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Parliament: Elected House of Lords

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, for introducing this debate, because it seems elementary not to realise the huge problems that there will be between the two Houses if your Lordships’ House becomes an elected Chamber. It seems obvious. People—particularly our dear friends the Liberal Democrats—always say, ““Reform the House of Lords””. It is as if they feel they are in the sixth form and have been told to write an essay on how you make a democratic Parliament and the answer is ““Two elected Chambers””. Of course that may be so, but as the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, said, we are not starting from there. That is what the dear Liberal Democrats do not ever seem to understand; we are not starting from scratch. We have inherited a constitution, which is the envy of all other countries, and it works. It works. Yet we are now out to try to destroy it. It is a great privilege. It has worked for 600 hundred years and the answer is that you want to build on it, and not destroy it. Whatever Members of another place may say about wanting an elected second Chamber, their successors will hate it because there will be another Chamber saying, ““We have been elected too, we have got just as much right as you have to have our views prevail and our votes too””. Are people going to offer themselves for election to a House which has the powers that we have? The answer is no. The power between the Houses is finite and if your Lordships’ House gets any more powers, another place will have to give up some of their powers. Is it likely to do that? No. How do you get an elected Chamber? The first thing is to throw out all the Members of the present Chamber. You cannot get the elected ones in as well. I see my noble friend Lord Attlee is getting all bouncy. The next thing is you are going to have to pay them to leave. That is grotesque. I suggest to your Lordships that it is far better to retain what we have got and build on it—not destroy it.