House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Debate between John Hayes and Sarah Olney

Committee of the whole House
Tuesday 12th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Olney]

Well, how polite of the right hon. Gentleman to say so. Obviously, I do not personally recall what happened in 2007. What we are trying to establish today are the steps that can be taken to reform the House of Lords. We very much support the step that we are debating today—that first step upon which, as the Minister said in her opening remarks, there is broad consensus. We want to see broader reform of the House of Lords and we want the Government to bring forward further proposals in due course. New clause 7 is about pushing them to produce those further proposals in a timely fashion, so that we can hold that debate in this Parliament and progress the cause of measures on which we can find consensus across the House.

[Sir John Hayes]

Given that the hon. Lady’s amendments are not likely to be passed, I assume that, on the grounds of logic and consistency, she will vote against Third Reading of the unamended Bill. As I said earlier, and she implicitly conceded, as it stands, the Bill does not make the House of Lords one ounce, one iota, one fraction more democratic.

[Sarah Olney]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. We intend to support the Bill, because we want to see the abolition of the hereditary peers; that is very much part of what the Liberal Democrats want. However, we want to see more; we want to go further; we want to see broader reforms. I have to say to the right hon. Gentleman that I have heard not only an appetite from all sides to support the Bill—as the Minister said, there is broad consensus across the House for that—but a great zeal on the Tory Benches for further reform. I therefore do not understand why there would not be broad support for my new clause, which calls on the Government to enshrine in this Bill a commitment to go further, because that is clearly what so many Tory Members are saying they would like to see.

With so much trust in politics having been destroyed by the chaos of the previous Conservative Government, we must take this opportunity to underscore the integrity of Parliament, with transparency and democratic authority in our second Chamber. We are grateful to the Government for introducing this legislation so early in the Parliament. Fundamentally, the Liberal Democrats do not believe that there is space in a modern democracy for hereditary privilege.

New clause 7 would impose a duty on Ministers to take forward proposals to secure a democratic mandate for the House of Lords through introduction of directly elected Members. Around the world, trust in the institutions and levers of the democratic process have too often frayed over recent years. In our democracy, we must ensure that the vital link between the people and their institutions remains strong. A democratic mandate is central to that mission. Reform of our upper Chamber has been a long-standing Liberal Democrat policy. We must do all we can to restore public trust in politics after the chaos of the previous Conservative Government. By introducing a democratic mandate for Members of the House of Lords, we can ensure that trust in politics is strengthened.

The disregard with which the previous Conservative Government treated the public’s trust threatened to erode faith in our democracy. The Bill is an opportunity to underline our commitment to democratic values and to begin to rebuild that trust. The new clause would strengthen the democratic mandate of the second Chamber, and Liberal Democrats call on the Government to support it as well our calls for wider reform to modernise our electoral system.

We want to strengthen democratic rights and participation by scrapping the Conservative party’s voter ID scheme.