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House of Lords: Reform

My Lords, I am not sure whether that was an endorsement of the White Paper. On my noble friend’s first question, paragraph 4.17 of the White Paper deals with when the conventions will be considered further. I anticipate that the noble Baroness is referring to the fact that the Joint Committee on Conventions, chaired by my noble friend Lord Cunningham of Felling, said that if there were firm proposals, the conclusions would have to be revisited. I shall read paragraph 4.17, which is very short: "““Once the debates on this White Paper and the free votes have taken place, and in advance of any legislation on reform of the House of Lords, the Government will look in further detail at the issue of the adequacy of the current conventions to ensure the primacy of the Commons in practice, to which all parties are committed””." Plainly, legislation is the point of decision. My noble friend asked whether you can be in favour of reform without supporting an elected element. Yes, because you can, for example, be in favour of removing the hereditaries and in favour of a statutory appointments commission.