Sitting of 19 November 1968

Preamble
The House met at half-past Two o'clock
PRAYERS
[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]
PRIVATE BUSINESS

  LANDS IMPROVEMENT COMPANY'S AMENDMENT (PETITION FOR BILL)
  The Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr. Sydney Irving): I beg to move,
  That notwithstanding anything in Standing Order 231 (Presentation of petition for bill under Section 1(4) of the Procedure Act) the Promoters of the Lands Improvement Company's Amendment Bill be permitted to present the petition for their Bill on or before 27th November.
  The Promoters of the Lands Improvement Company's Amendment Bill are a company whose activities extend to both Scotland and elsewhere.
  In cases such as this, Section 1(4) of the Private Legislation Procedure (Scotland) Act, 1936, requires representations to be made to the Secretary of State for Scotland to obtain his consent and that of the Chairman of Ways and Means and the Lord Chairman of Committees. Under Standing Order 231, these representations have to be made not less than four weeks before the Petition for the Bill is presented.
  Representations were made by the Promoters to the Secretary of State but were two days late and there was, therefore, a failure to comply with Standing Order 231. At my request, the Parliamentary Agent responsible came to see me and I satisfied myself that his failure was due to an oversight. I have also satisfied myself that the interests of third parties have in no way been prejudiced.
  The Agent's failure has in no way affected the proper consideration of the representations.
  I commend the Motion to the House.
  Question put and agreed to.

ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS
  OVERSEAS DEVELOPMENT

    Tanzania
    Mr. Juddasked the Minister of Overseas Development whether he will make a statement on the Government's aid and development policies towards Tanzania.
    Mr. Goodhartasked the Minister of Overseas Development if it is the intention of the Government to extend aid to Tanzania in 1969.
    The Minister of Overseas Development (Mr. Reg Prentice): I have nothing to add to my statements on 20th June and during a debate on 26th July when I told the House that it was regrettably necessary to bring our aid to Tanzania to an end and when I set out at some length the reasons for this decision.—[Vol. 766, c. 174–6; Vol. 769, 1248–53.]
    Mr. Judd: Is my right hon. Friend aware that, at a time when the Government seem able to offer £50 million for an assistance programme to Rhodesia, many people find it incredible that we are unable to give assistance to a friendly Commonwealth country which places so much emphasis on sound principles of self-reliance?
    Mr. Prentice: I agree with my hon. Friend's judgment of the sound principles of Tanzanian economic policy, but, as he knows, the reason for cutting off our aid was connected with Tanzania's repudiation of its pension obligations and I am afraid that, in the circumstances, our decision was inevitable.
    Mr. Goodhart: When it comes to the distribution of aid, will the right hon. Gentleman remember that there are many countries with greater administrative competence than Tanzania which follow a less disruptive foreign policy and which are badly in need of British assistance?
    Mr. Prentice: I shall not follow the hon. Gentleman in his implications but I agree that many countries need more development aid, whether from Britain or from other donor countries. They depend on a greater effort for development aid throughout the world.

    Aid Programme
    Mr. Juddasked the Minister of Overseas Development what is the latest estimated cost to the balance of payments of the current aid and development programme.
    Mr. Prentice: About one-third of the aid programme, roughly £70 million, is estimated as a current direct cost to the balance of payments. There are also indirect effects: for example, exports financed by aid may compete for industrial capacity with exports paid for on a normal commercial basis; on the other hand we gain export orders from the world aid effort in which our aid forms a part. Meanwhile interest and capital repayments of old aid loans are coming in at about £60 million per annum.
    Mr. Judd: Does not my right hon. Friend agree that, in the light of the immediate arguments against increased aid in terms of our balance of payments situation, we should as soon as possible make it plain that the present size of our aid programme is not for all time and that we want to see it expanded as soon as possible?
    Mr. Prentice: Yes, Sir. Her Majesty's Government voted for the resolution at the second United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, by which we are committed to a larger programme as and when our balance of payments position permits.

    Swaziland
    Mr. Wallasked the Minister of Overseas Development if he will make a statement on financial assistance to Swaziland for the first three years of independence.
    Mr. Prentice: Discussions with the Swaziland Government on this subject are due to begin in London on 25th November.
    Mr. Wall: May we have an assurance that this will cover financial aid for three years and that the outstanding problem, land alienation, will also be included in the discussions?
    Mr. Prentice: I do not want to anticipate the discussions, which are due to start next week. But, as the hon. Gentle-
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    man knows, the Government do not accept the Swaziland claims in respect of the land alienation question, although we have always acknowledged that a programme of land settlement projects could form some part of their development plan which could qualify for some of our aid.

    Kenya (Resettlement Scheme)
    Mr. Wallasked the Minister of Overseas Development what progress has been made under the 400,000 acre resettlement scheme in Kenya; and what agreement has been reached over the assessment of the current market value of farms and other land.
    Mr. Prentice: So far as the first year of this programme is concerned, I would refer the hon. Member to the Answer I gave in reply to his Question on 18th January, 1968. Under the second year purchase programme, 51 farms have been valued. Fifty offers to purchase have been made by the Agricultural Development Corporation, of which 35 have so far been accepted, while three have been refused.
    Valuations are proceeding satisfactorily on the same basis as previously.—[Vol. 756, c. 1927.]
    Mr. Wall: I welcome the progress of this scheme. However, can the Minister confirm that it will continue for its full four years and that approximately 100,000 acres of land will be brought forward for resettlement each year?
    Mr. Prentice: I can confirm that it will continue. Negotiations on the third year of the programme are expected to take place shortly.

    Tanzania (Pensions)
    Mr. Biggs-Davisonasked the Minister of Overseas Development (1) whether, in view of the hardship and distress of certain former officials of the Government of Zanzibar now in exile in the United Kingdom, he will reconsider his refusal to accept responsibility for the payment of superannuation benefits;
    (2) what was the result of representations made to the Tanzanian Government regarding the pensions and gratuities of Class II and Class III Officers not covered by the Zanzibar Public Officers Agreement.
    The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Overseas Development (Mr. Albert E. Oram): I am still awaiting a reply to our representations, but I am afraid that these pensioners are and must remain the responsibility of the Government of the Union Republic of Tanzania.
    Mr. Biggs-Davison: What hope is that for more than 50 such officials whom I know and one of whom is a member of the same order of chivalry as the Prime Minister? They cannot get jobs, although they could do very good work. Can the Minister suggest nothing to relieve this distress?
    Mr. Oram: We are pressing for a reply to our representations, but there is no doubt where the responsibility for these pensions lies. I accept that many of these people are in a sad plight, but we cannot make financial payments to them without offending against the fundamental principles upon which our overseas pension policy is based and has been based for many years.

    Tonga (Airstrip)
    Mr. Bryant Godman Irvineasked the Minister of Overseas Development on what grounds his decision to construct an airstrip on Vavau in Tonga was based; and if he will state cost.
    Mr. Oram: The decision to build this airstrip was taken by the Government of Tonga.
    The cost was estimated at £8,645. I understand that the actual cost may turn out to be about £15,000. We undertook to pay 90 per cent. of the estimate, viz £7,780.
    Mr. Irvine: Has the attention of the Minister been drawn to a report of British experts who have condemned this scheme and reports which are widely circulating in the Pacific that the airstrip will never be used?
    Mr. Oram: Yes, I am aware of a report about the unsuitability of this site and we have indicated to the Government of Tonga the offer of further help which we shall be able to give in consequence of the adverse nature of this report.

    Nationalised Industries (Technical Assistance)
    Mr. Hooleyasked the Minister of Overseas Development what contribution is currently being made by the Central Electricity Generating Board, the Gas Council and the National Coal Board towards helping developing countries by technical assistance, secondment of staff or in other ways.
    Mr. Oram: They have permitted the secondment of their engineers to serve in developing countries and have accepted trainees from such countries, including; 38 sponsored by my Department in 1967–68. They are also drawn upon for advisory services.
    Mr. Hooley: Does my hon. Friend agree that public utilities are very important aspects of the growth of developing countries? Will he encourage these nationalised bodies to continue this kind of service and even increase it?
    Mr. Oram: I agree with my hon. Friend. Such public bodies possess a vast experience which could be of help to developing countries and I hope that the secondment of experts will continue.

    International Development Authority
    Mr. Peter M. Jacksonasked the Minister of Overseas Development if he will make a statement on the financial provision to the International Development Authority; and whether Great Britain has fulfilled its financial obligation to the International Development Authority in the current financial year.
    Mr. Prentice: Authority for making the British contribution is contained in the Overseas Aid Act, 1968. Until the Agreement for the replenishment of the resources of the International Development Association comes into effect no British contribution is due under these arrangements. The British Government are however prepared to look sympathetically at proposals by the President of the World Bank for keeping I.D.A. in funds pending the replenishment becoming effective.
    Mr. Jackson: May I press my right hon. Friend further? Would he be prepared to consider making additional contributions in the event of any of the 18

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    contributing nations being in default of their payments to I.D.A.?
    Mr. Prentice: I do not think that question arises. Eight contributors besides the United Kingdom have ratified the Agreement. The United States retiring Congress did not ratify it, but I hope that legislation will be passed by the new United States Congress early next year. Meanwhile, the problem is that of seeing whether there may be some temporary steps to keep I.D.A. in funds in the intervening months, and this is under consideration.
    Mr. Carter-Jones: Will my right hon. Friend bear in mind the importance of informing contributor nations of the importance of the continuation of payments, or otherwise important projects for overseas aid will frequently be in jeopardy? Other countries should be made well aware of this fact.
    Mr. Prentice: This is probably the most important single question on the agenda of aid donors throughout the world and I earnestly hope that there will be progress on this matter in the very near future.

    Aid Expenditure
    Mr. Peter M. Jacksonasked the Minister of Overseas Development whether he proposes to increase the level of aid to the developing countries.
    Mr. Prentice: No increase is proposed in the levels of aid expenditure for this year and next year which I announced in my replies to Questions on 18th January and 18th July.—[Vol. 756, c. 1929–36; Vol. 768, c. 1640.]
    Mr. Jackson: May I remind my right hon. Friend of the Labour Party pre-election commitment to contribute 1 per cent. of the gross national product to aid? Will he consider drawing the attention of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to a book published in 1950 and entitled, "War on Poverty—an appeal to the conscience of mankind", written by the right hon. Member for Huyton (Mr. Harold Wilson)?
    Mr. Prentice: I am always ready to recommend good literature to the Chancellor of the Exchequer or anyone else. The 1 per cent. target as defined by the first U.N.C.T.A.D. has been fulfilled by
    1092
    this country over a number of years. The target has now been redefined and raised and although we are not reaching that new target at the moment, by voting for the resolution we committed ourselves to reach it as and when the balance of payments permits.
    Mr. Braine: Would not the right hon. Gentleman agree that it is not only the level of aid which matters to developing countries, but the effectiveness of the aid that is furnished? As the Prime Minister has already pledged full support for the aims of Mr. Lester Pearson's Grand Assize on aid and development, can the right hon. Gentleman tell the House what forward-looking studies are now being undertaken by his Ministry of the effectiveness of the current aid programme?
    Mr. Prentice: A very intensive study was made in the Department by the Special Value of Aid Committee which concluded its work some months ago. Its recommendations are now being followed up. It is the constant preoccupation of the Ministry to improve the effectiveness of our aid and I think that we are doing that to a considerable extent.
    Mr. Alexander W. Lyon: Would not my right hon. Friend agree that, as a result of the balance of payments problems of most donor countries, the future for aid seems very bleak? Will he try to ensure that in any revision of the Special Drawing Rights Agreement there is some provision for developing countries to obtain money so as to continue their expansion and trade?
    Mr. Prentice: I should want notice of the latter part of that supplementary question, but on the general issue I think that the present situation has been well described as an aid plateau with aid running at a fairly steady level, but with a very big question mark over the policies of most donor countries in the 1970s. Certainly I hope that we shall see an upward trend in development assistance in the years ahead.
    Mr. Frederic Harris: Does not the right hon. Gentleman appreciate that devaluation of the £itself considerably cut aid to developing countries, which are suffering badly from that cut?
    Mr. Prentice: The effects of the devaluation of the £upon our aid programme

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    were probably to reduce its value by about 5 per cent., but the hon. Gentleman will be aware that at the same time we decided to enter into certain new commitments, such as the replenishment of I.D.A., which was to be additional to the basic target, so that the real value of our aid this year will probably be similar to its real value last year.

    Overseas Civil Servants (Compensation Agreements)
    Mr. Bryant Godman Irvineasked the Minister of Overseas Development if, in any future compensation agreements for members of Her Majesty's Overseas Civil Service, he will increase the maximum figure of £12,000 used in cases such as Kenya or Malaya, in order to take into consideration the intervening fall in value of the £sterling.
    Mr. Oram: Changes in the value of the £sterling are not in themselves of relevance in fixing the maximum compensation payable. The compensation awarded under these schemes is determined mainly by the level of emoluments earned by members of Her Majesty's Overseas Civil Service in the country concerned. The £12,000 ceiling will not necessarily apply in any future agreements which may be concluded.
    Mr. Irvine: While thanking the hon. Gentleman for that reply, may I ask him to make it clear to the people who may benefit from subsequent agreements that the £12,000 used for Kenya is not applicable today?
    Mr. Oram: The hon. Gentleman refers to future agreements and I do not think that I can usefully comment on future negotiations.
    Mr. Braine: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that this is among a number of Questions today touching upon the Government's responsibilities in the sphere of pensions, and reflecting quite a considerable degree of anxiety about the security of those pensions? Would he not agree that the time is ripe for the Government to reconsider the whole question of the security of ex-patriate pensions?
    Mr. Oram: We are aware of a number of problems in this sphere, but the House had an opportunity of debating the position on 26th July. My right hon. Friend then gave a very clear explanation of what is the present position.

    West Indies
    Earl of Dalkeithasked the Minister of Overseas Development whether he will make a statement giving details of the economic aid that is being made available during the current financial year to the islands of Dominica, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and Grenada, respectively.
    Mr. Oram: Aid totalling over £2·5 million is being made available through Colonial Development and Welfare grants, technical assistance and—to all save St. Lucia—budgetary grants. There is also investment by the Commonwealth Development Corporation. I am circulating details in the OFFICIAL REPORT.
    Earl of Dalkeith: Can the Minister say whether he is satisfied that as much as possible is being done, both by public investment and through encouraging private investment, to reduce the present high levels of unemployment in these islands, which is the main factor compelling so many West Indians to seek their livelihood in other, less attractive countries?
    Mr. Oram: Aid to these countries is running at the level of about £7 per head of their population, which is a high level in comparison with our general aid programme. The social problems to which the hon. Gentleman refers are constantly being examined by our Development Division in Barbados, with the Governments of the islands he mentions.
    Sir H. Harrison: Will the Minister confirm that these four islands, probably more than any other places, suffered from devaluation because all their imports are from the dollar area and they have no higher price for their exports? Would he bear that in mind when making an assessment?
    Mr. Oram: In making our assessment of these islands' needs all such relevant

    ECONOMIC AID BEING MADE AVAILABLE TO DOMINICA, GRENADA, ST. LUCIA AND ST. VINCENT IN FINANCIAL YEAR 1968–69

    £'000

    Dominica

    Grenada

    St. Lucia

    St. Vincent

    Budgetary Aid

    352

    375

    —

    458

    C.D. & W.*

    280

    230

    275

    275

    O.S.A.S

    10

    9

    12

    8

    Other Technical Assistance†

    56

    56

    95

    55

    Commutation and Compensation Loans

    1

    2

    —

    —

    Total

    699

    672

    382

    796

    Commonwealth Development Corporation Investment

    70

    —

    335

    —

    * In addition there is a regional C.D. & W. allocation of £250,000 from which the islands benefit substantially.

    † In addition £68,000 is being made available for regional research projects in the Eastern Caribbean which cannot be broken down island by island.

    Aid Funds (Allocation)
    Mr. Edward M. Taylorasked the Minister of Overseas Development if he will restrict overseas aid to nations accepting and implementing equitable policies of taxation and respect for foreign investment within their territories.
    Mr. Prentice: In allocating aid funds I take account of all factors in the recipient country, particularly those which might affect economic development and hence the effectiveness of our aid.
    Mr. Taylor: Would the Minister agree that some of the nations receiving aid from us impose penal and savage rates of taxation on our investments? Would he be prepared to discuss with these nations a form of code of commercial conduct, to which all would subscribe?
    Mr. Prentice: I do not want to make a general comment upon the taxation policies of a large number of other countries, but if the hon. Gentleman has a particular case that he would like to draw to my attention, I will study it.
    Mr. Braine: Will the right hon. Gentleman explain to the House why Great Britain is alone among the great trading nations in not concluding investment treaties with developing countries? What action has been taken about this and, if it is outside of his Department, will he undertake to have a talk with the President of the Board of Trade about it? It Is really anomalous.
    factors are considered.
    Following are the details:
    Mr. Prentice: The hon. Gentleman is quite clearly aware that it is a matter for the President of the Board of Trade, and he might care to put down a Question for my colleagues to answer.

    Indonesia
    Mr. Edward M. Taylorasked the Minister of Overseas Development what is the Government's present programme of aid to Indonesia.
    Mr. Prentice: We disbursed £4,000 in 1966 and £690,000 in 1967. We hope to disburse more than £2 million in the present financial year, and about £2 million in the coming one. Our current aid is largely in the form of interest-free loans for essential imports from Britain.
    Mr. Taylor: Is it not a little absurd that our country should be giving £2 million to Indonesia, when some years ago it seized our assets amounting to almost £200 million, and there has as yet been no guarantee, or no prospect, of real compensation being paid?
    Mr. Prentice: British commercial interests are re-establishing themselves in Indonesia, I understand with some success. It is not at all absurd. There is a group of donor nations which have pledged a considerable amount of aid to Indonesia, and in which we are playing a relatively modest part. It is the judgment of most of the major aid donors in the world that Indonesia has considerable need for development aid and can make successful use of it.

    Somalia (Education Assistance)
    Mr. James Johnsonasked the Minister of Overseas Development if he will make a statement about education assistance planned for the Republic of Somalia for the three years 1968–69,1969–70 and 1970–71.
    Mr. Oram: We hope to meet all suitable requests from the Somali Government for teachers and teacher trainers in Somalia and for the training of Somali students in Britain.
    In addition, the British Council has reopened there.
    Mr. Johnson: Does the Minister accept Somalis' keen desire to learn English and the great need for student scholarships and English teachers in the Territory? Can my right hon. Friend say a word about the visit of the Somali Education Minister who was here a short while ago? Was he satisfied with what we have just heard the Minister say has been done?
    Mr. Oram: The Minister, with his advisers, paid a visit to our Ministry and I had the opportunity of a close discussion with him about the educational needs of his country. I can assure my hon. Friend that the needs of Somalia, including that of the teaching of English, are very much in our minds and we are eager to help in any way possible.

    Tunisia
    Mr. Stratton Millsasked the Minister of Overseas Development if he will make a statement on the discussions with the Tunisian Government on the proposed technical assistance and aid programme for Tunisia.
    Mr. Prentice: I am hoping to expand our programme of technical assistance to Tunisia and to contribute in a modest way to its development through the provision of a small amount of capital aid. Two members of my Ministry will be visiting Tunisia on 24th November for discussions with the Tunisian Government on British assistance.
    Mr. Stratton Mills: While welcoming this programme, may I ask the Minister to say when it is likely that it will begin? Could he also say something about
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    the amount of money involved and the type of technical assistance which the Government have in mind?
    Mr. Prentice: As to capital aid, we had it in mind to provide a sum of the order of £50,000 a year for the next two or three years, if a suitable project can be identified. As to technical assistance, we are hoping to expand this in two main directions, one is in the teaching of English language and the other is in the provision of consultancies.

    Nigeria
    Mr. Goodhartasked the Minister of Overseas Development what aid will be given to Nigeria in 1969.
    Mr. Prentice: It is too soon to answer this Question in full. Existing commitments and programmes will cost about £7,500,000 during the United Kingdom financial year 1969–70. In addition, I hope to discuss with the Federal Government of Nigeria the situation which will emerge at the end of the civil war and to make an appropriate contribution to their needs when the time comes.
    Mr. Goodhart: Is the Minister aware that a number of people in this country are afraid that our aid will be used for the buying of bombs and bullets for use against Biafra? Will he ensure that there is rigid supervision so that our aid is used to relieve suffering?
    Mr. Prentice: None of our aid is being used for the supply of arms for military equipment of any kind, and that will continue to be the position.
    Mr. Hooley: Will my right hon. Friend agree that it is important to get an enhanced aid programme without waiting for the end of the civil war? There is an enormous amount requiring to be done and I hope that this does not mean that schemes are being held up merely because hostilities are continuing.
    Mr. Prentice: When the fighting started, in May, 1967, we froze part of our aid as a precaution against the risk of projects being engulfed in the war. As it became clear that a large part of the country was not affected by the fighting, we have changed that policy and we began a number of new projects fairly recently.
    Sir A. V. Harvey: If, unfortunately, the civil war continues into next year, will the right hon. Gentleman ensure that Biafra, as part of that country, will get its share of aid, through whatever channels he can arrange?
    Mr. Prentice: I have no proposals for that at present.

    Departmental Activities (Publicity)
    Mr. Molloyasked the Minister of Overseas Development what steps are being taken or envisaged by his Department to inform the general public of the work, aims and objects of his Department.
    Mr. Prentice: Direct publicity results from our recruiting campaigns and related literature; the issue of aid statistics, pamphlets and our bi-monthly newspaper.
    A total of 11,600 column inches based on Ministry Press releases have been noted in the provincial and national press in the past 12 months. Assistance is given to private organisations, writers and to the many T.V. and radio programmes covering the problems of world poverty.
    Mr. Molloy: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for that reply. Would he agree that, while the majority of ordinary people, with their natural understanding and compassion, appreciate the need for overseas aid, there does exist an amount of misunderstanding? Would he not agree that it might be worth while to contact the various elements of mass media, to increase further the effort he is making to reduce this amount of misunderstanding?
    Mr. Prentice: I agree that there is a good deal of misunderstanding. I am not satisfied, and never will be satisfied, with what we can do in this direction, but my hon. Friend should recognise that whereas in the day-to-day affairs progress of this sort does not often make the headlines, the fact is, however, that there is an increasing awareness of world poverty problems. More and more articles appear in the Press about development programmes, and my Ministry's Information Department is constantly able to help those who are writing articles or preparing programmes of that kind.
    Mr. Tilney: Is the Minister aware that the best way to make the business world aware of this work, and to get
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    private enterprise capital moving, is to set up an insurance fund against nationalisation or the ability to remit profits? Will he discuss this with other capital aid-giving countries?
    Mr. Prentice: The question of such an insurance policy is one for the President of the Board of Trade. Certainly the business community in this country is interested in development problems, and our programmes do have the support of the C.B.I. and other representative bodies.
    Mr. Braine: This is the second time this afternoon when the point has arisen. Will the right hon. Gentleman, realising the good sense of the suggestion from my hon. Friend, undertake to raise this matter with his colleagues? The matter is pressing and the situation is utterly anomalous.
    Mr. Prentice: Hon. Members must take responsibility for raising their own questions in the appropriate quarter. If they need help, I will draw the attention of my right hon. Friend to the fact that the matter has been raised this afternoon.

    Overseas Students (Bar Examinations)
    Sir C. Osborneasked the Minister of Overseas Development if he will withhold further grants to overseas students who have failed to pass the Bar examinations in this country on four or more occasions.
    Mr. Oram: It is not the practice of my Department to grant an extension of financial assistance for a candidate who has failed the Bar examinations on four occasions.
    Sir C. Osborne: I am grateful for the reply. Is the Minister aware that in Gray's Inn 10 days ago a group of overseas students who had failed their examinations four times were demanding that they should have the opportunity to take the examinations again and again, thereby keeping out English students who would like to go there and be given a chance to pass the examination the first time?
    Mr. Oram: I have read the Press reports about the incident that occurred, but I think the hon. Gentleman has a misapprehension about the responsibilities of my Department in this respect.

    1101
    We sponsor only those students who are put up by their Government, of whom there have been 19 during the last year.
    Mr. Alexander W. Lyon: Will my hon. Friend arrange for a free course for the hon. Member for Louth (Sir C. Osborne) not only on the nature of the work of my hon. Friend's Ministry but also on the adequacies of education for the Bar, which do not in any way keep out English students however many times coloured students fail the examinations?

  NATIONAL FINANCE

    Money Supply
    Mr. Higginsasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will enumerate the components of the money supply and give figures for changes in the overall magnitude for convenient periods since 1964.
    The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. John Diamond): The definition of the money supply used in official United Kingdom statistics covers the notes and coins held by U.K. residents other than banks, together with the net deposits by U.K. residents with the banking sector.
    Figures of the components of the money supply and of changes in the overall magnitude from 1964 to the end of the second quarter of 1968 are given in Table 47 of the October issue of Financial Statistics.
    Mr. Higgins: Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the forecasting techniques based on Keynesian analysis which are now used by the Treasury are open to some doubt because they over-accentuate the demand side without taking into account the supply side? Will he say whether any check is made on the basis of forecasts relying on the changes in the money supply?
    Mr. Diamond: I fail to detect the relevance of the forecasting techniques that apply. I am not sure that the hon. Gentleman is dealing with the Question that I attempted to answer.
    Mr. Hordern: In view of the alarming increase in the level of money supply in the second quarter of this year, may I ask the Chief Secretary to say whether the Government have plans to restrain the money supply, either by requesting
    1102
    the banks to make higher deposits with the Bank of England or by increasing the size of their reserve ratios?
    Mr. Diamond: I owe it to the hon. Gentleman and to the House to explain that the situation that he has referred to was distorted by the figures of one end quarter. If he will be good enough to take that quarter together with the following quarter, he will find that the increase in the money supply is just under 6 per cent., which is slightly below the average for the past several years.

    Non-sterling Area Countries (Trade Finance)
    Mr. Biffenasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer by what amount he estimates that the reserves will benefit as a result of the decision to withdraw the exchange control authority under which United Kingdom banks have been able to provide sterling finance for trade between non-sterling area countries; and what are the estimated annual invisible earnings that have arisen from this business.
    Mr. Patrick Jenkinasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what estimate he has made of the annual loss of foreign exchange earnings that will be incurred by reason of the withdrawal on 11th October, 1968, of the authority covering sterling usance credits and lines of facilities in respect of trade between non-residents; and when he expects to restore the authority.
    Mr. Kenneth Bakerasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer to what extent the invisible earnings of the United Kingdom will be reduced by forbidding United Kingdom banks to finance non-sterling-area countries' trade.
    The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Harold Lever): With permission I will answer this question and Questions Nos. 33 and 42 together.
    In the third quarter the estimated total of sterling credit outstanding in this business was £50 million and represented a burden on our reserves of that amount which will now gradually be removed as the credits are repaid. The net effect on national invisible earnings, which must make allowance for offsetting factors, is not likely to be significant.
    Mr. Biffen: Is the hon. Gentleman aware, first, that, much as he is held in admiration and respect in the House, there will be widespread regret that on a day when sterling stands at its lowest exchange parity with the dollar the Chancellor of the Exchequer is not in his place to answer Questions?
    Mr. Speaker: Order. May we now have the supplementary question?
    Mr. Biffen: Is the hon. Gentleman aware, secondly, that this is a very small-minded restriction which merely underlines the fragility of sterling as a reserve currency and can but cause concern to our overseas creditors?
    Mr. Lever: This matter has no relation whatsoever to sterling's rôle as a third currency. This relates precisely to credit granted to non-sterling area countries in respect of trade, which has nothing to do either with this country or with any other part of the sterling area. I cannot see how any fragility can be attributed to it.
    Mr. Jenkin: Does the Financial Secretary recognise that if this trade is not financed in the City of London, it will probably be financed by Euro-dollars and Euro-sterling? Will he accept that, if this results in the increase of rates of interest, and therefore the loss of attraction of deposits in the City of London, the advantage which he claims for his ban will be more than offset by the loss of currency from the sterling area?
    Mr. Lever: The hon. Gentleman is entirely mistaken in supposing that a trifling sum in relation to total Euro-deposits of this kind could affect the rates of interest. It has no relation whatever to the need to restrict credits in respect of third party trade not undertaken by any member of the sterling area or by this country out of our reserves.
    Mr. Speaker: Mr. Dickens.
    Mr. Kenneth Baker: On a point of order. My Question was called in conjunction with Question No. 25.
    Mr. Speaker: I was not informed which Questions were to be grouped; it is usual for the Chair to know.
    Mr. Baker: Would not the Financial Secretary agree that, as a result of financing non-sterling area trade, London
    1104
    has earned on the invisible account quite a lot through shipping and insuring this trade and that to put these invisible earnings, or a large part of them, into jeopardy is an unnecessary self-inflicted wound to our financial system?
    Mr. Lever: These marginal advantages are more than outweighed by the need of the Government to go out and borrow equivalent sums in foreign currency, and the consequences resulting from that.
    Mr. Dickens: Is the Financial Secretary aware that we on this side of the House warmly welcome the decision of the Government to take this step, and we hope that it will encourage my hon. Friend and the Government to take further steps to reappraise the rôle of the City of London in the world economy?
    Mr. Lever: My hon. Friend in giving his warm support has given another reason for the Government's decision. Rare though it is, and welcome, I hold an identical view on this point with my hon. Friend.

    Credit Restrictions
    Mr. Biffenasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what proposals he has to extend credit restrictions or to use the Purchase Tax and Excise Duty regulator.
    Mr. Diamond: Since putting down this Question, the hon. Gentleman will have heard the statement made by my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade on 1st November.—[Vol. 772, c. 345–54.]
    Mr. Biffen: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that one needs only the slightest cursory acquaintance with the responsible financial Press to realise that there is still widespread expectation of further impositions to come? Is he also aware that the failure of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to act promptly and decisively in controlling the level of consumer demand invites unfavourable comparison even with his immediate predecessor?
    Mr. Diamond: No, I am not aware of that.
    Mr. Barnett: Would my right hon. Friend say whether the current bank lending ceiling has been exceeded and, if so,

    1105
    by how much? If he knows of any evasion of the ceiling since it was last laid down by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, would he say why he feels that it has had very little effect on keeping down consumer expenditure?
    Mr. Diamond: I am not aware of any exceeding of the ceiling, but if my hon. Friend wants the precise figures perhaps he will table a Question.
    Mr. Iain Macleod: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that in exactly the same way as before with the hire-purchase restrictions announcement, the whole of the Press is filled with stories which in the previous case turned out to be true? May I therefore ask the Basset-law question: would he answer "Yes" or "No", is an economic freeze on the way?
    Mr. Diamond: I am anxious to help the right hon. Gentleman in any way that he considers I can responsibly do so. If he would care to phrase his question differently, I should be only too glad to give him an answer.

    Bank of England (United States Management Consultants)
    Mr. Lubbockasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will direct the Bank of England not to employ United States management consultants.
    Mr. Croninasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what is his policy with regard to the employment of United States management consultants by the Bank of England.
    Mr. Shinwellasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what is the policy of Her Majesty's Government regarding the employment of a United States firm to investigate the administration and organisation of the Bank of England.
    Mr. Diamond: With permission, I will answer this Question and Question Nos. 40 and 44 together.
    Mr. Speaker: It helps if the Chair is informed previously of groups.
    Mr. Diamond: I apologise, Mr. Speaker. I regret the omission and will ensure that it does not occur again. With your permission, Mr. Speaker, I will
    1106
    answer this Question and Questions Nos. 40 and 44 together.
    This is a matter of internal management and, as such, for the Bank to decide.
    Mr. Lubbock: That may well be so, but is the right hon. Gentleman aware that one management consultant alone has undertaken no fewer than 14 banking assignments in the very recent past? What steps did the Bank of England take in this instance to obtain proposals from British management consultants? It is generally considered that the Bank went through a list of names and fastened on McKinsey for totally irrelevant reasons which had nothing to do with the pre-eminence of British consultants in this field throughout the world.
    Mr. Diamond: I wish to help the hon. Gentleman without wanting to alter in any sense my original reply. I understand that the Bank considered this matter very carefully and went through extensive lists. I also understand that it had employed British consultants from time to time in particular fields. It did not come to this conclusion lightly. It is also to be noted, and is a matter in which delight should be taken, that many British consultants are also doing a good deal of consultation work abroad.
    Mr. Shinwell: Surely this was a case in which the principle of import substitution might have been invoked. Why should we have to spend useful and scarce dollars to employ this firm, although no doubt competent, when there are competent firms in this country? Was this a Government decision, or was it made entirely by the Bank itself? Why do not the Government take action themselves in a matter of such importance?
    Mr. Diamond: The answer to the first part of my right hon. Friend's supplementary question is that no payment of dollars is involved. The answer to the second part is that this is a matter for the Bank's internal management alone. [HON. MEMBERS: "Why?"] Because that is laid down in the Bank's Charter. The answer to the third part is that the Government do not interfere except on matters of very substantial principle, and it has never been found necessary since the Bank was nationalised to issue a direction of this kind.
    Sir G. Nabarro: Is it not a fact that the Bank's going to America for financial advice creates the impression internationally that the Government are grossly incapable of managing this nation's affairs?
    Mr. Diamond: No. That suggestion would not apply to anybody other than the hon. Member, who is incapable apparently of considering the facts.
    Mr. Orme: Is my right hon. Friend aware that by bringing in foreign investigators to look into the way in which this organisation is run the Bank has destroyed the argument that it should not be looked into by this House, which is basically responsible for the nationalisation of the Bank of England? Is it not time that we made a thorough investigation into this public body?
    Mr. Diamond: What this House decides to do is an entirely different question.
    Mr. Lubbock: On a point of order. In view of the unsatisfactory nature of the reply, I beg to give notice that I shall raise this matter at the earliest possible moment.

    P.A.Y.E. Rebates (Wives)
    Mr. Fletcher-Cookeasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer why rebates for Pay As You Earn earned by wives assessed on temporary codes are repaid not to the wives but to their husbands.
    Mr. Harold Lever: A wife who has paid too much tax under P.A.Y.E. may get it repaid during the course of the tax year through the P.A.Y.E. machinery. Otherwise, under our system of aggregating incomes of husband and wife the repayment is due in law to the husband; but he can nominate his wife to receive the repayment.
    Mr. Fletcher-Cooke: Since this money never belonged to the Revenue and was earned by the wife, why should it be repaid to the husband, and why should the wife be put to the task of getting it back from her husband, with whom she may be on bad terms?
    Mr. Lever: I am afraid that as long as we preserve the system of fiscal intimacy whereby a wife's income ranks as the income of her husband, there will be no solution other than the present solution.

  COMMONWEALTH MEDAL
  Mr. Tilneyasked the Prime Minister whether he will discuss with Commonwealth Presidents and his fellow Prime Ministers the possibility of a Commonwealth Medal to be given sparingly by the Head of the Commonwealth on the advice of Presidents and Prime Ministers to those who have rendered outstanding Commonwealth service.
  The Prime Minister (Mr. Harold Wilson): I would prefer to wait until there is evidence of some general interest in such a medal in the Commonwealth.
  Mr. Tilney: But since men and women like rewards and recognition, would not the striking of such a medal strengthen the idea of Commonwealth?
  The Prime Minister: There is in most Commonwealth countries adequate provision for national awards. I have had no indication that any of my fellow Heads of Government in the Commonwealth would wish to symbolise the intimacy of the Commonwealth in this way.

  UNITED KINGDOM (GOVERNOR-GENERAL)
  Mr. Tilneyasked the Prime Minister whether, in order to put the United Kingdom on the same basis as other Commonwealth countries who bear allegiance to the Crown, he will consider introducing legislation enabling Her Majesty to appoint a Governor-General of the United Kingdom.
  The Prime Minister: No, Sir.
  Mr. Tilney: But would not such an appointment enable Her Majesty to spend more time informally in the Commonwealth?
  The Prime Minister: That is a possible argument, but there has been no pressure for this from any Commonwealth country. In these days of modern travel, Her Majesty is able to get to Commonwealth countries with remarkable speed, and the regular meetings of Commonwealth Prime Ministers in this country enable Commonwealth Prime Ministers to be entertained by Her Majesty.

  PUBLICLY-OWNED ENTERPRISES (UNITED STATES MANAGEMENT CONSULTANTS)
  Mr. Lubbockasked the Prime Minister if he will instruct Ministers responsible for publicly-owned enterprises to issue general directions to those enterprises requiring them not to employ United States management consultants.
  The Prime Minister: No, Sir. The choice of management consultants by public corporations and nationalised industries is a matter within their managerial discretion.
  Mr. Lubbock: Would the Prime Minister publish any representations which he has received on this question from the Management Consultants Association, together with copies of the replies which he or the Governor of the Bank of England may have sent?
  Does he realise that the decision of the Bank of England has done grave and irreparable damage to British consultants working abroad whose clients are saying that if even the Bank of England cannot decide to employ British consultants, why should overseas clients do so?
  The Prime Minister: There have been representations from the associations concerned. With regard to the Bank of England case, I thought that I heard the hon. Gentleman not only putting questions to my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary about this matter two or three minutes ago, but intimating that he would raise it on the Adjournment. In these circumstances, I am inhibited a little in replying to his question. Perhaps I should be in order in pointing out that on a number of occasions the Bank of England has employed British firms of management consultants.
  Mr. Shinwell: Surely there is something extraordinary about the situation when the Governor of the Bank of England and his colleagues appoint an investigating body to investigate themselves. Is there not something arbitrary and even prejudiced about this? When I tabled a similar Question to my right hon. Friend, why did he transfer it to the Chancellor of the Exchequer? Why
  1110
  should a Liberal have precedence over a loyal and devoted supporter?
  The Prime Minister: My right hon. Friend's loyalty and devotion have never been in question. His Question was transferred because it related specifically to the Bank of England which is within the jurisdiction of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Question of the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Lubbock) related to instructions to all Ministers responsible for nationalised industries. To go back to the early part of my right hon. Friend's supplementary question, I do not think that there is anything extraordinary about the Bank of England or any other organisation, privately or publicly-owned, calling in consultants to advise on particular matters of management. It is frequently done throughout British industry. If I have one doubt in this matter it is this—and I agree that it is not a matter for giving directions. There seems to be a growing assumption that this firm is the fount of all wisdom, on which I have heard doubts expressed.
  Mr. Montgomery: In view of the Prime Minister's great advocacy of backing Britain, should he not practise what he preaches and engage British firms of management consultants rather than overseas firms?
  The Prime Minister: We do, and the hon. Gentleman will be aware, although it has been criticised from the benches opposite, of what we have done recently to stimulate the use of consultancy firms in Britain, especially small and medium-sized firms, with Government assistance to that end. The British consultancy firms have double advantage in knowing the terrain better than American firms and, in general, in charging lower fees.
  Mr. Sheldon: While agreeing that publicly-owned industries have the right to go for the advice that they think best, is my right hon. Friend aware that there is great concern about this matter, because it is held that the Bank of England did not consult British management consultants and selected McKinsey without examining what the other firms could offer to its advantage?
  The Prime Minister: As I have said already, on a number of occasions the Bank of England has employed British

  1111
  firms of management consultants, so it knew what was available. In this case, I understand that it went through the list of possible alternatives. This is the Bank's decision. It is not for me to defend it or criticise it. It is a management matter.

  MENTALLY-HANDICAPPED CHILDREN (DEPARTMENTAL RESPONSIBILITY)
  Dr. David Kerrasked the Prime Minister if he will now make a statement on the transfer of responsibility for mentally-handicapped children from the Secretary of State for the Social Services to the Secretary of State for Education and Science.
  Mr. Archerasked the Prime Minister whether he will now transfer responsibility for the education of mentally-handicapped children from the Secretary of State for Social Services to the Secretary of State for Education and Science.
  Mr. Moonmanasked the Prime Minister whether, in order to ensure effective co-ordination of the mentally handicapped children's service, he will now transfer responsibility from the Secretary of State for Social Services to the Secretary of State for Education and Science.
  The Prime Minister: I would refer my hon. Friends to my reply on 14th November to a Question by the hon. Member for Chigwell (Mr. Biggs-Davison).—[Vol. 733, c. 144.]
  Dr. Kerr: Is my right hon. Friend not aware that he gave me a rather line-holding answer many months ago? Is this not a little unfair on mentally-handicapped children, who would benefit enormously if responsibility for them were to be transferred to his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science? Could we please get a move on?
  The Prime Minister: I do not think that the matter is quite so clear-cut as my hon. Friend suggests. I agree that this Answer, like the previous one, is a line-holding reply. I hope that we shall not have to hold it for very much longer, because I hope to be able to make
  1112
  an announcement in a few days' time. We have had to have consultations with all the organisations involved. Many of them are in favour of transfer, others doubt whether it is in the best interests of the children, and others have reservations about the timing of any transfer, but I hope to be able to put my hon. Friend's mind at rest in a few days.
  Mr. Archer: While appreciating that consultations take time, would my right hon. Friend agree that the basis of the original allocation of functions, namely, that severely subnormal children are ineducable, has been demonstrated to be false? Can we get on with educating them?
  The Prime Minister: I know that that view has been expressed by many organisations and, as my hon. Friend knows, we are aware of the Seebohm Committee's recommendations in favour of the transfer. However, it was right to consult in a matter of such importance involving the future of a considerable number of children who start life with a great handicap. As I have said, I hope that we shall be able to make a decision in the next few days.
  Mr. Moonman: While welcoming my right hon. Friend's statement that a decision will be made shortly, is he aware that there is increasing anxiety about the problem whereby one child in ten is at risk, and there is a waiting list for special places of something like 10,000?
  The Prime Minister: I am aware of the anxieties both in relation to the decision and on the question of places. Those of us who have seen special places in our constituencies know what a tremendous job is being done and also what is being done to increase the number of places.
  Sir D. Renton: Is the Prime Minister aware that the most essential step is to get started the training of teachers of mentally-handicapped children? This has been held up for a very long time pending the Government's decision. Will the right hon. Gentleman ensure that the matter brooks no further delay?
  The Prime Minister: The right hon. and learned Gentleman may be exaggerating the delay in teacher training. In

  1113
  fact, training courses for teachers of mentally-handicapped children and other mentally-handicapped persons have been organised by the special Training Council, which was set up for the purpose in 1964. The staffs of training centres are now seconded to these courses in increasing numbers. The decision about the transfer is not affecting this problem significantly, but, as I say, we intend to take a decision in the near future.
  Mr. Biggs-Davison: Since delay has held up the release of funds raised for the benefit of mentally-handicapped children, when the Prime Minister says that we shall have a decision in a few days, will the days really be few?
  The Prime Minister: I intend that the days shall be really few.
  Sir E. Boyle: Can the Prime Minister say whether there have been full consultations with local education authorities on this matter, and is he aware that, quite apart from the machinery of government aspects, there is overwhelming evidence that there are many children who ought to be getting education and having some contact with the world of education authorities who are at the moment right outside it?
  The Prime Minister: What the right hon. Gentleman has said accords with the experience of many of us in our own constituencies. On the earlier part of his question, it is the case that the education authorities and authority organisations have been consulted. These consultations have been going on for the greater part of this year. Different views have been expressed, though it is fair to say that the predominant view is in favour of transfer.

  PRIVATE INDUSTRY (OFFICIAL FORMS AND QUESTIONNAIRES)
  Mr. Hastingsasked the Prime Minister which Minister is responsible for co-ordinating the number of official forms and questionnaires submitted to private industrial firms.
  Mr. Emeryasked the Prime Minister whether he will issue a direction to all Ministers instructing them to reduce the number of Government forms which industry and small businesses have to com-
  1114
  plete for the benefit of Government Departments, but which involve individual firms in considerable financial cost and which are a major waste of manpower.
  The Prime Minister: I would refer the hon. Gentlemen to an article in the first issue of "Statistical News", in May, 1968, describing the new plans of the Central Statistical Office for the better control and co-ordination of statistical forms used by Government Departments. Much of the information so collected is, of course, for the benefit of industry and commerce as well as Departments.
  Mr. Hastings: Does the Prime Minister realise that this nuisance has increased steadily since his Government came to power and is still increasing? Has he any idea of the loss of productivity involved, and has he tried to measure it? Does he consider that the economic record of his Government is any recompense to those who have to provide the endless statistics?
  The Prime Minister: The hon. Gentleman's question raises broad issues on which he will not find agreement on this side of the House. In the first part of it, he deals with an important subject. A number of my right hon. Friends and I myself have spent considerable time on trying to get it straightened out. Through the years, long before this Government came to office, there has always been the accusation about the duplication of forms and about the same firms having to send replies to different Departments. The Central Statistical Office has this matter in hand, and that is why I referred the hon. Gentleman to the article in its publication.
  Mr. Emery: Is the Prime Minister aware that small firms in industry and commerce received 22 different forms within a matter of 18 weeks covering approximately 72 pages of statistics that were required? Many of the questions needed considerable research. The amount of manpower that went into it was quite unproductive and immensely costly. Surely this is something that the Government ought to work out a way of reducing?
  The Prime Minister: The hon. Gentleman will be aware that many of these firms also receive requests for statistical

  1115
  information from many people outside the Government, including some of the big industrial organisations, and I make no criticism of it. In setting up this new unit, we are trying to reduce the number of forms and make them more transferable between Departments. Industry, trade associations, N.E.D.C. and the "Little Neddies" attach great importance to the work produced by these means and, when it is a question of providing public money for private enterprise, it is important that the fullest information should be made available.
  Mr. Bidwell: If, by any wild stretch of the imagination, we had a Ministry for the repatriation of Commonwealth immigrants, can my right hon. Friend say how many extra forms that would require—and how many extra policemen?
  The Prime Minister: I do not think that that really arises out of this question, and the contempt shown in all parts of the House for the speech embodying that proposal does not need further words of mine.
  Mr. W. Baxter: Is my right hon. Friend aware that there is some degree of urgency required to look into this matter? Some of the circulars and questionnaires sent to firms are of such a complicated nature that they almost require a solicitor to deal with them, while, on the other hand, one finds extremes of triviality such as the number of cups of tea supplied to the employees of the firm concerned. It becomes a very considerable and costly exercise for industry as a whole. Clearly, it should be looked into without delay.
  The Prime Minister: If my hon. Friend has certain forms in mind, I hope that he will send them to me or to some of my right hon. Friends. However, a number of these claims are exaggerated. We are trying to streamline the forms and get as much vital information as possible on the basis of fewer of them.
  Sir C. Osborne: Does the Prime Minister remember that in 1950, when he was President of the Board of Trade, he boasted how he had a bonfire of controls and regulations? Will the right hon. Gentleman have another bonfire of these official forms and questionnaires?
  The Prime Minister: It was in fact 1949 and I was referring to a whole number of wartime controls that I thought it would be right to get rid of, including clothing rationing and similar matters—[Interruption.]
  Mr. Speaker: Order.
  The Prime Minister: But one thing that I tried to do in those years, which my right hon. Friend is carrying a great deal further, was to simplify the forms used by export firms. This is one of our highest priorities.

WAREHOUSE FIRE, GLASGOW
Mr. Hugh D. Brown (by Private Notice)Mr. Hugh D. Brown (by Private Notice) asked the Secretary of State for Scotland whether he will make a statement on the fire in Glasgow on Monday, 18th November, which resulted in the loss of lives.
The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. William Ross): All Members of the House will have been shocked to learn of the tragic loss of life which occurred as a result of a major fire in the centre of Glasgow yesterday. As soon as the dimensions of the catastrophe became known to me, I arranged that the Joint Under-Secretary of State should immediately fly to Glasgow. The statement I now make is based on his report to me.
Glasgow Fire Brigade responded to an emergency call at 10.31 yesterday morning to warehouse premises in James Watt Street, Glasgow. The premises consisted of a basement and three storeys. The basement and top storey were used for the storage of glass articles and the remainder of the building was used as a furniture and upholstery manufacturer's premises.
Shortly after 3 p.m. the fire had been brought under control and at that time 20 bodies had been found. I regret to have to inform the House that today a further two bodies have been discovered, bringing the total death roll to 22—five women and 17 men.
This is a tragic loss of life and I am sure that the deep sympathy of the House and, indeed, of the whole country will go out to the relatives of those who died.

1117
So far as is known, all the victims were employees of the two firms occupying the premises. Of the total number of people in the building at the time of the fire, only four persons escaped, none of these seriously injured. No casualties have been reported among members of the fire service or the other services in attendance.
I take this opportunity of paying tribute to the members of the Glasgow Fire Brigade whose actions were in the best traditions of the service. They prevented the spread of the fire beyond the building in which it started and no one regrets it more bitterly than they that they were unable to prevent the loss of life.
I wish, too, to pay tribute to the part played by the police and the Glasgow welfare service, by the ambulance service and by the various voluntary services who gave their help, particularly the Salvation Army and the Seamen's Bethel, who did much to comfort bereaved relatives.
The Lord Provost, who himself attended the scene of the fire until late yesterday afternoon, has arranged to have all the next-of-kin visited today in order that they may be offered help and advice including where necessary, financial help.
There must now be a full public inquiry into this fire. This will be held under the Fatal Accidents Inquiry (Scotland) Act, 1895, before a sheriff and a jury.
Hon. Members will appreciate that in these circumstances it would not be appropriate for me to comment further on the facts or on any theories about the causes of this fire and the reasons why its results were so costly in human life.
Mr. Brown: I thank my right hon. Friend for his full statement. May I associate myself and all my hon. Friends from Glasgow with the expression of sympathy to the relatives of those who lost their lives?
May I also compliment the various services referred to, particularly the public volunteers, for their brave but unsuccessful rescue efforts?
Is my right hon. Friend aware of the deep anxiety and, indeed, anger at this shocking tragedy, causing allegations of criminal negligence to be raised?
Is my right hon. Friend satisfied with the powers under existing legislation for
1118
inspection and fire prevention on high risk properties?
Finally, will my right hon. Friend assure the House that the fatal accidents inquiry will be detailed and exhaustive enough to satisfy the public demand for urgent action?
Mr. Ross: My hon. Friend has asked a number of questions about fire regulations. I have no reason to suppose that the statutory requirements had not been complied with, but these matters will come out in the inquiry. If there are lessons to be learned, we will be quick to take advantage of them. An independent Departmental Committee on the Fire Service, under Sir Ronald Holroyd, is now sitting and is due to report next year.
I understand and appreciate the feelings of everyone concerned. The public expects that there should be a full inquiry, the circumstances demand that there should be a full inquiry, and I am glad to say that the law provides that there can and must be a full inquiry.
If I read part of the Statute, I hope that my hon. Friend will appreciate how exhaustive it is. It says that the jury, after hearing the evidence and the summing up of the sheriff,
"…shall return a verdict setting forth, so far as such particulars have been proved, when and where the accident and the death or deaths to which the inquiry relates took place, the cause or causes of such accident or death or deaths, the person or persons, if any, to whose fault or negligence the accident is attributable, the precautions, if any, by which it might have been avoided, any defects in the system or mode of working which contributed to the accident, and any other facts disclosed by the evidence which, in the opinion of the jury, are relevant to the inquiry."
There is scope, therefore, within the terms of the Statute, for a full, exhaustive inquiry.
Mr. Noble: May I say to the Secretary of State how much every right hon. and hon. Gentleman on this side of the House, from wherever he comes, shares in the horror of the tragedy that took place yesterday and would wish to express sincere and deep sympathy to the relatives concerned?
I am delighted, as I am sure all of us are, that the Secretary of State has put in motion the necessary movement for

1119
the full inquiry. May I say that whoever may be found to have been responsible for this fire has probably already got quite enough on his conscience, if he survived it. But will the Secretary of State do his best, perhaps through the Committee that is at present sitting, to see that this type of disaster—and we have had some terrible fires in whisky warehouses—does not occur again before the inquiry reports? There seem to be some particularly sad and tragic parts of this disaster and I hope that something can immediately de done to see that such disasters do not occur again.
Mr. Ross: As the right hon. Gentleman suggests, there are some rather disturbing and very anguish-making facets of this tragedy. I think that we can problably provide for everything except human error. I am sure that if there are lessons to be learned by other people they will be learned. Certainly, concerning statutory requirements arising out of this inquiry, we will not be slow to enact anything that is necessary.
Mr. Rankin: Is my right hon. Friend satisfied that in Glasgow today there are not buildings of this type in which people are still working and liable to the dangers which we are now deploring? What is my right hon. Friend doing to preserve their lives if such disasters should occur in these types of buildings?
Mr. Ross: I think that we want to try to prevent disasters occurring by means of the fire prevention precautions that can be taken and the provision of particular services. Glasgow, like every other large and old city, has its share, and it may be that it has more than its share, of old buildings, particularly in the older part, at Broomielaw, near the centre of the city. This is the special concern of the fire authority.
Mr. Edward M. Taylor: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that Glasgow folk will be grateful for his prompt setting up of the inquiry? In view of this great tragedy, will the right hon. Gentleman consider promoting a campaign to encourage all firms in Scotland to review the efficiency of their fire emergency operations? Will he also consider legislation giving local authorities and fire services the power to require the removal
1120
of steel bars from the windows of buildings in which people are employed? At present, they have the power only to recommend such action?
Mr. Ross: I think that the point about steel bars is an appropriate one for the inquiry. I am sure that the immediate lessons of this tragedy will not be lost on those who are concerned. Certainly, this event should make everyone aware of the need to re-examine all aspects of fire prevention as they affect the fire authorities, individuals, and firms.
Sir M. Galpern: May I join in the general expression of sympathy to the relatives of those who died in this tragic fire? As quite a number of the unfortunate victims resided in my constituency, can my right hon. Friend say what form of compensation or financial aid will be available to the relatives of the deceased?
Mr. Ross: It is not for me now to pronounce on any compensation that arises out of the Statute, but I assure my hon. Friend—and no one should know this better than he does, as he was once the Lord Provost of Glasgow—that the Lord Provost has a standing fund, and I know for a fact that this is immediately and readily available—
Sir M. Galpern: It is not of very large dimensions.
Mr. Ross:—for special purposes. The fund is always there, and I am sure that the Lord Provost will be willing to receive contributions to it.
Mr. Wright: While we are waiting with great anxiety for this report, will the right hon. Gentleman take immediate action to ensure that the access to staircases in these buildings—in this case the staircase remained intact—is available at both ends for people in the building?
Mr. Ross: That is a matter for the inquiry. I hope that what is left of this building will soon come down.
Mr. Hannan: While awaiting the report, will my right hon. Friend undertake to exercise all the powers that he has to look at the establishments of the fire prevention services? Secondly, will he ensure that the greatest possible number of factory inspectors is brought to Glasgow to get on with the inspection of these old buildings? Thirdly, does

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this not lend urgency to the preparation of the Holroyd Committee's report about fire prevention, about which Questions have been asked in the House for some time?
Mr. Ross: I mentioned the existence of the Holroyd Committee, and said that it would report next year. The establishments of the fire services generally are relevant to the whole question of fire prevention, but I do not think that we should jump to conclusions about what was the cause of death here. We should leave that to the inquiry.
Mr. Gordon Campbell: As the Press reports of this tragic fire indicate that people were trapped because they could not escape through windows, will the right hon. Gentleman, even before the inquiry reports, look into the hazards and special precautions which are necessary in warehouses and stores, or in buildings which have previously been used as warehouses or stores?
Mr. Ross: I am sure that the fire prevention officers in Glasgow will look at that particularly as a result of the fire.
Mr. Bence: Will my right hon. Friend take steps, and, if he can, powers, to ensure that when a building is transferred from one ownership to another, resulting in a change of function within that building, the building is surveyed to ensure that it is suitable, in electrical work and in general construction, for the new purpose for which it is to be used?
Mr. Ross: That is a very fair and relevant point. As my hon. Friend knows, that is the responsibility of the Factory Inspectorate under my right hon. Friend the First Secretary of State. I am sure that the matter will be drawn to her notice.
Mr. Stodart: Is the right hon. Gentleman satisfied with the strength in numbers of those who are engaged in giving advice on fire prevention? Can the right hon. Gentleman say how many such officers are at work in Glasgow now?
Mr. Ross: I could not give that information without notice, but I think
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we must appreciate that it was 10.31 when the first emergency call came to the fire brigade. There was a second call at 10.32, which indicated that there was an explosion and people were trapped. At 10.35, the fire brigade was on the scene and sending back for further appliances, which were forthcoming.
Miss Herbison: I agree with my right hon. Friend that we ought not to jump to conclusions about the cause of this tragic disaster, but will my right hon. Friend consider asking his right hon. Friend to draft into this area in the next few days every available member of the Factory Inspectorate to ensure that all buildings in which people are at work are examined, and perhaps ensure that there will not be another disaster before we have the Committee's report?
Mr. Ross: I think that my right hon. Friend should appreciate that it was in this very area in 1960 that we had a shocking fire which cost the lives of 19 firemen and salvage workers. That fire occurred only 400 yards from this one. I am sure that after that time special attention was paid to this type of property. I sincerely hope that attention will be paid to the results of the inquiry arising out of this accident.
Mr. Horner: May I ask my right hon. Friend whether, following on his last answer, he is aware that the Glasgow Fire Brigade has no statutory right of entry and of inspection of the means of escape in premises such as these? Is my right hon. Friend further aware that the men who fought this fire yesterday, and sought to rescue the trapped men and women, take the view that the possibility of finding escape doors chained and padlocked would be much reduced if members of the fire brigade could be given powers of spot inspections constantly to follow up the prearranged visits of factory inspectors?
Mr. Ross: I am sure that that is one of the reasons why we have set up the independent Departmental Committee under Sir Roland Holroyd. It is the first real look that we have had at the fire services. I assure my hon. Friend that the need for further strengthening the powers of the fire authority will be closely looked into.
Mr. Noble: I think that the right hon. Gentleman missed the point of the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, West (Mr. Stodart). My hon. Friend was asking specifically, not about the fire service, but about the fire advisory officers, who come under the jurisdiction of the First Secretary of State. Will the right hon. Gentleman report to his right hon. Friend that there is a real desire in the House
1124
that this side of fire prevention should be actively pursued?
Mr. Ross: I shall do that. We learned some lessons from the last fire to which I referred a short time ago, and these were incorporated in the changes which we made under the Offices, Shops and Railway Premises Act, 1963. We must always be prepared and anxious to improve the statutory provisions for dealing with these matters.

HOUSE OF LORDS REFORM
Mr. Speaker: Perhaps I might announce to the House that I have selected the Amendment on the Order Paper in the names of the hon. Member for Fife, West (Mr. William Hamilton) and his right hon. and hon. Friends, in line 1, leave out "takes note of" and insert "rejects".
I have not selected the Amendments in the name of the hon. Member for Ilford, North (Mr. Iremonger) in line 1, leave out "takes" and insert "declines to take"; and in line 2, at end add:
'on the grounds that it envisages a second chamber which will be too easily subordinated to the executive and which will thus conform to the tendency encouraged by Her Majesty's present advisers to turn Parliament into an elective bureaucracy, which is a travesty of its historic and proper constitutional purpose and function and is the opposite of the kind of reform required'.
I have not selected the Amendment in the name of the hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Blenkinsop), in line 2, at end add:
'but regrets that the Command Paper includes no proposals for the complete separation of the Honours system from the reformed Second Chamber'.
At some stage during the debate I shall call on the hon. Member for Fife, West to move his Amendment. This will not cramp the debate in any way. It will be a general debate.
The Secretary of State for Social Services (Mr. Richard Crossman): I beg to move,
That this House takes note of the Command Paper (No. 3799) on House of Lords Reform.
Before I come to the main argument of of my speech I would like to make an observation or explanation. I shall be referring more than once to the White Paper as containing "agreed" recommendations and I wish to make it clear precisely what "agreed" means. As is normal in White Papers, this one presents a set of Government proposals. But in this case the Government's proposals are based substantially on the conclusions reached by the inter-party talks, and substantially it presents to the House the unanimous recommendations produced by the members of the conference for the reform of the other place. They are
1126
agreed between the participants of the talks and not between the parties.
I should add that there was one point of importance on which the Conservative members of the conference disagreed with the representatives of the other two parties. It referred, however, not to the reform itself, but to the timing of the reform. The representatives of all three parties were agreed that a Bill should be published and presented as soon as possible implementing our proposals. The disagreement came on what should happen after the Bill had become law.
The Government and Liberal representatives held the view that immediate steps should be taken to carry the reforms out so that the Queen could deliver her gracious Speech to the reformed House of Lords at the beginning of our next Session. The Conservative representatives took a different view. They held that though it was proper to pass the Measure which reformed the Upper House in this Session, its coming into being should await a new Parliament.
How did it come about that, on the substantial issue of reform, we achieved unanimous conclusions and differed only on one point, the timing of the reform? Each member of the conference started the talks from a fully thought-out and carefully prepared position. We did not come with "open minds". On the contrary, each of us, naturally, had clear views and possibly even strong prejudices. What was remarkable was how far each of us was able to go to meet the other fellow's demands without budging an inch from the requirements with which he had entered on the talks.
To demonstrate what I mean, I will describe my personal position. During the many years when I was either a don lecturing on politics, or a journalist writing about them, I had always been a staunch theoretical supporter of single-chamber government. It seemed to me that the British House of Commons should be not only the prime element, but the sole element in our sovereign legislature. However, as I got to know more about Parliament and party machines I began to realise the difficulty about the project of simply abolishing the House of Lords and, with it, the peerage.

1127
In the climate of British politics I began to think that it would be difficult to get rid of their Lordships without the risk of seeing a modern and more efficient second Chamber put in their place. Since I disliked the whole idea of a second Chamber, I became increasingly attracted to the view that an obviously ridiculous collection of peers was serving a useful Socialist purpose by ensuring that Britain had the weakest and most ineffectual second Chamber in the whole democratic world. In fact, I came to be in favour of preserving an undefensible second Chamber—to use Hilaire Belloc's words—for fear of getting something worse. But that is a view which it is easier for an Oxford don or for an assistant editor of the New Statesman than it is for a member of a Labour Government.
Soon after we took office I began to realise—I think that my conversion was shared by a number of old Left-wingers—that I had underestimated the danger presented by the other place to any Government, except a Conservative one, in the fourth or fifth year of a Parliament.
I now saw that though its hereditary composition made it ridiculous, its powers, if skilfully employed by a Conservative Opposition at the right point in the life of a Parliament, could be used to imperil the whole legislative programme of a Labour Government. I began to think, therefore, that the best way of dealing with this problem would be to leave its composition unchanged, while reducing its powers. This clear-cut separation between composition and powers had been taken for granted in all the textbooks I read; and I too easily assumed it to make sense, along with a great many political journalists who ought to know better.
In fact, the distinction is quite artificial, as I came to realise as Leader of the House, in which capacity I was able to study the other place at first hand, to observe its procedures and to consider its rôle as a second Chamber in this Parliament of ours. It did not take me long to realise that the project of dealing with powers while leaving composition unchanged was quite unreal.
In reality, it is the in-built Conservative majority which provides one of the main obstructional threats to a Labour
1128
Government, and unless he is prepared to abolish the House of Lords altogether, the Parliamentary reformer must deal not only with its powers but with its composition, too.
As Leader of the House, it was brought home to me that when one considered the possibilities of, for example, increased Select Committee work, more effective scrutiny of subordinate legislation, or the reform of Standing Committee procedures, one kept finding that we were coming to a dead end if we were not allowed to consider the reform of another place.
It was, therefore, as a House of Commons man, intent on strengthening our own Chamber of Parliament, that I became convinced that major progress in reforming the procedures of our House cannot be made without a full reform both of the powers and of the composition of the other place. In other words, it was not good enough to allow the Lords to decay and mould away. We must tackle a political problem which had defeated our predecessors for more than 50 years.
In doing so, I had no doubt that we should, if humanly possible, achieve substantial all-party agreement on the substance of the reform. I know that some of my hon. Friends are suspicious of the White Paper precisely because it represents a solution agreed at all-party talks. If Conservatives have agreed this solution, they argue, then it just cannot be the kind of solution a Socialist should accept. I ask my hon. Friends, before they adopt this attitude, to remember that it is in straight opposition to our own attitude in dealing with reform in this House. In the House of Commons we are not ashamed to give all the initiative in suggesting procedural reforms to a Select Committee with normal all-party representation; and when that Committee reports we are always glad to welcome a unanimous recommendation.
This does not mean, of course, that a Government with a majority should not on occasion go beyond the unanimous recommendations; and indeed, if I remember rightly, we did this once or twice while I was Leader of the House. Nevertheless, it obviously remains true that when we are making changes which affect our democratic constitution we should always seek to do it by agreement—and,

1129
when agreement is reached, as it has been on this occasion, it seems to me absurd to dismiss it out of hand for that reason.
Moreover, in this case the Government representatives went into the talks with five declared objectives, or minimum requirements. This is the way in which they are set out in the White Paper:

(a) the hereditary basis of membership should be eliminated;

(b) no one party should possess a permanent majority;

(c) in normal circumstances the Government of the day should be able to secure a reasonable working majority;

(d) the powers of the House of Lords to delay public legislation should be restricted; and

(e) the Lords' absolute power to withhold consent to subordinate legislation against the will of the Commons should be abolished.

Those were the five requirements with which we entered the talks, and the result of the talks was that the Government came out of the conference with a model for a reformed Upper House which precisely fulfilled these five requirements, but which also included important new features which will, if accepted, make our new model second Chamber a real improvement on the new model with which we on the Government side, entered the talks.
I will summarise the plan laid out in the White Paper, and for convenience I will do this in terms of our requirements. First, the requirement that the hereditary element should be eliminated. This is fulfilled in the White Paper by the device of a two-tier scheme which distinguishes between the voting Members who wield the political power and the non-voting Members who retain only the right to speak.
The voting Members will, in fact, form the core of the new House. They will be expected to give a substantial part of their time—not less than one-third of the sitting—to the business of the House and they will be in complete control both of the legislative functions on the Floor of the House and of committees upstairs. A Member of the voting House who fails to carry out these obligations will forfeit his right to vote until the end of that Parliament. At the beginning of the next Parliament, however, he can recover these rights.
1130
On the Government side we were attracted to this proposal not only because it fulfilled the first of our negative requirements—that peers by succession should be eliminated from the exercise of political power—but also because it fulfilled our second requirement, namely, the elimination of the in-built Conservative majority. The right hon. Member for Barnet (Mr. Maudling) will tell us why his party was attracted by this method of eliminating the hereditary principle and the majority which his own party has, through it, been able to enjoy for generations.
I can only say that we, on the Government side, welcomed his acceptance of it, because it seemed to us to have not only negative but positive virtues. Not only does it destroy what we oppose in principle: it also creates conditions for a second Chamber which combines the two essential functions of, first, a working legislature and, secondly, a debating Chamber of distinction. By keeping Members of the Upper House who can speak but not vote, who can influence opinion without wielding effective political power, our proposals make it possible to retain in the reformed House the cross-bench and expert element—the part-time element—which forms such a valuable part of its present membership.
Let me make this clear. The hereditary peers who once dominated the House are at one stroke eliminated from power, although any one of them will have as much right as anyone else in the United Kingdom to be selected for a life peerage, and we expect, under the conventions which exist between the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, quite a number of them to become life peers—while the rest, for their lifetime, retain speaking rights.
Mr. John Lee: Can my right hon. Friend say why no provision has been made for the abolition of hereditary peerages in toto?
Mr. Crossman: If my hon. Friend means, by the word "abolition", the forbidding of anybody holding a title, that would be a matter for the Royal Prerogative. The terms of reference of the conference concerned the reform of the House of Lords and not the future of peers and titles, which is a separate matter. If we reform the House of Lords first, and

1131
abolish the hereditary principle there, we may find it easier if we want to proceed to the second stage of the argument.
The special advantage of the two-tier system is, as I have mentioned, the rôle it gives to the cross-bench part-timers. I mention this because it is one of the more controversial parts of our proposals. To understand that role, however, we must first consider the size of the new voting House and the balance of parties within it. Our intention is that the voting House should consist, in the first instance, principally of those present created peers able to attend regularly—about 150 last Session—supplemented by about 80 newly-created life peers, draw principally from the existing peers by succession.
Now for the party's strength in the reformed House. We propose that the Government of the day should, by convention, have the right to a majority of about 10 per cent. over the combined strength of the opposition parties. If we assume a total voting House of 230, the Government would have 105, the Opposition 80, the Liberals 15, and there would be about 30 cross-benchers, excluding those law lords and bishops with voting rights.
Several Hon. Members Several Hon. Members rose—
Mr. Speaker: Order. We cannot have more than one intervention at once. Mr. Iain Macleod.
Mr. Iain Macleod: On a point of some importance—the right hon. Gentleman said "the Liberals 15". Surely he means, "other Opposition parties 15".
Mr. Crossman: Yes. The right hon. Gentleman has made a strict and accurate point. I should have referred to "other Opposition parties". That was the agreement reached. I believe that the Liberal Party wants to comment on this, but this was the precise agreement, because we had to look forward to possible changes after elections.
Mr. Hugh Fraser: In the White Paper it is not clear how the cross-bench active Members of the House of Lords will be appointed. These may well be made a blocking third, which will destroy the balance. How is this to be done?
Mr. Crossman: I would get on somewhat faster if I were allowed to develop my speech in my own way. I said that I was going to deal with cross-benchers. To explain the position I had to deal with the allocation of party strength first.
Before I deal with cross-benchers there is one other question concerning the parties, and that is the question of retirement. That affects the total strength of the House. We do not have to deal with that problem in this House, because our constituents do it for us. They make a decision, and that is that. But in a House constituted of nominated or life peers it would seem reasonable that there should be a retirement age. Unless there is a retirement rule there would equally be an inflation in the number of peers. We have carried out studies which show that if we accept 72 as the age of retirement it should be possible to keep the size of the House down to reasonable numbers—between 230 and 300.
Mr. E. Shinwell Mr. E. Shinwell (Easington)
rose—
Mr. Crossman: In our House the decision when to retire is taken by our electors. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Mr. Shinwell) on surviving the test for so long.
I am sure that the House wants to debate this question. I have tried to prepare my speech in an orderly way, and I now turn to the question of cross-benchers. I have just mentioned the 30 voting cross-benchers. This is nothing like the total cross-bench membership of the House. This is our estimate of the number likely to attend—the number who would attend one-third of the time.
At present, there are over 100 cross-benchers, but so many of them are occupied outside Parliament, as doctors, scientists, farmers, economists or technologists—or even as Press lords and bankers—that we estimate that only about 30 will be able to give the necessary amount of time to qualify for voting rights. Most of them will be more than ever part-timers, by nature. The rest will be speaking peers—and again I emphasise that their presence will be possible only thanks to our two-tier system.
Mr. Hugh Fraser: Will the 30 be appointed as stooges of my Front Bench or the Government Front Bench?
Mr. Crossman: Has the right hon. Gentleman read the White Paper?
Mr. Fraser: I have.
Mr. Crossman: Then he knows the answer to that question.
The method of nomination will be unchanged from the present one. If the right hon. Gentleman thinks that the result of the present method, used by the Conservative Prime Minister of the time, was the result he described, it is likely to be repeated; but if he was making mere propaganda, and he was satisfied with the results achieved, there will be no change in the method of appointment.
I have seen it suggested that in the reformed House—[Interruption.] It seems that I must spell it out in detail, if the right hon. Gentleman has not understood. A cross-bench peer or any other peer will go to the House by nomination by the Prime Minister of the time. That is clear, and is laid down. There are paragraphs about it in the White Paper. I shall deal later with the problem of the nominated House, but there is no difference between the nomination of one peer and another. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman is listening to my reply.
Mr. Hugh Fraser: Yes.
Mr. Crossman: Then he now knows the answer.
Mr. Fraser Mr. Fraser indicated dissent.
Mr. Crossman: I have seen it suggested that in our reformed House a Government with a 10 per cent. majority over the Opposition parties will be placed at the mercy of the block vote of the cross-benchers. Those who make this criticism seem to me to misunderstand the rôle which the cross-bench element has played in the other place during the last decade. Most are men and women who have made a name for themselves in careers other than politics, and the last thing any of them wants to do is to be a member of a block, or obedient to a Whip.
I know that some of my right hon. and hon. Friends will resent this, and think
1134
that I am a little gullible in saying it, but I have studied the situation during the last 10 years very carefully, and it is my settled conviction that the individualism and independence of non-party peers is an important element in the life of our second Chamber which the Members of the inter-party conference were right to recognise. It is remarkable that although we are all party men we did so unanimously.
I now turn from the question of the composition of the reformed House to the question of its powers. Here I want to preface what I have to say with a warning. Some people have asked why, if the evils of the composition of the present House of Lords are eliminated, its power should be reduced. They argue that a reformed House should have its powers not decreased, but increased. The answer to this objection seem clear to me.
The present House of Lords has very great powers indeed, but hardly dares to use them owing to its ridiculously anachronistic make-up. A reformed House, given the same powers as the present House, would challenge the sovereignty of the House of Commons. If we want a second Chamber, subordinate to the Commons, we have to make sure that its powers are exactly attuned to this purpose. Whereas any unreformed House would be reluctant to use its powers, a reformed House would be entitled to use them, and we must not, therefore, give it more powers than we feel are needed. This is a calculation that we have to make—
Mr. John Mendelson: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that Lord Mancroft said on television that while, in the past, the Lords could never use these powers because they were incredible as a chamber to the country, now they will use the powers, effectively and frequently, for the first time?
Mr. Crossman: This is exactly what I said. If we institute a reformed House it is ridiculous not to recognise that it will use the powers given to it, and have the authority to do so, and, therefore, it should be given no power which it is not prepared to use. I shall come to discuss what powers we think the sovereign House of Commons should give to this second Chamber. My hon. Friend has

1135
anticipated my own mind which is winging towards his ideas.
The Government's principle was clear. The second Chamber must be denied the right to wreck our legislative programme or obstruct Government business. The conference proposed to substitute for the old period of 13 months' delay from Second Reading in the Commons a new period of six months' delay from the date of disagreement in the two Houses. From the Government's point of view, and my own point of view, six months seemed unduly long, until the ingenious suggestion was thrown up of a "carry-over" into the next Session, or even into the next Parliament.
The House will appreciate that this proposal for the "carry-over" has a very important practical advantage of allowing the Government to send a Bill comparatively late in the Session to the Lords, and even if it is disagreed the Bill will become an Act by a mere Resolution of the Commons in the next Session, even if that next Session is the first of a new Parliament. This device presented itself to us as a method of at once enabling the Lords to tell the Commons to think again, and that, in my view, is a right and duty that we must give them. That is the object of a second Chamber, to enable it to tell us to think again, but not to enable it to obstruct our legislative programme. It will enable the Lords to tell the Commons to think again while protecting the Parliamentary timetable at any stage of any Session of a Parliament.
Now to deal with subordinate legislation. Although they have not used this power, except on one very recent occasion, the possibility the Lords possess to veto any Order, either affirmative or negative, except financial, provides them with their greatest threat to a modern Government. It is obviously impossible for a modern and reformed second Chamber to retain this power—this veto.
The White Paper proposes, therefore, that in future the power of the Lords will be limited to defeating any Order of which they disapprove, and so compelling the Government and the House of Commons to reconsider it and to vote on it, if necessary, twice. The House of Commons, under our new reform, can never be frustrated by the Lords. It can
1136
only be compelled to look at a decision again, and if necessary, to vote it again. That is the outline of the structure.
Now I turn to the objections from both sides of the House, and the criticisms that have been made of the White Paper. I have no doubt that the criticism that has caused the greatest alarm is the charge that our reform would extend Prime Minister patron age in a most sinister way and constitute a threat to our democracy. This attack has been deployed most effectively by my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, North (Mr. Edelman), in a recent contribution to the Daily Express. "Government by Patronage with King Harold mustering his placemen" was the headline.
My hon. Friend does not tell his readers what kind of second Chamber he wants, if he wants any. There is no doubt what he does not want.
"What we are now witnessing"—
he writes—
"is the prospect of Parliament handing over to the Prime Minister the right to dish out dozens of new, paid appointments to peers, many of whom will be drawn from the House of Commons, where M.P.s already tamed by the Whips, will wait in supine deference and expectancy for their elevation."
It is a very unattractive picture of the House. I will consider this charge later, but I am first bound to ask, even if my hon. Friend failed to ask the question, what alternative he puts forward to a nominated Chamber?
Would he prefer an elected Chamber, a senior House of Senators just as we see across the Atlantic? I am sure he does not want that, because he realises, as much as I do, that any elected second Chamber constitutes a direct threat to the sovereignty which the House of Commons has enjoyed through the whole of this century. Of course, countries with a written constitution and a Supreme Court to interpret it—countries which also have a division of power between the legislature and executive and another division of powers between the two Houses of the executive; countries with constitutions based on the division of powers—can have a challenge of this kind and find it not only tolerable but essential.
I would have thought that every democracy which derives its constitution from the American Revolution or the

1137
French Revolution is based on a division of powers of this kind. But our British democracy is a unitary democracy, based on the sovereignty of the Commons. That really rules out any proposal for an elected second Chamber.
Mr. T. L. Iremonger: Is this pure constitutional doctrine? Sovereignty is the sovereignty of Parliament, not of the Commons.
Mr. Crossman: I do not want to indulge in a constitutional controversy, but there is always a difference between the mythology and the realities in British laws. I was describing the reality, which affects us. I can take it that such a second Chamber is out.
Mr. Jeremy Thorpe: The right hon. Gentleman has said that any elected House would be a challenge to the sovereignty of the Commons. Would that not depend upon the powers which that elected House was given?
Mr. Crossman: I would have said that any directly elected House, however, small its powers, would feel entitled to challenge the Commons because it was elected by the people, and was a rival representative of the people. This is the point I was putting to my hon. Friends and I am glad that they agree about it.
I now come to the question of indirect elections. I have seen proposals that a reformed House of Lords should be composed partly of nominated peers and party of men and women selected by local authorities and similar bodies, representing the regions or countries. A House of Lords formed in this way would not constitute so grave a challenge to the Commons as a directly elected Chamber, but nevertheless, the challenge, although weaker, would be there, and the Government majority over the Opposition parties would be constantly threatened by a new and unpredictable block vote.
Moreover, having had some experience of indirectly elected bodies, I would hazard a guess that if one is looking for a second Chamber with fewer placemen and more men and women of distinction and independence of mind, one is more likely to get it from a Prime Minister's nomination than from the unpredictable vagaries of indirect election at local level. I am a fervent believer in regionalism,
1138
but I have the gravest doubts whether its cause would be furthered by this particular method.
If elections, both direct and indirect, are ruled out, we must face the fact that for a second Chamber which is subordinate to the Commons nomination remains the only practical alternative to abolition.
Mr. Simon Wingfield Digby: Has the right hon. Gentleman studied the proposals of the late Lord Bryce on indirect elections?
Mr. Crossman: I have, and I thought they were some of the most theoretical and abstract ever put to the House.
I have come to nominations. I admit the dangers of patronage. They are there in every kind of democracy, and also in every kind of totalitarian government. But dangers of patronage are certainly increased, as my hon. Friend for Coventry North suggests, when the post proffered to the politician provides money as well as status. Is the danger he foresees a real one? Let me deal with the problem of remuneration and get clear where we stand. The Government accept that Members without private means should not be prevented from playing a full part in the second Chamber. The principle of remuneration is in the White Paper—and I should have thought that no hon. Member could say "No" to that principle.
But the question both of the amount of remuneration and the kind of remuneration best suited is to be referred to an independent body similar to the Lawrence Committee. I am aware that this will not satisfy some of my hon. Friends, especially those who tell me that hon. Members of this House could be suborned by the prospect of a peerage at so many thousands of pounds a year into forfeiting the back-bench independence we so rightly cherish. And if there is to be a payment I gather that they would prefer a kind of expenses to a fixed salary—[HON. MEMBERS: "No."] Well, we must have one or the other.
Since we have decided to leave the decision to a Lawrence-type Committee I will not argue the case, except to observe that in my experience outside Parliament tax-free expenses are the richest pasture in which businessmen feed, occasionally

1139
raising their heads to admit that a taxed salary provides little fodder for them. It is my personal conviction that tax-free expenses are totally inadequate if lack of means is not to become an effective bar to membership of the reformed House. But the White Paper wisely avoids forcing a conclusion on this issue, and I myself am merely stating a personal opinion. The White Paper recommends leaving a committee to decide upon the method and amount of remuneration.
Apart from remuneration, what are the real dangers to the independence of Members of Parliament presented by a nominated second Chamber? I would agree that the dangers would be enormous if, as some suggest, the second Chamber were nominated only for the life of each Parliament. It would surely be the worst of all worlds to create a Chamber of nominees dependent on patronage and the favour of the Whips for reselection in each new Parliament. That is certainly the way to spread political corruption. But that is not what we are proposing. We are proposing a nominated house of life peers. What my hon. Friend, I think, is suggesting is that the sudden influx of new life peers would create a mood in the House of Commons of place men, if I understand him aright.
I want to look at the facts and figures to see whether it has already happened. The facts and figures are these. After very careful calculation, I concluded that no more than 80 new peers would be required to man-up our new Chamber, and that would be a quite unusual once-for-all creation of new peers. Nevertheless, it would be a considerable extension of patronage. But how considerable would it be? In measuring the extension, hon. Members should recall that since 1964 there have been 146 new creations—146 to man-up the old House compared with 80 required to establish the new House. Therefore, if there is a danger here it is not a danger in the new House of Lords, but in the present one. There will, therefore, be no great expansion of creation in the new House—
Mr. Mendelson: But does not my right hon. Friend realise that the number of new creations, even when lowered to 80, is irrelevant? The possibility of being included among a number, however small,
1140
is the problem, because hope springs eternal.
Mr. Crossman: That is a problem we have with us today in an unreformed House. We will still have exactly that problem with us. All I say to my hon. Friend is that the problem of patronage remains absolutely, or almost, unchanged whether we reform the House of Lords or not.
Summing up this part of my argument, I disagree with those who argue that these proposals constitute a vast extension of patronage. To say this seems to me to be a vast exaggeration—
Mr. Roy Roebuck: Before my right hon. Friend leaves that point, may I ask whether he has given any consideration to the position of Ministers in the Lords? Does he envisage the possibility of these nominations resulting in the Prime Minister of the day bringing businessmen into his Government?
Mr. Crossman: It is not for me to say what a future Prime Minister might or might not do. We are concerned with constitutional reform and not with intelligent anticipation of the character of the leaders of the parties. In certain ways, the Prime Minister's powers will be narrowed, not enlarged. I call attention to paragraphs 31 and 71 of the White Paper, which describe our proposals for a Review Committee which would review the composition of the reformed House, and report any deficiencies in its balance and range of membership either to the Prime Minister or to Parliament. This in itself is a powerful safeguard against abuse of patronage.
It is true that we originally conceived this committee when considering the possible danger that cross-benchers could become a political party in disguise, but it applies equally to patronage as well. I would add, coming back to the problem of regionalism, that this committee would be charged with the task of considering not only the total size of the reformed House, but the problem of regional representation.
Throughout our talks, the Liberal spokesmen stressed the issue of regional or country representation, and since the publication of the White Paper I have seen columns in The Times favouring this

1141
approach. Both the Government and the authors of the White Paper are in full agreement that the reformed House must contain Members who can speak for the special needs and interests of Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and, indeed, the various regions of England. The committee which is to consider the composition of the reformed House will have the duty to secure amongst the membership of the House a suitable representation of the various parts and regions.
I am aware, however, that those who press for regional representation would like to go further. Indeed, The Times wants us to postpone the whole reform of the Lords until the Constitutional Commission has reported, so as to be able to fit the new second Chamber into the regional or home rule proposals which it assumes will form part of the Commission's report. There are a great many assumptions in this argument which, any way, would have the effect of postponing a reform just when we are on the point of carrying it through after 50 years' delay.
Nevertheless the Government have tried to meet this objection, whether it comes from the editor of The Times or from the Leader of the Liberal Party or from our own back benchers. Indeed, I was pointing this out in a Committee Room last week, when I was misreported as saying that this reform, if carried through, would not last. What I actually said was something very different: that this reform when it becomes law will not exclude the possibility of introducing any new methods of self-government and regional representation at a later stage.
In everything I have so far said I have been assuming that British Parliamentary democracy needs a second Chamber; and that the only issue is whether a reformed House of Lords will fulfil this function or whether we need a brand-new and quite different sort of House. I now want to turn for a moment to the even more fundamental issue: do we need a second Chamber at all?
I want to answer abolitionists who say, "Do not reform the House. Just leave it to moulder on until you can remove it altogether from the body politic and leave the House of Commons to run the country on its own." In answering them I would ask them—because we are all good House of Commons men—to examine seriously how the Commons would
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actually manage if the House of Lords were abolished to-morrow. I suggest that we consider this question in four parts.
The first part is public legislation. We recently made a number of notable improvements in our procedures. Nevertheless, the commonest complaint I hear from back benchers of all parties is about what they feel about the waste of time in Standing Committees and, generally, the disproportionate amount of time devoted to public legislation. The first thing to notice is that the amount of time would be greatly increased by the abolition of a second Chamber. We might well have to introduce two extra stages to our Public Bill procedure as well as spending much more time on the Floor of the House discussing what are really points of detail. But with a reformed House of Lords a whole realm of procedural possibilities opens up. We can consider, for example, curtailing proceedings in one of the Houses or making certain stages a joint procedure. These are all possibilities. After reform we could send many more non-contentious Bills to a reformed House of Lords.
Next comes delegated legislation. Here the disadvantage to our own House of abolishing the second Chamber and the advantage to be gained by reforming it are both even greater. Without a second Chamber the House of Commons would have to spend far more time examining Statutory Instruments and, frankly, I am certain that we would go on skimping the job. In fact, by abolishing the power of the Lords to veto Statutory Instruments we shall, for the first time, enable the other place to co-operate with us in exerting adequate control in this field.
The third area is what I would call unconventional legislation—the kind of Measures which Governments feel too risky to attempt and which even private Members do not launch without some outside encouragement. I am fairly sure, for example, that the reform of the laws on homosexuality and abortion was greatly facilitated by the existence of a second Chamber, where these social problems could be discussed and ideas for reforms aired in a different atmosphere from that prevailing here in the House of Commons. If we abolish the Lords we abolish what has proved, even in its uniformed state, to be a useful vehicle for

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controversial ideas. If we reform the other place we preserve this vehicle and make it even more useful.
Mr. John Lee: Is not this entirely falsified if my right hon. Friend takes the example of capital punishment? Is it not right that the abolition of capital punishment would have taken place far earlier if there had not been a House of Lords at all?
Mr. Crossman: I hesitate to correct my hon. Friend about that history, but I think that he has got it wrong. It is very ungenerous of him not to face the fact that time after time the other place has ventilated unpopular issues which would not be ventilated here. This is a useful function for a second Chamber to perform which we would lose if we abolished it.
Fourthly, I turn to the central issue about which everyone of us who cares about this place must be increasingly concerned, the decline in the authority of Parliament. That derives mainly from the failure of the House of Commons in this world of ever-increasing managerial activity to exercise a continuous investigation of the activities of the Executive. Who can really pretend that by abolishing the present House of Lords instead of reforming it, we should strengthen the authority of Parliament and increase the chances of Westminster reasserting itself against Whitehall?
Take, for one example, our Specialist Committees. It is already clear that the chance of rapidly expanding the number of those Committees is reduced by the manpower problem both in the House and among the Clerks who serve us. With a reform of the House of Lords this problem would be considerably eased—
Mrs. Renée Short: Why?
Mr. Crossman: Thanks to the infusion of the cross-bench element, the experts and public servants I have mentioned, we should have at our disposal after the reform a new source of manpower in Joint Committees who could devote time and expertise on service on these Committees, if they were made, as they could be, Joint Committees of both houses.—[HON. MEMBERS: "Why?"] There is
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nothing like a radical proposal to upset hon. Members below the Gangway. Here we have it.
Mr. Shinwell: May I ask a question arising from what my right hon. Friend has just said? He has spoken—
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Sidney Irving): Order. I am not sure that the Minister has given way to the right hon. Member for Easington (Mr. Shinwell).
Mr. Shinwell: He has given way now and I am grateful to him. He has spoken about the decline of Parliament. If there is talk about the decline of Parliament—meaning the House of Commons—by the electors, what are the electors going to say about a House of Lords which is not elected at all?
Mr. Crossman: I should say, with great respect to my right hon. Friend, that he should ask himself another question: what would the electors say about a House of Commons and a reforming Government who left the hereditary House of Lords completely unchanged and un-reformed? [HON. MEMBERS: "Get rid of it."] The issues of Parliamentary reform which my right hon. Friend and I discuss with great interest, are not, it is quite clear, of tremendous interest outside, because people outside do not appreciate the enormous importance of the changes we make, either in our own procedures or for a second Chamber.
I want to sum up. We have here proposals in the Bill which will eliminate the hereditary principle once and for all, which will eliminate the in-built Tory majority once and for all and which will destroy effectively the power of the House of Lords to block our legislative programme. These are all things which come from the Bill straight away when we have passed it. The Bill will also give us not only these negative reforms, but a chance of reorganising Parliament, reducing pressure on back-bench members and giving a better chance of achieving adequate Parliamentary control of delegated legislation, and expansion of non-party controversial legislation with the prospect of a radical reconstruction of Parliament as a whole.
That is what we can do if we take on hand the reforming of the total anachronism we have in the other place today. I

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suggest that it is a future which we can get, instead of fulminating about the abolition of the House of Lords, which is not a practical proposal, and that we should carry out the proposals, radical and evolutionary, in this White Paper.
4.35 p.m.
Mr. Reginald Maudling: This debate is on a very wide Motion, chosen by the Government, to take note of the White Paper. I think that they were very wise to choose this Motion, because it will enable the House to have the broadest possible discussion of all the issues involved. I have no doubt that if the Government decide to proceed with legislation after this debate, they will pay full attention to what is said on both sides of the House. [Interruption.] I cannot make out whether hon. Members opposite like this proposal or not.
I start by reviewing the circumstances which led to the White Paper. The Government announced that they intended to legislate to reform the House of Lords. They decided to give priority to this Measure. This we have never understood on this side of the House. The grounds for giving priority to this Measure are very obscure. The Government have never advanced any argument to show that on constitutional, social or economic grounds there is any urgency whatever to be attached to this particular proposal.
The right hon. Gentleman was a little changeable, I thought, this afternoon. He started by saying that in his salad days he thought the other place the weakest and most ineffectual Chamber in the world. Then he spoke of an obstructional threat—a splendid phrase. He did not make clear to the House why it is necessary to proceed at this moment with this reform.
When the Government proposed that there should be consultations between the parties, we naturally agreed to take part. I entirely agree with the right hon. Gentleman that the discussions between the three parties took place in a very good atmosphere, an unbiased atmosphere, a frank atmosphere. I think that all parties recognised that if we were to get agreement on a set of principles there must be concessions from all sides, but, unfortunately, the discussions were broken off by the Prime Minister. I think that
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I said at the time it was "in a bit of a huff". We said that by breaking off the consultations he would make no advance whatever with the reform of the other place, and this is entirely proved at present. Now the position is that the Government have introduced these proposals as their own proposals, not as a joint proposal, but as their own proposals. I think that the right hon. Gentleman acknowledges that.
We who took part in those discussions have no intention whatever of going back on them in any way. We have not, as a result of the breakdown of the talks, changed our minds on what suits the constitution of this country, or suits the national interest, and we will not in any way depart from that; but I think it only right to stress that we on this side of the House have no responsibility for the White Paper in its terms or wording, and that we expect the Government to be prepared to answer the many questions which will be put forward and the many criticisms that may be raised. [Interruption.] I have confidence in the ability of the Government to do that.
In particular, a point to which we attach greatest importance is that we strongly disagree with the Government on the matter of timing. We regard this as a fundamental point.
Mr. William Hamilton: Would the right hon. Gentleman please say at this point in what important respects the proposals in the White Paper differ from the agreement reached when the talks were abandoned?
Mr. Maudling: If the hon. Member will be kind enough to listen to my speech he will find that that emerges with a certain amount of clarity.
Why did we agree to enter into these discussions? First, we on this side believe in a two-Chamber system. I think that the right hon. Gentleman very strongly put forward the practical arguments for a two-Chamber system. I think that his description of the volume of work falling upon this House in the absence of a second Chamber was a conclusive proof on a practical basis of the need for another place.
Possibly even stronger than that, I do not believe that there is any public support of any volume for a single-Chamber

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system. Whatever one thinks about the present status of Parliament, or about the reasons why the present public regard for the House of Commons may be a little lower than we would like it to be, we should all recognise, if we are practical and sensible, that the electors would not like to see one-Chamber government alone. [An HON. MEMBER: "How does the right hon. Gentleman know?"] By having some acquaintance with what people are saying and thinking. If hon. Members think that I am wrong, they will have plenty of time during the debate to advance their argument.
There is also the point that one cannot specify any major advanced country that is working a single-Chamber system. The arguments, therefore, from our point of view, are very strong indeed for the maintenance of the two-Chamber system.
The second reason why we agreed to enter into these conversations is that we believe, as the right hon. Gentleman rather foreshadowed, that the present upper Chamber is not fully effective and does not make the full contribution it should to Parliament as a whole. In all this we must look at Parliament as a whole. It is the total process of legislation and government that matters; and the contribution of the upper House to that total process is surely what should be decisive.
It is generally recognised that the quality of debates in another place is very high indeed. The value of the other place as a revising chamber has been acknowledged by all objective people, as, indeed, it was acknowledged this afternoon by the right hon. Gentleman.
It is true that at present the upper Chamber is handicapped by its hereditary composition and by its permanent one-party majority. The simple fact is that this regular majority for the Conservative Party has made it more difficult, not more easy, to oppose the Labour Government. The reason for this is that any action by the upper Chamber to oppose the will of the House of Commons immediately provokes a constitutional crisis in which what is put at issue are not the merits of what is being decided by the upper Chamber, but the relative powers and the
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relative privileges which that Chamber should enjoy.
Therefore, anyone who has studied developments in recent years knows that it is a fact that the present composition of the House of Lords makes it less effective as a check upon the Commons in the public interest than it would be if it were reformed.
The third reason why we agreed to take part in these discussions is that we think with the Government that progress should be made by inter-party agreement in these major constitutional problems: first, because the framework within which the parties operate and within which the parties contest with one another should be agreed as fair to both sides; and, secondly, because the alternative would be continued argument; a seesaw between the two parties according to the movement of public opinion at the elections; the development, I am quite certain, of extreme views; and ultimately, I believe, the disappearance of a second chamber.
Mr. Mendelson: Do I detect correctly a considerable difference between the right hon. Gentleman and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Services, in spite of the Mafia of the Front Benches on this matter? My right hon. Friend said that by reducing the powers there will be less check by the second Chamber on the Commons. The right hon. Gentleman has just claimed that in the past the check could never be exercised, but that now it will be much more effective. Is that the argument?
Mr. Maudling: I have stated my sincere belief. I will come on to the powers in a moment.
Our final reason for agreeing to take part in these discussions was that, although we think that one should be slow to change these traditional facets of our constitution, we cannot regard ourselves as being totally inhibited from making change. In the constitution, as in everything else, we must be prepared to make progress and adaptation. That is why we took part in these discussions.
Mr. Emrys Hughes: Will the right hon. Gentleman explain

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why he disagrees with the hereditary principle?
Mr. Maudling: I do not think that that is necessary. The hon. Gentleman is a much more eloquent advocate of that particular disagreement than I could possibly be.
I come now to the proposals, viewing them against the background of the functions of Parliament. I think that we should analyse the functions of Parliament on these bases. First, there is legislation, which is becoming constantly more complex, more difficult, and more remote from the ordinary man in the street. Secondly, there is the control of the Executive, which, once again, is becoming more important and more difficult as the state impinges more directly on the life of the individual. Thirdly—this should not be forgotten—there is the importance of Parliament as providing both a forum for the discussion of the major issues of foreign and home policy of the day and the leadership which a weary and often disillusioned nation is looking for avidly at the moment.
Viewed against the background of these functions, the two questions which the House must ask itself are surely these: first, will these proposals provide an effective second Chamber; secondly, is there any better alternative, including that of maintaining the status quo?
I think that composition and powers are interlinked. Unless the upper House is given adequate powers, adequate people will not be persuaded to take part in it. Conversely, unless the upper House is given proper composition we shall not be able to entrust it with adequate powers.
Are the powers under the proposals enough for a real, effective second Chamber? In my judgment they are. I think that the powers on Bills to delay for six months from the point of disagreement between the two Houses will, on average, differ very little from the delaying powers in existence at present. This seems to me to be logical and right.
I must confess to some concern, which, I think, will be generally shared at any rate on this side of the House, whether the proposals on Orders give to the other place as much opportunity as should be given, though I recognise that, in fact,
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the Government, in their White Paper, envisage a possible extension in this field. Perhaps the Minister who will speak tomorrow will be able to give us a little more information on what the Government have in mind.
I believe that the powers to be given to the new upper Chamber will be enough to enable it to inhibit the Government, not to frustrate the Government; enough to give the Government cause to think again and to pause, but not enough permanently to obstruct the decision of the House of Commons. It is very difficult indeed to strike a balance in this matter of judgment. There cannot be total power of inhibition; nor can there be an upper Chamber which means anything if it has no power at all. My judgment is that the powers given by the White Paper to the upper House, and which are broadly agreed between the parties, are as sensible a compromise as could be achieved by discussion.
Will the new House be frustrated in the use of its powers as the present House in practice is frustrated by its composition? I was glad that the right hon. Gentleman gave a very clear assurance on this point, namely, that if the new House were to be established it would be entitled to use its powers to the full and no one would be justly entitled to object if those powers were then used. This is a very important point.
Mr. John Lee: Are we to understand from that that, in the unlikely event of a Conservative Government being frustrated by cross-benchers in alliance with Labour peers, they would gracefully accept it?
Mr. Maudling: Of course they would. That is the whole point of the scheme.
The composition of the House and the two-tier structure is a unique proposal. I must confess that when I first heard it suggested I had considerable doubts about it. However, the more one thinks about it (he more difficult it is to find any better solution. This is the practical point. The two-tier structure preserves both the legislative and executive or supervisory functions of the upper Chamber and the opportunity for distinguished people from all walks of life to make the contribution they do at present to those debates.
Sir John Rodgers: For how long would the two-tier system continue? This is the nub of the matter. For how long would these peers have the right to attend but not vote?
Mr. Maudling: As I understand, the intention is that it should be a permanent arrangement. It is in no sense a temporary or transitional arrangement.
The division between Government supporters, Opposition supporters and cross-benchers is of fundamental importance. I do not believe that a Government could be expected to accept a majority of their political opponents against them in the upper House, but neither would it be right to guarantee to the Government of the day a permanent majority in the upper Chamber as a whole.
One is, therefore, left with this third and only other course, of providing a body of Members of the upper Chamber of no party allegiance who, if they ally themselves with the minority parties of the day, are in a position to defeat the Government's proposals. Those of us who believe in a two-chamber system of government cannot claim more than that by way of check on the Government, and neither should we accept less.
Mr. Hugh Fraser: My right hon. Friend has not yet told us, and the right hon. Gentleman opposite failed to tell us, how the selection of the 30 cross-benchers is to be made. Are they to be paid? I understand that there are more than 100 at present who can claim to be cross-benchers. Who will decide who is to be a cross-bencher? Will it be my right hon. Friend, or the Prime Minister? This is the key question.
Mr. Maudling: If I may, I shall come to that later. It is, as my right hon. Friend says, an integral part of the whole argument.
Mr. Fraser: We should like an answer now.
Mr. Maudling: I am coming to it.
The plan is to provide for an uncommitted vote, in the sense of being uncommitted politically, both by the presence of the law lords and the bishops who will be there for special reasons and by the provision of a number of cross-benchers to be nominated by the Prime
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Minister. I believe that this is the only way, against the background of a democratically elected House of Commons, by which one can have a system which makes it possible to muster a majority against the Government in the upper Chamber.
Sir Cyril Osborne: If someone is nominated as an independent peer, how will he be kept independent? How does one make sure that he does not change his mind?
Mr. Maudling: The next point in my notes is that the basis of the whole plan is that the convention can provide genuine cross-benchers. I entirely agree that this is a fundamental issue.
As the right hon. Gentleman said, experience has shown that cross-benchers in the other Chamber do work, and have done for many years, as cross-benchers. It may be difficult to guarantee that. But, if one cannot proceed in that way, I see no other way of making a second Chamber operate. Those who cast doubt on this arrangement, and rightly say that it is difficult to guarantee the independence of cross-benchers, can assert that argument with conviction only if they propose an alternative.
I think that I can speak for all who took part in the inter-party consultations when I say that we did not regard this as a perfect solution, and that, if we could have found a better, we should have been happy to have it. But, so far, no one who believes in having an upper Chamber which operates effectively within our Parliamentary system has been able to suggest any other method whereby the Government of the day, elected by popular voice and in a majority in the House of Commons, could be outvoted in the House of Lords.
This whole proposal is based on the belief that the convention will be operated, that the cross-benchers nominated by the Prime Minister of the day will be and will remain genuine cross-benchers.
Mr. Shinwell Mr. Shinwell rose—
Mr. Maudling: I am sorry. I have given way too often already.
Mr. Shinwell: Not to me.
Mr. Maudling: All right; it is a pleasure to give way to the right hon. Gentleman.
Mr. Shinwell: I am much obliged. I recognise that the right hon. Gentleman is suffering under a slight embarrassment because he is making proposals but is not quite sure that he believes in them. He has just told the House—I think I represent him accurately—that the House of Lords, even reformed in this way, could not be effective without the cross-benchers functioning effectively. These cross-benchers are supposed to be distinguished persons of independent mind. Will they have remuneration similar to that paid to the other Members?
Mr. Maudling: If they do the same job, they will have the same pay. If I may state it again, the basic issue is this. Do we have an upper Chamber with a permanent Government majority? Do we have an upper Chamber in which the Opposition parties have a majority over the Government, which would be intolerable to the House of Commons? Or do we have a system under which the balance is held by people who are not directly affiliated to either of the main parties?
I have been trying to explain the reasons underlying this proposal. If any hon. Members can find a better solution whereby the upper House can operate and be so constituted that it can vote, and is likely at times to vote, against the Government, I shall be very interested to hear it. I doubt that any such proposal will come forward from hon. Members opposite below the Gangway.
There are, as has been apparent, many objections to the present proposals to which the Government must give answers. To some extent, I have been trying to do their job in finding such answers. I come now to one or two of the important points which must be answered by the Government before we can hope to proceed on this course satisfactorily.
First—the Government must recognise this—there is a genuine feeling of concern about the position of the Crown in these matters. There are many people who believe that abolition of the hereditary composition of the House of Lords might threaten the position of the Monarch. I do not share that view. I do not believe that the position of the constitutional Monarchy would be al-
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tered by taking away the voting and legislative rights of the hereditary peerage. In some ways, the unique position of the Monarchy and its unique strength would be emphasised.
However, I was a little disturbed by what the right hon. Gentleman said today in reply to his hon. Friend the Member for Reading (Mr. John Lee) about abolishing not merely the legislative rights of peers, but the whole system of peerage. If it is the Government's intention, as he rather suggested, to proceed from this stage to abolish the hereditary peerage as a whole, that would raise constitutional issues of far greater importance.
Mr. Crossman: My reply to my hon. Friend was that I thought that he was one of those who favoured getting rid of the peerage. All I said was that, if he had that aim, there would be no obstacle to it if the hereditary principle were abolished. But the Government have no aim of that sort whatever.
Mr. Maudling: I think that the right hon. Gentleman said that it would be easier to do, and that is what worried us. He ought to be careful what he says on these matters, which are of great constitutional importance.
Next, there is the point which has been made so often, and which, I suspect, will be the main subject of our two-day debate, namely, the excessive power of nomination to the new Chamber apparently given to the Prime Minister. Formally speaking, as the right hon. Gentleman said, the present powers of the Prime Minister in nomination of peers are almost unlimited, and to some extent, formally speaking, they will be limited by the numbers established under the convention in the White Paper. But there is genuine concern about the need for safeguards here. There is genuine concern also rightly and understandably felt that, if Members of the upper House are to be paid for their services, this arrangement would give powers of patronage of a rather different character from what the Prime Minister has now.
Believing as I do, after our discussions, that this is the best system which can be found to solve the current problem, my appeal to the Government, therefore, is that they recognise how

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important it is that they convince the House that the difficulty over patronage by the Prime Minister will not, in practice, be a real difficulty. My own belief is that an awful retribution would be wreaked by the nation on any Prime Minister or any party who distorted the convention in this respect for purely party ends. This is only a belief; it is not susceptible of logical proof, but I appeal to the Government to put all the emphasis and eloquence at their command behind this point, which I believe to be by far the most important in the discussion.
There are other difficulties: the difficulty if the numbers fall off; the difficulty, to which one of my hon. Friends referred, if a member of the upper Chamber changes his spots; and the difficulty that there will be, on the whole, an elderly House because the younger members of the upper House now normally come from the hereditary peerage, and it is hard to see where they will come from under the new system. The Government must deal with these difficulties.
But I return to the point that if the upper House is to be reformed it is hard to see what alternatives there are to a nominated House. There may be many of my hon. Friends who believe that we should retain the hereditary principle. I do not know; this will emerge in the course of the debate. It is one solution, but I do not believe that an elected upper House can, in practice, be an alternative solution. I accept the importance of regional considerations, to which the Liberal Party has often referred.
There is a fundamental difficulty if we have two elected Houses. Our system is based on a clear calculation—and often we accept a very unfair or unjust calculation—of how votes in an election result in votes in this House. The problem of a second Chamber is not so much a potential challenge to us, but the fact that it would reflect either the political composition of this House, in which case it would be a rubber stamp, or a different political composition, in which case there would be a constant conflict between the two Houses. That is the basic reason why an elected upper House cannot really be a solution to our problems.
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I have been talking about the various issues that arose, and trying to deal with the questions of powers, which, in many cases, we regard as adequate, and composition, which, though open to much criticism and doubt, appears to those of us who were in the conference to be the best solution we could find.
But there is one point on which we totally disagree with the Government, namely, the question of timing. We do not believe that any new scheme of this character should be brought into effect during the course of the present Parliament, for three reasons, First, we do not accept the urgency of the Measure. Compared with the economic and social problems the country faces, it cannot be regarded as urgent. Second, the composition of the new upper Chamber, if it is formed, should reflect the political realities of the day, and not of 1966. That is a point of logic and force which the Government should accept. Third, a new factor is introduced by the Government by the setting up of the Constitutional Commission. The right hon. Gentleman wrote that off this afternoon, but there is far more point to it than that.
Paragraph 23 of the White Paper says:
"Two Royal Commissions are in any event subjecting the present system of local government to detailed and comprehensive inquiry, and the Government has also announced its intention to initiate consultations on the appointment of a Commission on the Constitution. It would be wrong to establish a second chamber on a regional basis until the outcome of these studies is known."
It would be equally wrong to establish a second Chamber on a non-regional basis until the outcome of these studies is known.
The logic of this is quite clear. If the Government say that one type of new upper Chamber should not be formed until we know the outcome of these studies, how can they argue that another type should be formed? I ask them to take this very seriously. I am not merely echoing the interesting leaders in The Times to which the right hon. Gentleman referred, but feelings widely held on both sides of this Chamber.
If the Government are going through the process of examining the whole governmental structure of the country and putting it into the melting pot, it is a little odd to choose the present time to

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amend one particular part of our constitution. I hope that they are not thinking of the proposal as a merely transitory or short-term phase. I hope that they recognise that a reform, when made, must remain for a long time, and that, therefore, if they reform the upper Chamber in the present Session they will make a decision that will largely result in considerable changes throughout the broad pattern of the constitution. There is a definite conflict between two of the Government's arguments, and I hope that they will try to reconcile them, or clear up the argument, in this debate.
In opening the debate from this side of the House, I have tried to put forward as clearly as I can what was in the minds of those of us who were members of the conference on the upper Chamber. We reached a very wide measure of agreement before our discussions were broken off. We do not intend, merely because of the tactical situation, to change our views on the real constitutional merits of all the proposals from the point of view of the national interest. But I emphasise to the Government that great concern and disquiet is felt by many hon. Members on many aspects of the proposals, which we hope that they will do their best to answer. We also emphasise that we do not accept the Government's views on timing. On that, we are totally opposed to them.
5.5 p.m.
Sir Dingle Foot: Not quite for the first time in my life, I find myself in complete opposition to both Front Benches.
In the last Session of Parliament some of my hon. Friends and I placed on the Order Paper an Early Day Motion in which we recalled, and invited the House to reiterate, an earlier Resolution passed by the House in February, 1684, when it declared that the House of Lords was a useless and dangerous institution, and ought to be abolished. We added that there should be a form of second Chamber, but that we were opposed to the creation of a class of nominated, salaried peers, because that would mean the bringing back of patronage into politics in a way unknown since the 18th century.
There are two questions we must consider in approaching the White Paper.
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First, do we need a second Chamber at all? Second, if so, what form should it take? On the first question, I differ from some of my hon. Friends sitting around me. I think that we need a second Chamber, because the House of Commons is always the slave of its timetable. There is never nearly enough time for all the matters we want to discuss, and should discuss. Every Thursday, when Business questions are reached, questions are put from both sides of the House to the Leader of the House asking whether this or that Motion, this or that topic, can be debated. The answer is always that there is not enough time.
An example is a document which I have here and which I believe to be extremely important in Parliamentary history—the Report of the Select Committee on Parliamentary Privilege, which proposes certain vital changes in the law of privilege. The Report is dated 1st December, 1967, and in spite of constant demands from my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, West (Mr. C. Pannell), no time has yet been found to debate it here.
The pressure does not diminish. If anything, it increases, largely because of the changing character of the House. I first came here a very long time ago, although not so long ago as my right hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Mr. Shinwell). I arrived here in 1931. In those days there was on each side of the House a very large, silent column. In the Conservative ranks there were a number of old gentlemen—retired generals, admirals, country landowners and others. On the Labour side, there were old gentlemen who were mostly retired trade union leaders. I am sure that they were all men of sterling worth. But they contributed very little to Parliamentary debate. Since then, particularly during the past 10 years, the House has become much younger, with the result that far more Members now want to play a really active part. That is why we have the demand for things like Select Committees. As a result of the change in the character of the House, the problem of our timetable constantly increases.
The business of Parliament—and I repeat, Parliament, not just one House of Parliament—is to keep the state of the nation and the conduct of the nation's

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business by the Government under constant review. That cannot be done by this House alone. The term "Parliamentary government" which we so commonly use is somewhat inaccurate. We do not have Parliamentary government. Except in the days of the Protectorate, this House has never itself tried to carry on the business of administration. What we do have is a system of Parliamentary supervision. The function of Parliament is constantly to supervise the Executive and everything which is done by the whole machinery of Government. That involves a process of constant inquiry. We cannot do it all ourselves. That is why it seems to me quite clear that we need a second Chamber. Now the question arises—what sort of second Chamber?
This may sound almost bizarre, but in my view it should be elected in one way or another. The only time when this matter was fully considered by an authoritative body was in 1917, when the Bryce Commission was set up by Mr. Lloyd George. Lord Bryce presided, and on the Commission were leading representatives of all the political parties and of the professions. The Commission reported in 1918.
It seems rather astonishing, because there has been no similar Commission since then, that there is no reference whatever in the White Paper to the Bryce Commission. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Services was asked about it and brushed it aside. The right hon. Member for Barnet (Mr. Maudling) had apparently never even heard of it.
The Commission proposed that three-quarters of the other place should be elected on a regional basis by the House of Commons. It proposed that we should have members of the other place elected for a term of 12 years. Some would be elected by Scottish Members of this House, some by West Country Members, some by Welsh Members, some by East Anglian Members, and so forth. It further proposed that the remaining one-quarter of the other place should be nominated by a special committee, representative of both Houses, and that these nominations would be based on public distinction. Apparently, those proposals have not been considered by the Govern-
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ment They were not even considered when the party leaders met to draw up their agreement.
Now I come to the White Paper's proposals. They are open to very serious objection because of the wide area of patronage they open up. It seems that, whenever we have a general election, and that general election results in a change of Government, we shall have to have a very substantial new creation of peers. The question therefore rises—what sort of peers will be created? The White Paper says:
"An incoming government would achieve its majority over the other parties by means of a suitable number of new creations during its first months of office."
Of course, the Government will only make these new creations so that they can rely, and absolutely rely, upon their votes. They have all got to be completely orthodox party men. Otherwise the whole purpose of the exercise would be defeated. I remember some lines written in 1907 after the L.C.C. election by G.K. Chesterton:
"The line breaks and the guns go under.
The Lords and the lackeys ride the plain."
If we have creations of this kind, we shall have not merely a House of Lords but a House of Lackeys as well.
If we put this kind of patronage into the hands of the Prime Minister, whoever he may be, we considerably strengthen the party machines. That, I think, would be a disaster. We all of us here accept the party system as an integral part of our Parliamentary life. We accept what was said by Disraeli in his speech against Peel in January, 1846;
"Above all, maintain the line of demarcation between parties, because it is only by preserving the distinction between parties that you will preserve the integrity of public men and the power and influence of Parliament itself."
But during the past 40 years we have not merely had the party system; we have had party regimentation.
My right hon. Friend referred to the decline in the authority of Parliament. I doubt whether there has been any decline in the authority of Parliament, but there has been a decline in the reputation of Parliament. I believe that the main cause of that decline has been the excessive party discipline exercised over many years by both the major parties in

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this country. Their methods are different. The Labour Party specialises in public executions and the Tories in private assassination. I may add that the latter has been far the more effective.
I was in this House throughout the 1930s. I remember what happened in those days. I remember, as the menace of the Second World War drew nearer, the speeches made from the corner seat below the Gangway by Mr. Churchill and how he denounced the policy of the Chamberlain Government with increasing force in one speech after another. I remember one particularly famous occasion when he was dealing with an Amendment to the Loyal Address of Thanks for the Gracious Speech which had been moved by the Liberal Party and was in favour of setting up a Ministry of Supply to speed up rearmament. He appealed to his own side thus:
"If only 50 members of the Conservative Party went into the Lobby tonight to vote for this Amendment, it would not affect the life of the Government, but it would make them act."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 17th November, 1938; Vol. 341, c. 1129.]
That appeal fell almost entirely on deaf ears. Out of nearly 400 Conservative Members, only two went with him into the Division Lobby. I am certain that there were: many other Conservative Members who agreed with him. It is, I think, inconceivable that all of them really approved of the Chamberlain policy. Yet it made no difference because party discipline was too strong.
That was in the 1930s. We saw a similar spectacle in the 1950s, this time in the Labour Party. There was one absurd occasion when five Members of the Labour Party had the Whip withdrawn and were threatened with serious displeasure, possibly with attacks in their constituencies, because, on a matter on which they felt very deeply, they had voted against the party even though the party itself was then in opposition.
In recent years, however, there has been a very considerable improvement. I think that it began in the last days of the Conservative Administration, when there was a considerable revolt among Conservative Members against the Government on the issue of resale price maintenance. A number of them voted against the Government. Nothing happened and as far as I know, there was no attempt to discipline them in any way.
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One of the chief features of this and the last Parliament which I greatly welcome has been the relaxation of party discipline on this side of the House. Again and again right hon. and hon. Members on this side have voted against the Government or against the party without incurring any really serious displeasure on the part of anyone. I have on many occasions at party meetings and outside paid my tributes in this respect to my right hon. Friend the Patronage Secretary, to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Services and, indeed, to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister. But, if I am right about that, here in this White Paper we have a thoroughly retrograde proposal to put power back into the hands of the party machines. That in itself is a compelling reason why we should oppose these propositions.
Now I come to the position of the cross-benchers. We are told in the White Paper that the cross-benchers will hold the balance of power, and that is perfectly true. We are told that they are so different in character, or so seldom attend, that it does not make very much difference. But it does not alter the fact that there will be some 30 nominated peers who will hold the balance of power, and the delaying power, if it is used as it may be and as it has not been used in recent years, is a considerable power. The position of the cross-benchers will be quite different from that of the other peers, because they will be able when there is a difference to hold up the passage of any Bill.
I am never in favour of creating or strengthening a class of professional politicians, by which I mean persons who serve in politics and have no other occupation or interest outside. I believe that the great strength of our Parliamentary system through the centuries has been that we have always drawn men from all walks of life who can speak from firsthand experience, men from the Services, the law, banking, industry, agriculture, the shop floor and the mine. They have all come here in the course of their lives to take part in the work of one House or the other, and they have all made their own special contribution.
But, having said that, one must add this rider, that anyone who takes a leading part in public life needs to serve a

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long apprenticeship. We have had, particularly in the war, certain figures coming in from outside not having served any political apprenticeship. To put it mildly, they were not outstandingly successful. But here we will have a group of people who, by definition, will have served no political apprenticeship, because they must not have been associated, or prominently associated, or recently associated, with any political party. They will be a group of latecomers, most of whom will not have had any experience of public life, who will occupy this key position and who will decide whether the Government of the day are to be defeated and whether this House may have to pass a Measure, perhaps a very important and complex Measure all over again. That is not democracy. That is not the Parliamentary system as we know it; it is government by mandarins.
Therefore, I believe that we ought to oppose these propositions. I think that we should have a second chamber, but it ought not to be a chamber of horrors.
5.23 p.m.
Mr. J. Enoch Powell: The proposals before the House today are both unnecessary and undesirable, and I believe that long before the end of this debate, let alone of any proceedings which are to follow, the Government will have been undeceived as to what the Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman), seemed to think was the degree of agreement about it. Indeed, it is a symptom of what is to come that I find myself in such unwonted and far-reaching concurrence with the right hon. and learned Member for Ipswich (Sir Dingle Foot), who already, in the first back-bench speech in this debate, has shot away in ridicule considerable portions of the scheme.
Reform is commended to us on two distinct and contradictory grounds. One is in order to prevent the upper House from frustrating or unduly delaying the decisions and wishes of this House. The other ground, which is contradictory to it, is to enable the Upper House to be a more effective check upon the proceedings of this House and to hold a more convincing balance against it. I
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believe that both these notions are chimerical.
First, there is no substance in the contention that the Upper House as at present constituted can check or frustrate the firm intentions of this House. Indeed, the Government themselves in the White Paper say that quite plainly and give the reason for it. In paragraph 18 they say:
"…the composition of the House"
—that is, the Upper House—
"is such that the Lords cannot persist in their opposition to a measure upon which the Commons are determined without the risk of producing a constitutional crisis."
No convincing evidence is produced for any ability of the Upper House in modern times seriously to interfere with the implementation of the wishes of this Chamber. We have recently witnessed how, even where the powers of the Upper House have not been limited by the Parliament Acts of 1911 and 1949, even in acting upon a Statutory Instrument, the Upper House has not found itself in a position to frustrate, or even sensibly to delay, the purpose of this House.
So I turn to the other horn of the dilemma, the claim that it is desirable to reconstitute the Upper House in such a way that it can confront this Chamber more effectively and can provide a more substantial check upon it. This is a mirage which has been pursued, not least by my own party, at various times since 1911; but a mirage I believe it to be. It is neither desirable nor tolerable that much more than the present degree of check upon the decisions of this House should be exercised by another place, and I do not think that Members of this House, if they found that a sharper check was operating, would tolerate it and would not again seek to overthrow the legislation which had made it possible.
But not only is it not desirable or tolerable; in the circumstances of this country, the very basis of an alternative authority which would make it possible is not available. In principle, as has already been pointed out several times in the debate, there are only two ways, other than the prescriptive right of the present House of Lords, in which a second chamber can be constituted. One is election; the other is nomination.

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In nations which are federal or confederal there can be and are second chambers, which represent the federated units as against the numerical population at large. In such countries it is not merely tolerable but is intended and is necessary that there should be a check and a balance between the re presentation of the states, or whatever it may be, which have come together into federation, and the crude representation of mere numbers of population in a lower chamber. But ours is neither a federal nor a confederal country, and there is only one electorate which can be represented by an elective system.
If we were to seek to establish another chamber, representing that same electorate, we should be faced with the insoluble conundrum—"Who are the true representatives of the wishes and party affiliations of that electorate?". One or the other would have to concede. We should have to decide which was to be the method of election and one chamber or the other would have to give way to that which it was conceded was elected in the most appropriate way. However the mode of election was rigged, we would never escape from this dilemma: how can the same electorate be represented in two ways so that the two sets of representatives can conflict and disagree with one another?
So, as the Government and my right hon. Friends have found, yet again, one is driven back to contemplate methods of nomination. Methods of nomination are two a penny. Anyone can devise a new method of nomination. There is an endless array of various ways in which it has been proposed that a nominated House might be constituted. However, as we have one lying on the Table, we can take that as an example.
Straight away we find that it exemplifies, and is destroyed by, the contradictory nature of the approach to reform of the Upper House. At one and the same time the proposals seek to secure a built-in Government majority and also to make it possible for the Upper House to disagree with this House, vote against it, throw out the Government proposals, and get away with that. In other words, it is designed to give the Government a secure majority, and also to deny the Government a secure majority. Upon
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that inherent dilemma this scheme is bound to perish.
Let us look at a few of the absurdities implicit in it. In a straight party conflict in such an Upper House—and I am taking, for illustrative purposes, the figures in the White Paper of a House of 230—it would only require a transfer of six votes from the Government Party Members to the other side in order to checkmate Government business.
There are two possibilities here. The first is that the party nominees—who incidentally will be nominees, not only of the current Prime Minister, but of recent Prime Ministers—who will be the deposit not only of the last General Election but of the last few General Elections—are to be absolutely bound to take a sort of oath, for the purpose of working the system, that when they enter the Upper Chamber they will never, never, defy the Party Whip. If that is to be the basis, if that is to be the ' convention '—and I use the mild term employed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Barnet—what sort of men and women are they to be who would submit to be nominated to another Chamber upon condition that they will be mere dummies, automatic parts of a voting machine?
Take the other alternative, that no such requirement is imposed upon them, and that some half dozen come to the conclusion that after all—this is not unknown in political life—their own party is on the wrong track, and the kind of legislation, the kind of policies, it is pursuing are not in the national interest. They conscientiously go into the Lobby against the Government in order to defeat or check it. What sort of authority will attach to the resistance put up by another place to this House when it is due to some half-dozen renegade appointees—the appointees, for all I know, of a previous Prime Minister? There is no authority there, no built-in respect, which could give the other place a counter-balancing influence that would make it a complement to this House.
Then there is the other grand absurdity of the cross-benchers, those 30 appointees, appointed on the basis that they are neither fish, fowl nor good red herring; upon the very basis that they have no strong views of principle on the way in which the country ought to be governed; upon the promise that they will fluctuate

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from case to case, from question to question, and not seek to decide in the light of any such general principles as bind us respectively together in this lower House? What sort of people would those be, and, secondly, how much authority would attach to them if they should dare to be the means of confronting and checking and seeking to frustrate the decisions of this House and its majority?
It is often said of democracy that it is the worst form of government until one begins to look at the alternatives. It may equally be said that there is no case for the present prescriptive House of Lords—I think "prescriptive" is perhaps an even more accurate definition of the source of its authority than the word "hereditary"—until one begins to look at the alternatives. Absurd…illogical…the words come easily, when looking at a prescriptive institution. But it would be unwise for this House to sneer at a prescriptive institution. What if someone should ask us "By what right do you so often install and support a government against whom the majority of the electorate have just voted at a General Election?" What if someone should ask us, "How comes it that you in this House continue to support a Government when you are morally sure that the majority of those who put them into power would no longer do so if they had the opportunity?" Our reply to such questions can only be: "It has long been so, and it works." Prescription is just as much the basis of the authority of this particular House, the House of Commons of this Kingdom, constituted as it is, as it is the basis of the authority of the other place, constituted as it is.
Of course, it would be different if there were some irresolvable constitutional clash, if the business of government were being held up, if the economy of the country were being threatened by the present proceedings and opposition of another place. No one has suggested that. Indeed, my right hon. Friend pointed out how grotesquely inopportune it is that we should be being invited in this Session to spend so much time, as perhaps we may still be invited to spend, upon this subject.
Again, it would be different if there were some great widespread public indigo-1168
nation and demand: "Away with the prescriptive upper house of Parliament". There is not. There was recently carried out by Mr. McKenzie and a colleague of his a survey of working-class political attitudes called "Angels in Marble." They found that
"only one-third of the entire working class sample, and only a slightly higher proportion of Labour voters, favoured abolishing the Lords or altering it in any way…. About a third of the whole sample"
of working-class voters in the country
"see the Lords as an intrinsic part of the national tradition or of the government of the country."
As so often, the ordinary rank and file of the electorate have seen a truth, an important fact, which has escaped so many more clever people—the underlying value of that which is traditional, of that which is prescriptive.
Once depart from that basis of prescription, and there is no further foot hold; one step and all is marsh. We shall find that after this expedient we shall stumble on to another and another after that. I notice that my right hon. Friend the Member for Kinross and West Perthshire (Sir Alec Douglas-Home) was reported as saying last week that:
"The scheme for Lords reform was not logical, nor was it the last" though "he saw no reason why the Lords should not make a success of the experiment."
My right hon. Friend was right. If this is done, it will be treated just as an experiment. This scheme will not be the last. Another and another will succeed it. The right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State made it clear that he had been misreported in saying something similar; but at least he did say that
"in due course…it would be necessary to look again at the composition of Parliament."
That is what the Government them selves say in their White Paper:
"…the Government has…announced its intention to initiate consultations on the appointment of a Commission on the Constitution. It would be wrong to establish a second chamber on a regional basis until"—
notice that "until"—
"the outcome of these studies is known."
First we make one experiment; then, when the outcome of the Royal Commission is known, we may change it; after that we may change it again and again. Once we depart from the present basis of prescription, no scheme will have more

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authority than the authority of its makers, and its makers in this House will claim to unmake it and remake it and remake it again, until in the end we shall come to that which the vast majority of hon. Members do not want to see, namely, single chamber government.
For no necessity, for no intelligible gain, it is proposed in this White Paper to destroy what, once destroyed, we cannot restore. We ought not to do it.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: I call the hon. Member for Fife, West (Mr. William Hamilton) to move his Amendment.
5.42 p.m.
Mr. William Hamilton: I beg to move, to leave out "takes note of" and insert "rejects".
I am sure that hon. Members on this side of the House, at any rate, will be glad to see the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) making his speeches in this House—at least on certain subjects. We only wish that he would make more on other subjects where he can be challenged rather than—
Mr. Andrew Faulds: He has not the courage. He is too much of a coward.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I must ask the hon. Member for Smethwick (Mr. Faulds) to contain himself.
Mr. Hamilton: The right hon. Gentleman should make more speeches on other subjects in the House rather than pick audiences elsewhere in the country. Certain of my hon. Friends have hesitated to give me promises about going into the Lobby tomorrow night lest it be soiled by the presence of the right hon. Gentleman.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I think that the rules of order require me to ask the hon. Gentleman to withdraw that phrase.
Mr. Hamilton: Of course, Mr. Deputy Speaker; if you direct me to withdraw it, then I do so, but I was simply stating the fact that certain of my hon. Friends have said to me that they will unwillingly go into the Lobby tomorrow night if the right hon. Gentleman is with them. He can make of that what he likes.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Services made what I
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think we would all agree was a very unconvincing speech. It the Trade Descriptions Act had been in operation, he would have ben prosecuted for false advertising. He knows as well as the rest of us that there have been several meetings of the Parliamentary Labour Party on this subject. There has been no unanimity of view, except on one point, on which there was complete unanimity at every meeting, namely, that we were opposed to a nominated, salaried second Chamber. The Government have flouted that view. They were more anxious to avoid a constitutional crisis and to get agreement with the Conservative Party and Liberal Party leaders than with their own back benchers. We were simply to be the reliable lobby fodder when they came forward with their White Paper and subsequent legislation. The result is that we have this consensus ragbag—and I agree with the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West on that point if on no other.
This scheme is based on an assumption that there must be all-party agreement if we are to have major constitutional reform. This is a wholly unwarranted assumption. It has no firm historical basis in the Reform Act, 1832, the legislation on the secret ballot, the Parliament Acts of 1911 and 1949, and the Life Peerages Act, 1958, against which the Labour Party voted; and even the Bill which we debated yesterday, the Representation of the People Bill, will no doubt be fought in Committee.
The Government claim, strangely enough, that they have a good bargain: that the hereditary system has been destroyed; that the built-in Tory majority has been eliminated; that the power to frustrate the will of the elected House of Commons has been abolished. If the bargain is so good for us, why does the right hon. Member for Kinross and West Perthshire (Sir Alec Douglas-Home) say that it is such a good bargain for him? It cannot please us both. This is a sinister conspiracy between the two Front Benches, and it must make us pause and look at it very carefully.
The Labour Party manifesto of 1966 said that we were to
"reinforce the democratic element in modern government."

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I measure that phrase against what is in the White Paper. Let us examine the proposals.
Like the new postal charges, the second Chamber will be two-tiered. The fivepennies will be the voting peers, who have to be regular attenders and less than 72 years of age. The definition of a regular attender is that he must attend on one day in three. If a miner or docker attended on one day in three, he would get the sack. These fellows are to get £2,000 a year. That is not just a rumour plucked out of the air. I understand that this figure has been bandied about among the coteries. I do not know where it comes from, but I have it in good authority that it is much more than a Press rumour. I wonder what Aubrey Jones will say about it.
Let us consider some of the statistics about how the other place operates which I obtained from the research section of the House of Commons Library—a very reputable organisation. In the last four Sessions, the Lords have sat, on average, on 127½ sitting days each year. The average length of the day's sitting in the Session 1967–68 was 5¾ hours. So that would be a four-day week, a 23-hour week. He would put in less than a voting peer could put in, less than 45 days per year, and get his £2,000; with no constituency worries, no weary weekend travel back and forth, no daily postbag, no Whips to worry about; complete security for the rest of his life. No wonder letters bearing 5d. stamps are pouring into 10, Downing Street day after day. To adapt the G.P.O. advertisement, there should be a motto put up in 10, Downing Street: "Everywhere someone is waiting for a peerage".
What about the second tier, the four-penny lot? They will be the non-voting variety; they will be a mixed bag; they will be created peers over 72 years of age, or poor attenders—one or the other, or both. Then there will be existing hereditary peers. The existing hereditary peers will be able to sit for the rest of their of days introducing Bills, moving Amendments, moving Motions or calling for papers. Presumably they will still be paid expenses of 4½ guineas a day, or is the independent committee to have a look at that as well? I do not believe
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that these people should be there at all. We should clear them out forthwith.
Does it apply to the Scottish hereditary peers? Following the last foray I had in the House of Commons on this matter. I had correspondence with a Scottish duke. I received a nice letter from him, written in his own hand, containing three spelling mistakes. By what divine right should a bad-spelling duke pontificate in a democratic Parliament?
I come back to the nominated, salaried, voting peers. In the main they will be superannuated party politicians, and the implications for this House will be very great. Even today, certainly on this side—and, no doubt, the Opposition when they are on this side will be in the same position—a massive revolt of the Government's own back benchers can hardly ever beat the Government. The payroll vote ensures that. If these proposals are put into effect, the payroll vote will be added to by the prospective peer vote. So there will be the P.P.S.s plus the P.P.V.s. It is already happening. Tomorrow night certain hon. Members will hesitate to go into the Lobby into which I shall go lest they jeopardise their chances of getting one of these plums; those with marginal seats, those retiring from the party battle, those in their fifties and sixties—
Mr. Shinwell: Those under 77.
Mr. Hamilton: Those under 77. This is happening even before the salary is agreed, and we are asked to sign a blank cheque. An extension of patronage on such a massive scale and with such grave implications should not be tolerated by this House.
There are further objections which I will enumerate. We are by this method perpetuating and extending the snobbery of titles. Whatever the eventual outcome for the second Chamber, we should drop the use of words like "peers" and "lords". Let us just call them plain Mr., Mrs. or Miss. It is an unwholesome fact that all too often the snobbery of titles has pecuniary value to the holder. I asked the research department of the Library for the names of the directors of every television company in the country. Almost without exception those companies have titled people on their boards, and it is the same with companies in

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the city. So these titles have a great pecuniary value.
My second further objection is that the proposition to increase the number of Cabinet and other Ministers in the House of Lords is a retrograde step. My party voted against the right hon. Member for Kinross and West Perthshire being made Foreign Secretary because he was in the other place. We thought that he had no right to be in the other place and at the same time to be Foreign Secretary. We object to an increasing number of Ministers being in an unelected Chamber, as the White Paper proposes.
I come, thirdly, to the power of the cross benchers, a power which will be out of all proportion to their numbers. Who can speak of these fellows as independent—Lord Shawcross, Lord Wigg, Lord Aylestone, Lord Boothby? They are cross-benchers in the other place. These fellows are intensely political animals and they will not be slow to recognise the power that will be put into their hands. The right hon. Gentleman has made the point time and again; who is to appoint them? I pose the question which has been posed before in the debate. Which is preferable—a House of Lords as it now exists, which is so absurd and indefensible by any democratic test that it dare not use the limited power it now has; or a more respectable and perhaps more defensible second Chamber which will not hesitate to use more often the more limited powers envisaged in the White Paper? The alternatives open to us are either to leave the second Chamber as it now is but to strip it of its power, or to have an elected Chamber perhaps on a regional basis. I reject both.
I would simply divide this House into two, each with roughly 300 elected Members, specialising to a certain degree, maybe one in foreign and Commonwealth affairs, and each revising the legislation of the other. This would at least have the enormous advantage that every Member of Parliament would be elected, there would be no element of patronage, and there would be no titled Parliamentarians apart from those who received their honours in other days. I hope in the Lobby tomorrow night there will be a cross-section of the House who feel as I do, that these proposals are extremely dangerous and might be extremely dam-
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aging to the name of Parliament and the country.
6.0 p.m.
Sir Beresford Craddock: I hope that the hon. Member for Fife, West (Mr. William Hamilton) will forgive me if I do not follow him in the many amusing points which he made. My reason is that I do not propose to comment on the other speeches to which we have listened. I have always regarded a debate on a Motion to take note of a White Paper as one where hon. Members can all put forward their views in the slender hope that the Government of the day will take note of what is said and, in due course, possibly revise their proposals.
I agree with a number of the objections raised by the hon. Member for Fife, West. However, I am not prepared to join him in the Lobby tomorrow, although, if a Bill is brought forward embodying all the proposals contained in the White Paper, most certainly I shall vote against it.
I want briefly to enumerate the various points in the White Paper which I consider to be quite objectionable. The first underlines the fact that these proposals increase to a tremendous degree the powers of patronage of the Prime Minister. When I say that, I am referring not to the present Prime Minister but to anyone who may lead any party in the future—
Sir Douglas Glover: And the Leader of the Opposition.
Sir B. Craddock: My hon. Friend the Member for Ormskirk (Sir D. Glover) reminds me that it is also in the power of the Leader of the Opposition, and I object to extension of patronage in any quarter.
Admittedly, the Prime Minister and the Executive have a great deal of power today—far too much, in my opinion—and the time has come already when we might have a Joint Committee to consider how those powers should be curtailed. We hear so much today about democracy. I get quite sick when I am told that a proposal is or is not democratic. My own definition of "democracy"—(which is original)—is "freedom to do what you are told". Therefore, I object

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to the White Paper first on the grounds of increased patronage.
My second objection relates to a proposal which I do not quite understand. It concerns the so-called delaying powers. In my view, these proposals give the Government of the day a permanent majority in the other place. To talk about delaying powers is a contradiction in terms. There is no guarantee that cross-bench peers will have any force under the new scheme. After all, they are appointed by the Crown on the recommendation of the Prime Minister of the day and at least a few of them will be permanent supporters of the Government when they go to the other place.
Like the hon. Member for Fife, West, I would be against the payment of a definite remuneration to voting peers. Whether they be voting or non-voting peers, in my view, they should be paid on the same basis as today, receiving only expenses. Later in my speech, I shall make a suggestion in that direction.
One must then consider how the Lords Spiritual are dealt with in the White Paper. I appreciate that His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury has set up a special committee to discuss the matter, and it is right that there should be no definite proposal in the White Paper at this juncture on the number of archbishops and bishops there should be in the House of Lords. It is suggested very tentatively, that the number should be reduced from 26 to 16, but I shall have one or two comments to make on that point presently.
Having criticised what is in the White Paper, I would consider it a very fair question if I were asked for my alternative proposals. May I, therefore, put forward one or two, though with no idea of their being accepted? Having been in this House for some years, one comes to the conclusion that, no matter what a back-bench hon. Members says, on which ever side of the House he sits, it makes very little difference.
I am sure that all right hon. and hon. Members will agree that the treatment of the other place is a matter of great constitutional importance. In view of that, I suggest that we adopt the old Latin tag, "hasten slowly"—
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. James Callaghan): What is it, then?
Sir B. Craddock: Festina lente
I am surprised that, being a Scot, the right hon. Gentleman did not know that.
The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. William Ross): No.
Mr. Callaghan: I asked what it was.
Sir B. Craddock: I am sorry. I thought that, like me, the right hon. Gentleman had received a classical education and would not want me to supply the Latin.
Mr. Ross: Why not give it in Gaelic?
Sir B. Craddock: Undoubtedly, there is a case for some reform. I have never liked the idea that, when some important issue arises, it is possible for one party to call in a huge number of hereditary peers to defeat it. It has not happened very often, but I have never thought it very fair. In the few cases where it has happened, I have regarded it as rather obnoxious.
My first proposal would be for a House of Peers consisting of roughly half the number of hon. Members in this House; in other words, some 300 voting peers. I would give all existing life peers voting rights. In the present composition of the other place, there are about 150 of them. The remaining 150 voting peers making up my figure of 300, I would leave to be elected by the members of the other place. They know those among their fellow peers who have real experience and knowledge.
My proposal would result in a House of Lords consisting of peers of first creation, hereditary peers and life peers. In my view, that would be a very good mixture. After all, there are a number of young hereditary peers who make a great contribution to the discussions and the business of government in the other place. Like most hon. Members, I listen to and read the debates there from time to time, and certainly that is my impression.
Delaying powers are one of the greatest bones of contention in the whole situation. In the reformed House of Lords which I have suggested, I propose that for the first two Sessions of a Parliament there should be no delaying powers

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in the other place. When a General Election has taken place and—to use a popular phrase which I do not like very much, but which is good enough—the will of the people has been expressed by electing Members of Parliament, it is only fair that for at least two Sessions the Government elected should be allowed to get on with the proposals that they put forward during the General Election campaign. Therefore, I repeat that for the first two Sessions there should be no delaying powers in the House of Lords, composed as I have suggested.
But in the third Session it is reasonable that there should be a delaying power of three months, and in the fourth and fifth Sessions six months' delay. That, after all, would be in conformity with the recommendations of the White Paper. During the first two Sessions, with no power of delay, if a Bill were defeated in the other place or if Amendments were not accepted at once when it came back here, the Bill would become law forthwith.
On remuneration, I feel that the best thing would be an allowance, as at present, although four and a half guineas these days is not enough. Therefore, I suggest six guineas.
Finally, the Lords Spiritual. I would hope that in due course the Archbishop's Committee will agree that those bishops entitled as of right to be Members of the other House should consist of, say, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York and the Bishops of London, Winchester and Durham, and I should like to see a representative of the of the Roman Catholic Church taking a seat in the House of Lords—probably the Cardinal Archbishop. I should also like to see—
Mr. Emrys Hughes: Would the hon. Gentleman include the General of the Salvation Army as well?
Sir B. Craddock: If that would help Christian unity I would not object.
I should also suggest as Members of right, the Moderator of the Free Church of England, the Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland and the Primus of the Episcopal Church of Scotland. Apart from other considerations, in these days when there is a great effort to obtain Christian unity, this might be one small step in what I consider a desirable objective.
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I have put forward these proposals for reform knowing full well, as I have said, that they will probably not be given any consideration at all. But I feel strongly about the timing, which has already been mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Member for Barnet (Mr. Maudling) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell). In view of the Constitutional Commission which is to be set up, I feel strongly that we should await its recommendations before taking any further steps about the reform of the Upper House.
6.15 p.m.
Mr. Maurice Edelman: The hon. Member for Spelthorne (Sir B. Craddock), in the early part of his remarks, expressed what I thought was a very sad epitaph on the back-benchers. He said that whatever back-benchers may say it makes very little difference. It has not always been so. I regret that the hon. Gentleman takes a somewhat defeatist view of the rôle of the back-bench Member. In a sense that is what the debate is about and I hope, during the course of my remarks, to show it.
We are discussing a matter of great constitutional importance. If it is not accompanied by the clamour and uproar which has attended previous debates on Lords' reform it is simply because it does not coincide in time with any great constitutional clash between the two Houses. We are not considering a battle of peers versus the people. We are not dealing with a clash between the Lords and the Commons. We are concerned with a much more subtle clash between the Executive and the Legislature, between the party machine and the private Member. That is why, although the debate takes place in relative calm, I do not feel that we should lose sight of the great underlying matters with which it is concerned.
Everyone must pay tribute to the ingenuity and industry which has gone into the White Paper. But no one likes it. It is significant that speaker after speaker has expressed the strongest possible objections to its contents. Whatever may be the result of the Division tomorrow, the fact remains that already the sense of the House is apparent;

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that is, that it is opposed to the White Paper.
I spoke about the ingenuity of the White Paper. Certainly, in attempting to enlarge simultaneously the Lords' functions, while diminishing the powers of the Lords, it is in the general trend of Lords reform in this century. To that extent, though to that extent only, I commend it. Perhaps I may include, also, its reference to the elimination of hereditary powers, about which, with few exceptions, I think most people are agreed. But functions and powers do not exist in a vacuum. They must be related to those who wield them.
What matters in the debate today is the composition of the Lords. The proposals for an élite and privileged hierarchy within the social and political hierarchy, with a number of political vestal virgins sitting on the cross-benches, has a Byzantine quality which is clearly the product of highly-sophisticated political minds, but political minds, nevertheless, which have little relevance to what people want for their constitution.
For my own part—and I mention this because my right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman) suggested that I had not put forward any alternative to the White Paper in the article which he quoted—I certainly should like to see a second Chamber with useful functions, limited powers, and indirectly elected.
We are debating this matter at a time when more and more people—especially the young—are tending to regard Parliament as an irrelevance. When they regard Parliamentary democracy as lacking an effective representative basis, in this context I believe that, in a literal sense, it is reactionary to propose reform of the House of Lords by making it a thing of the parties, a Chamber appointed and paid, a sort of brantub of patronage.
What the White Paper recommends is, in fact, a radical change in our constitutional practice. It is that the Executive should make a large take-over of a branch of the Legislature—the Lords—among whose functions today, as the White Paper states, is
"the scrutiny of the activities of the Executive."
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The White Paper which had the effect not of asserting the primacy of the Commons over the Lords, which is a question which exercises many of us, but rather the effect of asserting the supremacy of the Prime Minister over the Lords with effects on the Commons which can only be harmful. Some of these effects have been mentioned today.
The first effect of the White Paper would be immediately to extend the personal patronage of the Prime Minister. I speak not only of the present Prime Minister, but of the Prime Minister of the day. Whatever limitations might be imposed on his power of appointment by a committee, it is he, the Prime Minister of the day, who will have within his gift the paid offices of voting peers mentioned in paragraph 52.
While it is true that no firm figure has been fixed, and while it is equally true that there have been rumours of £2,000 a year to be paid to voting peers, whatever the sum that is fixed—and the analogy is with the Lawrence Committee, which was set up to assess the remuneration of Members of Parliament—I believe that by appointing peers who will be paid by the Executive we are entering on a very dangerous and slippery path.
A limited patronage is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, the exercise of patronage is something which is essential for the machinery of government. It is natural that all Prime Ministers, especially in the first flush of office, should scatter the confetti of patronage on those who are celebrating the marriage of the party and the people. The present Prime Minister has gone out of his way, perhaps rightly, to emphasise that in the exercise of patronage he has not created political knights. I believe that everyone who has seen how political knights have been created by seniority, by favouritism, and by other techniques of patronage which are and were available to Prime Ministers, will commend the present Prime Minister for the limitations he has imposed on himself in that connection.
During the last four years, since 1964, 146 life peers have been created. Even taking into account the need to redress the balance of the parties in the Lords, this is not a small number by any assessment. In 1958, when the process of

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creating life peers began, 12 were appointed. In 1960, this number had dropped to one, but now they are being created wholesale. I am still on the point of the appointment by the Prime Minister of life peers. In a personal sense the choices are admirable, but I doubt whether the elevation to the peerage of failed Parliamentary candidates is entirely a democratic procedure. But there it is. The Prime Minister has exercised a wide and benevolent patronage which has been much enjoyed, I have no doubt that Labour patronage is as good as Tory patronage, and probably much more fastidious.
For centuries this House fought to establish the constitutional principle that the legislature should be independent of the Crown, and that a Member of Parliament should not hold an "office of profit" handed out as a favour from the Executive. That has been the centuries-old struggle on the part of the House of Commons. After various amendments the principle still holds good in general, and it is this, that a democratic Parliament should not be a home for place men on the Executive's payroll. That has been the fundamental principle which time and again has brought this House into collision with the Executive, with the Crown, and with all the other fountains of authority.
But in recent years this principle has been much diluted. As the Crown's power has shrunk, so the power of the Prime Minister has grown. Instead of being "first among equals" in confronting the Crown on behalf of Parliament, the Prime Minister of the day—more President than Prime Minister—has taken over many of the actual prerogatives of the Crown. As Parliament's power has been whittled away, as the rights and influence of the back bencher have diminished, so the Prime Minister, who progressively has become more like a Paymaster in Chief, has asumed the rôle of the Monarch as the one whose authority needs to be checked by constitutional safeguards.
Now we are in a situation in which, so far from being checked, the authority of the Prime Minister, as proposed by the White Paper, is about to be extended. There is a reference in the White Paper to the Committee referred to by the right
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hon. Member for Stafford and Stone (Mr. Hugh Fraser). The Comittee is intended to be a check on patronage. The question immediately poses itself: under whose patronage will the Committee be created whose job it is to check on the abuse of patronage?
In Britain, since the Civil War, the usurpation of power has never been dramatic. It has usually come from a meek surrender by Parliament, huggermugger, to some sort of White Paper or its equivalent. But what we are now experiencing, and I repeat what I said in my article in the Daily Express, is the prospect of Parliament handing over to the Prime Minister the right to dish out dozens of new-paid appointments to peers, many of whom will be drawn from the House of Commons, where some Members, at any rate, already tamed by the Whips, will wait supinely and expectantly for their elevation. The promise of an office of profit under the Crown—I am talking about the promise, not the actual gift—or of the Prime Minister must be every bit as diminishing to the independence of a Member while he is still sitting in the House of Commons as an actual appointment would be.
No one can doubt—and I think that this is equally true of a Tory Government—that the influence of the payroll vote, and I use that as an omnibus term to describe the tied vote of those who are linked in some direct association, based on benefits, to the party machine, has grown, is growing, and should be diminished. We are witnessing a wholesale reversal of the historical trend of British constitutional development towards broader democratic responsibility and representation.
In the 18th century the system of patrons and their counterparts, the place men, undermined the quality of political life. These men were naturals for jobs, often sinecures, ranging from Tellers of the Exchequer, and Comptrollers of the Imprest, to Masters of the Buckhounds. But by the end of the Victorian era a reformed Parliament, and a reformed Civil Service, had raised our political representation to the pinnacle of its authority. Limits were set on favouritism by limiting patronage, and this made the Mother of Parliaments the envy of the world, and one which was imitated by

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most of the world. If we are now to retreat into a system of patronage arrangements which evoke some of the aspects of the patronage system under Walpole, we shall do a grave injury to the institution we represent.
We all know—and I relate this directly to the subject we are discussing—that in the last 10 to 15 years a whole spectrum of new jobs has emerged which are now filled by appointment. For example, there are 13 major administrative boards, extending from the Court of the Bank of England to the White Fish Authority, whose members are appointed by the Government. The Minister of Power has over 200 jobs in the nationalised industries within his gift. The Minister of Housing and Local Government makes more than 100 appointments to the new towns. The Minister of Health appoints 300 members to regional hospital boards. If we add to that all the other examples of jobs within the gift of the Executive, I hope that every hon. Member will agree that it is time measures were taken not to expand the authority of the Executive, but rather to limit it.
Over the last 50 years the subject of Lords reform has become something of a bore. Declining energies and declining powers have made the Lords of small importance—and this was mentioned by the right hon. Member for Barnet (Mr. Maudling)—compared with the great issues which the country is facing today, the question of peace or war, the question of the economy, that of the £, and so on. To some extent this debate may seem an irrelevancy compared with the great subjects facing the world.
The danger of the White Paper does not lie in the power which it confers on the Lords. That is weak enough. It lies in the vast new area of financial patronage that it offers the Executive and in the enfeebling effect which this, in turn, will have on the Legislature. I hope that, whatever happens to the Lords—and I see no good reason why they should not be indirectly elected—the proposal for paid peers, nominated by the Prime Minister, will be rejected with indignation. The placeman is a throwback to the 19th century. There should be no room for him in a modern democracy.
6.31 p.m.
Mr. Hugh Fraser: By the sound of it, when we come to decide this matter tomorrow night the only Members voting in favour of this form of reform will be those who comprise the two Front Benches. I am only too happy to think that the cabal which devised this scheme was in no way like the cabal which was formed of the American founding fathers. The welcome which these proposals has received from both sides of the House is probably the coldest in the history of Christian charity.
The hon. Member for Coventry, North (Mr. Edelman) spoke for us all when he spoke about patronage. I am sure that when the Constitutional Commission is established one of the main issues before it will be the power of the Executive, which has increased, is increasing, and should be diminished. This is the general view of the majority of people.
The long-term problem before the House is not concerned with peers versus people, but with people versus politicians. There is no more unpopular a personage in Britain today than the average politician. [An HON. MEMBER: "Speak for yourself."] Some of us are heroes to our dearest friends. Others are not even heroes to their valets. It all depends on one's position.
The problem which faces the House today concerns one's view of the constitution as a whole. It is the various parts of the constitution which make it a workable system. I agree that the House of Lords has absurd functions—and naturally, as the younger son, I am not in favour of primogeniture in all senses. I appreciate that there are absurdities in the system. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) said, it is probably the easiest of all our institutions at which to poke fun. Yet there is, because of the very tensions and difficulties of the present establishment of the House of Lords, a built-in regulator which ensures that the constitution is not upset and that all the will of Parliament is not thwarted.
That can, of course, be denied, and it may be said that the threat is always there. If we consider what is now proposed, I suggest that the threats in the

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new proposal are infinitely more grave. There is, first, the question of patronage from both Front Benches. Theoretically, that patronage could mean that the Government of the day would appoint the maximum number of liars to the House of Lords while the Opposition would appoint the maximum number of bores, and this would lead to a great improvement in the formation of the Upper House, some might say. In fact, however, it would not work like that.
I regret that, as a result of these appointments and as a result of the proposed constitution, admirable men might be appointed from this House, from either side, but that the power would lie in the hands of the extraordinary people called cross-bench peers. Should they be called "cross-bench" or "cross-wench"? Some of them would be an angry lot, and what would happen then?
Who will appoint these cross-bench peers? Spokesmen on neither Front Bench have been able to answer this question. They say that it is natural that the men appointed would have many interests. I trust that both Front Benches accept that they would also have tremendous power in their hands. When I have asked on several occasions who will make the selection out of the 100 or so eminent so-called cross-benchers, nobody has been able to reply.
The next stage could be that life would become absolutely impossible for this House because of the will—or determination, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West put it—of these cross-bench peers. There might be a sudden switch of six votes; a sudden determination to thwart the Whips, some of the peers having remembered that "Lord Blah" wanted rabbit shooting abolished. "You will not get your Bill through," a Minister might be told, "because he will not give you his vote unless rabbit shooting is abolished." Even more terrifying than this initial use of patronage is the fact that the Executive would have to move forward quickly to abolish the so-called independent peers.
The next stage, of course, would be the appointment of even more hon. Members of this House to the Upper Chamber, or a drawing in of party people from outside. Finally, one would end up with a constitution which was
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totally out of national balance and reflecting only what was being done in this House. This would be an entirely wrong state of affairs. The cabal from both Front Benches has failed dismally. This enterprise of constitution-making has gone wrong and I will take pleasure in joining the hon. Member for Fife, West (Mr. William Hamilton), if he will have me, in the Lobby tomorrow night to reject this form of reform. And there, I hope, many other hon. Members will join me.
6.38 p.m.
Mr. David Marquand: This debate has seen an extraordinary backbench revolt. I cannot recall a back bencher having spoken in support of the White Paper, and this does not surprise me. My doubts about the proposal, which were great enough before the White Paper was published, were intensified when it was published and intensified still further by the speeches of the Front Bench spokesmen on both sides in its defence.
I yield to no one in my admiration for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Services. His achievements as a Parliamentary reformer have been excellent. In the short time that I have been an hon. Member he has done more work along this path than was done during the previous half century. However, this proposal goes directly against all the things he was trying to achieve when he was Leader of the House.
Throughout his speech today he said, in a gay and charming way, to those who disagree with him, "There are, of course, anomalies in the White Paper, but, then, there are anomalies in the existing situation". That is an absurd argument. The existing House of Lords is admitted universally to be anomalous. The point in reforming it is to get rid of these anomalies. If the proposed reforms perpetuate the anomalies, there is no point in having them, unless there is a compensating advantage. Having listened to the debate so far, I have yet to hear of any real compensating advantage to emerge from the White Paper.
I would go further. In my view, the White Paper does not merely perpetuate the existing anomalies that I dislike most, but exacerbates them. That is my real objection. First, there is the social aspect. Ignoring the question of powers

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for the moment, what are the values symbolised by the other place—values symbolised by having people we call lords who legislate by right of being lords? This may seem to be a small point, but it is important. The values symbolised by the other place—by the whole apparatus of mediaeval pageantry and mysticism that surrounds the other place—are values that we on this side find abhorrent. Indeed they are deeply opposed to the values of the liberal enlightenment on which the Western world has been based since the French Revolution.
I agree that if we are to keep the other place going on the ground that it is not really worth abolishing them this may mot matter, but if we are to erect a new system in the middle of the 20th century, it is quite ridiculous to perpetuate this social snobbery, this mediaeval symbolism, in our new system. Why not adopt the suggestion of my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, West (Mr. William Hamilton), and use the title "Mr."? It is said that this would be to run into trouble because of the Royal Prerogative. That is an argument I cannot understand. In the White Paper we are abolishing hereditary legislators. Why not abolish hereditary lords at the same time? I see no valid objection to that.
Mr. Hugh Fraser: They will all come in here.
Mr. Marquand: They may ail come in here, but if they were elected here and have no objection to that. Some of them would perhaps add a little to the gaiety of life here.
I do not think that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Services really took the point on patronage when he tried to answer it. He said that there is patronage already and pointed out that about 140 life peers have been created since 1964. But the point about this White Paper is that the job which is to be created if this measure is enacted will be a lot better than the job of the life peer now. The life peer will be paid a proper salary. Move important, he will have legitimacy and status in the affairs of Parliament and the nation.
If the proposal contained in the last part of the White Paper is adopted we
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shall get new Joint Select Committees of Members of the two Houses. In that case, these nominated legislators, perpetual legislators to the age of 72, will have more opportunities to exercise an effective check on the Executive than have the elected Members of this House. It will be a far better job and, of course, the inducement to become a Member of the other place in those circumstances will be far greater than it is now.
What I find alarming is not so much that the present proposal increases the power of the Executive of the day. That is bad enough, but what is much worse is that it accentuates the drift to increasing the power of any party leadership, whether in opposition or in government. It increases the power of the Leader of the Opposition as well. No doubt that is why he is in favour of this proposal.
My right hon. Friend—and I am sorry that he is not here, because I have been mentioning him so much—in his Granada lecture the other day, pointed out that we were moving away from what he called "participatory democracy", meaning Parliamentary democracy, towards "plebiscitary democracy", meaning a system where the effective choice is between the two party leaders. In that same lecture he also implied that this trend is one of the greatest dangers in the existing situation. He was right, but his own proposals accentuate that danger tremendously. It is time for us to call a halt to this process of concentrating more and more power in the hands of the party leader of the time, and this would have been an opportunity to do this.
What are the alternatives? I must emphasise that it is not incumbent on the opponents of the White Paper to suggest alternatives. Personally, I would rather have the existing system with all its absurdities and anomalies than the White Paper. Nevertheless, there are alternatives which could be considered. I do not see why we should write out of court—as my right hon. Friend did and as did the right hon. Gentleman for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell), in a very impressive speech—the idea of having a second Chamber which is elected by regional councils. As I understood it, the argument of the right hon. Gentleman was that at the moment we have only one electorate, that this is the only source of legitimate authority

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that exists in the United Kingdom in 1968, that, therefore, there would be something artificial and false about having an elective second Chamber, and that under such a system it would be difficult to decide which was the true representative of the people—ourselves or the elected second Chamber.
But if we go for regional government and have considerable devolution of power towards Wales and Scotland—which I think is essential if the United Kingdom is to survive in the long run—the present situation will no longer exist. We shall have a different situation. It is at least worth considering having an elected second Chamber representing regional authorities. It need not conflict seriously with this House, because the powers of that second Chamber would not be great enough to involve serious conflict. At the same time, it would introduce into our whole political system an important element that is now missing. That point might be seriously examined.
In my the, the Government have responded, correctly but half-heartedly, to a feeling, which is growing, to the effect that there is a malaise in our political institutions of all kinds. This feeling has been growing for the last 10 years and has been getting increasingly acute in the last two or three years. I think that the feeling is justified. We can no longer take it for granted that the system which we inherited from the Victorians is necessarily the right system for the middle of the twentieth century. This feeling exists, and the Government have begun, half-heartedly, to respond to it. Unfortunately, they are responding to it in the wrong way.
What we need is a comprehensive examination of the whole of our institutions to see how they fit in together, to see what sort of reforms are needed in toto. What we do not need is a series of ad hoc reforms which make no comprehensive overall sense. The Government have in the White Paper produced a further example of "ad hocery". That is my strongest reasons of all for urging them to think again.
6.48 p.m.
Sir Harry Legge-Bourke: As the debate now stands, I feel that I shall have to go into the Division Lobby,
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if he can bear the shock, with the hon. Member for Fife, West (Mr. William Hamilton). I cannot help feeling that the timing of the whole of this business has been deplorably inept. The consultations which took place last Session seemed to me to have taken place only because of that one statement in the Gracious Speech last Session that the Government intended to deal with the matter. The moment I saw it, I came to the conclusion that this was simply being done to provide a red herring should the time come when the Government wanted attention taken off things that were awkward for them in the hope that there could be some rabble-rousing of this issue.
I must congratulate those who took part in the discussions for the detail into which they went, but since those discussions something else has been thrown into the ring by the Government. This was referred to by my right hon. Friend the Member for Barnet (Mr. Maudling) at the beginning of the debate. It is the decision by the Government to establish a Commission on the Constitution. This I welcome. From time to time, I have discussed with my hon. Friends the desirability of getting down to a complete review of the constitution. I believe it to be creaking and terribly out-of-date, and it is high time that we had a look at it. If we are to do this, it is important first to decide the logical process we should follow if we are to have this Commission.
Item No. 1 on the agenda ought to be: what sort of a Parliament is now required to serve the ends of the body politic as far ahead as we can see? The moment we start considering that, many other alternatives besides a monocameral or bicameral system of Parliament are presented. The question of the number of chambers of Parliament there should be is one which we have dodged for far too long. One thing in this White Paper is right, the indication that the House of Commons is at the moment overworked and incapable of doing the business it ought to do and wants to do. The case, therefore, for a second Chamber has increased rather than diminished since the war, but I do not stop there in my thinking.
Is it not possible that we ought to have yet a third House? If one starts thinking on these lines, one has to ask

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oneself: what powers would be necessary for however many Houses we have? Having decided the powers which are necessary, we would then have to decide who are capable and suitable to exercise them. This is the way I have been thinking for a number of years. I put in a paper on these lines to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition before the discussions started last Session.
I know how very reluctant we are in this House, let alone what they may be in another place, to become really radical in our thinking about reforms of our own Chamber. We are great believers in evolution; we are, I think, reluctant ever to have head-on collisions if we can possibly avoid them. That attitude has been instrumental in producing a situation in which what few powers now remain to their Lordships they dare not now exercise for fear of causing a constitutional crisis.
My belief is that sometimes, however blessed the peacemakers may be in avoiding the shedding of blood, that avoidance may lead to abandoning something which we need. We need a constitutional crisis. The constitutional crisis which I would precipitate is this: I would have a crisis, if need be, but I hope that it would lead to some sound thinking on what sort of a Parliament we need—let alone what we want, what we need.
Over the years I have been in this House I have been confirmed in my belief that at present the two Chambers are incapable of doing what Parliament ought to be doing in the modern body politic. Several hon. Members have referred to patronage. I remember a very beloved character who was a Member of this House in my earlier years whose name, no doubt, will be familiar to many in the Chamber now, the late Sir Will Y. Darling, who, perhaps, was at his best when things were getting a bit dull at 2 o'clock in the morning during an all-night sitting. I remember his saying that the loss of the freedom of the citizen began when patronage was ended and they started to make the Civil Service efficient.
The more one examines that, the more wisdom one realises there is in it, because the more efficient we make the Government machine the more tyrannical tend to become the Government who are sup-
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posed to be controlling it, but who usually end by being controlled by their-own machine. This, perhaps, is one of the troubles from which we suffer more than any other. In the Parliament which we want we might find a way of doing something about this.
If we were to have a third House in which we brought out into the open, and in which we made to debate, those people who are appointed by the Government and who now plan and order a great deal behind the scenes of our lives and our futures, we might do a great deal to diminish the tyrannical trends of government. I therefore would like to see a third House and I should like it to comprise people such as those on regional planning boards and regional planning councils, even. I should like the Bank of England to be represented and there a number of bodies which we could also bring into the open and more of those who control the spending of our scientific and technological budgets. Let these matters be discussed by those most qualified to discuss them.
I know that it is a very rightful pride of this House that we like to think of ourselves as a microcosm of the country as a whole, but the more we become professional politicians, and may become so because of the pressure and burden of work in the House, the more certain it is that we shall diminish our right to claim that we are still a real microcosm of the country at large. The more we are closeted in this building for very long hours, and the more those of us working on Specialist Committees, such as the Committee on Science and Technology, with the amount of reading, apart from anything else, which has to be done to do the work properly, the more of a burden is imposed on us.
If we go on like this, we shall eventually break down the whole of the machinery of the House. I love this place and I believe that everyone in the Chamber loves it.
The Solicitor-General (Sir Arthur Irvine): I have listened with great care to what the hon. Member said about a third House. I am not clear whether he envisages that the Members of that third House would have voting powers or not. I should be grateful if he would make that clear.
Sir H. Legge-Bourke: I am coming to that. I am grateful to the Solicitor-General for his interruption.
I love this place, but it is no good loving something which is steadily decaying. I think that, as an effective Parliament, the whole set-up today is decaying. That is why I want to see our two Houses reconsider their future and the possibility of finding better machinery than the White Paper suggests.
The hon. and learned Gentleman asked me a very appropriate question: would not a third House assume that it would have voting powers? The way in which I would arrange it would be, roughly, that every year, in each Budget, the Chancellor of the Exchequer would earmark so many million pounds, perhaps several hundred million pounds, for that third House to recommend how it should be spent. It would be for us here to approve or disapprove of how the third House recommended. We might possibly take a leaf out of the book of the Ecclesiastical Committee and have a committee to take a look at what the third House was doing and to report here. We could debate that report, or let it go through on the nod, but we should have the ultimate say about spending.
If one looks at the upper House, one finds some difficulty in understanding the philosophy which underlies hon. Member's thinking. This obsession with the awfulness of the hereditary system makes one ask: if we are to abolish the hereditary system, or to seek to diminish that system in another place, how far are we to take this exercise?
I suppose that the smallest and most personal form of government that can be thought of is the running of a household. Nobody seems to mind very much that that is conducted on a herditary basis. Where do we suddenly draw the line? Is it simply because those who have a hereditary entitlement to reach decisions may affect others adversely?
If they were on their own, if the whole of our Parliamentary discussion ended with the House of Lords on a hereditary basis finally deciding what everybody in the country should do—this is as regards governmental decisions—this would probably be impracticable and intolerable.
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Is there not something to be said for having this our elected Chamber, for my suggestion of a third Chamber composed of the more sophisticated technocratic experts, and for having in the second Chamber the hereditary system also expressing itself in the body politic?
If this suggestion for reducing or diminishing the hereditary principle is followed to the logical conclusion, sooner or later it is being said that man, through the electoral system, can make a better job of providing useful people than can the Almighty. This is the logic of it. Some may say that it is a logical absurdity. I have yet to know the true answer to the question whether the electoral law or the hereditary system produces more wisdom. I believe that wisdom matters more than cleverness.
I am convinced, having distened to debates in both Houses from time to time, that I hear as much if not more wisdom in another place than I hear here. I know that there are many very able and clever people here, but Francis Bacon once said:
"Nothing doth more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise."
We may be suffering from that at the moment in the Government. Wisdom has an important contribution to make to the well-being of the body politic. Over the years the House of Lords has provided considerable wisdom in the consideration of our affairs; and I am grateful for that.
Mr. Leslie Spriggs (St. Helens): Has not the issue of reforming the House of Lords arisen because of the paucity of efficient hereditary peers? Is it not the case that there is a large amount of dead wood, namely, a large number of hereditary peers who never attend the other place?
Sir H. Legge-Bourke: In my view, it shows a very much better sense of discretion than sometimes the Government Whips or even the Opposition Whips display when noble Lords in another place decide that the business of the day does not interest them. I would that we had the same right quite as often in this House not to be here when the business of the day did not interest us. There are many other things which we could do and I believe that we would

1195
probably serve the country far better by doing them than by coming here to discuss an erudite matter which is of importance possibly to only one district.
We usually find a way to compromise. As long as all the things which go to make the body politic are represented in Parliament, we shall be all right. What worries me is that the White Paper proposals will endanger those of independent mind who have up to now been in the House of Lords by making them possibly placemen.
Now that the Government have brought the Constitutional Commission into the picture, they should put the White Paper into a pigeonhole for a while. Let us have the Commission and let it do the job properly. It should not confine itself to dealing only with Welsh and Scottish nationalist problems. Let us look at the whole of our constitution and do something really radical, because that is what is necessary.
7.5 p.m.
Mr. Arthur Blekinsop: We have listened to some interesting speeches. If we were to follow the advice tendered by the hon. Member for Isle of Ely (Sir H. Legge-Bourke), consideration of any long-term proposals in connection with the constitution would certainly last for many years. This would be inevitable if we were to satisfy ourselves of the validity of any proposals eventually put forward.
There is a matter of importance of a much shorter term character which needs to be examined. I am surprised at the naiveté of some hon. Members who seem to have suggested that there is no hurry. There are immediate problems of a political character which need solution if a Government of whichever party, certainly the present Government, are to be entitled to govern for their normal constitutional period. I believe that this question has not been adequately raised by hon. Members on either side so far, although I may have missed some contributions. The right to govern in the last year of their period of office is one which certainly a Labour Government have every right to seek to safeguard.
It may be a valid criticism of these proposals that the White Paper would not adequately achieve that object. As I
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understand it, this is part of the criticism of some of my hon. Friends. In that case the criticisms should lie against the suggestion that the delaying powers should be for as long as the six months suggested in the White Paper, but not necessarily against the broad range of proposals in the White Paper.
Therefore, I take a rather different view from that taken by some of my hon. Friends about the need for consideration of this matter at this time. The more the Parliamentary programme and the requirements of government are examined, the more one feels that proposals broadly of this character, although with no doubt many criticisms of their detail, are needed, and are needed within a reasonably short time. I can well understand, even if the right hon. Member for Barnet (Mr. Maudling) cannot, why the Government seek to put these proposals into statutory effect during this Session.
There has been a good deal of confusion because of those who basically are opposed to the concept of a second Chamber. I can well understand this view. There are many who have held this view in the past, but who have changed their minds in recent years, including my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Services, as he very fairly stated today.
I start from the basis of believing that there is a need for a second Chamber. Accepting the need for a second Chamber, I do not see how the present Chamber can be accepted in its present form. I have already said that I accept the need for urgency here and for a solution during the course of this Session.
If it is accepted that a second Chamber is required, there is a whole range of questions as to what type of second Chamber it should be. There is the perfectly fair question as to whether there is a danger in a second elected Chamber. I think that there is. The record of countries which, though their backgrounds are different from ours, have elected second chambers convinces me that we should inevitably run into almost impossible difficulties in seeking to reconcile different points of view. Even though we tried to ensure that in the initial stages that second Chamber had clearly limited powers, there would almost certainly be a built-in demand for a steady

1197
increase in those powers; and before long the kind of clash which I fear would almost certainly arise.
So far from achieving a situation in which the Government of the day had reasonable right and authority to govern in the last year of the period for which they were elected, one would have moved much further away from such a state of affairs.
This argument, however, does not rule out the possibility of some form of indirect representation, for example, through regional bodies if they come into existence after the reforms which we are all awaiting with lively interest. That is a possibility which should be borne in mind as an addition to the use of patronage which, naturally, hon. Members fear. There could be at least a proportion of Members representative of the regions, and we ought to discuss how that could most effectively be brought about.
Obviously, the use of patronage causes real anxiety, and I accept the sincerity of my hon. Friends and hon. Members opposite who have vigorously expressed that anxiety, both in the House and outside. But I ask them to examine with care the state of affairs in the other place after a little experience of appointments made in recent years by the Prime Minister and by the Leader of the Opposition. Whatever criticisms one might have on detail, I imagine that all will agree that the other place now has an infinitely higher standard of contribution than it did before, and, what is more, it is no longer a place which automatically stands for reaction and against any kind of radical moves in social affairs.
Indeed, rather the reverse is true. In recent years, there has been some indication that the other place, with the introduction of some of those who have come by nomination by the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, has introduced new measures of reform which it would have been difficult for this House to raise. The situation is greatly changed from that of a short time ago.
Mr. Charles Fletcher-Cooke: If it is so much better than it was, why change it?
Mr. Blenkinsop: It is inconceivable that it should continue to exist in the old
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form. Some modest improvements have been made, and I want to see further changes made. I have already said that it cannot be acceptable to a Labour Government to continue to have the barrier to their action which the other place in its present form still presents. The dangers of nomination and patronage are there—I do not doubt that for a moment—but the results of their use so far suggest—I put it no higher—that one can exaggerate those dangers.
I come now to a point on which I agree with several of my hon. Friends who are critics of the Government's proposals, although it does not lead me to desire the complete rejection of them. My wish would be to widen their scope. If we are attempting to establish a more effective and efficient second Chamber to do a clearly defined job, a job which I believe to be necessary, why on earth tangle it up with continued maintenance of the honours system? I should like to see the complete disappearance of honours as they now stand. I should like the whole subject to be re-examined. I am very much against prefixes and slightly less against suffixes, but however that may be, I am certain that the whole question of honours should be gone into, but as a much wider matter which ought to be discussed separately.
But, in any event, why not take the present opportunity to press forward with getting rid of at least this element of the honours system and its relationship to a second Chamber? It is a system which perpetuates snobbery and the aura which lies about it. Why is the other place known as the House of Peers? Whose peers are they?—certainly not peers of hon. and right hon. Members of this House, and neither would most of them arrogate to themselves such a position. The very use of the term is out-dated in relation to a second Chamber.
So far from titles having any value, I sincerely believe—though I may be naïve—that many of those who today make the greatest and most valuable contribution in the other place would regard a title as a positive disadvantage. I cannot believe that some of those who were Members of this Chamber, men who have a fine radical record, better than that of most hon. Members today, would object at all, but, rather,

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would welcome it, if the useless nomenclature which we still perpetuate were withdrawn.
Surely, this is the moment to press forward with that change. If we are talking about a new Chamber with a clear responsible task to perform, with severely limited powers, this is the time to get rid of the title which, to my mind, perpetuates an atmosphere which we should all be eager to see ended. The system of titles is redolent of snobbery and sham.
Some of my hon. Friends have expressed a view on this point—in particular, my hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield (Mr. Marquand) in a most interesting speech—but so far from assuming, as they seem to do, that the problem of titles torpedoes the proposals before us, I believe that those proposals, with that additional consideration, could be of real value in enabling us to establish a second Chamber which could give the nation good service in the functions accorded to it—I understand that few of my hon. Friends would reject that suggestion—while, at the same time, striking a real blow against some of the sham and snobbery which has existed in this country for too long.
7.18 p.m.
Mr. Stephen Hastings: I listened with care to the speech of the hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Blenkinsop), a distinctive speech in that he seemed to express some sympathy, rather qualified sympathy, towards the proposals before us. I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman that there is any need for haste in this matter, but, even if there were, the course of the debate so far should convince him that, if the Government go forward with their proposals, or something based upon them, they will fly in the face of the House of Commons.
I make plain at the outset that, unless someone speaks with near miraculous powers of persuasion between now and tomorrow I, also, should be in the Lobby to vote against the Government's proposals had I not a public engagement in my constituency which I do not wish to miss. I make that clear now, and I am sorry that I cannot do so in the presence of the hon. Member for Fife, West (Mr. William Hamilton).
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Reform is a difficult matter, but I am impressed, so far as my knowledge goes, that it is among, or appears to be among, the more active and younger peers that there is an ardent desire for it. Also, I regret a situation in which the House of Lords has so little confidence that it hesitates to use its powers, for I want to see an effective Chamber, just as the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for Social Services does. But I am convinced that these proposals will not permit it to become one.
It is incumbent on all who regard the proposals with as much disfavour as I do to try to explain what they would do if they think, as I do, that reform should at least be seriously considered. I would adopt the following principles: that reform should tend to reduce, and not enhance, the power of the Executive; that it should tend to reduce, and not enhance, the influence of party politics; that it should give maximum expression to independent thought and to the views of minorities; and that it should enable the House of Lords to reflect, as once it did, so far as possible the true estates of the realm.
Opinion may differ as to what they are today. I suggest that, in addition to the Church and the law, the following are worth consideration: industry, both management and unions; finance and trade; science and technology; the services, both armed and otherwise; the education system; and the arts. Finally—I know that this would be "abhorrent" to hon. Members opposite because that was the word used by one hon. Member opposite—I would seek through an electoral college of peers to preserve a hereditary element in the House of Lords, which would be the last fraction of Parliament chosen without affiliation or mass interest, but on merit alone.
The present proposals defeat practically all those principles. First, they will increase the power of the Executive. A power of delay for six months is meaningless if there is a built-in majority for the Government in the House of Lords. It has been argued that the cross-benchers will hold the balance. So they may for a time—the present cross-benchers. But who will create cross-bench peers in the future? That question has not yet been satisfactorily answered. In any case, it seems to me that all the available capacity

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is to be stuffed with political placemen in order to achieve the sacred majority. They are all to be paid salaries by the Government and, in any case, what Prime Minister will bother with cross-benchers, or, if he does, how cross will he allow his benchers to be?
Second, the proposals will extend the deadening influence of party politics, in other words, the worst element of the House of Commons. Let none of us be under any illusion about that. I am speaking primarily to my hon. Friends and hon. Members opposite on the back benches. Which of us on the back benches do not know the frustration of work spent to no avail here? Who really takes much notice of what any of us says in the dog watches of debate here? We get perhaps half an inch in The Times or the Daily Telegraph if we are lucky. We cannot blame the Lobby correspondents, or the newspapers, for they know that either we play variations on the themes of our Front Benches, or we are rebels, or cranks, or both. We may attract attention in that last capacity, but otherwise we do not attract very much.
Which of us does not know that he could not bid to hold his seat unless the great party machine was behind him? This place is run by the Government, from the Treasury Bench and by the anti-Government from the Opposition Front Bench. And we are being asked to extend this paralysis to cover the whole constitution. It is ill-advised and it is a threat to liberty.
The proposals take no account of what I have termed the estates of the realm. It is a pity that those great group interests or activities which finally make for stability and progress, and create wealth, such as industry, science, education and the others that I have mentioned, can only bring their influence to bear as individuals once in five years. It may be said that they can and do lobby here, but it would be much better, if reform there must be, that they should have legitimate representation in Parliament.
Finally, the hereditary principle is to be swept away, and without explanation or argument, although there was one rather grudging reference in The Times to its merits. It is simply taken for granted that the necessity for its demise
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is self-evident. The phrase one hears so often on the radio and television, and reads in the newspapers, is that it is unacceptable and anachronistic "in this day and age", that the House of Lords is an anachronism. Now, this implies that we live in a particularly enlightened time.
Whether or not the House of Lords is anachronistic, whether or not the hereditary principle is superseded, to tamper with the constitution is no light matter. I want to examine "this day and age" from the point of view of somebody looking back on the present period as history. He might be excused for regarding it as a period of almost unrelieved stagnation of political thought, in which radicalism was divided and purposeless, changing for the sake of change and building nothing, or else still slavishly in thrall to the degrading delusions and tricks of Marxism and in which Conservatism was no more than a long process of surreptitious surrender.
I mean no disrespect to my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Front Bench, for I am speaking of a period of decades. He would see it as an age in which the independent had been driven from the House of Commons—a matter which we might regard as serious. As an age of mass cynicism, in which public life, public figures, and party politics were held in near-contempt, when the most powerful medium of persuasion, television, was regarded with almost universal mistrust; an age when power could be gained only by pandering to the majority; an age in which the economic cycle was arbitrarily geared to the General Election, in order to provide the means—
Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman will link what he has to say to the White Paper.
Mr. Hastings: I am coming to the reason for what I am saying.
It is an age when real truth is all too often shunned by politicians as a certain vote-loser. Perhaps I might finish this section of my remarks by quoting briefly from a speech made as long ago as 1908 by Arthur Balfour, who said:
"And when through an ancient and still powerful State there spreads a mood of deep discouragement, when the reaction against recurring ills grows feebler and the ship rises less buoyantly to each succeeding wave…"

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He was speaking on decadence and his words could well apply to "this day and age."
I do not for a moment doubt the capacity of the people to recover from "this day and age". What I doubt, and why I have gone into this discussion, is that we live in times so enlightened that we can blithely alter the constitution and dismantle its ancient safeguards because they appear to be anachronistic in terms of temporary political fashion.
There is a danger here and it stems from two popular, but false, beliefs. There is, first, the god of egalitarianism, which is behind so much in these proposals. And there is the dogmatic belief that all extensions of democracy—the apparent rule of the majority—bring good. Equality, I am convinced, does not exist, and all attempts to coerce it into existence lead to tyranny. Nor is democratic government one whit less in need of checks against the erosion of liberty than any other form of government. It has been said of the British that they are free people—once every five years. In between, what Professor Hayek, no less, has called the tyranny of the majority is a real possibility.
These proposals, if adopted, will not strengthen our liberties. They will reduce them. They will not improve the House of Lords, but turn it into a sickly appendage of the party in power. Those of us here who still pay more than lip-service to independence and freedom should consider very carefully what, by party compact, we are being asked to accept. For my part, I have no intention of having anything to do with it.
7.30 p.m.
Mr. John Lee: The Government would be well advised to realise that they have stirred up a hornet's nest. It is clear that a very large number of right hon. and hon. Members will find themselves in the same Lobby on this issue who are unlikely to be found in the same Lobby together again, and who certainly have not been found there together for many a long year.
I shall be among those voting against these proposals. It is hard for me to find a single good word to be said for them. They represent to me an eloquent commentary on the psychology of an extreme
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Right-wing Labour Government. They seem to be a good indication of the kind of inferiority complex the Government have in dealing with institutions of the Establishment.
We know, and have known for years, that the Government have not the courage to stand up to the City of London, or to the Governor of the Bank of England; that they cannot or will not tackle the gross inequalities of wealth which, according to the New Statesman, are getting worse instead of better; and, of course, we said farewell to a Socialist foreign policy many a long year ago. The Government have also shied away from the constitutional implications of denationalisation, because they are not really interested in nationalisation anyway and prefer not to talk about it. They are also only slightly less embarrassed than the Opposition Front Bench by the activities of the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell).
Mr. Speaker: Order. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will now come to the White Paper.
Mr. Lee: I wonder why so much has been done to ease the hereditary peers so gently out of the system. I understand why hon. Members opposite should want to keep them. The peerage is a legitimate part of the Conservative tradition and ideology which the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mr. Hastings) seems to want to preserve. But really what is the purpose of turning them into a curious kind of second-class peer for the remainder of their lifetime, in a way analogous, so far as I can see, to the case of the A class voting shareholding which the Jenkins Committee on Company Law has recommended should be abolished?
Why, indeed, should there be different categories of peers all sitting in the same Chamber? Surely this will lead to a curious and rather invidious situation. We shall have two categories of peers enjoying the same status and occupying the same facilities of Parliament, but divided into those who have power to vote and those who have not. The reason, clearly, is that the Government want to do the minimum possible to change the constitution for fear of provoking a constitutional crisis.

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I wish there were a constitutional crisis, because it might be one of the few ways in which we could jog the Government into more drastic and radical proposals. I wish, for example, that the other place had insisted on its opposition to the Rhodesia Sanctions Order last July, because that might have forced a showdown on that subject.
My hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Blenkinsop) put in a gallant word on behalf of the White Paper, but even he attacked the proposals for the maintenance of the peerage system. I want to say why I think that this aspect is still very important. I do not believe that the powers of the other place have mattered much for a long time. They have been rarely exercised. Apart from the opposition to the Iron and Steel Act, 1949, during the days of the Attlee Government, there has been no important instance of the exercise of its powers since the First World War.
It is true that the threat is there, but that threat could always be met by the threat of a mass creation of peers to swamp the House and I doubt very much whether, in these days, there would be insistence from Buckingham Palace on a General Election as a prerequisite to the creation of peers designed for that purpose.
In any case—and I am strangely in agreement with the Right-wing opposite on this—I would have thought that the existing peerage has not the courage of its convictions to have a showdown unless it can be provoked to do so by measures from this side which are deliberately designed to provoke it—and there is little chance of that from the present Government.
I want to see the whole peerage abolished. All that the Life Peerages Act has done has been to create another and sixth rank of the peerage. The effect of the Government's failure to recommend any further hereditary peerages whilst leaving the existing peerage alone, I think, indeed, is to enhance the social value of that peerage. One knows that a duke has great prestige because there are so few dukes, since none have been created this century. The same applies to the rank of marquess. No marquesses have been created since 1936, and for that reason the present marquesses too have a
1206
scarcity value. The same thing will inevitably happen with the other ranks if the existing hereditary peerage is left untouched, with no further additions to it. I want the Government to embark on the task of getting rid of the thing altogether along with the other place.
Far more important, I think, than the potential damage that the powers of a second Chamber does to the activities of a Labour Government is the influence of the whole peerage system in our class society on working-class voters. I think that much abused programme, "Till death us do part", and its archetypal character, Alf Garnett, is much more representative than some people imagine of a certain kind of view.
The frantic regard of a certain kind of working-class people for our class system is one of the things which the Labour Party has long had to overcome and one of the reasons why, even in 1945, and, indeed, in 1966, millions of working-class people voted Conservative. Unless we are prepared to strike a blow at the whole class system by ripping the peerage system to pieces, we shall not get anywhere in destroying the class system. Certainly, the extension of education is doing its job, but there is still a long way to go.
I may add that, if this derogates from the position of the Crown, so be it. I am not so particularly enamoured of the Crown that I would mind destruction of the peerage being the penultimate step to this country becoming a republic. I hope that other hon. Members on this side who have the courage of their convictions will be outspoken on this point. The Government are very reticent on the subject of a republic and I suppose that this is one other reason why the hereditary peerage has been let down so lightly in the White Paper.
In general, I am not opposed to the principle of an elected second Chamber. I do not think that there is anything particularly sacrosanct about this House of Commons. What matters in democracy is that there shall be adequate representation, that the Government shall be sensitive to public opinion, and that they shall have mandates from the electorate that they will keep. Both sides in the House know perfectly well that there have been numerous instances during the last 20 years of Governments being elected

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on mandates and then resiling from them. The Conservatives were elected in 1959 on opposition to the Common Market and resiled from that policy a few months later. A parallel situation existed with the Labour Party in 1966. So neither party comes out very clear on that score.
Elected second Chambers have not always been as bad as some of my hon. Friends seem to think. I recall the situation in the 1950s, when McCarthyism—the "ism" of Senator Joseph McCarthy—was at its height not only in the United States, but in Australia as well. The elected Senate of the Australian Commonwealth threw out the Suppression of Communism Bill which the Menzies Government introduced, and did so often enough to force that Government to abandon the proposal.
I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield (Mr. Marquand)—I do not think that the opponents of the White Paper are called upon to provide alternative proposals. We have to judge the White Paper on its merits and we do not, therefore, have to propose any alternative.
I would be quite satisfied if the other place were abolished now and if the peerage were abolished now, then waiting for the Constitutional Commission before going into the wider constitutional implications which, I hope, would include consideration of the possibility of an elected second Chamber. I recommend my right hon. Friends to reconsider their position, because I have the feeling that they will get a nasty shock in the Division Lobby to-morrow night.
7.40 p.m.
Mr. T. G. D. Galbraith: I do not know whether, as an elder son, I have an interest to declare, but I can assure the House that I have sought to intervene not because of my own position, because of course I am already a Member of Parliament, but because I think that the composition and the power of either House of Parliament must be a matter of great constitutional importance. As it is a matter of constitutional importance, I cannot help regretting that the Government have decided to have the debate in this House at the same time as a similar debate is occurring in another place. This is an extraordinary way in which to arrange
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business particularly if the two Houses are meant to complement each other, which is one of the things suggested in the White Paper.
My own attitude to constitutional change is rather cautious. I tend to think that the devil one knows is often a good deal better than the devil one does not know, however prettily it may be painted. Unless there is something specifically wrong with the working of the constitution, it is much better to leave things as they are. Like the Secretary of Stale for Social Services, I shall refer to Belloc—
"Always keep a hold of Nurse
For fear of finding something worse".
If we change the House of Lords, we may easily end with something worse. The grounds for change should, therefore, be very strong.
What are these grounds for change? It is not as though the members of the House of Lords were incompentent; nobody has suggested that. It is not that the Lords have abused their powers; it is not that they have failed to do something which they ought to have done, or have done something which they ought not to have done. The objection to the House of Lords is not practical; it is not against the way in which the House of Lords has acted or has worked; it is an entirely hypothetical and theoretical objection to the way in which it might work, because it might do something objectionable to the Government. As a result of this hypothetical objection with nothing practical about it, the powers of the House of Lords are to be reduced and its composition changed.
I agree that for ordinary legislation the reduction in powers may not amount to very much, but it may be a different matter with subordinate legislation. Subordinate legislation more often concerns matters like the Stansted case than the Rhodesia case. Indeed, as everybody knows, the fuss about the Rhodesia Order was a completely "phoney" constitutional crisis cooked up by the Prime Minister. It was a mere storm in a teacup. But cases like the Stansted case are cases in which the Lords are able to stand against the dictatorial powers of the Executive. There is nothing party political about this, for it happens to all Governments. The White Paper suggests the

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removal of a valuable check against the tyranny of the bureaucratic machine and, because it removes this check, we in this House ought to examine this proposal with the greatest care.
At the same time as the powers of the other place are to be reduced the composition is to be changed, and the hereditary element is to go. I have never been able to understand why hon. Members opposite are so opposed to the hereditary principle. It has been with us from time immemorial, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) referred to it as the prescriptive principle behind Parliament. On the whole, it has not served the country too badly. Even today, this principle plays a prominent part in the counsels of the Labour Party where the second generation Benns, Jenkinses and Greenwoods are every bit as influential as the Cecils and Cavendishes are supposed to be on this side of the House. The Attorney-General seems to be mystified, but I am merely saying that I cannot understand the objection to the hereditary principle when it plays such a large part in the counsels of his own party.
Mr. Hugh Jenkins: I am a first-generation Jenkins.
Mr. Galbraith: I was not referring to the hon. Gentleman. I do not know his marital position, but there may well be someone following him. I was referring, of course, to the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
The Attorney-General (Sir Elwyn Jones): All the sons of the people to whom the hon. Gentleman referred were elected to the House of Commons.
Mr. Galbraith: I am not saying that they were not elected. I am saying merely that the fact that their fathers were here before them was probably a great help to them in getting elected.
If there are to be changes, I should like the retention, at least for the time being, of some hereditary element. If the retention of the hereditary element were to be the cause of abuse, we could always get rid of it later, but once it has gone, it can never be replaced. I therefore suggest that the hereditary peers should elect a few of their number as voting peers. This is the suggestion of my hon. Friend the Member for
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Spelthorne (Sir B. Craddock). This would imply that all the hereditary peers would have the right to speak. Otherwise, it would be impossible for them to know whom to choose to have the right to vote. I cannot see what harm there would be in having a few extra speakers, and I do not understand why the White Paper proposals suggest their exclusion, for it seems to be the only way in which to get young blood into another place.
Indeed, it is an extraordinary commentary on the Government's thinking that, at the very moment when they are introducing youth to the vote with votes at 18, they are excluding youth from the second Chamber. This does not make sense. Even if my suggestion is not agreed, it would be wrong and foolish to restrict speaking only to existing peers. The White Paper suggests that existing hereditary peers will have the right to speak, but that existing heirs will not. At least existing heirs should be included. Many of them may have planned their lives on the assumption that they would follow their fathers. This is not a case of seeking privilege for its own sake, but of seeking the opportunity to serve, for they will have already been preparing themselves.
Mr. John Lee: Does the hon. Gentleman envisage a future Conservative Government creating more hereditary peers?
Mr. Galbraith: I have never suggested that. The White Paper says that existing peers will be able to continue in the House of Lords. I am saying that it would be very foolish to restrict that right to existing peers when there may well be heirs of peers who are very old and when the heirs themselves may be men in their forties or fifties who have been preparing themselves to follow their fathers.
I cannot help feeling that, in the national interest, it would be extremely stupid to exclude them. For example, if the proposals had been in force during the lifetime of their fathers, neither the present Leader nor the Deputy-Leader of the Conservative Party in the Lords, both relatively young men, would be in their present positions. I cannot help feeling that the most partisan would think that there is something wrong in proposals

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which lead to the exclusion of people so obviously able to serve the nation as well as these two gentlemen.
Mr. Spriggs: Would the right hon. Gentleman include those hereditary peers who never attend?
Mr. Galbraith: The hon. Gentleman is being a little stupid. I will now pass on from him to the question of the Scottish peers. This will interest Mr. Deputy Speaker, because he, like me, represents a Scottish constituency.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Harry Gourlay): Order. The Chair has no interest.
Mr. Galbraith: The Chair may not have an interest, in which case I apologise, but previously the occupant of the Chair used to have an interest, and perhaps that will make it all right. It seems that the Act of Union is involved here. I do not see how, without breaching the Act of Union, it is possible to exclude the Scottish peerage. It seems that 16 of them, at least, will have the right to vote in the new Chamber without having to fulfil the attendance qualifications which will be required in the present proposals.
This alone should not create any great difficulty because, I think, bishops will have the right to vote without attending full time. If that is all right for judges and bishops, I cannot see why it should not be ail right for Scottish peers, who would not be required to attend for business which was not of interest to them.
I would like the Attorney-General in his reply to say what he envisages will be the position of the Scottish peerage. Can they be excluded without breaching the Treaty of Union? This is a matter which we would normally be very chary of touching, and at present I should have thought that it was extremely unwise to do anything which breaches that Treaty between England and Scotland. If they cannot be excluded, or are not to be excluded, I suggest the principle of having a small body of elected hereditary peers from Scotland be extended also to the United Kingdom peers.
To sum up, I think that the reforms envisaged in the White Paper are misconceived on two grounds. The first has to do with timing. It is not really
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sensible to tinker with reforms of the House of Lords when major constitutional changes, affecting not only the House of Lords, but perhaps this House, the regions in England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales, as well as local authorities, will all come within the Constitutional Commission envisaged in the Gracious Speech.
If there were some definite defect, causing actual harm at this moment because of the misuse of powers of the House of Lords, I would say "Yes, go ahead in advance of the general review." But when the objection to the Lords is purely theoretical, a hypothetical one, I cannot believe that now, in advance of the Constitutional Commission's report, is really the best time to legislate.
The second misconception in the White Paper and a more serious one, is that it is shooting at the wrong tiger. The object of the White Paper is apparently to create a Second Chamber that will be a rubber stamp to the Executive, and merely a pale reflection of this place, which is a rubber stamp, whether we like it or not, of the Executive. Surely Parliament was never intended to be a rubber stamp to the Executive? It was precisely to challenge the Executive that Parliament came into existence in the first place. It is because of its ability to challenge the Executive that it gained its reputation over the centuries as the champion of the liberties of the subject. Parliament is nothing if it is not in opposition to the Executive, and if it is not able to force its will on the Executive.
In the old days the barons certainly did not go to Runnymede to act as a rubber stamp for King John, and so it has been throughout history, until now. Now all there is left in this House is a mere rump of an Opposition, and the bulk of the Commons are the "yes" men, more to be added to the Lords—the dogs, as the Prime Minister so felicitously put it, with a licence to bark but not to bite. [Interruption.] We all know that in our heart of hearts, even the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer) who is interrupting me while sitting down.
Mr. Eric Heffer: I would like to put this to the right hon. Gentleman. I am sure that he would agree that I and many of my hon. Friends could not be regarded as "yes" men.
Mr. Galbraith: The hon. Gentleman, however he regards himself and his hon. Friends, has still not succeeded in getting the Government to change anything they have decided to do. We all know that this is the fate of this House. We all know in our hearts that this is the real reason for the low esteem in which we are now held, compared with the high esteem in which Parliament was held in previous ages.
We are, if we admit it honestly, broken reeds, and no longer able to prevail against the Executive. What is really wrong is not that the Lords are too strong vis à vis the Executive, but that the Commons are too weak vis à vis the Executive. We in this House should stop scratching at the pimple of privilege in the Lords, and take a good strong dose of salts that will flush out the constipated workings of our own Chamber. If we did that, we might get a reform that would be worth while and that would satisfy the people of this country.
7.55 p.m.
Mr. Donald Chapman: I will not compete with the hon. Member for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. Galbraith) in his extravagant language. I agree about one thing he said, namely that the devil one knows is better than the devil one does not know. This is a very important point of departure for the White Paper, and for all our procedural changes. The reason I can support this White Paper is, if I may use the right hon. Gentleman's phrase again, that if we can modify the devil we know, it will be better than having the devil we do not know. This is the right way in which we should always, and do always in the end, approach all our constitutional changes and our reforms of procedure.
I have listened to practically every speech tonight, wide-ranging as they have been. Some have said "I want the whole thing started from scratch" or "I want a clean sheet of paper; I will rebuild it like this" or "I want this magnificent scheme." I have been here long enough to know that one gets nothing done in this House, in modifying the British constitution, if one starts with that approach. Parliament is too cautious, rightly so, to accept that proposal.
This leads me to say one other thing by way of introduction. I do not share in
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the running-down of this place, and of the British Parliament, which has gone on in speech after speech until I am sick and tired of it. Some hon. Gentlemen who are so critical of the functioning of this place should take a few trips abroad. I do not run down other legislatures by choice; I simply say to them that if they will go round the world and look at this place from a distance they will thank God for what we have got, and say what a bright example we are, with all our imperfections.
I begin by saying we have something fairly good. The question is: how can we improve it? I accept this White Paper, because we can improve it in the way it suggests. I have been here before, like the right hon. Member for Enfield, West (Mr. Iain Macleod). We had a debate on this 10 years ago, on 13th February, 1958, on the Life Peerages Act, when we both spoke. We then talked about what the ultimate form of reform should be. We were all coming round to this consensus. What we are now building on in this White Paper is what we have been steadily building since 1958—a second Chamber of life peers. The 150 who are there—and I am talking in round figures now—plus the 150 or whatever it is, of first creations, are in effect the 200 or 300 people who are now doing all the work in the House of Lords.
The number of people who have inherited titles is very small in the total of working peers. Whether they be hereditary peers of first creation or life peers, we have steadily evolved a system of nominated men doing the work of the second Chamber. It is on that alone that we have a chance of building reform if we proceed by the British system, which is gradually to evolve on the basis of what we have.
The 10 years' breathing space since the Life Peerages Act has given us the chance to do that and to take the next step which, in 1958, I chided the Opposition with refusing to have the courage to take. They would not go further than the concept of life peerages because they were split on whether to end the hereditary principle. Lord Hailsham, as he then was, now the right hon. and learned Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg), favoured the abolition of the hereditary principle in the Lords, but his

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colleagues in this place and the vast majority of peers would not allow it. Therefore, there was no chance in 1958 of going further than that very modest reform.
I am glad to see that today the Opposition are, very broadly, in favour of taking away hereditary rights as the basis for a second Chamber. I have a strong feeling that even the Lords, with their new-found interest in radical re form, will probably take the same decision in their debate.
That is the first point: we build on what we have. The next step, logically and properly taken in this White Paper, is to take away the hereditary power.
The second thing we should achieve is a more sensible arrangement about the delaying power. It is generally accepted—and this is something which I and a number of other people said in 1958—that the vision of the hereditary peers as people who would stave off a revolution based on the despotism of the Commons, of the Commons over-exerting its powers and needing to be checked in some new tyrannical action, is a myth. Lord Attlee said in the debate that if there were to be a revolution no paper provisions or powers of the Lords would stop it. What stops tyranny in this country is the unwillingness of the British people to accept it. They would not obey it, and nor would the Army, Air Force or Royal Navy.
Nevertheless, what is inconvenient about the delaying power is what happens to a Government like this Government in their last year of office. It is worth accepting the White Paper, with all its blemishes, if we have an agreed reform on that issue alone, because it is so important, and it makes sense—and here all credit should go to my right hon. Friend for reaching this agreement. It is so important that it should be emphasised time and again from our side of the House that it is a great advance.
I wish to deal with three other issues. There are two main objections to the White Paper. The first is that if we make the House of Lords less anachronistic it will be able to use its new delaying power. The second is patronage. I deal with these issues in that order.
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What has put me in an embarrassing situation is what my right hon. Friend said about the first issue. He was pounced on by the right hon. Member for Barnet (Mr. Maudling), who was happy to agree with him. My right hon. Friend said that if we make the Lords less anachronistic in the way proposed in the White Paper and leave them with the six months' delaying power, we must expect them to begin to use it. I see the right hon. Member for Barnet nodding his head in agreement. This is where I fundamentally disagree with him.
Mr. Mendelson Mr. Mendelson indicated dissent.
Mr. Chapman: I know that my hon. Friend does not agree because he wants to wreck the White Paper, but I want the White Paper to work.
Mr. Mendelson: My hon. Friend makes the wild accusation that I wish to wreck the White Paper. He is trying to mislead the House. It is not only the right hon. Member for Barnet (Mr. Maudling) who takes the view that this will make the Lords use the delaying power. The first to say it was Lord Mancroft on television the other night, when he said that the Lords would use it.
Mr. Chapman: I am not misleading the House. I have no wish to do so, and I do not see where I have done so.
Let me deal with the point about the delaying power and its possible use. The new House will consist largely of the same people who are doing the work there now. They will be mainly life peers and peers of first creation, and a few will be added to make up the arithmetical balance suggested in the White Paper. I do not expect this collection of eminent gentlemen suddenly to arogate to themselves powers over this Chamber. The right hon. Member for Barnet says that we are giving them the powers, but when it comes to the test, does he think that Members of the House of Lords will say, "We were not elected. We are exactly the same people who were doing this job three years ago. Members of the House of Commons have a mandate to carry out their election programme which has been approved by the electorate"? Do we expect this same bunch of gentlemen in the House of Lords to say, "We shall start rejecting Bills left and right as if we have some new power of constitutional decision in our hands"?
Mr. Maudling: Is not the Government's argument that the power given to the new House should be used by the new House when it thinks fit?
Mr. Chapman: That may be. I should be tempted to vote against the White Paper if that were the case. But I do not believe that it is. Because of the fundamental point on which I base my speech, namely, that we make our constitutional changes by advancing gradually and improving on what we have, I believe that those same gentlemen in the House of Lords will say, "We are not in a very different position today from the position that we were in five years ago. We are still an anachronism. We are still appointed. We must beware of setting ourselves up against the Commons. If we use these powers right and left, there will soon grow up a pressure in the Commons to take them away from us". That is what will prevent overuse of the powers.
The case has been grossly over-stated today. I should expect use of the six months' delaying power to be very infrequent lest it built up pressure in this House for further modification. On that basis, it is misleading to suggest that we must accept that the powers will be used to the extent that the right hon. Member for Barnet seems to imagine.
The second point about which the White Paper came under criticism today, and continues to come under criticism, concerns patronage, which is a much more difficult matter. I do not deny that the problem is substantial. But let me take my basic position again. Who are the people concerned? They will be very largely, as to 80 per cent. of them, the Members who are there now doing the regular day-to-day work. What patronage is involved in allowing them to continue to do it? Over-use of patronage can come only if there were to be substantial, continuous additions to their number on a scale which has never happened before in our history. I do not imagine for a moment that that will occur. The only numbers that we are likely to create will be of the same order as we create nowadays. The arresting figure that my right hon. Friend gave to the House was that there had been 140 new creations since 1964. Why has there not been this outcry about patronage now—
Mr. Fletcher-Cooke: Because they are not paid.
Mr. Chapman: I accept the hon. and learned Gentleman's correction; I am coming to that. If we argue on the issue of patronage, there is no argument on the numbers; and no argument that there is a vast new flood of patronage coming into the hands of the Prime Minister. So we are reduced to the second argument, that the patronage can arise only if they are paid. On that issue I agree that we are in difficulties.
First, I accept the proposal in the White Paper to appoint a Commission which will look continuously at new creations and advise the country, independently, whether there has been a misuse of patronage or whether the right balance is being kept in the creation of peers. It is not right to dismiss this safeguard in the light way in which hon. Members have dismissed it today. It is an important check on the patronage which the Prime Minister will be exerting.
Secondly, I would accept as a second check that the only way is to leave these gentlemen significantly underpaid. It is a terrible thing to have to say. It means that many people will have to be trained to do a job for less pay than is their value. But this is the only escape from the present dilemma, until we see how the system works. If, after a period of first activity in the new Chamber, we are able to dispose of the hare of patronage, then—when we have it firmly on the right lines—we can perhaps steadily get nearer to a realistic salary. Let us begin by accepting the necessity for underpayment because of the dangers.
Thirdly, I personally can vote for the White Paper because of what is said in the Appendices about procedural reform. We discovered in the Procedure Committee of this House that we could begin steadily to turn the attention of the House towards doing increasing work in checking the executive. For example, a vast area of Government expenditure is not at the moment checked. There is no watchdog in the sense that there was in the 19th century, since the whole thing has grown so big and our machinery cannot now cope with it. That is one example of where we could do much more work, and I could give many others.

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The key to the situation is that we will not do any of this work until we can lighten the burden on individual Members of Parliament. We cannot take on more work. We cannot even man some of the Committees which we would like to do more active work in the House of Commons. We are short of hon. Members who have time available to do this work. The only way in which we will solve this problem, partly at any rate, is by relieving ourselves of some of the burdens which we now carry.
There is an interesting proposal in the White Paper which again builds on what we have started to do here. One way by which we have started to disembarrass ourselves of work is by the use of Second Reading Committees. We have begun to differentiate among our activities and to say that certain activities are consensus activities which need not be brought to the Floor of the House but can be entrusted to a Committee, so that they can be put through quick stages, subject to being brought back to the House if the Whips or the Front Benchers have not made a right assessment.
Why do we not accept the proposal in the White Paper and agree that many more consensus Bills could be put through the hardest part of their work in the other Chamber? Much non-controversial legislation could start its life in another place where it could be thoroughly discussed and amended, even to the point perhaps of having a Joint Committee of the two Houses for the Committee stage. When the legislation reached this House we would be very thankful that we need not waste a great deal more time on it. As the Appendix suggests, this is a way in which the new chamber could be used, and I agree with it.
At the end of a recent Session when the Procedure Committee was finishing its work, we reached the stage when there was no more possibility of reforms in this Chamber for giving us more worth while activity until we can relieve some of the burden that is on individual hon. Members. If we can accept the proposal in the White Paper for using the reformed second chamber in this way, further reforms in our own procedure could then be considered.
What attracts me about the White Paper is the repeated assertion in para- 1220
graph after paragraph—paragraph 25, for example—that the interesting thing about this exercise is what will happen if we begin to regard the second chamber in a different light. The procedural reforms which will then be opened up are most attractive. As the White Paper says, there is no reason why the Lords should always duplicate the House of Commons in the way it behaves, with Second Readings, Committees, Third Readings; a pale copy of what we do here. Let us, as the White Paper says, regard it as a complement to our activity, relieving the elected Chamber where it wishes to be relieved, and not otherwise, of some of the less controversial work, and keeping for the Floor of this Chamber the party fights, the tough battles which we are sent by our electors to fight.
Let us use a reformed House of Lords increasingly in the way the White Paper suggests, to relieve our burden and to help us to make our own procedural reforms more effective, so that we and not the Lords will once again become the real check on the Executive, which, after all, is the final goal. If there is anything wrong in our Parliamentary system it is that we are no longer the effective vigorous check we used to be. Let us now proceed to use our reforming zeal, even our vision of the second Chamber, in a way that will allow that process to get under way again—so that we, with their relieving help, will again become the real check on the Executive.
8.18 p.m.
Sir Robert Cary: I agree with much of what has been said by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Mr. Chapman) about the tendency to denigrate Parliament, and that one only has to look abroad to realise that we should count our blessings at home. He also expressed such sentiments in the delightful speech with which he moved the debate on the Address a little earlier.
There are some matters arising out of the hon. Gentleman's speech which I would have liked to touch on, but I shall resist the temptation to unpack all my luggage, or use my imaginative embroidery to describe the world as I would like it to be. I will, therefore, devote my attention to one or two material matters within the framework of the White Paper.

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There is one exception. I see the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney-General on the Front Bench. His former companion as Solicitor-General, the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Ipswich (Sir Dingle Foot), is now not at his side, but he spoke earlier in this debate and there is one point that I would make in reply to a sentiment expressed by the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Ipswich about the years preceding the outbreak of war. I am one of the few who also shared this House with the right hon. and learned Gentleman in those years.
The right hon. and learned Attorney-General will recall that his right hon. and learned Friend referred to an occasion when Sir Winston Churchill, pleading with the then Conservative Party, invited its members to go into the Lobby against Government proposals. On a Supply day, he could find only two supporters. I speak as one of only 17 hon. Members who supported the Foreign Secretary when he resigned on 20th February, 1938. That was the time when Sir Winston pleaded for 50 or 60 members of the Conservative Party to support him in the Lobby in the policies that he proposed.
But, much more harmful than criticisms which could be levelled against the Government of the day was the consistent attitude of the Labour Party, then in opposition, which again and again voted against the Service Estimates. It was the courage of Hugh Dalton, at the Labour Party conference in 1937, that turned the tide and convinced the Labour Party to support the Estimates which were so urgently needed by the Government of the day.
I want to turn now to one or two matters in the White Paper. Opening the debate, the Secretary of State for Social Services said that he would prefer to see these proposals implemented in the lifetime of this Parliament, contradicting the view put forward by my right hon. Friend the Member for Barnet (Mr. Maudling) that the proposals should be accepted in the lifetime of this Parliament but should begin in a new Parliament.
I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that this is a Parliamentary matter and not a constituency one. The reform of
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the House of Lords raises no great temper or steam at constituency level. If these proposals are to see the light of day in the form of a Bill which will come to Second Reading and go through all its stages, in my view it should be dealt with as early as possible. I should hate to see our respective manifestos at a General Election cluttered up still with this age-old subject, the reform of the House of Lords. If we are to deal with the matter at all, let us deal with it now and get it out of the way. Then we can go cleanly to a General Election with it having no part in the exchanges of party politics. After all, the electors look upon Parliament to find a solution to its own problems.
The next point which has caused considerable concern is that of patronage. I know of no proposals ever put before the House of Commons that have been more coldly received by both sides. My right hon. Friend the Member for Stafford and Stone (Mr. Hugh Fraser) described it as "the coldest day in the history of Christian charity". It has hardly a friend. I agree that anything which could be devised would have imperfections, but, as one reads through the White Paper, the holes and imperfections in it are enormous, especially to anyone who wants to build a little sandhill of prejudice out of it.
The speech of the hon. Member for Fife, West (Mr. William Hamilton) has provided a high degree of laughter and delight to both sides of the House, but do not let us take it too far. These are important and serious proposals, and the Government cannot claim that they are really seeking the advice of the House on their proposals.
Far too much has been made of the Prime Minister's patronage as outlined in the White Paper. All Prime Ministers and Ministers surrounding them have enormous patronage and, if one knows anything about the work of the Appointments Office in No. 10, one knows that the Prime Minister's patronage is immense. Would it matter if, as a result of the proposed legislation, the existing level of patronage was increased to some slight extent? Would it make the slightest difference? It has been dressed up as an enormous bogey, and I give it no countenance.

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I turn now to the pay proposals in the White Paper, and I speak now as Chairman of the Trustees of the Members' Fund. For reasons of insurance and safety, the hon. Member for Northfield felt that it ought to be taken at a low level, but the payment of the other House, first proposed in the form of an attendance allowance of three guineas, which the Lawrence Committee later raised to four and a half guineas, is a squalid way of remunerating members of the other place. I am glad that it is proposed that another Lawrence Committee is to decide upon the proper payment to be made to voting peers.
Hon. Members will appreciate that in the position which I am privileged to hold, as one of the founders and architects of the Members' Fund, I see a good deal of the personal circumstances of Members on both sides in this House and in the other place. If the Lawrence Committee were to decide upon a reasonable level of payment to be made in a proper way, I know how beneficial and heartening it would be to a minority of Members of the other House. For that reason, I shall support any proposal which brings to an end the present undignified process of peers having to draw an attendance fee of four and a half guineas a day. I would give them £0, £500, or £750 a year, taxable, and have it done in a proper, dignified way, as we enjoy it in this House. I believe that the taunts which have come about some form of payment going to Members of the other place falls to the ground.
The hon. Member for Northfield touched on one point which the Secretary of State made in his opening remarks. There is and has been a denigration of Parliament in recent years which, as the right hon. Gentleman said, has led to a decline in the authority of Parliament. This is a dangerous tendency which has to be stopped. Much impatience, and even derision, has in recent years been poured out from certain sections of the community upon Parliament. Yet it still remains the sovereign freehold of every elector in the country, and it is our duty, holding our short tenancies here, to defend this institution with every fibre of our bodies. That is the inheritance that we have to pass on to the electors who
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will be the beneficiaries, I hope, of an improved freehold from us.
The only alternative to the system which has been much criticised here today is some form of tyranny, of which the world is full of illustrations. Tyrannies, supposedly the most effective form of government, when analysed are the negation of good government, open to the unbridled will perhaps of one man or a committee.
One cannot be associated with this House for many years, as I have been privileged, without still loving it and wishing to protect it, sentiments shared and expressed this evening by my hon. Friend the Member for the Isle of Ely (Sir H. Legge-Bourke). We know the possibilities of Parliament and its limitations. As Lord Butler often used to remind the House, politics is only the art of the possible. I like to think of Parliament as the late Mr. Ed Murrow thought of it when he said goodbye to us in 1945. Speaking of our circumstances in Britain, he said that the wonder of the war was not its famous military heroics and battles—Matapan, Anzio, Caen, Arnhem—the wonder of the war was that one single man, Winston Churchill, was able to mobilise Parliamentary democracy at that Box to fight the greatest war in history.
If anybody within the House, or outside, feels in terms a disenchantment with Parliament, it is our duty, as its Members, regarding a matter today which is common to both sides of the House and will have to be considered by them, to bend our will to improve our institution, to take it on to generations ahead and give the freehold that our constituents inherited on to their children, that it may come in better form from us.
8.34 p.m.
Mr. Emrys Hughes: I am sure that we have all listened to the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Sir R. Cary), with great interest. We know his affection for this House; we also know that he had great affection for the late Sir Winston Churchill. I agree that Winston Churchill contributed a great deal to this House by way of oratory and leadership. Nobody denies it. But over 50 years ago, when he was leading a campaign against the House of Lords, I remember Winston Churchill

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using language which would have horrified right hon. and hon. Members opposite—indeed, I am not sure whether it would not have horrified our own Front Bench—because he referred to the House of Lords as a Punch and Judy show. Those were the days when Winston Churchill was in his intellectual prime—1910. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Mr. Chapman) said that he was satisfied with our rate of progress.
I listened with great interest to the hon. Member for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. Galbraith) who, like me, is a Scottish Member. In fact, I represent the hon. Member in this House. He is one of my electors in South Ayrshire, and I have a great personal affection for him and for his father. His father is, of course, in the House of Lords, and my greatest hope, after hearing the hon. Gentleman's speech, is that his father will live to be a centenarian. If he does, the opportunity for the hon. Gentleman to make those great speeches which he has been preparing so assiduously will be rather interminably delayed.
I have listened to nearly all the speeches in today's debate. The more I hear of the debate, the more I am convinced that the House of Lords should be abolished. "Ended, not mended" was the slogan of Lloyd George and Winston Churchill. The more I listen to the discussion on how we should reform the other place, the more sceptical I become about the various solutions which have been presented to the House.
Let us consider the coldness with which the right hon. Member for Barnet (Mr. Maudling) spoke about the hereditary system. I tried to probe the matter, but the right hon. Gentleman wisely dodged the issue. Why is he against the hereditary system? I just do not know. I know why I am against it; it is because, biologically, it is not true that the son inherits the gifts of the father.
The hon. Member for the Isle of Ely (Sir H. Legge-Bourke) is in favour of the hereditary system, and he wants a third Chamber mixed up with it, with the chairman of the Bank of England as a member of that Chamber. If we bring in the chairman of the Bank of England, and if we retain the hereditary system, do we assume that the son of the present chairman of the Bank of England will
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be brought in because his father was a successful banker? The more one looks at this hereditary business, the more one realises that it is a myth, and something which has no place in 1968.
References have been made to the hereditary system in the highest office in the country. I take a pragmatic view about this. I hope that Her Majesty will live to be a centenarian. If she does, there will not be another coronation in my time, and it will be for the next generation to decide the issue. But because we are content to say that we do not want the Monarchy to disappear during the life of Her Majesty, that does not mean that we are in favour of hereditary peerages.
The hon. Member for Hillhead says that we must have these hereditary peers from Scotland in the House of Lords. I hardly think he knows anything about the hereditary peerage in Scotland. I have a classic book about the hereditary lords from Scotland. It is written by a distinguished ex-Secretary of State for Scotland and is entitled, "Our Noble Families". I shall not trouble to give the House details of individual gentlemen, but in the introduction to the book Mr. Tom Johnston wrote:
"The first step in reform, either of the House of Lords or of the land laws is to destroy superstition. Show the people that our old nobility is not noble, that their lands are stolen lands—stolen either by force or fraud; show people that the title deeds are rapine, murder, massacre, cheating or court harlotry"—
More robust language was used when the controversy raged 50 years ago. This view was expressed during that controversy of 1908–10
"Dissolve the halo of divinity that surrounds the hereditary title, let people clearly understand that our present House of Lords is composed largely of successful pirates and rogues, do these things and you shatter the romance that keeps a nation numb and spellbound when privilege picks its pockets."
At last the Conservative Party is getting up to date with what Sir Winston Churchill was like 50 years ago. The Government Front Bench is gradually coming along, also.
The White Paper has been subjected to much criticism. I would call it a haggis of a paper.
Mr. William Molloy: Do not insult the haggis.
Mr. Hughes: We do not want to be served up with constitutional haggises.
We are virtually all agreed that the hereditary principle has no place in this century and that the votes of hereditary peers should no longer exist. Nevertheless, a great many of these peers will still talk—and that certainly goes for the Scottish peers. If there is anything to do with land—be it concerned with poaching deer or an attempt being made to acquire land for the Forestry Commission—the Scottish peers from the backwoods will be in London in even greater numbers than they came in 1745 to discuss it. I do not want to see them here. If they are still hale and hearty, I want to see them taking part in the future government of Scotland, but only if they can be elected. No rational person can now argue in favour of the hereditary system.
It has been suggested that we should have an elected House of Lords. There was a by-election in Glasgow the other week when the people were concerned with matters right under their noses. Only 27 per cent. of those eligible to vote took part. I wonder how many would turn out to vote for an elected upper Chamber? If there were two votes to be cast at a General Election, one for the House of Commons and one for the House of Lords, how many people would vote?
I agree with everything that has been said about patronage. One can conceive of the House of Lords being selected by the bosses of the various party machines. The "safe" people would be selected. A few odds and ends of rebels might be allowed in—like Lord Brockway and Lord Soper, just to savour the haggis—but the Establishment would be entrenched for another decade, and I do not want to see that happen.
Everyone says that they do not want a single Chamber; and that we must have a second Chamber of some kind. Why? I do not see why there should be five wheels on a motor car, or why a second Chamber is necessary at all. I would make the other place into some kind of museum and charge for admission in order to help the Chancellor of the Exchequer—and goodness knows he needs it.
What is the case for a second Chamber? We are told that it is necessary to revise
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legislation; that it is necessary to have second thoughts. I agree, but why cannot we have a House of Commons committee appointed for that purpose? How many hon. Members sit in this Chamber when Lords' Amendments are being gabbled out and agreed to? Half a dozen, maybe—I do not know. I do not see why we need 100 or 200 people to be established in another place when we have good reason to believe that one-tenth of them will not be there regularly?
Government second thoughts could well be attended to by an enlarged committee, with a maximum of 50 members. Those members could be divided into sections to deal with particular Bills, and could easily attend to Amendments which the Government introduced on second thoughts. There is no need for an extensive establishment at the other end of the building when a comparatively small committee could deal with the work—as happens, in any case, when the House deals with Lords Amendments.
I know that the other place is regarded as being a good debating platform for those who want to put a point of view. Lord Soper uses it with great effect. He gets a better audience in the House of Lords than he gets on Tower Hill, or at Speakers' Corner, Hyde Park, and that is the only justification for it. But we do not need a glorified debating society of selected people to display their dialectical and oratorical powers in an expensive second Chamber.
The democratic thing would be to have a committee, not of veterans of this House—they are too talkative—but of selected people; some lawyers, some experienced in municipal administration, some trade unionists—and a few landlords to represent the country's decaying landlord industry. It would be a committee with a membership of at the most 50 members, with powers, perhaps, to co-opt for certain pieces of legislation but with the power remaining with the elected Members of this House. That is as good a suggestion as any that has been made in this debate.
I confess that I will be sorry if the other place goes. I have a sentimental regard for it. It has its uses. Whenever I get some of the farmers from my constituency visiting the Fatstock Show

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and the Gallery here is crowded, what do I do? I take them to the House of Lords and put them in a sort of glorified waiting room to have a little entertainment until I can get them places in this Gallery. The other places has some uses of that kind, but they are not political. It is even getting very difficult to adopt that procedure. About a year or so ago I put two of my constituents, who were very puritanical-minded members of the Free Kirk of Scotland, into the Gallery of the House of Lords while I was waiting to get them in here. Their Lordships were discussing the homosexuality Bill. When they came out they said, "Don't take me to that place again. I have heard words there which I would not like to tell my wife." So even the House of Lords, as a sort of ancillary, is beginning to lose its power.
The great landlords among hon. Members opposite will agree that titles shall no longer be hereditary, that the titles should not be inherited, but when it comes to the land which goes with the title that is another matter. Then they would all be in favour of the hereditary principle. If I tried to take the Duke of Buccleuch's land from him on the ground that if the Duke is not entitled to be a hereditary peer in the House of Lords he is not entitled to inherit the land which goes with it, hon. Members opposite would be up in arms.
Viscount Lambton: Did the hon. Member give an hon. Member who sits for one of the Edinburgh constituencies warning that he was to attack his family?
Mr. Hughes: I am sorry. That was impromptu. I apologise in advance to the hon. Member who will become the Duke of Buccleuch, but he knows my point of view and will not be surprised.
This applies to the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Viscount Lambton). He would far rather lose his hereditary right to sit in the House of Lords than the right to the acres he now possesses and from which he now draws rent. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] They all agree, so the hereditary business goes, the nominated business goes and we come down to the commonsense argument that those whom the people elect to the House of Commons should have the first and last word. The time has
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come to change the constitution of the country accordingly, democratically and intelligently.
8.52 p.m.
Viscount Lambton: I am very pleased to follow the hon. Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes). During all the years that I have been in the House I can never think of any occasion when he has spoken without endearing himself to one side or the other, nearly always our side. His wit, which is so charming, is nearly always turned against his own party. He wished that the father of my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. Galbraith) should be a centenarian. I am sure that the whole House would be with me in wishing that the hon. Member will entertain us in his inimitable way for even longer than that.
This has been a most singular debate because basically those on the back benches on either side of the House have come together almost to a man in condemning this White Paper. What is so curious is that hon. Members opposite have condemned it because to them it increases the power of the House of Lords, and it has been condemned from this side of the House by so many because it is said to reduce the power of the House of Lords. This is such a curiosity that it is very difficult indeed to understand, but I think it time that we threw a little light on the powers of the House of Lords which hon. Members on this side of the House are so anxious to retain.
Precisely what is the fundamental power of the House of Lords? As an effective political check, the House of Lords was broken by Lord Grey's Government in 1832 when, to ensure the passing of the Reform Bill, King William IV agreed to create a certain number of peers. This was repeated in 1911 when Mr. Asquith and Lord Crewe persuaded King George V reluctantly to take the same step.
Therefore, basically the House of Lords has no authority and no power. If there ever comes a real emergency or a real pinch when the Government are likely to be overwhelmed, the present Prime Minister or any future Prime Minister can immediately create, or

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threaten to create, a sufficient number of peers to ensure that the legislation that he wants goes through.
When we on this side talk of these powers which should be kept, we should admit that the powers are non-existent. There is a slight delaying power, and it could be said that the country would reconsider its view of such a creation of peers, but basically the House of Lords as a power disappeared in 1832.
What the debate is about, or what it should be about, is whether one believes in two Chambers or whether one believes in one-chamber Government. This is the heart of the problem, for basically hon. Members opposite do not believe in any second Chamber, whether hereditary or not. That is what the storm is about on the other side.
On the other hand, we on this side believe implicity in a second Chamber. This is hardly surprising, because in the period immediately after the war and during the last few years, both periods of Labour rule, it is almost impossible to conceive what would have happened to the legislative processes had there not been a second Chamber to digest some of the legislation which has come from this House.
We want a second Chamber which is effective and which is more powerful than the present House of Lords, which, as I have said, can be so easily overwhelmed. Do the White Paper proposals achieve that end? There is much in these proposals which is bad. There is also much in them which is quite good.
Curiously enough, the essential for a member of the second Chamber—here I will cross swords with hon. Members opposite—is that he should not be elected. If he is, not elected, but appointed, he will soon learn that all the democratic processes about whose beneficial results we hear so much do not perpetually sway him into making decisions which he believes are in accordance with the wishes of his constituents or which follow the party line. Although this is an unpopular view, I cannot believe that any second Chamber will ever be effective, unless it consists of people who do not owe their position to that of election.
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I find it very difficult to agree with those on this side who propose that the regions should elect Members to the House of Lords. I cannot conceive any system more designed to produce sectional rather than national interests, or more designed to create a Chamber looking inward rather than outward, which should be the function of a second Chamber.
It is no exaggeration to say that the White Paper is not a success. It is perhaps on the right lines in many ways, but not good enough for a House of Lords so reformed ever to work effectively. My right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell), in a remarkable speech, condemned the White Paper, because it was illogical in its proposals. But he then justified the House of Lords as it exists now because it works, although it ought not to do so.
There is a curiosity here. We are thrashing round about a subject when we ought to be looking at the fundamentals of what we want. Neither side will firmly pose and answer these questions: Do we want a second Chamber? Is it to be elected or non-elected? Of whom is it to consist? All this indecision and imprecision leads me to the conclusion that this matter is one which should be considered by the Commission which is to consider the Constitution before this White Paper is put into legislative form.
There is so much confusion, so much incomprehension and so much illogicality in the Government's present proposals that one cannot believe that they will lead to a Bill which could create a second Chamber which would be universally respected, which, more than anything else, is the quality which a second Chamber must have.
9.1 p.m.
Mr. Eric S. Heffer: First, I have one or two comments to make on the speech of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Services. As usual, coming from my right hon. Friend, it was a brilliant speech, though a very curious one and remarkable in the sense that only he could suggest that the House of Lords was carrying out a useful Socialist purpose. No one but my right hon. Friend could have come up with that idea. It

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was very much in line with similar ideas which he developed in regard to the Prices and Incomes Act, which, he said, if I recall aright, was a great step forward in the advance towards Socialism. A curious doctrine. I am sorry that my right hon. Friend is not here to hear me make that comment. Obviously, I did not send him a note to say that I should make it, because I thought that he would be in his place.
My right hon. Friend made another point which calls for comment. He said that the White Paper proposals are a compromise between the three political parties. True, the discussions did not reach finality because they were broken off as a result of the action of the Lords on the Rhodesia sanctions Order. Nevertheless, they had gone a long way with the compromise. My right hon. Friend said that the remarkable feature of the discussions was that no one on either side had really given anything away to the other; it was remarkable how far they had compromised without anyone giving up his principles.
I do not know how anyone can compromise on a question of basic principle without giving up something. What did we give up? We gave up abolition of the delaying power of the House of Lords. It was reduced from a year to six months, but still retained. True, it will be spread over and, therefore, is not so very important, but it is none the less clear that we gave something up. In my view, we gave up a good deal more than that. This is why right hon. and hon. Members opposite, certainly on the Front Bench, are enthusiastic supporters of the compromise which was reached.
I ask the House to look into these matters a bit more deeply. In particular, I ask those of my hon. Friends who support the White Paper to look into the history of the Labour Party's attitude to the House of Lords. Some of my hon. Friends seemed to give the impression that at all stages of its history the Labour Party had merely wanted the reform of the House of Lords. But that is not the history of the Labour Party in relation to the House of Lords. The matter was first discussed at any length at the Labour Party conference in June, 1918, when the programme that I think was called "Socialism in the Future" or "Labour in the New Social Order" was decided.
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An amendment to Resolution No. 11 was carried unanimously, calling for the abolition of the House of Lords and the establishment of a one-Chamber democratic system. That was the policy.
Mr. Emrys Hughes: It was also the policy of the Labour Party 12 years earlier, in 1906.
Mr. Heffer: My hon. Friend goes a little further back than I do in the history of the Labour Party.
My point, which he has underlined, is that, like a red thread running through its history, the Labour Party has constantly urged the abolition of the House of Lords. The conferences of 1928, 1933 and 1937 in different ways urged the abolition of the House of Lords.
We did not abolish the House of Lords between 1945 and 1951, but we made certain inroads. It is interesting that the question of the future of the House of Lords always comes up during a reforming Government. It does not come up when the Conservative Party is in office, because then the House of Lords is like a great giant sleeping. It stirs now and again, but not very often.
However, when there is a reforming Government it stirs a great deal. The Parliament Act of 1911 had to do with reform of the House of Lords, and the then Prime Minister, Asquith, had to get the King reluctantly to accept that he might create 700 peers so that Asquith could get his legislation through. [An HON. MEMBER: "Not 700, but 600."] It may be 600. I cannot remember the exact numbers, but it was a lot of peers. In 1947 reforms were introduced by the Labour Government, but it took two years, because of hold-ups in the other place, to get them through.
It is said that on this occasion we are carrying out the reform very kindly, that there is no great feeling, because there is no constitutional crisis. [An HON. MEMBER: "There is no reform."] My hon. Friend has taken the words out of my mouth. There could have been a constitutional crisis because of the Rhodesia Order, but there was not, because the other place decided that it was wiser not to cause one. The right hon. Member for Barnet (Mr. Maudling) stressed this point when he said the House of Lords cannot now use the powers that

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it has. But when the new compromise is in operation, the powers can be used. In other words, the powers the other place now has cannot be used because it would not be sensible to use them. But we shall give the new House of Lords more powers, in a sense, than it has ever had, and which it can and will use.
What are we creating? Is it in line with the concept of abolishing the House of Lords or even leading to its abolition? The other suggestion is that we are to have more Cabinet Ministers and junior Ministers in the other place and then joint committees. But to whom will the nominated members of the other place be responsible? To the electorate? The hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Viscount Lambton) was honest about it. He said that they should not be responsible to anyone but themselves. That is an élitist view, an old-fashioned view, an anti-democratic view, but a view which one would logically expect coming from a Lord sitting on the benches opposite. But it is not the view on this side and it is not a democratic view. It is not right that anyone in the other place, nominated or hereditary, should not be responsible to someone.
I am in favour of a second Chamber, but if we have one then I believe it must be elected. If we are not to have an elected second Chamber, then let us abolish it altogether, and if, in this immediate situation, we are faced with some necessary revision, then I have a simple answer—abolish the delaying powers. Let the Lords continue for the time being, looking at our legislation, but do not perpetuate them and strengthen them on the basis of these proposals.
I feel horrified to think that we shall be putting immense power in the hands of the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and the Leader of the Liberal Party by these proposals. I give an example of what happens now under the patronage system. Every hon. Member knows this. Someone comes up to one and says, "Look here, you are Ministerial calibre". I have had it said to me often enough. But that line does not wash with some hon. Members. They may be Ministerial calibre, but they will decide on it in their own time. Some
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hon. Members remain silent and become good lads.
We are now being asked to extend patronage. We are now to have not only a system where someone says to an hon. Member, "Look here, you are Ministerial calibre". We are to let him say, also, "The next time you lose your seat you will end up in the other place." So we may have a double advantage. We shall have Ministerial calibre and a stake in the other place as well.
I do not think that this is "on". I do not think that we can accept this situation. If we are to have a second Chamber, it really must be elected. I am not asking for direct or indirect elections. At this moment, I have no idea how the election should be done. All I can say is that I think that it should be elected. I am opposed to the concept of a nominated second Chamber.
Again, if we have a second Chamber, its members must have a fair salary. If they do not, we shall have again the situation where the only people who can be in it are those who can afford it, and that would be quite wrong. I am in favour of a second Chamber, but on different terms from those suggested in the White Paper.
I understand that there is a rumour going around that we may now be asked to vote for the White Paper tomorrow night. I am very sorry, but I cannot see my way to vote for the Motion. I shall be voting for the Amendment. It is logical and it states my position. I shall support it whatever the consequences and I feel that in so doing I shall be carrying on the tradition of the Labour movement and the Labour Party. We have to stick to our basic principles on issues of this kind. That is why I feel that, whatever we do and whatever proposals arise in future, they will ultimately lead to the abolition of the other place and the establishment of a democratic second Chamber in line with the views of my party.
9.15 p.m.
Mr. Esmond Wright: We have spent some six hours in debate and it may be proper to say at this stage that there has been an overwhelming consensus, with only one

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clear voice in dissent, that the Government should take back these proposals and think again.
Because time is short, I shall address my remarks to the speech of the hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Mr. Chapman), the one coherent speech in favour of the White Paper, although with some important reservations. He built his case on two points. One was that we must build on what we have. In many ways, we would all want to go along with that, especially when we call ourselves as he does not, Conservatives. Of course, we build on what we have, but what I question is the arrogance of this Chamber and the arrogance of the two Front Benches telling us what the character of that second Chamber shall be. I use the word "arrogance" advisedly, because I believe it to be appropriate.
I think that it was Edmund Burke and, incidentally, some inaccurate historical references have been passed across the Chamber today, but I will not correct the hon. Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes) about the number of dukes who moved south in 1745; there was none—who in the 18th century said that the tyranny of the multitude was a multiplied tyranny. Today the tyranny of the Executive is ever more multiplied tyranny and I am very much afraid when that Executive gets strange and unholy allies from the Opposition Front Bench.
The second ground is the last-year-of-the-Government argument. We heard this from the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer). This is the 1947 parallel. I ask the House to remember that there have been two occasions, in 1947, two years having gone and the end of a Government visibly coming up, and again today, four years having gone and the end of a Government coming up, when two Labour Governments have not talked about the need for a new constitution, but have made an attack on the Upper House. I want to pin my own arguments to this central point.
Yesterday, we discussed votes at 18 and the whole character of representation. A Commission on the Constitution is to be established which will look forward to some two years or more. Are we seriously to say, as the Secretary of State began the debate by saying, that we should introduce this fantastic suggestion
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of a revised and transformed Upper House and in two years, when that Commission reports, do it again? What are the Government thinking about and what will the country think of it if we in this House arrogate to ourselves this sort of stupid silly powers?
Let me list a few of the arguments in the White Paper. I shall not attempt to follow the admirable speech of the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) making the case for the history of the prescriptive rights of the Upper Chamber. He used a very important word, because when we consider an Upper Chamber, whatever name we give to it—a senate—we must consider it on a basis of election or selection different from that of the people who send us here.
Otherwise it is simply a copy, a rubber stamp, and almost every speech today has hinted at this fear of it being a rubber stamp. I suggest that there must be a different franchise. As a great many have said, it does not fall to us to offer alternative proposals. If we did offer them, I would go some way with the hon. Member for Walton in suggesting that there should be an elected second chamber, whether directly or indirectly, to which I would like to see some element of hereditary principle attached.
We are talking here of interests. There is an interest, in the historical sense of that word, which the peers represent—the interest of tradition, the interest of 700 years, the interest of variety and the interest of land. If we are to consider a chamber which represents business and churches—we have had them all proposed today—why not land itself? This is an important feature in our upper house.
Mr. Heffer: To take that to its logical conclusion, would the hon. Gentleman agree that we would have to have hereditary miners and dockers?
Mr. Wright: We could spend a long time on these Utopian proposals, and I was saying this as an aside. If there is to be an upper House which is in some measure directly or indirectly elected, I see no reason why it should not represent the regions or the constituent nations of this country. I want to dissent from my noble Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Viscount Lambton)

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in his assumption that a regional chamber is in some degree a divisive body.
Tell that to the Senate of the United States; tell that, until recently at least, to the Council in France. These are elected by totally different constituents or from different areas, from the lower Houses in those two countries. They have a regional background and interest. They used to talk in the United States about "senators for oil" or "senators for timber." But, once there, they represent the national interest.
The whole history of the upper House indicates that at times it represents and speaks for the national interest as, at times, this House does not. We have talked about the danger of delay and there has been an arrogance on the Front Bench in saying that we must not give them powers X or powers Y. Let me remind the House that there are moments when one needs to exercise delay. We may never on either side in this place know when those moments are, but since history has been quoted I would remind the House that the area known as Ulster exists only because there was between 1911 and 1914 a delaying power exercised.
If that power had not been there Ulster would have been absorbed, under the Government of Ireland Act 1914, into the whole of independent Ireland for good or ill, whatever views we take of it. The whole history of the area would have been transformed. Let us remember that Ulster exists and is growing more and more viable because of the delaying powers applied in 1911.
I want to press the point a little further. Unfortunately there is no time to go right through this White Paper, which was more an indication of the days when the Secretary of State for Social Services was still a don, rather than the practical statesman as he presents himself today.
Let me itemise two or three points which have already been touched upon. I am very frightened by patronage, as I think most Members are. I do not accept the argument that there is a Committee supervising the patronage. We live, and we know it, in an ultra-bureaucratic society, and a great many of those bureaucrats are at the beck and call of
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the Executive. I am not attacking individuals here. This is a danger which will arise whichever party is in power.
The great theme of this debate has been that this is a talking shop. We have had some humorous and delightful examples of that—a curb on the Executive, not a party to its antics. If there is a vote, as I hope there will be tomorrow, I appeal to hon. Members to go into the Lobby against the White Paper in order to say to the Government that in two, three or four years there may be a big constitutional proposal to make about the whole character of Britain. That will be the moment to make this change.
9.25 p.m.
Mr. Robert Sheldon: The hon. Member for Glasgow, Pollok (Mr. Wright), like my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer), put the case for an elected second Chamber. I am not too sure about it. We are a country small in distances and relatively homogeneous, and, when second Chambers have been felt to be needed for countries less favoured than ours, the fact of our short distances and of our homogeneity of character may be one of the unusual factors which will make a second Chamber unnecessary. But the question of an elected second Chamber is not before us.
In discussing changes of the House of Lords, what particularly bothers me, and what I feel is most important, are not the changes in the House of Lords but those which will be brought about in the House of Commons. When my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Services stated 12 months ago that he was initiating discussions of the kind which have produced the White Paper, I was relatively enthusiastic. I felt that with his background in reform of many of our procedures, he would look at the matter fro mthe point of view, not just of what we can do with the House of Lords, but what is required of Parliament in these modern times and how we can make Parliament the instrument for responsible and informed legislators, which it should be. It was in this respect that I found my greatest disappointment when I read the White Paper.
Reform has only just started. One of the first things which I had hoped to see as a result of Lords reform and of

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many reforming procedures initiated by my right hon. Friend was the views of hon. Members in discussing and promoting legislation. We know that at present the views of hon. Members are sought only in order to counter a potential revolt. We cannot have 630 Members of Parliament paid at the rate of £3,250 a year being limited to this minor long-stop position with immense theoretical power which is very rarely used. Therefore, as a result of the kind of reform which I hoped to see from my right hon. Friend, I expected a participation in much more of the day-to-day working of the legislative processes and of the administrative machine.
One thing which I expected from my right hon. Friend's reforms was a much more effective use of Members' time. Unlike my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Mr. Chapman), I do not think that what we need is the help of the Lords. We need a much more effective way of using the present 630 Members. This is a very large Legislature, larger than that in the Congress and Senate of the United States and that of many other countries. But it is most inefficiently and ineffectively used.
At a time when we are asking the House of Lords to help us in the problem of running the legislative machine, we have the nonsense of Standing Committees with 20 silent men on one side and 20 filibustering men on the other. This is no way in which to discuss legislation if there is a shortage of Members of Parliament. If there are large numbers of Members of Parliament, then this wastefulness can be afforded. It may well be that having such a large number as 630 Members of Parliament has permitted us to continue this wasteful use of manpower, so that we are faced with the final absurdity of having to cut down specialist Select Commitees because of this waste of manpower.
We also hoped, as the result of reform, for the opportunity for better examination of legislation, the ability to interrogate and the ability to question civil servants on the background of their reasoning, so that when hon. Members come to discuss the Bill they will be better informed. It is not necessary to have assistance from the House of Lords in order to do this. There are hon. Members who are willing and anxious
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to be used in this way but who are less willing and less anxious to be part of the silent or filibustering teams seen in the Standing Committees. If we should need the views of the outstanding men who, it is held, are often to be found in the House of Lords, then a Standing Committee ought to be able to call on these men of great wisdom and understanding rather than to use them just because they happen to be there. Their views could then be exposed for examination, interrogation and debate, and this is the way in which to approach the informed legislation which should be the aim of us all.
My great hope as a result of the reforms is that we may find ourselves able to undertake a proper examination of the choices before us. This is crucial. The Government do not now undertake the proper examination of the choices before us. We therefore had the absurdity of the January cuts, the agony of trying to save £30 million by the postponement of the raising of the school leaving age, the agony of trying to save £25 million on prescription charges and then, one month later, finding that the estimates had risen during the year by £500 million or more, so making a nonsense of our minor savings. We need to examine the choices. If we have the choice of spending £30 million out of a total revenue of £10,000 million, we have the right to say that we prefer to spend the £30 million in this way rather than in that way.
Mr. Speaker: Order. With respect, the hon. Gentleman must come to the White Paper.
Mr. Sheldon: I was trying to say, Mr. Speaker, that such choices ought to have been the result of the reform of our procedure, part of which is incorporated in House of Lords reform. The question of choice is central to any reform of Parliament.
In giving the projected House of Lords the greater powers, it must be remembered that any increase in the power of the House of Lords automatically means a reduction in the power of the House of Commons. There is only a certain amount of power at any one time which the people of this country give to the Parliamentary machine. If the House of Lords is to have greater power to use

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than in the past, then there will be a reduction in the power of this House, and this I would totally oppose.
What bothers me about patronage is not its effect on peers in the House of Lords but its effect on members of Parliament in this House. I am not a purist in the matter of patronage. I know that there is obviously an area within which patronage is necessary in order to ensure the working of the legislative process. However, I recall also that no Government have fallen since 1940, so there has been no great shortage of patronage, and this has been added to since that time.
Although I can understand that there may be a case for a small increase of patronage to help the machine work more effectively in minor matters such as getting certain business through smoothly and manning late sittings, there is no case for any big increase in patronage. Indeed, there are many who think that there is a strong case for reducing it. Within whatever limits it may be, no one has argued for a large increase in patronage. Because of that, I feel that it can have the most deleterious effects on the way in which the other place works.
It is not just a matter of the money, important though that may be. It is not only a question of position. It is the relationship between the two Houses which concerns me.
Much has been made of the retiring age of 72. However, the year in which a member retires from voting in the House of Lords is not that in which he reaches the age of 72 but the end of the Parliament in which he becomes 72. That will mean an average retiring age from active voting of 74 or 75. If one thinks of appointments being made to those in the early 60s, one can visualise an average life span in the House of Lords of 10 to 15 years. That is a long time compared with the average life span of Members of this House. If we find ourselves in joint committees, with the experience of the long-term Parliamentary processes possessed by Members of the House of Lords in addition, possibly to previous experience in this House, we may find ourselves in a not very enviable position. In that way, there could be a fundamental shift in the importance of Members of
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this House compared with that of Members of the other place.
My right hon. Friend said at one stage that this might be a temporary arrangement and that there would be other changes to come. I think that we can consider experiments in matters concerning Select Committees, Standing Committees and the sittings of the House, but we cannot experiment with the Constitution. When we change it, we change it for a very long time.
This House will not willingly go through the agonies of deciding the future of the other place every few years in the way that it is able to discuss the position of certain Standing Committees and other minor matters. One must remember that the appetites of Members of this House and of people outside it are limited. We can play about with reforms of one kind or another, but we cannot do it for ever and, when we do it, we must get it right. That is the problem of the reformer which faces all right hon. and hon. Members on this side of the House. Those on the benches opposite do not have to think in anything like the same way. We have not only to think matters through but to get them right at the same time. If we do not, not only is the reform dulled, but the appetite for other reforms is also dulled. That is the great burden of the reformer, and it cannot be avoided.
The power being presented by the increase in patronage is one which the Prime Minister will find added to that which he already possesses if this White Paper is approved. I am not very worried about that. What worries me is that, in years to come, there will be a Prime Minister who is more avid for power than those of recent years have been. We must be aware that the weapons that we are providing for his use at some time in future could be used with great effect and to the great disadvantage of this House. The increase of Cabinet Ministers from the other House is also part of this encroaching power of the House of Lords.
Many of us came into this House after fighting a pretty gruelling campaign. When we fought for the right to represent our constituencies we did not think that we would have to fight the democratic process over again in this House.

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Having fought our elections at constituency level, if this legislation goes through, we are likely to find at the end of the day that the battle still has to be continued here. This we ought not to accept.
9.42 p.m.
Mr. Charles Fletcher-Cooke: The most important sentence in the debate seemed to me to be uttered by the mover of the Amendment, the hon. Member for Fife, West (Mr. William Hamilton). He explained in some detail the different discussions that had taken place in the Labour Party. He said that of all the proposals that had been put forward, and of those that had been criticised, there was absolute unanimity on the back benches of the Labour Party that they would have nothing to do with a nominated and salaried second Chamber.
If that is true—and there is no reason to disbelieve the hon. Member—these proposals are dead, because there are many on this side of the House who will have nothing to do with it, either.
The precedent for this debate, as was pointed out by the right hon. and learned Member for Ipswich (Sir Dingle Foot) comes in the report of the Bryce Commission. The recommendations of the Bryce Commission are extremely apposite to what we have to discuss tonight. That Commission, which had a very distinguished membership, discussed all the alternative methods of proposing a new second Chamber.
Although the Commission published a very long Report, it is significant that it dismissed in six lines the possibility of a nominated second Chamber. It was considering even in those days—1917—that the Members should be salaried. I regard this as an important distinction between the present system of nomination by the Prime Minister for peerages and the proposals in the White Paper. It makes all the difference to the power of patronage if a salary is paid.
I draw attention to the fact that the Bryce Report also envisaged the payment of Members of the second Chamber. In the very short paragraph 12, the Bryce Report reads:
"The first method was that of nomination by the Crown acting through its Ministers. This plan appeared unlikely to find favour with the country, because it did not provide
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any guarantees for the fitness of the persons who might be nominated and because it would be liable to be frequently employed as a reward for political party services. Nor was it held that a provision requiring that the persons to be nominated should be taken from certain prescribed categories would furnish an answer to these objections."
I suppose that we have become so blunted and corrupted now by patronage that we do not have the same horror as Lord Bryce and his distinguished colleagues had. But we must remember whom he was addressing. He was addressing—and no doubt his colleagues had this in mind—none other than Mr. Lloyd George, and six lines were a sufficient shot across the bows to alert the country about the possibilities of the further corruption of the House of Commons if there were to be a nominated and salaried second Chamber, to use the words of the mover, the hon. Member for Fife, West.
It is said that nobody would behave as Mr. Lloyd George did behave. That may be true. It may be that the shadow of Maundy Gregory no longer lurks in the coulisses of this place. Nevertheless, we have some experience of patronage in recent years.
Mr. Emrys Hughes: The charge against Lloyd George was that he created too many Tory Press Lords.
Mr. Fletcher-Cooke: Whatever he created, I think there was no doubt that he created too many, and too many bad ones, but I think my point remains that in those days it required only six lines of a long Report to dismiss the scheme which the Government are now putting forward. I suggest that the same circumstances, though not the same corruption, exists today, and I do not think that a distinguished supervisory commission which the White Paper envisages will be a sufficient sanction.
We know the extent to which the Administration have been swollen in recent years. The numbers in the Administration at present, salaried and nominated, are enormous, and this does not give us any great confidence that the powers of patronage will not be used or that any committee could stop them from being used in the way that many hon. Members on the back benches opposite have so vividly described from their personal experiences in the last year or two. The hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton

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(Mr. Heffer) was particularly effective in his example of what happened to him personally.
It is asking too much of human nature to suppose that on a Division such as we are to have tomorrow night the lure of £2,000 a year, for that is the figure that is often mentioned, for about eight to 12 hours a week, for perhaps 12 years, is not very considerable indeed. Anything which increases the power of patronage, which I hold to be too great already over Members of the House, perhaps not very large in bulk, but it will loom very large in the prospects of many hon. Members, condemns these proposals. I think that it would make quite a good House of Lords, but it would make a very bad House of Commons, and to my mind the House of Commons is more important than the House of Lords.
I do not altogether agree with the objection to the Chamber that is suggested. Indeed, I think that it would be an extremely ingenious one, but to my mind it is nullified and the scales are tipped against the proposals because of this dangerous suggestion.
In opening the debate the right hon. Gentleman said that it was incumbent on those who disapprove of this power of nomination, as Lord Bryce and his Committee certainly did, to propose alternatives. I am not sure that that is so, but assuming it is let us examine the suggestions put forward by Lord Bryce. He examined them all. First, he examined the possibility of direct election. He came down against it because he said it would lead to the familiar dilemma that the upper Chamber in those circumstances would either be a rubber stamp, that is to say, a mint reflection of this Chamber, in which case it was unnecessary, or it would be opposed to this Chamber, in which case it would be very dangerous indeed.
The right hon. Gentleman dismissed it on the ground that it was suitable only for countries which indulged in the doctrine of the separation of powers, which followed the theories of de Tocqueville and others, and was suitable for the United States and for other federal systems.
I do not think that it has anything to do with the separation of power. The upper and lower Chambers are both part
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of a Legislature and the separation of powers is a doctrine that deals with the Executive and the judiciary, and not with the composition of the Legislature. That was, therefore, a foolish criticism.
There are plenty of second Chambers which are elected and which are not the product of federal constitutions. Most of the Europeans—the Low Countries and others—have second Chambers which have nothing to do with a federal system. Nevertheless, Lord Bryce rejected these suggestions and, although I regard them as far better than the nominated and salaried suggestion, he nevertheless did not like them; and who am I to quarrel with him?
Then Lord Bryce and his colleagues dismissed the election by local authorities, and on this one I am with their recommendation 100 per cent. God forbid that we should have that system of indirect election when, undoubtedly, there would be placed in the Upper House those members of local authorities whom the local authorities wished, for one reason or another, to shuffle off into honourable retirement.
Lord Bryce also discussed at great length—and none of this seems to appear in the White Paper, although it is extremely interesting—the idea of selection by a Joint Standing Committee of both Houses. I will not weary the House with that. Then came two systems, which are very interesting indeed, of election by the House of Commons, either directly—which he rejected on the grounds that it would become a purely party contest—or for hon. Members of the House of Commons to be divided into groups representing certain large divisions of the country, roughly today what we would describe as the regions, where they would meet in such groups to elect the persons whom they held to be best fitted to serve in the second Chamber.
It was considered by Lord Bryce that the dangers to which he had referred—of party contests, and so on—would be less likely to arise. They would be able to meet in friendly discussion and compromise to select persons who would better represent the different political parties from among men not active in party politics, but able, from their local knowledge and service, to consider current questions in a fair and impartial spirit.

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This was referred to as the "group scheme"—a scheme of election by geographical groups of hon. Members of the House of Commons, and that suggestion obtained the largest support of any other system. This was dismissed by the right hon. Gentleman earlier as being "abstruse and academic"—and so, in a sense, it is, but at least it would not produce the sort of corruption of our public life which I fear the present White Paper will indubitably do.
I suggest, therefore—if the Government will take these proposals back and think about them again—that there is a lot to be said for that scheme; certainly more than there is to be said for the White Paper, though not as much as my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) suggested in "leaving matters as they are".
If one is to leave matters as they are, then that should be done only until the Constitutional Commission has reported. In any event, the Government must widen the terms of reference of this Commission to consider the central part of the constitution. Having set up a Commission to consider the Constitution, how can the Government withdraw from the consideration of that Commission the most important, the heart, of our Constitution? We look forward to the Government's saying tomorrow—there would be no shame in this—that they have decided to reconsider the whole matter.
This is something which I would very much welcome, not only because I do not like this system but because it is quite right that Governments should put these large proposals before the House of Commons for our consideration without committing themselves to those proposals and then when they discover, as they must have discovered today, that a very large proportion of the House dislikes the proposals, there is no shame involved in taking them away and thinking of them again.
That is what we are here for. That is what the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Sheldon) said. He said in a very moving way that, having fought a hard election in 1964 and thinking that he had come here and won, he finds that he had to fight the battle for democracy all over again once he was
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here. Let him hope that this experience we have had today means that the fight in future will not be quite as heavy again as it has been in his life and perhaps in mine.
Today, within this Chamber, we have struck a considerable blow for democracy. Here has been a most remarkable debate with opinions going right across, and diagonally across, the Chamber, and no one can say that it has not been an exhiliarating experience to listen to it. The White Paper has had a trouncing. It has had an undeserved trouncing in many of its details because many of the proposals are ingenious and good. I think that the removal of the time delay on delegated legislation is a mistake, and that it is really an outrage to have tried to rush this thing through and make it effective before the next election.
Apart from that, and even apart from what I regard as the greatest objection of all, namely, the nominated and salaried Chamber, the proposals were extremely ingenious and good. In a way, I feel somewhat ashamed and sorry that those on both Front Benches who did such hard work in forming the later proposals should have had such a raw deal. But they should now admit that they were mistaken, that they misjudged the view of the House. In those circumstances, I think that they should take the proposals back.
I should say one last thing which does not have much to do with the debate. What I would say at this hour, Mr. Speaker, is this. Even though I think that the upper House should be elected in one form or another, if it is to be reformed, this may not apply to the same extent to the "cross-bencher" proposals. The idea of election of cross-benchers is really a contradiction in terms if people care to pause to think about it. There is a case for their nomination, but that depends on the whole scheme—which has been riddled to sinking point—going through. But if it is to continue I hope that there will be elections of the party members, or elections for all except a reserved number of seats—perhaps the 30 proposed in the White Paper. But I think that if they are to remain as cross-benchers, they must be nominated.

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We would give tension to the difference between the Lords by giving a long period of service to the elected members. As Lord Bryce suggested, they should be elected for periods of 12 years with the sort of rotation they have in the Senate in the United States; that is to say, one third retiring every four years. In the United States, one third re tire every two years but our circumstances are not the same.
The Bryce Commission suggested that these elections by geographical groups of Members of the House of Commons should be for periods of 12 years but that there should be a roulement, and one third should retire every four years. One can, of course, elaborate that like the Abbe Siéyés indefinitely—he was a great constitution maker—and it is everyone' privilege and fun to make his own constitution with his own kith.

That this House wishes to congratulate all the police who were on duty in London on 27th October 1968 for their efficiency good discipline and tolerance under great provocation; requests Mr. Speaker to send a letter of commendation on behalf of the whole House to all concerned especially thanking those who gave up their leave periods to be on duty; and furthermore wishes to place on record their admiration of the Chief Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police who in the interests of the liberty of all Her Majesty's subjects decided not to invoke his powers to ban the demonstration.

I beg formally to move the Motion.
Mr. Speaker: May I announce that I have not selected the Amendments in the name of the hon. Member for West Ham, North (Mr. Arthur Lewis): In line 1, after 'congratulate', insert
'the Government, the Home Secretary and'.
and in line 5, after 'of', insert
'the Government, the Home Secretary and'.
Question put and agreed to.

HIGHWAY CODE
Adjourned debate on Question [18th November] further adjourned till Tomorrow.

SENOR ANTONIO ARGUEDAS
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Fitch.]
10.2 p.m.
Mr. Stan Newens: The matter I wish to raise is not a trivial issue of purely local importance but one which
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I would, as I say, welcome some sort of elected second Chamber with a leavening by cross-benchers who are nominated, because I think they have to be, and with a levelling of judges and bishops and the hereditary members—
It being Ten o'clock, the debate stood adjourned.
Debate to be resumed Tomorrow.
Mr. Speaker: May I observe that have been able to call 24 speakers today because speeches have been reasonably brief. I do not think that the debate has suffered.

THANKS TO THE POLICE
10.0 p.m.
Sir Charles Taylor: I beg to move,
has national and even international implications of importance. It concerns the visit to this country between 27th July and 2nd August this year of Señor Antonio Arguedas, who up to a month previously had been the Bolivian Minister of the Interior in the Administration of General Barrientos.
Señor Arguedas fell from power when it came to light that he had sent to President Castro of Cuba photostats of the campaign diary kept by Major Ernesto Guavara, the Latin-American revolutionary Socialist and guerrilla leader, who was apparently killed in cold blood in a remote part of Bolivia after his capture on 7th October, 1967. When Señor Arguedas' action came to light, a Government crisis occurred in Bolivia and he fled to Chile, where he was given temporary asylum. Approaches were apparently made to Argentina and other Latin-American countries considered as refuges but these all fell through.
Eventually it was settled that Señor Arguedas should go to New York via London and he travelled on a B.U.A. plane which arrived at Gatwick Airport on the evening of Saturday, 27th July.

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On the plane Señor Arguedas was accompanied by two escorts, a Chilean by the name of Señor Pizarro Barrios and an employee of the United States Central Intelligence Agency, Señor Nicolas Leondivas.
When the plane landed at Madrid it appears that Señor Arguedas managed to contact the Cuban charge d'affaires, who informed him of the offer of asylum made by Fidel Castro. Señor Arguedas, however, was anxious to go to New York but agreed to discuss various matters with the Cuban in London. However, the Cuban representative was unable to obtain a seat on the plane and arranged by telephone that a representative of the Cuban Embassy in London should go to Gatwick Airport with the objective of meeting Señor Arguedas on his arrival. This he did, but when Señor Arguedas arrived, he was taken to an office while the question of his admission to Britain was discussed.
Although the Cuban representative made every effort to see him, he was unable to do so. Señor Arguedas apparently left the airport with one or both of the escorts. No one has yet explained satisfactorily why he changed his mind between Madrid and London on this meeting, and the inference is obvious. My information is that at the airport all negotiations on his behalf were, in fact, carried on by the escorts and he was not directly interviewed at all by British officials. He would have preferred to have proceeded on to New York without this stay.
After leaving the airport Señor Arguedas went to the Hotel Apollo, where he was registered, again by his escort, under his mother's name, Mendieta.
I personally became interested in the question on 29th July, in my capacity as Chairman of the Movement for Colonial Freedom, which follows events in most developing countries. I made inquiries at the Home Office. I was informed that Señor Arguedas's address, quite rightly, could not be given to me, but the Home Office agreed to pass on a letter to him, which I wrote and delivered by hand. In that letter I invited Señor Arguedas to meet me and gave him information to enable him to contact me. On the next day Señor Faevich, who was Señor Arguedas's lawyer, arrived at Gatwick,
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and again approaches were made to the Home Office producing a similar reply. Señor Faevich was advised to contact the Immigration Department at the Home Office on the following morning.
On Wednesday, 31st July, I again contacted the Home Office and asked whether a meeting could be arranged in the presence of Home Office officials without revealing Señor Arguedas's hotel. I was told that this would be put before the predecessor of my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary, who was away for the day. However, on 1st July I was informed that Señor Arguedas had met the Bolivian and Cuban Ambassadors on the previous day. On 3rd August I received a letter from my hon. Friend's predecessor enclosing my letter to Señor Arguedas, on which he had written a reply assuring me that his life was not in danger but denouncing United States imperialism.
I was naturally concerned about the difficulties placed in my way and wished to reassure myself that Señor Arguedas was not acting under duress. I was not entirely surprised when, in an interview given after his return to La Paz, Señor Arguedas made statements indicating that he had been prevented from freely communicating with outside parties, that he had been subjected to threats and moral pressure, and that he had been asked to give guarantees before communicating with Home Office officials and the Bolivian and Cuban Ambassadors in London.
It further became clear that Señor Arguedas was removed from the Hotel Apollo to an establishment at Richmond Hill, which I afterwards managed to identify as the Richmond Hill Hotel. Here, he was registered under a false name—Antonio Perez, the passport number for which was given in a Question tabled by the hon. Member for Richmond, Surrey (Mr. A. Royle). Apparently two gentlemen who accompanied him were registered as Mr. Petrelli Suarey and Mr. Stead.
I want to ask my hon. Friend whether the Home Office was aware of all these facts at the time and what investigations have been made since about these registrations in false names and about the passport numbers which were used. Will

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my hon. Friend explain the reasons why this action was taken?
Having considered these facts, would anyone in his right mind deny that the information which has been placed before the House justifies a full and proper inquiry to ascertain what actually occurred, particularly in view of the widespread knowledge of C.I.A. involvement, which has been added to by the information given by Señor Arguedas since the events to which I have referred? I recognise that the statements which he made could all have contained falsehoods. However, I have checked them on a number of points and my investigations have completely proved the truth of the allegations at those points. For example, on the question of the Richmond Hill Hotel, Señor Arguedas did not give that name, but investigations revealed that what he said accorded entirely with the facts.
If we were dealing with an organisation like the Girl Guides, and not the C.I.A., it might well be argued that the idea of interrogating people under moral pressure was preposterous; but the C.I.A. has never been renowned for high standards of veracity. For years, denial after denial was issued about the use of C.I.A. money to subsidise or infiltrate student, labour and cultural groups, but in 1967 the whole story came out, and Mr. Thomas Braden, a Californian newspaper publisher, actually claimed credit for it. Again, reports were denied that the general strike which took place in Guyana in 1963 against Dr. Cheddi Jagan was financed by the C.I.A., but they were later shown to be true, and the money was shown to have been channelled through the Public Services International, which has its offices in London.
Bearing in mind the obvious reluctance of the directors of the C.I.A. to be identified as practising their trade in Britain, there is cause here for great concern. Everyone who is familiar with the developing countries knows that the commitment of the C.I.A. is enormous. Fortunately, the organisation is not always successful, but it remains true that many of the coups and attempted coups which have taken place in developing countries throughout the last 10 or 15 years have involved the C.I.A.
Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman must come back to Ministerial responsibility.
Mr. Newens: Yes, Mr. Speaker. I was just endeavouring to show that it would not be unusual to find that the C.I.A. was interested in a gentleman who previously had held high office in a developing country. It is clear that the extent of the involvement of the C.I.A. in Bolivia whence this gentleman came was considerable.
No British Government should be prepared to allow foreign agents, whether Russian, American or any other, to carry out their duties on British soil. In the case of Señor Arguedas, there is overwhelming evidence that this occurred. If the Home Office did not know what was happening at the time when the former Bolivian Minister of the Interior was in the country and considered that my doubts had been satisfactorily dealt with by the action taken, it is clear that a serious review is required of the way in which cases of this kind are handled. If Señor Arguedas was treated in this way—if the facts which I have put before the House tonight are correct—there may be many other people, perhaps not coming to the notice of Members of Parliament, who may be subjected to similar or even worse treatment. There have been many instances of that kind recorded as having taken place in other countries.
We in this House have a right to be satisfied on these issues. It is difficult to imagine that agents of the U.S.S.R., for example, in a position equivalent to that of C.I.A. agents, would bring their victims to this country. But, if they did, it is extremely doubtful, one hopes, that they would be permitted to behave in the way in which the escorts of Señor Arguedas did. In the circumstances, we in Britain should insist on the same treatment for the agents of any foreign Power which seeks to operate on British soil.
In my view, the facts which I have put to the House tonight are of sufficient importance and give rise to sufficient concern to justify a full inquiry into all the issues which they raise. Hon. Members have a right to be assured that the British Government will in no way permit agents of any foreign Power to operate on British soil. Without such an assurance, serious

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concern would be felt among many sections of our population.
I make no apology for bringing this case before the House, and I look forward to hearing what my hon. Friend has to say.
10.15 p.m.
The Under Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Merlyn Rees): I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Epping (Mr. Newens) is greatly concerned about the circumstances of the case of Señor Arguedas, formerly Bolivian Minister of the Interior. He has shown great interest in the matter over the months before I had any responsibility for it.
I should like to make two points straight away. First, I can speak only for what I have responsibility for, and I am not responsible for the C.I.A. Second, I am aware that the gentleman is in prison in his home country.
Thee relevant facts are that Señor Arguedas arrived at Gatwick Airport on 27th July. He was accompanied on his journey from Chile by a Chilean police officer, who had been charged by his own authorities with the duty of safeguarding Señor Arguedas's physical safety during his journey, and who, having carried out his task, wished to return home as soon as possible. The circumstances of the journey of Senor Arguedas from Bolivia into Chile, following the matter of the Che Guevara diary, provided some grounds for the apprehensions entertained by Señor Arguedas and the Chilean authorities at that time.
Señor Arguedas was examined by an immigration officer in the proper manner, as were the other passengers on the plane. Señor Arguedas came to the immigration control in the company of the Chilean police officer, Señor Pizarro Barrios, but, while Señor Barrios presented a fully valid Chilean national passport, unfortunately the documentation held by Señor Arguedas was not in order.
He was not at that time in possession of a Bolivian national passport, although he obtained one during his stay in the United Kingdom, and the Chilean temporary travel document he presented was not in order for the purposes of our normal requirements.
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It was, accordingly, necessary for the immigration officer to see instructions, after interviewing Señor Arguedas to establish his intentions and future plans. Señor Arguedas told the immigration officer that he wished to stay in this country for a few days, during which time he hoped to obtain a Bolivian passport, and that he then planned to fly on to the United States of America, whence he hoped to return to Bolivia. He proposed to say at a London hotel while here, and Señor Barrios said that he would stay overnight and take the next available flight home the following day.
After consideration of the circumstances it was decided that Señor Arguedas should be admitted on the basis he had put forward, and he was asked to call at the Home Office early the following week to let us know how his arrangements were progressing. He and Señor Barrios then left the airport in a taxi on their way to London.
It has been suggested that facilities were provided at Gatwick Airport by the immigration authorities for the interrogation of Señor Arguedas by foreign intelligence agents. There is no truth whatever in this allegation.
Mr. Newens Mr. Newens I have never suggested that to my hon. Friend.
Mr. Rees: I carefully said "it has been suggested".
In view of all that has gone on, it is as well to get this clear. There is no truth in the suggestion. My hon. Friend has suggested in a Parliamentary Question that Señor Arguedas entered this country under the escort of Señor N. Leondiras, that Señor Leondiras was an employee of the C.I.A. and that Señor Arguedas was detained against his will. I think that we have now cleared up that matter. He was not interrogated by Señor Leondiras in the way suggested.
Mr. Newens: Is my hon. Friend suggesting that he was not interrogated by Señor Leondiras at any time during the period of his stay? Could my hon. Friend say something about Señor Leondiras and where he stayed?
Mr. Rees: I must complete what I have to say in 15 minutes, and I have only got to the airport. Let us get that over first.

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I will deal, first, with the circumstances in which Mr. Leondiras, who is a United States national, was admitted to the United Kingdom on 29th July. He travelled on the same plane as Señor Arguedas, but he did not come through the immigration control in the company of Señor Arguedas, and he was admitted in the normal way as a visitor. He most certainly took no part in any examination at the Airport. I understand that he left the airport some time before the departure of Señor Arguedas.
The immigration officer did not provide facilities for Señor Arguedas to be interviewed by anyone, including the representatives of the Press who were present, and any suggestion of this or something like it is without foundation.
I understand that Señor Arguedas, who was most anxious to avoid publicity, after spending a night at a London hotel, moved out to an hotel in Richmond, presumably because he thought it was less likely that he would be recognised there and so attract unwelcome attention. On 29th July, my hon. Friend spoke to my predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Mr. Ennals), and wrote to him, enclosing a communication which he desires should be handed to Señor Arguedas. In his covering letter my hon. Friend expressed his concern about the well-being of Señor Arguedas and his fears that Señor Arguedas was being detained against his will.
When Señor Arguedas called by appointment at the Home Office on 30th July, the letter from my hon. Friend was handed to Señor Arguedas who, I understand, responded with a courteous message. On the same day, the Cuban Ambassador had expressed concern to the Foreign Office and a desire to see Señor Arguedas; and the Bolivian Ambassador also expressed a wish to see him. These approaches from the two ambassadors were made known to Señor Arguedas at the Home Office on that day.
Señor Arguedas said that, in view of the Press publicity about his case, he wished his address to remain confidential but that he would be very willing to see the Ambassadors at some other place. Accordingly, it was arranged for the two ambassadors to see Señor Arguedas separately, on 31st July, on Foreign Of-
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fice premises and these interviews duly took place. I also understand tha, on the following day, 1st August, the Cuban Ambassador extended hospitality to Señor Arguedas. The fact that such hospitality could be extended could not exactly have happened to someone under duress.
On 2nd August, Señor Arguedas left this country for New York, and he subsequently returned to Bolivia. Since his return to Bolivia, Señor Arguedas is reported to have said that he was interrogated by the C.I.A. while in this country. I do not know whether, in fact, Señor Arguedas has said what he is reported to have said; but, if so, he must have reasons of his own for now taking this line.
I can only say that he made no mention of this to either Home Office or Foreign Office officials while he was in this country. He had every opportunity of doing so during his interview at the Home Office when only British Government officials were present. He had further opportunity during the course of the interviews I have mentioned with the Bolivian Ambassador and the Cuban Ambassador. During part of each interview British officials, including a Home Office representative, were present and, indeed, Señor Arguedas expressed appreciation of the treatment he had received while in this country.
Let us look further at these allegations. It is suggested that someone staying at an hotel as a private individual was subjected while a guest in that hotel to restraint and interrogation against his will by agents of the C.I.A., and that, nevertheless, he made no protest about this to Home Office or Foreign Office officials when the opportunity presented itself.
If Señor Arguedas did not wish to associate with other guests in the hotel or to have talks with them in private or in public and was being forced to do so against his will, the remedy was open to him which would be open to anyone else in this country in similar circumstances. He could have complained to the hotel management or to the police. As far as I am aware, Señor Arguedas did neither. Nor, so far as I am aware, did he make such a complaint to the Bolivian Ambassador or to the Cuban Ambassador. Indeed, he spoke to us,

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as I have said, of how well he was being treated in this country.
The hon. Gentleman the Member for Richmond, Surrey (Mr. A. Royle) tabled Questions about Señor Arguedas's registration at the hotel in an assumed named, and I undertook to make inquiries. The report I have since received from the police indicated that this was indeed the case.
Article 19 of the Aliens Order, 1953, as amended, places an obligation on all persons, irrespective of their nationality, of or over the age of 16 years who are staying at the premises, to inform the hotel keeper of his full name and nationality, and, in the case of an alien, also to inform him of the number and place of issue of his passport or other document establishing his identity and nationality.
Although there is an obligation to give the hotel keeper the specified information, this may be done personally or through a third party and either orally or in writing. The hotel keeper is placed under an obligation to keep for a period of a year a written record of such information and of the visitor's date of arrival.
It may be—and I use the word advisedly—that there has been an infringement of the requirements of Article 19 of the Aliens Order. If so, the question whether proceedings should be instituted is a matter for the police to determine and they would no doubt have to consider whether any action of this kind would now be appropriate in view of the fact that those concerned are no longer in the country. This, of course, is an academic matter.
Mr. Newens: Can my hon. Friend tell the House whether Señor Leondiras stayed at the same address?
Mr. Rees: That I cannot say. There was certainly somebody else staying with Señor Arguedas. But the point to get clear is that during that time Señor Arguedas met the Cuban Ambassador and the Bolivian Ambassador and everybody else whom I have mentioned and said not a word. Certainly there was no question of our keeping tracks on the man while he was here.
I said that I could not speak for the C.I.A., but I can assure my hon. Friend that we would certainly not allow any
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foreign intelligence service to intrude into our affairs. Our only concern is that anything which happens does not involve our national security; if it does, appropriate action is taken. It would be a great pity, however, if we were to forbid or restrict, as some countries do, social and business exchanges with foreign embassies because some of them might be seeking information for their own intelligence services, but we would certainly step in if our hospitality were being abused.
I have endeavoured to deal step by step with all of this question in which my hon. Friend shows a great interest. I am aware of his concern, but in looking at this afresh what moves me is that during the time that the man was in this country no representations were made. He met the Bolivian Ambassador and the Cuban Ambassador and there was a meeting at the Home Office; my hon. Friend himself wrote to him and we gave him his letter and no criticisms were made then. I am content that the responsibilities of the British Government and of my right hon. Friend at the ports were dealt with properly, and I hope that I have assured my hon. Friend about that.
Mr. Newens: Will my hon. Friend confirm that I myself expressed doubts throughout the whole period and that I was not entirely satisfied? Those doubts have now been confirmed by what my hon. Friend has said.
Mr. Rees: I confirm that my hon. Friend expressed doubts. Without being pompous—it is not for me to commend or otherwise—all I can say is that I have looked into this most carefully and in the man's entry to and exit from this country we acted properly and made arrangements quite properly while the man was in this country to be as helpful as we possibly could. Before he left this country, we were complimented on what we had done.
Mr. Peter M. Jackson: Would not my hon. Friend agree that there is a certain amount of corroborative evidence not only in the case of Señor Arguedas, but in the case of another South American, namely, Señor Faevich, whose room at the Hilton Hotel was searched? Surely that is a matter for concern.
Mr. Rees: If my hon. Friend can give me evidence that his room was searched, I shall inquire into the matter, but the inquiries which I have made do not confirm that. My hon. Friend is asserting that it happened, but I have no
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evidence from anything I have found that it did.
Question put and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at twenty-eight minutes past Ten o'clock.

OVERSEAS DEVELOPMENT
  Rhodesia
  Rhodesia
  Malaya (Pensions)
  Malaya (Pensions)
  Supplementary Financial Measures
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  Developing Countries (Inland Revenue Staff)
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  Overseas Civil Servants (School Fees)
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  Jordan (Hejaz Railway)
  Jordan (Hejaz Railway)
  Indonesia (Aid)
  Indonesia (Aid)
  Burmese Students
  Burmese Students
NATIONAL FINANCE
  International Monetary Fund Mission
  International Monetary Fund Mission
  Personal Consumption
  Personal Consumption
  Fruit Machines, Sporting Clubs (Licence)
  Fruit Machines, Sporting Clubs (Licence)
  Cigarette Smoking
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  Non-Ferrous Scrap Metal Trade
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  Pensions (Commutation)
  Pensions (Commutation)
  Euro-dollar Market
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  Consumers' Expenditure
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  Electric Golf Buggies (Purchase Tax)
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  Credit Facilities (Advertisements)
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  Rhodesian Stock
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  Selective Employment Tax (Inquiry)
  Selective Employment Tax (Inquiry)
  Unearned Income
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  Private Wealth (Distribution)
  Private Wealth (Distribution)
  Incomes (Purchasing Power)
  Incomes (Purchasing Power)
  Phonographic Equipment Company Ltd. (Dividends)
  Phonographic Equipment Company Ltd. (Dividends)
  £ Sterling
  £ Sterling
PUBLIC BUILDING AND WORKS
  House of Lords (Extension Schemes)
  House of Lords (Extension Schemes)
  Building Control Act, 1966 (Building Licences)
  Building Control Act, 1966 (Building Licences)
MINISTRY OF POWER
  Cwmynyscoy Quarry, Pontypool (Blasting)
  Cwmynyscoy Quarry, Pontypool (Blasting)
  Statutory Appointments
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ELECTRICITY
  Proposed Generating Station, Hams Hall
  Proposed Generating Station, Hams Hall
COAL
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LOCAL GOVERNMENT
  Gypsy Sites (Supervision)
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  Town and Country Planning Act (Appeal Procedure)
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  Advertisement Signs, Okehampton (Appeal)
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  Betterment Levy (Hotels)
  Betterment Levy (Hotels)
  Local Authorities (Exchequer Grants)
  Local Authorities (Exchequer Grants)
FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH AFFAIRS
  European Communities (Co-operation)
  European Communities (Co-operation)
  Demonstration, Central London (Australian Flag)
  Demonstration, Central London (Australian Flag)
  Nigeria
  Nigeria
  Detainees, Hong Kong
  Detainees, Hong Kong
  European Convention on Human Rights
  European Convention on Human Rights
  Ex-Sultan of Zanzibar
  Ex-Sultan of Zanzibar
AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD
  Agricultural Policy
  Agricultural Policy
  Sugar (Retail Prices)
  Sugar (Retail Prices)
  Butter (Retail Prices)
  Butter (Retail Prices)
  Egg Marketing Board
  Egg Marketing Board
  Import Saving
  Import Saving
SOCIAL SERVICES
  Domiciliary Medical Services
  Domiciliary Medical Services
  Drug Companies (Free Samples)
  Drug Companies (Free Samples)
  Medicines (Prices)
  Medicines (Prices)
HOSPITALS
  Rugby (Geriatric Beds)
  Rugby (Geriatric Beds)
  Capital Expenditure, Birmingham Region
  Capital Expenditure, Birmingham Region
  St. Cross Hospital, Rugby (Operating Cost)
  St. Cross Hospital, Rugby (Operating Cost)
MINISTRY OF DEFENCE
  British Forces Overseas (Costs)
  British Forces Overseas (Costs)
  Sonic Boom, St. Ives
  Sonic Boom, St. Ives
  RHODESIA (MINISTER'S VISIT)
  RHODESIA (MINISTER'S VISIT)
  MINISTERIAL SALARIES AND PARLIAMENTARY ALLOWANCES
  MINISTERIAL SALARIES AND PARLIAMENTARY ALLOWANCES
  RHODESIA
  RHODESIA
  LINESMAN AIR DEFENCE SYSTEM
  LINESMAN AIR DEFENCE SYSTEM
HOUSING
  Local Authority Rent Increases
  Local Authority Rent Increases
  PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES
  PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES
ECONOMIC AFFAIRS
  Unemployment, Northern Ireland
  Unemployment, Northern Ireland
EDUCATION AND SCIENCE
  Primary Schools, Basildon and Brentwood (Pupils)
  Primary Schools, Basildon and Brentwood (Pupils)
  Free School Meals
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  State Schools (Governing Bodies)
  Authors (Public Lending Right)
  Authors (Public Lending Right)
  Drama Schools
  Drama Schools
EMPLOYMENT AND PRODUCTIVITY
  Lithgows (Industrial Dispute)
  Lithgows (Industrial Dispute)
  Girlings (Industrial Dispute)
  Girlings (Industrial Dispute)
  Earnings
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HOME DEPARTMENT
  Departmental Letters to Members
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  Central Criminal Court Cases (Delays)
  Central Criminal Court Cases (Delays)
  Crimes of Violence
  Crimes of Violence
  Criminal Justice Act, 1967 (Bail)
  Criminal Justice Act, 1967 (Bail)
  Commonwealth Citizens (Employment Vouchers)
  Commonwealth Citizens (Employment Vouchers)
TECHNOLOGY
  Sonic Bangs (Cathedrals)
  Sonic Bangs (Cathedrals)
  Linesman and Mediator Systems
  Linesman and Mediator Systems
TELEPHONE SERVICE
  New Towns (Multi-purpose Cable Systems)
  New Towns (Multi-purpose Cable Systems)
BOARD OF TRADE
  Development Areas (Grant-Aided Plant and Machinery)
  Development Areas (Grant-Aided Plant and Machinery)
TRANSPORT
  Street Names
  Street Names
  Yugoslav Road Tax (British Goods Vehicles)
  Yugoslav Road Tax (British Goods Vehicles)
AVIATION
  Turnhouse Airport (Runway)
  Turnhouse Airport (Runway)

Preamble
The House met at half-past two of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR On the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Chichester.

LONDON TAXI-CAB DRIVERS' TESTS
LORD ST. JUST: My Lords, I beg leave 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 the test for cab drivers under the Metropolitan Public Carriage Act 1869 is still strictly enforced by the Commissioner of Police.]
THE MINISTER OF STATE, HOME OFFICE (LORD STONHAM)>: Yes, my Lords, these tests are still being strictly enforced by examiners of the Public Carriage Office under the direction of the Deputy Commissioner.
LORD ST. JUST: My Lords, I should like to thank the Minister for his Answer.
BARONESS WOOTTON OF ABINGER: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend whether it is still true that applicants for motor cab licences in the Metropolitan Area are required to state, not whether they have ever been convicted by a criminal court but—as was the case some years ago—whether they have been summoned before a criminal court?
LORD STONHAM: No, my Lords. One of the requirements before a licence is granted for driving a taxi-cab in the Metropolitan Area is that the applicant must be of good character and fit to act as a cab driver. The question posed by my noble friend might be regarded as evidence that the applicant was not of good character.
BARONESS WOOTTON OF ABINGER: My Lords, surely my noble friend is not suggesting that the mere summons before a criminal court is evidence of
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bad character, even if the defendant is subsequently acquitted.
LORD STONHAM: No, my Lords; I quite agree with my noble friend.

LONDON TAXI-CAB FARES
2.37 p.m.
LORD DERWENT: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how soon they intend to bring into force the new fares and regulations for London taxi-cabs.]
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, the Government hope that the preparatory work can be completed so that the order bringing the new fare scale into effect can be made in time for the new fares to be introduced on December 16.
LORD DERWENT: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that most satisfactory Answer. Do Her Majesty's Government think that these new regulations will be sufficient to stop the scandalous overcharging at London Airport by some taxi drivers?
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, under the new regulations, if a taxi driver accepts a fare at London Airport and is coming to Central London, he will be obliged to charge a fare according to the meter reading. The average journey is some 16 miles, and the meter should provide a fare of 51s. There will be a statutory obligation to charge that fare, and no more.
LORD DERWENT: My Lords, I am much obliged to the noble Lord.
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: My Lords, while agreeing with the noble Lord opposite with regard to the implication about fares from London Airport, and also accepting that an increase is necessary, may I ask whether my noble friend really thinks that it is reasonable to ask people to pay increased charges for time occupied when their taxi is stuck in a traffic jam? Is he aware that this is really not good enough?
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, the question of delays in traffic is only one element, and a comparatively minor one,

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in the increased charges. The increase of 11½ per cent. has been approved by the Prices and Incomes Board and is generally regarded as fair and appropriate.
LORD WAKEFIELD OF KENDAL: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that taxi drivers avoid places where they know that traffic jams are likely to occur, and that in the circumstances it is extremely difficult to get a taxi? How does he propose to overcome that difficulty?
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, of course I cannot forecast a sudden increase in the number of taxis. I agree with the noble Lord that normally taxi drivers are adept at missing traffic jams, if it is at all possible. The main answer to the noble Lord's question is improved traffic engineering.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, is my noble friend also going to advise the House as to what is a fair and appropriate tip?
LORD STONHAM: No, my Lords; that is quite outside the province of Her Majesty's Government, and it must be left to the discretion of the passenger.

CONCORDE FIRST FLIGHT DATE
THE EARL OF KINNOULL: My Lords, I beg leave 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 it is expected there will be any delay in the Concorde first flight date because of the recent crash in France of the Mirage IV bomber acting as a Concorde flight simulator.]
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, this unfortunate accident will not delay first flight and will only marginally effect the programme as a whole. The Mirage IV was used mainly to investigate flight test techniques for Concorde. It did not simulate Concorde itself; this is done on another aircraft, a Mirage III, which has been specially modified for the purpose.
THE EARL OF KINNOULL: My Lords, while thanking the noble Lord for his reply, I would ask him, in view of the fact that there has been no similar difficulty with the British projects,
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whether he can give an assurance that the first flight date will be based on technical rather than political considerations? Could he also assure us that the British development will not be held up because of the recent French problem? Further, would the Government be prepared to request the two companies, if necessary, to revise their phase test programme, so allowing the British project to have first flight.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I am glad to assure the noble Earl that the issues here are technical and not political. But the delay in one part of the programme carried out in France inevitably delays the British programme too, and the arrangement that the French prototype flies first will stand.
THE EARL OF KINNOULL: My Lords, could the noble Lord advise the House what is now the first anticipated flight date of the French version?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I understand that the President of SudAviation stated that the 001 will fly from Toulouse at the beginning of January, and the British prototype should fly about six weeks after that date.
THE EARL OF KINNOULL: My Lords, in view of the fact that the flight date has been revised and put back (I believe that the first flight date was to be in September), could the noble Lord say whether this delay will cause an increase in the development costs and a delay in the "in service" date for the aircraft?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, of course costs have gone up for a number of reasons. I think the truth of the matter is that the whole project has proved rather more complicated than was at first thought.

BUSINESS
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, the somewhat lengthy list of speakers for to-day's debate poses certain obvious problems, the answers to some of which —although not quite all—we have found. Dinner will be available this evening from 7 to 8.30 p.m. and also to-morrow evening. There will be refreshments later on both in the Guest Room and in the Members' Room.

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I have been asked by a number of noble Lords, and others closely concerned outside, as to how long the debate will go on. I have had to say, of course, that the length of the debate is the sum total of the individual speeches. Various proposals have been put forward as to how we might deal with this problem. I wonder whether we might each undertake, having spoken ourselves, to stay behind and listen to those who follow. That may well prove to be the most effective discipline.

PROCEDURE OF THE HOUSE
THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (THE EARL OF LISTOWEL): My Lords, I beg to move the first Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That a Select Committee be appointed to consider any proposals for alterations in the procedure of this House which may arise from time to time, and whether the Standing Orders do or do not require to be altered to effect such alterations; and that the Lords following, with the Lord Chancellor and the Chairman of Committees, be named of the Committee:

M. Salisbury,

E. Jellicoe,

E. Longford,

E. St. Aldwyn,

E. Swinton,

V. Colville of Culross,

V. Dilhorne,

V. Goschen,

L. Ailwyn.

L. Amulree,

L. Beswick,

L. Byers,

L. Caccia,

L. Carrington,

L. Champion,

L. Henderson,

L. Henley,

L. Merthyr,

L. Morton of Henryton,

L. Rea,

L. Saltoun,

L. Shackleton,

L. Shepherd.

L. Silkin,

L. Strang,

L. Wade,

L. Willis,

L. Wilberforce,

B. Wootton of Abinger.

That the Committee have leave to report from time to time.—(The Earl of Listowel.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

HOUSE OF LORDS OFFICES
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: My Lords, I beg to move the second Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That the Select Committee on the House of Lords Offices be appointed; and that the Lords following, with the Lord Chancellor and the Chairman of Committees, be named of the Committee:

M. Cholmondeley,

M. Salisbury,

M. Willingdon,

E. Dundee,

E. Dundonald,

E. Jellicoe,

E. Longford,

E. St. Aldwyn,

E. Scarbrough,

E. Swinton,

V. Dilhorne,

V. Goschen,

V. Simonds,

L. Ailwyn,

L. Airedale,

L. Amulree,

L. Beswick,

L. Bowles,

L. Bridges,

B. Brooke of Ystradfellte,

L. Burden,

L. Byers,

L. Carrington,

L. Champion,

L. Chorley,

L. Conesford,

L. Denham,

L. Hawke,

L. Henderson,

L. Henley,

L. Hunt,

L. Inchyra,

L. Ironside,

L. Jessel,

L. Kennet,

L. Mancroft,

L. Morton of Henryton,

L. Newton,

L. Ogmore,

L. Rea,

L. Reid,

L. Robertson of Oakridge.

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L. Sainsbury,

L. Saltoun,

L. Shackleton,

L. Shepherd,

L. Silkin,

L. Strang,

B. Summerskill,

B. Swanborough,

L. Wade,

L. Wise,

B. Wootton of Abinger

That the Committee have leave report from time to time.—(The Earl of Listowel.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

HOUSE OF LORDS REFORM
2.45 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD GARDINER)THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD GARDINER) rose to move, That this House gives general approval to the proposals for the Reform of the House of Lords as set out in the White Paper, House of Lords Reform (Cmnd. 3799). The noble and learned Lord said: My Lords, to-day the Government are asking both Houses to be good enough to consider the White Paper, House of Lords Reform. They will not themselves, of course, make any decision as to what legislation they will introduce until they have had an opportunity of considering everything which has been said in both Houses, and they hope to hear a good deal from all parts of both Chambers. That being so, I shall not detain your Lordships for very long. I have no intention of going through the White Paper, which I assume your Lordships will have read, but as, out of over 50 speakers to-day, I shall be the only Government speaker, there are certain considerations which I desire to put before the House.
The first is this. I think that anybody who has given long consideration to this problem will end by agreeing that there are four ways in which the problem may be approached. The first is: Let us abolish the House of Lords. I, of course, do not agree with that. There are certainly Members supporting the Government in another place who, no doubt very sincerely, are unicameralists. I have ventured to say that I am not, simply because the Spectator last week credited me with being a dedicated abolitionist.
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I never know why they say these things. I am not an abolitionist, for two reasons. First, because one can observe that there are occasions, as with the recent Transport Act, when through a shortage of time the other place is not able to complete its own work; and, of course, a large majority of the Amendments made by your Lordships to Public Bills are accepted in the other place as being obvious improvements. How on earth it can be thought that one Chamber can do to all its own work and all ours as well, I simply do not understand.
Secondly, I think the unicameralist's position is contradicted by all experience. There is no other Western democracy of anything like our size that has not found from experience that it is abtolutely essential to have a Second Chamber. There are, of course, smaller ones which have one Chamber: New Zealand, Israel, Zambia, I believe Liechtenstein, and no doubt some others. General experience has been that it is necessary. I know of one Member of your Lordships' House and there may be more—who is a unicameralist, but I think there will not be a substantial number, and I do not think I need say any more about that.
The second approach is: "Revolution and not reform; let us wipe the slate clean." This is, of course, a possible approach. If that is your approach, then I think you start by having what would necessarily be a fairly long Bill to create a Supreme Court because why en earth should your Supreme Court be all mixed up with one of the two legislative Chambers? Then I think you would have a rather longer Bill to disestablish the Church of England, either because you say: Why should this one Church alone have a lot of Bishops here and a lot of votes; or, as I should prefer to say: Why on earth should there be only one Church, which cannot even alter its own Liturgy without a lot of politicians agreeing and whose dignitaries are appointed by the Prime Minister? There are those who would say, I think, that whoever is in the Second Chamber would not depend on titles.
So, having wiped the slate clean, you say, "Let us have a Senate and Senators". Who are they to be elected by? It is at this point that none of those who have this approach is, unfortunately, able to agree. Some of them say, "Let

643
us have them elected by Northern Ireland, and Scotland, and Wales and the regions or", more simply, "by the county councils". What sort of a Chamber this would be if it were all elected by the county councils, I should not like to say. Others say "No, that is wrong. We must have them elected by the C.B.I. and the T.U.C." Others say that they should be elected by the Commons. Again, I do not agree, and I do not agree for three reasons.
First, while any proposals like the ones before the House can be criticised on one ground or another, I have not seen any two people who agree on a sensible alternative. Secondly, because I believe that, whatever Government are in power, it is absolutely unrealistic to think that the House of Commons will ever vote in favour of a Bill to establish an elected, and therefore rival, Chamber. Thirdly, of course, if one were to follow through this approach, there would be no other legislation this Session—which some of your Lordships might appreciate, but which the Government would regret.
The third approach is: do not let us do anything. This, again, is being unrealistic. The reform of your Lordships' House has been hanging over our heads for years. Each of the major Parties has a sort of Sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of the others. From time to time growling noises are made by one side against the other side. There are powers which cannot be used, and it is time that this problem was tackled. Practically speaking, it is no good saying "Let us do nothing", because this is not going to happen. The Government are pledged to introduce a Bill on this subject in this Session. Even if they did not —which in any case they are going to do—the noble Lord, Lord Alport, is sitting waiting and poised to strike, and my noble friend Lord Mitchison has already introduced a Bill. So it is clear that this is a subject which, in one form or another, we have to tackle this Session, and I suggest that the right approach is the fourth: let us reform the House of Lords —not revolution but reform.
Why do we want to reform the House of Lords? I believe that there is general agreement about this. It must be something like two years ago that the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, speaking from the Opposition Front Bench, expressed the
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view that it was really impossible any longer to defend an hereditary Chamber. I believe that under the Mikado before the war there was something of the kind in Japan, but this is impossible to-day. Indeed, I do not know any reasons which would support it. The one reason which is usually mentioned is that it enables large numbers of young men to come into this House who would not otherwise be here. Well, that itself is not wholly supported by the facts. We have over a thousand Members. I have made inquiries about those who turned up at least once in three times last Session. Of the hereditaries under 30 there was only one; and as to hereditaries between 30 and 40 there were only nine. So unless we are to talk about young men up to 50, that argument is not really maintainable.
Secondly, is it really possible to justify a Chamber which has a large, built-in, permanent majority for one particular Party? I do not believe that it is. Thirdly, can it be justifiable that this Chamber should be in the position to annul any subordinate legislation in opposition to the will of the elected Chamber? This power arises through an historical accident. It was simply because in 1911 there was hardly any subsidiary legislation, so they did not include it in the 1911 Parliament Act. To-day, as we all know, there is a great deal of it, and some of it is of very great importance. Fourthly, it is difficult to justify not only the length of the period of delay under the Parliament Act but the considerable complexities of its operation.
It is extremely important to try to effect this reform, if we can, by agreement. I say this for two reasons. First of all, it is a constitutional reform and nothing would be worse than for one Party, when in power, to alter the Constitution one way, then for the other Party to get in and alter it back again, and later on for the first Party to reverse it. For this reason it has always been recognised how desirable it is, if it is possible, that constitutional reform should be carried out by agreement.
When I found myself Chairman of the All-Party Conference I said, without anybody disagreeing, that I wished to detach myself from my colleagues and that I proposed as Chairman to dedicate myself to the sole task of seeing whether we

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could get an agreement. If I had been asked at that time, I should have thought that the prospect made it very unlikely. But one knows what happens when a lot of people get round a table, at all events in this country: they end up by looking at the larger thing instead of the smaller; they end up by putting their country first and their Party second, and by thinking of the good of Parliament as a whole rather than the good of a particular Chamber. I think your Lordships ought to know what a very considerable part in that Conference was played by Members of your Lordships' House. We had a main Working Party which did an enormous amount of work and which consisted of my noble friend Lord Shackleton, the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, and the noble Lord, Lord Byers. They did a very considerable part of all the "donkey work" on behalf of the Conference as a whole. We were also exceptionally well-served by our officials.
There is a second reason why I think it is very important that, if possible, reform of this kind should be carried out by agreement, and it is this. As I have already made plain, the Government will make no decision as to the form of the legislation it will introduce until it has heard and considered all the views which may be expressed to-day, to-morrow and Thursday in this House, and to-day and to-morrow in the other House. But whatever the form of the legislation, your Lordships are going to be surprised. I think that you are going to be surprised by the things in the White Paper which are not in the Bill. The reason for that, of course, will be that we have not a written Constitution.
Personally, I think that we are lucky not to have a written Constitution. It seems to me that those who have written Constitutions, like the United States, find great difficulties in altering them; and although the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, will probably know more about Australia than I do, I have been told by Australians that whenever they want to make some sensible change in their Federal Constitution—and, of course, they have to have a referendum—everybody always says "No". But if one depends for one's Constitution in part on conventions, then there are conventions which cannot properly be the subject of Bills, particularly where they
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affect the Royal prerogative. Nor can one properly put into a Bill that ordinarily, subject perhaps to some exceptions, the Prime Minister of the day is to see to it that the Government have a majority of about 10 per cent. in this House over the other two Parties combined, but not over the House. That is the second reason: that if we are to have reform by agreement, then it is desirable that there should be agreement, not only as to those things which are properly matters for a Bill, but also as to the conventions.
I should like to say a word or two about the relatively few criticisms which I have read or heard. As a whole, the White Paper may be said to have had a reasonable reception. As I have said, I am not going through the White Paper, because it is one which sets out not only our proposals but also the reasons for them. The most general criticism has been that the proposals put forward mean an enormous increase in Prime Ministerial patronage. To anybody who takes that view, I can only say, most respecfully, that he has not done his homework, because I do not see any increase in patronage at all.
This Government has been criticised, I think sometimes quite rightly, for trying to do too much too fast, and for putting forward proposals which have not really been thought through. I can assure your Lordships that this does not apply here, and that behind almost every paragraph of the White Paper there is a mound of working papers. One wanted to see, of course, that any proposal was viable and did not result in too many Peers having to be appointed at one time, so what we did was to borrow a computer—I think I had better not say where we borrowed it from, because I am not sure what happened about that—and to tell the computer what had been the results of all the General Elections for the past sixty years. We then said to the computer, "Now you tell us what would have happened during those sixty years if this scheme had been in force"; and it is perfectly viable from the point of view of numbers. We also asked it to project itself into the future on, of course, alternative hypotheses, as to who would win the next two General Elections.
Now I do not know, in the first place, whether it is generally realised exactly how much Prime Ministerial patronage

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there is now. It may be a surprise to some of your Lordships to know that in and since 1964 146 Peers have been created. Does that mean that we are a debilitated or less interesting House? Is it not in fact a matter of common knowledge that we are a more varied, a more interesting and probably a more influential House than we were before? There is another point which is not always realised—and I have written this down to make sure that I get it right. I do not believe it is generally realised that it is now customary for the Prime Minister of the day to consult the Leaders of the other Parties when he thinks it appropriate to put forward names from their Parties for Peerages. The patronage (if such there be) for the other Parties belongs to the right honourable gentlemen the Leader of the Opposition and the Leader of the Liberal Party. They are of course responsible to their Parties, in a way which strikes me, at least, as eminently democratic and reasonable, for the manner in which they use their powers.
It is therefore true to say that the Prime Minister is responsible only for the selection of members of his own Party and also, of course, for the recommendations which he makes to the Queen in the half-yearly Honours List. As your Lordships will have observed, those who are recommended in the half-yearly Honours List are men and women of high distinction who have something important to say and who, by the contribution which they are able to make, enrich the debates of the House. The question of where those Peers sit in the House, whether on the Cross-Benches or elsewhere, and still more the question how they vote on individual issues, is of course a matter for them. On this, I would ask the House to take into account the Committee which the White Paper proposes, because as your Lordships know it would be one of the functions of that Committee to advise the Prime Minister from time to time on these matters.
Lastly, we had to consider this. There is quite a lot to be said for appointing Peers, certainly for something less than life and probably for only the length of the Parliament. This makes the numbers easier. It means that at the end of a Parliament, after a General Election
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and perhaps with a new Prime Minister, the question of numbers becomes easier. The reason why we ended by rejecting that was because of course it would leave the Party Whips in a position to say, "We do not want him back" or, "We do not want her back", and we thought that we could not adequately safeguard the independence of your Lordships' House unless we ensured that Peers were appointed for life, and only for life. But this, when one is considering Prime Ministerial patronage, in fact considerably diminishes what it would be without that provision. I know one Labour Peer who does not vote often but who, whenever he does, always, I think, votes against the Government. That is all right, because whatever any Whip may say there is nothing he can do to any of the Members of your Lordships' House; and, subject to being convinced by one's colleagues, everybody is free—and this is very important indeed when one is considering Prime Ministerial patronage.
Then, my Lords, I have heard it asked, "Why do the Law Lords have to have an automatic vote?" Of course, we are a little short of lawyers in your Lordships' House. I am told, believe it or not—but this is official—that there are 126 lawyers in the other place. I could make a comment about that, but we are always very respectful to the other place so I will not. We have half a dozen other very distinguished lawyers, but we are very fortunate, I should have thought, in having the most eminent members of the Judiciary in the country as Members of this House. As the Appellate Committee is a Sessional Committee of this House its members must be able to vote, and their right should be automatic, because otherwise the unfortunate Lord Chancellor would be put in the position of thinking, "If I ask Lord So-and-So to sit in the Privy Council too often instead of in the Appellate Committee he may lose his voting writ".
Then I have been asked why there should be so many Bishops—"Why 16 Bishops?" The art of reform is the art of the necessary and the sensible. The Commission on Church and State is still sitting, and will not, I believe, report until next year. Meanwhile, I think it must be realised that the right reverend Prelates have their Sees to look after, and their diaries get filled up very quickly. If it

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was to be so limited that only three or four had to cover every Sitting day, they would not be able to run their Sees; and 16 is about the minimum number to ensure that your Lordships always have a right reverend Prelate to say prayers and that occasions do not arise when there is public criticism in your Lordships' House because there are no Spiritual Peers to speak on the matter in question.
Then, my Lords, there is the question of representation of the regions. I do not want to take up much time about this, but it is of very great importance, and in paragraph 50 the White Paper stresses how very important regional representation was considered by the whole conference to be. For the reasons set out there, which I will not repeat, we were against regional elections, but I know that my right honourable friend the Prime Minister is fully seized of the importance of ensuring that the several parts of the country are adequately represented in your Lordships' House, and the Committee referred to in the White Paper will also be charged with continual surveillance of that.
My Lords, the proposals contained in the White Paper are not, of course, the proposals which the Government would have put forward. They are not the proposals which the Opposition would have put forward. Obviously, if there is to be agreement it is no good—I must not inflame matters by saying "acting like Mr. Smith"—but it is no good saying. "I must get my way 100 per cent. of the time". It is to that extent a compromise, which is, I think, part of our national genius.
There is not complete agreement on one point, and that is the date on which any such reforms should start. It is the Government's view that they should start on the Royal Assent. It is another view that they should not start until the next Parliament. I feel in my bones that if one does not take advantage of the right time to do something, then it goes off and it may be years and years before it is done. If one looks at the precedents, there are, I think, rather more cases of constitutional reforms which have been brought into effect on the Royal Assent than there are of constitutional reforms which have not started until the next Parliament; and I myself
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feel that it is very important that we who have been through all this should do it ourselves in the lifetime of this Parliament, rather than leaving it to an entirely new Parliament.
Some say, "Why not wait for the Contitutional Commission? "This, I think, is really the same group which says, "Do not let us do anything". This is just an additional excuse for not doing anything. But the two are in no way in conflict. It will be, I suppose, two or three years before the Constitutional Commission report, and I should have thought that it would have been most unlikely that they would report anything which would be in any way in conflict with the White Paper proposals. On the contrary, of course, if they find some new way for regions to be represented, there is no reason why that should not be effected; but it is very unlikely that they will say that it is very important that the men on the Clyde should be represented by a Scottish noble landowner; it is very unlikely that they will want to reintroduce an hereditary Second Chamber. It is very unlikely that the Constitutional Commission will say that one important thing to do is to have a Second Chamber tuber which is so constructed that there is a permanent majority in it for one Party. Nor are they likely to say that the Second Chamber should have power to overrule the first, the elected, Chamber on subordinate legislation. So whatever the Constitutional Commission may or may not report, there is nothing in it which is likely to be in conflict with these proposals.
My Lords, before concluding, may I mention a personal matter? As your Lordships know, Wednesdays are not usually public business days or usually late nights, and I agreed a little time ago to talk to some law students to-morrow night. I hope that the House will not think me discourteous if I leave for a short time to-morrow night and then come back.
I hope that your Lordships' reading has extended to Appendix II. One of the great advantages of this reform will be that it will then enable all of us to sit down, in circumstances in which we are no longer battling with another place, to consider together the reform of Parliament; and, as is pointed out in Appendix II, on Public Bills, with a reformed House

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there would be no reason why a Bill should start in one House and not in the other. It would need the other place to give way on some of their financial privileges, but I see no reason to anticipate that they would not do that if it were for the good of Parliament.
One could provide that a Public Bill, after having its Second Reading in one House, would then perhaps have a Joint Committee stage of both Houses. There is a lot of doubling of time on subordinate legislation through having two separate Committees considering it, one in each House. Again I think we should consider the possibility of Joint Committees. And why should not Statutory Instruments be capable of being amended? It has been this difficulty between the two Houses which has so far prevented the two Houses from getting together and thinking, not about what is best for their House but about what is best for Parliament. Subject to the views of the noble Earl, the Lord Chairman of Committees, I suspect that the Private Bill procedure in both Houses really needs an overhaul.
Finally there would be no reason why we should not have Joint Select Committees to inquire into matters of public concern, as a further check on the growing powers of the Executive. If these reforms appeal to your Lordships, what we shall really be doing is getting rid of enormous powers which we cannot use and substituting for them sensible powers which we shall be intended to use and which we shall use. There is a criticism by some who say that the Cross-Benchers, in the sort of proportion that is suggested for the House, will have all the powers. That view is held less among your Lordships who know the Cross-Benchers than among those in another place. But we know our Cross-Benchers. Not a great many of them vote regularly. They very often divide in opinion, because they are entirely independent. But if there was an occasion on which all the Cross-Benchers voted either for the Government or against the Government, is that not the very sort of case in which this House ought to use the powers it will have?
I believe that following these reforms we shall have every opportunity to do real Parliamentary reform, and I
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believe, too, that with these reforms the influence of your Lordships' House on the country will be greater than it is to-day. For those reasons I respectfully commend these proposals to your Lordships. I beg to move.
Moved, That this House gives general approval to the proposals for the Reform of the House of Lords as set out in the White Paper House of Lords Reform (Cmnd. 3799).—(The Lord Chancellor.)
3.15 p.m.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, entering this marathon debate as the first speaker from this side of your Lordships' House, I am very conscious of the fact that I have been a speaking Member of this House for only ten years or so. Nevertheless, I hold myself second to no Member of this House in my belief that our form of democracy demands a two-Chamber system that we need an effective and efficient Second Chamber and that this House, even as it exists to-day after the reforms of the last decade, is in some respects that Chamber. I should like to explain how I approached the inter-Party Conference of which I had the honour to be a member. I had in mind the three main roles of this House which my noble Leader. Lord Carrington, has so often explained: the function of initiating and revising legislation; the ability to ventilate issues of to-day and to-morrow in more general debate and the responsibility, if need be, to tell the Government of the day, "No; take that back and think again".
I suspect that most fair-minded people would agree that we at present discharge the first two of these three roles, the revisionary and the deliberative, tolerably well. Unfortunately. I was not persuaded, and cannot persuade myself even in my most Panglossian mood, that our House is the best of all possible Houses in the best of all possible Parliamentary worlds. This is in part because we are so plainly prevented from properly discharging our third function: the ability, when need be, to impose a proper period of delay for further reflection. We on this side of the House know this business only too well. If we pull our punches, as time and again my noble friend has been constrained to advise my noble friends to do, the Press reads. "The Lords cave in again". But if the House puts its foot down, no attention is paid to the ground on which we

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choose to stand. Public opinion is exclusively focused on our right, or lack of right, to make a stand. "Tories to the Tumbrils?", the headlines politely suggest. If the truth of this required demonstration, it was surely demonstrated over the Rhodesia Order last June.
Constitutionally, the effects of this are serious. This House chooses, perhaps naturally, to exercise only a limited check on a Government of the Right—albeit rather more check than outsiders sometimes suppose. Likewise, and rather paradoxically, we are able to exercise but little check on a Government of the Left, since we know that if we stand on our undoubted constitutional rights we are bound to precipitate a full-scale constitutional crisis.
My Lords, by this I am not saying that this House does not work. In many ways, it works a great deal better than most outsiders realise—and largely, if I may say so, as a result of the dedicated work of the hereditary Peers. What I am saying is that we are inhibited from playing our proper part in the work of Parliament by our consciousness of what I would term the "St. Aldwyn's Overkill"—that large, inbuilt Conservative majority which derives from history and hereditary. Time and again we are constrained to pull our punches and thereby to erode our general public standing and our constitutional credibility. The main case, therefore, for reform, as I understand it, is that a reformed House with a logically defensible composition would not only have increased authority in the country but could also play a fuller part, as the noble and learned Lord who sits on the Woolsack suggested, in making our Parliamentary machine as a whole more efficient and effective. In large part I accept that case, although my own preference would have been to proceed rather more slowly, digesting the not inconsiderable reforms of the last decade.
But, my Lords, we do not live in an ideal world. We have, after all, a Labour Government. We cannot ignore the fact—and, again, we have been reminded by the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack—that the Government are committed to a wide-ranging measure of reform in this Session. It is no longer, therefore, a nice academic problem which we can pick over at leisure in the "Bishops' Bar"—a Bar for which I
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thank the right reverend Prelates very much. We are now faced with a practical, a political choice. We could, of course, choose to have no truck with a Government who are now, in electoral terms, but barely credible. In general, I see nothing particularly wrong with the old adage, that it is the duty of the Opposition to oppose, but, personally, I draw a major distinction where major constitutional change is at stake. In this special and reserved area, I believe it is incumbent on me—I know that this is the Lord Chancellor's belief as he expressed it—and incumbent on the major Parties to reach agreement if agreement can be achieved without the sacrifice of principle. It would be a real disaster if this House were to become the plaything of Party political forces, a political shuttlecock like the British steel industry, for example. I therefore believe that this Government, wrong in most things, were right in November last year to propose joint talks between the three Parties. By the same token, I believe that it was right for the Opposition to respond.
The noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor has, I think, implied in his speech that the White Paper contains the essence of the package which—subject to a reservation of the first importance to which I will revert in a moment —the Conference agreed. I can, of course, confirm that this is the case and, if I may, I should like to thank him for his reference to the small sub-committee of the Conference on which, as is always the case, most of the important work was done by the officials. I should also like to thank the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, for his impartial chairmanship of the Conference as a whole. Like him, I went into this Conference hoping that agreement could be reached, but extremely sceptical about whether it would be.
From the start, as he explained, we were faced with the difficult question of the principle on which a reformed House should be based; whether on the elective principle, or on some basis of regional representation, or through nomination, or through some mix of these various possibilities. He has explained why, in the end, we came back to nomination, and I agree with that explanation. I agree, too, that if we are to have nominations the responsibility for

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nomination must, in the last resort, rest squarely on the shoulders of the Prime Minister who, in the last resort, too, can be held to account. The critics have focussed much of their criticism on this question of nomination, and the linked question of patronage.
I should like to add only this to what the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor has said. Apart from the safeguards of independence built into the scheme embodied in the White Paper, to which he alluded, there is a further safeguard against any undue extension of patronage. That further safeguard is the one implicit in the White Paper, that the Prime Minister's existing and undoubted right to swamp a recalcitrant Upper House in the last resort would now, and for the first time, be clearly limited by a clear convention that the Government of the day can never possess an assured majority in the voting House. In view of this, I would submit that, far from the Prime Minister's existing powers of patronage being extended, they are, under the present proposals, and in a significant degree, restricted.
As for the scheme itself, it is there for all to see, and I think there are 117 other speakers who are to have their say on it. I should now like, only very briefly, to emphasise what I particularly like about it. I particularly like the large measure of real independence which, under the scheme, would be built into the structure of the reformed House. I also see great advantage in that constitutional novelty, the two-tier device. It is the best device that I can think of by which in a reformed House we can include the two main types of Members, which the dual functions of the House require; the full-timer, discharging the often pedestrian but often important function of legislation, and the part-timer —whether he be an hereditary Peer, with some esoteric expertise, or the occasional lay expert, or that very important but impossibly busy person who cannot come very often to the House—discharging the function of general and expert debate.
The other great merit which I see is that the Conference was able to discuss and agree on both composition and powers. At the start I feared that, if we could agree on a reformed House so constituted as to render it less vulnerable to
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criticism, the Government might well be unwilling to concede real power to that reformed House. For me that would have been a clear breaking point. But in the event, those fears were not realised. The upshot is that the delaying power conceded to the reformed House on public legislation is, on average, not less than the powers—"the enormous powers I think the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor called them—which we at present possess, and the point of definition from the point of disagreement— is much clearer than the present extremely erratic yardstick.
That said, I should be less than frank with my noble friends if I did not make clear that in a perfect world there are aspects of the scheme which I should have preferred otherwise. First and foremost, there is the erosion of the constitutional rights of the hereditary Peerage. That is a point which troubles many of my noble friends, and it troubles me, too. The hereditary Peerage is deeply rooted in our history. Hereditary Peers have made, and make, a distinguished contribution to this House. And, while it may go against the grain to surrender rights personal to oneself, it goes even more against the grain to surrender the rights of those who are to follow us.
It is true that a not inconsiderable number of hereditary Peers will doubtless take their place in the voting House by selection as new Peers of first creation, but I, for one, had hoped that we could preserve more in an agreed scheme. I had hoped that we could persuade the other participants in the talks that not only would the existing hereditary Peers be able to continue as non-voting Members, but that they would also have been enabled to transmit their right to their heirs. If the Conference had been able to agree on this, it would, in my view, have bequeathed two undoubted advantages on the reformed House. Automatically, this would have meant a place for the "ordinary bloke"—the Jellicoes and Ferrards of this world, if I may so term them—and automatically, too, it would have given a chance for youth, if it so wished, to take that chance (and I take the Lord Chancellor's point) to make its way in the new House. It is, in my view, a very great pity that the Government felt unable to agree to this.

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The second area which troubles me is that of delegated legislation. Admittedly, our right of complete veto derives from a quirk of history. Admittedly, in the scheme before us we shall retain the right to make the Commons think again. Nevertheless, I was not particularly happy about the position reached by the Conference on this aspect of affairs when our talks were so rudely interrupted by the Prime Minister. This may appear a rather humdrum area of our legislative life; but it is a significant one, as Stansted Airport has reminded us.
We have witnessed a luxuriant growth in legislation by Statutory Instrument during the last 50 years, with all the temptations which this holds out for an overweening Executive. This is preeminently a field in which the revisory Chamber should be able to operate with effect and with authority. There is a clear case, to my mind, for ensuring that the reformed House has powers of delay over subordinate legislation analogous to its powers of delay over Public Bills. Likewise, we should be able to build in safeguards against an unscrupulous Administration, whether of the Left or of the Right, being able to circumvent the delaying powers of the Second Chamber over Public Bills by embodying in Instruments what should properly be incorporated in Bills.
These desirable objectives have still to be achieved. The difficulties which the Conference faced are explained, and explained quite fairly, in the White Paper. In paragraph 58, the Government advocate urgent examination by a Joint Select Committee of both Houses of the whole field of subordinate legislation. I must emphasise that I, for one, agreed to the surrender of our admittedly somewhat anomalous powers in this field only on the understanding that this review would be carried out without delay and with the objectives outlined in paragraph 58 of the White Paper in mind.
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (LORD SHACKLETON): My Lords, before the noble Earl leaves this very important point—he has put it very fairly—I hope he will confirm that we were confronted with the total impossibility of building in delaying powers into subordinate legislation as things are now. We examined this very thoroughly, and I hope that it will be clear to your Lordships that this
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is not being done, not because the Government took a particular predetermined view, but simply because it was technically impossible to do it.
EARL JELLICOE: Yes, my Lards, I can confirm what the noble Lord the Leader of the House has said. I certainly was not intending to mislead your Lordships. In fact, I said that the White Paper had put this fairly, and I think that the point is firmly embedded in the White Paper. The noble Lord is quite right.
I now come to our most important reservation. The last sentence of paragraph 6 of the White Paper states that:
"The Government proposes that the reform should come into effect at the end of the present session."
This flat statement conceals the one point of flat disagreement between the Conservative members of the Conference and the remainder. We expressed the view that it would be quite improper to embark on this major reform of the composition of the House, in a way which undoubtedly diminishes the rights of some of its Members, save at the beginning of a new Parliament. In our view, such action would be contrary to the letter and the spirit of the Writ of Summons which all Members of the existing House have received. Furthermore, we held, and we continue to hold, that it would be utterly wrong to base the composition of the reformed House on a House of Commons which was elected in 1966 and which now distorts rather than reflects the political situation of to-day. In sum, my Lords, we hold that a grave constitutional change of this kind should not be brought into effect in the dying years of a discredited Government.
But let us make no mistake about what we mean. In its leader to-day, The Guardian suggests that those who take this view are against legislation in the lifetime of this Parliament. The Guardian has got it wrong. What we are saying is that effect should not be given to such legislation in the lifetime of this Parliament. The noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack has talked of the desirability of acting while the constitutional pot is on the boil. All I would say in reply to that is that I can see no difficulty in writing into this legislation, if it comes before the House in this Session and we approve it, a clear

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requirement that it should be brought into effect in the beginning of the next Parliament.
Where does all this lead us? By the early summer of this year, the Inter-Party Conference had elaborated its proposals and virtually finished its work. Then came that fit of post-Rhodesian Prime Ministerial petulance. The talks were broken off, and all bets from both sides were off with them. Since then the Government have gone through, I understand, a further period of rather trying labour and have now brought forth a White Paper. The responsibility for that White Paper is of course theirs, and theirs alone. Those of us who participated in the Conference could well argue now that it was not we who broke it up and that the bets should remain off. But I would hold that to be neither a reasonable nor, indeed, an entirely honourable attitude for us to adopt. If the package was acceptable to us in June, it should be acceptable in November.
As for the future, we shall see what we shall see. It is perfectly possible that the proposals could be refined during their passage through Parliament. Beyond that I should naturally expect any successor Government to do its level best to operate the scheme both in its letter and in its spirit. But, of course, it cannot be held to be immutable. Certainly the Government's rather gimmicky proposal (if they will pardon the expression) for a Constitutional Commission has added a new dimension to this old problem. In any event, if the scheme goes through I am sure that the right thing to do is to see how it works and for all of us to do our utmost to make it work well. But if, in the light of experience, it becomes clear that changes are needed, then I can see no good reason why the necessary changes should not be made, provided that such changes are backed by a broad measure of agreement.
That, my Lords, is my personal position and the position, as I understand it, of my Conservative colleagues in the Conference. How my noble friends view this scheme is, of course, their affair and quite another matter. St. Aldwyn's Whip will not be flourished on Thursday night when the vote is taken. It would
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be wrong, as it would certainly be counter-productive, for us to whip on a constitutional matter of this magnitude and on an issue which so intimately affects the personal interests of noble Lords and, indeed, of their descendants. Nevertheless, I hope that my noble friends will allow me, in conclusion, to put the following considerations to them.
I would remind them of what the House could gain under this scheme. If we endorse this scheme, the Party opposite will be agreeing something which, as I understand it, they have never before formally agreed—namely, that a viable Upper House has an essential part to play in our Parliamentary structure. They will be agreeing that this reformed House should never—I repeat, never—contain a majority of the Labour Party's committed supporters. They will be agreeing that this new House should be able to use its powers without the constant fear of bringing down upon its head retribution, in the shape of a major constitutional crisis. They will thus, my Lords, be approving and sanctioning a House which will virtually have as much power, in theory, and a great deal more power and authority in practice than our existing Chamber. Aspects of the new scheme may well be as unpalatable to noble Lords opposite as some other aspects may be to my noble friends. But to both I would say that we are not going to be asked in two days' time to approve every jot and tittle of this scheme. We are being asked to give no more than a general approval to it as a package.
My final reflection is this—and here I know that I must regretfully forfeit the support of the noble Lord, Lord Blyton, if he is here. In my political lifetime, I have seen my countrymen throw away a great opportunity in foreign affairs—the chance of taking the lead in the political unification and advance of Europe. That chance may never recur. I am myself convinced that in the nearer and more domestic sphere we now have a quite considerable constitutional prize within our grasp; namely, the opportunity to build a really viable Upper House, on the basis of a broad consensus of support from all Parties. I would ask my noble friends to ponder carefully

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in the unsilent reaches of the nights between now and Thursday the consequences of not seizing that chance. As I have said, my Lords, it may not recur.
3.40 p.m.
LORD WADE: My Lords, as the first speaker from the Liberal Benches in this very long three-day debate I shall not be expected to comment in detail on all the paragraphs of the White Paper. I shall endeavour to follow the good example set by the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack and the noble Earl. Lord Jellicoe. There is, however, room for many distinctive points of view. Speaking for the majority of my colleagues and myself, I can express broad approval for the proposals in the White Paper, not as an ultimate solution but as an interim measure of reform which, subject to certain detailed criticisms, deserves support. I should be the first to admit that the proposals in the White Paper have all the characteristics of a compromise, but I believe that the merits outweigh the demerits.
It so happens, my Lords, that from time to time when I was in another place I took part in debates touching on the reform of your Lordships' House; and, fortunately, I do not find myself in the position of having to eat my own words. I have always recognised the dilemma facing reformers: if there were to be a wholly elected House it might become a rival to the House of Commons rather than a complement to it; on the other hand, if it were wholly appointed, there would always he this danger of excessive patronage. There is no ideal and no simple solution. But that is no reason for leaving the present composition unchanged.
Your Lordships will recall that at the time of the Wedgwood Benn case, when Mr. Wedgwood Benn was attempting to be relieved of the obligation of having to leave the House of Commons and of coming to serve in this House, he petitioned the Committee of Privileges in the House of Commons. That was in 1960. When that failed, a Joint Committee on House of Lords Reform, composed of Members of both Houses, representing all Parties, was set un, and sat in session in 1962–63. The outcome of the Report of that Committee was the Peerage Act 1963 which introduced the
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opting-out procedure. I happened to serve on that Joint Committee on House of Lords Reform. There were some differences of opinion on the interpretation of the terms of reference, and I found myself in a minority: actually, on one occasion I was voted down 19 to l; but I am accustomed to being in a minority. I took the view that as the proposals under consideration involved some depletion and some additions to the membership of this House, the Committee ought to consider the whole subject of composition, and if not permitted to do so should put on record the illogical posit on in which the Committee found themselves. But I was voted down. However, I think my point was a valid one, and I still think that the Peerage Act 1963 provides additional reason for introducing a reform of the composition of this House.
As I understand it, the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, has broadly supported the proposals but has suggested that they should not come into effect until after a General Election. I think it is worth noting that following the Report of the Committee to which I have just re erred, the Government introduced a Bill. There was one Amendment, if my memory is right, which was accepted. When the Bill was passed, it came into effect straight away; there was no question of waiting until after a General Election, although a General Election was only a year ahead. Once it was clear that the proposals were approved by both Houses of Parliament they were adopted.
I think it is fair to point out that the Peerage Act 1963 introduced quite a new principle; namely, that certain particular and very distinguished families in society should have the right, generation by generation, to decide whether or not they should have a seat in Parliament—or, to be more accurate, that heirs on inheriting should have a right to sit in Parliament or not. Some thought that this was creating a new type of privilege. But perhaps that is past history. Nevertheless, it was put into effect straight away, and I think it would be inconsistent not to follow the same precedent today. If both Houses approve these proposals, having examined the appropriate legislation. I can see no point in further delay.
I agree with the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe (I hope I am summarising correctly what he said), that the prin

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ciple of a hereditary House of Lords is no longer the main issue. It is really a practical issue that we have to consider; namely, how to remedy the anomalies in the composition and powers of this House in order that Parliament may function more effectively. It would seem to me that there are four main factors which have to be taken into account. The first is: in this complex society, with the Executive so powerful, with the mass of legislation that we have to deal with, there is a very real need for some form of Second Chamber; and this should not exist on sufferance, but should be accepted as a necessary and proper part of our Parliament. Secondly, quite apart from the principles of Parliamentary democracy that are involved there is a positive disadvantage in having one Party in a permanent majority in this House. I think that even the official Opposition today recognise this, as the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, has pointed out.
Thirdly, there is need for closer cooperation and co-ordination of work between the two Houses. I should put that at the head of the list of the aims in the White Paper; it is extremely important. But, unfortunately, no satisfactory progress can be made until there is reform of the composition of this House. That, I think, is just one of the facts of life. Fourthly—and here we come to the compromise—I think we must acknowledge, and I certainly acknowledge it myself, that there are a number of hereditary Peers who are giving valuable service in this House, and it would be foolish to dispense with their services forthwith merely because they happen to have inherited their position in the House of Lords.
It would seem to me, therefore, that the proposals in the White Paper represent a fair attempt to take all these factors into account. Of course, there are objections. There are some who do not like the idea of a two-tier system, and some who fear that there may be too much increase in the power of patronage. As to the two-tier system, at first I was not very enthusiastic, but it seems to me that the only alternative would be to limit membership to, say, 250 to 300 full-time Members of this House and exclude all others. I can see the objections to that, and therefore I am persuaded that we
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should adopt the two-tier system, at any rate on trial.
As to the criticism that there will be excessive powers of patronage, this should be taken seriously. I do not think it should be brushed on one side. I hope that the Review Committee will provide a partial answer, but I think we shall have to rely largely on public opinion, both outside this House and within. At the same time, it is important to analyse exactly what is meant by this danger of patronage. It may mean that the Prime Minister will nominate persons solely for faithful service; and I think the answer there must come from the strength of the conventions that are built up, and public opinion. A more serious line of criticism, certainly constitutionally more serious, is that Members would have less independence owing to the pressure of the Party managers. But if Members are appointed for life, this could well be exaggerated. There has not really been very much evidence of this. Since I became a Member of your Lordships' House I have not seen any very marked sign of submissiveness on the part of my fellow Life Peers. It is worth pointing out that in the House of Commons there is a much more serious threat. That is, the threat to a Member that if he does not toe the line he will have an official candidate put up against him at the next Election, and the vote will be split and he will lose his seat. That is a very much more serious interference with personal independence than anything that can be said by a Party Leader or a Party Whip in this House to a Life Peer. Therefore, I suggest we must view this matter in the right perspective, although it certainly must be watched.
I promised not to attempt any detailed comment on the proposals in the White Paper, but I should like to offer three comments which I hope are constructive. The first relates to the functions of the non-voting Peers—I am assuming there will be non-voting Peers. Paragraph 46 of the White Paper, as I understand it, provides that non-voting Peers may serve on Committees; but paragraph 49 states that they shall not
"vote in any committee for the consideration of legislation."
That seems to me unreasonable. Take, for example, the Gaming Bill. There are few subjects on which I know less

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than on gaming, but I was greatly impressed by the expertise displayed by the Committee on that Bill. On some future occasion where a similar Committee is set up it may well be that a non-voting Peer will be asked to serve. I think it would be unreasonable to ask a Peer to serve on a Committee such as that and not vote. After all, the Committee will report to the Whole House on Report stage, and I do not think we should suffer if non-voting Peers were allowed to vote on Committees in those circumstances.
Secondly—a very short point—on page 14 of the White Paper, paragraph 31, it is suggested that the Review Committee should report
"to the Prime Minister or to Parliament".
Surely, it would be quite inadequate to report only to the Prime Minister. The Report should be to Parliament, and thereby made known to the public. Thirdly, on remuneration, I am quite sure that the right course is to set up an independent body. I believe that this is the correct procedure. But when the Lawrence Committee were appointed there were also appointed an Advisory Committee composed of Members of both Houses. I was a member of that Advisory Committee. We did not attempt to tell the Lawrence Committee what to do—we should not have presumed to do so. We were there to give background information and advice. Our advice was not always taken, but I believe that that Committee gave useful service; and perhaps a similar idea might be adopted if a "Lawrence Committee" of that type is set up.
Finally, as to the future, looking further ahead, may I say that this will not be the last reform, my Lords. I am not going to say that we must wait for the Commission, because I do not yet know whether the promise of a Commission is a delaying tactic or something to be taken seriously. But, Commission or no Commission, we must contemplate the possibility, maybe the probability, of a Parliament in Scotland and in Wales. In saying that, I am not advocating separatism, which I think would be harmful to Scotland and Wales; but it would necessitate a review of the composition of this House. Again, the day may not he far off when we have some kind of regional government with regional assem
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blies. That also will require a review of the composition of this House. I am not afraid of an elected element. I think it will come, and it may provide an opportunity to younger people to gain entrance to this House.
However, there is one essential condition that must be fulfilled, which is that we must have a different voting system. I think it would be very harmful to the composition of this House if we copied the voting system adopted for Elections to the House of Commons. I regard that point as absolutely essential. If that is true, then there is much to be done. There is agreement to be arrived at with our friends in Scotland and Wales; the question of boundaries has to be decided; the length of service in this House has to be considered, and the method of electing representatives. All this will take time. Meanwhile, we cannot stand still.
There has been some discussion in the Press as to whether, if these proposals are adopted, the Commons will get the best of the Lords or the Lords the best of the Commons. I am not really interested in that. What matters is the reform of Parliament, and to achieve that there must be closer co-operation between the Lords and the Commons. Unfortunately, we can make little progress until we have overcome this problem of composition. There is, alas! a kind of psychological barrier between the two Houses. So far as this House is concerned, it is regrettable because there is a considerable waste of talent as well as duplication of work. I agree that there is a high standard of debate in this House; I agree that we have the value of great experts coming here; but I sometimes wonder how many people read what they say. I believe their membership would be much more valuable if there were Joint Committees of both Houses for such matters as foreign affairs, defence, the economy of the country; also science and technology and great social problems such as poverty and housing, and of course the ever-present question of how to stand up to the Executive. This is far more important than the reform of the House of Lords: it is that that "brooks no delay".
The reform, my Lords, is therefore necessary as a means to an end; namely, a more efficient Parliament. If the choice lies between doing nothing and accept

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ing something broadly along the lines of these proposals, I certainly would vote for these proposals. Once both Houses approve, I think the sooner they are implemented, the better. Then we can insist on a more satisfactory, a more efficient and a more sensible co-ordination of work between this House and the House of Commons.
3.58 p.m.
THE LORD BISHOP OF CHESTER: My Lords, I am confident that I command the support of those who sit on these Benches in giving our full encouragement to the reforms set out in the White Paper. I believe them to be a victory for common sense. As the noble and learned Lord who sits on the Woolsack has reminded us, the White Paper proceeds by way of reform rather than by revolution. It does not attempt to impose a new system upon us untried by time or experience. In the past decade there have already been considerable constitutional reforms in this House which have come in easily and peacefully and have been greatly to the strengthening of the work of this House. It seems to me that these reforms follow naturally and easily upon those things with which we have been accustomed during this past ten years. It emanates from the agreement of the Parties concerned; and that is a great commendation in itself. I believe that these reforms will go far to remove the anomalies which are generally recognised to exist in the constitution and functioning of this House, and open new opportunities for effective action in the good government of this country.
Again, I am confident that I speak for the right reverend Prelates who sit on these Benches in thanking Her Majesty's Government for the consideration that they have given to the place of the Bishops in the reformed House. I should especially like to express our gratitude to the noble and learned Lord who sits on the Woolsack for the sympathetic and understanding way in which he approached our presence here in his opening speech. The representative Committee was good enough to receive a small number of us, led by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and to listen to our views upon the place and usefulness of those who sit on these Benches. The White
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Paper may not give all that all of us would have liked, but on the other hand the proposals are equitable. In a House of reduced size it is reasonable that the number of Bishops should be reduced from 26 to 16. It is proper that the historic Sees of Canterbury, York, London, Durham and Winchester should remain ex officio. Some of us, however, regret that the rest should be deprived of their voting rights and would have hoped that the same privilege in this respect should apply to the reduced number of Bishops as applies to the Law Lords.
We feel that on controversial issues, while it may take courage to make an unpopular speech it takes more courage to record an unpopular vote, and yet by so doing one can put the seal upon a conscientiously held point of view more effectively than merely by making a speech unaccompanied by any responsibility for implementing what one may have asked for. And it should be remembered that on controversial issues the record of the Bishops is carefully scrutinised outside this House, as we are all only too well aware.
Again, in respect of legislation by Church Assembly Measure, which is a significant part of the duties of this House, it seems strange that the majority of those most directly implicated should have no power to express an opinion by vote in the case of a Division. Nor do I think it wise necessarily to attach voting powers solely to the five ex officio Sees, for it may well be that one or other of their occupants may not be particularly interested in the work of this House. He might well have other interests and expertise, and so the House would be deprived of the services of one or more of its voting Members.
These are, however, matters of detail which can be examined when we come to consider the finer points of the scheme. I mention them and leave them for the moment lest I should incur the criticism levelled against that ghostly episcopal predecessor released from his frame for a short time in the Hall of Ruddigore Castle who voted in a minority of one against the penalty to be required of the new baronet and received the reproach. "Oh, you are never satisfied."
Those of us who sit on these Benches are not insensitive to the view held by

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some, and mentioned in the White Paper, that the presence of the Bishops in this Chamber as a separate estate is an anomaly that should not be allowed to continue in a modern legislative assembly. This view has been expressed as well in one way or another in letters to the newspapers, accompanied, I regret to say, with a certain amount of denominational tail-twisting which accorded ill with the ecumenical temper of these days, and displayed some ignorance both of the facts and of the constitutional issues involved.
But here let it be said—and I am sure that I speak for other Lords Spiritual—that much as we recognise and greatly as we value the privileges which we enjoy in this House as Bishops of the established Church, we should be among the first to support the view that a place should be found for the leaders of other religious bodies. The contribution made to the deliberations of this House by such noble Lords as Lord Soper and Lord McLeod of Fuinary can leave no doubt about the enrichment which would be brought by a still wider representation of those who bear responsibility for the religious life of the nation. Even so, there are those who question the propriety of the Bench of Bishops enjoying a place as of right in this Chamber, and since this is an opportunity for a frank discussion of such issues I hone your Lordships will bear with me if I say something in explanation of what we who enjoy this privilege greatly value. In so doing, I shall try to be as dispassionate, as objective and as impersonal as I can be.
First, there is the historical issue. The presence of ecclesiastics in the Councils of the nation goes back unbroken, except for a short period in the Commonwealth, to Anglo-Saxon times. The reason for their presence and the extent of their influence has varied from century to century. Originally, they were summoned because they were powerful and wealthy landowners. Later they made their contribution as great Officers of State. At the accession of Henry VIII it was estimated that 15 out of the 17 diocesan Bishops had held high office in the State. In the 18th and early 19th centuries they represented valuable votes in your Lordships' House. This was the time when the Bishops reached the nadir of their representation in Parliament.
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Bishop Bell of Chichester, speaking in this House on a similar occasion in 1957, quoted a well-known historian as saying of these times:
"The Bishops were almost a laughing stock for their subservience. They could not even stay away without exciting comment. When only 7 of the 26 appeared in Parliament during the ticklish Regency crisis of 1788 Lord Bulkely remarked that it was a proof that crows soon smell powder."
If Anthony Trollope is to be trusted, the scandal of political appointments to spiritual cures lasted into the 1850s, for devotees of Barchester Towers will recollect that the prolongation of the life of Bishop Grantly for a few hours after the fall of the Government meant that his son, Archdeacon Grantly was, in Trollope's words, deprived of his "desire to sit in full lawn sleeves among the Peers of the Realm"; while the diocese instead was subjected to the rule of Dr. Proudie—and Mrs. Proudie.
With such a record so close at hand it is not surprising that some should share the acid comment of Bishop Hensley Henson:
"Is it not notorious that few arguments against the Establishment are more effective with the multitude than a cold recital of episcopal action in Parliament? The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge."
Yet in fact we have done much to rid our mouths of the bitter taste of a questionable past. Bishops no longer live in their London houses, visit their dioceses during the off-season months, and turn up in solid phalanxes to vote for the Government which nominated them to their Sees. They have a greater sense of responsibility for their primary spiritual duties in their diocese, while at the same time recognising that those duties are given special opportunity by a voice in Parliament.
I think it can be claimed that the historic right to a seat in this Chamber on these Benches has brought to its counsels many men of great wisdom, courage and prophetic insight, who would not otherwise have been here: to name only Archbishop Davidson, Archbishop Temple, Archbishop Garbett and Bishop Bell. I do not believe that we do the nation a service by disregarding the past, by rejecting institutions because the reasons for which they came into being have ceased to have any relevance. To sterilise the present from its contact with

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what has gone before by removing those institutions which remind us of our his tory and tradition may in subtle but powerful ways upset the balance of our political machinery. So long as we can adjust and adapt the old to meet the demands of the new we render a double service. We serve the present with the maturity of the past. And that, I hope, the Lords Spiritual have in some measure been able to achieve.
It would not be right to justify a position solely on grounds of history and tradition. In this case there is also the important constitutional issue. By reason of our history, the threads of Church and State are closely interwoven in the fabric of the nation. That is an inescapable fact. There are some, both those who claim to be churchmen and those who do not, who regret this state of affairs and would like to disentangle the threads. Indeed, it is in order to examine the desirability of a modification in the relationship between Church and State that the Archbishops' Commission is at present sitting, though we cannot yet tell exactly when it will be able to report. If that Commission should recommend a change in the Church-State nexus, then all the points of contact, of which Bishops in this House is one, would need to be reexamined. The balance of relationship is, however, a delicate one, and I suggest that the White Paper is fair and just in recommending that any basic alteration in the status of the Lords Spiritual should await the more general survey which we may expect from the Commission.
Finally, I come to the practical issue. The influence exerted by the Bench of Bishops has changed greatly over the years. At the Reformation Parliament in 1529, there were present 48 Lords Spiritual and 44 Lords Temporal. In the reign of Edward VI the number was fixed at two Archbishops and 24 Bishops. Three hundred years ago this House consisted of 80 persons in 1900, of 590 persons; in 1957, 872; today, 1,062. The number of Bishops has remained the same. The Lords Spiritual therefore constitute a tiny minority, but, I hope your Lordships will accept, a significant one. The Bishops are entrusted with a responsibility in this place not for any narrow ecclesiastical reasons, but because they, along with others whose mouthpiece
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they endeavour to be, are deeply concerned—and specially concerned—with the spiritual, moral and social well-being of the nation.
Never has there been a time when these issues were more vividly before us. Issues of war and peace, of international morality, of racial discrimination, of educational reform, of the welfare of different sections of the community; issues of personal morality, abortion, divorce, homosexuality, gambling, drug addiction and the like. This House has a wealth of experience and expertise over the whole range of these problems. I hope it is felt that those who sit on these Benches make a constructive contribution to our discussions, by virtue of their training, their experience and their contact with all sorts and conditions of men.
In paragraph 23, the White Paper stresses the need for regional representation in the House of Lords; in paragraph 25 it declares its desire for "a degree of genuine independence". I hope I am not claiming too much for the Lords Spiritual in saying that they are tailor-made to fit these requirements. They represent a wide geographical pattern and can express a point of view fresh from the place where they live and work. The Bishop of Durham on the problems of the North-East, which surround him in Bishop Auckland; the Bishop of Truro, straight from the beaches befouled by the "Torrey Canyon". They are beholden to no one, and can and do express their minds without restriction.
I must not end without expressing, on behalf of all of us on these Benches, the value which we place upon our privileges which we hold in this Chamber. We are proud of the tradition which we represent; we value the opportunity of leading the House in its Prayers; we value its many friendships, and, above all, we prize the opportunity of taking part in the government of our country. We trust that, though diminished in number, we shall be given the opportunity to continue to serve to the best of our ability.
4.15 p.m.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, I hope that the preceding speakers will forgive me if I do not follow them at length into all the interesting arguments which they have put forward this

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afternoon: it would take up far too much of your Lordships' time. Though, no doubt, I shall cover much the same ground, my purpose is to concentrate in as short a time as I possibly can on the main issues that seem to me personally to be raised by the Government's Motion which we are examining this afternoon.
The subject which we are discussing, the Reform of your Lordships' House, is not a new one—at any rate, to those of us who have been Members of this House for any considerable time. I think it is the third time that it has come before the House of Lords since I have been a Member. All the aspects have been explored again and again, both with regard to the composition and powers of the House, and all possible alternatives to the present system have been exhaustively examined.
The main target, of course, has been the hereditary character of this House, and that is perhaps not surprising; for, after all, the conditions which so many centuries ago brought into being the hereditary system have long passed away. In those days, as I think the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester has just reminded your Lordships, the main qualification for membership was territorial power—the territorial power of those feudal magnates without whose support the King could not govern at all. That, as I understand it, is the real origin of those Writs of Summons which your Lordships still receive. But to-day, as we all know, great territorial magnates no longer exist; and if the hereditary system has continued into the modern world, it has not been because it is any longer defensible on any logical grounds, but because, as I understand the position, it has, like so many British institutions, on the whole worked not too badly; and, in addition, it has provided a check on possible actions by a House of Commons which has ceased any longer to represent the people who elected it—a check which up to now, at any rate, the British people have believed to be required, if democracy is to mean what it says.
I may be told that the fact that some such check may he needed does not of itself justify anything in the nature of a hereditary system. I should entirely agree with that view; and as some, at any rate, of your Lordships, may know,
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I have personally long advocated a drastic pruning of that system. I should think there can be few people in the world to-day who would still attempt to maintain the view that the fact that a man is the son of his father could of itself justify a claim to be a Member of this House. There must be some other qualification as well. To this extent, I largely agree with what was said by the noble and learned Lord, the Lord Chancellor.
On the other hand, I believe that there is still one reason against the disappearance of the hereditary system, as is, as I understand it, envisaged in the Government plan now before your Lordships. It has nothing to do with principle at all—it is purely practical—but it is, I believe, very important. It is a very simple one. Without some hereditary Peers, I do not see how there is going to be, under the Government's proposals, any even fairly young Members of the House of Lords at all. I have been at pains and it is really a monumental task—to go through the list of Peers who are Members of this House at the present time. And what have I found? Except for hereditary Peers, there would not be a single Member under 40, and only three under 50. And yet, my Lords, the House is, under this scheme, now to lose all its hereditary Peers. That does seem to me a formidable defect to these proposals which we are discussing.
The House of Commons, in this particular respect, is quite differently and far more fortunately placed than us. For a young man, however young, can always offer himself to a constituency organisation for selection as a representative of one or other Party in the House. But a young Peer, under the White Paper proposals of the Government, if I have understood them aright, has to be selected by the Prime Minister of the day himself. And how is the Prime Minister to know, among quite young men, who are good and who are not? The experience we have already had with Life Peers clearly shows this. They are all, if I may say so, fairly elderly men, and some of them are quite old. It is quite true that, for one generation only, existing young Peers are to he allowed to speak, if not to vote. But this is again, if I have got it right, only for one generation; and

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after that there will presumably be practically no Member in this House who is under 50 and very few under 60. Unless this difficulty can be got over, this does seem to me a very serious defect in the proposals. For your Lordships' House will tend to be only an armchair for the old, comfortable no doubt and probably well deserved, but sadly lacking in youth or imagination or vitality.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, before the noble Marquess leaves this very interesting point, how many young Peers does he think are essential to modify the "armchair" quality of this House? I wondered how many under 40 he could see at this moment. I can see about two or three.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, I can see some. I am not defending the present position; what I am saying is that under the Government scheme it would be infinitely worse. I would personally prefer to leave at least a residue of, say, 50 hereditary Peers and entrust the selection of those either to the whole body of hereditary Peers, stressing the importance of youth, or to an all-Party Select Committee of the House of Lords as an alternative, and I would put that suggestion very diffidently to your Lordships as a solution to this very real difficulty. While, therefore, I am not pretending that all young Peers at present pay attention to their duties exactly as they should. I do see some here this afternoon, good ones too, who would not be here in the reformed House.
And now I should like to say a word about powers, with regard to which the defects of the scheme seem to me even more glaring. Perhaps the main argument, as I have already said, that has been used in the past against the hereditary system is that the mere accident of birth should no longer be regarded as entitling a man to perform the immensely important and responsible duties that might well fall on him under the Constitution. But that argument, if the White Paper scheme is passed into law, will no longer have any validity. The dead wood will all have been cut out. A new membership will have been provided, consisting of men and women selected because of their ripe wisdom and experience.
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Surely, that being so, the quid pro quo should be that the new and wiser Second Chamber should be given more independence, more authority to play its part under the Constitution. But, strangely enough, it appears that, under the scheme of the Government, the exact opposite will be the case.
This wise new House is to have not more, as one would have expected, but far less powers than the old one. That surely does not make sense at all. There is always, it seems, in the future to be a Government majority for whatever Party it may be, whether in the Lords or in the Commons. Both Houses will have a majority of the same Party. That runs directly contrary to a very sensible observation, if I may say so with family pride, on this very subject once made by my grandfather, when he was leading this House at the end of the last century, with regard to the proper relationship between the two Houses. He said that if one has a door with two locks, one does not want to open with the same key. That observation seems to me to be as true now as it was then; and that is where I disagreed, I think, with some words that were spoken by my noble friend Lord Jellicoe.
There is, it is true, a rather odd proviso—not, strangely enough, mentioned at all up to now this afternoon—that the Cross-Bench Peers, under certain circumstances, should be able to hold the balance. But what does this in fact mean? It means this: that in a really serious crisis, when the main Parties in the State, representing between them the great majority of the British people, are unalterably divided, the final decision would rest with a group of individuals who, however distinguished, have shown, by the very fact that they sit on the Cross-Benches, that they do not represent any body of opinion at all but themselves. What protection is there to the country in that? The very fact that they have found themselves unable to agree with the policy of any political Party makes it very improbable. if they will forgive me for saying so, that they will be able to agree even with each other or will represent anything that could be described as a corporate opinion on any question whatever.
That being the case, the effect of what the Government are proposing to do will

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be to remove any effective curb on the House of Commons and give the Government of the day, whatever it may be, an automatic majority in both Houses of Parliament, even if that Government has clearly ceased to represent the majority of the people. And that is something dangerously near single-Chamber government. Indeed, it is really no figment of my brain that such a situation might occur; it is exactly the position we are in at this very moment. It is surely rather significant that this Government that is asking to be freed from all constitutional restraints is one that may have a majority in the House of Commons but certainly at the present time has not one in the country, or anything like it. Such being the case, one cannot help suspecting that it is not so much the elimination of the effete hereditary Peers that is the real purpose of this exercise. We are merely the smokescreen.
The real aim of the Government and their supporters in another place is a much more far-reaching one: it is to take the country a big step nearer to single-Chamber government; and that is something, my Lords, that I do not believe for a moment the electors want; and though we are sometimes apt to forget it, it is they, the electors, the British people, and not we, who should be, under Her Majesty the Queen, the real rulers of this country. We are only their servants, and they, the British people, ought, I submit, most certainly to be asked to give their approval to this scheme at a General Election, before any change so far-reaching, affecting their whole future, is passed into law. That was the course, I would remind Lord Wade, which was adopted by the then Prime Minister in 1910. It was the right course then; and even after listening to the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor I feel that it is the right course now; and I was glad to hear my noble friend Lord Jellicoe support that view.
By all means let us eliminate heretary right as the sole basis for membership of this House, if that is the will of the people. We have gone quite a long way in that direction already. By all means if that is what the country wants, let us have a Council of State composed of men of ripe experience and independent mind, capable of exercising their
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own judgment on public affairs. But to shackle a Council of State of that kind with a permanent Government majority simply does not make sense. It is a contradiction in terms. Nor, I repeat, do I believe that to free Governments with temporary majorities in the House of Commons from all constitutional restraints is what the British electorate want. On the contrary, their present mood, so far as I can gauge it, is one of deep suspicion of all politicians. What they want is not less restraints but more.
I fully realise that in speaking as I have to your Lordships this afternoon about the constitutional importance of this House I may be regarded by many, perhaps in all parts of the House, as just an old reactionary, or at any rate an anachronism, looking back into the past, hankering after the past. But, my Lords, I do not hanker after the past. I know as well as any of your Lordships that the past cannot be recalled. What I do feel—and feel deeply—is that it this country, as in every country so far as I know at the present time—even in democratic countries—there is a great and growing danger. It is of the ever-increasing power in the hands of the Executive. That, my Lords, is the danger: and it is my strong belief that, to guard against that danger, there must always be some Second Chamber that does not merely say "Ditto" to the first, and I gravely fear that this scheme that we arc discussing this afternoon, with its statutory built-in majority for the Government of the day, and with, as I still feel, even after listening to the Lord Chancellor, its increased patronage in the hands of the Prime Minister of the day, and with its placing of a responsibility on the Cross-Benchers much too heavy for them to bear—that this scheme, my Lords, far from protecting the country from that danger will only increase it.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester said that he regarded the scheme as "a victory for good sense". For the reasons I have given, I am afraid that I cannot agree. And in saying this, my Lords, I am certainly not a reactionary. Indeed, now that the noble Lord, Lord Foot, in this House, has approved of something I have said on this subject, and now too that I have found myself in almost complete agreement with what was said by Mr. Maurice Edelman in the

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Daily Express last week, I am beginning to think that I am moving rapidly, and almost dangerously, to the Left. But what I am, and what I hope I always shall be, is a constitutionalist; and I believe that this scheme of the Government will upset the whole balance of the constitution, on which the stability of the country depends. I understand that it has been put about in some quarters that, if we do not accept this, we shall get something worse. Indeed, that was inherent in the speech of my noble friend Lord Jellicoe—if he will forgive me for saying so, a rather pusillanimous, even a defeatist, speech. That was also the argument, if I understood it aright, that was put forward by the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor this afternoon. But I personally do not regard as a convincing argument in favour of doing something bad the belief that if you do not do it, you may get something even worse. Moreover, frankly, for the reasons I have stated, I do not believe that we can have anything much worse; and for that reason, I personally shall feel it my duty to go into the Lobby against the Motion, when it comes to a vote.
4.35 p.m.
LORD S1LKIN: My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Marquess in any debate in this House, and I do so this afternoon with special pleasure because we all know the great part that he has played in the past in matters of this kind and the many negotiations in which he has taken Hart in connection with the reform of the House of Lords. I did not find his speech this afternoon entirely reactionary; I found it partly so. In his references to the fact of the Government having a majority in this House, I thought he was rather overlooking the fact that that has been the case for centuries past in the case of a Conservative Government. I do not remember the noble Marquess ever protesting that there was virtually unilateral government at the time of a Conservative Government and that the House of Lords came ino active operation only when there was a Labour or Liberal Government.
However, I want to be critical myself of the White Paper, and I hope that the Government and my noble friends will not mind if I am comnletely outspoken
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and say things of the White Paper itself which may be even rather hurtful. I want to make it quite clear that I am speaking only for myself and for nobody else. I wish, first of all, to question the urgency or even the necessity for dealing with this matter at the present time. There is no crisis, and no crisis is being threatened. After all, for many years we have had the situation of a majority of Conservative Peers in this House and we have had the hereditary system—anomalous as these things have been —and I do not remember, at any rate since 1910, that the actual policy of a Labour Government or of a Liberal Government has been seriously interfered with. I could have understood it if this Government had introduced a measure for the reform of the Lords immediately they came into office; they might have feared that there would be a certain amount of interference with the work which they intended to do. But to bring in a measure of this kind four years after they are in office, when they realise that they are in no danger whatever from any interference from this House, seems to me a somewhat untimely action.
The powers of delay which this House possesses have not proved to be serious. It may be said that this House can interfere with measures that are introduced in the last Session of Parliament. But looking at the gracious Speech and the measures which are being introduced in this Session, it seems to me that there is nothing radical which is threatened for either this or the succeeding Session. Therefore, there seems little danger that this House will interfere with anything that the Government may wish to do either in this or in the next Session. Of course we have frequently made Amendments to Bills against the wishes of the Government. We did so in the case of the Transport Bill, but, as I think the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack pointed out, a great many of these Amendments were eventually accepted by the Government because they effected an improvement in the Bill. Therefore, no harm has been done by passing such Amendments even when they have been opposed to the Government's own ideas.
LORD SOMERS: My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Lord for a second? Is it not also true that those Amend

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ments to which the Government did not agree we agreed to withdraw?
LORD SILKIN: My Lords, that is perfectly true, and the Transport Bill is now in force. Moreover, in many respects this House has shown itself in recent years as more progressive, or at least as equally progressive as the other place. I need mention only one or two measures of social reform, controversial I agree, which have originated in this House: measures on homosexuality and abortion, and the willingness of this House to accept the abolition of hanging. In these respects, and in many others, I think we have demonstrated that this House, certainly in the last twenty years, has changed in character and is to-day a much more progressive House than it ever has been. So this talk of urgency, of "brooking no delay," which has gone on for a century is really no reason for introducing a measure of this kind at the present time. Admittedly there has been a crisis from time to time in the past. There was a crisis in the days of Gladstone when the Home Rule Bills were rejected by the Lords. In 1893, when Lord Rosebery was Prime Minister, and his Home Rule Bill was again rejected, he said that it was
"urgently necessary that something should be done about the House of Lords".
But in fact it was not until 1910, when a Budget was rejected, that there was a measure to deal with the House of Lords by limiting its powers to deal with finance. Even at that time it was stated that it was only as a temporary measure that this had been done. But may I quote from the Preamble to the 1911 Act:
"… and whereas it is intended to substitute for the House of Lords as it at present exists a second chamber constituted on a popular instead of hereditary basis, but such substitution cannot immediately be brought into operation …"?
We have waited a very long time for a House of Lords constituted on a popular basis, and we are not even getting it to-day.
Apart from the Act of 1949, which reduced the powers of delay of the House of Lords, and of course the Life Peerages Act, which was a first-aid measure when the Opposition at that time had virtually ceased to exist, the House of Lords has remained exactly as
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it was in 1910—without, so far as I know, any ill-effects. The White Paper again refers to the fact that the now proposed reforms are temporary; and that has been stated by virtually every speaker who has supported these measures. I wonder for how long this "temporary" measure will continue. If it is the same as was promised in the Preamble to the 1911 Act it will be a great many years before there is any real modification of the Act.
Moreover, there is no popular demand for this change. It is creating little or no interest in the country. I realise that the proposals are based upon an agreement between the Leaders of the Parties, but in fact there are very large sections of the followers of those Leaders who are not prepared to agree with the proposals in the White Paper. Certainly in another place, if a poll were taken among my own supporters I should think that a very large number would be against the proposals in this White Paper, and I do not know what would happen among noble Lords opposite if they were free to express their views.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Lord for one moment? I thought I made it perfectly plain in my opening remarks that, so far as this House is concerned, there is no Whip, and even if there were it would not make the slightest difference.
LORD SILKIN: My Lords, I do not know the relevance of that remark. All I am pointing out is that although the Leaders have come to an understanding their respective followers have not necessarily done so and I think we shall find during the three-day debate that that is perfectly true.
I have said that I can see no urgency about these, proposals, nor is this the right time to be making such proposals. The Goverment have announced their decision to set up a Constitutional Commission. I presume that this will be considering, among other matters, the functions of Parliament as a whole: how it works, and how it can be improved. I hope that it is not only the House of Lords that will be under consideration, but even more so the House of Commons, which is very much more in need of a face-lift, of modernisation. To deal with the House of Lords alone strikes me as

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being not only a complete waste of effort but a wrong priority.
Furthermore, we are living in rapidly changing times, and a House of Lords which might appear appropriate to-day would be completely outdated within a very short time. There are movements in Scotland and Wales, which we cannot ignore, for self-government, and whatever happens they are bound to result in the near future in a greater delegation of powers. This must be reflected, or should be, in a changed membership of the Lords. Then again we are waiting for the Reports of the Maud Committee on Local Government and on Regionalisation. The noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack did not think that they were relevant. I think that the Reports are very relevant. We are moving towards more and more regionalisation in this country, and I am sure that it would be wise to have this reflected in a reformed Second Chamber. Until we have a clearer idea of the shape of things to come, it is absurd to be embarking upon this wholly unnecessary, or at least premature, legislation.
I know that proposals for the reform of the Lords have been incorporated in the Labour Party's policy programmes for many years, but it has become progressively less and less important and, as I say, is to-day quite untimely. In 1910 an Election was fought on the reform of the Lords. At that time one could arouse passions about the non-representative character of the Lords and its built-in Conservative majority. They were matters which aroused fierce controversy. Could we do this to-day? Could we today conceive of an Election fought on the reform of the House of Lords?
We are being asked to give general approval to the proposals of the White Paper. I am sorry about this. I find it difficult, personally, to give general approval. There is so much, apart from the time factor of the proposals, with which I cannot agree, that I should have preferred that we had a discussion and listened to the views of large numbers of noble Lords who are going to take part in this debate, before we finally decide to give our general approval. I observe, incidentally, that the Commons are not being asked to give "approval" to the White Paper; they are merely being
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asked to "take note". I hope that it is not because we are more pliable or less critical of the White Paper. I hope that noble Lords will speak very freely about it.
I wish now to make a few comments on the proposals themselves. I have talked hitherto about the untimeliness of these proposals and, indeed, about the necessity for them at all. I agree that if we are going to deal with the Lords, we must tackle the two points which cannot be defended: the hereditary system and the permanent Conservative majority; and, of course, we must settle the powers of the Lords vis-à-vis the Commons. The agreed proposals are an attempt to meet these criticisms and to regulate the relationship between the two Houses. But, in my opinion, this is the wrong way of remedying the anomalies. It is only substituting one anomaly for another. Personally, I am not satisfied that a nominated House, in practice nominated by two or three individuals, is going to be much of an improvement in composition and character on the present House. It is certainly no more democratic to have a House composed in this way.
Neither the proposed House nor the existing House are in any way representative of the general public. The present system of Life Peers provides the possibility of getting into the House persons of distinction, specialised knowledge, ability and character and, to a large extent, the House has been enriched as a result of the creation of such Life Peers. But—and here I tread on thin ice—it has also been a means of patronage, of rewarding people for past services who to-day have no particular contribution to make, who have either rendered long service in the other House or are no longer able to get a constituency, or of people who will be soon reaching the proposed retiring age.
We shall have the enormous disadvantage of eventually losing our young Peers who, as the noble Marquess has pointed out, are making so admirable a contribution to the work of this House. I cannot see either the Prime Minister or the Leaders of the Opposition of any Party deliberiately seeking out young people as Life Peers; young people who have not yet made a mark in the political world, but who have decided to make the House of Lords a career. In spite of the statistics

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which have been given, many of them are dedicated and show much public spirit and considerable ability. Admittedly, under the present scheme a number of existing young Peers will probably be used, but when the present generation of hereditary Peers dies out, there will be no young Peers to replace them. And then, as the noble Marquess has so clearly pointed out, the House will be composed of elderly ladies and gentlemen with an average age considerably higher than the Commons and, as distinct from the Commons, will remain here for life. Nor do I like the idea of appointing Peers for life. With all its difficulties and problems, I should have much preferred an elected Second Chamber. I appreciate the argument that the Commons do not wish to have an elected Second Chamber, and that they will never be persuaded to have one because it might appear as a rival to themselves, but I must say that I see little force in that point, because it is the powers of the House that will count. The powers of this House are, and will be, severely restricted in such a way as always to leave the Commons as the predominant Chamber. That is what will matter.
In fact, very often the House of Lords, even with its truncated powers, to-day acts as a rival to the Commons. Many of our debates are far better, better informed and more objective than those in the Commons; and if one has a nominated Chamber partly composed, as the White Paper intends it to be, of eminent persons with specialised knowledge and experience, one will never get away from the idea in the public mind that the House of Lords is the more intellectual and capable Chamber. I realise that in paragraph 13 of the White Paper it is proposed to set up a Committee to consider broadly how the House of Lords is working, but this will be after the event and after the leaders of the various Parties have nominated membership of this House. It will have no authority to deal with the vexed question of the increasing powers of the Executive and the fact that Members of the House of Commons are becoming more and more ciphers with the feeling that they have little authority over the Executive.
I said that I did not in any event like the conception of membership for life. It is probably meant as a kindly gesture
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to people who have given long years of service in the Lords but who are no longer capable of making a real contribution and therefore cannot be trusted to vote. It is true that there is provision in the White Paper for the removal of Members who neglect, or who are no longer able or fitted to perform, their duties. It is not clear whether this will be on the grounds of age or who is going to decide that a particular person is no longer able or fitted to perform his duties. In the vast majority of cases over-age Peers will take a very passive part in the work of the House. They will regard it as a club and—I hate to say it—possibly as a dormitory. And since they cannot vote, it will be an invidious and impossible task to have to decide who are no longer equipped to be Members. Who will undertake that task? I would much prefer, sad as it will be for me personally, that there should be a definite retiring age. Make it 75, make it some reasonable age; but let it be assumed that once a person has reached that age he is no longer in a position to render effective service in this House.
LORD BOOTHBY: My Lords, may I interrupt my noble friend for one moment to ask him whether he would also apply that age limit to Ministers occupying executive positions in the Government?
LORD SILKIN: My Lords, I would indeed, of course, though I believe that there must be very few Ministers who are of the age to which I have referred. I can only regard it as an act of kindness or mercy on the part of the promoters of the White Paper that they should permit of membership of this House for life. I know that one can point out A and B as people who are over the retiring age but who are still capable of rendering service, but one can always do that. Even in public companies there is a retiring age at which the chairman has to go, however eminent or fit he may be. It is true that for a year or two he may be appointed as an adviser or consultant to the company, but it is up to the company to decide and it is not automatic that every director of a company, once he attains the age of 70, 65 or whatever it is, shall remain an ex officio (or whatever it is) member of the Board. So I would much

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prefer that there should be a definite retiring age and that Members should retire from this House at that age.
My Lords, I have no particular criticism of the proposed functions of the House as set out in the White Paper. I think that, on the whole, they are about right. They will impose a minimum of interference and delay with the decisions of the House of Commons; and I think there has been general agreement on them. However, in conclusion I would make two proposals for the more efficient working of a Second Chamber. There is a suggestion in the White Paper that more Cabinet Ministers might be allocated to this House. I think that would be all right in the case of non-Departmental Ministers, but it would be a great mistake to appoint Departmental Ministers to this House. Their work must be primarily in the Commons, to whom they should be answerable. But I appreciate that in this House we are suffering from the fact that we have not enough Ministers of calibre to speak for and justify major Bills, or to discuss really serious and important topics. I would suggest that we might go back to the Middle Ages and permit senior Ministers from the Commons to address this House on such occasions. This would not be creating a precedent, and I am sure the idea would be dear to the noble Marquess, who referred with nostalgia to some things in the past.
My second proposal is not touched on in the White Paper and is probably a matter for this House itself. I have from time to time advocated that we should conduct our proceedings in a more orderly way, and ensure that the Standing Orders relating to debates are strictly observed. For instance, I have noted that many speeches recently have been wholly irrelevant to the subject under discussion. I remember several recent speeches which really had nothing whatever to do with the Motion before the House; but there was no one to call the speakers to order, and consequently a good deal of time was wasted. Very often Amendments are put down which have no bearing on the Bill before your Lordships' Committee, or which are outside its scope or powers. The same applies to Questions, which are becoming more and more irrelevant, particularly supplementaries.
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I would therefore suggest once more that we have a person in charge of our proceedings other than the Leader of the House: an independent person who would preside at our meetings and be in a position to deal with Motions or Questions which are irrelevant or out of order. It seems to me completely anomalous that the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor— and I am glad he is not here at the moment—who is nominally in the Chair, should be responsible for calling Motions or Resolutions, should then take two steps to the left to act as a Party spokesman and then, when he has finished, should take two steps to the right and collect the votes. It is very decorous, no doubt, and quite historic, but is it not completely out-of-date for a person of such eminence to act in this time-consuming manner? I am sure that any Lord Chancellor could make much better use of his time than merely sitting on the Woolsack and taking no part in our procedings other than on the occasions when he is speaking.
My Lords, I have said my say. Your Lordships will gather that I am by no means enthusiastic about the proposals in the White Paper. I regard them as unnecessary at the present time, not sufficiently thought out and, in any case, as untimely in the light of probable future developments. I do not think we are proceeding along the right lines. Although I recognise that on the two matters I have mentioned changes are required, I do not think that the proposed changes are the right ones. A writer in to-day's Daily Telegraph says:
… what is being designed is not a perfect constitution but a perfect accommodation between political parties".
But I submit that it is not being put forward by the members of the political Parties, and that the political leaders have been speaking only for themselves.
If your Lordships consider that these reforms are right and sound, and are prepared to approve them generally, then I see no reason why they should be postponed and put into operation only after the present Parliament ends. I would therefore not support the Opposition on that particular point, although I gather that they are not dividing on it. I do not know, but if they are I would not support them. For myself, I propose to abstain from voting.
5.9 p.m.
LORD ANNAN: My Lords, I hope your Lordships will bear with me if I take a rather different line from that which I suspect some speakers will take on the White Paper. It seems to me that the main point in the White Paper is not to eliminate the delaying powers of your Lordships' House, or even to alter its composition, but to ensure that Parliament as a whole can function rather better.
My Lords, there are two sides to our Parliamentary system, and the first, which I do not believe we should ever forget, is that it provides strong Government. I say that because a moment ago there was an enthusiastic cheer when the noble Marquess reminded us that of course it is our duty to check the Executive. But the boon which this country has in having a Constitution which provides a strong Government must not be forgotten. Of course, Governments can be weak; but even if they are, there is nothing in the custom of the Constitution which prevents them from governing. The two parts of the Legislature are not divided perpetually against themselves; nor, for that matter, does the Legislature combine permanently to thwart the Executive. Similarly, the Judiciary has no power to overrule the Legislature.
It is difficult, perhaps, to remember how fortunate we are in this, because almost exactly a hundred years ago the Reform Bill was passed which produced in its train the Party system which has given us this kind of government; and we have not experienced in this country those weak systems which have collapsed, those weak systems of democratic government such as existed in the Weimar Republic and in the Third and Fourth Republics in France. The only time the principle was seriously challenged was in the period of Mr. Asquith's Administration; and the Parliament Act of 1911 was the result.
I say this, my Lords, because there are well-meaning people outside Parliament who seriously urge the setting up of a regional Second Chamber or a House of Lords elected by popular vote. This, as the noble and learned Lord who sits on the Woolsack reminded us, would mean turning this House into a Senate—and we do not want a Senate here. The American constitution groans under
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the shackles of its complicated checks and balances, and only the fact that the President of the United States is both Head of State and leader of a political Party enables him to govern at all. If the Second Chamber were to be given real power—and power outside the Party system— the House of Commons, I think would dwindle and Cabinet Government as we have known it would become an impossibility.
But, my Lords, we are all concerned about the second part of our Constitution, which is the check the Legislature keeps on the Executive, and we are aware how necessary it is for Back-Bench opinion to bring its power to bear upon legislation. Paradoxically, I believe that some of the most important paragraphs in the White Paper come right at the end, in Appendix II. There, the White Paper sets out some of the functions which a reformed House of Lords would fulfil. If these reforms were to be adopted, more Bills could be introduced in this House, so enabling Public Bills to be spread over the session and divided more equally than they are at present between the two Houses. This House might revive its practice of appointing Select Committees with power to send for persons and papers On matters which have been approved by the House of Commons Standing Committees on the machinery of Government, or on subordinate legislation, or on delegated legislation or on statutory powers, and time could be given for their deliberations to be debated on the Floor of the House.
The White Paper itself draws attention to the fact that present procedures in relation to subordinate legislation are very time-consuming. It suggests that a Joint Committee might be set up to exercise the combined scrutinising function of the Special Orders Committee and the Statutory Instruments Committee. If there were a general reform of the functions and procedures of this House, with special emphasis on Joint Committees, as suggested in paragraph 9 of Appendix II, the use of Joint Committees could be extended to the consideration of Private Bills. The Appendix also draws careful attention to the way in which both Houes might agree to set up joint specialist Committees, for example on law reform.

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I believe that it is in this way that the power of this House can be preserved and extended, not by emphasising the formal voting procedures as at present exist in this House and as the noble Marquess also reminded us. But none of these changes in the functions of Parliament such as many of us have for years wished to see could possibly be envisaged unless the Upper House were reformed. If Parliament itself is to be reformed, and if its procedures are to be overhauled to meet present-day needs, it can be done only if the present anomalies in the House of Lords are removed. It seems to me that these anomalies have grown very much more marked and obvious since the creation of Life Peerages which have transformed the character of this House.
My Lords, there is a school of thought to be found on both political wings which holds that the hereditary composition of so large a part of this House should be maintained. Some desire the hereditary principle to continue so that the House of Lords will remain as absurd and useless an institution as it is possible to devise. On the other hand, there are those who want it maintained because they believe that dangerous legislation can then be thrown out by the hereditary Peers in this House. At a time when every concern in this country is being urged by the Government to become more efficient, is it really possible to argue that one part of Parliament should remain so anachronistic as, in one respect, is the House? As for the defenders of the hereditary principle, I will not argue at length against their position. I see they are now arguing that to abolish the hereditary principle in this House would be to weaken the Monarchy. If the institution of the Monarchy were really to rest upon the principle of hereditary Peers voting in this House, it would long ago have been abolished. The Monarchy rests upon totally different foundations.
My Lords, I think that the proposals before us are the kind of reasonable compromise which it is worth while accepting. They ensure that strong government will continue, they hold out the promise that the functions of Parliament will be revised and they also ensure that the Second Chamber will survive. I think that the onus on those who wish to
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abolish the Second Chamber is to explain how, if it were to be abolished, the volume of business conducted by this House could be conducted in a single Chamber. So far from abolishing the delaying power, the abolitionists would find that they had enormously increased delay in passing legislation in another place; that they had whittled away their last chance of scrutinising the processes of the Administration and particularly those processes which give rise to legislative needs—we should have a Stansted on our hands every single month.
Many of us dislike this or that proposal in the White Paper. I think that the Labour Party has conceded a great deal in these negotiations. I should like to congratulate the leaders of the Conservative Party in their adroit defence of the present status quo. It will give us, I am glad to say, the opportunity of hearing the noble Lord, Lord O'Hagan, who spoke so admirably in the debate on student unrest—we shall hear him speaking as a Peer by succession in debates 70 years from now. I am unhappy about the voting privileges given to retired Law Lords. Like the noble Lord, Lord Wade, I am unhappy at the refusal to allow non-voting Peers to vote on Committees, if they serve there, since the process of the Committees will in the end be submitted to the scrutiny of the House.
There are other points which worry me. I am worried about the position of the voting Cross-Benchers. Will they perhaps be a very senior lot? Here, of course, it depends on what view you take about the functions of the House of Lords. We have had two views put to us. If you take the view of the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, they will be an etiolated, pale lot, carefully scrutinised to see that they have no political bias or blood in them. They will be colourless individuals. On the other hand, if you take the line of the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, you look forward to sharp conflicts in which the Life Peers who vote will hold the balance. Then what a lot is theirs! They will be wooed; they will be wined; they will be dined Every inducement. endearment and blandishment will be lavished upon them.
My Lords, may I put a question to my noble friend the Leader of the House? There was one small point of

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reciprocity which I wanted to raise with him. According to the White Paper it will be possible for a Duke to sit as a Member of the House of Commons. May we have reciprocity and allow commoners to sit as Members of your Lordships' House? There are some of us who would have preferred to sit in that way, and not to have been exposed to the "Chinese tortures" inflicted by the Heralds.
But whatever doubts I have are largely put at rest when I reflect on the White Paper as a whole. The Press comments on the White Paper seem to me to neglect almost entirely the strength of custom of the Constitution. It is now part of the custom of your Lordships' House that it only very infrequently votes against the will of the Commons on a major issue. For the most part, I believe that the Cross-Benchers vote for the Government, unless they are convinced —and they take some convincing—that it is their duty to vote against the Government. With the new composition proposed in the White Paper I do not believe that the House of Lords will be the scene of continually narrowly balanced votes which are as liable to go against the Government of the day as they are liable to go for it. I must say that I was a little alarmed when I heard the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, look forward to the time when these CrossBenchers would be exercising their rights with such vigour. If there really were an attempt on the Floor of this Chamber to put, as it were, "teeth" into the House of Lords when we vote, I have little doubt that there would shortly be amending legislation by the House of Commons.
Where I think we can ask for the House to be given greater responsibility after the House has been reformed is over those functions described in Appendix II. There it is that the influence of this House can legitimately be brought to bear. That is why I support the proposals in the White Paper. I believe in their common sense. I believe in the good sense that governs our Party life, despite superficial appearances to the contrary. I believe that this reform will make the system work as it is intended to work. If that is so, then I believe that the way will be open for the far-reaching reforms in Parliamentary procedures which paragraph 70 and
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Appendix II of the White Paper suggest are so valuable and necessary.
5.24 p.m.
BARONESS ASQUITH OF YARN BURY: My Lords, I am sure that we have all enjoyed Lord Annan's interesting and very optimistic speech. I do not know that I share his optimism to the full, but I go quite a long way with him. I think that my first duty—our first duty—should be to congratulate the Government on their courage in tackling this tricky job of House of Lords Reform; a task which over 50 years ago we were told "brooked no delay" but before which successive Governments of every kind, colour and complexion have quailed. That said, my Lords, I must confess to some surprise at the timing of the operation. For as we know and as they have announced, the Government are going to set up a Constitutional Commission, and this must cover, among other things, the wider field of regionalism. It may well include—I personally hope that it will; and in this I differ from some of the past speakers—a measure of regional representation in this House, by indirect election or otherwise.
It cannot be denied, I think, that the House of Lords is part and parcel of the Constitution and its reform would seem to be part and parcel of any constitutional measure. With respect, I suggest that we may to-day be putting the cart before the horse, and that we may be involving ourselves in the future task of unpicking our own knitting. However that may be, I question only the timing of the operation. I certainly do not question the necessity for the operation itself, and I agree wholeheartedly with the general principles which are set out on page 1 of the White Paper, I think in paragraphs 4 and 5.
No one, I think, could seek to justify the anomalies, as the noble Lord. Lord Annan, said, of the composition of the present House. They are quite indefensible; although I must confess that I, as a relatively new Member, have been amazed since I have sat on these Benches to find how well a flagrant anomaly can be made to work. Here we are, a mixed bag; hereditary Peers, life Peers, Bishops and Law Lords, without even a Speaker to keep us in order—without a Speaker to impose the faintest shadow or degree of relevance on our speeches. I remember

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complaining of this on one occasion, but I have now learned better and I welcome it; because these digressions from relevance in speeches of noble Lords nave brought me an enormous amount of useful and miscellaneous information. If I may digress for one moment, in the debate that we had on dog licences (I think it was last week) I learned, to my amazement, that we import no fewer than half-a-million tortoises into this country every year. And I learnt with regret that we treat our tortoises even worse than we treat our dogs. This is the sort of advantage that we have derived from the anomalies of this House which we are now going to banish from our midst, perhaps for better things. And in spite of our somewhat bizarre habits and procedures, what good work we have done not merely in amending and revising Bills but in initiating bold and courageous legislation!
Then also, another advantage, what freedom we enjoy. Nobody could possibly accuse us, I think, of being what is called "Lobby fodder". I cannot of course answer for other Parties, I can only say that since I have sat on these Benches—only for two or three years, it is true—I have never received from our Whips any instruction or hint as to which Lobby I should vote in.
>LORD CARRINGTON: It would not have been any good.
BARONESS ASQUITH OF YARNBURY: Well, my Lords, I have sometimes sought advice for myself when I have lost my bearings in that jungle called Committee and Report stage. So we have some advantages, even if we are an anomaly.
My Lords, I came to this House, as many others of my generation must have done, with what amounted to almost Freudian bruise about its inky past. Of course, I belong to the generation, the very old generation, which lived through those tempestuous years before the Parliament Act was passed and before the Veto was abolished. Those were the years in which Winston Churchill called this House—I copied out his words:
"a one-sided, hereditary, unpurged, unrepresentative, irresponsible absentee."
Every one of those epithets was richly deserved, in my opinion, with the possible exception of "absentee". For, alas the
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House of Lords was never absent. It was always with us, and it was always the same: a fortress of reaction, a road-block to reform, an evil monster wielding absolute power. That is how I saw it and that is what it was. When I compare it with the House as it is to-day, this body infused with moderation, with reason, with tolerance and with independence of mind, it makes me feel that perhaps power is an evil drug and that there is something to be said for not having too much of it—although I think it is absolutely necessary that we retain just enough to make us feel that what we are doing here matters; that it counts; that it is going to change things, and is not just an empty ritual or an exhalation of gas.
I want, if I may, to make two criticisms of the scheme outlined in the White Paper. First of all, I am opposed to a Second Chamber which is entirely nominated by the Prime Minister of the day, whoever he may happen to be. I disagree with those who think that this will not increase patronage and extend it unduly. I think that it will open the door to wider patronage. I want to make clear beyond a doubt that this criticism has no reference to our present Prime Minister. I am not accusing him of any of these malpractices. On the contrary, I want to pay tribute to him for the admirable, moderate, just and fair way in which he has used the considerable powers he already possesses. But, as we all know, there are Prime Ministers and Prime Ministers, and, as we also all know, there are sins of omission as well as those of commission.
I am in rather a delicate position because what I am now saying involves a declaration of interest, not financial but political, both for my Party and for myself. I want to illustrate my point by a short chapter in fairly recent history. When Mr. Harold Macmillan initiated Life Peerages—and I think it was an admirable innovation for which we should give him full credit—one of the stated reasons for the reform was that it should increase the representation and strength of the minority Parties in this House, which were at that time admittedly underrepresented—namely, the Labour and the Liberal Parties. Well, during his term of office Mr. Macmillan did not create a single Liberal Life Peer. His successor, Sir Alec Douglas-Home followed suit—not, I think, through any malice towards

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the Liberal Party but probably because he thought that as Mr. Macmillan did not do it it was just one of those things that are "not done". When the present Prime Minister came to power, he immediately created three Liberal Life Peers, of whom I had the good fortune to be one. That is why I declare my interest. Since then he has added to our number. I have told this story because I think it is very relevant.
I know that we are going to be told that this "Watchdog Committee" which will be set up is going to safeguard us against the vagaries of Prime Ministerial patronage and whims. I have watched many Watchdog Committees in my life, and my experience is that though they sometimes bark they rarely bite—at least, they never bite a Prime Minister. The Committee proposes, but the Prime Minister disposes.
My second criticism (and I hope that I am not keeping the House too long, because I realise how many speakers there are to follow) is of the so-called two-tier structure, by which we shall have a House divided in two classes: a first class and a second class of Members—those who can speak and vote, as we all do at present, and those who may speak but who may never cast a vote, even in a Committee, as we have just heard. I do not think that any legislative body anywhere should contain first-class and second-class citizens. I think that we should all serve on equal terms and have equal rights.
Have the Government, I wonder, been inspired to suggest this scheme by their experiment in first-class and second-class mail in the Post Office? I devoutly hope that this House is not going to be run like the Post Office. It is very strange, but everything now seems to be labelled first-class and second-class—the very last thing one would expect from a Labour Government. I am an old-fashioned Liberal. In our household, class was always a dirty word, almost a four-letter word. Now everything is first-class or second-class, from Peers to postage stamps.
Voting is a vital political function. Voting is action, the only action we politicians can take outside the Cabinet. If I were forbidden to go into the Lobby and cast my vote for a cause about which
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I felt deeply, I should not wish to remain a Member of your Lordships' House. If I were asked to choose between being a dumb voter and an impotent spouter, I should certainly choose to be a dumb voter. Speaking is no fun and it is much more trouble than voting. I do not come here just to say "Bo" to a goose: I come here because I hope to cook a goose. I think that we should have both functions or none; and any Member who is not fully fit, whether by reason of age or otherwise, to discharge both functions, should be discharged from duty in this House.
I gather from the White Paper that the non-voting Members will be, first, hereditary Peers and, secondly, Peers who have reached the age of 72, which I suppose is now considered the official age when dotage begins. May I remind the House that such a dispensation to-day would disfranchise, for example, the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, one of the most active, ardent and indispensable Members of this House. To my mind, to disfranchise the noble Lord would be quite unthinkable.
May I point out one strange and glaring anachronism in the conception of this scheme? For instance, all Law Lords and those who hold high judicial posts are engaged in the most strenuous and precise intellectual work. Their minds have to be in athletic trim. But they can go on for ever. And, even more extraordinary, so can Cabinet Ministers. This really is very strange. I suppose that a high standard of mental preservation is more necessary in a Cabinet Minister than in just one of our Back Bench trash. We do not matter. But apparently, no. Lower standards of mental preservation are tolerable in a Cabinet Minister and he also can go on functioning past the age of 72. Meanwhile, in another place, let me remind your Lordships that octogenarians are flourishing like the green bay tree. I really cannot take this dispensation seriously, and I devoutly hope that it will be dropped. I shall certainly do my best to oppose it.
Finally, may I give strong support to the attendance requirement. May I say that I think the low-water mark of 33 per cent. is really unduly indulgent and charitable. When I read it, I rushed

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upstairs to the accountant's office, eager to check my own record and full of fear that it might not come up to scratch. To my intense relief, I found that in this year my attendance was 84 per cent. plus; and last year, although not quite so good, it was 79 per cent. plus. So although I may be a dotard, and I shall never become either a Law Lord or a Cabinet Minister, I think I can say that I have tried to do my duty in that state of life into which it has pleased the Prime Minister to call me. I intend to cast my last vote in the last ditch against becoming a fourpenny stamp."
5.41 p.m.
LORD DENHAM: My Lords, every organisation is capable of improvement by reform. Indeed, once the members of any organisation no longer admit that it can be improved, it is usually a sign that reform is not only desirable, but essential. I think the achievement of the All-Party Committee in reaching agreement over so many points is remarkable. Like many noble Lords, I have serious reservations over many parts of the package deal, but, on the whole, I can accept the proposals as probably the best compromise one can get, with one exception. I cannot accept that the eventual elimination of hereditary Peers from the second non-voting tier is either necessary or desirable. I believe that this proposal would present such a risk to the essential character of this House that, if it cannot be removed, it makes the whole package deal unacceptable. May I say at this point that if I vote for the White Paper, I shall do so because I accept the main proposals, and not because I am prepared to accept any Bill that in its final form includes this particular provision.
My Lords, all change is not necessarily for the better. We know that the House with its present composition works. If you cannot be certain of getting something better, or at least of getting something that will not be worse, it is wiser to leave well alone. As the noble Lord, Lord Annan, has said, the onus of proof that something should be altered or done away with lies with those who want to make the change and not with those who want to retain the status quo. Yet, whenever people discuss the reform of your Lordships' House, the one statement that
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it seems to be permissible to make without producing any reasons whatsoever is (and I am quoting the White Paper),
"that the hereditary basis of membership should be eliminated".
I know that the hereditary principle has for years been anathema to the Party of noble Lords opposite. Whether this is an emotional prejudice built up over the years, or whether it is a dislike based on reason, or a bit of both, I am not quite sure. Inasmuch as it is prejudice, it is difficult to argue against, except to say this: that the reform of Parliament is too important a matter to be obscured by prejudice. If noble Lords are going to eliminate the hereditary basis of membership, let them only do so having considered how it works in practice and having come to the conclusion that it is no longer necessary, and not because they object to the abstract concept of heredity.
My noble Leader, Lord Carrington, has said on several occasions—and my noble friend Lord Salisbury repeated it to-day—that it is no longer possible to justify a seat in this House by virtue of heredity alone. Of course this is true, for whether we are here because we are our fathers' sons or because we are eminent politicians, soldiers or businessmen, because we are Bishops, or even because we are the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack, we justify our seats by what we do while we are here, and not by the method of selection or election that brought us here. Is a seat in this House to be regarded as a reward for services rendered, or as an opportunity for services to come? Which is more important: who has the privilege of doing the job, or whether it is done well? If, as I believe, the answer is the latter, the only questions to be considered are these: does the hereditary element in this House contribute anything that is (a) desirable, and (b) cannot be provided by any other method of election; and will the House be a better or a worse place without the hereditary Peers?
My Lords, I believe that the hereditary element is justified in the present House and necessary in the reformed one, for four reasons. The first is that it provides this House with continuity. I think that most noble Lords have agreed this afternoon that it would be the

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greatest pity to exclude young men from the House. Not only do they counterbalance the septuagenarians and bring down the average age, but also, when subjects particularly appertaining to youth come before your Lordships, it is useful to have the views of some to whom youth is not too distant a memory. But the real value of having young men in this House is not so much what they can add to debates between the age of 20 and 30, but the contribution they can make between 30 and 40, or between 40 and 50, having had 10 or 20 years' experience of your Lordships' House.
This House has a character that is formed partly of customs inside the Chamber and partly of inter-Party cooperation and friendship outside, which produces an atmosphere that is quite unlike that of any other legislative assembly in the country, and probably in the world. In the 19 years that I have been a Member of your Lordships' House I have noticed that, though the faces change, the atmosphere remains the same. But if it is to continue to do so, it is necessary that those who exert most influence in the House at any particular time should have had the opportunity of seeing how things worked well in the past.
This is made possible by the inclusion of hereditary Peers, because most hereditary Peers go through three stages in this House. The first, soon after they succeed, is a period of apprenticeship, when they come from time to time, as their commitments allow, to listen and to watch, more than to take part. Those who feel they can do so, and want to do so, then enter the second stage, when they come as often as they can and speak whenever subjects which they know something about are discussed. At this stage their influence on the character on the House is at its greatest. Finally, the third stage is when age or other commitments make their rate of attendance, and therefore their opportunity to influence the House, less.
Life Peers miss out the first stage altogether. By the very reason of their appointment, their attendance is at its highest and their influence at its greatest when they first arrive. In the jargon of modern advertising, they are "instant Peers". By the time they have had
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much experience of this House they are well on the way to the final stage.
Of the 100 noble Lords (it was exactly 100) who attended over three-quarters of the Sittings in the 1966–67 Session the last full Session for which I have been able to get attendance figures, just under half were hereditary and just over half were created Peers. Of these noble Lords, who were most in a position to ensure the continuity of what is best in the House, those who were hereditary had been Members of the House for an average of 19 years, whereas those who were created Peers had been Members for an average of only eight years. Taking the combined Government and Opposition Front Benches to-day, who perhaps have the most practical opportunity to influence what goes on, the hereditary Members have been in this House for an average of over 16 years, and the created Peers for an average of less than five years.
With the House restricted to Life Peers, there would be virtually a complete turnover every ten years. There would be hardly any continuity. The character and atmosphere of the House would change constantly. And as former Members of another place would certainly form the largest group, and with their knowledge of Parliamentary matters would surely exert a lot of influence, the House would become more and more a shadow of another place, whereas it would still have completely different functions to perform.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Lord? I am interested in his statistics. He will realise that statistically, since the great majority of Life Peers have been created in the last five years, it would not be possible for them to have had more than five years' attendance.
LORD DENHAM: No, my Lords; Life Peers and first creations added together. In saying "created Peers", I was using the words used in the White Paper.
The second reason I would advance for the retention of the hereditary element may at first hearing seem to be rather an argument against it. It allows for the inclusion of nonentities in your Lordships' House. The House of the

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future must to a large extent consist, as it does now, mainly of the eminent in various fields: the chairmen of banks, the leaders of industry, the famous surgeon, the trade union boss. All these we have to-day as first creations or Life Peers and it would be easy to fill the House with top experts in every field. But the great advantage of the present House is that it also includes as hereditary Peers the not-so-eminent, lesser men in commerce and industry, the general practitioner, the rank and file trade-union member, men and women who have practical knowledge in many different fields from many parts of the country.
If I may give your Lordships a personal example, when I am not in your Lordships' House I am a small shopkeeper. There are at least three Life Peers in this House who control, or have controlled, vast and successful chain stores. They are among the greatest experts in their line. But when legislation to do with shops is before this House I think I know more about the problems that might beset the thousands of small shopkeepers in the country than these noble Lords will ever know.
As a revising Chamber, we are concerned to a great extent with small matters. The larger issues of policy are settled in another place, and, though we go through the motions of dividing on them on Party lines, the real achievement of the House is in perfecting the many small Committee points, relatively unimportant in themselves but collectively of great importance. Can you expect a House of experts to interest themselves in matters which are individually insignificant? There is about your Lordships' House an amateur spirit which it would be a very great pity to lose. The devoted amateur in almost any field can afford to spend time, effort and interest in getting details perfect that would be commercially unjustified to the professional. In a House composed entirely of experts—a "meritocracy"—will not each Member tend to be biased in favour of his own particular expertise? Where will you find the true all-rounder without the hereditary principle? There are always two or three noble Lords in this House (and your Lordships will know at once who they are) who contribute little or nothing inside the Chamber but who,
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by their character, their good nature and friendliness, contribute very largely indeed to the background against which this House works so well. How do you find these without the accident of heredity?
The third reason, and I think one of the most important reasons, for the retention of the hereditary element is that it will prevent this House from getting too exaggerated an idea of its own importance. If anybody criticises another place, they shout for the Committee for Privileges. If anybody criticises this House, your Lordships are rather inclined to agree with them. This is not because your Lordships are more high-minded or more modest, but simply because, not having been elected by 40,000 voters, and many of us not even having been appointed on merit, we are in a position to realise what every other political assembly ought to realise: that as a House we can justify ourselves only by what we do and the way we do it. If you remove the hereditary Peers this may change. The House would be in a position to feel itself a real "meritocracy". How often has one heard created Peers, usually newly-arrived created Peers, say in this Chamber, though they are much too polite to put it in exactly these words: "What an absolutely first-class place this would be if only we could get rid of these layabouts of hereditary Peers. Once we get rid of them," one can feel them saying, "we will be a collection of splendid people sitting in a splendid House, saying. doing and deciding splendid things." In the words of Miss Nancy Mitford:
"How lovely to be lovely us!"
The fourth reason is that the proposals in the White Paper will stand more chance of success if hereditary Peers are not excluded. Everyone is agreed that it will take a great deal of good will on all sides to make the package deal work. How are we going to get this good will if we exclude hereditary Peers, and insist on their abolition, which many of us consider is unnecessary? The two-tier system is tailor-made for the inclusion of hereditary Peers in the second tier, as the House could get all its advantages and none of its disadvantages. Those who are against the hereditary system would get all they ever asked for. No one would get a vote by virtue of heredity alone, and the imbalance between the Parties would have

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been put right. Those who support the hereditary system would be satisfied because hereditary Peers who made the grade would be able to gain promotion from the second tier to the first.
There is a great danger that the White Paper proposals will make this House more Party political. The whole system of selection of voting Peers will be based on a particular Peer's being of a particular Party, or of no Party. I can foresee the introduction of three-line Whips in this House, and I can see the introduction of pairing. Once that happens, what is the use of having a vote at ail? Hereditary Peers are inclined not to be very Party political; it is quite true, my Lords. Many newly-succeeded Peers do not join the Party of their father but sit on the Cross Benches. It is very much more difficult, as I know from bitter experience, to persuade an hereditary Peer to give blind allegiance to the Party Whip. Their inclusion even in the second tier would do much to take the emphasis off Party.
Lastly, I can see friction developing between the two tiers, as the noble Baroness, Lady Asquith, did. The voting Peers will be liable to show impatience if a speaking Peer joins in a debate, as they might consider unnecessarily, thereby postponing the time of the Division in which they will have to vote and he will not. Speaking Peers are liable to show understandable resentment if during their speech most of the voting Peers are out of the Chamber and they are left with an audience of other speaking Peers, who may be convinced but will not be able to vote. There will be a very much happier relationship between the two tiers if there is a two-way traffic between them. As well as retired Members of the first tier joining the second, young Members of the second tier should be aspiring to get into the first. I cannot see this happening after the phasing out of hereditary Peers.
These are the advantages that I believe the hereditary principle brings to your Lordships' House, and it is these advantages that, with the hereditary principle, Her Majesty's Government are in danger of destroying. And, my Lords, why? Because of something Keir Hardie said at the turn of the century? Because noble Lords are so keen on achieving the appearance of democracy that, in
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order to do so, they are prepared to put up with something that is in fact less democratic? Or is it just mother symptom of that rather strange instinct that occurs in all human beings and some animals, that when you see something you do not understand you have to destroy it?
Do your Lordships remember the story of Sir Isaac Newton's mathematical bridge at Cambridge? The story is probably apocryphal but, as Sir Winston Churchill once wrote about another legend, if it is not true it ought to be. Newton, so the fable goes, designed a wooden bridge over the River Cam with such ingenuity and mathematical precision that the component pieces of wood, once they had been laid in place, held together without the aid of nails, bolts or any other form of fastening. This confounded all the greatest brains in the Cambridge of the day. They could think of no good reason why a bridge constructed in this way should work. They could think of a number of very good reasons why a bridge constructed in this way should not work. But the one thing that was abundantly clear for everyone to see was that the bridge did work and carried out admirably the purpose for which it was intended. Such was Newton's prestige in the Cambridge of the clay that, while he lived, none dared to tamper with his bridge; but when he died their curiosity got the better of them and his contemporaries could resist it no longer. They took the bridge to pieces to find out how it worked. From this piece of vandalism they learnt only two things: the first was that, by taking the bridge to pieces, they could get no further forward in discovering how and why it worked; and the second was that, having taken the bridge to pieces, they were quite unable to put it together again. My Lords, if Her Majesty's Government have not quite closed their minds on the issue before us, they might well find a moral in this story.
6.0 p.m.
LORD S'UDELEY: My Lords, this is my maiden speech, but I am glad to know that in the light of the Bill it need not be my "swan song". I do not see that the present Government have reason to introduce the Bill. If it is popularity which the Government are seeking it is

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right to regard the Bill as something of a bagatelle, for it is surprising how little is the popular interest which has been provoked by a question of such great constitutional importance. If it is practical results which the Government seek, then they will obtain very few, for already the House performs very well its principal function of amending legislation, especially Socialist legislation of which there is so much.
The motive of the Government must be a doctrinaire one, which I would criticise. To the Socialist way of thinking, the House of Lords cannot be justified as an elected Chamber, yet while making a sacred calf of the principle of election Socialists do not represent a large body of good opinion. Disraeli's Angels in Marble by which is meant the many working men who support the Conservative Party would, I think, say that if the House of Lords cannot be justified it does not need justification. The feeling which they entertain for the Peerage is one of affection.
To all Socialists the House cannot be justified because it is founded on the hereditary principle. In this I believe the Socialist to be unrepresentative of a large body of good opinion. Any attack on the hereditary principle is an attack on the family, and for this reason it is unpopular in many quarters. Moreover, the hereditary principle is here made to look more spurious than it really sounds, simply because it is represented in the House of Lords. Many of us today maintain that we cannot seriously countenance the inheritance of political power, while inheritance of economic power by way of someone succeeding to a fortune is never so severely criticised. Why make this distinction between political and economic powers? But I know that it is futile to say what I have said. Saint Thomas Aquinas has remarked that if argument is to take place there must he a common point of agreement, but here on a question of doctrine plainly there is none. Dialectic serves merely to harden, never to conciliate opinion. It is, I hope, with more profit that I shall glance at the proposals themselves.
Speaking for the White Paper, I would say that it would ensure a good standard of debating in the House. If the CrossBenchers are taken into account the Gov-
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ernment of the day are not assured a voting majority. Because the votes of the Cross-Benchers are to be swayed, the debates in the House will always be real debates in the sense that debates in the other place are not. In every other respect, however, I am against the Bill. First, it is claimed that when the Bill becomes law it will be possible to introduce controversial legislation into the House as into the other place, but I do not see why this fine saving of Parliamentary time cannot be effected anyway. As now constituted, the House would at all events agree to controversial Party measures introduced by the Conservative Administration. Since the House has played the sophisticated role of bowing to all that it finds distasteful the House would likewise agree to controversial measures introduced by a Socialist Administration.
My second objection is that the vote is to be given to Peers who attend regularly and who are to receive, we may anticipate, a small salary. This is scarcely to invite the best services. Most private fortunes are no longer what they were, and now that politics as a profession is so much discredited surely those who will give the best will prefer to make or earn more money elsewhere.
My third objection is that already adduced by the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, that a totally insufficient check is placed on the Executive. Especially after its third year of office, by which time circumstances may have changed so much, the Executive may wish to do many things which form no part of its mandate and are indeed directly opposed to the will of the people. At the end of its term of office, the Executive may on the specious plea of a national emergency move to preserve itself in power. For this reason more than for any other, unless I am persuaded by the speeches that come after my own, I shall vote against the Motion.
6.7 p.m.
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, in this permissive age it would not be surprising if maidens were not what they were, and are not what they were; but it is refreshing to have a maiden speech such as that to which we have just listened and which to a large extent follows the normal traditions but in certain respects admirably breaks away from them.

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I am delighted, as I am sure all your Lordships are, that the noble Lord has taken his seat in time so that, no matter what comes of our deliberations, and those of the Government, in forthcoming months, we shall be able to listen to him often on even less controversial subjects that this.
I find myself to-day in the somewhat unusual position of agreeing with Her Majesty's Government in almost every respect and of agreeing at the same time with a very large part of what the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, has said. It is refreshing, frankly, to find oneself in that position and, still more important, to find that the Leaders of the three Parties have arrived at such a large measure of agreement on such an important subject.
I will not go over the arguments, which have already been so ably adduced by speakers who have come before, as to the reasons why the reforms outlined in the White Paper have my support. Very briefly, I will start with the premise that it is right for there to be a Second Chamber—we do not want a one-Chamber form of government—and that that Second Chamber should be complementary to the House of Commons that it should not in any way try to rival it or to perform the same functions, or draw its members from the same sort of people in the same sort of way, but should he there to carry out those things which the House of Commons, for one reason or another, is unable to carry out. That being so, it rules out immediately any form of democratic election, in the accepted sense of the word. As other noble Lords have said, that would create a Senate—and the noble Lord, Lord Annan, put it very forcibly indeed: we do not want to follow the example that we see in such countries as the United States and elsewhere, where there is a Senate.
The second point is that the Second Chamber must be independent of outside sectional pressures, and it must not be continually looking over its shoulder to ensure its own survival: its individual members should not be put into that position. I am not saying anything, I hope, disrespectful to the House of Commons or its Members, but it is an essential part of democracy that those who are elected should to some extent be guided and
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directed by the views of those people they represent. It is not only natural but right that when a problem comes up before Members of another place they should ask themselves, "How will this affect my constituents, and how will it affect my representation of my constituents?" That is the way of democracy: it does work, and I have nothing against it at all. But we do not want the Second Chamber asking itself the same questions. It must have a degree of independence analogous to the independence of our judges who know that, regardless of the decisions they make, they are there for life and have no fear of offending those who may at some later stage be responsible for appointing or electing them. I do not think we need look back very far in the history of this House to see the enormous importance of the independence which we have enjoyed so far and must preserve, and which the proposals in the White Paper do preserve.
The second thing we need in this House is what one can call professionalism or amateurism, depending which way one looks at it. What we want is amateur politicians who are professionals in other walks of life, whereas the House of Commons is of necessity becoming increasingly a place for professional politicians who, even if they have been professionals in other walks of life in the past, have now become amateurs because they have to devote so much time to the profession of politics. Therefore we must have our Second Chamber organised in such a way that those people who are professionals—and respected professionals—in banking, industry, the law, medicine, architecture, agriculture and many other activities, should be able to practise their professions, understand their professions and be leaders of them, and should be respected in their professions yet at the same time be able to come here, when necessary, and give this Chamber the benefits of their professionalism. So I believe that the proposals in the White Paper make those two essential needs possible and probable in our new reformed Chamber.
However, I believe there is one weakness in these proposals, which has already been touched on by other speakers—my noble friend Lord Silk in, the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, and

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in what, if I may say so, was an admirable speech (although I did not agree with it) of the noble Lord, Lord Denham, which bears out my point to some extent, as did the maiden speech to which we have just listened. I am referring to the importance of having young, or relatively young, people in this Chamber. It would be a disaster if in the days to come there were nobody here who had not already made his mark in the world—or who was thought to have made his mark in the world—and therefore who was presumably 50-plus. But in addition to the 72-year-olds, whether or not they are allowed to vote or are allowed only to enjoy their dotage, and in addition to the small middle group from 52 to 72, we want younger people. In my view it is quite possible for this to be achieved without continuing with the hereditary principle.
I will try to put these suggestions forward briefly, in view of the large number of speakers who are to come. We have already had put before us the proposal of a two-tier system. I suggest that we should add one more tier to this.
LORD SHEPHERD LORD SHEPHERD: Oh, my Lord!
LORD WALSTON: Well, my Lords, once we have two tiers, why not have three, or even four, if it is going to make the Second Chamber more efficient? I suggest that the additional tier should be not Life Peers but Peers created for the life of the particular Parliament. A small number of those appointed at each new Parliament, as outlined in the White Paper, should not be Life Peers but should be Peers for the lifetime of that Parliament; and they should be drawn primarily, if not solely, from the younger age groups of men who would like to go into politics, who have an interest in politics but have not yet established themselves sufficiently in their own professions to be able to devote the amount of time which fighting for a seat, nursing a constituency and, eventually, succeeding in getting into the House of Commons, now entails.
At present, these young men turn their backs on the House of Commons, not because they do not want to go there but because they have neither the resources nor the time to do so. Nevertheless, they want to learn about politics
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and to serve an apprenticeship in politics. And if, from young men of all Parties—probably not Cross-Benchers—a small number of Peers of Parliament were selected, they would be able to come along in the same way for 30 per cent. of the time indeed, I hope for 50 per cent. or 60 per cent. of the time—yet still be able to devote time to their professions and to learning about the world at large as well as politics. At the same time they would begin to understand the Parliamentary processes and could decide whether in fact they liked politics and had the aptitudes to make a career out of it. If they did that then, at the end of one Parliament, or possibly two, they would hope to be selected for a Parliamentary constituency and would enter the House of Commons with the experience they had gained in this Chamber and would then devote themselves whole time to politics.
Such a system would encourage young people, giving them a stepping-stone which is now lacking, and would make it easier for so many people who now say that there is no point in going into politics, and it would give us (those of us who remain) the advantage of having younger people representing not only youth as such but, far more important, the younger attitude of the particular professions which they represent.
I hope that the Government will give serious thought to a proposal of this kind before the Bill is prepared, because in my view it would greatly strengthen both the new Chamber and also the whole political picture, and would give encouragement to just those people who, from the national point of view, we want to encourage to take an interest in politics. With that sole proviso I congratulate the Government on this White Paper and on their proposals, and I hope that, with very few modifications, it will shortly become law.
6.17 p.m.
LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE: My Lords, I should like to add my congratulations to those which have already been uttered by the noble Lord, Lord Walston, to the noble Lord, Lord Sudeley. I am sure I echo the hope of noble Lords on this side of the House that we shall have the benefit of the speeches and views of the noble Lord, Lord Sudeley, many times in the future.

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Your Lordships will be relieved to know that my contribution is going to be very brief. I give general support to these proposals, and I submit that each one of us who has given deep consideration to the issues which are before us must judge on the balance of advantages and disadvantages—and of course there are disadvantages—as against the position which will arise if we reject the proposals contained in the White Paper. Many criticisms have been made by noble Lords to-day, and so far as I can see many more will be made within the next two days. No doubt it is possible to make many improvements to the scheme, and the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack has said that Her Majesty's Government will listen to all suggestions and criticisms which are made during this debate.
I believe that we have to judge on the main considerations, which are two and which are not unfamiliar to your Lordships. I cannot myself defend—and there has been no defence of it here today, except for a skilful defence from the noble Lord, Lord Denham—the hereditary principle as giving a right to a legislative function whether, I regret to say, it be voting or non-voting, although I would fully support the gradual phasing out of the hereditary principle on the non-voting category as put forward in the White Paper. My noble friend Lord Salisbury made the point that this loss of hereditary principle will mean the loss of youth. There is much force in that argument, but in a moment or two I shall make some suggestions on a regional basis which might be of some slight assistance in that direction.
I must confess that I was somewhat puzzled by the speech of the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury. He carries great influence, quite rightly, in your Lordships' House. He has rendered great public service and we respect everything he says, and all his actions as well. He did not tell us, however, what he would like to have as the alternative. I am puzzled as to what his alternative is to stopping what he called "the drift to single-Chamber government" that he sees as a danger in this White Paper. If we have to reject, as I feel we must as practical men, whatever our views may be, the possibility of an elected Second Chamber, how are we going to stop this
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position which the White Paper envisages —although I would not admit that it is a drift to Single Chamber government?
The noble Marquess rejected a permanent Party majority, as we all do. He rejected the power in the final event resting with a limited number of Cross-Benchers who, he said, represented nobody but themselves. If the House of Commons will never contemplate an elected Assembly, what does the noble Marquess propose? I wish he were here to tell me. Perhaps he will have the opportunity on some other occasion. Does he envisage, in order to p-event a permanent majority for the Government, a Socialist majority in your Lordships' House when there is a Tory Government and a Tory majority when there is a Socialist Government? That seems to me the logical outcome of the noble Marquess's views.
In saying goodbye to the hereditary principle I believe we should, with great respect, pay tribute to the way it has worked so splendidly for our country over the past centuries. It is fascinating to go to the Library in your Lordships' House and look at the signatures to the Act of Union between England and Scotland. So many of them are signatures of men who were in public life and whose families are still in public life and playing a distinguished part in your Lordships' House. It is a fine thing. But all good things, perhaps, have to change in differing circumstances, and I do not believe that the hereditary principle can or should survive.
The second main issue is the built-in majority, where again the noble Marquess's speech somewhat puzzles me. On the question of powers, the third big issue, I regret, as I am sure we all do on our side of the House and maybe noble Lords on the other side also, that the power of delay is being cut down, but I suppose this is a price we have to pay for a package deal. Six months' delay is not insignificant. I wound remind your Lordships of the wise leadership of the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, between 1945 and 1951 when, if it had not been for his wisdom, we might have had a constitutional crisis at almost any time, in which case we should not be discussing the future of your Lordships' House as we are tonight.

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To remind your Lordships, I would point out that the noble Marquess said to us then on the Conservative Benches that anything which the country had voted for in principle—the nationalisation of railways, of aviation, of electricity or of other industries—we should pass in principle on Second Reading and we would do our best to improve the Bills. But when it came to steel, we said that the Government had not got a mandate for the nationalisation of that industry, and we used our powers of delay and sent the Bill back to the Commons. A General Election took place and the non-elected Opposition here were proved to be more representative of public opinion at that time than the elected majority of the Government. Therefore I do not think we must in any way reduce in our minds the value of this power of delay.
I believe that the value in your Lordships' House is not in voting strengths so much as in the power of debate, to ventilate and to expose to the public great issues which another place are often unable to do, either through unwillingness or through lack of opportunity. When we vote in your Lordships' House I think we vote with regret. We do it as a necessity, unlike the Commons where we leapt into the Lobby and had a lot of fun when we could defeat or get near to defeating the Government. There is an essential difference in the outlook between the two Houses on political issues.
As to the regional importance of the future Chamber, the White Paper rejects regional representation. I accept that, just as I accept that we cannot have a Chamber elected regionally. I do not believe that we can have it nominated regionally, but I believe we could edge some way towards improving the regional aspect within the boundaries of the White Paper scheme. To some extent Life Peers are appointed now to your Lordships' House on a functional basis. We have great trade union leaders, leaders of industry, scientists and past diplomats. The Lords Spiritual, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester pointed out, are both functional and regional. Certainly they are functional. We have old House of Commons Members, functional as Parliamentarians. All those are expected to be represented in your Lord-
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ships' House. Could we not combine this functional aspect with a regional aspect? I have in mind some regional advisory machinery, private and well-balanced, something similar to the advisory machinery which the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack has in respect of the appointment of magistrates, a certain number of regional advisory committees which would submit regional suggestions—and only suggestions—to the Prime Minister of the day to fill up the functional appointments. I think it is very important that we should try to improve the regionalisation as put forward in the White Paper, which by and large I support.
Unlike some of my noble friends, I am not afraid of the Prime Minister's patronage. It is arguable whether there is, or is not, a great increase in patronage. It is already great, but I believe that common sense and a sense of decency in the public cannot be ignored in this matter, and that if the patronage is beyond a certain point abused and offensive it will rebound upon those who have been exercising their licence unfairly and unduly and will indeed be a lesson to anyone who feels like doing the same thing in the future.
I finish as I started. The scheme is not perfect, but it is as good as any I can see. Belonging to the third category of noble Lords in Lord Denham's classification of peers, aged and with no influence, I cast my mind back to World War I and to the cartoons of "Old Bill" by Bruce Bairnsfather. There was one cartoon of Old Bill, nearly up to his neck in water in a shell hole, with a companion beside him in the same plight, the splinters rattling down on their tin hats. And the other man complained to Old Bill that it was not a very comfortable position to be in. All Old Bill said was, "If you knows of a better 'ole, go to it!" In this scheme I know of no better place, not of political refuge but of political security, for this House than the broad proposals put forward in the White Paper.
6.30 p.m.
LORD ROBERTSON OF OAKRIDGE: My Lords, the first thing I must do is to apologise for speaking to-day as I am only able to attend the debate to-day, and to-morrow, and when the winding-up speeches are made, I shall not be able to come. I will try to make up for my

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offence by speaking very briefly. When this White Paper first appeared, the newspapers—that is to say, those that I read—started to "crab" it, and they have been busy "crabbing" it ever since. I must make an exception in one respect, because the Guardian this morning started its leader with a sentence saying:
"The good points in this scheme outweigh the bad".
That seemed to me to be clear guidance to its readers. Almost it persuaded me to be a Liberal—but not quite.
This problem reminds me of several other problems of which I have had experience in my life. These are problems that go on through the years, and every time a fresh attempt is made to solve them there is always somebody ready to come forward with a bright idea which is not a runner but which is quite sufficient to muddy the water so that nobody can find his way through it. There is always somebody ready to say, "Before we solve that problem we ought to give our attention to this one first"; somebody ready to say, "The time is not ripe and we ought to put this thing off a bit". It may seem to your Lordships a curious analogy to make, but this problem of ours reminds me in this respect of the Channel Tunnel. They dug the first hole at Dover before I was born, and they are talking still, and in just the same way. As the White Paper tells us, the movement to reform the House of Lords gathered its first real strength in the late 19th century; that is to say, about the time I was born, which is a long time ago.
Unfortunately, these problems do not improve with keeping; the longer they are kept, the more difficult they arc to solve. It seems to me that our problem ought to have been solved in 1948, and could have been, with a little more give and take between the Parties. Moreover, it would have been a better solution that is available to us now; and it is tolerably certain that if we prove ourselves unable to solve our problem now, some of our successors will have to solve it, and they will find that an even less satisfactory alternative is then open to them. I say "even less satisfactory", because, of course, it is quite easy to pick holes in this solution. Our newspapers have done it for us. It is, in a way, their job to tell us the bad points
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of a scheme as well as the good. And there are some bad points, and I shall have a word or two to say about one shortly.
On the other hand, there is one extremely good point about this proposal, and that is that it is supported by the leaders of the three political Piffles, incidentally by the Bench of Bishops and, to the best of my belief, by the Law Lords. It is reasonably certain that if you try to amend this scheme in any important respect you will destroy the agreement that has been given by the Parties. As to some of the wilder notions that have been uttered o the extreme wings of the Right and the Left, I think it is reasonably certain that they would not be acceptable to the ccuntry either.
I said that I would have a word or two to say on one weak point. Despite what the noble and learned Lord, the Lord Chancellor, said, I am one of those who think that the Prime Minister of our country—I do not refer to our present Prime Minister particularly—already has too great powers of patronage, and it seems to me that: this proposal, while it will riot increase the total extent, as it were, of that patronage, will increase it in one very impertant direction. In the White Paper it is said that it is proposed to set up a Con stitutional Committee which shall watch over the working of this scheme and shall enable Parliament and the contry as a whole to satisfy themselves that the powers are not being abused. I thought I heard the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, call it "gimmicky". I am sorry to hear him say that. He knows much more about this subject than I do, of course, but this proposal did not seem to me other than a reasonable attempt to curb this additional power of patronage which the scheme gives.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I wonder whether I may interrupt the noble Lord for a second. I was referring to the Government's proposal for a Constitutional Commission. I was not referring to this watchdog committee.
LORD ROBERTSON OF OAKRIDGE: My Lords, I thought I might be wrong; I apologise. There is one other point I should like to make about

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this matter and I put it with great trepidation. The noble and learned Lord, the Lord Chancellor, mentioned that our Constitution is not a written Constitution and there are a number of things in the White Paper which will not appear in the Bill; and that that is because we govern ourselves partly by conventions and traditions. That is so. What I should like to say on that point is this. It is a tradition of our Constitution that nominations to the Peerage are made to the Monarch by the Prime Minister, and I do not see any way of getting round that. I have tried to think of some other way that might suit, but it seems to me that any alternative would be very wrong. On the other hand, I hope that in the interpretation of this new plan it will also be recognised by our Prime Ministers that while they have the right to advise the Monarch, the Monarch also has the right to give them some advice.
In paragraph 70 of this White Paper we read of the Government's desire to review the functions and procedures of the two Houses, and that has been welcomed by several noble Lords, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Annan; and I welcome it very much indeed. I would refer particularly to the second paragraph in Appendix II, where it says that it may be desirable to increase the number of Cabinet and other Ministers in the House of Lords. That is indeed very desirable, not only in the interests of the prestige of this House—but that is important, and maybe it will be even more important after this rather severe surgical operation—but also in the interest of good government. Our Foreign Secretary, for example, is given responsibility for all our external affairs. He is a terribly busy man; he has an enormous range of matters to think about. Is it right that he should be subjected to the hurly-burly which is inherent in the atmosphere of another place, when he has so much to think about? Yesterday, for example, there were 70 Questions down for him to answer. It does not seem to he reasonable. And there are other Ministers, too, whose functions are coordinative, who are not responsible for the budget of any particular Department. Surely they would do their work better in the Upper Chamber rather than in the Commons.
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I should like to say one word about the Cross-Benchers. I do not speak for the Cross-Benchers. Nobody can do that. The White Paper rightly says, in paragraph 72, that we do not act as an organised group, nor do we possess a sense of corporate identity. Those words have led some people to have a certain amount of fun at our expense; even to be a little rude at our expense. "Neuters", one much-respected elder statesman has called us, and the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, was to-day very critical of us and of our way of acting. Well, as the noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Inchrye, has just said, the noble Marquess did not make clear what alternative he wanted.
How does he expect us to behave? Does he not like us being independent? Does he want us all to work the same way? Does he want an Upper Chamber which consists of men who all have Party labels round their necks, and who do exactly as the Whips tell them? It seems to me that that is not very reasonable. I hope that when the Bill is drafted it will include a provision to ensure that the proportion of independent Peers shall not fall below a certain limit. I also hope that it will become a custom of the House that the independent Peers shall be independent not only of the Parties, but also of each other.
That is all I have to say, my Lords. I should like to close by reiterating the chief point which I have striven to make. It is the great virtue of this White Paper that it offers us a plan in outline for the reform of this House—a plan to which the main political Parties and the Bench of Bishops and the Law Lords are prepared to agree. Reform is essential. No alternative which differs in any important degree from this is likely to be acceptable, and so I support the Motion before the House.
6.42 p.m.
LORD MITCHISON: My Lords, I shall do my best to be really short. I am bound to say that any exhortation from the Front Bench to be short does not encourage someone whose activities in the future are likely to be confined merely to speaking. I am only a "four-penny Peer", whatever limit you put on me. Why did they choose 72, I wonder? I have come to the conclusion that it was

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either a protest against the decimal system, or an uneasy compromise between 70 and 75. Whichever it was does not really matter. The substantial point about this White Paper is that it has been introduced at all.
I should like to remind the House—nobody, I think, has mentioned this; and I have listened to every speech in the course of this debate—that it is all very well to say what the electorate would or would not approve. In the 1966 Election Manifesto, the electorate were given a quite clear statement of what the Government proposed to do. It was not a statement of what they proposed to do if the other side would agree with them, but a statement of what they were going to do, anyhow. This is what it was. They were going to safeguard measures approved by the Commons from frustration by delay or defeat in the House of Lords. You cannot do that absolutely. You cannot correct a minimal delay. But the shorter you make the period of delay, the more you will attain the object that was quite clearly indicated in that section of the Election Address.
It is not only in that respect that the proposals now before us fall short of what was put before the electorate. It is a very important part of the White Paper, as I see it, that the House of Lords should have the power to call on the Government of the day to think again. I have heard that claimed again and again, but I have never heard a reason for it, and I do not think there is any reason. This is a non-elected Chamber. It has no better knowledge—indeed, a much worse knowledge—of what the electorate is thinking than the House of Commons has. And why should it be entitled to pick and choose what the Government have to think again about? I have never understood any reason for it. Exactly the same point was put forward in regard to the Iron and Steel Bill, and the Amendment which the noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Inchrye, mentioned today, and it was denied, and hotly denied, from the Labour Benches at the time. Mr. George Strauss, who was speaking for us, said the Government quite failed to recognise any right in the House of Lords to call on the Government of the day to think again. So what this White Paper represents is a considerable dilution of what was put before the electorate.
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This is a time when the reputation of our Parliamentary institutions does not stand as high as it should with the ordinary voter. It is perfectly true that he will not study an Election Address with detailed care, but, by and large, he knows something about it. So it is highly important, I suggest, that Parliament as a whole should be absolutely honest, and should pay more attention to the pledges of the last Election which were quite clear. I do not mind which way it is put, but we ought to remember that to promise one thing and to do something less because you can get agreement on it is not a democratic procedure. On those grounds, I regret that the Government did not take the alternative which they could have taken.
If they had paid attention to this subject a little earlier, they could have cut the powers in the way indicated in that Election pledge. If any of your Lordships are interested, I have produced a small Bill which I drafted myself the other day and which indicates what can be done by way of cutting powers; and cutting powers only. It does no more than what was said quite clearly in that Election pledge. One has to remember that if the Government had done that, they would have been doing something which they had promised to do, and promised to do for, I think, the first time.
I have heard some talk to-day about pledges in Labour Party Election Addresses since the war, but if your Lordships will look at them I think you will find that they were all pledges to do something horrible if the House of Lords did not behave itself. It did behave itself well enough, and those pledges were never carried out. I do not complain of that, but in this case there was an unqualified pledge, irrespective of the behaviour of the House; and I think it a great pity, at a time when confidence in Parliamentary institutions is not at its height, that we should be going back on that pledge in favour of an agreement between the principal political Parties.
I must, of course, recognise, as a practical person—I hope I am—that the agreement has been reached, and that it is now extremely unlikely that the Government will go back, literally and exactly, to what they promised to do.

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The practical conclusion is that this agreed set of proposals should be as flexible as possible, and I was much heartened by what the noble Lord, Lord Annan, had to say about Appendix II. I think he is perfectly right. There is an attempt, a slightly uneasy attempt, to make these proposals thoroughly flexible, and to make them depend on what may happen in the future, and perhaps, particularly, on the Constitutional Commission, and on other changes, too. I hope that is going to be done in practice, and that, because we have dealt with this White Paper, the subject is not going to be shoved on the shelf which it has occupied for so long, and left there for another generation or two. I hope, therefore, that these proposals will be treated as flexible, and that it will be borne in mind that they are rather less than was promised in the Election Address which the electorate approved.
I turn from that (and so far I feel considerable doubt about whether or not I ought to support a resolution approving, in principle, what is in the White Paper) to some of the points in the White Paper itself. I assure your Lordships that I am not going to be long. I have the highest regard for the personal integrity, the intelligence, if I may humbly say so, and the general capacity of the people who negotiated this compromise, most of whom I happen to know personally. Having said that, I would admit at once that the pathway to this reform of the House of Lords is indeed paved with their good intentions—some of it is rather crazy paving. I really think they might ponder a little more about some of it.
As I said at the beginning, I am a condemned "fourpenny". The "five-pennies" are going to have all the fun. They will be allowed to vote they will go into the Lobby and have those funny wands waved at them. It is not just that. The point is this: is it going to lead to a change in the character of the Chamber, to have first-class and second-class Peers? There is some extremely unfortunate language in some parts of the White Paper which quite unnecessarily makes that sort of distinction. I hope it is not going to work out that way in practice. I do not say that because I shall stay here for long—
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I am seventy-eight. But I should be sorry if it were kept, not only on account of the aged Peers but on account of other people who will be "fourpennies", too. The Law Lords are, of course, in a separate position. I think they could fairly be treated as "recorded delivery". They cost a good deal, but one pays a great deal of attention to what they say.
Turning from that, but still to some extent on it, I would call attention to a rather remarkable provision in one sentence or two in the White Paper. The critical age is seventy-two, unless you are a Minister. If you are a Minister you can stay on after you are seventy-two and go on voting. That is a complete non sequitur. The two things are completely different. Not only that, but the reason given for it is completely illogical, because the Prime Minister ought to have complete freedom in his choice of Ministers. Does anybody seriously suppose that the Prime Minister is going to create many Ministers over seventy-two, or, if he does, that he is going to pay the faintest attention to whether they are class 1 or class 2 Peers? I think that a little of what I think is probably ministerial arrogance ought to be taken out of the White Paper in any subsequent dealings with it.
There are one or two other points I could make. I have long tried to persuade the Chief Whip on my own side to give me a cash consideration not to speak, but I have never succeeded in getting it. This was probably my best chance to-day. Not having had it, I had to speak. I hope that I have remembered how many of your Lordships are on the list of speakers, and if you start working out when we are likely to stop the position gets worse and worse.
6.55 p.m.
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack and my noble friend Lord Jellicoe opened this debate with speeches of model persuasiveness, and, though neither of them has convinced me of the merits of this White Paper, I should like at the outset to thank them and their colleagues on the Inter-Party Committee for the sincerity and trouble they have taken in bringing these proposals to fruition. I think all those who took part in those discussions want this House to

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come to an honest decision, and everybody who contributes to say what he really thinks.
I suppose I am the first speaker who does not in the least mind if anybody calls him a reactionary. What is reaction? The most typical example of reaction is being sick. But the merit or demerit of the performance depends on what it is that the system is refusing to assimilate. I put that thought before the House with some confidence. We are asked to approve great constitutional changes. I will mention three. First, there is the ending of an historic right of an hereditary Peer, after the death of the present Peer, to sit and give his counsel in this House. Secondly, there is the creation of a Second Chamber with two classes of members, first and second-class members. Thirdly, there is the passing of all real power over subordinate legislation to the unfettered control of the House of Commons, though everything now requiring legislation (by which I mean an Act of Parliament) can easily be accomplished by subordinate legislation if, as so often has happened, the necessary enabling Act has been passed.
These are great constitutional changes, and especial care binds all of us when constitutional changes are proposed. It is often pointed out that our Constitution is unwritten. The noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack drew our attention to that point this afternoon. I think he will probably agree with me that Professor Dicey was right when he pointed out that the more important distinction was not whether the Constitution was written or unwritten, because in either event you could ascertain the law, but whether, as I think the noble and learned Lord had in mind, it was rigid or flexible. Of course ours is a flexible Constitution.
Unlike most great Constitutions, our Constitution does not lay down any special legislative procedure for effecting a change in the Constitution itself. The same process could change our Constitution as is applied to the most trivial and temporary Act of Parliament. Yet in this country Parliamentary Government has achieved a continuous and glorious history unrivalled by any other country in the world. This is not due to the safeguard of any special legislative process for changing our Constitution; it is due
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entirely to the maintenance of political wisdom and to the innate conservatism of our people when constitutional change is proposed. I am not there using "conservatism" in a Party sense.
If I might remind noble Lords of a well-known and great sentence of Burke:
"I would not exclude alteration neither; but even when I changed, it should be to preserve."
I believe that the changes proposed in this White Paper are unwise in themselves; that they do not remedy the evils that worry the public, but on the contrary, make those evils worse; and that the proposals themselves result from a procedure which sets a bad precedent the final result of which cannot be gauged.
Let me take first the two-tier system, which it is convenient to consider with the proposals about age, attendance and remuneration. For the first time this system introduces two classes of members in a Parliamentary assembly. Clearly that is undesirable unless the change is justified by necessity. The age proposals are quite astonishing. I differ from the noble Lord, Lord Mitchison, since I have been officially declared to be "ga-ga" for only four years. He has been so for a longer period. But let me mention some-body whom both he and I will regard as rather more important than either of us. In 1955, the late Lord Attlee came to this House after a long and distinguished service in war and peace. Had the proposals in this White Paper then been in force, Lord Attlee would have been considered a second-class Peer ab initio. He would never have been thought lit to vote. Suppose that Winston Churchill had been persuaded in 1946 to come to this House; he would have been too old to vote. It is interesting to speculate on his conversation with the man who came to make that proposal to him. Both Churchill and Attlee would have been unable to vote in this House. There is, as the noble Lord, Lord Mitchison, and others have pointed out, one exception to the rule; under paragraph 45 Ministers would be exempt. No prizes are offered for guessing why.
I come now to attendance. Many of the most distinguished Lords who contribute to our economic debates are much too busy to attend this House often.

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Will it not be a public loss if, whatever may be the occasion or whatever may be the national crisis, these distinguished Lords must never vote? Then there is remuneration. Have the authors of the White Paper thought out the difficulties of their proposals for remuneration? How on earth is the "independent body" mentioned in paragraph 52 to assess a figure fair both to the man who attends full time and to the man who attends a third of the time? In this White Paper they simply throw this problem on the independent body. They must know, if they think, that there is no possible solution except the choice of a perfectly arbitrary figure.
Many might be prepared to accept the two-tier system, with all its disadvantages, if that system had been put forward to preserve the hereditary right to attend, for which, I think, the two-tier system was originally put forward many years ago by the noble Earl, Lord Longford, and a former Clerk of this House. Had it been intended to preserve the hereditary right to attend beyond the lifetime of the existing Peers, that might at least have provided a reason or excuse for adopting the two-tier system, with all its disadvantages; but to have that system, with all its disadvantages, merely as an adjunct to getting rid of our historic Peerage is, I submit, an absurdity.
Every thinker about the reform of this House has come to one conclusion; that its powers and composition are indissolubly connected. That was the unanimous decision of every Party in the 1948 Conference. If now it were proposed greatly to increase the powers of this House, of course everybody would agree that heredity could not possibly provide the basis of the House to whom such increased powers were entrusted. If, however, the only powers to be exercised by this House are powers to impose a short delay, then the simple question is whether the hereditary basis is better or worse than that proposed to replace it.
The hereditary system, in my submission, offers both advantages and disadvantages. The disadvantages are obvious and have often been mentioned. There is no certainty that the man produced will always be a worthy man, but
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it has the advantage of history and continuity. It brings some young men to this House, and it has this tremendous advantage: that the Peers by succession are absolutely independent of the Executive. And we see how it works. This is not open to speculation without knowledge.
Let me put two simple questions to the House. Are my noble friends Lord Carrington and Lord Jellicoe really inferior to other Peers? Are the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, and the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, much less competent than other Ministers? Everybody knows that the four I have mentioned give distinction to this House and do their work admirably. I cannot give an example from the Liberal Benches because they have not recently enough been in office. But perhaps I could cite one former hereditary Peer on their Benches to show what I mean by an hereditary Peer who enriched this House, who contributed something to debate that nobody else at that time could quite contribute. I am referring to the late Lord Esher. We know the distinction that the hereditary Peers can bring to this House. I think it is fantastic to do away with them, especially since there is not the slightest necessity, if the only power that is to be left to this House is a power of short delay.
It may be said that no other Parliament has a hereditary House. Quite so. But no other Second Chamber is worked on the two-tier principle, and in no other Second Chamber, as far as I know, does the Prime Minister nominate a majority for himself among the Party Peers. There are plenty of things that are going to be unique. We are abolishing the one thing that is ancient, continuous, and tried; we are adopting two institutions unknown in the rest of the world, wholly untried, and, in my submission, altogether inferior. That is what is proposed in place of the hereditary Peerage; nomination by the Prime Minister with all the patronage that that involves.
Now I respond willingly to the quite reasonable challenge given by the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack. He points out, quite rightly, that patronage already resides in the Prime Minister. So it does; but it is not a patronage that enables him to promote and give payment, until he reaches the age of 72, to

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any man in the House of Commons whom he chooses. Further, the patronage is much more serious if you abolish all the hereditary Peers after the present generation, when that is the body that at least gives to its membership independence from the Executive. What is it that is worrying the country, as contrasted with Parliament? It is not the House of Lords. It is the tyranny of Ministers; the inability of the House of Commons ever to check them; the fact that, after a General Election, the Government easily tend to become a tyranny of the Executive. The public do not want more patronage but less; not more laws, but fewer and wiser laws, that they could understand.
My Lords, one of the worst things about this White Paper is that, while it records all the convenient arrangements made between Parliamentarians for the convenience of Parliament, it scarcely ever mentions the public outside and what that public are thinking and saying. Somebody in the course of this debate, I expect, will say that I have made a speech agreeing with many Left Wing speakers in another place. I dare say that I have. I do not regard that as discreditable. There are men of every shade in the political spectrum who love Parliamentary government and they may well be united in their opposition to the scheme in this White Paper.
What has brought it all about? The noble Lord, Lord Mitchison, mentioned a sentence in the Party Manifesto at the Election. It was a single sentence, and I agree with him that it made a statement about delay. It made no statement whatever about composition, and it certainly did not mention doing away with the hereditary principle. I should have thought that, in a constitutional change of this kind, at least the electorate might have been informed. In the Queen's Speech last year the intention was declared to eliminate the hereditary basis of this House. With that pistol at their head, very busy Leaders of all Parties discussed, in their spare time, the drastic reform of an ancient Constitution that has given us the most famous and continuous Parliamentary government in the world. To my mind that sets an intolerable precedent. I shall oppose it with conviction.
7.15 p.m.
THE EARL OF IDDESLEIGH: My Lords, I have listened to two most brilliant speeches from masters of Parliamentary debate. They will, I am sure, excuse me if I do not attempt to follow them in all their arguments. I assure them that shall to-morrow read their speeches with very great interest, and they will affect my voting in a final Division. But, for my part, I am at present disposed to welcome this reform, and almost any reform, on the ground that our national prestige is beginning to suffer through our inability to solve our constitutional problems, and to fin ourselves out with a Constitution which foreign countries can regard as rational and sensible. When I was a boy it did not matter in the least what foreigners thought. I am afraid that it does matter to-day, and I am sorry to say that our prestige is suffering very largely through our failure to amend our governmental and legislative institutions.
I pass from that to my main reason for speaking which, curiously enough, is to revert to points made by the right reverend Prelate, the Bishop of Chester, and to tender to the Bench of Bishops (empty though it now is) such support as I can properly give them. It is known to some of your Lordships that I do not myself acknowledge the spiritual authority of the Establishment, but I have the highest regard and respect for the Bishops in the House of Lords; and I agree with the right reverend Prelate, the Bishop of Chester, in thinking that in the White Paper they have not had as much consideration as they ought properly to have received. It is perhaps a little surprising that a Labour Government, for whom the right reverend Prelates have so frequently voted, should be so very restrictive in their treatment of the Bench. I fear that Her Majesty's Government will be accused of "biting the hand that blesses them".
But my real objection is this. Next year, I suppose, we shall have a report from the commission established by the most reverend Primates, and we shall be engaged in a great national debate to determine the value of the ecclesiastical Establishment of this nation. I do not know what line I shall take in that debate, but I have long considered that, whether you keep the Establishment or

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get rid of it, it is a great mistake to whittle away the Establishment; and it seems to me that in so drastically reducing the number of Prelates in your Lordships' House we are in fact "whittling away" an important feature of the religious establishment of this kingdom. I respect the Prelates and I value their presence here. When I was a boy I was taught a rhyme which ran,
"Patience and perseverance Made a Bishop of His Reverence".
I trust that the Bench of Bishops will show those qualities of patience and perseverance in standing up for their rights, and I trust that they will accept my suport in that resistance.
It is particularly lamentable that there will be no representative of the Midland Prelates among the voting Episcopate. There are to be the two Archbishops, of course, and the Bishop of London, and one North See and one South See. Surely a concession which might reasonably be made by Her Majesty's Government is to acknowledge the value of the Midland Prelates, especially at this time, for one of our great preoccupations for many years to come is likely to be the racial problem. It seems to me that the Bishops of Birmingham, of Coventry, and of other Mercian Sees, will be particularly valuable in counselling your Lordships on that problem.
I pass from that question to the analogous one of the representation of religious interests in this House. I can recall many debates in which the House has benefited by the ability of some of its Members to speak as members of a particular religious body. We have had, as I recall, three debates in which Jewish noble Lords have spoken about their religious convictions —and very well they spoke too. We have had a debate in which Humanist Peers have spoken. I have always considered the Humanists as an essentially religious denomination, and I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, that they ought to be regarded as religious people. That was an admirable debate in which Humanist Peers expressed their point of view, to the benefit of the whole House. I recall the late Lord Alexander of Hillsborough, who so often spoke, and spoke with great vigour, as a Baptist. I can even recall one debate which took place soon after the war in which no fewer
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than three Peers of the Christian Science Church came down to the House to object to a piece of legislation which damaged their interests. Other religious bodies have also from time to time troubled your Lordships with their opinions. I can only hope that this has not been too troublesome.
My Lords, I trust that in the constitution of the reformed House of Parliament which I believe will result from this White Paper the importance of representing those interests will be remembered. I do not propose to go into the quite separate question of whether those interests are better represented by clerics or by lay persons. That is a difficult problem on which there may easily be two opinions, and perhaps the fairest thing to say is that some Churches may benefit by having clerical spokesmen and others may be more fittingly represented by laymen.
There is one point, however, on which I should disclose my thoughts to your Lordships. It concerns a suggestion made from time to time, not yet in this debate but in the public prints, that the Archbishop of Westminster should become an ex officio Member of your Lordships' House. In what I am going to say I speak purely from my own convictions: I do not attempt to represent anybody else's point of view. But when I say that it would be a profound mistake to confer ex officio membership of this House on that high Prelate, or indeed on other Prelates of my Church, I feel that I am on safe grounds. Consider the method by which the noble and reverend Lord, Lord Soper, and the noble and very reverend Lord, Lord MacLeod of Fuinary, were appointed. It seemed to the Prime Minister a good idea that they should be in the House. He offered them a Life Peerage, and they were free either to accept that Peerage or to refuse it. It would be a totally different matter if a High Prelate of my Church were to become an ex officio Member of the House; if he were not free to refuse that honour.
I am anxious to put on record and this will be the concluding passage in my speech—a conversation which I had nearly forty years ago with Cardinal Bourne. I ventured, with the rashness of youth, to ask his Eminence whether he would consider it an advantage to have a seat in the House of Lords. His Eminence said: "I have often been asked that

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question and I have always replied that I would not desire that honour. I should always be having to give my opinion on all sorts of questions on which I would much rather not give my opinion". When I reflected on those words of the eminent Cardinal, I remembered that he had been in office first as Bishop of Southwark and then as Archbishop of Westminster throughout the worst of the "troublous times" in Ireland; he had been in office when the Orangemen were engaged in gun-running, and when the Sinn Fein movement were persuading Ireland to give up any hope of constitutional remedy for their supposed wrongs; he had been in office during the Easter Rebellion and its aftermath; he had been in office during the days of the Black and Tans, with all the murders, the burnings, the bitterness and the hatred that those terrible times produced.
How much my community must have been divided in those days: the English Roman Catholics being for the most part conservative in opinion and Unionist in principle; the vast mass of the faithful springing remotely, or more often recently, from Irish stock! It was the task of Cardinal Bourne in those difficult years to hold the Church together. It was a task that he could not have performed had he held a seat in your Lordships' House, for even if he had assiduously refrained from any discussion on the greatest political issue of the day he would still have incurred blame for what he did not say. Well did he say that a position in the House of Lords would have embarrassed him!
My Lords, I believe that the same objections might still exist to any ex officio membership by a Prelate of my religion in this House. Ex officio membership is something which the Anglican Prelates must accept as a part of the Establishment, but it is not suitable to a Church which, "not being Established", has just as much right as any other Church to call herself "Free".
7.28 p.m.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: My Lords, it is going to become increasingly incumbent upon those taking part in this debate to be brief and to avoid repetition, and I shall therefore content myself with saying, on the general
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principles, that I am glad to accept the advice of those who advocate in favour of this White Paper, and I hope that I shall be able to vote for it on Thursday. But I should like to mention two points of detail on which I think further consideration is necessary and which have not, I think, so far been fully covered. The first of them concerns Sessional and Select Committees; and I raise this, although it is a point of detail, because I rather suspect that the legislation which is in store will have to cover this point.
Paragraph 49 of the White Paper sets out the functions of non-voting Peers and says:
"They would be able to serve on committees, but would not be able to vote in any committee for the consideration of legislation."
With respect, I think this is less than clear. So far in this Session we have set up a number of special Committees, and the membership of them has been chosen, I have no doubt, from those Peers who could make the most valuable and suitable contribution. As an example, on the Standing Orders Committee on Private Bills 8 out of 10 noble Lords are hereditary Peers. On the Select Committees which we have set up to deal with contested legislation, in one case two, and in another case three, out: of five noble Lords are hereditary Peers; and so it goes on.
If the hereditary Peers are not automatically to have a vote then a proportion of these Committees will be made up of one sort of Peer and a proportion made up of the others. It is true that some of the hereditary Peers may get Life Peerages, and, equally, that some created Peers may not wish to take up their voting rights. An even worse situation arises on some of the Joint Committees. Nearly half the Consolidation Bills Committee membership from this House will be hereditary Peers; at any rate, that is so at the moment. All the noble Lords that we sent to sit with the Commons on the Plympton By-Pass Special Parliamentary Procedure Order are hereditary Peers, and it is within my knowledge that a large number of the noble Lords who go with Members of another place to look into contested private legislation in Scotland under the1936 Act are hereditary Peers. I feel that it would be wrong to make this particular distinction between those who

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sit on such Committees. Surely the correct rule should be (and I think this would answer the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Wade, about the arrangements that were made for the Gaming Bill) that if this House puts such confidence in a noble Lord as to place him by name on any particular Committee then, for the purposes of that Committee, he should have a vote whether or not he has a vote in the House in general. This would apply to Sessional Committees, as well as to private legislation, but not to Public Bills.
My Lords, I go on to a matter on which I have certain reservations although I do not consider them to be so fundamental as to prevent me from voting for this White Paper. I wish to join my noble friend Lord Denham in a plea for what he termed the "less than eminent." The fact that he used his arguments in favour of retaining the hereditary right to sit in the second tier does not seem to me to detract from the importance of what he said. He drew attention—with what I thought penetrating perception—to certain qualities and contributions that are made by some of the Members of this House. He gave examples of which every noble Lord can think of for himself, of speeches made by those who certainly would not call themselves, in the terms of the White Paper, "leaders of the community" or, in the phraseology of the noble and learned Lord who sits on the Woolsack, "persons of the highest distinction". Yet those were speeches that contributed greatly to the debates in this House.
I thought I saw on the faces of some noble Lords sitting opposite a certain opposition to what the noble Lord, Lord Denham said. Surely their opposition is not to the principles of what he said, so much as to the method of achieving that type of quality and contribution. For myself, I do not mind whence comes that quality or that contribution so much as the fact that it will be available for the service and enlightenment of the House. Therefore I hope that a little thought may be given to the desirability of finding methods to bring here people who can make the contributions about which my noble friend was talking.
It is not just a question of youth; although it is interesting to see that if
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they stay the course there will be nine noble Lords under 40 speaking to-day in this debate and another four to-morrow, according to a list that I have seen. I do not think it is just a matter of continuity either. Your Lordships can think of many Members of this House who now occupy positions of high distinction and are listened to with respect and affection by your Lordships; you may think of the origins of those noble Lords, of the fact that they very likely started here by listening, by taking part on the more humble occasions and gradually adventuring into matters more and more important until now they hold the positions that they do. I do not think it is just that. I think that under the new scheme it is going to be a matter of time.
I have taken account of what the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor said, and I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Annan, about the importance of Appendix II. With that type of duty placed upon the House to an increasing degree, voting Peers are going to have their hands full—and properly so. As I understand it, the second tier is to consist of the most distinguished in the land. They are going to be people who cannot be expected to come here more than on infrequent occasions, to deal with subjects upon which they are the best qualified. They are to be selected, at any rate largely, for the role that my noble friend Lord Jellicoe pointed out: that of bringing lustre to the general debates, of bringing information to this House and to the country and to keep up the standard of debates which this House has always enjoyed. They are going to be, from their very nature, busy men who cannot come here to deal with the minutiae.
I think there is room in the second tier for others of a slightly different calibre. We shall wish to have the day-to-day experience of their lives outside Parliament to help us in our legislation and in some of the less exacting and exciting occasions in this House. I do not think we can do without them; because those are the people who will have the daily experience of the problems. And although I suspect that many voting Peers will find it necessary to supplement what they do in this House by outside activities of one sort or another, I do not think they will have the time or the range

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to cover the whole of the field. Therefore, I believe that in the second tier there should be some of the less-than-eminent. Things do not always look quite the same from the top of the ladder as they do from halfway down it. It is true, after all, that the majority of people in this country are not leaders of the community, are not persons of the highest distinction. It is for them that we legislate; it is their lives that we are going to regulate.
My Lords, is it not important—to quote Lord Denham's example—to have the views of the small shopkeeper when we are talking about the Trade Descriptions Bill? Is it not important to have the views of someone who drives a bus when we are talking about the Transport Bill? Is it not just as well, however many noble and learned Lords we have who come here and who sit on the Appellate Committee, to have the views of those who take part day by day at the less elevated levels, perhaps in some rather specialised subject of the law? I make a plea for the continuance of people such as those. I believe that Her Majesty's Government would agree that they have their contribution to make and that they ought somehow to be fitted in. I trust that a method will be found. If it is not, I do not think the scheme wholly fails; but there is no reason to suppose that we should not try to continue the best of the old when we launch forth into the new.
7.38 p.m.
VISCOUNT DE L'ISLE: My Lords, I have been in this House for quite a long time—for some 23 years. I sit both as an hereditary Peer and as a created Peer, so I have had the opportunity to observe the workings of this House for a considerable time. When I entered the House it consisted entirely of hereditary Peers; and those Peers could not stand for Parliament. They had to retain their Peerages, whether they liked it or not; there were no Life Peers and there were no Ladies in the House. I think it would be not unfair to say that we felt ourselves, by force of circumstances, a class apart, with obligations and duties and privileges. In the course of the last twenty years or so the creation of Life Peers, the entry of Ladies and, perhaps even more important, the power of Peers to renounce their Peerages, have totally al-
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tered the balance and complexion of this House.
I will not pretend that I do not look back with affection and many regrets for those days. I think it was a good House. Its authority rested on prescription. Now that has changed. We face to-day a situation presented to us by the Government. I do not like the situation, but it is there. If, after I sit down, I may be accused of damning the scheme with faint praise, that would be true, because there are many aspects of it which I much dislike. I should prefer as an alternative to an hereditary House an elected Second Chamber. I am not one of those who delight in criticising and in making snide comments on the American Constitution. I think theirs has been a great democratic political experiment. Above all, they have shown throughout their political history that they have been great lovers of liberty. We should not sneer at them. But it is quite clear that there is no practical chance of being able to create in this country an elected Second Chamber.
So far in this debate, and I suspect that it will continue throughout the debate, there have been no more practical suggestions than those made for the creation of Life Peers on the nomination of the Prime Minister. But we must remember that it is patronage on a very large scale, and I do not in the least underestimate the power that it will give to this and to future Prime Ministers. It is an extension of patronage which has not been seen since the 18th century. I confess that. I dislike the prospect, because not only the creation of the Life Peers but their payment which will give the Prime Minister so great a power.
But supposing that there is no other way, how can we maintain and if possible increase—or at any rate not see diminished—the power of Parliament as a whole? More than one noble Lord has said, and I think truly, that the prestige of Parliament is not as great as it was. I, for one, would advance as one reason that the House of Commons is paid out of the Exchequer and that the Government of the day has more than once increased that remuneration without any reference to the electorate, and on its own ipse dixit. We have seen also a very great increase in the number of members of the Government who sit

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in another place. I believe that I share with millions of my fellow countrymen a doubt whether in present circumstances there is enough independence in the House of Commons to keep the Executive in check. When I was a young man Mr. Winston Churchill, as he then was, once said to me, "When I see a Government I want to kick it—unless, of course, I am a member of it". I share that sentiment to the full. I want the electorate to want to kick the Government. I want Members of both Houses to want to kick the Government, whatever its complexion—and unless I am a member of it. I am sure that is a very healthy attitude, and I fear that a nominated House, nominated by the Prime Minister, may be much less inclined to kick the Government.
My Lords, I am a convinced bicameralist. I was glad when we heard the noble and learned Lord who sits on the Woolsack say that he shares this conviction, though I do not know whether he shares it to the full. My mind and my attitude to the White Paper will be greatly affected by the replies which the Government can give (I hope they will give these replies at the end of this debate) to two questions. Is it their settled conviction that whatever further constitutional changes may be adumbrated the proposed powers and the composition of the House as set out in the White Paper will be inviolate? I am sure that in order to maintain its prestige and the confidence of the people at large the Constitution as a whole must rest very largely on prescription. We must not start to fiddle about with it, or our Parliaments will share the fate of many Parliaments in Europe and elsewhere.
My Lords, I think this is a question of prime importance. I have referred to it to-day because I saw last week it was reported in no fewer than four newspapers that Mr. Crossman, when addressing the Parliamentary Labour Party, said that he did not expect the proposed constitutional changes to last.
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, he has said it frequently.
VISCOUNT DE L'ISLE: My noble friend, Lord Conesford, said, "He has said it frequently", but that is the only
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time I have myself seen it reported. I think it of great importance that the Government should be able to reassure us that in respect of powers and composition their proposals are not going to be varied by a future constitutional commission.
The second assurance which I should like is that the powers which the White Paper would give to a reformed House would be exercisable without constant blackmail on the part of the Government of the day, and particularly the present Government. In one or two of the speeches which have been made, I think in that of the noble Lord, Lord Annan, and possibly in that of the noble Lord, Lord Mitchison, I have noticed it was said that this House should not oppose the will of the Government, which they regarded as co-extensive with the will of the people. I believe that no bicameral system worthy of the name can exist unless both Chambers have powers and unless the Second Chamber has a very positive and exercisable power to refer legislation, and subordinate legislation, back to the House of Commons, if necessary forcing a General Election.
I think that it would be wrong, in the circumstances in which we find ourselves, to reject the proposals in the White Paper. But my mind will be very much made up by the replies which the Leader of the House can give to the House on these particular points: the inviolate nature of the composition and powers and, if not a pledge, at least a forecast that it is the assenting view of the Government that the powers which the House has been given should be allowed to be used.
7.48 p.m.
LORD FRANCIS-WILLIAMS: My Lords, I speak as one of those ancient Life Peers to whom the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, referred; indeed, I think I was among the first batch of them to arrive in your Lordships' House. I remember with what feelings, both of apprehension and revulsion, I arrived here some six years ago—revulsion because to be a Member of the House of Lords ran contrary to my earlier political philosophy and ideas. In a way, I speak to-night as a reformed Peer, in that I have come to see some merit in a House which in earlier days I should have regarded as without any.

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I was, as I say, apprehensive, and I am glad to remember that on my first day here, after being introduced, I was somewhat cheered up as I walked along the corridor by feeling a hand clapped on my shoulder. I turned round and found that it was the noble and gallant Viscount, Lord Montgomery of Alamein. He said, "Nice to see you again, my boy": which, at the age I was then feeling, was, I thought, very pleasant of him. Then he said, in a voice which rang throughout your Lordships' corridors, "You will like it here—all decent chaps here!". And I must say that on the whole I have found it to be so, though on occasion I could not help feeling that some of them were decent chaps with somewhat indecent opinions.
I was asked by the late Hugh Gaitskell whether I would agree to allow my name to go forward as a Life Peer to the then Prime Minister, Mr. Macmillan. I remember that I first said, "No", with a good deal of indignation at the proposal, but Hugh Gaitskell went on to argue. What I think finally convinced me was when he said, "I don't want you to think of this in any way as an honour or as a reward for past services. It is an invitation to new services." I feel sure that it is in that spirit that most of those who are Life Peers have come to this House.
I must say that I have found a little objectionable some of the references that have been made to the evils of patronage, rather with the connotation that any Life Peer nominated by the Prime Minister or, as in my case, by the Leader of the Opposition to the Prime Minister, is a victim or associate of patronage and thereby in some way is subservient to the Prime Ministerial or other whim; that by becoming a recipient of the so-called patronage, he gives up his freedom and independence. I remember Mr. Gaitskell, after saying that he regarded his invitation as an invitation to service, went on to say to me, "And I hope you will appreciate that although I know where your general political sympathies lie, I do not expect that you will always either speak or vote on our side. I want you to go as your own man and your only value is if you speak as you feel and believe." I believe that all of us who have been, or who may in future be, nominated for membership of your Lord-
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ships' House would accept a similar sense of obligation to themselves and to the traditions of this House. I think that the records of participation in the debates by Life Peers on any Bench in this House do not suggest that any Members are likely to become simply the slaves of a master voice in another place.
A good deal has been said, wittily by the noble Baroness, Lady Asquith of Yarnbury, and by other speakers, about what the noble Baroness called "five-penny and fourpenny Peers". I take a slightly different view of this. I see the division between the voting and the nonvoting but speaking Peers as a division, an acceptable and, in my view, an important division, between two conceptions—the conception of power and the conception of influence. The powers of this House are theoretically to be reduced but practically to be increased, because it will be given powers which it can use in a way it has never felt able to use the much larger powers that theoretically exist at present. It will be the function of voting Peers to exercise that power which will reside in your Lordships' House under the new reformed Constitution and which I think will be particularly important if the various suggestions in Appendix II come into being.
But let us not ignore or denigrate the importance of influence. In many ways it is not the power of this House to effect governmental decisions but the influence of those who speak in it from substantial authority or expert experience which gives the House its particular glory and distinction. I do not see that those who, for one reason or another, are speaking but not voting Peers will be in any subordinate position, because they will be exercising what is one of the great qualities of this House, the quality of influence by the impact of the speeches that they make from the special points of view and experience they can bring to bear.
There is only one small amendment in regard to this that I should like to suggest, and I hope that it can be taken into consideration—that is, although the speaking but not voting Peers should normally not have the power to vote, there should be an exception to this: they should have the right to vote in any Division which follows a debate in which they have taken part. It seems to me

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that if one of those Life Peers of much greater distinction and experience than myself attends this House to take part in an important debate on economic, educational, scientific or social affairs and by his experience and power of lucid exposition succeeds in some measure in swaying the House, it is entirely invidious that on that occasion he should not himself be allowed to exercise a vote. So I would suggest the small but I think significant amendment, that where a nonvoting Peer speaks in a debate which is followed by a Division, he should be allowed to vote. It could not by its nature much affect the balance of voting but it would be a logical development of this situation.
My Lords, I do not want to take up too much time, because there are many noble Lords still to speak and many whose words and wisdom your Lordships are trying to absorb. I agree with all those who say that the White Paper and the solutions contained in it are not perfect. But I remember as a young man having an opportunity of talking with President Franklin Roosevelt. He said to me, as we talked about political life: "One of the great dangers besetting any politician, and particularly a reforming politician, is to let the perfect defeat the possible." This is not a perfect solution, but it is a possible and commonsensical solution. My Lords, I hope that we shall support it.
8.1 p.m.
LORD GRENFELL: My Lords, I speak as only the second Baron in my family, but I think the House should know that we Peers who are of the younger ones in Debrett are just as proud of our titles as those Peers whose peerages go back many generations.
LORD SHACKLETON: I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord. It may be that some new arrangement has been made, but I do not see the noble Lord's name on the list at this time.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: Yes, it is.
LORD SHACKLETON: It may be that noble Lords opposite have a more up-to-date list, in which case it would be a kindness if the Whips on the other side would tell us.
LORD FERRIER: My name appears following that of my noble friend Lord Grenfell. A revised list has been arranged.
LORD SHACKLETON: I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, will not think that my intervention is in any way personal. Perhaps I can appeal to the Whips on both sides to keep each other informed.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: I think this has been done through the proper channels, since a revised list has been printed.
LORD SHACKLETON: I beg the noble Lord's pardon.
LORD GRENFELL: My Lords, I speak also as one who succeeded in 1925, took his seat in 1932, and has been a regular attender since 1947. There can be no doubt that the immediate future is going to be an unhappy period for hereditary noble Lords on all sides of the House. Over the years there have been constitutional crises, always involving a diminution of the powers of this House. Now we have before us a constitutional change which is undoubtedly the most controversial of all, as it cuts right across the system of heredity in this country. Therefore it is only natural that I have given careful and anxious thought to what I was going to say to the House to-day.
I have always been convinced that a change of this magnitude must come about with the greatest possible degree of agreement of all Parties, and I was deeply distressed when all negotiations were broken off. I now understand that to a high degree the White Paper reflects the views of the Committee which studied in such detail all aspects of the subject until consultations were discontinued. Like many noble Lords, I have been unhappy for a number of years about the image of the House of Lords in the country and in the Press. We have seldom, if ever, received the credit which is undoubtedly due to us for our advising role and our work in Committee. It is clear to all of us what a mess the Transport Bill would have been without the careful scrutiny of your Lordships' House. And looking back into the days of the major nationalisation Bills, when I was an assistant Whip in Opposition, under my noble friend Lord Salisbury,

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we worked hard and wisely, and a great many Amendments were incorporated in the various Bills.
If we ask ourselves why we have not received this recognition, there can be no doubt about the answer. The country as a whole, and the Press, will no longer accept the fact that in the Second Chamber there is a voting purely through the hereditary system. It does not necessarily follow that the son of a famous father is as good as his father, but it is true that any parent who hands on a peerage should train his son up to the responsibilities of what is a tremendous heritage in the service of his country. After that it is up to the son.
My Lords, I have been building up my case, I hope fairly, on both sides of this problem, but I must now state quite clearly to your Lordships that I am utterly convinced that this House must, in the interests of itself and of the country, reform on the broad basis of the White Paper, not at some future date, but at the earliest possible moment. It would in my opinion be quite useless to put this off until after another Election, as I am absolutely certain that the public at large are not in the least interested in the House of Lords as it is now constituted.
The remainder of my speech will be Second Reading or Committee points, but I think they are sufficiently important to mention them now. In passing, I should like to make a plea that due consideration may continue to be given in a reformed House to remuneration for the Members. There has been an onslaught in another place on this subject, but many in this House have given years of their lives to the House, and I feel that, with the work that we are rightly demanding of voting Members, they should be given the rate for the job.
My Lords, I have two points only to raise from the White Paper. In the first place, I am disturbed about the ruling of the White Paper that sons of Peers after their death would not be able to sit in any capacity on succession. It appears to me that, if this House is to be able to hear the views of the younger generation, those who succeed should be able, if they are willing, to become non-voting Peers and, if they
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prove themselves, should be eligible to be made Life Peers as vacancies occur. I feel deeply that the total rejection of the younger generation is a retrograde step.
Then, turning to paragraph 73(h), I am disturbed, with my noble friend Lord Colville of Culross, about the fact that non-voting Members will not, as I interpret it, be able to vote in any Select Committee upstairs. As your Lordships will know, I have been Chairman of some rather controversial Committees upstairs, and have been ably supported by Members who, through interest in the Committees, have given their time but owing to many other commitments will in all probability not be able to accept a Life Peerage. It appears to me to be vitally important that these Committees should be manned by experienced noble Lords. After all, the Report stage and Third Reading come on the Floor of the House, where Bills can be and on many occasions in the past have been, challenged. I would firmly recommend that non-voting Peers should be able to give their experience, either as Chairmen or as members of these vitally important Committees, and should be able to record their vote in this one instance. Finally, I would say that, whatever the outcome of this Bill, I shall endeavour to play my part in your Lordships' deliberations in any capacity which you may require.
8.10 p.m.
LORD FERRIER: My Lords, I feel I must remind myself that we are discussing whether we generally approve of the proposals in a White Paper; and consequently, in a measure, the issue is narrow. But I have been tempted, not only by the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, who has just sat down, but by that of his predecessor, the noble Lord, Lord Francis-Williams, to mention the question of the image of this House in the eye of the public. This point was raised in the earlier speech of the noble Lord, Lord Wade. So far as Lord Francis-Williams is concerned, I cannot confess that I am a regular reader of his articles on the Press in Punch. I am rather an "old fogey" in these matters. I was a Life Peer four years before he was; I think I am one of the first. I read Punch for something funny, and I find his articles extremely important and thought-provoking, which are not reasons

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why I read Punch. Therefore, I beg your Lordships' leave to begin my speech by sketching in what I believe to be a most important part of the background of this debate.
The noble Lord, Lord Francis-Williams, talked about the influence of this House on the people. The noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, said that it is practically unnoticed, and that is what Lord Wade also said. But I personally believe that the public as a whole are, and have been kept, broadly ignorant of what the House has done since the passing of the Life Peerages Act in 1958. This is the period which I have been able to observe. This brings me to the point which was made by the noble Lord, Lord Mitchison, when he spoke of the Labour Party's Manifesto in the Election of 1966; because it was only in the spring of 1965 that the B.B.C. were persuaded invariably to include a reference to the House of Lords in their programme "Today in Parliament", provided of course that the House sat. They have done so since. I believe that the position to which Lord Mitchison referred of 1966 is now changing, in that a good deal of water has flowed under the bridge, and people are a good deal more conscious of what we do here. I think we are grateful to the B.B.C. for that, although I am still critical of their Saturday programme "The Week in Westminster", which I think should be called, "The Week in the House of Commons", except on the one or two occasions when they have some reference to your Lordships' House.
The so-called popular Press seldom mentions the House of Lords, unless our proceedings contain something with a sensational or a salacious overtone. The principal papers are better, but not so very much better. I have with me a cutting from Monday's Times, and I feel I am justified in trespassing upon your Lordships' time in this matter. Here it is:
"Thursday, November 14.—Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Bill read second time. Expiring Laws Continuance Bill read first time. House rose at 6.45 p.m."
On that afternoon, for three hours your Lordships debated an Unstarred Question of the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot of Harwood, and 17 noble Peers took part in the debate. And yet that is what is
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in The Times Diary of last week. I produce this only to illustrate the point I make in approaching this White Paper: that the public are ill-served, this House is ill-served, by the Press. This has a direct bearing upon the background of the discussions relating to the White Paper.
My next point is that the background to this debate is also confused by the treatment of your Lordships' House by the present Government. I think it is a bit of a snub that a synchronous debate is running in the other place. My own view is that this may be an attempt to cover up the petulant spirit in which the White Paper has been produced. Forgive me if I use the word "petulant", but the noble Earl, the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, used the words "rudely interrupted" when he referred to the discussions which led up to the break after which this White Paper was produced. Is this the old trick of attacking the House of Lords in order to cover up failure in the field of Government? And, as Lord Silkin said, what is the hurry? Where is the crisis? I view this action as an endeavour to force through a fundamental and, to me, unacceptable formula for a change in the Constitution; and I greatly welcome the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Conesford, who put his points in terms infinitely more persuasive, and infinitely more wide, than anything I could say. Also, I agree with the noble Lords who have said that this Session is the wrong time to think of a change of this importance and of this magnitude. My Lords, should we not be wiser to stick to the process of "broadening down from precedent to precedent?" I agree that some measure of reform of this House is necessary, but I think that the reform should be taken more slowly. This is my first objection to the White Paper.
There is general talk of reducing the powers of the Second Chamber, and I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Conesford, said, rather than with what other Peers have said; namely, that this alteration in the powers will possibly be the other way about. But in terms of the problem of subordinate legislation, I take the view that this White Paper reduces the powers of this House. And if the powers of this House be reduced, what type of man or woman is expected to serve a Chamber with reduced powers?

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We have little enough power as it is. I personally feel that those who demand that the House should be totally abolished have some reason in what they say if the powers which now exist are to be still further truncated. The White Paper's proposals in regard to subordinate legislation will result in a reduction of these powers, but if this point could be improved upon after these debates then the Bill which stems from the White Paper might easily be one which is acceptable. But so long as conditions remain that a Government can take powers which the Second Chamber cannot resist, they are unacceptable to me, my Lords. This is my second objection to the White Paper.
I feel great sympathy with the noble Lord, Lord Denham, whose most persuasive and excellent speech said a great deal of what I was going to say and therefore has saved your Lordships' time and mine. I congratulate him on the way he said it. But we must remember that we live in an age of Fabian catch-phrases: a Socialist Government which calls itself Labour; Government control described as "bringing into public ownership"; the "pound in your pocket" story, and so on. There is an element of double-talk, to my mind, behind a great deal of what is going on to-day. So I feel that this attack upon the hereditary system may well be nothing more than a Socialist inspired shibboleth. Indeed, that has been suggested already by other noble Lords. I have said before and I say again that, though a Life Peer, I have come to believe that in a large measure the hereditary system should be retained as a passport to a seat in Parliament's Second Chamber; and I feel that this point was extremely well made by the noble Lord, Lord Denham, when he expounded what I feel is also the right solution: that if the hereditary system is to be reduced in influence, which may well be the proper step, then this two-tier system should be applied so that young Peers will have the right to sit as non-voting Peers in order to serve what the noble Lord, Lord Denham, referred to as an apprenticeship. I think that might well be the right solution.
Before leaving the hereditary system, I should like to refer to the speech of the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, who suggested that the White Paper was erod-
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ing the hereditary system. I do not think that that is the right word: the fact is that it is eliminating the hereditary system. I believe that erosion might be acceptable as part of reform, but this White Paper aims at the elimination of the hereditary system; therefore I do not agree with the noble Earl my Deputy Leader. But before we leave the hereditary problem, as a countryman I cannot leave this point without reminding he objectors to the hereditary system that heredity simply cannot be disregarded in any context concerning life—horses, sheep, dogs or hens. When I think of one of the principal objectors in another place, I wonder what he does when he buys a homing pigeon—does he study its pedigree? I bet he does. Admittedly there is an element of serendipity in the hereditary method of selection, but it must also be admitted that this very serendipity reduces the margin of error and thus justifies its use in the selection of younger men for an apprenticeship such as the noble Lord, Lord Denham, mentioned.
The other point in the White Paper to which I wish to turn is the matter of payment. An annual stipend is proposed, less tax, which I regard as claptrap. I am sorry if I offend, by Lords, but I am opposed to the payment of Life Peers referred to in terms of a stipend. I do not seek reward and I did not seek reward when, like the noble Lord, Lord Francis-Williams, I was offered a Life Peerage—I am sure his reaction, though quite different from mine in regard to your Lordships' House, was rather the same in regard to responsibility. Neither of us sought rewards; and I do not want to be patronised. In that respect my mind is perfectliy clear. I should prefer to see an actual allowance paid for expenses incurred. Why do I say this? It is because I can see no other way of compensating for the comparative expenses of Peers resident in London or thereabouts and those who reside at a distance. This point is referred to in the White Paper, as your Lordships know, but it seems to me that the method of recompensing a Peer for the time and treasure that he or she gives to the service of your Lordships' House should be a method which makes it more possible for Peers who live at a distance to attend, and attend regularly—because otherwise they would not be able to take part as voting Peers.

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Incidentally, I look forward to hearing what some of the Scottish Peers are going to say on this subject: I understand a number of them will speak to-morrow. Though myself resident in Scotland, I am after all a Peer of the United Kingdom, and I should like to hear what they say. Living at that distance this question of sitting on Mondays and perhaps on Fridays is a very important one, not only in terms of these obligations but in terms of qualifying for remuneration; and if remuneration or recompense is to be based on a certain number of sittings, then the number of days on which we are asked to sit is a matter of real importance to the individual when he has to decide whether or not to take his place. There is also the matter of postage, telephones, telegrams, stationery, secretarial assistance and the like: they are all important and they are all more onerous the further one lives from here.
There is yet another point which will have to be considered: whether speaking Peers will be entitled to travelling expenses even though, if the conditions of the White Paper become law, they will not be entitled to receive remuneration.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Lord, because he is speculating about something which is left entirely open in the White Paper. There is no suggestion that there shall be an annual stipend or that speaking Peers may not receive expenses. I do ask him not to follow the example of certain honourable Members in another place and jump to conclusions.
LORD FERRIER: The noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack, the Lord Chancellor, said he hoped that the Government would profit by the debates in this place and the other place. If I have suggested that this has been laid down, then I apologise, but the point I make on these matters of remuneration is that so far as I am concerned the term should be not "remuneration" but "recompense".
My Lords, much of what I was going to say has been said by other noble Lords and therefore I will pass over matters such as the age limit, and so on. These may be considered at another time, but I have outlined some of my objections to
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the proposals in the White Paper and some of the reasons why I shall vote against its approval. I feel that a wide cross-section of the public as a whole are having suspicions of the growing threat of a dictatorship which a compact group of intellectuals can bring to bear on public affairs. The public, I feel, want a Second Chamber to have a considerable measure of power. They want a rule to be thought out, I believe, and introduced more gradually than this one; and perhaps the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack was right when he said that people thought that this Government had been inclined to tackle too much too fast.
Before I sit down, I should like to mention the matter to which the noble Lord, Lord Francis-Williams, referred; namely, this question of the Life Peerage being an honour. I have referred to this subject before, and I notice that the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack talked of it when he mentioned Honours List Life Peers and other Life Peers. Looking back to the time when I was offered and accepted a Peerage, I felt it was an unenforceable obligation, and my personal feeling is that this matter of a Life Peerage should be regarded as an unenforceable obligation and not necessarily as an honour.
Your Lordships will notice from what I have said that, with the noble Lord, Lord Conesford, and others, I am one who believes that an egg which is good only in parts is better rejected altogether; and if there is a Division I shall vote against approval, even of the general terms of the White Paper.
8.30 p.m.
VISCOUNT MASSER EENE AND FERRARD: My Lords, I feel I should blush at the kind of things which my noble friend has just said regarding the hereditary Peerage. I am a hereditary Peer and my ancestors have been hereditary Peers for some considerable time past. In spite of that, however, I have always been an advocate of reform. But I admit that in the White Paper there are three suggestions that I find hard to stomach. For instance, I do not want the reform for the reason suggested by one or two noble Lords, that the House does not perform its functions efficiently. I cannot agree with that.

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I have been a regular attender in this House for 12 years. I can quote a number of lifelong Socialists, ex-Ministers, who have extolled the virtues of this House, including the late Sir Stafford Cripps, the late Lord Jowitt and the late Lord Walkden. I think the latter went so far as to say that it was the finest senate in the world, and I could quote many similar remarks. I think we should have reform, but not for the reason given by the Government. In the White Paper, the Government say that we should have reform in the interests of being modern. But I can give many instances where institutions have been modernised and where the result has been disastrous. That is an extremely lame reason.
The reason why I have been an advocate for certain reform is that the whole conception of the Peerage has changed, especially in the 20th century. What started the change was the Reform Bill of 1832. As we all know, before that date the conception of a Peerage was that it was a dignity appertaining to an individual because he had vast territorial possessions, and on account of those possessions he had great State duties to perform. During the reign of George III, a great many people came into this House. I think the membership then was 300, but it can be fairly said that, up to the time of the Reform Bill, the country, through this House, was ruled by a small group of aristocratic families. They were, first and foremost, politicians. One may not approve of that, but if we compare our conditions then—our prestige, our wealth, our power—to our position now, I consider that they did a very good job.
After the passing of the Reform Bill, the floodgates to the House of Lords opened, and it was quite right that they should. That is one of the reasons why I should like reform, but not completely in accordance with the White Paper. After the Reform Bill, at the end of the 19th century, there were something like 500 Peers. This House was opened to merchants, to bankers, and to almost every strata of society. I have never quite understood the logic of the idea that if you wish to honour a man—for instance, a great merchant or a soldier who has given invaluable service to his country—he should at the same
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time be made a legislator. I have always believed that honours should be divorced from the duties of a legislator, but that is only my personal opinion.
It is the change in the composition of this House that has made me rather in favour of reform. I have held that view since I was very young, and a long time before I was in the House. It is surprising to look at the House to-day, and to think that at the end of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I there were only 59 Peers. Even in Stuart days there were only just over 100 Peers. I think the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor said that in the last four years 164 Peers have been created, and vie now have over 1,000 Peers. In my view, that number in itself calls for some reform.
I do not personally object to the two-tier system of the voting and the nonvoting Peers. I am not qualified to speak on the legal aspect, of course, but there may be some great Constitutional point, that if you have a Peerage under patent it may not be correct to take away the powers of voting in this House which are granted in that patent. One Peerage which I hold in this House was granted under patent, but for my oldest Peerage I have no patent. As far as I am aware it has just grown up through usage.
Where I do not agree with the White Paper is that I do not see why the eldest sons of hereditary Peers should not be allowed to come to this House after the death of their fathers. They may be great experts in certain subjects, and why should they not be able to give their advice to the Government and to the nation? If one looks through the list of Members of this House—and, naturally, I am speaking now of the hereditary membership; I fully appreciate that we have extremely distinguished Life Peers, but I am not bringing them into this argument because I am talking only of hereditary Members—we have in this House experts in every field. We have great philosophers, great businessmen, great Generals, authors—every strata of society is represented.
I think the noble Lord, Lord Mitchison, said that the House of Commons was far more representative of the people than the House of Lords, but I do not agree. The House of Lords comprises an all-

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embracing cross-section of the people. Do your Lordships realise that in this House there are more Nobel prize-winners than in any other institution in the world? I am quite sure the public do not realise the immense talents in this House. I am, I admit, the wrong person to expound this. I have no talents; I am a jack-of-all-trades. This is a unique institution and the Government get all this advice free. It is Government on the cheap. Large corporations pay Members of the House thousands of pounds for their advice, but these same Members come to this House and give advice free. The Government want to destroy all this.
It must be remembered that in this country we have a universal franchise. That is a very good thing; we are a democracy. But a great number of that franchise are naturally not qualified to understand the great issues of State. Therefore, I think it is essential that there should be a Second Chamber, which must be independent of the Executive. It must not be a "Yes man" to the House of Commons. As has been said before in this debate, I am afraid that under the present reform mentioned in the White Paper we are going for what I might call Parliamentary dictatorship. This House will not have any power to overrule the other House in any way. We are going to have a short delaying power, which will be of little importance.
I should like to know why the Government want to do away with the hereditary system as regards advising them and the nation. I can understand why they want to do away with the hereditary system on the question of voting, although I may not agree. But it is not logical to throw away this great fount of knowledge, this free advice to the Government. The Government are not being logical.
Last Session the Government introduced the Agricultural (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill, which I think is now law, to make hereditary the rights of all tenant farmers in Scotland. That means that they can hand on their farms to their sons or other children, to their wives, and even to their adopted sons. Here a Socialist Government are creating a group of people, who will have great power by producing food in Scotland,
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made subject by that Socialist Government to the hereditary system. In this White Paper the Government are saying that they cannot have this free expert advice through the hereditary system. It is not logical. That is rather a nasty one to answer, and I am sorry that the noble Lord the Leader of the House, for whom I have a great respect, is not here.
The noble Lord, Lord Francis-Williams, made a good point when he suggested that non-voting Peers, if speaking on a subject, ought to have the right to vote. It would make very little difference, and I think that is a good idea. Another subject about which I am worried, and on which the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor spoke, is that of patronage. The noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack assured us that there would be no increase in patronage. But as I read the White Paper—I agree it is only a suggestion—it appears that the voting Members of your Lordships' House are to be paid quite an appreciable salary—£2,000 or £2,500 a year. That completely alters this question of patronage, because it will be very nice to be appointed to a Chamber which one need not attend so very many times. One has only to attend one-third of the sittings. I attend over two-thirds of the sittings. I agree that there is going to be a committee, a watchdog, to look over this, but great patronage will be involved and I do not like it.
For a long time, Parliament has been fighting to be independent of the Executive. When Members of Parliament were first paid, Parliament lost a round, and it has lost many rounds since. Parliament is now, I am afraid, the tool of the Executive. That is a great pity, and I am quite sure that when Peers are paid £2,000 or whatever it is, the power of the Executive will be even greater.
Another point which I find disagreeable is the permanent majority of the Government in power over all other Parties. I agree that there will be Cross-Bench Peers, but how are they to be chosen? Presumably, they will be chosen by the Prime Minister. I do not think that is very satisfactory. I should have preferred a House where

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there were a great many Members completely divorced from the patronage of any Prime Minister.
I cannot understand why a certain section of voting Peers, say a half or a third, cannot be chosen by all the organisations in the country: why they cannot be nominated by, say, the trade unions, by all denominations of the Church—Catholics, Methodists—also doctors, the scientists, the C.B.I., every organisation in the country, to represent them as Life Peers. You would then get away from the patronage of the Prime Minister.
I should also have preferred to see, say, a third of the voting Peers hereditary Peers chosen by a Select Committee of all Parties. We do want to get away from this appointment of all Peers by the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister to-day is a very powerful individual; he is really nearly a dictator. He is to all intents and purposes as powerful as the Crown used to be 300 or 400 years ago. It was, after all, the Peers who in Magna Carta secured the Civil Rights from the Crown, and from that the liberty of our Parliamentary institutions has grown up. It was owing to the independence of the Peers that the basis of our civil liberties has grown.
The other thing I must say a word about is the subordinate legislation. As we see the power of the Executive growing and growing, we are going to get more Statutory Orders. I quite agree that if this reform goes through according to the White Paper there are going to be, I think the noble and learned Lord, the Lord Chancellor said, conferences on the question of subordinate legislation and regarding the powers of this House. We are now getting increasing government by decree, and it is going to increase. I do not feel at all happy about that.
There are two other points that I should like to make. There is the question, which is going to be discussed at length to-morrow, of the Scottish Peers, and I should like to bring in the Irish Peers, because, as some of your Lordships may know, I fought the case for the Irish Peers to be represented in this House. After all, according to the White Paper, we are to have Irish Peers. The idea is to have Peers who represent the North of Ireland. I cannot see why the Irish Peers, or at any rate a certain num-
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ber of them, elected by themselves, cannot be allowed into this House in the non-voting tier, and from that nonvoting tier a few of them, four or five, chosen to represent the North of Ireland. The other point I would make, very briefly, is on the question of the Scottish Peers. Representation of the Scottish Peers was an integral part of the Treaty of Union. I do not think it is really adequate to allow the Prime Minister to appoint the Peers for Scotland. I think it is breaking faith with that Treaty. Any reform affecting the rights of Scottish Peers should be the subject of a special Statute.
There is one point that rather amuses me. Of course through the ages we have had many schemes for reform of this House. In fact the first scheme for reform was brought about indirectly by the Treaty of Utrecht. The Tory Government of that day got the Crown to create 12 extra Peers in order to have a majority in this House to get the Treaty through. But at that time it was thought to be a very arbitrary act that the prerogative of the Crown should be used to have a majority in this House for the Government of the day. It was an extremely arbitrary act which was looked upon with great apprehension. And so it came about that when the Whigs came into power they did the same thing to have a majority in this House. So it went on, and people began to fear that every time there was a different Government more Peers would be created by that Government in order that it should have a majority in the House.
We then had a reform in 1719 by the Whig Government; and the reform was to try to stop this increase in your Lordships' House; the idea was to try to keep this House independent of the Executive. The idea was that the membership of this House would not increase by more than six. The reform was thrown out by a Whig House of Commons, which was rather surprising because it was brought in by a Whig Government. The present reform is to ensure a majority for the Government in this House. When we look back in history it is interesting to see how the idea of having this House reformed in that way was looked at askance.
There is one other point that I would like to mention, and it is one than will

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probably please the noble Lord, Lord Mitchison—I am afraid that I have hardly ever pleased him. I was rather surprised to hear him say that he apparently does not agree that any reform of this House ought to be by agreement between the Parties. I will not go into that now. I am going to say that I really do feel that the age of retirement for voting Peers of 72 is an insult to extremely brilliant and extremely able men. I can quote many instances, as I think have been quoted already, of men over 72, even over 80, with minds like needles. I greatly deplore this proposal. I quite agree that we have to have youth, and therefore I think it would be a great pity to destroy the hereditary system as regards the non-voting Peers. But I do honestly deplore that Peers of 72—I have quite a long time to go yet—should have to retire from the voting category.
With regard to voting on this White Paper, I am really torn "between the devil and the deep blue sea". I agree with some suggestions, but I find it very hard to stomach the eradication of the hereditary system as regards eventually not having any non-voting Peers to give advice to the Government and the nation, because I have already said that you have running through the hereditary Peerage a body of expert and illustrious people, although I naturally do not count myself among them.
9.0 p.m.
LORD BELSTEAD: My Lords, for many years now the presence of a considerable Conservative majority in this House has presented an unfair advantage for the use of the delaying power. The predominance of hereditary Members has been represented as an indefensible element in legislating. Thus, the position of this House has become impossible, and this reform at least finds a solution. If there is to be reform, as the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, held, the two-tier system is in many ways the best device imaginable; and I must say I think that the dangers of patronage on those who are nominated voting Peers for life are surely overplayed by some. With no joyful heart, I nevertheless support this White Paper which results from consultations on which the participants are surely to be congratulated.
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Despite a continual majority of one Party in this House for so many years, perhaps noble Lords will agree that a rare degree of independence and scrutiny has been achieved in the revision of Bills. The six months' delaying power proposed in the White Paper must, whether we like it or not, be a factor in our thoughts, unless anyone really believes that a Government must automatically receive general electoral support all the way through to the end of its term of office. I must say that this is a theory which the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, dealt with quite effectively when he spoke. But if conflict between the two Houses does not form the basis of one's thinking, then six months from disagreement should provide real opportunity for various opinions to influence the second thoughts of the House of Commons. It is therefore no part of my case to criticise the new proposed delaying power for Public Bills.
However, I would draw your Lordships' attention to the deletion of any real check by this House, as proposed in the White Paper, over subordinate legislation. Paragraph 16 of the White Paper declares
"There can be no justification for a non-elected second Chamber having co-equal power with an elected House of Commons in this important area of Parliamentary business."
Quite possibly. But are not Statutory Instruments the offspring of Acts? Surely, therefore, is there not a logical case for some period of delay analogous at least to the six months proposed for the delay in Public Bills?
Paragraph 58 continues with the words
"The concept of a period of delay is not, however, part of the present power of the House of Lords"
—and it declares that a considerable survey would be needed to decide on a period of delay as such. I submit that this argument is specious. The present power is for annulment—that is, for indefinite delay—and presumably some thought has been given to the matter before recommending the almost complete abolition of this power. I quite realise that otherwise paragraph 58 draws fair attention to the difficulties. With other noble Lords, I was listening when the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, intervened earlier in this debate and quite briefly explained some of the difficulties. But this is hardly enough, and much apprehension

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would be dispelled if the Government, instead of giving an indication, would give a definite undertaking that further consideration will be given to this question.
Perhaps your Lordships will not accuse me of muddled thinking if I illustrate the importance of this point from what was originally a Private Bill. In 1962, the late Lord Birkett successfully moved a mandatory Instruction to that part of a Private Bill which sought to give Manchester Corporation power to extract large quantities of water from Lake Ullswater. The power of complete delay, as it were, mobilised by Lord Birkett's wonderful last speech, gave opportunity for a conference to he held under the chairmanship of the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe. This affected the order subsequently produced by the Manchester Corporation. A public inquiry ensued, and then the Minister of the day, under the Labour Government, imposed conditions protecting water levels, natural beauty, future demand and public access.
On this evidence, can anyone doubt that the power of delay did not merely satisfy the whim of a noble House but ensured that those who had not chosen to have second thoughts thought again? Let Her Majesty's Government have a care in this matter. Few actions so readily cause a gulf between Parliament and people than decisions against which there seem to be no appeal.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Lord? He certainly is on to a most important point. We went into this matter thoroughly. It is difficult to impose a power of delay, for instance, on subordinate legislation which is already in force. That is one of the many categories of subordinate legislation made by successive Governments. The point that I should really like to make is that this is a real tangle, and one of the things the investigation into this reform has brought out is that it is an area to which Parliament has to direct its attention. I assure the noble Lord that it is not for lack of will that we were unable to solve this problem.
LORD BELSTEAD: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his guidance. I realise that there is a difference between what the White Paper calls "urgent" and "less urgent" Statutory Instruments. I was rather hoping that the noble Lord
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would say something, or perhaps something would be said before the end of the debate—this is what I am angling for—to the effect that there will be a definite undertaking that this subject will be looked at, and not just that the will is there. Possibly the value of delay in subordinate legislation which was illustrated by what happened with what was originally a Private Bill is not so entirely wide of the mark as it may have sounded. I believe I am right in saying (and I approach this subject with a certain amount of diffidence) that in certain circumstances Special Procedure Orders provide an alternative for Private Bills, an alternative with attractive advantages in regard both to time and expense. May I therefore also ask the Government, before the debate concludes on Thursday, whether Special Procedure Orders are to be included in the White Paper's recommendations regarding subordinate legislation? If so, for the first time the House of Commons will be able to override this House on a matter of Private Bill character, and this will be contrary to the recommendations on Private Bills in the White Paper itself.
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Denham, has proposed a strong case for the inclusion of future hereditary Peers as non-voting Members of this House. The point has been made again and again that appointing young Life Peers will not be easy in the future; and many existing Life Peers are so very busy that they simply do not have the time to devote to work here if it falls outside their field of interest. It is this aspect of the reform which I fear may slowly transform this House into some theatre, a place in itself artificial and lifeless, where performers, themselves full of life perhaps, simply come and go. The noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, referred to the contribution of what he called "the less eminent in the second tier", and. said that this would be helpful in many ways. It would do harm to none, and of course such Peers would then have the chance, if they made the grade, to go on and possibly become voting Peers in due course. By projection, Lord Denham's case would. I feel, continue to add to our pool of specialists who attend but rarely.
Your Lordships may remember the book on the House of Lords written by

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Professor Bromhead, then of Durham University, in which he said:
"In the unreformed House it is still possible for a Peer suddenly to emerge from political obscurity and to make a valuable contribution. … It is difficult to see how any reform which restricted membership of the House to 300 elected or appointed Peers could preserve intact the advantages of the old arrangements."
Those words were published ten years ago, and to-day the White Paper proposes to fly straight in the face of this warning. I beg that the prejudice of to-day, which exists among some people, may not threaten the work of this House for the future.
To those outside this House, may I end by suggesting that our procedure may sometimes mask two essential ingredients to the despatch of business; namely, courtesy and brevity. It was, I believe, the much respected late Lord PethwickLawrence who said that the difference between the House of Commons and the House of Lords was that in the House of Commons a speaker must begin by proclaiming a depth of disagreement with the previous speaker, and then will go on, broadly speaking, to agree with what has previously been said; whereas in the House of Lords a speaker will invariably begin with a tribute to the Peer who has spoken last, then perhaps say a few disarming words about how unfitted he is to be taking part in the debate at all, and then make his points of disagreement as incisively as possible. To the long-winded, we sometimes find that the use of our hearing aids can be intimidating. If a speaker is dull it is not so difficult to fall asleep as ostentatiously as possible, and then at the end of a particularly boring sentence to let fall your hearing aid with a clatter from your nerveless grasp.
He who underrates the attention or the mental capacity of this House does so at his peril. It was, I believe, the late Lord Halifax who said:
"It is the accustomed boast of this House that we can command the services of experts in relation to whatever topic may engage our attention".
And to-day tribute has been paid to the revising and initiating of legislation, and to the general debates in your Lordships' House. In these respects surely the mixture of hereditary and Life Peers has proved valuable. Let us never forget the time given by Peers attending Commit-
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tees and the time given by our Deputy Speakers, to whom I think a debt is owed. If "continuity", about which we have all talked so much to-day, is to mean anything, there must be young Members of this House; yet such Members are very conscious of the lead given by the more senior Members of your Lordships' House, some of whom are among our most regular attenders. Whatever final form this House is to take, it will do well, I think, if it continues to make a similar contribution to fair and well-ordered government.
9.14 p.m.
LORD FEVERSHAM: My Lords, it is beyond doubt that this is to be a marathon debate, and I fear that only those of Ethiopian physique will survive the course. I apologise that I shall not be able to hear it all. I have to go to Yorkshire this evening for a meeting in Leeds to-morrow morning, which cannot be avoided. I shall of course, follow most carefully in Hansard whatever I may miss here.
The reform of the House of Lords is something we have all been hearing about for a number of years. It seems to have become as much a part of the London season as feeding the ravens on Tower Hill, together with those other little things that one knows one should do but somehow never gets round to doing. At last we have some proposals in print, and it really looks as if reform is on the way. I think that nearly everybody in this country, apart from one or two noble Lords of the hereditary type, agrees that the hereditary element in Parliament should be phased out of action. The correspondence columns of various newspapers have carried some strange attempts to define the hereditary Peerage. I have read that I am both a congenital idiot and a passenger on the top deck of a Batter-sea bus. Most extraordinary of all, apparently I do not blow on my cocoa but merely fan it with my top hat.
Although I am eager to see reform of your Lordships' House, there are a few points I should like to make on the White Paper. I am a young man. Parliament and politicians do not command very much respect from me and, I believe, from many of my generation. I believe that the structure of Government in this

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country is partly responsible for such a lack of respect, as is the species of political animal created by that structure, which appears to me (that is to say the structure, not the political animal) to be a horrifying Party-political load of "old cobblers".
The noble Baroness, Lady Asquith of Yarnbury, called a speech made by the noble Lord, Lord Annan, "optimistic". I expect that the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, may call my speech pessimistic. The heavy suspicion of bureaucracy is settling over me to make me feel like a wanted man. We seem to bury ourselves in committees and sub-committees and safeguard ourselves with unions. We seem to lose all sight of where we are going or what we are aiming for, and merely grope about in the dark muttering "Fair shares, fair shares". I have not met one person of any intelligence during the last few years who has not grumbled at the state of Britain and at the incompetence of Government. From time to time the phrase "constitutional crisis" is used in Parliament, usually with the wave of an accusing finger at us fellows who merely fan our cocoa with our top hats. Surely there has been a constitutional crisis in this country for some time, and politicians have gone up to their necks in mud before admitting it, and many would probably go down before they did so. Parliament and people are out of touch, and if that is not a crisis in democracy then I do not know what is.
We all know how slowly the cogs turn in the great British machine. But at last a young man sees some hope of action. The House of Lords is to be reformed; the Royal Commission on Local Government is due to report, and a similar Commission on the Constitution is to be set up. I hope that the job of putting Parliament into touch with me—with people—is about to be undertaken. The proposed reforms for the House of Lords do not seem to me to fit very convincingly into this framework of hope. There is an unfortunate air, despite the much-flaunted inter-Party talks on Lords Reform, of "Under the carpet with the top-hatted cocoa boys". This is all very well, but the vital need is for a Constitution that works in this country. I think that the general agreement is that such a Constitution should contain an effective Second Chamber.
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I find that I am in difficulty because, having stated that I think the proposals in the Government White Paper rather feeble-minded, inconclusive and short-sighted, I want to qualify this by adding that I think they are the best proposals we shall see put forward in the circumstances. To a young man without much experience, British law and the British way of life appear to evolve, through short-sighted years of feeble-mindedness, into something almost miraculously worth while. They do not change overnight to the rattle of tanks up St. James's. I am going to say in a moment what I as a young man would like to see in the way of a Second Chamber of use to Parliament and the people. But first I want to look at the timing of these proposals for reform of your Lordships' House. It seems to me odd that such a significant change in the Constitution as reform of the House of Lords would entail should be discussed before the Constitution as a whole comes under the scrutiny of a Commission, something of the sort which we have now been promised. It also seems odd that the White Paper does not advocate a Second Chamber based on a regionally-elected membership—partly because no machinery exists at present to elect a regional membership. Yet we are led to believe that we are on the threshold of reform in local government to give it a more regional influence.
My Lords, if I have any politics, then they are formed out of regionalism. I am a regional Peer, and my doctor has told me that a visit to any place so central as your Lordships' House is almost certain to put me down with a severe attack of Mao's 'flu. I think that a regionally-elected Second Chamber could be of use to Parliament and people; although I agree with the point which was made by the noble Lord, Lord Annan, that we do not want a federal system in our country. I am sad to see that one of the reasons for rejecting a regional Second Chamber is, in effect, that we have yet to see the Report of the Royal Commission on Local Government. This seems to point to bad timing in the consideration of how to reconstruct the Second Chamber of Parliament.
But against this we have the kind of argument which I think the noble and

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learned Lord the Lord Chancellor employed. We have the fact that if we wait to see every Report of every Commission and Committee then we shall wait until Doomsday, as we have waited from Doomsday for reform. This kind of paradox seems, again to a young man, typical of democracy. The best hope for me, eager for reform, lies in the fact that should the proposals in this White Paper pass into law they will remain open to revision and improvement thereafter.
George Washington was once asked at a teaparty where he considered the value of a Second Chamber to lie. Pouring some tea out into his saucer he blew over it and replied: "Like that—we don't want our legislation too hot." My Lords, much debate has taken place, and will take place, on the powers of a Second Chamber. In a modern context, in Britain, I do not believe that Washington's valuation of a Second Chamber holds true. However many powerful Chambers there were to our Legislature, I do not believe that committees, subcommittees, bureacracy and compromise would allow any legislation hotter than tepid tea
There seems to be great concern over increasing the power of the House of Commons. Here, I can see that I am going completely to disagree with the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, the noble Lord, Lord Conesford, and, I am afraid, with a whole host of noble Lords. My concern is that the House of Commons, in a streamlined Constitution, should have all the power that we can accord to it. The loss of power to politicians in a denser and denser jungle of red tape is synonymous with an increasing lack of respect for those in political life. I believe that the main job of a revised Second Chamber should be to provide as wide a forum of public opinion as possible, so that in debate, and with limited powers to delay legislation, it could demonstrate with authority whenever a Government began to act out of step with the electorate. It would be essential for this task that any revised Upper House should reflect as wide a section of public opinion as possible—and here I am in sympathy, I think, with some of the arguments of the noble Lord, Lord Denham, and the noble Viscount,
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Lord Colville of Culross. My main argument with the proposals in this White Paper is that as they stand they just do not do this job. It is a job which is more successfully done by the present system of hereditary Peerage. It is essential that the useful qualities of hereditary Peers should be incorporated in the revised Second Chamber on a nonhereditary basis—and here I come to the main issue in my speech.
With all the diffidence of the noble Lord, Lord Soper (I again mention the noble Lord, although I am not quite sure that I should, as he is not here), when he speaks for himself but also feels that he is dipping in an oar on behalf of the non-established Churches, I speak for myself but feel that I represent at least some of the people in my age group. The proposals of this White Paper will eventually eradicate young people from membership of this House, both as voting and as non-voting Members. I think that this is wrong, particularly in a House which should purport to field a cross-section of public opinion. Soon members of the public over the age of 18 will have the vote, and if they are to have any voice at all in Parliament, other than the electoral vote, then it should be heard in the forum of a Second Chamber. That young people should have a voice in Parliament is important to me: that they should have a vote there less so.
I really cannot go along with the vision of the noble Lord, Lord Denham, of Peers of my sort of age going through a kind of pupilage for sterner stuff later on. Nor do I support the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, when he feels that the hereditary system is the only method for injecting young blood into the House of Lords. I am sure that a method other than the existing hereditary one must be found for putting it there. As the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor has pointed out, quite clearly young hereditary Peers are almost a figment of the imagination when it comes to attendance figures.
I do not want to go into all the difficulties of selecting young people to sit in a revised House of Lords. The greatest difficulty is that people remain young for a relatively short time. I merely make the suggestion that perhaps university students could send a small number of

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elected delegates to speak in the Second House for a period of, say, two years before the election of new delegates. This sort of suggestion is difficult to uphold under proposals which still insist on calling people "Lords" and under restrictions "life-sentencing" them to a Second Chamber. What with these proposals and Lords of first creation, "lifers", "voters" and "speakers", we are going to have more breeds of Lord than there are monkeys in the trees. Some people say that the Second Chamber, consisting as it does largely of older and wiser owls, is no place for young people. I say that young people have more respect for age and experience than their parents give them credit for—perhaps because the parents feel cut out of any special relationship which their child may strike up with his grandparents. Whatever reform is carried out of the House of Lords, I hope that the idea of its containing some young people will not be eternally shelved.
My Lords, I want to end on a personal note. If I am to be a non-voting speaker, I shall be young for a few years yet to give service to this Second Chamber, to uphold what I believe to be the valuable and unique position of the young person with a voice in Parliament in a democratic country. I am not a politician: I have no wish to go to the House of Commons to be of service. The electoral vote which I should receive under these proposals is of no use to me. There is no political Party at the moment which contains the ideas, the ideals or the power to hold me. Outside my region there is little service that I could do for my country other than by writing or speaking from an independent position from a Cross-Bench.
9.27 p.m.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, I propose to begin by invoking what the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, described as the "courtesies and customs of this House". I think he was quoting the late Lord Pethick-Lawrence. I want to do so, particularly in relation to the speech we have just heard. The noble Lord, Lord Feversham, said that I might regard it as pessimistic. I do not. I am not a pessimist, because I believe the great hope of the world lies in youth to-day, and I welcome the speech which has just been made because it expresses the mind and mood of so much youth in
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this country. We have to face the fact that some of the most alert and intelligent of the youth to-day are cynical about politicians and about politics—and not only about the House of Lords but about the House of Commons. One of the most urgent issues of our time is to find some way to bring to the alert youth of our nation, reflected as they are in nearly every nation in the world, a belief in great imaginative and constructive policies. I very much hope that during his period of contribution to our national life, the noble Lord, Lord Feversham, speaking for youth in this House to-day, will give a lead to them which will find expression in those directions.
I am intervening in this debase only because I shall be saying things which no one else will say. Perhaps that is not unusual. Certainly, what I am to say has not been said so far in the debate, and I do not anticipate that the conclusions I have reached will be expressed by any subsequent speaker. I am against a legislative Chamber which is either hereditary or nominated. I regret that the noble Lord, Lord Ferrier, is not in his place, because I was going to make a comment on his justification of the hereditary principle. He was saying that pedigree was important in the production of horses, cattle, sheep and chickens. I have not had much experience in those spheres, though I have had very considerable experience in breeding racing pigeons. It was one of the only two things I learned at school; the other was rugby football.
What I want to say to the noble Lord, Lord Ferrier, is this. He should be very careful indeed in justifying hereditary Peers in this House on the grounds of pedigree. Honestly, my Lords, we must not begin to make that kind of examination. If we did, it would be very unfortunate for the stalwarts who now occupy not only the Benches opposite, but some Benches on this side of your Lordships' Chamber, and who claim, because of their ancestors, that on the grounds of good pedigree they have the right to be in this House. I am a tolerant person, and therefore I hope that no one who belongs to my profession of journalism will take up the challenge of the noble Lord, Lord Ferrier, and begin to examine the ancestry of our hereditary Peers.

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This House of Lords, and any Second Chamber, has two arguments in its favour. The first argument is that it serves as a revising body for what is done in another place; and, sometimes, when the programme of another place is crowded, as a body for initiating legislation. That is a technical matter. It is a matter of finding the correct device by which we shall enable another place to give proper revision to its decisions, and enable its legislative programme to go through effectively.
I admit at once that, with the present procedure in another place, a Second Chamber is necessary for that purpose. The procedure of another place—and, like other Members of your Lordships' House, I have had a good deal of experience of it—is mediæval. We talk about modernising industry, science and the universities. The place which needs modernisation more than anywhere else is the Lower House of our two Houses of Parliament.
For many years I was a Back-Bencher in another place. I have never known such frustration as I experienced there. I was elected to the other place. I was keen to contribute to the legislation of the country, I was keen to contribute ideas about its administration, but I had little opportunity at all to do so. The average Member of Parliament spends 50 per cent. of his or her time as a social worker, rather than as a contributor to either administration or legislation.
I will say at once, on a point which I shall develop later, that I have experienced much less frustration as a Back-Bencher in this House than I did as a Back-Bencher in another place. What I am arguing is that the argument in favour of this Chamber or any Second Chamber is in the first place a technical matter. If we could find in another place a procedure which would enable proper revision to be given to legislation which was hurried through, if we could find in another place an opportunity for the Back Benchers to take a real part in administration and legislative initiative and consideration, then there would be no need on those grounds for a Second Chamber at all.
It is not our duty, although Members of another place often accept it as their
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duty towards us, to make detailed proposals for that change. I believe that the solution for another place will be found by making every Member of Parliament, not a talking Member or a Member seeking to talk, but a working Member through membership of some committee or commission responsible for legislation and actual administration in the different Departments of State. I understand that under the initiative of the former Leader of the House of Commons proposals on these lines are being made. I believe that if those proposals are followed through to their logical conclusion it will be possible to have in one Chamber the necessary consideration of legislation which is now rushed through in a rather impulsive way.
There is a second ground for the justification of your Lordships' House and of a Second Chamber, and to this I want to pay great tribute. This is the informed and specialised debates which take place in your Lordships' House. I admit at once that on many subjects the debates in this House are of a far higher standard than any I have ever heard in another place. We had a debate last week about qualified married women. They could never have had that in another place. We have had debates in this House on higher education, on colonial administration and on many other subjects, of a high standard because Members of this House have given their lives to work in those spheres and have been able to contribute immensely to our knowledge and to our consideration. Yes, that is true.
We have also this advantage: that because in this House we are not dependent upon popular prejudice we have been able to be pioneers in a number of spheres. I am thinking particularly of the sphere of sexual morality, where Members of another place are frightened about their votes. That is a contribution which this House, or any Chamber which consists of those who by their experience and knowledge are able to contribute ideas, is able to make to the community.
The idea which I wish to express to-night, as I reach a conclusion of these considerations, is, as I have said, one that your Lordships are not likely to accept. If you can have modernisation of the procedure of the other place, I do not believe that a Second Chamber or

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the House of Lords is necessary for legislative functions. I should deeply deplore the disappearance of men and women in this House of great knowledge and experience, who, because of their contributions to political ideas, are really formative in the thinking, philosophy and practice of politics. But I would have a Second Chamber which had no legislative functions at all, provided that in another place the technical problems of revision and so on are solved. It is now humiliating: the Opposition here bring in Amendments; after long debates we send them to the other place who reject them; then the Opposition just say: "We will bow to the other House." It is humiliating; it makes this House an absolute cypher. With a change in the procedure of the other place, that function of this House would become unnecessary.
But those of experience and knowledge, those representing different spheres of life—and I include among them students at universities—could make a contribution to ideas, to formative thought, in a Second Chamber which would be a kind of permanent political British Association. If we made that our function, I believe that we should end the prejudice against the House of Lords, arising from our interference in legislation, and that we should receive some respect for the contribution of creative ideas.
Because of this, my Lords, I shall be unable to vote for the proposals which are now before the House. I am not going to vote against, because I would not be seen in the Lobby with many of those on the other side who stand for the hereditary system and who believe in this idea of aristocratic pedigree. I will not vote with them against the proposals, but it is honest to make clear the point of view which I hold as I abstain.
9.44 p.m.
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, the noble Lord who has just sat down has always been a fund of new ideas, and this evening he has displayed them to a degree which one can only describe as most interesting. I am sure he will forgive me if I do not follow him down the garden path which he has traversed. When the Government first announced their new determination to reform your Lordships' House, my basic instinct was
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to feel that, despite the idiosyncracies of your Lordships' House and its peculiarities, of which there are many, and despite its almost curious anachronism in modern-day society, it has done, and is doing, a job of work far more complex and more vital, and doing it far better than that which it is usually given credit for. Therefore my first reaction was that it would be a pity to alter it.
On the other hand, over the years it has become increasingly more difficult to defend, both in public and in private, a House of Parliament the main membership of which consists of those who are there by the accident of birth. It so happens that in practice this system has proved to work well, but in this day and age, where the proof of the pudding is not so much in the eating but in the accurately computerised diagnosis of its contents, your Lordships' House as at present constituted finds difficulty in being readily acceptable to a substantial section of the public. Therefore I would concede the case for a change, not on the ground that your Lordships' House is at present unsatisfactory but on the ground that the hereditary principle is increasingly difficult to defend as one of the main criteria for membership of the Houses of Parliament. But that does not mean that what will replace your Lordships' House as we now know it will necessarily be a better House of Parliament or a more balanced House of Parliament, or will result in the will of the people being more accurately reflected.
I would at the outset vindicate the Government of any charge of endeavouring by these proposals to destroy the House of Lords, which is what we were always told a Labour Government would do, and indeed which is what I think many members of the Labour Government sought and hoped that they would do. Labour Governments have always been understandably needled by the power which your Lordships' House has had, small though it has been, and which it could use against the Government; and they have always given the impression of being determined, therefore, to cut the House of Lords down to size. But things do not always work out the way they are intended to.
I have made a little law which I have had the audacity to call Ferrers Law,

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which says quite simply that everything has the reverse effect of that intended. When there is an economic crisis, for instance, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer says that in order to protect the pound nobody must take more than £50 abroad, the result is that more people go abroad than ever before. If you have an egg and you clean it and subject it to the most vigorous scrutiny to make sure that it has no dirt or impurities or cracks, and to display its excellence you stamp it with a "lion", nobody wants to eat it. When the Goya painting of the Duke of Wellington was stolen from the National Gallery, more people went to see the place where it used to hang than ever went to see the picture when it hung there.
So, my Lords, it is possible that with these proposals for the reform of your Lordships' House we may very well find that they have the reverse effect of that intended. We should be mistaken if we thought that, by removing the powers which hereditary Peers have had up to now, we should be striking a mortal blow to your Lordships' House, because we shall not. We shall in fact be making it far stronger. If anyone thinks that one of the results of the White Paper will be that your Lordships' House will emerge like a dove with clipped wings, he will be in for a very big surprise. And if the Government were irked by the vote on the Rhodesia Order, let then not be under any misapprehension, as I am sure that they are not, that the White Paper is just retribution for those "naughty boys" who took part in the prank; because once these proposals become law the House of Lords will be divested of the one thing which made it reluctant and chary to use its power; namely, the hereditary Peers. Instead, there will be clearly defined Members and clearly defined powers, and these powers will be used far more frequently and with far less caution, and in such a way, I should have no hesitation in forecasting, as to make the Rhodesia Order vote seem like a little local difficulty.
The great advantage of your Lordships' House has not been the power which it has had but the influence which it has had by what has been said in the course of debate. And though I sup-
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pose that every hereditary Peer who attends regularly and who is summarily "axed" by these proposals will be sorry to find himself no longer a voting Peer, I have always, rather truculently, thought that if the Government had really wished to damage the House of Lords it would not have taken away the right of voting and left the right of speaking: it would have left the right of voting and taken away the right of speaking—on the basis that what is said in your Lordships' House carries far more weight than the way in which your Lordships vote.
One may criticise these proposals, and indeed any proposals, and especially those in regard to the House of Lords, because everyone has his own ideas as to what should be done; but there is one major criticism which I have and which again adds to my point that everything has the reverse effect to that intended. The object of these proposals is to bring the House of Lords more into line with modern-day practice and thinking, and to cut out the old-fashioned, archaic system. Yet what will be the results of all this? As has been said by many noble Lords, it will cut out all the young people. One can visualise few people being made Life Peers at the age of 50, and certainly not before the age of 40, and I am bound to say that the statement made by the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor this afternoon, that there were only 9 peers under the age of 40 who attended regularly in the last year, was to me greatly surprising.
But, my Lords, that statistic may conceal one important thing, and it may give a wrong impression. The impression one would receive is that on any day one would see only 9 peers under the age of 40 in your Lordships' House. That is not the case at all. If your Lordships' House is depicted at present, quite erroneously, by some of the less generous cartoonists and columnists as being a House full of old "fuddyduddies", we would hardly seem to be bestowing upon the new House the "swinging", "with-it" image which is so much demanded nowadays, by directly and deliberately excluding from its future membership anyone under the age of 50. Indeed, it seems odd specifically to design a new Chamber the working Members of which will be aged from 50 to 72. By the mere passage of time,

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statistics would show the majority to be near the top end of the scale, so that we shall run the risk of having a Second Chamber which, whatever may be its advantages—and there may be many—will certainly be accused of being out of touch with young thinking.
One of the strongest arguments against the proposed idea of a selected number of voting Peers is that they will become placemen, put there by the patronage of the Leader of their Party. I do not here wish to comment on the patronage question, because I again believe that the figures which the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor gave really squashed the patronage question completely. But it could well be that, having been put into the new Chamber by the Leader of their Party, these voting Peers might feel an inborn obligation to vote, on all of the most important and controversial occasions, for the Party to whose allegiance they owed their seat.
It is said by those who take the contrary view that, at least in theory, this will not happen, because once a Life Peer always a Life Peer, and Peers will be able to express their views and vote according to their consciences. In practice will this happen? When making up his full complement of Life Peers, will a Prime Minister or a Leader of the Opposition deliberately choose those who are noted for the frequency of their deviations from the Party Whip, or will he be tempted to choose some good old faithfuls on whose support he can rely? I do not know at all, and I would not venture to suggest. But there would be one method of dispensing with at least this general and very real fear that, once here, Life Peers would tend to vote too frequently with their Party; that is, by holding a secret ballot. Then, in fact as well as in theory, voting Peers would be able to vote according to their consciences. This could be done by having some form of mechanism in the Lobbies which would enable each Peer to record his vote by the pressing of a button.
This may seem an unattractive innovation. Maybe it is. But in my view it is at least one worthy of consideration. Life Peers would be given their place by their Party Leader; they might even feel obliged at times to voice the Party's
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view, for good measure, but they would always be able to vote according to their consciences and not necessarily according to the dictates of their Party Whip.
While such a system would be wholly unacceptable in your Lordships' House as it is at present constituted, and while such a system would be intolerable in another place, where Members are sent as representatives of the people and are required to account for their views and their actions, it may not be so intolerable here in the future, where the whole essence of the House is—or should be—complete freedom of individual thought and opinion, and when no Member should be obliged to look over his shoulder to determine the reaction he creates on a constituency, on a Party or on a Whip. If the membership of the new House is to be—for want of a better expression—deliberately "cooked" then we must do all we can to see that the voting is wholly free.
My Lords, I admit to harbouring a nostalgic feeling that it is a pity to "mess around" with something which has worked well. I would fear the move from the present, admittedly vague and indefensible, system to the clinically precise and statistical system. I would fear that we might move from being a wholly independent body of people to being a more professional, tightly knit body of people. I would fear that we should lose the immense diversity of interests and thought and might replace that with a narrow and restricted Party thinking. I would fear that in our endless quest for a logical basis for membership we should end with a House less individualistic, both in complement and in operation. But I accept that there must be change; and if there is to be change then mercifully no one person's views will predominate.
I believe that this package which the Government have produced will in fact prove to be not wholly acceptable to anyone but largely acceptable to a great many people; and while everyone may have his fears of the unknown, I welcome this White Paper on the basis that if there is to be change this is as good a way of making the change as one is likely to find. It is one which, in my view, will result in a stronger Second Chamber, and I shall vote for it.
10.0 p.m.
LORD BIRKETT: My Lords, I speak to-night as one of those most carefully considered by, and most emphatically rejected by, the White Paper, for I sit in your Lordships' House as of hereditary right only. Until my noble friend Lady Asquith of Yarnbury warned me that I was about to become a "fourpenny stamp" it had not occurred to me that I might be left forcibly overnight in a postbag. It will therefore be no surprise to your Lordships if I say that I am bitterly opposed to the suggestions contained in the White Paper. I hesitate to call them reforms as the White Paper so blandly does, because although they may well re-form your Lordships' House I very much doubt if they will do so for the better.
I should not like your Lordships, however, to think that I speak out of personal pique. I believe my personal position does not come into the matter. My attendance and my contributions to this House have been so infrequent, and I daresay so ineffective, that if they were to cease altogether to-morrow it would be idle to suppose that the nation would be a whit the poorer. But to many hereditary Members of this House this most emphatically does not apply.
More important than any individual Peer is the principle behind his presence here. I defend this hereditary principle, well aware of the arguments for it already urged in this debate. I do not forget the accumulated wisdom and notable public service attributable to the great noble families of this land, but I hope it will not be thought disrespectful if I defend it for a simpler and perhaps more unusual reason: simply because it is random. I also hope it will not be thought that I intend any disrespect upon the many distinguished Life Peers of this House if I commend to your Lordships one sentence from G. K. Chesterton written at the beginning of the century, an imaginary look back over the 20th century:
"To think what time was wasted in arguing about the House of Lords, Tories saying it ought to be preserved because it was clever and Radicals saying it ought to be destroyed because it was stupid, and all the time no one saw that it was right because it was stupid, because that chance mob of ordinary men thrown there by accident of blood, were a great democratic protest against the Lower
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House, against the eternal insolence of the aristocracy of talents."
Like many witticisms of great men there is more than a germ of truth in that passage.
I fear, however, that these changes, urged by the Government upon us for the greater efficiency of Parliament, lay the country open to far greater dangers—dangers stemming almost entirely from the nature of Party politics. For no matter how long a history there is of discussion of these changes, and no matter how great a measure of agreement between the Parties has been reached, I doubt if a Government not faced with an Opposition majority in this House would so strongly advocate reform. The substance of these measures is all towards offering no threat to the free exercise of power by the Government of the day.
The present composition of the House seems to me to provide some bulwark against the tide of political dogma which washes across the floor of the other place. More importantly, it provides some defence against the abuse of power to which dogma can lead. Once remake this House into a Chamber where any Government can be assured of a majority over all other political Parties and the changes which may result over a seven-year span may do irreparable damage to the nation. It may be objected that some degree of independence is assured by the proposal for life tenure of a seat in this House once someone is promoted to it. But if the basis of this promotion is to be political, and above all if the choice is to be within the patronage of the Prime Minister, then this House will be able to rely on a high degree of political loyalty from almost all its Members.
In an age when politics is an increasing interest and yet "politician" almost a dirty word, such political loyalty is dangerous. Indeed Party politics seems to me the curse of our century. The pointless bickering in speeches up and down the country, on television and even in the debating Chamber of the other place makes one almost despair of common sense and individual conscience. If Party political loyalty were not so often in question why would there be Whips? Not, I take it, simply as schoolmasters, to discourage laziness or unpunctuality. Surely Whips exist to make sure that no Party member votes against the views of

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his Cabinet or his Shadow Cabinet. One may ask what would cause a man to vote against his Party. Once again, I take it not often personal greed or eccentricity or ignorance; simply that he finds it difficult to agree with the Party line. In other words, his loyalty to his Party is in conflict with his conscience or his common sense. Loyalty itself I take to be one of the virtues. Yet Party loyalty seems often merely the distortion of a virtue.
Again, it may be objected that a Government rules by a mandate from the people and through the elected representatives of the people and it must be allowed to do so. I would reply that Elections have long ago become mostly the election of a Party, a Party whose claims have been urged with all the specious power of a commercial advertising campaign and based on a platform of which only the biggest and most obvious planks have been in question. Indeed, I wonder if elections to-day are not more concerned with which Party should not govern. I sense in this country a despair that casts more votes against the political Parties than ever are cast for them.
How then, once a Government is formed, is the freedom of those who elected it to be secured and safeguarded? For in seven years the people of this country may grow sick and tired of a Government, they may grow frightened of its power; but so long as Parliament functions efficiently that Government cannot readily be changed unless a large measure of political independence is retained by this House. That the present political convictions of the active hereditary part of this House are Conservative does not entirely please me, I confess, but I think it infinitely less important than the safeguard of individual conscience built into any assembly which can disregard the Party Whip whenever it chooses. If anyone had proposed a scheme whereby that degree of independence could be safeguarded and at the same time the hereditary right of Peers abolished, I may well have welcomed it, but they have not, and I have no talent for suggesting Constitutional amendments.
I find no difficulty in agreeing that the hereditary system is arbitrary and irrational; in spite of the formidable weight of experience and expertise fielded by the
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present holders of such titles, it will have no appeal to those who believe in the possibility of meritocracy. But I hold that liberty is better defended by an arbitrary or even random system than by a further streamlining of Party political domination. It cannot be an accident that British justice places its trust so firmly in good men and true picked quite at random. It may perhaps seem somewhat melodramatic to your Lordships, amidst the sunshine of tolerance and courtesy which always prevails here, to prognosticate too fearsomely on the evils which this much-canvassed constitutional change may bring, but although the present structure of this House may seem ramshackle and even old-fashioned, once its bonds are loosened I am sure the power of the State over the individual will grow with ever increasing swiftness. Once the almost accidental qualities in this House are removed, regulation will supersede them, and regulation is only one step from regimentation.
If this prophecy seems too like fiction to your Lordships, let me remind you of the most famous and the most dire of all such predictions—1984. What gives that book its abiding power is partly the courage of its title, not a piece of science fiction 2,000 or 2 million years away, but today, 16 years on, if you like. What frightens me is no how nightmarish is the world that book imagines, but how closely day by day we seem to keep in step with it, as if Orwell, like so many great artists, was also a prophet, and as if we had a date with totalitarianism which we were keen to keep punctually. In fine, I urge Her Majesty's Government, and indeed all the political Parties and all the Members of your Lordships' House, to consider whether all the streamlining and efficiency in the world is worth the risk of abandoning that precious streak of almost abstract independence which makes this House what it is, because I feel that this debate, so coolly debated and so politely argued may be crucial to the nation and I fear that tomorrow or the next day, unnoticed Or even applauded, will start a tiny crack which will one day sink the raft of freedom on which we have floated for so long.
10.10 p.m.
LORD MARGADALE: My Lords, as a comparative newcomer to this House

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I feel diffident about speaking in this debate. However, after a number of years in another place and a short period here—and we are asked to give our views on this White Paper and to vote on it—I venture to do so. I find myself considerably in agreement with the noble Lord who has just spoken. I put the simple question: will this House and all that it means in the whole of Parliament and the government of the nation be a better House when the White Paper, as we read it and possibly amend it a little, is implemented? I know that at the present time there are shortcomings and difficulties, particularly so for the two Front Benches in this House. But the answer I give, having thought the matter over most carefully, is that if the White Paper is carried then the position of this House will be not so good but will be worse than if the House is left as it is at the present time.
Having said that, I do not rule out reform of various sorts. But when I read the White Paper, as I understand it the possibility of area representation is ruled out because local government reform has not as yet reached that stage. Also election is ruled out because those in another place would think that it would lessen their powers. I speak, I hope, freely to-night, in that I am a first creation and therefore, as is written in the White Paper, am not necessarily to be "knocked on the head" or have to seek patronage of any sort. If I wish, I can remain as a voting Peer provided I attend sufficiently. But of course there are a great many who have
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taken part in this debate who will not be able to do so.
I must say that I feel considerably in agreement with what the noble Lord, Lord Denham, said in his most amusing speech. If this White Paper goes through, I believe that the House will be an ageing one, a too-political one, and that many leaders in education, industry, trade unions and all sorts of things that go on in the nation as a whole, will, if they live outside the metropolitan area, find it difficult to partake in the new House. This would be of great detriment to the conscience of the nation.
The noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, in a most persuasive speech, made reference to Appendix II, saying that legislation would go more fluidly through both Chambers. My own humble opinion is, I am afraid, contrary to what probably is his opinion. My opinion, shared, I believe, by 95 per cent. of the public of this country, is that we suffer from far too much legislation, and that we could do with a lot less. I am afraid that with that handle the noble and learned Lord has not persuaded me.
I shall not keep the House any longer. I am not approaching the age of seventy-two and shall not be, I am glad to say, for a considerable number of years. But I was rather shocked to hear from Lord Mitchison's lips that whereas those not in Government were expected to retire at the age of seventy-two, apparently those in Government could remain on indefinitely. I cannot believe that that is a very good thing.
10.15 p.m.
LORD GIFFORD: My Lords, I find myself in the happy, if somewhat unusual, position of agreeing wholeheartedly with the Motion before us and with the Government, and of disagreeing with many of my noble friends on these Benches and comrades in another place; and it is particularly to them that I should like to address my remarks this evening. Before I do so may I deal with one argument which has come mostly from the other side, and which perhaps I ought to touch on before I sit down? That is the argument about young people. With the exception, perhaps, of the noble Lord, Lord Feversham, I feel that this argument has been a red herring trailed across this debate by those who seek to advocate the retention of the hereditary principle, cm possibly some system of election, because it seems to me that those are the only two methods by which young people could be retained.
Now what about young people in this Chamber? My noble and learned friend on the Woolsack made the position very clear, and he pointed out that really our contribution is somewhat insignificant. No doubt we provide a diversion from time to time, as no doubt I am doing now; but it cannot seriously be argued that the loss of young people to this House would seriously impair the efficiency with which it discharges its functions. In any case, let us look at those functions, the functions of a subordinate, revisory, patient, scrutinising, spillover House. I have every respect for those who spend long hours in the painstaking work of this House, but I ask you: would any young man worth his political salt, given the option, choose a lifetime of that service, and turn down the possibility of fighting the real battles in the hustings and in the rough and tumble of another place? I do not think so. I am quite content to leave the calm, deliberate atmosphere of this Chamber to my elders—I do not say elders and betters, but my elders—because I think that, given the functions this House performs, they are most fitted to fulfil them.
Turning to the arguments from the Left on this side of the House, I would say that they seem to be, broadly, that it is an imperfect, botched-up scheme; that it increases the power of patronage;
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that it makes the Second Chamber too influential; that there should be a clean sweep reform around some other lines, and until such reform is arranged it is best to leave this House as it is. I must say, in all sincerity, to my noble friends on this side of the House who want to argue in that way that I believe they have completely missed the point. There is really only one vital issue of principle in this debate, and that is that the Government have at last had the courage to initiate a reform which will, once and for all, rid this Parliament of its hereditary composition and its hereditary element.
I said in a previous debate on this subject that in so far as this Horse was composed on hereditary lines I found it an abomination; and I stand by that statement. There is no more pertinent reminder that the battle against the inequalities of the class system are yet to be won than to see such conspicuous representatives of that system still taking part, by reason of their birth, in the Legislature. It pains me to see members of this Party, whose whole history has been one of a struggle against class, stand by and, in this counsel of despair allow such an abomination to continue.
I believe that the continued presence of aristocratic elements in this Chamber contributes quite significantly to the prestige of the aristocratic aura in society generally as an ornament to our society. I have no doubt that the power and influence of those lackeys of the system, the gossip columnists, the functionaries of the Court, the companies who need a Lord on the board, is very much bolstered by the fact that Lords, hereditary Peers, have a right to take part in the Legislature of this country. Let us do away with it, and let us not get into involved and endless wrangles about the ideal Utopian form of Constitution. I agree that if we were to sit down and try to devise a perfect blueprint Legislature for this country, we would not come up with a scheme in which all Members of the Second Chamber were nominated by the Prime Minister. Of course not.
But then again if 630 M.P.S were all to devise their systems, there is no doubt that as a result 630 different plans would be put forward. There is no consensus or agreement about this.

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Everyone has his pet scheme. We have unicameralists, federalists, regionalists, and all sorts of other curious hybrid beasts. These arguments about structure, about the exact way to form the Constitution, are side issues, in my view, as compared to the wider, more basic principle of ridding this House of its hereditary elements. Let us not waste time on this.
The noble Lord, Lord Feversham, talked about the alienation of people, and young people in particular, from the political system. I would suggest to him that it is not the organisational structure of our Parliament that alienates people. If anything alienates them—and I agree that they are alienated—it is the policies which the Government are pursuing. These are the issues we should get worried about, not the exact framework through which they are pursued, although, of course, reform is needed. The fact that Lord A or Lord B would like a clean sweep and cannot get it, because this is not the moment, is not a case against reform of this Chamber. The only case against the proposed White Paper reforms would be if it could be shown that something much worse would result, and surely that is not so.
The argument that this Chamber would have greater influence is true. But should we shrink from that? Looking back over some of the major issues which have confronted us over this past year, I am not so sure that a reformed House would not exercise its influence in a way which was quite embarrassing to Conservative interests. A reformed House would have passed the Rhodesian Sanctions Order by an overwhelming majority, given the great episcopal and other turn-out that there was. A reformed House might well have thrown the Commonwealth Immigrants Act, 1968, into the dustbin where it belonged. I am not worried about the possibilities of the exercise of influence by a reformed House. As for the power of patronage, I feel that this is a spectre haunting this debate which is not very relevant. Perhaps it is not altogether realised that when the public in the gallery come back here in a year from now they will look down on a reformed Chamber and will see a sight not very different from that which they now see. Already a huge proportion of the burden of work
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in this House, particularly on this side of it, but significantly around the rest of the House, is already carried on by nominated Peers. And those who say that the power of patronage will be an evil should now be able to point and say, "We already see this evil spreading among us", and I submit that with the Life Peers as we know them this is patently not the case.
I therefore support these proposals, and will end with only one criticism. It is not so much a criticism as a suggestion about an aspect of reform which I do not think is really covered in the White Paper. The effect of this reform will be finally to separate membership of this House from membership of the aristocracy. There will no longer be any tie. In that case why on earth should Members of this House be saddled with the title of "Lord"? I do not see it. Why should we not be "Mr. Shackleton" and "Mr. Gardiner"? Why should this Party, of all Parties, this movement to which I should have thought "handles" in front of names were anathema, particularly when those handles are identical with the handles borne by the holders of antique titles, seek to perpetuate the bearing of those handles when we have such a marvellous opportunity to remove them? If there is anything in this argument about the power of patronage, I should have thought the prospect of bearing a prestigious title probably was more alluring than the prospect of quite painstaking drudgery in the service of this House. I support these reforms because they will send the hereditary Peers into the backwoods where they belong, but I should very much like to send their titles with them.
10.27 p.m.
LORD MILVERTON: My Lords, over the past twenty years, during which I have had the honour and privilege of being a Member of this House, this is the most important Motion that has come before us. I appreciate the need, in view of the phenomenal number of speakers still wishing to speak, to be very brief. Unfortunately, time does not allow any detailed examination of the White Paper, and I shall therefore confine myself to a few general observations.
First of all, may I say at once that the hereditary basis of membership runs contrary to much modern thought, but

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a contemplation of possible alternatives inspires some caution against a too hasty and comprehensive elimination. Admittedly, if one were building an entirely new Constitution to-day one would not consider a personal composition of this House in its present form. But what we are doing is to examine the case for a fundamental alteration in an institution which has its roots in our remotest history and which over the centuries has undergone steady development and change in composition and powers to meet the ever-multiplying complexity of democratic government. My Lords, before throwing the whole system into the dustbin of an outmoded past, should we not be quite clear about what we want and why we want it? In other words, should we not await the conclusions and recommendations of the Constitutional Commission and be careful to preserve an integral part of our unwritten Constitution until we know what part the House of Lords is envisaged to play in the future?
Is there really, then, any immediate need to emasculate a House which is performing its duties with marked responsibility and ability, however incongruous and indefensible its basic composition may appear to be, and at the same time to speak very vaguely, as the White Paper does, of a future extension of its function and scope? Surely no man's ipse dixit is an acceptable substitute for the prolonged study of a commission of picked men.
What sort of man and woman, with what qualifications, are considered ideal for this House? Surely not primarily geographical qualifications; not popular choice by an electorate; not as representative of a specified interest; not crusaders for a particular political doctrine; but men and women who have graduated in the university of life, whose beliefs have been fashioned by trial and error in the many walks of life, whose intelligence has been sharpened by experience and whose judgment has reached a tolerant maturity and an ability to apply to the problems of public affairs a minimum of prejudice—Peers about whom you could reasonably quote the lines:
"Comes now to search your manhood Through all the thankless years Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom The judgment of your peers."
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There is no known way of selecting such persons in bulk, but by a lucky accident that has, generally speaking, been the result of the somewhat random present method of recruitment to membership of this House and of an instinct, if I may say so, which leaves the bulk of its work to an instinctively self-chosen group of about a quarter of its total membership.
My Lords, I think it is admitted that the work of this House is, on the whole, very well done. Why then does it need basic reform so urgently? The answer is mainly political, and not necessarily based, as I see it, on the interests of this country: first, that membership based on heredity offends democratic principles as they are known to-day, and, second, that it involves a permanent Conservative majority. The House naturally tends towards conservatism (with a small "c") because the Members of this Howe are mostly of mature age and judgment who naturally tend to have a right-of-centre political bias. If the quality of work done here were the only test of the present system of membership there would be no case at all for reform other than a steady selective diminution in the right of hereditary membership.
I appreciate that the White Paper, on page 33 in Appendix II, merely claims that its proposals are ideas—obiter dicta on reform, put forward to pave the way to a review of the functions and procedure of the two Houses of Parliament. I retain my feeling that a review of the functions and procedure of the two Houses of Parliament should precede the so-called reform of the composition and powers of the House of Lords and not vice versa. This seems to me to make very much of the principle made known by those famous lines of Kipling in which he described how the amateur evangelist (who was, incidentally, a pugilist) fist of all knocked the sinner down before leading him up to grace. That, apparently, is the treatment which is being provided for this House.
I say "so-called" reform because in my view this reform would effectively destroy the quality of the House of Lords, as well as its small remaining powers, and so would inevitably facilitate its ultimate disintegration and loss of public respect. The offer of pay at £2,000 a year, with an obligation of a minimum attendance of one-third of the Sittings

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and retirement at the age of 72, seems to me derisory and incapable of attracting to this House the sort of person who is now giving invaluable service free of charge. The House of Lords, even now with reduced powers, is still the final bulwark of freedom. That is why some people want to see it deprived of power and respect.
My Lords, may I quote a few sentences from an article published in the Daily Telegraph last week? The author said:
"I readily understand public disquiet about hereditary Peers … What I question is whether to substitute for them Mr. Wilson's, Mr. Heath's and Mr. Thorpe's nominees will remedy a more basic and valid disquiet about our incapacity to challenge often enough and fiercely enough excessive administrative power."
The truth is, my Lords—
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Lord? I think he was one of Mr. Attlee's nominees. Has he felt very inhibited by this?
LORD MILVERTON: My Lords, I did not quite catch what the noble Lord said.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I will withdraw the question if the noble Lord did not hear it.
LORD MILVERTON: My Lords, I am afraid I did not catch what the noble Lord said. May I continue with my quotation?
"The truth is that when the last remnants of independence, against which we are induced to feel strong social prejudice, have been flattened, bureaucracy, not democracy, will reign instead—and without challenge.
If we mean business here, as a constitutional party should, then we had better look in other directions. One, at least, is to find fresh means of sharpening Parliament's weapons against the armour of State Departments, which few Ministers can now penetrate and not many more even understand."
We often hear quoted in praise of our democracy the lines about "the ways of freedom" broadening "down from precedent to precedent." Recent experience has taught us that it is not only freedom that "broadens down from precedent to precedent." There has been a steady erosion of the rights and freedom of the ordinary citizen in face of the centralisation of Executive control in London, and
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real authority recedes steadily into the hands of a hidden and entrenched Executive. There can be little doubt that the method proposed in the White Paper for packing this House with nominees of the Prime Minister in order to ensure a Government majority is a mockery of democracy; and apart from providing a dangerous increase in the powers of patronage of a Prime Minister, of whatever Party, it would not, and could not, conceivably bring to the House the same degree of collective competence as is secured to-day under its present system.
Bryce described the outlook proper to the composition of a Second Chamber in this way:
"A certain proportion of persons who are not extreme partisans, but of a cast of mind which enables them to judge political questions with calmness and comparative freedom from prejudice or bias. No assembly can be expected to escape party spirit, but the excess of that spirit can usually be moderated by the presence of a good many who do not yield to it."
The responsibility of the Lords is illustrated by the rareness of Divisions against the Government or, if one likes to put it that way, by their knowledge of what will be tolerated. At present Members of this House, because they do not depend for their seats on submitting themselves to the electorate, can afford to take a line more independent of their Party's policy than can a Member of the House of Commons.
Many of our iconoclastic friends of to-day would like to abolish the House of Lords. Its prototype was old when William the Conqueror arrived in this country and through long centuries it has steadily evolved—or perhaps I should say, devolved—to meet the changing needs of time. It continues to provide highly qualified assistance to the complex work of modern government, free of charge. Its Members are not paid but give their time and attention largely out of a sense of public service. I think it should remain so. I think it would be a subject of very great regret if any system of payment were ever introduced into this House. This House is unique in the world in many respects, and it is the only Chamber of importance in the world whose Chairman presides, but neither has nor needs any power to rule, because order is kept instinctively.

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There are so many ideas in the White Paper with which I cannot agree, and so many assumptions that I cannot accept, that I cannot bring myself to give a comprehensive approval of it. After all, an effective cure cannot arise from a false diagnosis. The work of Government to-day has such potentially calamitous repercussions throughout our society that it reminds one of the truth of the old lines:
"For forms of Government let fools contend.
Whate'er is best administered is best."
Looking at this White Paper, one is almost tempted to think that it was originated by some political Omar Khayyam, who has come to life here and, looking at our condition, has slightly varied his own lines:
"My Lords, couldst thou and I with Fate conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire;
Should not we shatter it to bits and then Remould it nearer to our heart's desire?"
My reply to that is in the negative. I cannot bring myself ever to be an agent or a supporter of the idea of remoulding this House to be an impotent tool of bureaucracy incarnate. I shall therefore register my vote against this Motion.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, may I intervene for a moment? I was anxious not to interrupt him, but some misstatements have been continually repeated and may be believed. I do not know whether the noble Lord appreciates that there is nothing in this White Paper about £2,000, and there is nothing in these proposals to tie in the remuneration to a one-third attendance. It is suggested that the right to be a voting Peer should depend, or may depend, upon a one-third attendance, but the amount of any remuneration and the qualifications for it are proposed to be left to an independent Committee. I venture to interrupt the noble Lord only because it has been repeated so often this evening that everybody is going to get £2,000 a year for attending one-third of the time.
LORD MILVERTON: I thank the noble and learned Lord for correcting
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my misapprehension in this matter, and I withdraw the statement.
10.46 p.m.
LORD MILFORD: My Lords, I have sat in your Lordships' House for some five years, and this is the third time that we are debating how to patch it up and give it a more modern image, to make it look more respectable—this completely outdated institution. We shall never succeed. When the very foundations of an ancient building are rotten, decayed, to add another floor to make it a two-tier edifice is dangerous, bad engineering. But that is what we are being asked to do, and this at a time when most people do not want this building at all. Even to many noble Lords opposite the hereditary basis of this Chamber has become embarrassingly difficult to defend. Its abolition was due hundreds of years ago.
When the Labour Government came to power with a large majority, with their built-up image of science and computers, we Socialists certainly hopes that when they got around to dealing with the House of Lords they would ruthlessly sweep away this ancient feudal institution—after all, abolition of your Lordships' Chamber was a prominent plank of the Labour Party policy for many years. Instead, we have this White Paper. Our Labour-Socialist Government have polite joint discussions with their diehard opponents in this House, with those who are the backbone of the present Establishment. The result is that the hereditary Peerage is not abolished in one fell sweep; instead, it is apologetically asked gradually to change its clothes. If the Labour Government had wanted a real radical step forward, they would have done far better to go to their own Party, to their own supporters, for lengthy discussions. No wonder many hereditary Peers do not feel the winds of change are too cold!
Paragraph 6 of the White Paper says:
"… existing members who sit by right of succession would lose their voting rights but would be able to remain as non-voting members for the remainder of their lives. Voting rights would therefore be confined to those on whom a peerage has been conferred but some of the peers by succession who are politically more active would be granted life peerages and so become entitled to membership of the voting nucleus."

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There is no qualification whatever on what issues we have been more active. Some of us have been very active in attempting to hold up progress; holding back, for instance, the Transport Bill and Rhodesia. Many vested interests deeply entrenched in this Chamber will still have power to vote, and they will not have got this power to vote from having gone through any form of election. What is more, till old age finally overtakes them they are safe in their seats and cannot be ousted.
In paragraph 46 of the White Paper we are told that
"The Government contemplates that about 80 new life peers would be needed … in the first instance, the great majority of whom would be drawn from existing peers by succession."
So the top storey of our new building is to be constructed from some of the condemned material from the old House. It is true that as the present hereditary Peers die out the hereditary principle will disappear. But it will take quite a long time and will be a very gradual process. Why must it be gradual? The plea of continuity keeps creeping in. Continuity of what? The world social systems and forms of Government are changing fast. Why do we cling to continuity so hard?
To come into the modern world, the House of Lords should be abolished quickly, and now. The question of whether or not there should be a Second Chamber is another issue, which should be examined and debated by the people's elected House of Commons in the light of whether it would help it in its task of governing this country, and also whether it can bring about greater democracy. For to-day our democracy is being encroached on more and more. Greater and greater powers are being taken over by the Prime Minister and his personally picked Cabinet. Parliament, the Labour Party Conference, Trades Union Congresses, are being openly flouted. However, if the country decides for a Second Chamber, let it be the newest, best model, taking into account the experiences of other countries. I am sure the British people would demand that it was elected in some way or other. I am also sure that no modern country in the world would
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alter its Constitution so that the Second Chamber consisted of nominees of the Prime Minister. What a danger! More power still to the Prime Minister; less democracy.
This system of nomination will lead to creating a group of servile "Yes-men", careerists, who, whatever their private convictions, in their ambition to avoid the hustings, the battle of Elections to the House of Commons, and to go into a House of Parliament where they are safe and cannot be turned out, will fawn and seek the notice of any Prime Minister. What right have a Prime Minister and other leaders to determine the composition of a Chamber of Parliament? The problem to-day is how to extend democracy and popular participation in Government, and overcome the growing alienation between the Government and people which is now causing such great concern. But the country may decide that, instead of a Second Chamber, it would prefer Bills to be scrutinised by Committees and specialists.
The way we Cross-Benchers are described as "non-Party", a kind of body of umpires assessing the course of debate in a wise, detached way, is extremely misleading. I, for one, am a Communist, far from detached: I could never support a Tory Motion against Socialism or for any form of imperialism, colonialism or racialism. I have heard them in action on racial policies; I have heard them on Rhodesia, Vietnam, Greece, as well as in debates supporting this Paper. I also notice among the CrossBenchers around me that there are very few indeed who would support true Socialist measures. Any Socialist, however mild, can sit without a qualm on the Labour Benches. It is true that experienced past diplomats, past and present high legal personalities, and other experts, sit on the Cross-Benches. But I would venture to say that they are all in favour, perhaps with slight modification, of the present structure of society and the Establishment. So in fact Cross-Bench Peers will always be able to tip the balance in this Chamber towards the retention of capitalism, against Socialism.
The general public and the working people would be shocked by the section on remuneration, in the light of the

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present financial policy of the Government, which reduces the real wages of large numbers of people. We can get 4½ guineas a day. For how many hours? Hours are not mentioned at all. We can come here and more or less "clock on". We can come here and go to sleep, taking no part in the actual proceedings for months and months, and still get 4½ guineas a day. And if we have attended one-third of the Sittings, whatever we have done or not done in this Chamber, we can claim travelling expenses. Now I gather that voting Peers, including nominated Peers, may get much more.
No, my Lords, these reforms are to strengthen the prestige of this House, to give it in fact more power and importance. When we were not respectable, as noble Lords opposite have explained to us, we did not dare use these powers too blatantly; when we are respectable we shall feel able to go ahead and use them as much as we like. We are not cutting out the delaying powers of a non-elected Chamber. These reforms are attempting to put this Chamber back on the map, while nobody except your Lordships wants it to exist, and for the Government to bring in these reforms as almost the major issue of this Session of Parliament I consider is treating the British people with contempt.
The standard of living of our people is going down. Wages are frozen while productivity per man goes up. Prices are soaring, racialism is raising its ugly head more boldly, education is being cut, and other social services whittled away. The reform of your Lordships' House is a red herring and is of no value whatever to the British people. Bring in a White Paper for the abolition of the House of Lords, get rid of the rank of Peers and all titles and privileges, make the first priority the tackling of the real problem facing us to-day.
THE EARL OF BESSBOROUGH: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, may I ask him this question? If he is so disparaging and critical of the work of this Chamber as he appeared to be in his earlier remarks, and indeed in his final remarks, why did he decide to take his seat here?
10.58 p.m.
THE EARL OF CORK AND ORRERY: My Lords, I hope you will forgive me if
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I seem to take a moment or two to get into my stride, because I confess I find myself in a state rather more confused at the moment than is conducive to the making of a reasoned speech. I feel as though I had struggled up, gasping from the depths of the Red Sea, and I am also conscious that I bear a small part of the responsibility for this White Paper, because one of the basic reasons for its existence is that your Lordships' House contains too many people like me—Conservative hereditary Peers. But I have no personal feelings in this matter, and when I say that, on the whole, I cannot support the White Paper it has nothing to do with the hereditary system and its continuance or abolition, but is simply on the matter of patronage.
The House that the Government propose will, whatever one may say about it, consist eventually of 100 per cent. nominees—the Prime Minister's or otherwise. That means patronage on a scale that this country has not experienced before, with all the pressures and temptations to political jobbery that that implies. In the White Paper, the Government referred to a suggestion that this might be referred to a committee, but they abolished that suggestion in these words:
"… but the members of a committee which possessed such a power"—
that is, of nomination—
"would be placed in an extremely embarrassing situation, and would be open to pressures and representations of a kind which would make it very difficult for them to do their work effectively."
So it is proposed that the extremely embarrassing situation that would be too much for a Constitutional Committee is one that a Prime Minister would be perfectly well able to cope with on his own. I do not believe it, my Lords.
The noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, and one or two other noble Lords, spoke of patronage (and I hope I do not misquote them) as though it were something which might be exerted by the Prime Minister on Parliament, or through Parliament on the country. But I am thinking of it in another way, as a force that might be used against the Prime Minister. The pressures and representations would be not used by him against

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Parliament, but by others through him ultimately against Parliament; and that would be exceedingly hard for him to stand up against. Such a proposition opens up the possibility, which I am sure would be at least partially realised, of a Second Chamber manned by professional place-seekers and "Yes-men".
I do not in the least follow (or I very slightly follow, rather to my surprise) the remarks made on this subject by the noble Lord, Lord Milford. I in no way agree that the result would be either as unpleasant or as violent as he described. But I see that the germ of the possibility exists, and that would make for a far worse House than the House we have now; and that means a worse Parliament. Surely the overriding object of any proposals for reform ought to be a better Parliament—an object which, astonishingly to me, is nowhere mentioned in the White Paper.
We are asked to give our general approval to these proposals as a whole. Believing as I do that they tend towards the result that I have described, and that that result is injurious to Parliament, I am sorry that I cannot do it. I am sorry, because I confess that there is much in the Paper that appeals to me. However, may I try to make some small amends by means of a suggestion which I hope your Lordships may think at least constructive? One of the things that I like about the White Paper is that it seems to me to have been composed with a certain balance of fairness and in lucid and polished English, and its proposals are set forth, on the whole, with the support of thoughtful argument. It is for that very reason, however, that one proposal, in particular, stands out uniquely in contrast with the rest of the Paper.
The intention eventually to abolish membership by succession is dropped into the Paper unaccompanied by reasoning or argument of any kind, as has already been pointed out by my noble friend Lord Denham. Even more than that, it is done in such a way as to arouse a suspicion that it has never been thought out logically at all. The Government's Election Manifesto, which we have heard quoted by the noble Lord, Lord Mitchison (if it was not Lord Mitchison, it usually is), made no mention of it. Nor did the White Paper of 1948 which said, I think rightly:
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"The present right to attend and vote based solely on heredity should not by itself constitute a qualification for admission to a Second Chamber."
That still leaves open the possibility of a right to sit, but not to vote.
The Queen's Speech of 1967 spoke of "eliminating the hereditary basis of the House," and so does paragraph 2 of the present White Paper. It is not until we reach paragraph 5(a), that we meet for the first time the proposal to eliminate the hereditary basis of membership. For that particular item, therefore, the Government presumably claim no mandate. Whatever the words "hereditary basis" may mean, it seems clear enough that "basis of the House" and "basis of membership" are not synonymous.
What have we here, then? Confusion of thought? In so very carefully thought out and highly organised a Paper, I hardly think so. Perhaps there is a clue in this: that the proposal to eliminate the hereditary basis of membership is the first of the five "objectives" listed in paragraph 5. Now if we are to abolish the hereditary legislator, as will be done under the two-tier system, this paragraph 5(a) has no effect on any of the other "objectives". The presence of nonvoting Members—and there will be some, in any case—will not affect either the balance of the Parties in the House or the powers of the House itself. So paragraph 5(a) stands entirely on its own feet; and first at that. Why then has it been put in, and, above all perhaps, why first? I think we have here simply an expression of a Socialist article of faith; in fact, a dogma. "Out with the hereditary Peers!" There are some on this side of the House, though certainly not all, who have some sympathy with that attitude. Indeed, I have myself, though not much. But this is not a light matter. This is a matter of the Constitution, of changing the character of Parliament itself, and that, my Lords, is an area in which the application of dogma unsupported by reasoning can be a pretty dangerous sort of exercise.
The removal of the hereditary right to a seat in Parliament means negativing the Letters Patent that confer the right, which touches the Royal Prerogative. Such things can be done of course, but I gravely doubt whether they should be

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done without putting forward some convincing reason. This being so, I feel that we have a positive duty, regardless of our feelings in this matter, to call upon the Government to disclose their reasons for this proposal and justify them if necessary in debate. I therefore address this specific request to the noble Lord the Leader of the House. Will he please state the Government's reasons for the inclusion of paragraph 5(a)?
Now I approach (your Lordships may say, "at last") the constructive part of my remarks, and the text for them which occurs at the top of page 2 in the third sentence of paragraph 6 which begins like this:
"Membership would for the future be by creation alone …"
To that I disagree. I accept, however, the words which immediately follow:
"… succession to a hereditary peerage would no longer carry the right to a seat in the House."
To that I agree. Those two statements need a little reconciling, I quite see that, and I shall try to be succinct. I venture to propose a procedure which I will call for convenience the Conditional Writ. "Conditional" refers to certain conditions under which a Writ of Summons may be granted, the Writ itself remaining unchanged.
What it means is this: A newly succeeded Peer shall retain the right to apply for a Writ of Summons. The right to receive such a Writ, however, shall be unconditionally and permanently withdrawn. In other words, he loses his right to a seat but retains the right to apply for it. The result would be this: he makes his formal application for a Writ, and his application is considered here in Parliament. Whatever persons or body of persons shall have the responsibility of considering his application—the proposed constitutional committee perhaps—they shall decide whether or not they think he is a fit and proper candidate and likely to prove a useful Member of the House. If their judgment is in his favour, the issue of a Writ may—not necessarily "will" but "may"—be recommended. No patronage is involved here, as he is already a Peer. On receiving his Writ he will—not "may" but "will"—take his oath as a non-voting Member with certain minimum obligations as to attendance and service, and from there on it
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is up to him to qualify for a voting, Peerage or not as the case may be.
I must say that I do not see, at present anyway, what objections except on dogmatic grounds the Government can have to such a scheme as this. It certainly has advantages over the present system and also over the totally negative arrangement that the Government themselves propose. May I briefly consider what is likely to happen under my scheme. I call it "my scheme", which is rather arrogant of me. It turns out that after I had thought of it I discovered, to my pleasure and surprise, that my noble friend Lord Glasgow had had exactly the same idea. I will call it our scheme. To begin with, the number of those who apply for Writs of Summons will be greatly reduced, since no one will apply unless he is ready to meet the necessary condition of intending to take his membership seriously, and to accept the duties and obligations that it would impose. Then, having applied, he may be refused, and that may be a discouragement to some. Finally, if approved, he still may not get his Writ. That would depend, roughly speaking, on whether or not there was thought to be a vacancy.
I suggested that the right to receive a Writ should be withdrawn permanently. That implies that having received a Writ for one Parliament he is not thereby automatically entitled to receive a Writ for any subsequent Parliament, though in practice he would, I think, unless he having failed to give satisfaction, his later application were not approved. So it will be seen that, though there is no question of selection in the sense of choosing one candidate rather than another, yet the system itself is selective and only the most useful of Peers by succession will ever appear eventually on these Benches. Further, the influx of such Peers into the House would always be under complete control.
A further argument in favour of such a scheme is this. I have already said that I have some sympathy, though not much, with the prejudice that undoubtedly exists against hereditary Peers in Parliament, with or without votes. I also think that this is a relic of the class war (which I am heartily sick of) and is therefore out of date. But in any case,

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prejudice is not the best basis for constitutional reform. Moreover, this particular prejudice may fade with time. It may fade, particularly with the disappearance of the hereditary legislator. Future Parliaments of whatever complexion may think differently. Is it not a fact that it would be wise to keep at least a loophole open for second thoughts? Under this scheme the loophole would remain even if no Writs were actually issued. But the Government's proposal for statutory exclusion is irreversible because it is based on death. Once the grim Reaper has begun to operate there will be no question of hereditary membership ever being revived, in even the most vestigial form. Per contra, the Conditional Writ system could remain in being indefinitely, even if not actively operated, and no harm come to anyone. In the meantime, there would remain at least the chance, and perhaps the only one, of securing a touch of youth in an otherwise ageing House; and it would also, incidentally, provide the only possible way that I can think of by which the House can obtain such Members as the noble Lords, Lord Gifford and Lord Milford, who have both left the House.
May I now invite your Lordships' attention to paragraph 32 of the White Paper, at page 14, which says:
"The Government takes the view that a two-tier chamber, organised and chosen in the way proposed, provides a sensible method of transition from a largely hereditary to a wholly created House without disturbing that blend of the active parliamentarian and the independent expert which gives the present House its special distinction and special qualifications for performing the functions assigned to it".
Is that altogether true, my Lords? Are the Government really right in thinking this? I think there is a third thing that gives the House its special distinction and qualifications—that is, the presence in it of a number of people who are neither parliamentarians (meaning, I take it, old hands from down the corridor) nor experts. I personally hate to imagine the Second Chamber composed solely of those two classes of person, especially if they had all arrived here under the umbrella of patronage. What is needed is a good leavening of non-
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experts of the general duties type, chosen not for their special knowledge of education or of Scotland, or of Company Law or trade, but for their personal qualities. The Conditional Writ will provide a few of those at least. And when they get here they will, as has been said before, be the most completely independent Members in the House, since they will be beholden to nobody, just as they are now.
I have put forward the barest bones of a proposal. I dare say it has drawbacks, like any other scheme, but it also has advantages that I could enlarge upon. However, I feel, as a hereditary Conservative Peer with a 350-yearold Patent and less than two years service, that it might be thought unseemly of me to talk too much, especially at this time of night, so I lay it respectfully before your Lordships and leave it at that, although I suspect my noble friend Lord Glasgow may have some further thoughts on the subject. But I hope the Government will forgive me for feeling unhappy about the proposals as a whole (although not particularly about losing my vote), and give some little thought to my suggestions which I believe to be for the benefit of Parliament.
11.16 p.m.
LORD AUCKLAND: My Lords, the White Paper which we have been discussing for nearly the last nine hours, and which will be further discussed during the next two days, has on the whole had a rather frigid reception, so far as one can judge, from both Houses of Parliament; but I myself, on balance, feel that this frigid reception is completely unjustified. I believe that the White Paper has a good deal of merit in it, and I would remind the House that we are discussing a White Paper, and not the Second Reading of a Bill. I cannot help feeling that some speeches have been rather akin to speeches on the Second Reading of a Bill; and certainly if it were the Second Reading of the Bill that we were discussing to-night my speech would be rather more critical than the brief speech which I shall inflict on your Lordships now.
I think the real nub of this whole discussion is: is reform of this Chamber necessary? I believe that it is. I think

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the onus on those who criticise reform is to find a better solution, because I think it is common ground that the present composition and working of this House is by no means perfect, although it is certainly by no means as inadequate as some critics would have us believe. Although I was never a Member of another place before I came to this Chamber I have had a certain amount of experience in the political field in a Labour-held constituency, so I did come, at the age of just under 30, with a modicum of political background. I am still thoroughly active in a speaking capacity outside this Chamber, both in a Party and a non-Party sense, and I have been the recipient of a great deal of comment on this White Paper. I am bound to say that much of it has been very much more favourable than some of the speeches inside Parliament would have us believe.
I think certainly that people of the calibre of my noble friends Lord Carrington and Lord Jellicoe, and the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, would hardly have embarked on an exercise such as this if the likely result had been such as some of the critics would have us believe. In fact, I think they have done a workmanlike job. A good deal has been said about patronage, but obviously if you are going to have Life Peers somebody has to create them, or somebody has to decide who shall be created, and I do not find myself at all convinced by the argument the Cross-Bench Peers are going to be "poodles", to use a rather current expression, of the Prime Minister in office. I believe that our present Cross-Bench noble Lords are, for the most part at any rate, genuinely independent, and I have no reason to think that, whatever measure of reform is put into action, this will not be so in the future.
So far as the future of the hereditary system is concerned, I am naturally saddened that the proposal is to end succession completely. I hope that the Government will have some second thoughts on this, but I do not believe there should be automatic succession merely because a son succeeds his father or because any other relative succeeds. I believe that any Peer who is likely to succeed in this way should not come under a kind of Selection Committee, but should have some kind of distinction to his name, either through having served as a Parlia-
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mentary candidate or through having had some grounding either in politics or in public life. This may mean that the age of succession, instead of being 21 should be, say, 25. I hope that perhaps between now and the Second Reading of the Bill in another place the Government will give serious thought to this idea. So far as the numbers are concerned under this possible scheme, this would have to be thought about very carefully.
I believe that this House, in whatever context, has a great deal of communication with the electorate at large. I have heard people of all Parties say that what emanates from the House of Lords is a lot more convincing than what emanates from another place at the present time. But at the same time I think that it would be a great pity if this reform, whatever form it takes, ever became a kind of signal for warring between the two Houses. I believe we have to make up our minds on this idea. There is a genuine feeling of interest in these proposals, but one point seems to have been overlooked. The mere fact that hereditary Peers of the present generation can sit and speak—and if this legislation goes through many of us will not be able to vote—means that there is no immediate urgency for the proposals under this legislation in relation to the hereditary system. I think this is a matter which can b the subject of continuous thought, and therefore we do not necessarily have to make up our minds within five minutes on this point.
One of the most advantageous parts of this White Paper is the two-tier system. I do not think there is an anomaly in having both voting and non-voting Peers. After all, one has voting and non-voting shareholders. Perhaps the comparison is a little illogical, but it is not entirely out of place. It is quite clear that if a Bill reaches this House a great deal will need to be said during its various stages here, and at this late hour prolonged speeches on the White Paper are not desirable. But I hope that the Government will have serious thoughts on some of the more practical proposals which have been put forward in this discussion.
LORD MILFORD: My Lords, may I apologise to the noble Earl, Lord Bessborough? I am very hard of hearing, and I did not realise that he had

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asked me a question. That is why I did not answer it; but I will do so at any time.
11.26 a.m.
THE EARL OF GLASGOW: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Auckland, has practically made my speech for me, but we have passed the point of no return and I realise that in a debate of this sort, when noble Lords are searching their consciences to try to sort out in their own minds what their views are, some repetition is inevitable. But I assure your Lordships that I shall be brief. Like the noble Lord, Lord Auckland, I should like to pay a tribute to those noble Lords, on both sides of the House, who have managed to achieve such a very large measure of agreement over such an absolutely impossible problem. I think the White Paper, though I disagree with a great deal of it, offers a possible basis on which an acceptable solution might be found; but I do not think that this problem should be rushed.
Again like the noble Lord, Lord Auckland, I had intended that my text should be: is reform necessary; and, if it is necessary, will the White Paper produce the answer? The first point I wanted to make has also been admirably made by the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury. It concerns the powers of this House; and I will only say that I find it extremely illogical that if we are to reduce the powers of this House we should then find it necessary to alter its composition. If the object of this reform were to increase the powers of this House, then indeed, I think, some alteration would be required. The only argument for reform which I find really convincing is the difficulty of the built-in Conservative majority. This has the double disadvantage of making a Labour Government apprehensive and the Conservative Opposition reluctant to use its majority for fear of precipitating a constitutional crisis. This is one of the main problems which the White Paper has attempted to solve; and it has in part done so.
But, my Lords, a Second Chamber, under any form of Government, tends to be more conservative than the other place. Even some of the noble Lords who norm-
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ally sit on the Benches opposite have (I think we must admit it) lost a bit of that socialist fire with which, in their earlier days, they enlivened proceedings in another place. This is a natural and very healthy phenomenon, and gives the people of this country the protection which they have the right to expect from too hasty reactionary or revolutionary legislation. At the core of this problem lies the hereditary principle. The automatic right to govern or legislate by virtue of birth is indeed difficult to defend. Nevertheless, it has served this country well for a thousand years; it is a very British concept indeed; and it has undeniable advantages. We have heard your Lordships thinking to-day of other ways to choose our leaders and our legislators, and when we have gone right round the circle it is extremely difficult to improve upon the present system. Many of our finest institutions are illogical—not least our unwritten Constitution—and they are all the better for being so.
The hereditary principle automatically solves three problems which have clearly exercised those who drafted the White Paper. The first is the problem of regional representation; the second is the problem of patronage, about which much has been said, and the third is that of ensuring a place for young men of ability in the Upper Chamber. To abandon the hereditary principle would also take a lot of colour out of our national life and out of the proceedings of this House. No longer could the backwoodsman from the Welsh valley or the Highland glen buckle on his sword and come storming down to this House to speak passionately on some subject on which he felt very deeply. My father was just such a one. He appeared rarely in this House; but when he came he came for a purpose, and whether it was in his early anti-Communist days, when the gutters were always running with blood, or in his more recent speeches on India, on the unmarried mothers, or on the Ladies in the House of Lords, he always "rocked" this House. Many of the more senior noble Lords will no doubt remember it.
My Lords, the proposals in the White Paper will produce eventually a smaller House, and an older and duller House, with noble Lords tied to London and less representative of the country

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as a whole. It will be a more professional House but narrower in outlook and not so stimulating. Speaking as an hereditary Peer, I believe that some of the disadvantages which I have described could be mitigated by leaving the door ajar for our sons to win their spurs as non-voting Members when we have been gathered to our fathers. Some suggestions to this end have already been made by noble Lords. On the general issue I find myself in agreement with my noble friend Lord Denham, and I also strongly support the excellent proposed solution put forward by my noble friend and namesake, Lord Cork and Orrery. For some such concession I would gladly forgo the right of Peers to vote and I would require those who wish to stand for election to another place to renounce their titles for life as at present.
In conclusion, I am not convinced that reform is necessary or in the interests of the country. Nevertheless, I am very conscious of a strong feeling in both Houses, and perhaps to a lesser extent in the country, that some measure of reform is overdue—although few members of the public are aware of the mass of often tedious and selfless work done in this House on their behalf, much of it by hereditary Peers. I shall therefore vote in favour of accepting the White Paper as a basis; but I intend to keep my powder dry against the day when the Bill comes to this House in its final form. In preparing this Bill, let those whose business it is, try to avoid political expediency and keen their eyes on the wider issues. I regard some concession to the hereditary Peers of the future as an essential ingredient and a vital link with the ancient traditions of this great country.
11.34 p.m.
LORD WOLVERTON: My Lords, I rise to speak to-night with a certain amount of trepidation. I am not a constitutional expert, but I have sat in this House for something over 33 years; I have had some experience of its working and I have been very gratified to be a Member for so long. On Thursday we are to be asked to give general approval of this White Paper as a package deal. I cannot give my approval to it as a package deal unless some alteration is made to allow for the continuation in
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some form or another of the hereditary principle.
If we are to adopt this new system of two-tier voting—"A" and "B" rolls—and to get rid of the Conservative built-in majority, which seems to have been for a long time a thorn in the side of the Party of noble Lords opposite, I cannot see why we should not in future continue some form of hereditary membership, even if it be in the form of younger Peers being allowed to come to this House, naturally not in the "A" but on the "B" roll, as speaking Peers only. If they win their spurs, and should any vacancies arise on the "A" roll, one hopes that some of them would eventually be included in the "A" roll. But I cannot see the Prime Minister of the day ever being able to know, until they have been tried out, whether the younger Peers are going to be good or not.
My Lords, when I came to this House before the war it sat at four o'clock. I was working full-time as a junior partner in a banking business, but I was able to come and learn a great deal in the evenings. Gradually, I got very interested in the work here, and I started to speak. Then the war broke out, and I was away on military service; but after the war I gave a good deal of my time to the work of this House. I feel that this is such a major alteration in our Constitution that I would beg the Government to think again about that point. They may be frightened that they will be defeated because of a built-in Tory majority, but if we adopt the two-tier system that will not happen in the future.
I am worried, my Lords, about the balance being held by Cross-Benches. I have a great admiration for the present occupants of the Cross-Benches, but who will appoint new Cross-Benchers when the present ones die? We are told in the White Paper that it will be the Prime Minister of the day, and naturally he will not appoint Cross-Benchers who are too unfavourable to his way of thinking. So will they really remain independent?
The other point I wish to raise relates to the remuneration. I do not like that at all. I think it would be better if a larger expense allowance could be given in lieu of pay. Here again, if remuneration is given it will be giving too much patronage to the Prime Minister of the

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day. I am sure he would try to be fair, but I think it a wrong principle and I should prefer that this House was not a paid Assembly. When it is necessary for a Member of this House to keep two homes going (and if one lives away from London it is necessary to have somewhere to stay in London) no taxation relief is allowed because it is necessary to keep a second home in London. I think that the payment of a salary would make difficulties over patronage, and I should therefore prefer that there was a larger tax-free expense allowance.
That is all I wish to say, my Lords. I hope that between now and the end of the debate the Government can give us some hope that they will look again at this matter of hereditary Peers. It is vital that there should be younger men in this House. During the years that I have been here the membership has always been refreshed by hereditary Peers. We have got on very well with a mixture of Life Peers and hereditary Peers, but, as has been said so many time to-night, the Life Peers, although they are men of great distinction, are, if I may say so without appearing rude, getting on in years. I do not think that they would be prepared to do the donkey work which has to be done, such as serving on Committees, preparing Amendments and that sort of thing. A tremendous amount of work has to be done behind the scenes in the preparation of major Bills, and this House may find itself very short of those who were called by my noble friend Lord Carrington the "ordinary working Peers". I am afraid. therefore, that I cannot support the White Paper as a package deal.
11.40 p.m.
LORD SOMERS: My Lords, I begin by apologising for the fact that I shall not be able to be here to-morrow, as I shall be working all day at my other job. I hope that your Lordships will forgive me. Your Lordships have already listened to well over thirty speeches, so not a great deal remains to be said. I think that throughout the debate it has been sufficiently obvious that there are not many, even on this side of the House, who do not feel that some reform in the composition of your Lordships' House is necessary. What I am in grave doubt about is whether the reforms sug-
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gested in the White Paper are the right ones.
I shall start with what is the most controversial issue of all—that is, the hereditary system. I do not defend the hereditary system in the way my noble friend Lord Ferrier did, when he referred to the pedigree breeding of dogs, cats and cattle. That has nothing whatsoever to do with it. There is nothing in the blood which makes one a good or a bad Member of your Lordships' House. But there is something in the fact that one has been brought up to think along those lines. Think of the position in other walks of life. Take, for instance, the legal profession. Surely a boy who is the son of a High Court Judge or of an eminent barrister will have heard famous cases discussed ever since lie can remember. He will have read all about the various problems of the law. Surely, by the time he comes to the age when he has to decide which profession he will take up, he is far more qualified to be a lawyer than someone who comes from a family who have had no connection with the law. The same could be said of the medical profession, and the same, to a more limited degree, of the arts.
I do not think that the hereditary system is so illogical as is generally imagined. It is so imagined chiefly by those who are outside the House. Of course, on paper one must admit that it looks a little illogical, but its critics have not come here to see how the House works. And, as other noble Lords have emphasised this afternoon, the proof of the pudding is in the eating: it certainly does work. However, I feel that the hereditary system must be controlled a little more. How it is to be done I am afraid that I am not expert enough to suggest, but it certainly is not right that those who take no interest in the House, who never come here and who have no connection whatsoever with it, should still have the right to come on any occasion when they please and to vote. That is all wrong, and I am sure that a great many of us on this side of the House were just as embarrassed as were noble Lords on the other side when so many strange faces turned up during the debate on the Rhodesian Order. That was entirely wrong. That sort of thing could perfectly easily be controlled on a basis of attendance. One does not get the vote until one has a certain rate of attendance.

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The White Paper suggests that the hereditary system is to go and we are to have instead appointed Peers. But appointed by whom? The White Paper suggests the Prime Minister. But I suggest that he—I am not referring to the present Prime Minister alone, but to any Prime Minister—is about as little qualified to know who are the most suited to be Members of your Lordships' House as anybody could be, because he has never had any experience of debates in your Lordships' House, and nor has he had any connection with it. Therefore, I should have thought that, if we are to have appointed Peers, it would be far better if it were done by the respective Leaders of the Parties in your Lordships' House. But I still do not know that appointed Peers is the answer. Apparently, we are to have this two-tier system. It is an odd thing, my Lords, that a Government who have been so anxious to eliminate second-class citizens should be so anxious to create second-class Peers. I am perfectly willing to be second-class. On the other hand, it is not for my own interests that I am speaking, but what is best for Parliament and the country.
One thing that the appointed system would do would be at once to increase the Party feeling and rivalry within this House. This is something that has always been kept fairly well below the surface, and I feel that it should remain there. I think one can only accomplish that if one retains the House more or less with its present composition, because appointed Peers will almost certainly be those who have political connections. The fact that the Party feeling has been kept so low has been one of the great merits of your Lordships' House, because it has eliminated the consideration of legislation from a purely Party point of view. I well remember the time when our own Party were the other side of the House and I had spoken five times in succession against my own Party. Even this brought forth only the mildest remonstration from our Chief Whip, who asked me whether I did not feel that. I might sometimes speak in favour of the Government's policy. That is as it should be. We want to keep away from an atmosphere of the three-line Whip.
I now come to the chief point, which is this. What is the true function of a
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Second Chamber of Parliament? Surely, it is to consider the legislation which is sent to it from the other place in as objective a manner as is humanly possible; to retain that which is good, and to eliminate that which is bad; to make suggestions as to drafting et cetera, and to return the Bills to the other place much better Bills than when they came here. I say that they should be considered in as objective a manner as possible, and that can be done only by keeping the Party spirit out or, at any rate, at a very low ebb. I feel that the suggestions in the White Paper are not likely to provide that kind of House.
I will tell your Lordships what I should like to see, although I have no doubt it will be condemned as completely unworkable and impracticable. I should like to see a House where one tad a nucleus of each Party on the respective Front Benches as at the moment, and I should like the whole of the rest of the House, apart from the Officers such as the Lord Chairman and others, to be independent. Under the system that we are considering there will always be a permanent Government majority. That will be a majority over the Opposition, but not over the whole House. So it remains for those who sit on the Cross-Benches to decide which way the House is going to vote.
I have the greatest respect for the Cross-Benches. Some of our most distinguished and eminent Members sit there. I certainly would not wish to say that I have any disrespect for their opinion whatsoever. But I do not think it right that any—I repeat, any—one section of the House should have its hand on the tiller, so to speak, to steer the decision of the House one way or the other. I do not think that noble Lords who sit on the Cross-Benches would desire it, either. It would place a great deal of responsibility on them, and on the whole it would not prove a satisfactory solution. My Lords, I cannot feel happy about this White Paper. It certainly has offered some possible solutions, but I do not think that in the end we shall get a better House than we have now, which is the only object of producing it.
LORD FERRIER: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, as he has referred to something I said I suggest that

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when my noble friend reads what I said to-morrow he will see that I was not as narrow as he suggested. I said that the hereditary system was not the right way to select people but that it narrowed the margin of error; and I have felt often that there has been too much talk of the word "random" in connection with the hereditary system as a basis for selection. I agree with him—and have said so before in your Lordships' House—that upbringing, which often goes with heredity, is a very important factor in a man's suitability.
LORD SOMERS: I thank the noble Lord.
11.53 p.m.
THE EARL OF LYTTON: My Lords, on the last big debate when we were summoned from the Recess we discussed Czechoslovakia. A day or two later I received a postcard, closely typed, from a stranger, a Jew, formerly a German who lived in Berlin, now a British subject living in London: a man who knew what persecution was and who wrote, as it were, out of the blue saying that he had attended the whole of that debate, which was a long one, and had listened to it spellbound. The spellbinding was due to the odd mixture of Peers we have. But he mentioned three or four by name whom he considered pre-eminent, and they happened to be hereditary Peers. I mention this because I think that outsiders who know anything at all have not lost their esteem for those hereditary Peers who do regular work in this House.
I do not claim to be one of the regulars. Naturally I was pleased because I am an hereditary Peer on both sides, from my mother a seventeenth Baron, with an Earldom from my father. I have two sons, and if they should predecease my daughters without issue I have three daughters, one more formidable than the other, each of whom could succeed to the Barony under the hereditary system. Therefore I speak to your Lordships as an hereditary creature of this House, who would not be here at all but for the fact that I am the son of my father and my mother.
I should like now to mention the main points as they have been set out in this debate by the Leaders in this House, to say where I stand. I would begin by
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saying that, owing to a confusion of posts and my papers, I read the White Paper for the first time on arrival in this House from Somerset this morning. Previously I had read only a number of newspapers, and I was extremely hostile to the White Paper. Having read it, however, I became quite open-minded and decided that I would listen to what was said in this House and, studying it in connection with the White Paper, would draw my conclusions afresh. Therefore, I scrapped what I had written and these are my reactions.
Heredity is not to be the sole qualification. I think hardly anybody in this House has claimed that it should be. The noble Lord, Lord Milford, claimed that it should be an active disqualification. With that view nobody else seems to agree; and in fact one supposes that those who like hereditary Peers will incorporate them in the list which is submitted to Her Majesty for the creation of Life Peers. If that is so, of course, many will be satisfied and will get what they want in a different form, and we may see a number of the familiar and friendly faces on both sides that we have here to-day. Very well: I object to nothing of that. That there should be no built-in majority for one Party has, I think, been accepted by everybody. I have not heard it defended anywhere. Certainly it seems to me to be an absurd anomaly and, if anything, more of a red rag to a bull, in connection with the other place, than even heredity. It may be foolish to be disturbed by red rags, but it is better to remove them and put on another suit.
Thirdly, life membership is a factor which tips my marginal views in favour of the White Paper. Had it been a "wangle" of Parliamentary Peers for a Session I think I should have opposed that part. The noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor mentioned that point, and to me it is a convincing one. It produces an element of independence which would be far from real at the beginning but which would grow, unless every Peer was appointed when he had reached the age of about 68.
A built-in minority appears to be the intention as well, and this seems to me to be a renunciation of power which is discreet and quite admirable. I am not the person to say that the Cross-Benchers should be those who, in a case of a

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tight vote, should determine the issue. In any case I do not think we Cross-Benchers deserve the sneers of the noble Marquess on the ground that we can never agree with anybody. It is true that on one subject in this House I was in a very small minority for a long time, and I owed the fact that I was not entirely alone to the noble Lord, Lord Somers; but on other occasions I have been sometimes with the majority, sometimes with the minority; sometimes with Labour, sometimes with Conservatives, and having decided to be independent I do not think that I deserve—or that any of us deserves—the kind of disparagement which the noble Marquess, with all his magnificent authority, chooses to sprinkle upon us. I think he was making in part a quip, and I hope that he will think better of it. However, do not let it ever be said, so far as I am concerned, that I speak for the Cross-Benches or have the slightest desire for power on any single occasion. That my vote should determine anything is not a thing I aim at or should in the least like.
As regards membership, I feel that if it might be considered a transitional House that we are forming it is not too bad and not objectionable. As regards powers, I should like to quote Queen Victoria, in a letter to Gladstone in 1884, when similar unpleasant noises were being made at the House of Lords and we were being described as "interesting ruins" and due for demolition and so on. She wrote:
"The Monarchy would be utterly untenable were there no balance of power, no restraining power."
Now to-day the Sovereign, this particular Sovereign of ours, I would say is in a stronger position than Queen Victoria in 1884, in an impregnable position which is not in question and could not be, whatever these debates run into. It could be different if she were somebody less unselfish, less robust, less glamorous; but in the present instance the Monarchy is in no question. But I do suggest that it is desirable to assure the public good by this balance of power and some restraining power.
And why? I think the noble Lord, Lord Mitchison, said that he had never heard of any reason why. It seems to me that the noble Lord, Lord Cones-ford, expressed the matter pretty well.
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The power of the Executive between General Elections tends to grow; the Executive tends to ignore the House of Commons. It is not going to brook this House as a rival. It does not want it to have a mandate from the people lest it should appear in that guise. I am not myself sure that a dictatorship of the Cabinet in between General Elections is a healthy symptom.
Are there any possible amendments? The two-tier arrangement is unpleasant, but if I were invited to be a second-class Peer because I was not worthy of being a first-class one I think I should accept. I wonder whether it would be possible for those who would like to have a two-tier arrangement in perpetuity to suggest to the other side that if they do not like hereditary Peers as a non-voting element then they might find some other counterbalancing element which they might like better. I do not know what it might be, but it could be a selection of representatives from the Commonwealth for a period of five years. We greatly lack representation in this country from the Commonwealth, and a few coloured faces in this House would lend colour, if nothing else, to our debates. I put that as a suggestion together with my support, little as it is, for Lord Conesford's suggestions regarding examination of the actual powers.
My own feeling, however, with regard to the powers of delay is that whether they are a little more or a little less is less important than Parliamentary reform as a whole of both Houses, particularly the House of Commons, and particularly perhaps the system of producing Members of Parliament. I am always worried by the low level of discussion at Parliamentary meetings in the constituencies; by the fact that no elector who chooses a man for a very important post need have the smallest qualification of any kind, and that the person for whom he votes need have none either. You would not choose a doctor, or a lawyer, or a soldier or anybody else in this world for an important place, without being relatively certain that he knew enough to do the job. Only in politics need you know nothing and be voted for by others who know less. I wonder whether that point should not be studied at some time, because I am not satisfied with the age of the common man.

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When the Recording Angel summons the representatives of the twentieth century to the Judgment Seat, I think it will have to be pointed out that it has been a century of carnage and wars beyond any precedent, with the imminence of the most sophisticated and civilised people on earth being able to produce 80 per cent. of Armageddon in a couple of hours. I am not sure that he will not call the representatives of the people to book for this, more than he would have had occasion to do in previous centuries with Princes and Emperors. That, I think, is the more important thing. If the dispute between the two Houses—the tension, the feeling that we are wholly unrepresentative, and this built-in majority—is got rid of, then we might get together and do something useful for the Constitution as a whole.
12.7 a.m.
VISCOUNT MONKTON OF BRENCHLEY: My Lords, I speak once more, finding it hard to be dispassionate and finding it very hard not to over-simplify what we have heard and read, as all soldiers are apt to over-simplify. I cannot help but think straight away of what your Lordships are going to be like in time to come:
"Forty years on, growing older and older, Shorter in wind as in memory long, Feeble of foot and rheumatic of shoulder, What will it help you that once you were strong?"
Just look round this House, my Lords, at this moment, even after the plea by the noble Lord the Leader of the House. At least the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor recognises those words, because he, by accident of birth I suppose, was also at Harrow.
I believe the most serious failing in the future House that is now proposed is the lack of youth. To hear, early on in the debate to-day, that so few of the young have attended one-third of our debates pleases me enormously. That they should attend more, God forbid! We want them to come in when they have something to say on affairs that concern them, as we did in the university debates. We want them now to be learning their own professional jobs, earning their wages, but coming here occasionally to hear what goes on, to get the feeling
820
and to learn the procedure of the House. But God forbid that they should come here regularly, now or in the future! What is good—I hope noble Lords opposite will not mind my saying this as it applies to both Parties—is that young men, here by accident of birth and not representing a class or anything like that, should stand up and demand answers from Ministers of both Parties. That must be good, whatever Party is in power. That is one of the things which will go if the proposals should be adopted. Another point that worries me—we have not heard much about this, but it is clearly in the White Paper—is that the change is going to be continual, and I dread your Lordships living under this system. I have lived under it in the Services for the last ten years and it has been agonising and desperate to be under the continual shock and change which your Lordships will have if the proposals are accepted.
I should like to make one constructive point on the assumption that the changes must go through; and I am sorry that the right reverend Prelates have not been able to stay, even though they made a demand to retain their powers. There are very few Catholic Life Peers at the moment. I speak as a Catholic hereditary Peer, and most of the Catholics in your Lordships' House are hereditary Peers. I hope some thought will be given to representation of that Church in the new House to be, and indeed to other religions, most of which are, I think, represented here by Life Peers.
I suppose
"the test of the legislation which is to come before us on this subject will … be in how much it succeeds in preserving what has been good … in the past and removing the weaknesses"
that have appeared at the present. No. that is not my phrase; that is taken from the excellent speech of the noble Lord, Lord Delacourt-Smith, in moving the humble Address to the gracious Speech. But I suppose it also sums up a lot of what we must feel: that of course change must come, but we must try to preserve what is best. What is the object of all this? Surely the criterion should not be ourselves or even our children. Certainly it surely should not be our Party. It must be for the good of Parliament and, above all, for the good of the country. If you

821
honestly feel that the proposals we have heard meet those criteria, then I suppose you will vote for them; but I submit that they cannot meet those criteria.
Again I have always seen things in black and white and as right and wrong, too simply, I suppose. I have believed in promises and treaties, and I have agreed with criticism of people who break treaties and promises. I do not think that anybody has reminded your Lordships of the actual words of the promise in the last few hundred years, made by the Sovereign to the first created hereditary Peer. Among those words—the quotation is quite short—are these:
"that he and his heirs male aforesaid and every one of them successively may have, hold and possess a scat. place and voice in the Parliaments and public assemblies and councils of Us, Our heirs and successors …"
Apart from the fact that our sons are excluded, that goes some way along with the White Paper. It promises a seat and a voice, but no vote in actual words. But it does promise on to the next generation, and so on, and that is a promise of the Sovereign which those of you who vote for these proposals are forcing the Sovereign and previous Sovereigns to break; and to my simple mind that must be wrong.
I am going to be short as time is short. We have heard so much that it is difficult to find anything new to say, but I feel that at the moment we speak on our honour, and I doubt whether your Lordships will be able to do so under the new system. At the moment we ignore Party Whips. The noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, said that if he had put on a Whip it would not have been of the slightest use. No Whip of the future in your Lordships' House is going to be able to say that, because the plan is mathematically exact, and nobody will be able to do as I did—change sides and come across to these Benches. So far as I can see, the whole mathematical balance and statistics would be put out.
And how are you going to choose those 20 or 30 Cross-Bench Peers who are to hold the balance and take the decisions? You must either castrate them mentally or you will accept their contrary vote. I do not think that the other place will accept a contrary vote. You will be shot down, and yet further changes will come.
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How can you expect 20 chaps to shoot down the will of the Commons, or what is in fact the will of the Executive?
LORD FERRIER: My Lords, I hesitate to interrupt the noble Viscount, but does he suggest that once one takes one's place on a certain Bench in the new House one will not be free at any time to move to the Cross-Benches if one wishes?
VISCOUNT MONCKTON OF BRENCHLEY: I am suggesting that you are free to do so, but I do not see how the mathematical system is going to work if you do. Above all, I believe that we must avoid—
LORD SHACKLETONMy Lords, may I answer the noble Viscount on the mathematical system? Since he is a soldier he will be aware of operational research, and the mathematical system has been worked out with the aid of the Ministry of Defence. I can assure him that he will be free to move to whatever part of the House he wishes.
VISCOUNT MONCKTON OF BRENCHLEY: When I was in the Ministry of Defence we did not change sides: we were always on the same side. But, above all, I dread the day when this House becomes a House of professional politicians. It is surely its strength that all of us nowadays are professionals in one way or another, but not, thank God!, in politics—not, anyway, in my own ease. The more I see of it the more I dread that happening. We are extremely catholic in our background. The fact that we have titles by descent means nothing; it is the catholicity of our buck-ground that matters. There is a noble Lord who was a bus driver for five years sitting behind me. I am a farmer, having been a soldier, and I do three days in the City and take one day a week off for rest. We have an enormous variety of backgrounds, which surely it must be good to contribute to this House.
I noticed that one suggestion was the difficulty of selection for this new House, whether it is by appointment, by vote, or by other system of election. One Liberal Member suggested a lottery to select Members of your Lordships' House. I would almost humbly suggest that we have that in the Peers' bedrooms already.

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It is an accident. Those of us who are hereditary have been stood up and counted on which way we have voted. God knows why, because I thought the one thing that the word "Peer" meant was equal. But it is a lottery already; it is an accident of birth. I think this is really the only major point of issue that I personally have with the White Paper.
May I just make one quotation, which is from a famous Lord Chief Justice:
"I have laboured to make a covenant with myself, that affection may not press upon judgment, for I suppose there is no man that hath any apprehension of gentry or nobleness, but his affection stands for the continuance of a house so illustrious, and would take hold of a twig or twine thread to uphold it."
That was not said about this House, but it could well have been. It was said by Lord Chief Justice Crew in the Oxford Peerage case, when he was already accepting that change must come. That was the speech which included the words
"Where is Mowbray, where is Mortimer?"
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, I must inform my noble friend that Mowbray is here.
VISCOUNT MONCKTON OF BRENCHLEY: My Lords, I hope there will always be a Mowbray in your Lordships' House.
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, when the noble and learned Lord Chief Justice made that remark Mowbray, after 500 years' hard labour in your Lordships' House, was in fact merely having 100 years' abeyance in the womb of Stourton before coming forth with renewed energy.
12.18 a.m.
LORD GRIDLEY: My Lords, after that last altercation I do not intend to keep the House for very long. First of all, I should like to pay my tribute to the noble and learned Lord for his speech opening the debate. He said in most conciliatory terms that he would bear in mind everything that was said, and that the Government would consider the points of view expressed from all sides of the House. I should also like to say how fortunate we are, in the circumstances in which we are here tonight, to have a
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noble Lord of the calibre and respect in which we all hold the Leader of the House Lord Shackleton. Similarly, I include my noble friend the Leader of the Opposition, Lord Carrington, and particularly my noble friend Lord Jellicoe who has, I understand, been greatly immersed in the all-Party deliberations.
I can go along with the recommendations in the White Paper in all respects, but with one exception, which I shall cover shortly. Apart from that one exception I consider it an admirable document. I agree that it is undesirable that when a Labour Government is in power we, in a Conservative Opposition, should have a permanent majority of hereditary Peers by succession who can vote against the Government. It does not make for a smooth relationship in the business of this House, and indeed that view has been expressed by many speakers who have taken part in the debate this afternoon and evening. Of course, it is particularly difficult for hereditary Peers by succession, of which I am one, to decide an issue and in a clear conscience vote against the Government. Therefore, I consider the proposal for a two-tier structure of Peers wholly admirable, but with one important reservation. In the future and from outside this House I should like to see some provision made for the inclusion of the hereditary Peer by succession, and by selection if necessary. We heard a remarkable speech on this point by my noble friend Lord Cork and Orrery, and there was some merit in what he said on the subject. But as the White Paper stands at the moment, a hereditary Peer by succession is to disappear in the future. I think that the country will lose because of this, and I will give my reasons.
Is there any objection of substance in the White Paper to the part played by the hereditary Peer by succession in the work of this House? My Lords, there is none. There is nothing of any substance, and it is the Labour Government who in due course will bring before Parliament the proposal to abolish the hereditary system. One of course appreciates the struggles of the Labour Party in its early days, way back in the past, when most unjust things happened in this country, and one can well understand how some people in the Labour Party feel. I saw the General Strike, as no doubt did others of your Lordships. They were

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the most dreadful times, and it is understandable that people who went through those bad periods in the history of our country hold the views they do about the hereditary principle.
But there is another side to the coin. It is remarkable that when one talks to Australians and Americans, they praise the impartiality of our Parliamentary system of government in this country and support the idea of the hereditary system by succession, which, looking at the matter from outside this country, they consider to be impartial. Here I will say something about my own Party. We believe in initiative and free enterprise and the right of the individual to progress, but are we in future to have an aristocracy of wealth and is only wealth to count for merit? We need to preserve an aristocracy embracing the ideal of service inherent in the traditions of succession.
The facts are—and I am sure that this is accepted by noble Lords on both sides of the House—that hereditary Peers by succession have from time to time made a very valuable contribution to the work of this House, and they have done this out of a sense of duty. There would seem to be no reason, if hereditary Peers in the future were included in the two-tier structure, as I have suggested, why this should not be of benefit to your Lordships' House, to Parliament and to the country. It is therefore my hope that there will be some sort of provision on these or on similar lines in any Bill which we are to consider.
Finally, I want to say something about tradition and heredity, because basically it is these things which are under attack. I am not interested at all in my antecedents or from where I came. I am intensely concerned about the fact that I have a hereditary Peerage. I resist the attack on tradition and heredity with every fibre in my body. As for 27 years I worked in the Colonial Service overseas, I inherited a great tradition on this score alone. This tradition carried with it obligations—and so does a Peerage. My father was for twenty years a Member of the House of Commons, and I do not suppose that in all the time of nearly thirty years in which I was abroad I did not receive a weekly letter from him. They were momentous years for
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both of us. Then war came to Malaya, the country was overrun in South-East Asia, our correspondence ceased, and for four long years there was silence. Now let us see what happened in the furtherance of an inherited tradition.
My Lords, in the circumstances in which the Colonial Service found itself in Malaya at that time, the decision taken was that if we were no longer able to administer the people for whom we were responsible to a British Parliament—and that includes this House as well as the other place—then our duty was to stay with them and share their suffering. I do not need to elaborate beyond this. It is well known that imprisonment in a criminal gaol followed, with starvation for all of us and torture and death for others. But, my Lords—and this is the point—not only was the high reputation of a British Parliament in how we behaved at that time in our trust, but when man is faced with almost insuperable adversity the inheritance of traditions which are right gives him an unconquerable will to survive; and surely the obligation of service is not only decreed to us by tradition but is inherent in an inherited Peerage.
Frankly, I do not worry very much about what may happen to me, but I do care most deeply about what may happen to our country as a result of our deliberations. I am not the possessor of material things, and I am an Oversea Civil Service pensioner drawing his pension. I look upon the inheritance of a Peerage as a call to give service, as I am sure do other noble Lords who perform a duty in coming here. It is this position of the Peer by succession in the future, by the method I have suggested of recruitment to the two-tier structure, that I should like to see included.
My Lords, this is the age of the common man, but it is also the age of unbridled attack on our institutions. All of us in common justice wish to see the advancement of the standard of life of all our people, but this is the aspiration of all Parties and is not confined to one Party or Government in power. But at the present time, my Lords, who will deny that there is not too much preoccupation in glorifying man's personal advancement to the exclusion of his spirit? Man needs something outside

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himself, and a part of this is to be found in tradition, qualities and standards bequeathed to all of us from former times. It is this spirit outside oneself which illuminates the darkness and points the way.
12.23 a.m.
LORD ILFORD: My Lords, many proposals for the reform of your Lordship's House have been made in the sixty years which have elapsed since the Parliament Act of 1911 was passed. All those proposals have come to nothing, and all have failed for the same reasons. They failed to make proposals which would ensure a Second Chamber which, at once, had a measure of independence and was not a political reflection of the House of Commons. Now, how do these proposals deal with that difficulty which has defeated the reform of your Lordships' House for so many years? What is proposed in the White Paper is that the Members of the voting House shall be so arranged that the Government of the day have a majority over the minority Party in the House of Commons, but there are to be inserted into the voting House votes which would be exercised by the Cross Benchers, and if the Cross Benchers and the Opposition Parties combined they would have a majority over the Government of the day.
The first thing that I want to say about that is to ask Ministers whether they regard that safeguard as a reality. Do any of us really suppose that the Cross Benchers will unite and form something like a Party or a special group, and use their voting powers for the purpose of defeating the Government? That is exactly what they will not do. The Cross Bencher is an individual primarily, and his Cross Bencher aspects are attributable to the fact that he is unwilling to co-operate with anybody else and is unwilling to join any Party. It is really a sham to pretend that this provision in the White Paper is going to result in any real degree of independence in the new Second Chamber.
THE MINISTER OF STATE, FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH OFFICE (LORD SHEPHERD): My Lords, will the noble Lord allow me to intervene for a moment? I think he will remember an occasion in the early stages
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of this Government when the Burmah Oil Bill was discussed. It was a nonpolitical Bill. My guess, knowing the views of the Cross Benchers, is that if on that occasion we had had the reformed House the majority of the Cross Benchers would have voted against the Government. I think that in terms of a political question how they split is problematical; but on that particular occasion I think they would have voted against.
LORD ILFORD: My Lords, I am not so well informed about the feelings of the Cross Benchers as the noble Lord. He may be right. I hope he will be right, and that this device will prove an adequate safeguard to protect and ensure a measure of independence in the Second Chamber.
May I turn now to a rather different matter? I think it is unfortunate that the White Paper should propose that the Members of the voting House should be paid for their services. Many noble Lords in the course of this debate have referred to the very substantial degree of patronage which this Bill is going to give to the Prime Minister of the day. Nobody suggests that the Prime Minister will use this patronage in other than a proper manner, I want to make that perfectly clear. That is true of all the Prime Ministers I have known—going back quite a number of years. But it is not exactly how the patronage is exercised that matters; it is what appears in the public gaze.
The noble and learned Lord who sits on the Woolsack met this point by drawing attention to the very considerable degree of patronage exercised by the Crown at the present time. I have no doubt that Crown patronage, exercised by the Prime Minister at present, may even be equal to the patronage he would get under this arrangement. But it is patronage of a different sort from the patronage he will get under this proposal. It is not patronage which meets the public eye to any great extent; but this patronage will meet the public eye and may be very much a subject of doubt and suspicion in the public mind. I think everything should be done which is possible to be done to ensure that the exercise of this new patronage by the Prime Minister does not arouse suspicions, uncer-

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tainties and so forth in the public mind. I am sure that is very important to the success of this scheme.
There is one other matter. I think it is unfortunate that voting Peers should be required to forfeit their position as voting Peers on reaching the age of 72. I suppose I have some interest here because I am a "fourpenny Peer", as it has been called this afternoon. I am out of this picture. I suppose, for ever. I believe we shall be losing many men such as some of us know and have known who retained considerable powers late in life. I remember that when I first came to your Lordships' House Lord Alexander of Hillsborough was the Leader of the then Opposition, and a very vigorous and formidable Leader he was. I do not know how long it had been since he was 72, but he was well past the age limit which would have put him out of action under these proposals. There was Lord Morrison of Lambeth, and I remember that when we sat up all night debating the London Government Bill Lord Morrison conducted the whole of the opposition himself with considerable vigour. At that time, under these proposals, he would have been excluded from taking any part in the work of your Lordships' House. I say to the Government that they should think again about this matter and not allow themselves to be misled by the popular feeling of the day that at 70 a man may be no good for any further work. That is not the case.
My Lords, I should have liked to say something about the hereditary principle and the part it has played in this House in the past, a part which some of us would like to see it continue to play, but so much has been said with which I agree that I think that at this hour I should not be justified in detaining your Lordships with any further observations on this subject.
12.36 a.m.
THE EARL OF SHANNON: My Lords, with over forty speakers before me there is practically nothing left for me to say. I must, however, say that I feel most heartily for those noble Lords who are to speak tomorrow. What on earth are they going to find to say? A clever and carefully prepared speech would have been shot to pieces long before now, and
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I cannot even claim to have prepared one. I do happen to have a few notes scribbled on the back of an envelope.
I support this Motion, in spite of the comment one hears everywhere outside your Lordships' House—"All right! Reform; but first things first. Why start with the Lords?" My Lords, we have had plenty of speeches about this not being the right time, but if we go on saying that it is not the right time, it will never be the right time, and for this reason I think we must make a start, even though many people do not consider it appropriate to start here. At least it will be a start. I have always believed in my heart of hearts that I was a little bit radical. I now find, however, after listening to the noble and learned Lord who sits on the Woolsack, that I am not a radical—I am a revolutionary. I had cherished the hope when the White Paper arrived that we should have a real elected Second Chamber. I was hoping to see proportional representation—say, far the sake of argument, one appointed Peer by Parties for each 100,000 votes cast, and a special election with voting for Parties or independents, and not for candidates and not for regions. I regard all monopolies as bad, and I can find no real justification for it to be written or unwritten in any Constitution, in letters of gold or otherwise, that only one Chamber shall have the divine right of being the only elected Chamber.
I know that the reason given in paragraph 22 for not adopting such a principle is that there would be rivalry between the two Houses. I think this a pity; I believe it would improve both Houses. But having listened to all the speeches I realise that my cherished illusion must go and that this is an impossibility. I think, however, that the Government horror of an in-built majority has been a little overplayed—the inbuilt majority at present on the Opposition side. I know that it must give the true hidebound Whips the "willies" to think about it. I think that noble Lords who sit on these Benches had a corporate identity of pleasure when we saw that paragraph 72 said that we have no corporate identity. That just shows that we have, as independents, fulfilled our task correctly and that it has been appreciated as such.

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Many noble Lords, mostly on the opposite side of the House, have asked the Government seriously to consider keeping some hereditary element. That has been lucidly expounded by such noble Lords as the noble Lord, Lord Denham. I agree that this is worthy of consideration, but I do not intend to labour that point. It seems to me that the item of age brings most credence, and perhaps it might be possible for the Committee envisaged in paragraph 31, when making their recommendations to the Prime Minister, to balance age as well as Party strength.
This is a package deal and therefore it is a compromise, and gravely deficient, as many noble Lords have pointed out. However, it is a welcome move to end the unwelcome situation that at present exists between the two Houses. For that reason alone, it deserves our support. The present House cannot use its powers without having many critics watching it, ready to shout about there being a constitutional crisis. It gives the critics outside the House the opportunity to dash into print and to air their ignorance about everything in your Lordships' House. It is surprising how often otherwise eminent people tend to do this. Probably no other institution in the world has been such an inbuilt Aunt Sally as your Lordships' House, at which anybody can take a shy with impunity. The White Paper, if translated into legislation, will greatly help to remove this image. Perhaps we are much remiss in that our own public relations have not been all that they could have been. We take no steps that one can see to project our image to the public and such image as exists is often stated to be that this place is purely a shower of sparks from a lot of hereditary Peers grinding their own little choppers.
I come to my last point, your Lordships will be pleased to hear. I should like to take issue with the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury. I must completely debunk the theory, which has been rapidy gathering credence throughout this debate, that the Cross-Benchers are going to hold the balance of power. I cannot conceive how that can be the case. As the Whips will tell us, they
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cannot count on their supporters. I do not see that even the appointed voting Peers are going to be such good Party members, if they hold their seats for life, and are going to be counted upon so rigorously that it will finally be left to the Cross-Benchers. No, my Lords. I think that the number of defectors on major issues from both sides of the House will be more than the number of Cross-Benchers.
There is one point that has not been mentioned (I have been able to find one), which is that there is one power that your Lordships have and must retain, for the reasons that we have been listening to for the many hours that this debate has continued. There is one thing that your Lordships can do. The House of Commons, if it wishes to prolong its own life. must, I think I am right in saying, get the concurrence of your Lordships. This I would regard as vital for your Lordships to retain, and at no time should your Lordships be in a position just to rubber stamp the application of the House of Commons to prolong its own life because your Lordships have been constituted in such a way that you can only rubber stamp.
12.46 a.m.
LORD MACPHERSON OF DRUMOCHTER: My Lords, I should like to apologise in advance for not being able to be present in your Lordships' House on Thursday afternoon when this debate is concluded. There is to me a great deal of merit in this White Paper, and the one point on which I agree and sympathise with the Government is the built-in majority of one particular Party. I feel strongly that somehow or other we have to devise a system where this can be corrected. But I should like to urge the Government to reconsider the position of the hereditary Peers of the future. If the Government consider that the present hereditary Peers can make a contribution, which by their retention today they must do. I cannot understand why they do not think that the hereditary Peers of the future could make a contribution to your Lordships' House.
However indefensible the hereditary system may be, as many other speakers have said in this debate, this system has worked for some hundreds of years, and I think particularly well over the last

833
thirty years. I know that possibly both main Parties have had some of their policies amended, and in extreme cases opposed, but they have suffered very little and I think gained a great deal. It is usually unwise to scrap a system which has withstood the passage of time and replace it with something which is untried. I therefore suggest that the future hereditary Peers be given a chance of attending the House as non-voting Members—that is, if we must have the two-tier system. If no further hereditary Peers are created, this old right will in the course of time gradually die away.
As a Cross-Bencher I should like to say how much I have appreciated the courtesy and consideration that I have received from the past and the present Leader of your Lordships' House, and I hope that the friendly and pleasant atmosphere of your Lordships' House will not be lost with these new proposals. I understand that our attendance and the way we have voted has been closely studied, and I should like to point out, particularly to those who have been giving this matter this study, that we on the Cross-Benches may not have recorded a vote in certain of the debates. This does not mean we are "don't knows", but possibly the subject was a political one and at the time some of us did not wish to side with, nor necessarily agree with, either of the main political Parties. Or perhaps in our own individual view the case had not been made out one way or the other. I know it would he impracticable to record abstentions, but to me this is a third type of vote.
In my own particular case my votes have been mainly against the Government as I have not agreed with their policies on two important issues: Stansted and Rhodesia. In the latter, the main case of Her Majesty's Government has been their insistence on "one man, one vote". Now the Government are suggesting a two-tier House and no longer one man, one vote. I can of course see the strength of the argument for the two-tier system. But will it result in the loss of those very talented Peers who attend on special occasions? I fear that they may not attend if they are deprived of their vote. There are a large section of the public who still look to your Lordships as a final control, if Governments of the future take action contrary to public interest.
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Lastly, I, too, must take issue with the noble Marquess. We Cross-Benchers are worthy of consideration. Just because we do not allow our views to be swamped by Party interests it does not follow that we are incapable of using our vote properly and sincerely. So far as one can ascertain, most of the Press's and the general public's reaction to the White Paper has been the fear that we may make your Lordships' House a Party Chamber, as is another place. This could be overcome by including in the new House an even greater number of independent, non-Party Members: in tact, Cross-Benchers.
12.53 a.m.
LORD TEVIOT: My Lords, having been in your Lordships' House for so little time, I hope that your Lordships will not think me too impertinent in speaking on this subject of reform. I confess that at the moment, I have no idea which way I shall vote, and I shall therefore wait for the winding-up speeches. One has been buffeted about this afternoon from one side to the other and will probably continue to be so tomorrow and Thursday. Before I go on to the basis of my own speech, I should like to deal with one or two points. The noble Lord the Leader of the House said at the time of my noble friend Lord Salisbury's speech that there were two or three Members of your Lordships' House under the age of 40. I have since counted up, with the assistance of my noble friend Lord Redesdale, and I make the number 20. I will give the list to the noble Lord after the debate.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords. perhaps I may interrupt the noble Lord by saying that he need not give me the list. I fully accept what he said, but I can only say that quite a number seem to be hiding beyond the Bar, or in the bar.
LORD TEVIOT: My Lords, I can only say that these Benches are so popular that there is no room.
Now I must refer to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Gifford, and l have warned him of my intention. He tcld me that he had an early appointment tomorrow morning and could not be here for me to attack him. But I am afraid

835
that I find his speech utterly contemptuous and odious. There was nothing in it in any way that one could class as being constructive, particularly when he referred to young Peers and hereditary Peers. I did not interrupt him because I did not think it suitable, and he agreed that it was not a suitable debate in which to interrupt; but he also said that he enjoyed being interrupted. However, I am afraid that I did not give him that pleasure; nor did any other noble Lord. I find myself more in sympathy with the noble Lord, Lord Milford. It is true that I disagree with a great deal of what he said, but at least he operated under his own label, and I gather from my noble friend Lord Bessborough that the noble Lord, Lord Milford, has since apologised and would have liked to make his statement here. However, I see he is not present now, so that he cannot make it.
There are two points in the White Paper that I wish to discuss. Up to now Life Peerages have been granted to distinguished people, either to Members of the other place or to men and women at the top of their trade or industry, or in the public or social services. This is as it should be, and I am not objecting to it at all. But I should like to suggest that in addition there should be selected a group of operative Peers, consisting of men and women who work among people in a subordinate position and who have first-hand knowledge of the views of the working population. As we all know now, every member of the electorate votes for the candidate of the political Party of his own persuasion in the area in which he lives. The elected member therefore becomes the constituency Member and he goes to the other place, representing the interests of all his constituents.
I suggest that in your Lordships' House members of the public could have their own representative of the industry or public or social service to which he belongs. He (or she) would be appointed by a special selection committee. He would not be a figurehead but would be a person who would remain at floor level, engaged as a worker in various parts of the country, gleaning first-hand information with regard to future legislation. After I had returned this summer from
836
a fact-finding mission on drivers' hours in connection with the Transport Bill, your Lordships would be surprised at the number of letters I received from drivers who were appreciative of the fact that there was a person in this House speaking on their behalf.
These men and women representatives could deal with all sorts of fundamental points. I have heard it said that both here and in another place there are experts on all subjects. This is largely true, but not completely so. For example, at the moment there is not a policeman of any kind sitting in either House; but there are quite a few Bills which deal with justice in one form or another. I know that there are a great many legal representatives from all branches of the profession, except for the one section whose function it is to maintain law and order and prevent crime. But the policeman is only one of the examples that I had in mind for the actual working, trained Peer. I suggest that we might have a nurse, among many others; and a skilled engineering worker. I am aware that there are many noble Lords who could be first-class engineers in their own right, but it must be a long time since they actually worked at a machine.
Turning to another point (I do not mean to be contentious or to ask for "kicks"), would it not be beneficial, in order to assist in racial integration in this country, to have one or two West Indian and Afro-Asian Peers in this House, dealing specifically with their own problems? I am sure that it will be quite a few years yet before there is a West Indian or an Afro-Asian Member of the other place. So would not such a person help us? And we, in turn, would help him to sort out these important problems and so help in racial harmony. I submit that this group of operative Peers would give the country a more balanced and representative House than it is today.
My next subject concerns the people who are over 72 years of age. Various speakers have already referred to this, and therefore I shall be as brief as possible. I do not speak on this aspect because I am trying to curry favour with my elders, or to be branded, "If you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours," and a great many people have spoken

837
about the under-40s. One of the main reasons I feel qualified to speak on this matter is that I had the privilege of growing up with a very much older father. I clearly remember the year he was 72, in 1946. It was the year he played as captain of the Royal and Ancient, at St. Andrews. At that time, and until I took my seat in your Lordships' House, I thought he was a remarkable man. Whilst not denigrating my father as remarkable, I would say that he is not in the least untypical of many in your Lordships' House who have done immense service far beyond that age. The over-72s have done tremendous service in the last Parliament and many others.
I know that the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack has advocated that magistrates should not sit beyond the age of 70. That may be absolutely correct: that they should not sit in judgment over others; but that does not apply here. I have consulted the opinions of a gerontologist. I always believe in consulting experts, and this eminent gerontologist I spoke to thought it was absolutely crazy to draw the line at a certain age. I ask your Lordships to consider this matter.
1.0 a.m.
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: My Lords, am a simple man with simple tastes which dictate to me that I should be far away by now. To my mind this debate is most premature, and I think it was the noble Lord. Lord Silkin, who said so delicately that we have started at the wrong end. For some reason that is still, after 11 hours of debate and opinion, obscure to me—sinister, I think, perhaps to some other people—there appears a strong desire to pick a team before the opponent is known. In this rather sophisticated technological age I should have thought it would have been rather better to have something like a job analysis; job evaluation, first of all, of what a Second Chamber wishes to do, has to do, must do or could do. This job of work having been decided. I think it would be very much easier to find the members to fit the team. We could then debate and decide how best this could be done—because to my mind, from the short time I have been in your Lordships' House, the job is certainly not at all clear.
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But if this is the way we are to do things, I make my short comment on the position as I understand it. I find it quite impossible to accept the two-tier. the first-class and second-class, the differential system of Peerage: because any differential system suggests, rightly or wrongly, a first-class and a second-class, all equal but some "a little more so". I find it illogical that it is proposed that any Peer, hereditary, sitting by succession, created, may come until he drops dead (I understand this point) and participate; that he can talk, can debate, can listen, yet is refused the opportunity of taking his argument to what appears to be the logical conclusion in a Division Lobby. This seems to me extraordinarily unfair. I think that such a position, such an insistence on non-finality could quite easily lead to a disinterest and an apathy; and since there is already enough disinterest and enough apathy, within and without the Parliamentary scene, I believe that any change we make should be designed to induce greater interest and greater participation.
The hereditary system has, of course, come in for some fairly stiff buffeting this afternoon. I do not know that I defend it particularly, but for this. I think that only a few people regard the hereditary system as creating something of a privileged class; something very privileged, something that they cannot be. But I have found, since I succeeded my noble father just over twelve months ago, that it has brought me a great de al of responsibility. Your Lordships will probably remember very well the maiden speech by the noble Lord. Lord Tedder, earlier this year, I think in June. when he so adequately described his feelings regarding this sense of responsibility and why he came to your Lordships' House. I suggest that it is this same feeling of responsibility that brings sons of their fathers, hereditary Peers, to play their part, to accept their share of the responsibility by coming and taking their place in your Lordships' House.
The White Paper suggests that Peers in this second-class category may not be allowed to vote, and if they withdraw their participation. as I think they may well, that will he a great loss. I cannot feel that any person or any committee or any computer could effectively select that broad span of age, knowledge, interest, experience and enthusiasm which is such

839
a feature of your Lordships' House. I would refer to the incident of birth, rather than the accident of birth, that brings all these things, and that most refreshing and most useful absolutely random selection of people to what may otherwise become a Chamber of probably older, certainly more politically mature and more politically minded people. possibly even the professional Parliamentarian, which I do not think is quite what those of us who like our particular and very odd Parliamentary system really feel they want.
EARL ST. ALDWYN: My Lords, I beg to move that this debate be now adjoured until a later hour to-day.
Moved accordingly and, on Question, Motion agreed to.

MISCELLANEOUS FINANCIAL PROVISIONS BILL
Brought from the Commons; read 1a, and to be printed.
SEA FISHERIES BILL
Brought from the Commons; read 1a, and to be printed.

PUBLICATION OF PARLIAMENTARY PROCEEDINGS
Message from the Commons to acquaint this House, That they have appointed a

From

To

The Rt. Hon. Harold Wilson

…

†Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury

1. 4.66

date

Minister for the Civil Service

1.11.68

date

The Rt. Hon. Michael Stewart

…

†Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs

1. 4.66

10. 8.66

First Secretary of State and Secretary of State for Economic Affairs

11. 8.66

28. 8.67

First Secretary of State

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14. 3.68

Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs

15. 3.68

16.10.68

Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs

17.10.68

date

The Rt. Hon. Roy Jenkins

…

†Secretary of State for the Home Department

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28.11.67

Chancellor of the Exchequer

29.11.67

date

The Rt. Hon. Lord Gardiner

…

†Lord Chancellor

1. 4.66

date

The Rt. Hon. Richard Crossman

…

†Minister of Housing and Local Government

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10. 8.66

Lord President of the Council

11. 8.66

21.10.68

Secretary of State for Social Services

22.10.68

date

Committee of three Members to join with the Committee of this House on the law of defamation and privilege in relation to the publication of proceedings in Parliament. as desired by this House.

CONSOLIDATION BILLS
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Ordered: That the evidence taken before the Joint Committee from time to time be printed, but no copies be delivered out except to Members of the Committee and to such other persons as the Committee shall think fit, until further order;
Leave be given to the Joint Committee to report from time to time.

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