Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
It’s a fairly academic, objective look. It tries to be up to date – it’s pretty up to date, with an addendum of changes that took place. It seems to me that all one needs to do if one’s interested is to understand the history of the House of Lords and to look at the issues, and then make up your own mind. And that book, I think, allows somebody to see the set-up and then think it through.
And does the Donald Shell book suggest which sort of reform would work best?
No. That is really its virtue. I think it really tries to tell you the history of it, and let people then make up their own minds. I suppose nobody ever writes any book that is completely unbiased – you can usually see a line of where you are.
His conclusion is a depressing one, which is that the House of Lords is likely to go on in its present, only partially reformed state, and that there is no appetite for reform.
It amazes me that the Labour Party hasn't made at least one real historic legislative achievement and gone for what is the only one you can get a consensus on, which is a mixed house with some elected and some not elected. But you would have to have maybe 20, 30 per cent appointed. And it would gradually move towards a fully elected chamber in the way constitutional reform takes place in Britain: crabwise movement, slowly changing.
But there’s nothing necessarily wrong with that – let constitutions evolve. I’m a natural scientist; I believe in evolution, so although I personally would vote for and would support immediately a 100 per cent elected House of Lords, realism tells me we won’t get it that way. It’ll be slowly, and I would have probably 20 or 30 per cent appointed. Personally, I think they cannot vote – I mean, I have no wish to exercise a vote, but I quite enjoy being able to speak from time to time, I don’t do that very often. I don’t consider myself part of the legislative process. In fact, I even debated whether to go into the House of Lords. I’m glad I did. Wonderful library. That’s one of the reasons I went there.
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Lord Owen was one of the founders of the British Social Democratic Party (SDP) and led the SDP from 1983 to 1987. He was British Foreign Secretary (from 1977 to 1979) and has been a controversial figure for much of his career, inspiring great devotion among close followers. He sits in the House of Lords as a crossbencher and his latest book, Time to Declare: Second Innings, is out this month. Here he tells FiveBooks that the House of Lords should be a fully elected body and that Tony Blair’s careerism is a disgrace.
