House of Lords Reform

Lord Lea of Crondall Excerpts

Tuesday 29th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde]

The noble Lord, Lord Richard, proves my point and I am immensely grateful to him. We are going to investigate whether there should be a scheme.

The noble Lord, Lord Steel, wants to have a vote on the abolition of by-elections for hereditary Peers. I can confirm to the House that when we publish a Bill at the end of this year, which is only a few months away, there will be not only a proposal for the abolition of by-elections for hereditary Peers but one for a very substantial cut in the number of life Peers under the Life Peerages Act 1958. That is the by-product of going down this road.

The noble Lord has put down only four suggestions. He could have had a fifth: whether or not there should be an elected or an unelected House—as if there were any doubt about that, incidentally. His next proposal concerns the removal of Members convicted of serious criminal offences. Frankly, I was surprised to see this because I cannot imagine that anybody would not be in favour of having a statutory scheme similar to that of the House of Commons. It is certainly our intention that this should be covered in the legislation when it comes forward, once we have had a suitable debate on that subject. The provision already applies in another place; there is no good reason why it should not apply here.

The creation of a statutory appointments commission is infinitely more complicated and is the most difficult and controversial aspect of the noble Lord’s proposals. It is difficult and controversial at least in part because the appointments system that we have already seems to work pretty well. Many of the Peers on the Cross Benches came out of the Appointments Commission and they show up that commission rather better than many of us had imagined would be the case. However, if we still had an appointed element in this House, there would have to be some kind of system, and it would be very surprising if that was not a statutorily-based system.

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

Is the noble Lord not aware that, in introducing his Motion, the noble Lord, Lord Steel, said that it applies to the period between now and the never-never land when the Bill will come into operation? To say that this will all be covered by the Bill and that the hereditary by-elections will automatically ipso facto go at that time does not address the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Steel.

[Lord Strathclyde]

But of course it does. The Government have pledged to produce a Bill by the end of the year. I could ring up the parliamentary draftsman tomorrow morning and say, “We have a cracking good idea. We have four marvellous suggestions that none of us has thought of before. Please draft a Bill”. These measures require legislation. They cannot just be willed. They cannot just happen.