House of Lords Reform

May I make it clear at the outset of my speech that my preferred option is for us to have a 100 per cent. elected Chamber? I used to believe in the predominantly elected option, which I defined as about 80 per cent. or 70 per cent. elected, until I attended a public meeting, and having stated that I wanted that little headroom for the great and the good who would not stand for election, somebody in the audience asked me to name them, and I could not. I therefore decided that 100 per cent. was the proper proportion. However, like the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke), I am fairly certain that that will not be the outcome, and I will therefore happily accept a lower percentage of elected Members than 100 per cent. I am also on record as having said that I believe that Lords reform is a process and not an event. I believe that from the moment when elections are introduced, that will become an unstoppable process—I am in favour of that—and that we will eventually end up with an elected element of about 80 per cent. or 100 per cent. Therefore, I have a slightly different view from that of some of my colleagues, who might feel bound not to vote for a lower percentage. However, they are doing a very good job of trying to persuade me, and at the end of tomorrow night, having listened to the debate, I shall take my own counsel and decide what I should do. I also wish to make a point at the outset about hybridity. A number of Members have said that a hybrid House would be bound to fail. In response to that, I just point out that for 50 years the House of Lords was a hybrid House in that its Members included those who got there by an accident of birth and those who got there by an accident of patronage, and they co-existed perfectly happily. I believe in the good will of the men and women who will find themselves in that House, and I believe that they will be able to co-exist. It is important for those of us who believe in reform to state why we believe in that. Several Members have tonight used the old adage, ““If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it””. It is seductive to think of the House of Lords as somewhere where diligent scrutiny work is done and wonderful debates are held and to believe that it is best left alone, but to think that is to make a very great mistake, because the House of Lords is fundamentally broken. It is the lack of legitimacy, which many Members have referred to, that makes it broken. For anybody who has sat in the other place and experienced hours and hours of work in Committee—with, I have to say, greater diligence than I have ever experienced in a Committee in this place—and on Third Reading and Report, it is sad to then see that work cavalierly tossed aside by a House that has rushed in to vote with no knowledge of what they have done, which is what happens. That 90 per cent. of such work goes to waste is not a particularly good recommendation. Any second Chamber that is not composed predominantly, or wholly, of an elected element will not be considered legitimate by us, by the media or by the public. It must have such legitimacy, and that is why I reject the idea that there should be an appointed House.