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House of Lords Reform

My Lords, it is a great privilege to follow the most reverend Primate in a debate of this importance, particularly because each of the three noble Lords who have spoken before me have taken us one step further towards clarifying the issues. The noble Baroness, Lady Royall, gave a clear insight into the fundamental importance of the central issue, which, put simply, is: is this House likely to improve if a substantial elected element is introduced to it? That is the great fundamental question and I have some sympathy with her proposal of a referendum on the consideration of that. The noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, reminded us that a number of transitional changes are featured in the Steel Bill, which, whatever happens, will need to be considered. As we have argued many times, they have and could have been considered already. That is the quality of the questions we are considering. The first and fundamental question is whether there should be elected Members here. One of the problems is that we will not gain much from arguing about the procedure for resolving that; from arguing about the appropriateness of a draft Bill now, next week or next year; or from arguing about what committee should be designed to consider the problem and disentangle the difficulties so as to make it easy to go on with the next step. The difficulty is that every political organisation addressing this question is divided within itself. All the parties are divided. Both Houses of Parliament are divided, which causes gaps between the leadership, as well as between the sometimes slightly misleading term of the organisation. For example, we understood that this would be something for a third term of a Conservative Government, but somehow impatience has carried it in a different direction. We want this caucus of Front-Bench representatives from the three parties to seek a way forward, and I can understand why. It then has to be commended to both Houses of Parliament. Both Houses have to address this fundamental question of elected Members and be persuaded in their judgment that it is a positive improvement for this legislative structure. Because that question concerns this House alone in the direct sense, it is very disagreeable to find any suggestion to the effect that the views of this House can be pushed to one side and that, above all, we do not require a clear majority persuaded in favour of this change in this House. Therefore, where the evidence is on which the case for change is to be based becomes the important question.