It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for South Thanet (Laura Sandys). I agree that reform and an elected House of Lords are essential. It is a basic principle of democracy that those who legislate for everybody else are voted for by the other citizens of the country.
Whatever their positions on the Bill, hon. Members on both sides of the House agree that the House of Lords should complement and not duplicate the House of Commons in both its function and its make-up. Unfortunately, the Bill is weak on both counts. Clause 2 is inadequate in setting out the functions of the reformed House. I agree with the letter written by my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) to the Deputy Prime Minister. We must see a new draft of clause 2 early in the passage of the Bill. We cannot be expected to agree to a measure if we do not know what the functions will be until some distant time in future, after the Bill has been to the Lords.
Furthermore, the Bill reveals one of the weaknesses of our unwritten constitution. It would be helpful if Ministers considered not only how to preserve the primacy of the Commons but what special responsibilities
the other House should have. At one point, giving the other House special responsibility for human rights was considered.
On the make-up of the second House, many noble Lords are going around saying that the Lords is more reflective of the population than the Commons. That is not true. Only a fifth of Members of both Houses are women and 5% or fewer are from ethnic minorities. However, more than 96% of Members of the other House are over 50. The Government’s proposals in the Bill are extremely weak on that. The proposed 15-year terms are weak not just on accountability; they will add to that age bias.
The objective is surely to widen involvement in our political institutions—[Interruption.]