AND ANOTHER THING
How to settle the Scots, the Welsh and the Lords in one senatorial stroke
PAUL JOHNSON
The Labour Party has now been in exis- tence almost a century and has formed five governments. All have been failures and all for the same reasons: an unrealistic approach to the handling of public finance and a failure to contain spending. At long last Labour seems to have learned these lessons. When, as I hope, it forms its sixth government later this year, it will, right from the start, keep expenditure under the strictest control and nurture the economy with all the cautious pessimism hitherto practised by Conservatives alone. Unfortu- nately, having at last corrected its cardinal fault, Labour's sixth experiment in govern- ment seems likely to fall headlong, wholly through its own choice, into an entirely dif- ferent pit — constitutional reform.
This is very hard on Tony Blair who, left to himself, would leave the Constitution exactly as it is. No government in its senses tackles the Constitution if it has something better to do, and Blair has plenty. But he inherited a party which, for many years, held a minority of seats in England and a large majority in Scotland and Wales. Dur- ing this period, Labour drifted into a bind- ing commitment to give the Scots and Welsh their own extra tiers of government. Now Labour is within weeks of winning a majority of English seats again but finds itself stuck with the pledge. To make mat- ters worse, Blair is also saddled with a hor- ribly unsatisfactory plan to reform the House of Lords by excluding hereditary peers and filling their places with govern- ment-appointed ones.
Which of these two measures is more reprehensible it would be hard to say. As Dr Johnson remarked, 'There is no settling the point of precedency between a louse and a flea.' But one thing is clear: both these legislative vermin will occupy an unconscionable amount of parliamentary time and government energy. They will be attended by all kinds of political and legal pitfalls as yet wholly unforeseen, as well as the countless ones which can already be predicted, and will provide an endless pro- cession of field days for all the Constitu- tion-nutter MPs, of whom there are plenty on all sides of the House. As a result, noth- ing else of substance will be done for an entire parliament.
If Labour people don't believe me, let them study the difficulty the masterful Mr Gladstone, with a huge majority, experi- enced in getting through the 1880 parlia- ment the mere procedural change required to allow an atheist MP to take the oath. Tony Blair would be mad to take on two such burdens, which have absolutely noth- ing to do with his main political aims. Indeed, it would make sense for him to say, here and now, 'I will not do it.'
However, I have a proposal which might help him to escape from his dilemma. It would solve the problems both of Scottish and Welsh devolution and of House of Lords reform at one and the same time and, by way of a bonus, actually improve the machinery of parliamentary govern- ment. Neither the Welsh, nor even the Scots, are all that enthusiastic about having their own parliament, and would be content with something a good deal less elaborate and expensive, provided it effectively amplified their voice in government. As for the Lords 'reform', no one at all wants the change proposed, other than those who hope personally to benefit from it. There is little to be said for hereditary peers, but even less for those appointed by prime min- isterial patronage. Everyone knows that life peerages are mostly bought and paid for, either in money or in grovelling and similar disgusting services. And what makes the process even worse is that it is not done openly but furtively and with infinite hum- bug. The idea of the entire Upper House being selected in this fashion makes one's stomach turn.
What I propose instead is to scrap the idea of devolved parliaments, and abolish the House of Lords entirely, replacing both with an elective senate formed on a region- al basis, and invested with real powers of a distinctive kind. When the Americans drew up their Constitution in the 1780s they bal- anced the House of Representatives, cho- sen like our own Commons by head-count- `With our examination board, failing is harder than passing.' ing in order to give it primary responsibility for raising revenue, by a Senate, in which each of the states got two members irre- spective of their population. This has proved, over 200 years, an outstandingly workable device, preventing even the small- est state from being marginalised and giv- ing all the regions powerful voices. We should do the same here, electing senators by pairs, for eight years, on a separate vote, and allocating seats to regional unities which would both satisfy strong local feel- ing and, in the case of Scotland, Wales and Ulster, national identity. Of the 100 seats, England would have a majority, but not a large one, and the other three components in the United Kingdom would be able, by their senatorial numbers, to feel that both their dignity and their need for real power had been recognised. Naturally, such an Upper House would have genuine authority, justified by the huge constituencies of its members. Its powers would be threefold. First, it would have a special responsibility for all matters affecting the regions and the Constitution. There would be no question, ever again, of parliament short-changing the Scots, the Welsh or the Ulstermen (or, for that mat- ter, the North of England). Second, and linked to this, the approval of the Upper House would be required for any treaty signed by the British government. We would never have got into the mess over the Single European Act or Maastricht if we had possessed this constitutional proce- dure for vetting. Thirdly, and again in line with the power enjoyed by the US Senate, the Upper House would have the duty of `advising and consenting' to all the most senior of the thousands of appointments which, at present, are made entirely at the whim of ministers, and especially the prime minister. A British Senate, strongly rooted in the people and the regions, would be a reassuring counterbalance to the rashness, ideological bias, corruption, misjudgments and follies of government. I would like to see Tony Blair, once in No. 10, put such a proposal forward in the form of a Green Paper, making it clear that constitutional reform — whatever shape it eventually takes — must therefore be deferred to the second half of the parlia- ment. In the meantime he can get on with doing what he wants to do, and we want him to do, making Britain a more civilised place in which to live.
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