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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Okay, well let’s get back to House of Lords reform and joining me to also discuss that we’re joined from Edinburgh by former Labour Minister, now Lord Foulkes and here in the studio by former Lib Dem Treasury spokesman Lord Oakeshott and constitutional expert and cross bench peer and author of Distilling the Frenzy, Lord Hennessy. So a triumvirate of Lords there and we’ll start with you, Lord Oakeshott. This is something that is the Lib Dems isn’t it, it’s you lot that’s keenest on this.

LORD OAKESHOTT: Well we might be keenest on it but it is, as my coalition colleague Michael Fallon, has just said coalition policy. As we came in I said to him there is not going to be a cigarette paper between us on this one, you know, Michael and he said, well that would be a first. Well I am actually going to prove you wrong, I think you put the case exceptionally well for what we’re doing this week. It is coalition policy, the concerns and perfectly reasonable concerns of MPs, not just of the Conservative side, about whether new elected peers would be treading on their toes, I thought you put that very fairly and I agree with every word you said, Michael.

DM: My goodness me! Well let’s see if we can have all of you agreeing. Lord Foulkes from Labour, something that was talked about a long time before you were in power, while you were in power and still is being discussed now. Is this something you can support from what you’ve heard so far from Michael Fallon?

LORD FOULKES: Well if we are going to have a second chamber in our legislature, and that is something that is still open for discussion, then you have to decide what its function is. Is it going to be, as at present, a revising chamber or is it going to have some real powers? What we’ve got from Nick Clegg and the coalition is a dog’s breakfast. We’ve got a list system of election which means the leadership will decide just as they decide who should go in the House of Lords now. We then have got 20% who are not elected so we will have non-elected people who will still hold the balance of power and the elected members will not come up for re-election so there is no accountability which is an essential part of democracy. So we’ve got a real dog’s breakfast and of course, the interesting thing is we’ve suggested and we will demand that anything that comes out of parliament is put to a referendum of the people and I hope Matthew Oakeshott and Peter Hennessy will agree as the committee, the joint committee of the House of Lords and the House of Commons agreed, it should go to a referendum of the people.

DM: Okay, I’ll put that, the referendum, to the two of them in a moment or two but I want to bring in Lord Hennessy because really raised there by Lord Foulkes, do we actually need House of Lords reform or does the constitution as it is currently formed or as people understand it, does it muddle along quite nicely?

LORD HENNESSY: I’m a believer in organic reform. There are certain things that we need to do, there’s been a planning blight on Lords reform since 1999 when the bulk of the hereditaries, with everybody waiting for the big bang. As a result a whole range of organic reforms have been neglected and I think that by 2015, on a very, very consensual basis, we could put most of them through. For example, completing Lloyd George’s work, which would please the Liberal Democrats, ending the hereditary by-elections so that the hereditary peers disappeared gradually. Only the British in our genius for constitutional arrangements could have come up with something whereby the only elected people in the House of Lords are the 92 hereditaries, it’s wonderful. Also you end the link between a peerage and an honour, you end people who have got serious criminal convictions from coming back in and you get the numbers down with a proper retirement scheme and you make better use of the expert knowledge there with a few more overarching select committees.

DM: But does it need a big bang, as Peter Hennessy says…

LORD HENNESSY: I’m not a big bang man.

DM: I know but you can tinker at the margins as has been done for so many decades and you end up with something that’s quite a lot better.

LORD OAKESHOTT: Well it is completely illegitimate and wrong at the moment, let’s get that quite clear. Let me say to George Foulkes, it’s amazing how you get these radical socialist firebrands and the moment they arrive in the House of Lords, there must be something in the air and water, suddenly they are bigger defenders of the status quo even than hereditary peers. I mean Peter, you are talking about letting hereditaries die off, one or two a year. I mean it is completely and utterly wrong, why should someone sit in our Houses of Parliament and vote on our laws because their great-great-grandparent went boozing with King George or bonking King Charles? It is just utterly wrong, utterly outrageous, it’s in all three party manifestos that we’re going to have work done on the second chamber and we need to get on with it.

DM: The monarchy works on that basis …

LORD HENNESSY: I think we could put that to one side!

LORD OAKESHOTT: The monarchy doesn’t have a vote and also appointed peers, party peers is a deeply corrupt system as well, there are far too many people as I look round there who bunged a million to Mrs Thatcher or bunged a million to Tony Blair, it’s completely wrong, completely wrong.

LORD HENNESSY: I came in through an appointments commission. I put in a form to apply.

LORD OAKESHOTT: What George Foulkes doesn’t like to remember but the Labour manifesto was in favour, was in favour actually of openless systems, further democratic reform, all three parties said it and this argument that because we’re got an economic crisis we can’t sort out our democracy is nonsense. Of course the economic crisis is the most important thing but we can’t spend all day and every day talking about it.

DM: Well let’s bring back the former Socialist firebrand who has now taken the shilling.

LORD FOULKES: Matthew, I never used that argument, I never used the argument that there was an economic crisis. What I said was is we want reform of the House of Lords, if we want elections, it should be 100%. We can’t have 20% nominated, holding the balance of power, making the decisions in the House of Lords, that’s no change from the present and we should also put it to a referendum, that’s included in our manifesto. Now Matthew, will you be radical and agree first of all that if it is going to be elected it should be 100% and secondly, it should go to a referendum of the people, just as we did for Scottish devolution, for mayors, for Europe and for the AV voting system for the House of Commons? Are you in favour of a referendum, Matthew?

DM: Oh maybe the radicalism hasn’t died out in the House of Lords. Lord Oakeshott, two specific questions, 100% elected and a referendum on it?

LORD OAKESHOTT: I don’t mind much whether it is 100% or 80% elected because the 20%, if there are 20%, will not be party peers, they will be independent, they are not going to be voting as a block so you will have, it will be legitimate whether you have 80 or 100 and on a referendum, no frankly.

LORD FOULKES: No, no… why not, why not?

LORD OAKESHOTT: It was in the Labour manifesto, I agree, but it wasn’t in the other two parties and we won. Frankly I’ve had enough of referenda and I actually personally agree with Clem Atlee and Margaret Thatcher, it’s a device of demagogues and dictators. It’s in the manifestos, let’s get on with it.

MICHAEL FALLON: This isn’t big bang, I mean the Lords won’t have any more powers than they have at the moment, that’s the key point. The Commons will still be the main chamber. On the referendum, you need a referendum, of course it’s essential if you are taking powers away from the Commons or if you are changing the franchise of the Commons, it is quite reasonable to consult the electorate on that but here is an issue where all three parties were committed to a reformed House of Lords and I don't think it’s fair to spend £100 million on a referendum for an issue where the electorate was already clear that all three parties wanted reform. I think there are many better things to spend £100 million on.

LORD HENNESSY:I am actually for a referendum, I think there should be a referendum because it is a very profound change.

MICHAEL FALLON: Is it?

LORD HENNESSY: The constitutional select committee of the House of Lords said if you are going to abolish a chamber of parliament that you needed a referendum. Now you can argue whether it is abolition, I think the coalition’s plans are for abolition and the gradual replacement in the hole left by the old House of Lords with an entirely new chamber so I’m a referendum man but the practical point is the one I’d like to make, Dermot, the reason why I believe in a better version of yesterday which is Ralph [inaudible] kind description of the SDP is a practical argument, that it is good to have somewhere in the legislative cycle a group of people who are there primarily because they know things rather than they believe things and this isn’t just the cross benchers who are my chums with whom I sit, it is the people on the party benches who wouldn’t come in in their 30s until they had cracked a profession, they wouldn’t consider coming in. Doctors like Ian McColl on your side, Lord Alderdyce on yours, a tremendously impressive medical man too, David Putnam, Melvin Bragg, you get people on the party benches as well as on the cross benches who are there primarily because they know things and have done things rather than because they believe things.

LORD OAKESHOTT: You’ve actually got that wrong. John Alderdyce stood for parliament, I stood for parliament, that doesn’t arise.

LORD HENNESSY: But many people wouldn’t have done.

DM: Just on that, you lose that kind of element of expertise from other fields, you end up with too narrow a gene pool.

LORD FOULKES: That’s what we’re saying, that’s what I said at the start. You have to decide what kind of second chamber you want. If you want a revising second chamber we can have it as at present, improved as Peter Hennessy suggested but if you want it to be part of the legislature with real powers then you obviously have to have a codified constitution, 100% elected and you have to put it to a referendum of the people.

DM: I am terribly sorry, gentlemen, three Lords and one commoner here, I have to close it down so our thanks to Lord Foulkes, Matthew Oakeshott, Lord Hennessy and Michael Fallon, thank you all very much indeed for discussing and continuing to discuss I know House of Lords reform.