Thursday 9th February 2012 | 06:00

Baroness Royall: Extracts of speech to Centre for Opposition Studies

Extracts from Baroness Royall's speech to the Centre for Opposition Studies

1. On the impact of Coalition government in the Lords, Baroness Royall will say:

“Had the Conservative party won the 2010 general election, the balance in the House of Lords would have meant that a Conservative government, post the election, would have, as we did, succeeded only by persuasion, by argument, rather than by brute numbers.

“Not so now.  The coalition government now has a greater prospect of getting its legislation through Parliament, and especially through the House of Lords, than the Conservative Party would have done had it clearly won the election. 

“The paradox is that the coalition, formed out of political expediency and without the approval of the British people at an election, is more able to ram things through the Lords than it would have been had the component parties of the coalition been more electorally successful at the ballot box.

“Far from the position of broad balance in the Lords brought about by Labour, the coalition is now dominant in the Lords.  Taken together, the coalition now outguns Labour.  Looking at total numbers, there are now 309 coalition peers in the Lords, against 239 for Labour – giving the coalition 39.3 per cent of the total votes in the House, as against 30.4 per cent for Labour. 

“Looked at among the political votes alone, excluding the crossbenchers, bishops and others, the coalition has 56.4 per cent of the votes, against Labour’s 43.6 per cent – a political majority currently of 70 for the coalition.”

2. On Government response to defeats in the Lords, Baroness Royall will say:

“Legislation in the Lords has not gone smoothly for the coalition, with significant government defeats being marked by political muttering – sometimes in private, sometimes in public – that this kind of behaviour would be replied to by bringing in extra peers to boost the government’s voting strengths.

“That does seem to be what we are currently facing.  The lists of appointed political peers since the coalition came to power, which saw the introduction of a total of 43 Conservative peers, 24 Liberal Democrat peers (that is, 67 in all for the coalition) against 37 Labour peers.

“A new list is certainly on the way, and the Westminster rumour mill has it at a further 60 new peers – 40 more for the Conservatives, 15 for the Liberal Democrats and five for Labour. 

“The final numbers may be lower than this, but based on these figures, the coalition’s already-dominant strength in the Lords would be substantially boosted – up from a total of 309 peers, with 56.4 per cent of the political vote, with Labour on 239 peers, or 43.6 per cent of the vote, to a total of 364 coalition peers, with 59.9 per cent of the political vote, as compared to 244 Labour peers, or 40.1 per cent of the political vote.  Crucially, the coalition’s majority among the political vote would rise from 70 to a whopping 120.

“This looks like packing the House - because it is packing the House.  Having loaded the dice, the coalition is now intent on creating a completely stacked deck. The purpose, though, is not solely to swamp the Opposition, so severely limiting the constitutional role of the House of Lords to scrutinise and revise legislation, though it certainly does do that.

“It would also clearly have the effect of reducing the likelihood of the Government making concessions on legislation in the face of likely defeat in the Lords. The purpose is to negate almost totally the impact of the independent crossbench peers by having so many coalition peers available to vote that the crossbenches, on anything like their usual attendance and turnout, would be simply occluded in the division lobbies, in effect thrusting aside the very often acute, informed, intelligent and coherent arguments they had been making in the chamber on the Government’s legislation.

“Beating your opponents in the Lords by argument is one thing, and one thing the Government have often been unsuccessful in doing.  But beating your opponents by unfairly boosting the strength of your own side is a very different thing indeed, and in effect amounts to political gerrymandering of the worst kind.

“What the Government is seeking to do here is to change the fundamental constitutional role of the House of Lords.  Instead of it being a scrutinising and revising chamber, holding the government of the day to account – the very role described by the Government in its White Paper on further reform of the Lords – the coalition is seeking to return the House of Lords to the rubber-stamp role it used to have in the days of Conservative dominance."