Viscount Bridgeman
Main Page: Viscount Bridgeman (Conservative - Excepted Hereditary)House of Lords: Reform
Viscount Bridgeman Excerpts
Viscount Bridgeman
My Lords, the theme running through the ongoing debate about the future of this House is the ignorance in the other place of the working and—dare I say it?—the effectiveness of this House. It applies to all parties and has certainly, so far as I can recall, ever been thus. One of the effects of this is the unawareness among many of our colleagues in the Commons of just how well they are presently served in the current legislative relationship between the two Houses. To take one example, flagship Bills have been given six times the amount of Committee time in this House compared with the other place. We pose no constitutional threat.
The pros and cons of an elected House have been rehearsed many times during this debate: the expense, and the problems of finding candidates of sufficient quality. However, transcending all that in constitutional terms are the powers that an elected House would seek—nay, demand. There is only one place that those can come from—the House of Commons, and how popular would that be down there?
Much has been made of the present lack of democratic legitimacy in your Lordships’ House. Perhaps I may respectfully suggest that that is precisely how it should be—no challenge to the supremacy of the other place. Rather, we would do well to build on the present structure of our House, which, it can be argued, is probably working more effectively than it has ever done in the whole of its history, but with one major proviso: we must have a strong statutory Appointments Commission and, indeed, one that is proofed from any gerrymandering on its composition.
Finally, there are two bedrocks which any changes in this House must enshrine, so well articulated by my noble friend Lord Forsyth. The first is the ability of this House to get the Government to think again and the second, which to some degree is a corollary of the first, is to provide that in principle the Government should in the end get their business.