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House of Lords: Reform

My Lords, I have made it clear in reply to the Front Bench interventions that I believe that the quality of what this House does is very high. In particular, what this House does well is significantly to amend legislation without gridlock and generally without conflict with the other place. However, I do not think it is right that that is done without an elected element, and the question that arises is whether one can introduce an elected element without reducing the quality of what is done. I believe that one can do that while keeping the complementary role of this House. The debate is intended to identify whether there is sufficient consensus to obtain reform of this House. We know that within individual political parties there is not full agreement, but is there enough agreement across the political parties to reform this House? If there is, we should go ahead.