LCER Briefing on Cook-Maclennan

For those of us involved in trying to influence the process which resulted in the launch of the 1997 Cook-Maclennan Report, what has happened and what needs to be done is not only interesting but helps us focus on the next tasks. In summer 2004 we issued a Third Term Cook-Maclennan II Questionnaire and below we compare the results from Labour electoral reformers with what Robin Cook says in his interview with Alex Runswick which appeared in Looking Back, Looking Forward: The Cook-Maclennan Agreement, Eight Years On (New Politics Network, 2005); and is reviewed here .

1) a democratically elected upper house

Robin Cook: “we did manage to deliver the bulk of the Cook-Maclennan report’s recommendations, Devolution, the Human Rights Act, and the Freedom of Information are now all well established. But there is unfinished business and completing the House of Lords reform is the most obvious example. Personally I just do not see how you can credibly offer a second chamber of Parliament which does not below to the public and which is not democratically elected. We had a serious stab at it in 2003 but it came apart because the House of Commons was given too many options. There were seven options to the Parliament.”

LCER: Unlike reform efforts in the Commons, there is no consensus about what shape a reformed House of Lords should take. But more than half of Labour Electoral Reform respondents preferred at least a predominately, if not a wholly, directly elected Chamber as their first choice. This puts the seemingly high figure supporting Billy Bragg’s proposals for indirect election via a secondary mandate into more of a context. The overwhelming rejection of the status quo and the Government’s limited reforms is clear in the low score for a wholly nominated Chamber.

Tony Wright MP speaking in the discussion of Lords Reform, on the weekly Radio 4 Westminster Hour, 10 pm on Sunday evenings, says that “at some point the House of Commons has to be persuaded to a way forward” in a broadly elected direction. There are many in LCER who see no reason why this House should not broadly reflect the gender, regional and national geography and ethnicity of the population as a whole.

Meg Russell, now Senior Research Fellow at the Constitution Unit, in the same programme, said that when the Commons complain that the House of Lords is not elected, they are open to the question why not make it elected. There is a Commission Report on the Lords coming forward after the General Election. Meg Russell goes on to shed light on the overlap between electoral reformers and Lords reform supporters. “There is one strand of opinion in the Labour Party that says that once a government has won power it ought to get its legislation through parliament as easily as possible unimpeded. There is another strand which is more pluralist, which thinks that there ought to be checks and balances, and is quite relaxed about the House of Lords being strong, perhaps even stronger than it is now.”

Must Politics Disappoint? by Meg Russell has just been published by the Fabian Society. Copies priced £6.95 + £1 p&p can be ordered direct from the Fabian Society: 020 7227 4900 or bookshop@fabian-society.org.uk

2) a written constitution

Robin Cook: “I am still in favour of a written constitution. It is very English, and I mean English not British, that is to say it is not particularly Scottish or Welsh, to take great pride in having a constitution but in one that is not written down. I never understood it myself. We have a constitution but it is spread across many acts of parliament, and it seems to me that there is nothing wrong and a lot to be gained by bringing them together in one coherent text. But in itself that will not change anything about the constitution. It may, however, make it more accessible and more readily understood. What is in the constitution depends on the reforms we make not on whether we put it in one document or in fifty.”

LCER: Labour electoral reformers prioritised the need to look at setting up a Commission on the Constitution and saw a written constitution as helping to create a joined up democracy. “A guide to our democracy” for schools was also supported particularly with citizenship education being taught and the ceremonies for those who have come to live in the UK, a project with which LCER’s own Bernard Crick has been pivotally involved.

3) electoral reform

Robin Cook: “In terms of my hopes for future reform: I think that the next general election will very sharply pose the question of the injustice of the electoral system. I would hope that in our third term we do get a thorough review of electoral systems of the kind we were promised. And finally, and of course not least to say: I just don’t think that it would be acceptable for a third term Labour government to leave hereditary peers in the second chamber. These two things would represent great achievements for any government.”

LCER: However there are still those in the Labour Party in the National Policy Forum, the National Executive, in trade unions and in parliament, who believe in first-past-the post for every tier of government. The Select Committee on the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister proposed stronger powers for regional assemblies but elected by the current voting system. There are those who want the replacement House of Lords elected by FPTP. There is still much work to do to ensure that Robin Cook’s hopes for the rest of their agenda and a review of voting systems point the way forward to reform. Join LCER and help make it inevitable.