House of Lords: Reform

Lord Wills Excerpts

Monday 11th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wills]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Hunt’s call for codification. As noble Lords will know and as we have heard again today, the key issue that has bedevilled House of Lords reform for so long is the potential for challenges to the primacy of the House of Commons if the composition of this House is elected. I understand those concerns, which arise logically from the greater democratic legitimacy of an elected Chamber. But such concerns are not necessarily justified. They could be an outcome, but they are not inevitable.

I believe both in an elected House of Lords and in the primacy of the House of Commons, and I do not believe that they are axiomatically incompatible. The key to resolving any incompatibility must lie in the codification of the functions of this House—to put beyond doubt the respective roles of the two Chambers and their relationship. Convention and custom, upon which we can often rely successfully in our constitutional arrangements, always need to be scrutinised for their adequacy in radically new circumstances—and a wholly or partly elected House of Lords would be radically new circumstances.

I recognise the deep concerns that are felt about codifying our constitution, and to some extent I share them. But we must also recognise that our constitution has in recent years been subject to a creeping codification with no adverse consequences—quite the opposite, in my view. So I do not believe that we need fear such codification of the functions of this House. However, any constitutional codification raises complex and challenging sets of issues, and this debate has illustrated again the importance of fully exploring them so that that debate can be adequately informed.

For that reason, I conclude with a plea to the Government. The previous Government established a working group—a galaxy of wise and distinguished experts from all the main parties and from none, including distinguished Members of this House, to explore these issues without any assumptions about the outcome. The general election intervened before this group could get under way. Please would the Minister commit to getting that group under way? It makes no assumptions about the outcome or its conclusions, and I have no doubt that it will produce invaluable work that will aid policy-making on all sides of the debate. If he will not convene the group, perhaps he could tell the House why not.