My hon. Friend is absolutely right: 15 years non-renewable hardly leads to accountability.
A key absence from the Bill is that there will be no referendum. The Government have opted to impose their proposals on the public, rather than trust the people with a vote on House of Lords reform. We think that is an error, and it runs contrary to the growing tradition that major constitutional change should be put to the people in a referendum.
It is not only Labour that calls for a referendum. The Joint Committee also unanimously called for a referendum:
“The Committee recommends that, in view of the significance of the constitutional change brought forward for an elected House of Lords, the Government should submit the decision to a referendum.”
This Bill is much weaker as a result of the Government refusing to include a referendum.
We heard a number of defences of that position from the Deputy Prime Minister. He said a referendum was not needed because proposals to reform the House of Lords were in all three main parties’ manifestos. The manifestos said very different things, however. While Labour and the Lib Dems called for a wholly elected second Chamber—albeit Labour wanted a referendum as well—the Conservatives sought only to find consensus. It is not simply semantics to argue that the Conservatives never actually gave a commitment to reform the House of Lords; they gave a process commitment to seek dialogue to find common ground.