House of Lords (Alternative Second Chamber) Bill [HL]

Viscount Stansgate Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 23rd October 2026 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, although whether the noble Lord would say the same about me if our positions in the list were reversed, I cannot say. I am sorry to say that I was not in the Chamber when the noble Baroness introduced her Bill. I congratulate her on it being her first. I double-checked the date, and 3 June was the day I returned to the House after a few days’ absence. After five years of serving in your Lordships’ House in many capacities, including as a Deputy Speaker, I suppose I had passed the audition.

I was sorry to learn from the Library briefing that some noble Lords apparently indicated that they did not want the Bill even to receive a First Reading. Noble Lords will know that that is against the spirit, custom and practice of this House, not to mention what is set out in the Companion. Although I do not agree with every aspect of this Bill, I nevertheless hope it gets its Second Reading and is considered further in Committee. I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Llanfaes—I apologise if that pronunciation is wrong—for having brought it forward. We should not be afraid to discuss the future of this Chamber and the possible alternatives that lie before us.

The Bill advocates consultation. Incidentally, I notice that Clause 1(3)(b) says provision should be made for contributions from members of the public to appear on a website. The news this week of the corruption of the PHP software that governs so many websites around the world is a reminder that you cannot always take websites for granted. Anyway, I am grateful for the chance the noble Baroness gives the House today to talk about the future. Of course, this is the second constitution-related debate in two days—the other being the debate yesterday initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich—so this House has had the luxury of considering the constitution of this country twice in a week.

My first point is to argue the need for a second Chamber of whatever kind. I do not think that a unicameral legislature would be a step forward given our political history as a country, and nor would it represent a democratic step forward. I am in favour of a bicameral legislature. Despite the noble Baroness’s criticisms of the Chamber as presently constituted, and whatever the demerits of our House, it is far preferable that we are here than that we are not—or far preferable that something is here as a second Chamber rather than not.

One reason I have for saying this is that our current two-House Parliament is struggling to do its job of scrutinising legislation as it is. I pay tribute to the work of Members of the other place. They work hard, they are dedicated to their constituents and they have enormous pressures on them, not least in this social media age. But it is also true, partly as a result, that they are failing properly to scrutinise legislation—with results that we can see here.

Noble Lords might have been present on the recent evenings when my noble friend Lord Rooker has moved an amendment on the committal stage of government Bills. He has argued that this is because he wants to draw the attention of the House to the extent to which some Bills have had negligible scrutiny in the House of Commons. As a result, this House has an even greater job of work to do, and the Commons may have the mistaken impression that we are making their lives harder by returning Bills to their Chamber with so many amendments when it is, in fact, the reverse. My noble friend has made some good points. Government of all kinds, and I do not mean just the current one, have found it convenient and expedient to use the House as a way of inserting sometimes substantial amendments to their own legislation—my noble friend Lord Blunkett and the noble Lord, Lord Burns, have alluded to this very point during this debate.

The essence of the Bill is to consult stakeholders on the replacement of the House of Lords with an alternative second Chamber. When it comes to possible alternatives to this House, as has been said already, there is no shortage of possible suggestions. The form of your Lordships’ House was an issue that first arose after the rejection of Lloyd George’s Budget in 1909. For many years—maybe still—at Labour Party conferences you could pick up postcards from that era, which depicted a battering ram against the doors of the House of Lords and were designed to foster support for the abolition of this House.

Proposals for reform have arisen since. I almost hesitate to draw your Lordships’ attention to some of them, but perhaps I may refer to a Fabian pamphlet entitled The Privy Council as a Second Chamber, published in 1957, nearly 70 years ago, by the then Member of Parliament for Bristol South East. It argued that because Privy Council membership relied heavily on public service and political appointments, rather than the then existing system of inherited peerages, shifting second Chamber duties to the Privy Council would eliminate almost all hereditary Peers while retaining experienced public servants. Such an approach did not find favour at the time, although, in constitutional terminology, I believe I am right in saying that the Cabinet remains, in formal terms, a committee of the Privy Council.

In the late 1960s, further reform proposals for the second Chamber were defeated by what was then called an unholy alliance between Michael Foot and Enoch Powell. There was the House of Lords Act 1999, which took the first decisive step towards removing hereditary Peers, and the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Act earlier this year completed their removal. Meanwhile, further reform of the House itself arose in the coalition Government of 2010. The detailed proposals put forward for reform, including different options about the proportion of a second Chamber that might be elected, were debated and considered at length, but in the end no single option found favour and the proposed reforms lapsed.

One lesson that can be learned, as some of us explain when we take part in the excellent activities of the Learn with the Lords programme, is that debates about an alternative second Chamber have been going on for so long, and I am afraid that they will continue to do so. One problem that will never go away is how you reconcile the differences between an elected House of Commons and a more legitimate alternative Chamber, possibly an elected House of Lords. The Bill is silent on that matter, and yet that question lies at the very heart of any case for any alternative second Chamber. If you want to know why this is such an important issue, you have only to look at countries such as the United States and the difficulties that arise when two chambers on Capitol Hill disagree with each other—we will have to wait to see whether that reappears.

I know that the Bill is only what you might call a paving Bill to consult on possible future alternatives. However, I am struck by the fact that although Ministers in all the devolved bodies are to be consulted under the terms of the Bill, it does not, unless I have got this wrong, extend to the Parliaments and Assemblies themselves. Perhaps the noble Baroness, when she comes to wind up, might tell the House why the consultation was only for Ministers rather than the actual Assemblies.

All the same, it would be unrealistic to debate the Bill in Committee without considering the crucial issue of how differences would be reconciled between the two Houses. I do not want to go anywhere near the time limit, but I would like to take the opportunity to insert in this debate some of the ideas being discussed among noble Lords about ways in which the House might be reformed that would not need legislation to take effect. These ideas arise from the work of the Campaign for an Effective Second Chamber, so ably led by my noble friend Lady Hayter, who has left her place, and the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth. One of its regular members, the noble Lord, Lord Burns, has already addressed us. These are changes we could make that would require not legislation but only debate and agreement, by this House and for this House, to put into effect.

In what ways could we act to make us more effective? I will give an example. One suggestion that arose yesterday was that the House of Lords Appointments Commission should be put on a statutory basis. The noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, who chaired the commission in the past, said yesterday that he was nervous of such a proposal because it might trigger judicial review as to the basis upon which Peers are appointed. This is a major problem, given the House as it is and its size, and we have no control over the powers of the Prime Minister to create peerages. No one has any control over that.

There are other ways in which we could reform, though perhaps I had better curtail the other examples I was going to give. Using the 2014 Act, we could establish a mechanism to identify and assist those Members for whom retirement might be appropriate. We are officially awaiting proposals from the Government on the removal of peerages, which is a separate issue and has not been done by Parliament since 1917. We could improve the way we scrutinise Bills. I am in favour of not just more pre-legislative scrutiny but more post-legislative scrutiny, which would be a very good thing. There are detailed, rather technical, amendments that could be made. We could tighten the rules on degrouping, which occasionally has been used as a tactic to prolong debate. There are a range of other things, but in view of the time I will pass over the next six or seven wonderful pages of my notes.

In conclusion, I entirely appreciate that the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, wants to use the Bill to trigger a debate about alternatives, and the Prime Minister has already indicated that he would like to embed the concept of devolution more strongly in our constitution. It may be that proposals to that effect will be brought forward. Time will tell. But the House should not be afraid of this Bill. I for one look forward to Committee and very much hope that the House will give it a Second Reading.