House of Lords Reform

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

The contributions of Lord Whitty and Baroness Quin were, indeed, excellent, and I look forward to hearing support for the ideas that they set out last week from Labour Front Benchers today.

Turning to the second key reason for change, if we do not modernise the other place, a question mark will continue to hang over our second Chamber. We have passed the point of no reform, and to come this far and give up is to condemn our upper House to enduring doubt about its legitimacy. Yes, Lords reform has been debated for a century and, yes, our second Chamber has evolved over that time, but the other place cannot afford another 100 years in limbo. Reform is overdue, and it is time to bring this chapter to an end.

[Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

I must confess that I think the House of Lords has done a pretty good job over the past 100 years, and I am glad that the Deputy Prime Minister acknowledges that it does, indeed, do a good job. I invite him to consider that House of Commons Library figures show that the average Member of Parliament costs the British taxpayer about £257,000 a year, whereas the average unelected appointed peer costs well under £100,000. Is now the right time to start demanding that we spend more money on more politicians, more expenses, more secretaries and more office space, when the House of Lords is doing a perfectly good job as it is?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I agree with my hon. Friend that the other place is oversized—it is far too large. That is why one of the centrepieces of the proposals worked up by the cross-party Committee, which I chaired, was that we radically cut the number of politicians in the other place right down to 300, so it would be less than half the size of this Chamber.

[Mr Jenkin]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Will you look into the House’s sound system? I distinctly heard the right hon. Gentleman the Deputy Prime Minister refer to the size of the House of Lords, when my intervention made no mention of that whatever, so he must have misheard me.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

That is not really worth responding to.