House of Lords Reform (No. 2) Bill

Debate between Jesse Norman and Jacob Rees-Mogg

Friday 18th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way and for referring to Edmund Burke’s principles for reform. Under those principles, would it not be better, with regard to excluding peers who commit offences, to build on the Titles Deprivation Act 1917, which provides a precedent for removing peers and taking away their titles?

[Jesse Norman]

I thank my hon. Friend for that typically scholarly and thoughtful intervention. That piece of legislation worked in the opposite direction, beginning by taking away titles and then allowing removal or exclusion from the Lords to follow therefrom. Such an approach would raise a thicket of further constitutional issues and probably steer us directly into the centre of the Bermuda triangle, never to return. It is therefore with some hesitation that I would endorse his suggestion, but I absolutely invite him to expand on it in any remarks that he makes later.

This Bill meets every one of the seven tests of Burke that I set out. If it succeeds, it will be an excellent example of effective reform, and we, and indeed our country, will be the better for it.