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Parliament: Elected House of Lords

My Lords, this Question seeks the Government’s view on the effect of an elected House of Lords on the relationship between the two Houses of Parliament. I hope it does not sound presumptuous of me to say that I think this is a matter of fundamental constitutional importance, albeit that we have only an hour and a half in which to debate it. It needs to be addressed, not least because the present relationship between the two Houses is the right one and works very well. That is not just my judgment; it is shared by a committee of this House, the Cunningham committee, which reported a few years ago and whose report was adopted unanimously by both Houses of Parliament. Therefore, if my judgment is not considered sufficiently strong, I hope I can persuade the House that that committee’s report is conclusive. The basis of the relationship could not be simpler; the primacy of the Commons is secured by the fact that it is elected and we are not. That is the conclusion of the report, which explains the current relationship. My argument is very simple and I shall try to develop it. An elected upper Chamber—whatever you call it—would fundamentally change that relationship for the worse. This question has been disgracefully neglected or ignored by the previous and present Governments. Every time I have attempted to raise it on various occasions it has been dismissed as something we should not spend too much time worrying about. First, I wish to look at the key arguments of those who say that this does not constitute a major problem, that the two Houses will be fine after any reorganisation of the House of Lords and that we are worrying unnecessarily. They use two arguments most frequently. The first is that the Parliament Acts are supposed to be the absolute guarantor of the supremacy of the Commons over the Lords because in the last resort the Commons can insist on its legislation going through. People who recite that mantra do not know, or do not want to know, anything at all about the practical day in, day out consequences of the ways in which the two Houses relate to one another, which is demonstrated most vividly when ping-pong occurs. That is rather a dismissive title for a fundamentally important part of our constitution but we all know what I am talking about. I recall that ping-pong between the two Houses has occurred six, seven or eight times, but it always concludes in the same way in my experience, which is that the Commons defers to the Lords.