House of Lords Reform Bill

Andrew Bridgen Excerpts

Monday 9th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Conor Burns (Bournemouth West) (Con)]

rose—

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

rose—

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I shall make a little more headway.

A Joint Committee of both Houses spent nine months considering that White Paper and draft Bill, and I remain extremely grateful for the Joint Committee’s forensic and detailed analysis. We accepted more than half its recommendations and reshaped the Bill around its advice.

This Bill is therefore the sincere result of long and shared endeavour. Its history belongs to us all: to Liberals, to Conservatives, to Labour and to all other parties in this House, as well as to the great political reformers and pragmatists of the past.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sadiq Khan]

I will answer the question myself. On the Third Reading of the Bill abolishing 90% of hereditary peers, the Lib Dems abstained. I know a reshuffle is due, but the hon. Gentleman should stop reading the Whips’ sheet and listen to the debate.

The Lib Dems abstained. Subsequently, we introduced people’s peers and a proper appointments process, and we also sought to ensure that no single party would have a majority of Members in the second Chamber. The Constitutional Reform Act 2005 resulted in a far-reaching separation of powers, with senior Law Lords removed from the other place. The UK for the first time had its own dedicated Supreme Court, which is now firmly established on the other side of Parliament square. It is also worth reminding the House what happened on that occasion. Thirteen members of the current Cabinet, including the Prime Minister, supported a reasoned amendment declining to give that Bill a Second Reading in 2005. What did the Liberal Democrats do on Third Reading? Yes, they decisively abstained. We are therefore comfortable with our record in government on good constitutional reform.

[Andrew Bridgen]

The right hon. Gentleman talks about creating a consensus across the Chamber about Lords reform, but is not the truth that this Bill, if enacted, will not reform the House of Lords, but effectively abolish it? The House of Lords is a fine institution. It is not broken, so why do we need to fix it?

[Sadiq Khan]

The hon. Gentleman is right that the reforms, if carried through, will replace the House of Lords as we know it now. However, I will come to the semantics of the words “abolish” or “replace” in a moment.

It is fair to say that Labour would have liked to go much further. On occasion we tried to achieve much more, but we were held back. Our decision to proceed only with cross-party consensus acted as a restraint on the pace of reform. Proposals floated by Labour ran into fierce opposition. Despite healthy general election majorities, Labour did not seek to impose our wholesale reforms on a divided House of Commons. It is ironic that this has left us open to criticism by the Deputy Prime Minister—and, I hear, the Chancellor—for not doing enough during our years in government.

The House of Lords Reform Bill was first published on 27 June. A draft Bill was published in May last year, which was largely castigated in this Chamber and the other place. Before the Bill’s publication, the Deputy Prime Minister set great store by the findings of the Joint Committee established to look into the draft Bill. Let me take this opportunity to thank all the members of the Joint Committee, who spent nine months on the report. The Joint Committee published its report on 23 April, with an alternative report published by 12 of its members.