House of Lords Reform

It is 98 years sincere a wholly hereditary House of Lords plunged the nation into one of its worst ever constitutional crises as it vetoed the right of a democratically elected Government to set a Budget. It took two general elections in a single year and the Parliament Act 1911 to resolve the crisis. In 1999 the House of Lords underwent the most significant reform since the 1911 Act, with the removal of the vast majority of hereditary peers and the establishment of a second Chamber in which no single party should command an overall majority. Those changes have produced a more independent and active House of Lords. It has been a major advance, but as a reform it is far from complete. Those who believe that the United Kingdom should have a unicameral Parliament will have the opportunity to express that view in the votes tomorrow night. It is not a view that I support. Strong government must be balanced by a strong Parliament, and that means, among many other things, an effective, revising second Chamber, subordinate to but complementary to the House of Commons. Almost all countries the size of ours or larger have bicameral Parliaments, because of the weight and complexity of the business before them. This House already sits for longer and for more days than most comparable legislatures. If it were serious about doing the work of two Houses combined, it would mean—besides many other things—much shorter recesses, no light Thursdays and many fewer constituency Fridays. I suggest to Members on both sides of the House that that is a sure-fire recipe for detaching Members of Parliament from their voters. My preference, and that of the main Opposition parties, is for a reformed House of Lords containing a substantial proportion of elected Members alongside appointed Members with special expertise and experience. I believe that by such means we can create a more representative, effective and legitimate second Chamber without challenging the primacy of this House. Despite the 1999 reforms and other changes to the House of Lords since 1911, such as the introduction of women Members and life peers, this House has so far found it impossible to reach a substantive conclusion on the most appropriate membership and framework for a reformed second Chamber. There are those who say, even now, that what we need to do is pause and reflect ““maturely”” on the next step. I rather think that 98 years is long enough for such reflection. We have not been short of debate over the past 98 years, just results. All-party talks in the late 1940s fell away. All-party talks in the late 1960s were thwarted first by a Lords decision to block sanctions against what was then Southern Rhodesia and is now Zimbabwe, and following that by an extraordinary alliance—a kind of Faustian pact—between the late Enoch Powell and Michael Foot. More recently, after a royal commission with a distinguished membership had presented a thorough and wide-ranging report in 2000, and after a White Paper in 2001 and a comprehensive inquiry by the Public Administration Committee and a Joint Committee of the Commons and Lords in 2002, the House in early February 2003 managed to vote down every possibility for reform, from doing nothing to having an all-elected House and every alternative in between. It was not a good day for the reputation of this House or of Parliament.