13:29 - The House divided: - Ayes: 7 / Noes: 39 - Question negatived.
The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Greg Clark)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire (Dan Byles) on his luck in coming so high in the ballot and, I daresay, for his pluck in choosing a Bill that has the words “House of Lords” and “Reform” in its title. Lord Hennessy, the noted constitutional expert, said in evidence to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee:
“Lords reform is the Bermuda Triangle of British politics, or one of them. Every generation or so people go into the Bermuda Triangle. Some never reappear; others appear singed, vowing…never to return.”
I hope, at least for my hon. Friend’s sake, that he will make it safely into port, singed or not. Whether he vows to return is quite another matter.
Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con)
In that spirit, will the Minister say to the House now that he will support the Government’s giving the Bill the proper time and attention to allow it to return from the Bermuda triangle entirely unsinged?
Greg Clark
I was about to say that the Bill contains modest proposals that the Government are prepared to support. Obviously, it needs to be scrutinised closely in Committee. My hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman) has ventured into the Bermuda triangle himself on occasion—whether he was singed or not is for him to say, but I am pleased to see him in his place today and look forward to his contribution.
The changes that are set out, as the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) said, are relatively straightforward and represent common sense. There are those who argue that no change should be made until the wider case for reform, or improvement, as the right hon. Gentleman had it, or change, as other people might have it, can be agreed, but there is a clear consensus, after five attempts in the House of Lords, on the need to describe some arrangements that constitute incremental but nevertheless practical changes. It is only right that this House should listen to that call and take time to scrutinise it.
Mr Nuttall
Bearing in mind that these proposals had already been considered on a number of occasions by the other place before the Government introduced the House of Lords Reform Bill, does the Minister agree that had these measures been introduced in this place at that time, they would now be on the statute book?
Greg Clark
My hon. Friend makes an important point. The case for these changes has always been well understood. I guess one of the reflections on recent years is whether the addition of various other measures prevented these measures from being adopted. That is a debate that has passed and my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire is right in seeking to concentrate the House on the particular matters in hand. If the House of Lords is willing to embrace sensible reforms, which it seems to be, and it seems quite anxious to proceed with them, we should provide the opportunity for it to do that.
The Bill allows Members of the House of Lords who are peers to resign, removes peers who do not attend the House of Lords during a Session, and removes peers and Lords Spiritual who are convicted of a serious offence and sentenced to imprisonment for more than a year. These changes would bring the membership rules in the House of Lords closer to those in this House, and in so doing would reassure members of the public that those convicted of serious wrongdoing in particular would be removed from the legislature.
I note that the Select Committee yesterday produced a helpful and timely report which supports the introduction of these three changes. It made some further recommendations, to which the Government will respond in due course in the normal way.
The Government have no desire to rerun through this Bill the debate on wider House of Lords reform. I know that some will argue that these changes are not extensive enough and that the opportunity should be taken to have a wider debate, but I was struck by the speech from my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire, in which he said that that was not his intention and that he wants to keep the Bill very narrow. I know that for some people any change requires careful scrutiny and the limited nature of the Bill will afford it the possibility to have that. The Bill offers a set of proposals on which there may well be the basis of a consensus.
Sir Edward Leigh
We cannot let the Minister off the hook. He is speaking very early in the debate, which surprises me, and he appears to want to avoid any wider debate. We need to know from the Government something about their plans. What are their present attitudes to further reform of the House of Lords? Just to say that this is a very modest Bill and we should support it, giving the House no intimation of the Government’s wider plans, is not good enough.
Mr Speaker
Order. Let me say that the Minister has spoken early because he was keen to do so, and I thought there was nothing disorderly or improper about that in any way. Just in case the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) has any trepidation on this point, I can assure him that there will be very full opportunity for other right hon. and hon. Members who wish to speak to catch the eye of the Chair.
Greg Clark
Of course my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) takes a great interest in these matters and I have the greatest respect for the contributions that he has made on that. My remarks are about the Bill before us. It is not the Government’s Bill; it was presented by my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire, and my comment is on the provisions in the Bill.
I think my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough knows well the Government’s position. There is a commitment in the coalition agreement to bring forward reforms to the House of Lords but it was not possible to make progress with it. I suspect that it was in the light of those developments that my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire introduced these provisions today. Of course, as Mr Speaker says, it is open to hon. Members to air the wider questions, but if the Bill proceeds to Committee, it is to consider the specific measures that my hon. Friend is proposing. The Government are prepared to support the Bill today and to see it go into Committee because it provides for the introduction of some sensible, specific and relatively small scale changes to the House of Lords.
Mr Chope
Will my right hon. Friend explain a little more why the Government think this is such a good Bill? Do they think it is such a good Bill because it would enable the House of Lords to be smaller? If so, why are the Government so busy appointing new Members to the House of Lords?
Greg Clark
My hon. Friend will be aware that the coalition agreement makes it clear that the Government, pending further reform of the House of Lords, will continue to take steps to make it reflective of the result of the general election, in terms of the representation of parties. On the measures that have been proposed, there has been a degree of concern that the provisions, for example, on the consequences of criminal convictions, are out of line in the other place with those in this place.
The Select Committee, on which my hon. Friend serves, has reflected on the leave of absence provisions and has noted that they have not been very effective in providing a mechanism for Members to retire. So the support that the Government are willing to give specifically reflects concerns that have been expressed beyond this House, but also by Committees of this House, and this is a way to facilitate the correction of those aspects, if not the wider aspects that we have debated from time to time.
Mr Blunkett
Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman would be good enough to reflect to the Prime Minister that it is a bit odd for a Conservative-led Government, irrespective of what is in the coalition agreement, with only 18 months to go till a general election, to allow the minor party to press a point that would undermine the stability and functioning of a Chamber that the majority party in the Government supports and wants to work. Is that not perverse?
Greg Clark
The creation of the coalition was based on a coalition agreement. That was discharged. The Bill was put to the House and the House took a view on it. My hon. Friend’s Bill does not relate to those matters. It relates to some specific reforms that have come from a variety of sources, endorsed by one of the Select Committees of this House, and on that basis I am happy to confirm the Government’s support for it to proceed into Committee, if that is the wish of the House.