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Business of the House

I cannot think of an example of that. I can think of examples of Governments completely losing their ability to do what they have promised to do before they fall, but not in this situation, where the Government still have a majority that they could use to fulfil their commitment. Briefly, let me come on to what we are going to do tomorrow. The motion says that we will be considering Lords amendments and that there will be an hour for each of the Bills. Presumably that will include the Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill. I thought I was going to come to this debate to say that an hour would not be enough to consider a Bill of such massive importance, but it seems that minute by minute the Government and those on the Conservative Front Bench are getting together to cross out more and more of it, including the Government's commitment to hold a referendum on electoral reform and to remove the absurd by-elections for hereditary peers. I noticed that the Leader of the House was pointing to the shadow Leader of the House, saying that this was all the fault of the wicked Tories. Let me say this to the Government: it is not; it is their fault. There is a different way forward which the Government have chosen not to take. They could have tabled a business motion in the Lords that would guarantee the passage through the Lords of the parts of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill that they are now agreeing with the Conservatives to get rid of. There are precedents for this because in 1997, when the Conservatives were last in charge, there was a business motion in the House of Lords in the wash-up period—[Interruption.] As the shadow Leader of the House says, the Conservative party at that point had a majority in the Lords. The question for the Government is why they have not tabled such a business motion and challenged the other parties in the Lords—the Liberal Democrats and the Cross Benchers—to support them on that motion. If they did that, I am sure they would get widespread support. What I suspect is going on is a combination of two things. On the one hand, the Government are split over whether they want these reforms at all. This has always been the case with electoral reform and the Labour party. I remember as an elector receiving a letter from a Labour candidate in 1997 promising electoral reform then. Strangely, 13 years later it has not happened. This is the normal pattern, and there are reactionary forces in the Labour party that are opposed to all political reform. I am sure that is one factor. The other factor is the attempt to raise an election issue by pretending that the Labour party is in favour of reform and the Conservatives are not, when the reality is that with the right advice and the right negotiations across parties those reforms could be put through now. That strikes me as an entirely fake manoeuvre. Those two issues—the completion of the reform of the House that was proposed by the Wright Committee, and the Government's pusillanimous treatment of political reform—mean that although the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire was able to say that he would follow a constructive approach, both in this House and in the other place, I presume, through the wash-up, I cannot make the same commitment because my party has been excluded from the negotiations. So I am not in a position either in this House or, more importantly, in the other place to say that we will co-operate with the Government in getting their business through. Indeed, we will start that approach this afternoon by dividing the House on this motion.