House of Lords: Reform

Lord Peston Excerpts

Wednesday 21st December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I can tell that the House is in a good Christmas mood this morning, and it looks as if I am the turkey. The noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, has done some good research into the preamble to the 1911 Act. To some extent, that demonstrates how wise they were in 1911, but even then they could not possibly have predicted that it would take another 100 years to get to the first draft Bill ever published. Today we have a very different House to the one that we had in 1911. The Parliament Act 1911 itself was amended in 1949, and since then the conventions between the Houses have developed over the years. We therefore believe that we should not be bound by the view set out in the preamble to the 1911 Act.

[Lord Peston]

My Lords, is the position of the Leader of the House not somewhat illogical? If we have an elected second Chamber, the Parliament Acts no longer make any logical sense, nor does the primacy of the other place. Indeed, if there were an elected second Chamber, there would be no reason why the Prime Minister should be chosen from Members of the other place, which would certainly please the more ambitious Members of this House.