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Business of the House

Contrary to a nonsensical press notice from Conservative central office, which stated that half of the 30 Bills promised in last year’s Queen’s Speech have been scrapped, delayed and so on, we have a good record of getting almost all the Bills through. The Conservative party is complaining that Bills have been changed, but I am proud that they have been because it shows that Parliament—both this Chamber and the other place—is doing its job of revising the measures that the Government put before it. As for the proposals for reform of the second Chamber, the right hon. Gentleman knows that it has fallen to my party already to have made greater reforms than have been effected since 1958, with the end of the automatic right of hereditaries to sit and vote in the House of Lords and the establishment of a situation in which no one party has an automatic majority in that House. I am engaged in active consultation with the other two main political parties, the bishops and the Cross Benchers in an effort to secure a consensus on the next stages.