House of Lords Reform Bill

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Tuesday 10th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Ms Eagle]

The hon. Gentleman makes his point in a characteristically effective way, and it is one with which I have a great deal of sympathy.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

But one practice that has existed for hundreds of years is the one whereby, when a Bill receives its Second Reading, it is committed by virtue of a resolution of the House either to a Bill Committee—since 2006, a Public Bill Committee—or to a Committee of the whole House. It looks as though if the Bill gets its Second Reading tonight, it will be in complete limbo, which the Pope abolished several years ago. So is it not essential that we have some clarity on where the Bill is going to go, preferably before it gets its Second Reading?

[Ms Eagle]

My hon. Friend is exactly right, and that is why I attempted to obtain some clarity from the Leader of the House when he made his bombshell announcement at the beginning of this debate. We would appreciate some certainty from Government Front Benchers on how we can deal with the issue.

The Leader of the House and I have something important in common: we were both Members prior to the introduction of the routine programming of business, and we both know that it is possible to scrutinise effectively a Bill that does not have a programme motion attached, because we used to do so all the time. The Government, following their climbdown today, will have to come forward with new proposals, and the Opposition look forward to seeing what they are, but let me confirm for the record that, after adequate scrutiny, we want the Bill to go to the other place.

Labour has a proud record of reforming the Lords. We have been responsible for all the major changes to the other place over the past 100 years: the removal of hereditary peers, the introduction of an elected Speaker and the creation of the Supreme Court. We wanted to go further and tried in the previous Parliament to pass legislation in favour of an elected Chamber, spending extra time trying to forge a cross-party consensus.

This Government seem to spend so much time on inter-coalition diplomacy, however, that they keep forgetting to work with Her Majesty’s official Opposition, and on issues of constitutional change, that is an insult and a mistake. We will support the Bill’s Second Reading, but the Government’s proposals give us cause for concern in a number of areas that we will need to explore further, so I thought that it would be helpful to the House if I set some of them out.

I was elected on a manifesto promising a referendum on House of Lords reform. That is why the Prime Minister’s and Deputy Prime Minister’s argument—that a referendum is not needed because reform featured in all three party election manifestos—is so disingenuous. Our manifesto offered people a choice. It is the Government who are seeking to deny the electorate a say once the new arrangements have been forged and decided here.