House of Lords Bill [HL]

My noble friend referred to Bills and eternity; I could not think of a more apt description of the Marine and Coastal Access Bill. The Government’s position on House of Lords reform has been discussed by a number of noble Lords in this opening debate on the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Steel. I hope that I will not test the patience of the Chamber if I restate that the Government are committed to a comprehensive reform of your Lordships’ House. We will base our proposals on the White Paper, which was produced as a result of cross-party discussions and consensus, and we would welcome a wide-ranging debate on what it contains. As I have said to the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, on a number of occasions, I look forward to debating in the very near future the White Paper and comprehensive reform of your Lordships’ House. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Steel, is not a great admirer of the White Paper. Alas, at Second Reading he said that the Government’s proposals were not imminent and that the White Paper was extremely vague on fundamentals. He spoke rather a lot today about wind. I was not quite sure whether it was the offshore wind variety of renewables or the greenhouse gas emissions variety of cows, about which my colleagues in Defra are so concerned at the moment. We are in a period of debate and discussion on Lords reform and we have made it clear that we will not introduce comprehensive legislation before the next Parliament. This is because we think that on so fundamental a decision as the reform of your Lordships’ House, we have to proceed by cross-party consensus. I do not agree with the noble Lord, Lord Steel. The White Paper contains within it many provisions which are the result of cross-party consensus. I was interested in the helpful suggestions of the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, about the timetable that the Government should adopt. As I have already said, we would welcome a debate. We have always said that we would consider publishing draft clauses in the light of the response we receive to the White Paper, and that remains the position. The noble Lord said that the Conservative Party would never have started from here. The problem, of course, is that the Conservative Party would never have started at all. If the party opposite had been at all serious about Lords reform they surely would have used their 18 years in power to bring forward proposals. We welcome the clear determination of the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, to persuade his right honourable friend the leader of the Conservative Party to change his mind on the urgency of Lords reform. No doubt he will keep us all informed of the progress he makes. The noble Lord will know that the Statutory Appointments Commission was part of the proposals contained in the White Paper. It clearly would make sense that if the option of an 80 per cent appointed House was to be adopted, a Statutory Appointments Commission would be necessary. The drafting of the noble Lord’s Bill is extremely helpful in allowing us to debate the nature of a Statutory Appointments Commission and we will look very carefully at the proposals the noble Lord has made in that respect. Hereditary by-elections are difficult to defend. That was the point of the agreement made back in 1999 in order to encourage comprehensive reform of your Lordships’ House. The Government could not support the proposals made by the noble Lord, Lord Steel, however, because he described them as being kind to the hereditary Peers. We know that under his proposals it would be at least 2040—it could well be 2060—before the last hereditary Peer left this House. Much as I love the hereditary Peers and the contribution they make, we cannot support a proposal that would allow them to remain until then. I turn to the third pillar of the noble Lord’s purpose. As with a number of other parts of the Bill, the allowance of Peers to retire is consistent with the Government’s intention on the provision of resignation, attendance requirements and the enfranchisement of Members after fundamental reform. On resignation, the Government’s intention is that Members of a reformed second Chamber should be able to resign in a simple but formal process. On disqualification for lack of attendance, again, we accept the principle; again, such proposals were contained in the White Paper. On the question of the proposal to exclude Members from the House, there is little doubt over the consensus around Part 4 of the noble Lord’s Bill. The lack of a provision to disqualify Members who are convicted of a serious criminal offence puts us at odds with the rules of another place for no good reason and has caused damage to the reputation of your Lordships’ House. We agree that we must act on this, and we will do so swiftly. Serious criminal conviction is one area where we are considering what legislation could be introduced as part of the Government’s support—