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

Lord Burns Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 23rd October 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Burns (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Llanfaes, for the opportunity to discuss House of Lords reform again. I enjoyed her introductory remarks and agree that this is a very good opportunity to begin to discuss some issues that go beyond the particulars that some of the committees have looked at.

Over the past decade, I have consistently made the case for reform. I have argued for a limit on the size of the House, a balance of new party appointments which reflect the most recent general elections and 15-year term limits for new Peers. Sadly, we have seen no progress on these proposals. As the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, said, there has been a shortage of action. Despite the removal of the hereditary Peers, the House is roughly the same size as it was 10 years ago, when we started work on the Lord Speaker’s committee. The Prime Minister of the day continues to determine the total number of appointments and their allocation by party. New Peers are being appointed at an age that could see them being Members of this House for 40 years, even with a retirement age of 80. No one outside Westminster can begin to understand how these arrangements make sense for a legislative Chamber.

I understand the complexity of the issue, but I am disappointed that successive Prime Ministers have shown little interest in reform of these elements of our system. Instead, the Government have a manifesto commitment to replace the House of Lords with an alternative second Chamber that is more representative of the nations and regions. They have said that they will consult on proposals, and, rather cleverly, today the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, has taken on that job for them and brought forward this commitment to a consultation in her Bill. Personally, I remain committed to the proposals from the Lord Speaker’s committee and hope they will be considered, among other options.

The requirement that the House should be more representative of the regions and nations could be added fairly simply. The responsibility for meeting them should be placed on each of the party groups and HOLAC. On its own, this does not require major reform. However, when we looked at this, I was astonished to discover how difficult it is to determine where people come from. Is it where they were born? Is it where they now live? Is it where they were educated? Is it somewhere between all these areas? Nevertheless, it does not require major reform and does not seem to me, on its own, to be an argument for fundamental reform, compared to some of the other issues that we have discussed.

In any consultation with the public about reform—despite what the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, said about his interaction with students—I am confident that the most popular option would be some form of appointment by election. There might be debate about the details, but my reading of public opinion is that it clearly favours the legitimacy of election-based appointments.

Under the terms of the manifesto commitment and this Bill, the Government must publish a document setting out alternatives for consultation. In my remaining remarks, I will suggest some factors that I hope the Government will consider if they get round to setting out these alternatives. First, in any consultation, it is hugely important that the Government should be cautious about any change to the powers and purposes of this House. Experience shows that the Commons is very wary that increased legitimacy for this House could undermine its own primacy. The safest approach is to accept that the present powers and purposes of this House are appropriate and to place emphasis on the experience and independence of Members. Any consultation should clearly state that the primary role of the second Chamber is legislative scrutiny and encouraging the Government to think again on certain issues. Earlier this week, there was a debate in the House of Commons about House of Lords reform and the issue about the primacy of the House of Commons surfaced from a number of the contributors.

My second point is that if elections for Members are included, the system should be as different as possible from the Commons system. Therefore, for a second Chamber, my view is that a proportional representation would be most suitable. I say this in tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Smith: the recent Welsh Senedd system offers such a model for a limited proportional representation system. It involves regional constituencies with multiple Members where voters choose between the parties and determine the number of seats that each party wins. These seats are then allocated by the parties from a closed list of candidates. Like the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, I am not a fan of closed lists, but essentially this seems to me to be a hybrid system of election and appointment, which may be suitable for this House. The overall numbers would be determined by election rather than by the Prime Minister, but leaving the selection of individuals effectively in the hands of the parties. This would also address the Government’s concern about underrepresented regions and nations in the second Chamber.

The next question is whether separate elections for the two Houses are necessary, or whether they should be held together. I favour simultaneous elections for both Houses because it would be very difficult to generate much interest among the electorate in separate elections for a Chamber with relatively limited powers.

The third major issue that keeps cropping up for me is the mechanism for Members leaving. In an elected system, of course, this would involve term lengths. The straightforward approach would be to have the same term length as the Commons. During a general election, all party members would leave and stand for re-election or retire. However, as the scrutiny role emphasises experience, options could also include longer terms for Members of the second Chamber. Members could serve for two Parliaments, say, with half of the House standing for re-election at each general election. A third option would be to serve for three Parliaments, with a third of the House standing for re-election. The third option is, broadly speaking, my own choice, and would—this is no coincidence—over time deliver a result very close to the proposals of the Lord Speaker’s Committee for the political parties, but with the democratic element.

The fourth major issue is the role and handling of the Cross-Bench Members. I will leave the detail of this for another day, but noble Lords will not be surprised to hear that I hope the Cross-Bench Members remain a significant proportion of the House under any option, with appointments generally being made by HOLAC. I agree with the criticism of what has happened in recent years in the way that Prime Ministers have limited the role of HOLAC and the number of appointments it is allowed to make, taking on the job of making appointments to the Cross Benches themselves.

The focus of my contribution on Lords reform over the past decade has been to try to make the existing arrangements work more effectively, avoiding the relentless underlying increase in the size of the House, and I have not given up hope that we could see significant changes yet. However, if there is no change to the Prime Minister’s power to make appointments and there are no term limits, it will become increasingly likely that more fundamental reform is going to take place.