House of Lords Reform

Alas, my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) and I, both ardent reformers, found that we had other engagements that took us out of the country. The 80 per cent. option was defeated by three votes on the last occasion, so if my right hon. Friend and I been able to break our unbreakable engagements, and if we had been in the House and voted as we should have done, it would have been defeated by only one vote. I assure the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) that I will be here tomorrow to do penance for my absence on the last occasion. Let me address a key argument that inspires an extraordinary amount of resistance to what I regard as a fairly self-evidently necessary reform. We are in the 21st century, and if any new state proposed a new constitution, and suggested having an upper House that took the same form as ours, it would be regarded as utterly ridiculous. We are talking about legislators. We are all legislators, and we are servants of the people, by whom we are elected. No one should be a legislator because they inherited or bought the post. No one should become a legislator for life as a young man, and never have to account for their actions. No one should be a legislator because they are a member of the great and the good, and a leading figure of the establishment, having been appointed by a committee composed of other distinguished members of the establishment. The argument against the 1832 reform of the House of Commons was that the wrong sort of people would be elected, and distinguished experts would no longer find a place. I am glad to say that the wrong sort of people have consistently been elected to the House ever since; that is called parliamentary democracy. We have legitimacy because of our debt to the people and because of what we said when we were elected. That enables us to exercise powers that we could not otherwise use. Let me address the question of whether we are somehow weakening the Commons, or aiding the Government by giving them a more powerful House upstairs, while down here, an emasculated Commons is adversely affected by the competition in the Lords. I do not believe that that is the case. As the Leader of the House said, it is not a zero-sum game. The powers of the House of Commons are not dependent on, or made greater or less by, our ““sharing”” them in some way with the upper House. The issue of the powers of the Commons needs to be addressed, and reform of the House of Lords should not be regarded as the alternative to the necessary reform of this place, which should be made more effective in holding the Government to account in the modern world.