House of Lords (Alternative Second Chamber) Bill [HL]

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 23rd October 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

I congratulate the noble Baroness on the draw and on presenting her first ever Private Member’s Bill. In the 37 years I have been in Parliament, I have never presented a Private Member’s Bill, so I particularly congratulate her both on this opportunity and on the, as ever, passionate and articulate speech that she just delivered. It does not mean that I think that she is right, but I think that she is correct in bringing this forward, which I suspect is why that those of us who are here to debate it this morning have forgone the dangers of not being able to reach the regions and nations of Britain, because of the weather, in order to contribute to an important debate.

Like the noble Baroness, I am very pleased that students are with us in the Gallery. When I presented the ideas on reform of the upper Chamber to students at the University of Sheffield, we always started off with the presumption that they wanted democracy in the form of election of some sort or another. By the time we concluded the debate, they were not so sure, because this is a very complex and difficult issue. If it were not then what the noble Baroness described as the equivocation over a century would not have taken place. It is precisely because no one could actually come to a conclusion on what the legitimate alternative might be that we are here today.

Like the noble Baroness, I am from a deeply working-class community—we have to say it, don’t we: from a council estate—in my case, in the north of Sheffield. Yes, people used to look bewildered at the ermine. By the way, in those days—because I am old, and I am getting older, like the rest of us—there were no life Peers. When I looked at the hereditary situation in the House of Lords, no wonder I was bewildered and thought, “God, I’ll never get there, and if I do, I’ll probably want to abolish it”. Well, I am here and I do not want to abolish it, but I do want to reform it.

My noble friend Lady Taylor of Bolton, who is speaking later, was the chair of the Retirement and Participation Committee, and I served under her. We looked at some of these broader issues. We did not have a Bishop on our committee—as a Methodist, I have no intention of going into the issue of the abolition of the hereditary principle of the Church of England having representatives here—but, apart from that particular grouping, we were well represented across the House.

It was interesting to have that debate. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Smith: by all means let us set up a constitutional commission. Let us have the open debate about what we would replace this House with. If, as my friend the former Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, proposed in the commission that he led four years ago, it focuses on the regions and nations, which the noble Baroness mentioned, and would therefore be much more a constitutional Chamber, I have a very simple message: there is a House that is entirely representative—minutely representative—of the regions and nations of the United Kingdom. It is the House of Commons. It represents, in relation to geography and population, the nations and regions, and it speaks for them.

It is true that we could be more representative in this House. It is true that Prime Ministers of all persuasions, when they say that they are going to widen the scope of the representation of English regions, of Wales, of Scotland and of Northern Ireland, should do it. I am relieved, despite the fact that we have moved in the opposite direction in the past two years, that those who have entered this House from London and the south-east are of the highest possible quality. Good job—otherwise I would be deeply offended by the way we have ignored the Labour manifesto of 2024. But there we go; there are other bits of it that I do not agree with as well.

This morning, let us agree perhaps that there is a dialogue to be had and that we could, through a constitutional commission, examine the impact of changing fundamentally the representation of this House on the workings of the House of Commons, on devolved regional strategic authorities in England and on our relationship with Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. That would be sensible, not least because the House of Commons would have to change dramatically. In the last Session before the general election, 2,400 amendments were moved by the Government to improve and alter Bills that had been partly scrutinised but were mostly nodded through the House of Commons. Having spent 28 years there, I know its strengths and its weaknesses.

I never made a pledge from the council estate or when I was in the House of Commons that I would not enter this place, so I feel fairly secure in saying: let us try to get it right for the future, not simply by having a list system—which is what it would be if we had direct election—in which the political parties would determine who was at the top of the list and who arrived here.