarkable how nearly general agreement was reached, even in those circumstances.
I hope that there will not be any lack of trying on the part of the Government and of the Liberal Party. I do not think there will be. As to the attitude of the Socialist Party, it seems to me, to say the least, to be rather doubtful. They seem to speak with two voices on this subject—as, indeed, they do on some others. Certainly they have moved a considerable way from the view that I think was once expressed by the late Mr. Clynes: that the House of Lords cannot be mended, only ended. Now perhaps noble Lords opposite do not wish to end the House of Lords. I am sure that a number of noble Lords opposite do not wish that; but neither do they seem at all eager to mend it. Certainly nothing they did during the years that they were in office helped very much. As some noble Lords have said, a section of the Party opposite, at any rate, does not want an effective Second Chamber—and by "effective," I mean effective in the sense of exercising a check against totalitarian trends which may be displayed by a Party of the Left or the Right who enjoy a temporary, and perhaps unrepresentative, majority in another place. That, as I see it, is the vital function of this House.
It seems to me, therefore, that if the Labour Party do not enter the Conference it can only be because they want this House to be so weak in composition and in power that it is, as I think the noble Marquess the Leader of the House once put it, only useful to throw brickbats at on Saturday afternoons. It would
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mean that they are prepared to tolerate only a House of Lords which, as Mr. Bevan once said he hoped, would eventually become no more than an ancient monument and would gradually wither and crumble away. I believe it is vital that this should not occur and I think most noble Lords opposite are in agreement with me on that point. Already the powers of this House are down to somewhere near vanishing point. Yet, even so, any full use of those small powers which this House now wields would almost certainly be followed by a demand for liquidation. I think this is a very grave and urgent matter. And when we consider that we have an unwritten Constitution with wholly inadequate safeguards for preventing a Party in another place from going some distance towards a form of a dictatorship, I think we must feel that the sooner something is done the better.
I personally believe it is more important to concentrate on strengthening the composition of the House than on any increase in the powers. I believe that a Second Chamber with a substantial number of its Members appointed on individual merits and not necessarily attached to any political Party, even if equipped only with the powers which the House at the moment has, would nevertheless prove to be a Chamber considerably greater in the esteem and confidence of the public than the present House, which is almost entirely hereditary in composition. Finally, I should like briefly to mention the position of the younger Members with regard to any changes that may take place in the composition of the House. I hope it will still be possible for those who may wish to do so to have the chance of membership in any reformed House. At the same time, I think it should be recognised that there may well exist a considerable number of Peers, particularly younger Peers, who may wish to lead a more active political life than is possible in present circumstances. I hope, therefore, that the Government and all other Parties entering into the Conference will consider the position of younger Peers who may wish to stand for another place and who find their present inability to do so embarrassing. I sincerely trust that something fruitful will come of this all-Party Conference.
6.12 p.m.
LORD BALFOUR OF BURLEIGH: My Lords, I beg to move that this debate be now adjourned.
Moved, That the debate be now adjourned.—(Lord Balfour of Burleigh.)
On Question, Motion agreed to, and debate adjourned accordingly.

AGRICULTURAL LAND (REMOVAL OF SURFACE SOIL) BILL
6.13 p.m.
Read 3a (according to Order), with the Amendments.
Clause 3 [Consent of Attorney-General required before prosecution]:
THE. EARL OF ONSLOW: My Lords, when this Bill was discussed, at an early stage the noble and learned Earl, Lord Jowitt, put forward an Amendment which was accepted by the noble Lord, Lord Amherst, and I, on behalf of my noble friend, gave it the Government's blessing. Since then, on further consideration, it has been deemed proper that these
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words should be inserted. The Amendment is designed purely from an administrative point of view to simplify matters, and I am certain that it provides for exactly what the noble and learned Earl wanted. It merely makes this particular passage more convenient from an administrative point of view. I beg to move the first Amendment standing in my name.
Amendment moved—
Page 2, line 40, after ("save") insert ("by or").—(The Earl of Onslow.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
THE EARL OF ONSLOW: My Lords, I beg to move the second Amendment standing in my name.
Amendment moved—
Page 2, line 40, at end insert ("or the Director of Public Prosecutions").—(The Earl of Onslow.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Bill passed, and returned to the Commons.
House adjourned at sixteen minutes past six o'clock