Draft House of Lords Reform Bill

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Monday 30th April 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I am in favour of an elected House, so I hope that the Government will have the courage to come forward with a Bill. However, I do not envy their prospects. On the one hand, if they go down the route proposed by my right honourable friend Nick Clegg, they will be faced with a rebellion in the other House and in this House. On the other hand, if they pull up short of that, they look like causing some severe fractures internally in the Government. It will be a hard choice and I do not suppose that they will have gained anything from the debate today, which has to my mind been pretty polarised.

I will concentrate on a bit of ground between the opposing parties, which no one else likes but for which I happen to have an affection; namely, the list system. Those who favour an elected House say, “It’s appointment by another name”, and so it is. We could preserve all the virtues of the current House under a list system. Those who have argued that we must preserve the House as it is say that the list system would be an election. But it is not an election to fear. At the moment, the Government create the list of Peers they want in the dark after the election and all sorts of odds and sods come through. My peerage comes from buggery and bribery, although things are better these days. None the less, to expose the people proposed for peerages to an election would be a positive step forward. It would not interfere with the process and would tend to result in a better selection of Peers in this place.

There is a lot to be said for my right honourable friends bringing forward a Bill based on a list system. To our surprise, I think that we would find that we could agree on it.