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Draft House of Lords Reform Bill

My Lords, I begin by thanking the noble Lord the Leader of the House for his comments and for the even-handed way in which he introduced the resolution. However, I am bound to say that there are some people—I do not ascribe this view to the Leader of the House—who propose a wholly or partially elected second Chamber in our Parliament who assume that their policy can be enacted and that nothing else will change. They believe that the de facto abolition of this House and its replacement by an elected Senate can be seamlessly accomplished and Parliament and Government will continue as before, completely unaffected by the change. I believe that they are wrong. I believe that there is plenty of evidence from previous Joint Committees to enable us to come to the conclusion that they are wrong. I welcome the decision to establish a Joint Committee of Lords and Commons to consider the draft Bill, as long as that committee is balanced, of varied views and not a repetition of the committee set up by Jack Straw during the previous Parliament—in other words, not made up of people who all begin and end by sharing the same view of the future. The purpose of my amendment is to ensure that the evidence, conclusions and recommendations of the Joint Committee on Conventions are fully taken into account. I cite the summary of the report, on page 3: "““Our conclusions, however, apply only to present circumstances. If the Lords acquired an electoral mandate, then in our view their role as the revising chamber, and their relationship with the Commons, would inevitably be called into question, codified or not. Should any firm proposals come forward to change the composition of the House of Lords, the conventions between the Houses would have to be examined again””." It is a central conclusion of the unanimously agreed report of the Joint Committee—and, as I have said in this Chamber before, unanimously approved by both Houses of Parliament—that that would have to be considered again. Therefore, it is important that we get that established with the new Joint Committee. An elected second Chamber with a mandate would assert its right to a view. The evidence in the Joint Committee report says that, as do the conclusions. The other House and the Government of the country could not escape the consequences, which would most likely be profound and unpredictable, but would probably destabilise the conventions of Parliament. If change is required, and I believe it is, the better alternative is set out in the case made by the noble Lord, Lord Steel of Aikwood, in his Bill, which I certainly support, and more recently the proposals—at least most of them, I had better say, in case of an early intervention—made by the committee chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Goodlad. The Government should support those proposals, while still pursuing their right to establish a Joint Committee. I regret very much that in the previous Parliament the then Government consistently blocked the work of the noble Lord, Lord Steel, and his Bill. That was a mistake. We should take care that blind adherence to outdated thinking does not produce outcomes that make our Parliament less effective than it already is today.