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Friday 4 July 2008

A chance for the Lords to justify their existence

The EU’s Lisbon Treaty was handled scandalously in the Commons, says Daniel Hannan. Now the Upper House has the chance to play its ancestral role as the conscience of the nation

Some of the new appointees are conscientious and independent, of course. But many have spent a lifetime swimming in the ocean of public subsidy. They sit on committees. They draw up strategy papers. They liaise with stakeholders. They spend a surprising amount of time on the Eurostar to Brussels. And their first instinct, faced with almost any problem, is to firehose money at it.

As a consequence, independent-minded people are less likely to want ‘a K or a big P’ these days. The cash-for-honours affair has, alas, splattered the ermine of even the most guiltless peers. Accepting a title nowadays carries something close to stigma. The louder they talk of their honours, the faster we count our spoons.

As the red benches fill with placemen, the chamber becomes an extension of the party system. If you think I’m being unfair, watch how peers vote next month on the proposal for a referendum on the European constitution (now called the Lisbon Treaty).

The European Union (Amendment) Bill is about as clear a case as you could ask for of where a second chamber ought to assert itself. It was guillotined in the House of Commons, in defiance of the convention that constitutional Bills should never be subjected to time limitation orders. The late publication of an English text meant that not a single MP could have read the draft from cover to cover before voting. And there is no question that the public wants a referendum. Ten constituencies were allowed to vote in sample plebiscites organised by ‘I Want a Referendum’. Eighty-eight per cent of voters in these seats, on a higher turnout than for local or European elections, voted in favour of a national poll.

Bagehot, Dicey and Erskine May would surely agree that here is a textbook example of where the Upper House ought to ask the Lower to think again. For six decades, the House of Lords has operated under the Salisbury convention, whereby it does not seek to frustrate manifesto measures. But the Salisbury convention cuts both ways: when something was promised by the governing party — indeed, by all three parties: 638 out of 646 MPs — there is surely an obligation on the Lords to uphold the promises that others have broken; an argument first advanced by this magazine. Doing so would quell the doubts of all those who are uncomfortable with the clientism inherent in the current dispensation, magnificently vindicating the Lords’ existence.

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