House of Lords Reform Bill

Debate between Lord Watts and Sadiq Khan

Monday 9th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sadiq Khan]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. She reminds us that there are still a number of major deficiencies, which will need to be looked at in Committee, if the Bill is to be improved. Our support for giving the Bill a Second Reading should therefore not be taken as a blank cheque.

We have many concerns—many of them major—about the content of the Bill, but I shall concentrate on three areas.

The area of powers and conventions deserves our greatest attention. With all the focus on form, the Government have neglected function. On primacy, the Government have sought to rewrite the inadequate clause 2 of the draft Bill and dropped any reference to the conventions governing the relationship between the Houses. It remains to be seen whether this will deal satisfactorily with the issue; constitutional experts are no doubt poring over this as we speak. As the Bill will be debated on the Floor of the House, and as new clause 2 was not considered by the Joint Committee, there has been no pre-legislative scrutiny. We simply do not know whether the provision is adequate. Labour Members want to ensure that the Commons maintains its primacy even when a second Chamber becomes elected.

It is impossible to predict what changes might develop in the culture of the House of Lords following reform, but it seems likely that elected Members will expect to play at least a fairly assertive role and that voters may share that view. When the European Parliament went from being an appointed to an elected body, it demanded more powers to reflect its democratic mandate. Why should elected Members of the second Chamber be bound by conventions that bind a Chamber of hereditary and appointed peers? The Bill effectively washes its hands of this issue.

[Mr Dave Watts (St Helens North) (Lab)]

Will my right hon. Friend explain why it is good enough to have a referendum when we are electing a mayor in a city, yet not good enough to have one when we are changing the constitution?

[Sadiq Khan]

I heard the Deputy Prime Minister desperately trying to answer that question, but on four or five occasions when such questions were put to him by his hon. Friends, he failed to answer them.