House of Lords Reform

Jo Swinson Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sadiq Khan]

I do not think that the second point necessarily makes the first point impossible; it is possible to have a second Chamber that is a revising Chamber and for all its Members to be elected. Of the 61 other bicameral Parliaments, none has an appointed upper Chamber. All of them are elected and seem to be doing a pretty decent job.

I am concerned that in other areas of constitutional change the Government have shown themselves willing to be less principled and more partisan. For example, we will see the number of MPs reduced from 650 to 600 at the next election, with no evidence for why we should lose 50 Members, which will simultaneously increase the power of the Executive. We have had 117 new unelected peers appointed to the House of Lords since last May, with more promised. Each peer costs £108,000 a year—we can all do the maths. There are now almost 830 unelected peers in our Parliament. We have seen boundaries re-fixed according to out-of-date electoral data that exclude 5 million eligible voters. We have seen Parliaments fixed at five-year terms, which was mentioned by neither coalition partner before the election, but is now mysteriously favoured by both. We have seen the political fudge of establishing a commission on a Bill of Rights, papering over the cracks between the coalition partners on human rights, and we have seen a failed referendum on the alternative vote. Those are some of the reasons why those of us who should be the natural allies of the Deputy Prime Minister’s plans to reform the House of Lords are suspicious of his plans and of him.

[Jo Swinson (East Dunbartonshire) (LD)]

I, like the right hon. Gentleman, would like to see a 100% elected House of Lords, but if the choice were between 0% elected and 80% elected, given that so far we have waited 100 years, I would like us to make some progress and to get to 80% elected at least. In that situation, what would he choose?

[Sadiq Khan]

I would make sure that my leader, if he were the Deputy Prime Minister, negotiated properly for a fully elected second Chamber so that the problems that have been highlighted did not occur. What has happened—[Interruption.] I hear the chuntering both from Government Front Benchers and from Liberal Democrat Members, whose concerns and aspirations I will come to in a moment. We remember the sanctimony of Liberal Democrat Members when we were in government. I will talk about the progress that has been made over the past 13 years, but I accept that there was not enough.

We have also heard that 100 years is too long to wait for those who sit in the Lords to be elected, and those of us who want a fully elected second Chamber understand the wish to proceed sooner rather than later, but there are many issues that the Deputy Prime Minister has not addressed in the draft Bill or in the White Paper, and with the best will in the world it is simply unrealistic to expect the Joint Committee to have resolved them by February, as he wants it to.