House of Lords Reform

The hon. Gentleman makes two points. The first is that we do not have written down the fact that it is to this House that the Prime Minister has to come to gain a vote of confidence. In our view, we should. That is why some of us have argued for a written constitution for many years. We are moving in that direction by virtue of the fact that we had the Joint Committee on Conventions, which agreed certain things, including the fact that the Parliament Acts could be used, but only to enable the second House to delay things for a year and to act within certain limits. That is now written down. It was agreed. Everybody—the Conservative party, the Labour party, our party and the independents—signed up to that. It has been confirmed by this place. We took note, with approval, of that report just a few weeks ago.