Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

I do not disagree with the hon. Gentleman, because the Lords is more of a revising Chamber than a reforming one—I am perhaps rather taken up with the idea of reform this evening. As I have said, I am all in favour of reform, but it should be carried out at the right pace and in a reasoned and logical way. As he rightly says, the Lords is an effective revising Chamber and the people of this country deserve to have as effective an upper Chamber as possible. Amendment 92 and the associated provisions might make the House of Lords more effective. My hon. Friend the Member for Chichester was right to make the point about the size of the House of Lords, and his argument was persuasive. In redressing the balance of numbers among the parties in the other House, every new Prime Minister rightly has the power to appoint more peers and does so. As a result, the size of the Lords grows and grows. Thus, my hon. Friend was right in his analysis, in his comparison of our bicameral system with other such systems, and in his comparison of the number of people sitting in the Lords with that in any comparable Chamber in the democratic world. Rather than leaving the culling process—I hope that I may call it that—in order to limit the size and overall membership of the Lords to the grim reaper, as the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit Öpik) put it, it would seem sensible for us to consider the possibility of introducing term peerages. As a matter of principle, the Conservatives are always in favour of strengthening Parliament and thereby strengthening democracy, and my hon. Friend's proposals could be a small step in strengthening democracy. They are no substitute for full, considered reform, but he is not pretending that they are. They are possibly a small step in the right direction and for that reason we will not be opposing them.