Democratic deficit

Lord Morgan: ‘We should have the popular will asserted in our constitution, in the choice of candidates, in primaries, in the power of recall’

Sherlock Holmes famously referred to the dog that did not bark. The dog that did not give much of a bark in the Queen’s speech was constitutional reform.

By general account, the government have participated in winding up the old British constitution based on parliament and a central executive headed by a prime minister who rules through majority power. The old revered constitution of Bagehot and Dicey has gone. Big Ben chimes out over the debris. We now have a hollowed-out constitution in which parliament is restricted externally by the EU and internally by devolution, the power of judicial review and referendums. There are fundamental laws that parliament cannot repeal. The cabinet has become almost a dignified, not an efficient, part of the constitution. Elected ministers are being replaced by myriad non-elected regulatory agencies. The noble Lord, Lord Patten, spoke fascinatingly about the alphabet soup that has resulted.

The state seems at the same time both much weaker and much stronger, with more power agglomerated by central government. The system seems more democratic in an era of devolution. At the same time, it is seen as much more remote by the people, who - as we heard from the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor - show almost a contempt for parliament that goes far beyond bath plugs and duck houses, whatever they may be. There is a crisis and yet the dog did not give much of a yelp.

In some ways, where we are is very much to the government's credit. They have asked fundamental questions. They have passed very important reforms that should be taken further. With regard to the House of Lords, they have of course made very significant changes. I was in the small minority - the late and much lamented Lord Williams of Mostyn was in it as well - who voted for an all-elected House. I was confirmed in that view by reading the remarks last week by the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, who sounded as if he was actually opposing Lloyd George's People's Budget, and he seemed to have turned, as it were, into Mr Cameron's poodle. On the other hand, I agree that it is pointless that the House of Lords should become simply a clone of the House of Commons. We could avoid that with a proper electoral arrangement.

The Human Rights Act is a great civilising breakthrough and one would like to see the government observe it less reluctantly and more robustly and be proud of it. They should also engage with the European Charter of Fundamental Rights, from which we have opted out.

We have the great achievement of devolution in Scotland and Wales. That should be taken further. In particular, we now have the Jones Parry report proposing that the Welsh Assembly be given the powers of law-making possessed by Scotland. I would be grateful if the noble - though apparently not gallant - minister could demonstrate his knowledge of Welsh matters when he deals with the Jones Parry report. All these things are considerable improvements on what went before and the government should be commended for them. Other things are less to their credit. Gordon Brown began as prime minister with a powerful statement on constitutional reform but in fact the approach has been fragmentary and incoherent. I served on the joint committee that considered the previous Constitutional Renewal Bill and it just seemed to us a very miscellaneous measure dealing with all sorts of matters, from demonstrations in Parliament Square to the right to make war. Of the proposals that were valuable, some, such as the war powers and the role of the attorney general, have disappeared from the new bill. The new bill does not seem to be up to meeting the challenge that is required. There are of course some valuable pieces, on the civil service and the approval of treaties, but in the famous phrase of Sir Winston Churchill, ‘This pudding has no theme’.

There are no obvious central arguments and what is left is what one academic has recently called a state of ‘constitutional anomie’ in which the government contradict themselves. They have concentrated on the dispersal of power and yet they have at the same time ratcheted up power with controls imposed over civil liberties in ways that we have heard, in relation to DNA and other matters, which seem to be very much at variance with what we heard earlier about Tom Paine and John Stuart Mill.

Our democracy, I believe, is in acute crisis. People are losing faith in it. Specifically, what we should do, in my view, is to relate constitutional reform not to the internal, circumscribed political class but to the people. There is an enormous democratic deficit. Ironically, there is a deficit in Europe. I strongly support our membership of the European Union, but the democratic deficit there was shown almost to an absurd degree by the recent appointment of a president. In an earlier era, critics of Europe such as Michael Foot claimed that the British system was more open, better and more democratic - well, perhaps not any more. It needs to be democratised. The Commons as well as the Lords should be democratised. We should have the popular will asserted in our constitution, in the choice of candidates, in primaries, in the power of recall of inadequate Members of Parliament and in more frequent recourse to the popular will.

Proportional representation is advocated by many but I think that too much can be attributed to it. Too much can be claimed. However, I regret the fact that the Queen’s speech did not refer at all to proportional representation at a time of such widespread public disaffection. It should have seized the initiative. However, I enormously welcome the views that I read the other week in Progress by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, who seems to be a wonderfully innovative minister in so many cases. He argued the case for elected mayors and for the need to decentralise and open up the system. I quite agreed with what the noble Lord said about Ken Livingstone having been a considerable pioneer in this respect.

Britain does not embody popular sovereignty; we have a very limited sense of citizenship compared with other countries. We are subjects of the Crown. We still have the tattered vestiges of the royal prerogative. I well acknowledge that having a formal written constitution would absorb a huge amount of time. What we should do, I think, is be incremental and build on existing legislation.

Finally, I hope that the Labour party will take the initiative in these matters, as it should - with the support, I trust, of the Liberal Democrats, despite the rather right-wing observations from their leader over the weekend. The Labour party was built on the idea of democratic socialism. For people such as Keir Hardie, the democracy was quite as important as the socialism. The main party opposite has resisted every change. It is an unsatisfactory instrument for reform, with a paranoia over Europe. I think that building a healthy people's democracy depends on the power of progressives.

This article is taken from a speech given by Lord Morgan in the House of Lords on the 23 November 2009

Lord Morgan

24 Nov 2009 14:09

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Comments

• Posted by John Morton on 24 November 2009, 4:27:30 PM We just had the biggest constitutional reform in this nations entire history, it's called the Lisbon Treaty. What more do you people want to screw up before you get kicked out of power?
• Posted by Tom Miller on 25 November 2009, 1:56:18 AM Fundamentally though, the author is a member of the least democratic organ of our constitution...
• Posted by Barry Davies on 27 November 2009, 3:08:55 PM The word democracy is soon to be made illegal, because the european unions constitution which was renamed the lisbon treaty, and has illegally been imposed, the current democratically deficient eu commission has no mandate to govern, that ran out on 31/10/09, and this foul piece of legislation came from them, so it died legally on 31/10/09, but no matter our unelected foreign governors will just ignore the law and impose it on the majority who don't want to be a part of a federal state of europe, or as it will soon be known the civil war of europe.