House of Lords Reform Bill

Debate between Nick Clegg and Anne Main

Monday 3rd September 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

As the hon. Lady knows, a lot of ink, paper and official time has been consumed, not just by this Parliament and Government but by previous Governments and Ministers who have sought finally to crack the conundrum of how we introduce more democracy to the House of Lords. The hon. Lady is right: if she and her colleagues had decided to back us on the timetable motion, all that ink and paper would not have gone to waste.

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

What message does the Deputy Prime Minister think it sends to the public when he votes in favour in principle of boundary changes but then, when he does not get what he wants, he throws his toys out of the pram and rejects the whole thing?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

With the greatest respect to the hon. Lady, I feel slightly as though we are looking at the matter from opposite ends of the telescope. The problem has arisen because of the refusal of her colleagues and others to will the means to deliver something to which she is committed, under not only the coalition agreement but successive Conservative manifestos. I have been looking at the long pedigree of commitments in favour of an elected element in the House of Lords in Conservative party manifestos going back to 2001. Interestingly, the 2005 Conservative manifesto states that

“proper reform of the House of Lords has been repeatedly promised but never delivered.”

That sounds more like a prediction than anything else.

House of Lords Reform Bill

Debate between Nick Clegg and Anne Main

Monday 9th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

It will be able to discharge that considerable authority with greater legitimacy, and therefore it will be harder for the Executive to ignore the opinions of the House of Lords. I would have thought, if I may say so, that it was a long-standing Conservative principle that it is the people who should be in the driving seat and the Executive who should be kept on their toes.

The third reason to support the Bill—

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I shall make some more progress.

The third reason to support the Bill is simple practicality. The House of Lords cannot carry on on its current path. We need to reform the Lords to keep it functioning, and we need to do it soon.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I will make a little more headway, and then of course I will give way.

Democracy, better laws and the urgent and practical need for reform are the three reasons why Members of this House should give the Bill their blessing and wish it a swift passage into law. Before addressing some of the concerns about the Government’s proposals, I would like to make the point that the Bill, although it has been introduced by the coalition Government, in many ways is not just the Government’s Bill. These reforms build on the work of our predecessors on both sides of the House. As with all the best examples of British constitutional reform, the proposals look to the future but are respectful of the past. Veterans of these debates will know that the coalition parties cannot claim full credit for the reforms presented here. If we go back to the White Paper produced by the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) in 2008, the late Robin Cook’s “Breaking the Deadlock”, the House of Lords Act 1999, Lord Wakeham’s royal commission and everything that went before over the past 100 years, it is clear that these reforms have a long bloodline that includes all our parties and political traditions.

[Mrs Main]

Does the Deputy Prime Minister not see that there is a degree of inconsistency between his view that we in this House are too powerful and therefore need neutering by the House of Lords and his voting to maintain the strengthening of the Executive and the boundary changes by keeping the number of Ministers yet reducing the number of Back-Bench Members of Parliament?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

One of the Bill’s intentions is absolutely not to neuter the House of Commons, but to work in partnership with the House of Commons in holding the Executive to account. I would have thought that Members on both sides of the House would celebrate and support anything that means that Parliament as a whole can hold the Executive more fully to account. Indeed, in 1910, when Government proposals to limit the power of the House of Lords were introduced, it was Winston Churchill who said:

“I would like to see a Second Chamber which would be fair to all parties, and which would be properly subordinated to the House of Commons and harmoniously connected with the people.”

He ended by saying:

“The time for words is past; the time for action has arrived.”—[Official Report, 31 March 1910; Vol. 15, c. 1572-83.]

More than 100 years later, I could not agree more.