House of Lords Reform

Is it not one of the cardinal principles of our constitution that the Government are responsible to the electorate? They can only be responsible to the electorate through a party system. We have a system in which Members on both sides of the House are elected on different programmes, but if we churned that programme up, and then the House of Lords churned it up, at the end of the Parliament, the Government would have every right to say, ““Well, that’s the sort of constitution we have.”” There is no way that we can hold a Government to account via the electorate if we are prepared to allow party election pledges to be overturned, either here or in the other place.