House of Lords Reform

If they are elected, they will be highly democratically accountable—a point that I will come to. The other side of the coin is the weaknesses, one of which is legitimacy. The current House is unrepresentative. When the hereditaries were there, we had innumerable debates on salmon fishing, rather than on the common fisheries policy. The current composition is heavily weighted towards Oxbridge, former Members of this House and lawyers. Election would certainly help there. The other place is also heavily weighted towards older Members, if I might put it that way. A single long term of 12 years, with a composition renewable by one third every four years, would give a system that best mirrors the House’s current strengths. Such a system is most likely to deliver a House that will do the work that we require of it, and in a legitimate way that will enable it to stand up to this House to a certain extent. I turn to primacy, about which the hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden) made some points. We have to be clear what primacy actually means. The White Paper gives three criteria, the first two of which I can happily agree with. First, this House is directly elected at a general election and therefore forms the Government—I would add in parenthesis that it also supplies the Ministers—and secondly, we are in charge of the money. However, I question, at the very least, the third reason given. It is ridiculous to expect a reformed legislative House to have its views rejected as often and in as off-handed a manner as we have been wont to do. Although this House may rightfully expect to prevail on major manifesto commitments, we must expect to give way more often; otherwise, what on earth is the point of reform? So I say, primacy, yes, but supremacy, no. We want a strong Parliament, which requires a strong House of Lords. I return to the practical point of how we get from an endless debate on how to reform, to achieving that reform. There are many things that I have not attempted to address this evening, such as the size of the constituencies and the manner in which we would hold such elections; they can wait for what the Leader of the House described as the sunny uplands—if we ever get there. The practical point is that Members of the other place have a genuine self-interest in this regard. If we tell them that they are all safe and we provide for them to resign, quite a lot of them will; they will retire gracefully. If we feed in one third over a 12-year period, we will end up with a slightly smaller House—certainly a lot smaller than the one that I was in. That might be pork-belly politics, but it is a small price to pay for achieving our goals. It is unthinkable that our great democracy should continue to live in a time warp of heredity and patronage. It is time to reform. It is time to put our trust in the people, and it is time, frankly, for a stronger Parliament.