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House of Lords Reform Bill [HL]

My Lords, I am certainly very much opposed to having a referendum on this Bill. This is a series of modest proposals, which is—as my noble friend Lord Steel said, and as the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, accepted—a housekeeping Bill. It is a modest Bill, which would certainly perplex any electorate if put to it for a referendum. The point made by the noble Viscount, Lord Astor, is entirely different. I have never been a fan of the referendum; indeed, I did not want a referendum in 1975, and made that view quite plain in another place at the time. But we had it, and you cannot uninvent things. We have reached the situation in this country where we have had referenda on a number of major constitutional issues. We had them over devolution; we had one, which I thought was wholly unnecessary, earlier this year about alternative voting. But if you argue that alternative voting is of sufficient importance constitutionally to merit a referendum, you cannot argue that the abolition of a House of Parliament and its replacement by something totally different—because that is what it would be about—is not a fit subject for a referendum. So if by chance there is a proposal that we should have this House replaced by an elected one, there is an unanswerable case for a referendum, particularly if, as my noble friend indicated, the three major parties subscribe to that general ideal in their manifestos. We know that, whatever was said in the manifestos last time, there are a significant number of Liberal Democrats who are unhappy about the concept of an elected House. There is a very much larger number of Labour voters and Members who are unhappy about an elected House, and there is an overwhelming number of Conservative Peers and a very large number—we do not know how many—of Conservative Members of Parliament who are against it. If the hierarchies and leaders of the three parties put this forward in manifestos, that would be all the more reason for a referendum. That would be on the significant and central issue of whether this House was to be replaced by something different. Here, I slightly disagree with my noble friend Lord Selsdon. I believe that the people of this country are sufficiently mature and adult to understand if they are being asked to have an assembly of 300 paid, elected party politicians to replace what they have in this House at the moment. If they decide to go down that route, having had the issues thoroughly debated and explained, I would be very sad but so be it. That would certainly be the right subject for a referendum. The noble Baroness’s party is right to have that at the heart of its manifesto commitments on this particular issue. I urge my noble friend Lord Selsdon not to press his amendment as far as the Bill is concerned.