By Ned Simons - 22nd June 2011
Peers lined up to trash the coalition's plans to reform the House of Lords yesterday.
Nick Clegg's bill was variously described as "palpable nonsense", "fanciful", a "conceptual mess" and a "stonkingly silly" piece of "Cleggery" that risked bringing down the monarchy.
The House of Lords is holding two days of debate on the white paper presented by the coalition last month, after which a joint committee of MPs and peers will examine the draft bill before it is introduced as legislation.
During yesterday's debate an overwhelming number of peers from all parties and none stood to savage the legislation.
Some of the harshest criticism of the draft bill came from Baroness Boothroyd, who said the it confirmed her "worst fears" about plans to reform the House of Lords.
"Never in my experience has an institution at the heart of the British constitution been marked down for destruction on such spurious grounds," she said.
"Never in all my years in public life has the bicameral role of our Parliament been so wantonly put at risk by such disregard of the nation's best interests."
The former Speaker of the House of Commons said it appeared the coalition's "sole aim" was to preserve the coalition for five years and "create 300 jobs for the boys and girls on the party lists, and send us as quietly as possible salami-style to the knackers' yard".
Many peers of were of the belief that there was no need to replace the appointed chamber with an elected one and insisted that when it came to reform the mantra should be "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".
Lord Howe of Aberavon said: "If one asks people specifically what fault they think will be corrected by the admission of elected members, one gets no real answer.
Another Conservative former chancellor, Lord Lawson of Blaby, said the plan was "thoroughly bad and wholly undesirable" and peers should agree on how to "best give it a decent burial".
Crossbencher Lord Low of Dalston said the government's proposals were "manifestly unsatisfactory" and contained "more holes than a Gruyère cheese".
Conservative Lord Dobbs reminded peers he had described the bill as "stonkingly silly" and a "dog's dinner of a white paper for a pretty scrawny mongrel".
And Conservative Lord Cormack even warned that while it may not be the intention, the passing of this bill would "isolate the monarchy" and "make it vulnerable to future Cleggery".
Labour's Lord Grocott said it was "palpable nonsense" to say an elected second chamber would not challenge the primacy of the House of Commons and lead to constitutional and legislative gridlock.
"Frankly, it is ridiculous to suggest that, somehow or other, 300 democratically elected senators would exercise the same self-control in dealing with legislation coming from the House of Commons," he said.
"It is that the absolute heart of our democracy is the House of Commons, which is elected by the people and from where the government comes.
He said: "Anything that diminishes the House of Commons diminishes our democracy."
And there were less than warm words from some Lib Dem peers. Lord Steel of Aikwood, a former leader of the Liberal Party, said the bill was "something of a dog's breakfast" and rejected the suggestion an unelected Lords was undemocratic.
"With no power over the finance of the nation, with limited scrutiny powers and only able to ask the House of Commons to think again on some issues, as we did with the previous government on civil liberty issues and as we have done in this Parliament on health matters, to suggest that this House is somehow comparable in evil with single-party elected states with military apparatus and security services is simply fanciful nonsense," he said.
And Lord Lee of Trafford said he was against the "wholly unnecessary destruction" of what he regarded as a great British institution.
He warned ministers that any attempt to use the Parliament Act to drive the Bill through for an elected House would be a "gross abuse" and stretch party loyalties to the limit.
Lord Sewel attacked the idea that having members of the newly elected House serve single 15 year terms would make Parliament more accountable to the electorate.
"The fact that you cannot be re-elected actually has the opposite effect and will make members utterly unaccountable. It is a totally conceptual mess in a constitutional conundrum," he said.
One of the few voices speaking in favour of the proposed legislation was Lord Ashdown, who said the fact peers did not have democratic legitimacy undermined their capacity to act as a check and balance on the excessive power of the government backed by an "excessive majority" in the House of Commons.
"The case is very simple to argue," he said. "In a democracy, power should derive from the ballot box and nowhere else. Our democracy is diminished because this place does not derive its power from democracy and the ballot box but from political patronage-the patronage of the powerful."
Peers returned to the House this morning to continue the debate and the draft bill is expected to get an equally harsh savaging.
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