Queen’s Speech

Baroness Royall of Blaisdon Excerpts

Monday 14th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

Perhaps I may return to the statement of the Minister that of course it is possible for the Government to deal with House of Lords reform alongside all the other things that they wish to discuss. Why therefore are they proposing that perhaps five of the most important Bills outlined in the Queen’s Speech, on such matters as energy and banking, may well be carried over into the next Session? Why are they considering that?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, this will be a shorter Session than the last one, as I am sure all noble Lords have noted. We will see what progress we can make. The speed with which progress will be made on the Lords reform Bill and on other Bills will depend on the reasonableness with which they are met in each of the two Chambers.

I move on to the question that a number of Peers raised about the rationale for the Bill. There are three important points. The first is that we are a transitional House. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine, said:

“The transitional House which will be created as a result of the Bill will be exactly that: transitional and not permanent”.—[Official Report, 11/5/99; col. 1092.]

The Labour Government promised on more than one occasion to take the next step. In this Chamber on 20 July 2007 the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, then a Minister, declared:

“We have the prospect of agreement between the parties on the way forward”.—[Official Report, 20/7/07; col. 535.]

He stated that this was for the House to be “substantially or wholly elected”. We are moving on to the next stage now because the previous Labour Government failed to do so—and we are closely following the model that they intended to put forward.

Since 1999, we had a royal commission chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham; a first White Paper from the then Labour Government; a Joint Committee; a Green Paper; a second White Paper; a cross-party working group; and, finally, a third White Paper and two reports that we have debated over the past 10 days. In May last year, the Government published a draft Bill—and now is the time to move forward.

The issue of composition arises because we are a patronage House, and the patronage that leads us all here is something that we think is not sustainable. The third is that we are talking about evolutionary reform: the next stage in a pattern of Lords reform.