House of Lords Reform

No, if the hon. Gentleman will excuse me. Tomorrow night, I shall vote for a 50 per cent. elected, 50 per cent. appointed hybrid House—my personal first preference, and where I think consensus might lie— and then for a 60 per cent. and 80 per cent. elected House, as well. I shall vote against the other alternatives. As I have just mentioned, the principal reason I previously supported a wholly appointed House was that I considered that the introduction of any elected element into the Lords could, by virtue of that fact, inevitably challenge the primacy of this House, which is fundamental to our democracy. However, as I read the royal commission report, the associated research evidence and much other material, I was presented with facts about other countries’ experience that simply did not support my view of an automatic link between an elected element in the Lords and an erosion of the primacy of this place. The evidence shows instead that a country can have a powerful elected second Chamber—the United States, for example—or a weak elected second Chamber, four examples being Japan, Spain, Poland and the Czech Republic. A nation may have an appointed second Chamber with relatively limited powers, or an appointed second Chamber with relatively substantial powers. There are, in truth, no iron rules linking composition and power, except the rule that allows self-confident democracies to set their own rules—their constitutions—and to change them when they judge it right to do so. Having considered the evidence, I was struck by two other things. First, after extensive deliberation the royal commission, the Public Administration Committee and the unofficial but authoritative Breaking the Deadlock group each came down in favour of a hybrid House of part-elected, part-appointed membership—of albeit different proportions. Each of these all-party committees had thought long and hard about how a hybrid second Chamber could be established in such a way as to avoid competition with this House. They made recommendations to that end, which have greatly informed the conclusions of the Government and of the cross-party group.