MR BEVAN’S ATTACK ON LIFE PEERAGES BILL

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28513, 17 February 1958, Page 12

MR BEVAN’S ATTACK ON LIFE PEERAGES BILL

(Special Corresponaeni N Z.PA.f

(Rec. 7 p.m.) LONDON, February 15

An effective, virulent and vitriolic speech was made by Mr Aneurin Bevan in an attack on the life peerages bill in the House of Commons. His opening shot was when a Conservative, Mr William Whitelaw. was speaking and declared that he did not want to remove entirely the hereditary character of the House of Lords. “I understand that Mr Bevan breeds pigs. Is he interested in the boar? I imagine he is. If he takes an interest in the boar presumably he does so because he wants it to produce better pigs in future.” Mr Whitelaw said. Mr Bevan interjected: “I can select my boars, but I cannot select my boars in another place.” When he rose to speak, Mr Bevan said that he had been asked to remember pig breeding, but he was not quite certain what the test was to be. “In pig breeding, it is length and leanness. I am not sure whether to make our tests on biological or sociological grounds.” he said “Parade” “If we are to make them on biological grounds, we ought to have members of another place paraded before us so that we can examine them, because, after all. they have been handed down to us by accident.” The essence of prescriptive right was that one got handeddown power by accident, and members of the Lords were there by accident, he said. “It is a lot of nonsense to try to pretend that ,jn institutions of that sort one gets descendants of great eminence. One might get them, but it would be by pure accident. “Some of the most famous of history were bastards. I think Leonardo da Vinci was a bastard and he was not a bad nainter. So was Ceasar; while Shakespeare’s ancestrv is lost in the mists.” said Mr Bevan. “We ought not to try to svnport serious contentions by such ludicrous arguments.” Until recently, mankind had in-

vented only three methods of passing power from generation to generation, or from one person to another: dynasty, property and caste. “Recent Invention” A fourth, invented quite recently, was democracy, he said. “It is a comparatively new invention and that is why the Conservatives have not yet become accustomed to it—a way of transferring power by counting heads and not breaking them.” All the first three institutions were fused in the Lords which was replenished from time to time by people who were overwhelming! v Conservative in character. “The House of Lords is still recruited in the main by the same social pressures and influences as it was over six or eight centuries and its membership has remained virtually unchanged. Why do we not get rid of this atavistic survival?” Mr Bevan asked. “Why should a Labour Party and Labour Government be under its threat?” The country was now in a situation where all legislation of a Labour Government could be obstructed. Mr Bevan said. Functions Residual Mr Bevan said that as a consequence of historial attrition and the reduction of the functions of the Lords to the purely residual, it was questionable whether an institution of its size and status was reallv required to perform the functions still left to it. “I doubt very much that we would invent a second chamber today to perform those functions if one did not exist. “This is 1958. and we have to adjust our institutions accord-, insly. In modern society government intervention in economic, financial and social affairs is the accented order of the day. What we require now is to have flexible. effective ways of government interven’ion that still leave private liberty untouched. That is our problem today.” Mr Bevan described the remuneration of peers as “pelf for peers.”