Oral Answers to Questions

Sadiq Khan Excerpts

Tuesday 20th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I strongly agree with my right hon. Friend. There is an odd sort of circularity in the argument that, notwithstanding the fact that this House has voted clearly in favour of either a wholly or largely elected Chamber, somehow to preserve the primacy of this House we should not allow any legitimacy into the other place. That seems to me to be a somewhat self-serving argument.

[Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

Major constitutional change that is successful is best done by parties trying to work together and then putting the case to the country via a referendum. We have seen devolution to the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and London done in that way, and on 3 May we will see cities across the country choosing via referendums whether they should have elected mayors. Will the Deputy Prime Minister work with those of us who want to see the second Chamber reformed and then trust the British public on this major constitutional change via a referendum?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

As the right hon. Gentleman knows, because he himself joined in the discussions, we had months and months of painstaking cross-party discussions about the content of the draft Bill, precisely because, as he quite rightly says, it is best to proceed with these important matters on a cross-party basis. All three parties, again as he knows, had in various shapes or sizes a commitment to a reformed House of Lords. It is something we have been discussing for a very long time as a country—close to a century.

There is an open debate to be had about when something is presented to the people via a referendum—or not. The Lords Committee that recently looked at the issue very clearly said that there should be a referendum if there is a proposal to abolish the House of Lords. That of course is not what we are proposing, because we are proposing to reform the composition of the House of Lords, so I do not share the right hon. Gentleman’s view that a referendum is justified in the way he describes, although I acknowledge that it was in his party’s manifesto at the last general election.