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Draft House of Lords Reform Bill

My Lords, given that my Motion has attracted an amendment, I should say a few words about it. The Motion proposes a Joint Committee on the draft House of Lords Reform Bill published last month, and does so in the usual way by referring the draft Bill and accompanying White Paper in their entirety to the Joint Committee for its consideration. The noble Lord, Lord Cunningham of Felling, may shortly move his amendment and I have no desire to pre-empt him, but I hope that it is helpful to the House if I point out that Clause 2 of the draft Bill provides that: "““Nothing in the provisions of this Act … affects the primacy of the House of Commons, or … otherwise affects the powers, rights, privileges or jurisdiction of either House of Parliament, or the conventions governing the relationship between the two Houses””." The White Paper includes several paragraphs on the powers of the two Houses, essentially providing, "““no change to the constitutional powers and privileges of the House once it is reformed, nor to the fundamental relationship with the House of Commons, which would remain the primary House of Parliament””." It goes on to say: "““The Government believes that clause 2 of the draft Bill is the best way of achieving this because it does not attempt to codify the existing powers of the Houses in legislation but rather, as now, accepts that the position is a matter of convention””." That, of course, is the Government’s view, but as I have already made clear, the Joint Committee will be able to consider each and every matter raised in the Government’s White Paper and may reach its own conclusions. There is, therefore, nothing in the Joint Committee's remit to prevent it from doing exactly as the noble Lord, Lord Cunningham, proposes. I cannot possibly second-guess how the committee will choose to approach its work, but I imagine that it would wish to have regard not only to the conclusions of the report chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Cunningham, but to the exchange we are having today and to related points that will no doubt be raised in the debate later this month. Therefore, although I am extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Cunningham, for tabling his amendment, which concerns something which has the potential of being quite a controversial matter during the discussions in the Joint Committee, I hope that the House and he himself will accept that the amendment is unnecessary. I beg to move. Amendment to the Motion Moved by