House of Lords Reform Bill

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean Excerpts

Wednesday 27th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde]

It is all very well noble Lords laughing at this. The public will see that they are laughing at a huge amount of public money being spent on a referendum when all three parties and the coalition manifesto said that there should be reform of this House.

[Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean]

On the contrary, I think that noble Lords were probably laughing at the transparent inadequacy of the answer. We now see on page 36 of the Bill the enormous constituencies that are proposed for electing Members of this House. There are eight of these huge constituencies and it will take the votes of millions of people to send Members to your Lordships’ House in the future. Does the noble Lord the Leader of the House really think that people sent here for 15 years with the backing of millions of votes are going to defer to Members of the House of Commons, who will be sent to represent constituencies with electorates of no more than 80,000 on a minute proportion of the votes for only five years? Self-evidently, Members of this House will be much more powerful than colleagues at the other end of the Corridor. I hope that the noble Lord will answer that in terms of how it will automatically affect primacy. I do not think that Members of this House will go on deferring to the Members of that House in the way that we do while we are unelected and they are elected.

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I agree with some of what the noble Baroness says: I think that elected Members will probably defer less than is the case with the current House. That of course is something that the House of Commons will need to take into account when it comes to its conclusions on this, and it is right that it should do so. There would be no point in doing this if this House were less assertive than it currently is. The fact that Peers will have been elected will give us an authority and legitimacy that we do not have at the moment. However, I think it will be argued by Members of the other place that the House of Commons has ultimate legislative supremacy because of the provisions of the Parliament Acts, because the Government of the day is formed from the party or parties that can command a majority in the House of Commons and because the House of Commons has control of financial matters. These are the protections for another place.