House of Lords Reform Bill

Lord Spellar Excerpts

Monday 3rd September 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

As far as I can remember, I have not sought to make any apology over the past 45 minutes. I feel that the Government have acted in good faith to try to generate cross-party support for a reasonable set of proposals drawing on a lot of work from other members of other parties over several years. It is a great pity that the hon. Gentleman and other colleagues felt that it was not possible to get behind that reasonable package of proposals with a timetable motion. The coalition agreement said that this Government were going to come forward with proposals to reform the House of Lords. We are not a think-tank. The Government do not talk about proposals just to float them idly in a newspaper article and then do nothing about them. If one is going to propose something as a Government, one proposes it with a view to actually doing something.

[Mr John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

The Deputy Prime Minister has been ducking and diving on the question of the Boundary Commission review. Is he aware that the Boundary Commission has today written to all Members of Parliament saying that it proposes to publish its revised proposals on 16 October? That will involve a huge amount of expense. Why does he not shut this exercise down and save a shed-load of money?