William Wallace: House of Lords has a vital role in Brexit process

THE EU (Withdrawal) Bill starts its long passage through the Lords today, to be followed later this year by a further eight or nine bills on the details and implications of leaving the EU.
Lib Dem peer William Wallace is defending the right of the House of Lords to challenge and amend Brexit legislation.Lib Dem peer William Wallace is defending the right of the House of Lords to challenge and amend Brexit legislation.
Lib Dem peer William Wallace is defending the right of the House of Lords to challenge and amend Brexit legislation.

So attacks by Conservatives and their friends in the media on the Lords as an institution have already started, for contesting the ‘will of the people’ and the supremacy of the Commons.

As the Government is challenged on the confusion of its negotiating position, and amendments are made to the current text, those attacks will sharpen; so it is time to defend the necessary constitutional role of our second chamber.

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Of course, the Lords needs further reform. It’s unelected; it’s too large. Its part-time membership, with a daily allowance that is generous for Londoners but scarcely pays for overnight accommodation, makes it too London-centred.

Nevertheless, the House of Lords plays an essential role in Britain’s half-broken constitution. The role of a second parliamentary chamber is to examine the details of policy proposals that more partisan debates in the Commons often slide past, and to insist that ministers can explain and justify their proposals in detail as well as in principle.

We also address issues that MPs and their whips often prefer not to discuss: ‘end of life’ questions, about which there are passionate differences, or the treatment of the disabled. The House as it currently exists has a fairly clear sense of its constitutional role. We are here to make the Government think again: not to block its overall proposals, but to ensure that they are carefully examined before they become law, and altered where ministers cannot explain why they are needed and what they mean.

The task of unravelling 40 years of shared regulation with our European neighbours, during which we have also shared institutions and agencies for aviation, medicines, competition policy and customs controls, is unavoidably vast. Far from the promises of how much money we would save by leaving the EU, it is also expensive, as agencies we shared with other countries have to be replaced by institutions for the UK alone.

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The civil service has already grown in the last 18 months, and will have to expand further to cope. The Prime Minister and her deeply divided government have made the transition more difficult by letting 18 months slip by without defining what future relationship with the EU they want.

The EU Withdrawal Bill reaches the Lords after Ministers had failed to answer criticisms in the Commons about some of its central clauses, and with many MPs encouraging the Lords to amend it further.

Some Conservative MPs are talking of a looming constitutional crisis, if the Lords insists on substantial changes in any of the avalanche of legislation required to implement Brexit. But that’s absurd. The Leave campaign fought the EU referendum on the principle of restoring Parliamentary sovereignty, amongst other issues. They now risk defending executive power for Ministers – ‘Henry VIII powers’, in legislative jargon – against Parliamentary criticism.

The British constitution doesn’t work very well, but, failing reform, it’s the structure we have to work within. Conservatives have always resisted reforming the Lords. Until the last limited reforms of 1999, the Conservatives held a permanent Lords majority. The House was there, they assumed, to hold back first Liberal and then Labour governments, but not to challenge the Tories. There are 40 more Conservative peers in the Lords than Labour even now, and Theresa May is about to tip the balance further with new appointments. It was explicitly agreed in 1999 that no party should have an overall majority in future, with 180 crossbenchers holding the balance.

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The current membership, former MPs and Ministers, ex-leaders of councils across the country, retired judges and diplomats, professors, doctors, business and charity leaders (yes, and party donors too) take their responsibilities seriously. Whichever way you voted in the referendum, I hope you will want us to challenge the Government to demonstrate that its proposals for Brexit are constitutional, coherent, and consistent with our long-term national interests.

William Wallace (Lord Wallace of Saltaire) is a Liberal Democrat peer. In the Coalition government he led for the government in its unsuccessful efforts to reform the Lords further, which Conservative MPs failed to support.