A double-edged sword

Whilst agreeing that fusing a measure to provide for a voting system referendum with one to reduce and redefine constituencies is ill-judged, Lord Steel of Aikwood says filibustering on the bill risks a guillotine precedent that would cut down the Lords’ ability to scrutinise legislation.

Last week’s shenanigans in the House of Lords have been greeted with gentle amusement in the press. Peers on camp beds, special breakfasts, free toothbrushes, entertainment, have all been trawled over with glee. Yet there is nothing funny about what happened.

At one point both Lord McNally on the government front bench and Lord Falconer on the opposition front bench appeared to be contemplating the same danger – namely that continued frustration of government business could lead to an end to our self-regulation and the introduction of the dreaded guillotine. It would indeed be an irony if what happened under the last Labour government to the House of Commons, resulting in large parts of bills coming up to us unexamined, were to happen to the House of Lords as a result of Labour opposition filibustering.

Now, of course every filibusterer (as I recall from my own long-past activities) will state with wide-eyed innocence that they were simply engaging in proper scrutiny; but what we have witnessed are the delaying tactics of oppositions in the Commons being brought into the Lords, and this threatens to wreck our quite different atmosphere (the people most angry are the crossbenchers).

The protestations that Labour peers have simply been spontaneous, diligent seekers after truth and enlightenment, were somewhat destroyed by the discovery of a paper carelessly left in a ladies’ lavatory issued by the Opposition Whips’ Office, setting out a detailed speaking grid for each amendment and inviting others to add their names.

Demonstrating my objectivity on all of this, I recall my last appearance on this page in September when I wrote about the unseemly haste of the coalition agreement, and I fear that the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill is a symptom of that.

Longer consideration, recalling the ill-fated Scotland and Wales Bill in the 1970s, might have revealed the poor judgment in putting two completely different subjects (one dear to the Lib Dems and the other dear to the Tories) into the one bill.I have the disadvantage of writing this before the week is out, but we are where we are, and the bill had come to us with a clear majority from the Commons.

Our proper duty therefore was to examine the bill in detail, not to try to undo the entire legislation, still less to try to unsettle the coalition.

In the end some deal will have to be struck, and that seems likely to centre around easing the five per cent variation in size allowed to the Boundary Commission, either generally or in special geographical circumstances. (The big revolt led by Norman Fowler on Wednesday evening on the Isle of Wight case demonstrates to the government that peers have not abandoned individual judgment on the merits of arguments deployed in the chamber.) Indeed, it remains a mystery to me that so many Members in the Commons have collectively signed their own death warrants, and I suspect they look anxiously to the Lords to remedy some of the rigidity of the bill’s provisions.

Lord Steel is a Liberal Democrat peer and was leader of the Liberal Party 1976-88.

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