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

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 23rd October 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the mellifluous contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, although invariably we disagree. I begin by congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Llanfaes, on bringing this Bill forward. She is above all consistent and principled. She came into this House pledging to work for the abolition of the House of Lords, and she is as good as her word. It takes some principle to support something that is against your own fiduciary interest, so I commend her for that, but I have to say that this Bill is a missed opportunity. It is a legislative vacuum, because it really does not address the key issues in this half of our bicameral legislature. We could be debating many other important issues for reform: the NHS, social care, the prison system or welfare, not constitutional reform, notwithstanding the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady O’Grady.

The Bill presupposes the answer from the outset, the answer being abolition, and it gives quite wide-ranging, sweeping powers to Ministers to set up a process with little detail or vision. One has only to look at Clause 1(2)(e) and (3)(a) to see that. As others have said, including the typically astute noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, we already have a people’s assembly and it is called the House of Commons.

We all know that the same old people will be mounting their hobby horses in this campaign: Unlock Democracy, the Electoral Reform Society, the Fawcett Society and, of course, the Guardian. The House of Lords is way down the list of voter salience and voter concern. We have already experienced the unedifying chaos of piecemeal reform with the removal of the hereditary Peers, which would make a Central American banana republic blush as dozens of new Labour Peers have been ennobled while long-standing, experienced hereditary Peers—mainly Conservative ones—have been kicked out. In fact, I sometimes think that there is not a member of the constituency Labour Party in Islington or Camden who is not a Member of your Lordships’ House.

The Bill fails to address the case for meaningful incremental reform on attendance, on the potential abuse of leave of absence, on the role of the Lords spiritual or on improving the role of this House in, for instance, confirmation hearings for senior civil servants and quango leaders, or the scrutiny and oversight of international agreements and treaties, analogous with foreign jurisdictions and Senates, such as the United States. These are all areas that could be enhanced without reducing the proper, predominant, constitutional role of the elected House of Commons.

The Bill is also silent on powers, composition, election method and our relationship with the other place. I have to say, I think it is virtue signalling in legislative form. We need only look back to 2012 and Nick Clegg’s proposals for a 15-year, one-off, non-negotiable term in a de facto Senate. That did not work; there was no consensus, which is why it fell, and of course the rest is history.

The public do not really care about this issue. There is no real, definitive, empirical evidence that this is a matter about which the public are significantly concerned. It would be a bunfight and a race to the bottom among the perennially angry activist class. An elected House or Senate of the regions will result in a House of compliant placemen from party lists, donors, careerists, cranks and the unemployable, with fewer appointments on meritorious achievement, skills, knowledge and lived experience.

The dirty secret is this: the Commons will never allow the Lords to impinge on its authority via a competing mandate, even if the Lords aspire to be elected. I speak as a sinner who is repenting—I look at the Bishops’ Bench as I say that—and as someone who had a pretty jaundiced view of the Lords as a Member of Parliament but now genuinely appreciates and understands its integral role of making the Commons better: a Commons that frequently fails by poorly and inadequately scrutinising drafted primary and secondary legislation. We need only think of the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill earlier this week: dozens of amendments were put forward but, because of the guillotine, they were not considered. The other place does not have the time to do that.

In this Parliament, the House of Lords has challenged the over-mighty and arrogant Executive where the Commons has had to acquiesce on, say, Chagos, the then Employment Rights Bill, the social media ban for under-16s, and the Financial Services and Markets Bill. There were—the Whips will probably wince at this—208 defeats in the 2024 to 2026 Session. The alternative is a House of apparatchiks with some kind of a mandate that will set it at permanent war with the Commons. That is a recipe for gridlock and a constitutional impasse. We would not invent the present Chamber as it now is, but it works to meet its constitutional obligations. The Parliament Acts of 1911 and 1949, the Blairite settlement of 1999, the Life Peerages Act 1958—all have acted to establish the proper and well-understood conventions and constitutional proprieties.

One only has to look at the superb work that has been undertaken in the past two years on the terminally ill adults Bill. Whatever your view on that, the House of Lords came into its own as the finest example of a proper scrutiny and oversight Chamber in pointing out the very evident and egregious flaws in that Bill—and we know what happened thereafter.

The Puritan zealots abolished your Lordships’ House during the Cromwellian interregnum, but even they brought it back with Charles II: a legislature that was at the heart of the Glorious Revolution and the publication of the Bill of Rights, the abolition of the slave trade and, more recently, the blocking of 42-day detention for pre-charged terror suspects. Such a body should not be slowly killed off by a consultation portal peopled by angry misfits and anarchists in their parents’ bedroom. This Bill could have been a catalyst for an interesting and important national debate. Regrettably, it feels like a tick-box exercise hiding the blushes of an already over-powerful Government, and yet another of their broken manifesto promises.