The Lord Lisvane KCB DL
GEORGE BAKER (WH5)
OT Society President, Lord Lisvane (SH 63-68) has had over 40 years of parliamentary experience, including working as Clerk of the House of Commons between 2011-2014. He was made a Life Peer in 2014 and currently sits in the House of Lords as a crossbencher. After years of public service, and now free to express his opinions without restrictions, he last year ‘went viral’ for having likened opposition to a second EU referendum to forcing nervous aunties to the cinema to see Reservoir Dogs. In the aftermath of March’s ‘meaningful vote’, Politics student, George Baker (WH5) sat down with Lord Lisvane to discuss the state of British politics and the odd anecdote about his time at Tonbridge School.
Q: What is the future of the House of Lords moving forward in terms of reform? I am a member of a group called 'A Campaign for an Effective Second Chamber'. Our effort is to identify how the House needs to change in way that does not require legislation because firstly, unless it is a government initiative you’re not going to get time in any legislative programme to do anything about the House of Lords. Secondly, if you introduce a bill, the scope would be wide enough to do lots of unplanned things. Our efforts then morphed into the Burns Committee (Lord Speaker's Committee) focusing on the size of the chamber. I think people generally agree that the Lords is very effective at what it does in terms of legislative scrutiny but that it is much too big. Every journalist who writes about the Lords has a sort of module on their computers that says, "second largest chamber after the People's Assembly in China". Burns can be summed up in one sentence as "two out, one in". It does require the PM of the day to play ball. Our present PM has been more equivocal on this than she has been in relation to Brexit - saying she would not 'overdo it'. Over the last year, I think we have made a net loss of getting on for fifty. I think at the moment, we are around
790 and the aim is to get down to the size of the House of Commons. To go back to your original question, I don't see the Lords being reformed in the immediate or even the midterm. Q: Would it be fair to accuse Speaker John Bercow of overreach and of abusing his powers as Speaker of House in recent months? I think he was absolutely right to rule as he did on a potential 'Meaningful Vote Three'. There is an old rule - and I am sorry he made so much of it being 1604 because there is a sort of assumption that if things are 415 years old that somehow, they must be decrepit. Whereas the point he was making, and should have been made more strongly was that this has been a central part of House of Commons practice for centuries. The media picked up a couple of occasions when it was challenged, but of course what nobody sees apart from the practitioners are the fact that time and again, somebody goes into the table office says: "Can I put this down?", and the answer is: "No, because the House decided that in a debate six weeks ago". So it is a check on wasting the House's time, basically. So I think he was right in not allowing MV3, given there was no real change. I think there was a change from MV1 to MV2 because of the legal analysis which was bolted on. ➻
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