House of Lords Reform Bill

Debate between Malcolm Rifkind and Nick Clegg

Monday 3rd September 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

Of course the Labour party does not like to be reminded that it has been converted from a party of the people to a party of the peerage. What did Labour Members do when they had the opportunity? They voted for the idea of reform but not for the means to deliver it. They delivered lofty speeches about the need to give the people a say about how to elect the legislators in the other place, but they would not even tell us how many days they wanted in the timetable motion to make that lofty rhetoric a reality.

I think the history books will judge the Labour party very unkindly indeed. When they had the opportunity to translate the great work of Robin Cook and of the right hon. Member for Blackburn into reality and finally had it within their grasp to be the friends of reform, they turned into miserable little party point-scoring politicians instead.

[Sir Malcolm Rifkind (Kensington) (Con)]

The Deputy Prime Minister will be aware that his noble Friend Lord Steel has introduced an alternative reform of the House of Lords measure that commands wide support in the other House as well as in this House. As the right hon. Gentleman will be aware, that measure would remove the hereditary peers, impose a retirement requirement, thereby bringing down the size of the other House, and ensure that those who have been convicted of offences cannot continue to sit in that legislature. Will he give some indication of whether the Government would support that proposal? Otherwise, he will throw away an important and serious opportunity to modernise the upper House. It might not be what he would ideally wish, but it is all he is likely to get.

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I would like to correct the right hon. and learned Gentleman on one point: the Steel Bill would not remove hereditary peers. It would do three things, to be precise. It would extend the, in effect, voluntary retirement scheme that is in place in the other place, which I think has led to the spectacular result of two of its Members choosing to do that. Having seen the coverage of the views of some Members of the other place who are from my party, I can think of one or two whom I hope would take early retirement, but there would not be a mass cull in the way that the right hon. and learned Gentleman implies.

Another provision relates to crooks, but let us remember that that means future, not existing, crooks, who would—hey presto!—not be allowed to sit in the other Chamber. Also, any peer who did not attend once, not even for a few minutes to sign on for their £300 tax-free daily allowance, would be disallowed. I am afraid that any scrutiny of that Bill shows that it would barely trim at the margins the size of the House of Lords, so by its own reckoning it would not do what it purports it would do, which is dramatically to reduce the size of the House of Lords. While I have a great deal of respect for the considerable time and effort that Lord Steel has put into this, my view remains that there is no surrogate for democracy.