Motion made, and Question proposed,

That the Lords Message [25th April] relating to Conventions be now considered.

That this House concurs with the Lords in the said Resolution;

That, accepting the primacy of the House of Commons, a Select Committee of 11 Members be appointed to join with a Committee appointed by the House of Lords as the Joint Committee on Conventions, to consider the practicality of codifying the key conventions on the relationship between the two Houses of Parliament which affect the consideration of legislation, in particular:

(A) the Salisbury-Addison convention that the Lords does not vote against measures included in the governing party's Manifesto;

(B) conventions on secondary legislation;

(C) the convention that Government business in the Lords should be considered in reasonable time;

(D) conventions governing the exchange of amendments to legislation between the two Houses;

and that the Committee should report by Friday 21st July 2006;

That the Committee shall have power—

(i) to send for persons, papers and records;

(ii) to sit notwithstanding any adjournment of the House;

(iii) to report from time to time;

(iv) to appoint specialist advisers;

(v) to adjourn from place to place within the United Kingdom; and

That Mr Russell Brown, Mr Wayne David, Mr George Howarth, Simon Hughes, Sarah McCarthy-Fry, Andrew Miller, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, Mr John Spellar, Ms Gisela Stuart, Mr Andrew Tyrie and Sir Nicholas Winterton be members of the Committee.— [Mr. Byrne.]

I am very interested in the motion, and I am disappointed that the Minister did not rise to say something about it. There are certain assumptions that I find puzzling—one is to try to reform the conventions between the two Houses of Parliament, without knowing what the shape, form, powers or responsibilities of the House of Lords will be. At the moment it is at a discount, because it is accountable to no one. If the proposals for the reform of the House of Lords, which I understand are under discussion, suggest that it should be legitimised by being accountable to the electorate, the question of its being a subordinate House does not necessarily arise. It will be what it was historically: co-equal—the two parts of Parliament. I just make that point because it is very important. We are now trying to reform our constitution in the absence of any knowledge of what the House of Lords will be after the deliberations between the major parties. That is the first thing.

The second thing is that the motion—I recognise that it comes from the House of Lords—states:

"the Salisbury-Addison convention that the Lords does not vote against measures included in the governing party's Manifesto."

Every hon. Member who has heard the doctrine of the manifesto and served in the House for a long time knows indeed that it is a very thin concept for a variety of reasons, one of which is the nature of party manifestos. I must confess—it often shocks people— that, until the last election, I had never read my own party's manifesto from beginning to end, and I will give the House an indication of why.

I travelled the Library for a few minutes to look at some of the past manifestos. In 1997, my party's manifesto, under the glorious title of "You can be sure"—or something—was 56 pages long. The Labour party was more realistic; it recognised that, in fact, the electorate would probably grasp only five concepts, so it issued a pledge card. "Make the Difference" was the Liberal Democrats' manifesto—63 pages. By 2001, we had learned something. "Time for Common Sense" was the Conservative manifesto—46 pages. I could not find the Labour manifesto for that election, but I looked at "Ambitions for Wales" and I take it that it was identical, because the Scottish one was "Ambitions for Scotland", and I guess that there was an "Ambitions for England". That was 44 pages.

By 2005, the Conservatives got down to "It's Time For Action"—28 pages. The Labour party had made great advance with "Britain forward not back", which it published as a paperback, retailing at £2.50. I cannot imagine the warehouses filled with that important document.

The hon. Gentleman refers to "Britain forward not back"—112 pages, and it is a right riveting read, I can assure the House, but does he accept that length does not necessary imply detail? Even a manifesto of that length will include something like:

"We will ensure that councils are organised in the most effective way...to deliver high-quality services."

I support that, but what would a breach of that mean if the House of Lords rejected some local government legislation in a future Parliament? That is very difficult to establish.

I am glad that the very point is reinforced by what the hon. Gentleman says, because of course a generalised statement is not a detailed policy, so the consent to the general proposition does not of itself mean consent to the interpretation of what that general proposition means. I always explain that to my constituents by saying that the Government propose—it is in our manifesto—to build a new road to Birmingham; let us say, and we all say, "Hurray!"

A road out of Birmingham!

The hon. Gentleman is thinking of Scotland, I think.

When the detailed Bill comes before the House, we discover that the road goes by way of Ipswich. Am I going to vote for a road that goes to Birmingham via Ipswich? I put it in such simplistic terms because the truth is that the doctrine of the mandate is a wearisome concept that cannot bind Members of Parliament from dutifully examining the detail of legislation and, if necessary, rejecting it. However, that is what is inscribed in the motion—the doctrine of the manifesto.

We have not yet heard from the new Leader of the House, but my understanding is that the job of the Committee will be to discover what it is thought that the conventions are and simply to offer that wisdom to both Houses of Parliament so that they can decide whether to keep them or change them. Like the hon. Gentleman, I am not signed up to a convention that says that whatever the manifesto is, Parliament has to follow it, but surely an academic exercise cannot do too much harm.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman and I notice that his name sits on the list—he is the only representative of the Liberal Democrats on it. I will leap to the part of the Order Paper that is of substance. It names a number of Members to sit on the distinguished Joint Committee. I notice that there are seven Members from the Labour party, three from the Conservative party and one from the Liberal Democrats. That is no longer representative of the many passions and interests that this House, of necessity, as a representative body, must have in the construction of our constitution. Where are the disparate souls from Scotland, Wales or the other parties? It looks to the observer like a carve-up between the three principal parties.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for making that point. The Scottish National party and Plaid Cymru, which have been to the fore in cleaning up the scandals that are happening in the far corridor, are not on the Committee at all.

I had hoped that I was not going to be the only one to speak in the debate. I hope that I have encouraged wider participation. The very fact that the motion was moved formally is an indication that it was expected that it would go through on the nod. However, I look to the Leader of the House, because I know of his concern. I am delighted to know that we have a man who is much respected in the House to make a case for the motion. We have a genuine Leader of the House of Commons and we should respect that. I certainly do and I wish him well in his great appointment. The Leader of the House was someone who represented not only the interests of the Government, but the interests of the House as a personality and an authority in its own right. I remember, as he will, John Biffen standing in the Chamber when guillotines were being proposed and saying, as the Leader of the House, that the routine guillotining of Bills would undoubtedly benefit the Government—and he was absolutely right. However, we have to remember that today's Government may be tomorrow's Opposition.

I hope that we will hear a little more about the thinking behind the motion. As it stands, we are examining the conventions against the background of a sudden lurch and rediscovered interest in reform of the House of Lords by the Prime Minister, no less, who ruled out an elected element. That is being discussed between the leaders of parties and not by any constitutional forum, as is the tradition of this House and other great constitutions.

My hon. Friend has just used the word "examining" the conventions. That word does not appear in the motion that was moved so briefly. Will he tell me whether he understands the word "codifying" to mean examining or to mean something more elaborate—perhaps institutionalising or institutionalising in a code that is binding? That is an important element of the proposal before us.

I have no doubt that the Leader of the House will give us his views on what that means.

My intention in speaking to this seemingly innocuous motion is to put down markers. The matter is profoundly important.

I want to clarify an implication of what the hon. Gentleman generously said about my colleagues and me. We did not sign up to the division of members of the Committee because we wanted to argue in support of it. We were told that the Committee's composition would have to follow the balance of numbers in the House, which is why it will consist of seven Government Members, three Conservative Members, one Liberal Democrat Member and no others. We certainly retain, as he would, our unhappiness about the balance and representation. I understand that the same procedure is applied in the Lords, although the numbers are different because the balance is different.

I am slightly surprised by the hon. Gentleman's response inasmuch as the House is the master. Amendments could have been tabled to address the composition of the Committee, but they have not been tabled. I came late to the motion—that is, yesterday. I would have tabled amendments on the names, but one has to ask people whether they are prepared to serve on Committees. The list of Committee members is ill-balanced and wrongly constructed. It can only have been carved up by Front Benchers, which must mean that the Liberal Democrats were complicit in the arrangement.

I can say, because I was consulted, that we did not agree to the division, but protested about it. I think that the motion was tabled yesterday, so the hon. Gentleman is right that amendments could have been tabled to it to open up the question of the composition. However, we certainly never voluntarily and happily assented to the division of numbers.

But, with great respect, the Committee could be meaningful only with the Liberal Democrats' participation. If they had said that they could not participate on the Committee because of the paucity of representation from elements in the House, the Government would have rethought the list.

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that both Liberal Democrat and Conservative Front Benchers have given the Committee legitimacy by participating?

Much of the business of the House often goes through in a spirit of comity and, in fact, ignorance. The truth is that it is dependent on hon. Members to examine propositions that come before us. I have often made the point that we are all party men in one sense or another, but there are some matters, namely about the House itself, on which we have to stand up and say what we believe is appropriate or right. The motion is a typical example of the way in which business has been done in the modern age. It would previously have been a hotly-contested matter. It bemuses me—I say this just as an observation—that the House of Lords would ever have agreed to such an arrangement, but it has, so we must accept that it wants such a Committee. It is thus incumbent on us to participate, but we should question vigorously why the House of Lords should enter into such an arrangement when it does not know what its future composition will be, or whether people such as myself will be satisfied that it is a legitimate check and balance on our constitutional arrangements.

I have read the proposed list of members of the Committee. It is august indeed, so no aspersion is cast on any individual who is proposed as a member. However, may I put to it to my hon. Friend that it would be helpful to know whether our right hon. and learned Friend Mr. Clarke was asked to join the Committee? If so, did he decline, and if not, why not?

My hon. Friend should be aware that I am entirely ignorant of the answer to that question. Perhaps my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Opposition Front Bench will lay in front of us the reasoning for these matters.

Does my hon. Friend consider it wrong for a Parliament, at any one snapshot in time, to change conventions that have built up over many years?

I talk in that spirit. The Leader of the House is the individual who will lay bare to us the scheme behind the motion. I took in great faith that which was said by Simon Hughes. Although I am dubious and suspicious, I feel that this is merely a looking-at what the conventions are, and will not of itself cast anything in concrete.

I am happy to share with the House later, place in the Library and share with the hon. Gentleman correspondence that I have had with the Lord Chancellor on the status and the relationship of this Committee to other Government considerations. It is clear from a letter that I received from the Lord Chancellor that there was the intention to provide information and to advise both Houses. It is separate from the discussion about the future of the other place, but it was to be interrelated so that one could inform the other.

That is what worries me. The Lord Chancellor has sent a shiver down my spine.

I have been named as a potential member of the Committee. My understanding is, on this occasion, the same as Simon Hughes. We are seeking to examine the conventions, but there is the issue of whether a consensus can emerge on what would be appropriate in any alteration to the conventions. It is not unreasonable that a Committee should proceed in such a way. I know that the hon. Gentleman is a reasonable man. I hope that he will understand that there is before us an attempt by reasonable people to ascertain whether we can find a way forward that will find consensus across both sides of the House.

I greatly respect the hon. Gentleman. I cast no aspersions on the names that have been listed. It is the process by which the names arrived on the Order Paper that worries me.

It is said that reasonable men can find a consensus. I have fear at the very thought that reasonable men—remember who we are dealing with—will inform us on how the House of Lords is shaped. I am not sure whether there is an interrelationship after what the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey has said. If that is the way we are proceeding, I am alarmed. The constitutional settlement of what the House of Lords should be would normally enable that place to determine its own standing orders and its relationship with this place. That is what we understood as politics—reasonable men negotiating from a position of strength, not a neutered Second Chamber.

That is not my understanding. The composition of the other place is wholly without the terms of reference of the Joint Committee. Within the terms of reference is discussion about the arrangements between the two Houses in terms of legislation and what is acceptable and what is not. The hon. Gentleman is raising fears that are groundless.

This is cart and horses. How can we rationally examine conventions on behalf of a body, or inform the composition of a body, that may take upon itself a view that is entirely different from a House that has not yet been reformed?

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Will we have an opportunity to discuss these matters after the Leader of the House has had his bite of the cherry?

The Leader of the House is not winding up the debate—he is just starting.

It is a great pleasure to speak to the motion, which I tabled with my right hon. and hon. Friends. It fulfils the commitment given by the Government in our manifesto last year to conduct

"a review...by a committee of both Houses" to

"seek agreement on codifying the key conventions of the Lords".

The focus of our debate is on the Joint Committee's terms of reference and its membership from the Commons, rather than the wider question of House of Lords reform, including the future composition of the upper House. However, to answer Mr. Shepherd, our debate takes place in the context of the commitment by all three principal parties and some of the minority parties to look at the composition and the powers of the House of Lords. It was our judgment before the election—and it remains our judgment—that as the issue of the composition and thus the powers of the Lords were to be the subject of live debate in this Parliament it was essential that we establish a baseline by reaching a common understanding of the existing balance of powers between the Lords and the Commons.

I am talking not about the way in which the Lords manages itself—that is a matter for their lordships and no one else—but about the extent to which the House of Lords seeks to check and balance the powers of the Commons. Both Houses have a legitimate interest in the matter and, ultimately, it is for the elected Chamber to make decisions. If there had not been any debate about that, if there had not been any argument in the country and if political parties had not sought to put the issue on the national agenda there would be no need for the Joint Committee. However, those issues arise periodically—they were live issues in the last Parliament—so there is cross-party determination to try to seek a consensus on the composition of the Lords. We therefore need prior agreement on powers, and we need a common understanding of the existing powers.

I thank the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills for the great compliment that he paid me when he spoke about the role of the Leader of the House. He dismissed the doctrine of the manifesto—he is entitled to his opinion—but he certainly wasted his time reading his party manifesto, because as soon as the ink was dry and the election was over, its author, Mr. Cameron, announced that he did not agree with a word of it. That appeared to be his manifesto in his party's leadership campaign.

It was an extremely shrewd and sensible one.

The manifesto drafted by the Leader of the Opposition should be torn up, but the hon. Gentleman's admission exposes the lack of judgment on the part of its author, behind whose banner he intends to stand.

rose—

I shall give way in a moment.

The hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills may disagree with the doctrine of the manifesto, but it is the basis of our politics. He asked how the Committee will operate. The four conventions listed in the motion and other arrangements are already the subject of explanation in "Erskine May" and other authoritative textbooks.

Up to now, however, there has not been a description of those conventions by Members of this House and the other place, or an attempt to secure that. The Committee that we establish may conclude that the conventions are impossible to describe in the words of the English language, but that would be astonishing. It is possible to describe the conventions and for the Committee to go on to make recommendations about the manner in which they might be codified. It is for the Committee to make recommendations, and for the House and the other place to dispose of the matter.

The manner in which the conventions could be codified ranges from a codification in the body of the Committee's report, to a code that has been negotiated by both Houses and which we endorse in resolutions, through to its inclusion in Standing Orders or its enshrinement in law. That is a subsequent matter.

I have high hopes of the Leader of the House, who strikes me as a man of integrity, from first impressions. Given the current scandals—a police investigation and two parliamentary inquiries—surely the most live issue, as the right hon. Gentleman said, is the convention on appointments? Before we do anything with the House of Lords, we must make sure that the system of appointments is beyond reproach. That is what the Committee should examine. We must ensure that transparent—

Order. The matter has nothing to do with appointments. It is about the conventions of both Houses. I call the Leader of the House.

I give way to Mr. Cash.

I am grateful to the Leader of the House. Can he tell us, first, what he understands by the expression "convention" in the present context? Secondly, how does he justify the assertion in the message and the resolution that these are "the key conventions" or, indeed, conventions at all?

As I learned when I was studying at A-level what was then quaintly described as British constitution and is now described as politics, our constitution is not unwritten, but it is not in a body of higher law that has supremacy over ordinary law of Parliament. In addition, some of the basic tenets of our constitution, such as the fact that it is Parliament rather than any other institution that has the power, are not prescribed in legislation at all, but they are written down. They are written down in "Erskine May", as I say, and in many other authoritative textbooks and guidance, and everybody accepts them. They are perfectly capable of description.

We do not often discuss whether Parliament, rather than, say, the Crown, should be the final authority because there is consensus on that. Ever since government in this country moved from being representative but undemocratic to representative and gradually democratic, there has been a tension between the Lords and the Commons. The balance of power has shifted, and each time it has done so new conventions have had to be developed to ensure the smooth passage of legislation.

Again, those conventions are perfectly capable of being written down. They have to be understood, and the only way they can be understood is in words, rather than in emotions and sentiments. That is the purpose of the Committee. These are not the only conventions that govern the relationship between the Commons and the Lords. Most people are aware of the origins of the Salisbury-Addison convention, which raises the issue of the manifesto.

The length of manifestos can be charted from the occasion in the late 1940s when that convention was agreed. Earlier ones, as the hon. Gentleman will see if he looks in the Library's collection of manifestos, were very short, including Labour party manifestos. The conventions arise from that, and the Committee can consider them. The motion states "in particular", but it is by no means an exclusive list.

It will be to the right hon. Gentleman's enduring credit if, as I confidently expect, he, as a great House of Commons man, proves to be the House's representative in the Government, rather than merely the Government's representative in the House. However, he has already worried me: will he confirm that he does not envisage the Joint Committee as the first stage in a two-stage process to achieve the ultimate reform that is in the minds of right hon. and hon. Members? In other words, will he confirm that agreement in Committee on the conventions is not a necessary prerequisite—a sine qua non—of progress thereafter?

No one has suggested that unless the Committee reaches an agreement about the conventions, there will be no further opportunity for discussion on reform of the House of Lords. The hon. Gentleman will be familiar with our proposals, and we have said that we will introduce a series of options and that there will be a free vote, in the light of which the House will judge whether it wants legislation to be introduced. The hon. Gentleman thinks that he smells a rat, but there is no rat to smell.

I welcome the Leader of the House to his new post and look forward to many happy Thursday mornings with him. May I take him back to his statement about how the conventions might be codified, which may have involved a slip of the tongue? He said that one option would be to put the conventions into statute, but my memory is that when the Lord Chancellor was asked in the Constitutional Affairs Committee how he could guarantee that such conventions would not then become the subject of judicial review, his answer was that they would not be in statute and that they would be in some other form.

That will be a matter for the Committee. In my opinion, it would be a grave error to put any description of the convention into legislation, because that would embroil the higher courts in the powers of this House in relation to the other place, and it would also be unnecessary. I was asked to state how the conventions currently described in the textbooks could be described more formally, and I offered a range of alternatives. However, the matter is not for me—I shall not serve in Committee—but for the Members of both Houses who will serve in Committee.

I join in the universal welcome for my right hon. Friend's coming home and am sure that he will be a considerable Leader of the House. Conventions, by their nature, are things that change. At this moment, the relationship between this House and the House of Lords is changing, and it will change even further and faster when we have the promised second stage of House of Lords reform. I put it to my right hon. Friend that there is a practical difficulty in trying to freeze the definition of conventions at a moment in time, when they will necessarily be changed by what we do on a wider front.

The question whether conventions are frozen relates to the question of the status of the Committee's recommendations and conclusions. The House might take the view that it should simply receive the report and for the time being not decide to elevate the description of the conventions into a document that has any greater status than that. My hon. Friend has made the case for setting a baseline. All hon. Members understand that if the composition of the other place is to change to any significant degree—in particular, by moving towards an elected element—it is bound to affect the balance of power between the two Houses. It is therefore as well for everybody to understand that we cannot have a discussion about composition without also acknowledging the crucial inter-relationship of powers. We might as well have an agreement about where we are starting from and what the common understanding is before we move on.

There are practical reasons for doing that. For example, as I know from my time as Home Secretary, Labour Members complain that the House of Lords gives us a tougher time than the Conservatives when we are in government. Conservative Members might cast their minds back to the time when Mr. Howard was Home Secretary. It is fair to say that there were, at least qualitatively, quite a number of occasions when he was given a hard time too. Mature reflection by this Committee might be helpful.

I am very grateful to all hon. Members who will serve on the Committee for the work that they are about to undertake, with the leave of this House. Plenty of Committee reports are received and no particular view is taken of them; it depends on the quality of the work that has been put in. My view is that in this case the quality will be high.

The Leader of the House is making a logical case for postponing this until we know about the reform of the other place. Can he explain why we have to do it now?

What I was trying to do—I obviously failed comprehensively—was to make a logical case for dealing with this issue before we got on to composition. Let me try to explain the point again, because it should be one on which there is agreement across the Chamber.

Each party is committed to seeking some changes in the composition of the House. For us, it is to make it more representative; for the Conservatives, it is to see whether there is a consensus on an elected element. I apologise to the Liberal Democrats for not having memorised their manifesto commitment. I dare say that, as ever, it seeks to outbid the two parties that have any prospect of government—but 'twas ever thus. With all due deference to the drafters of the Conservative and Labour manifestos, they are always couched in rather general terms—they raise expectations, but do not do much more than that. One of the good things about our manifesto was that it took the view that we had to sit down and describe where we were before we moved on to the next stage, and see whether there was broad agreement about the nature of these conventions—particularly, as the motion makes clear, in relation to legislation.

The crucial role of the Lords, as everybody knows, especially anybody who has ever been a Minister, is to revise Bills that come from this place. I personally think that in general their lordships do a very good job. My hon. Friend Dr. Wright will recall that after I had accepted a shedload of amendments on the Freedom of Information Bill, I commented that although that could sometimes be irritating, it was one of many Bills that had been improved by the process of revision in this place and in the other place. I say that in all seriousness. Anybody who has ever experienced drafting legislation in government knows that, because the pace is fast, no Minister can, in practice, go through every detail of it. It is therefore absurd for any Minister to suggest that measures are written on tablets of stone and that there should be no change to them.

We accept—and I have always regarded as valuable—the role of the other place. However, I believe that all parties agree that this House must have primacy, not only because of the doctrine of the manifesto, but because this is the elected Chamber and the means whereby the view of the people is expressed. Somehow, there must be a way of squaring the circle between the other place's legitimate powers to revise legislation and ensuring that this House has primacy. That has been the purpose over the years of the development of conventions, especially in relation to legislation. Any change to the composition of the other place will inevitably change its appetite for its role in legislation and therefore, in practice, its sense of its power.

Our judgment is that it is a good idea to start by setting out the baseline. I hope that that answers—I have tried to do so—the point made by Mr. Bone.

Like my hon. Friend John Bercow, I am something of a spectator at this debate, because I came into the Chamber to present a petition. I hope that I might be able to do that before midnight. However, the Leader of House, being—like me and many others—a student of law, acknowledges that conventions evolve.

Surely the conventions between an elected House and a fundamentally unelected House will be different from those between an elected House and another largely elected House at the other end of the building. The exercise that the Leader of the House and the Committee are about to undertake is totally academic. It will be overturned as soon as we know the composition of the other place.

The hon. Gentleman makes the point that I am trying to make: if we are to move to a wholly or partially elected House its powers are bound to change to some extent, and we need to know where we are at the moment. To answer John Bercow, of course there will be the debate that we promised in our manifesto on considering options for the future of the House of Lords. I hope that those debates focus seriously on the role that we want the House of Lords to play, and that we will then seek a consensus on a Chamber that is based on that role, not the other way round. If we are to do that, we might as well first ascertain whether we can agree about the role in relation to this Chamber. That is the purpose of the Committee. It would be bad, and would not serve our constituents' interests, if during the subsequent debate we spent the whole time arguing about our different understanding of the current role. That could easily result from leaving things as they are and not having the Committee.

rose—

rose—

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I shall give way first to Simon Hughes, then to the other hon. Gentleman, and then to my hon. Friend David Taylor.

Let me try to summarise what appeared to us to be the sensible proposition—which, I believe, the Government support. There should be a three-stage process. First, both Houses should ascertain whether they can agree about the current conventions. Secondly, we should consider whether it is sensible to codify them, and if so, in what way. Thirdly, having done that, we can have a realistic debate about what changes should be made to the House of Lords. We all have our views on that, but at least we will approach it on the maximum common basis of knowledge and agreement.

The hon. Gentleman puts the point better than I, and I am grateful to him. He is right, and that is a good reason for his inclusion on the Committee.

May I expand on the point made by Mr. Bone by saying that we are dealing with components here—almost like the components of a car? We are tweaking about with the components despite the fact that we might be buying a new car in a year or two. Surely we should look at the bigger picture before concentrating on the smaller details. Na h-Eileanan an Iar is my constituency, by the way.

Simon Hughes has already addressed that point, and so have I. I do not regard the issue of the powers of the House of Lords in relation to this place as a small detail.

The Leader of the House suggested a moment ago that there was intra-Chamber consensus on the Salisbury-Addison convention on manifesto commitments. He said—I paraphrase slightly—that any manifesto was a blend of a snapshot of the present landscape, a broad aspirational sweep, and legislative nuts and bolts. This is a quote from page 61 of our 2005 manifesto:

"Given the pace of change within medical services we will ensure that it is possible for the NHS to change the way in which it organises its services as quickly as possible."

Into which of those three categories does that fall—

Order. I do not think that the Leader of the House needs to respond to that question. Although this debate is completely open-ended, I have to say that it is getting rather circular.

I will talk to my hon. Friend David Taylor about that question in the Tea Room, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

Further to the point raised by the hon. Members for Wellingborough (Mr. Bone) and for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr. MacNeil), may I tell my right hon. Friend that the reason why I agreed to serve on this Committee was my sheer frustration at the way in which the House had dealt with the process the last time round? I chose to protest by voting for abolition last time, because I thought that it was absurd to have a discussion such as this before the House had had a reasoned debate on what the powers of the House of Lords are now and what we would like them to be. When we have discussed those issues, it will make sense to discuss the composition of the other place.

I agree with my hon. Friend.

Architects say that form should follow function, and that should apply equally when we are designing our Government. We need to get the functions right first. I sat on the last Joint Committee, and I was not particularly keen on the idea of sitting on another one on this matter. We failed with regard to the issues of function and of role, because we all too easily said, "Oh yes, we all agree about that."

My hon. Friend puts his point very elegantly. I hope that we shall learn from what happened in the last Parliament. If we do not address the issue of function first, by describing what the House of Lords is for, grave errors will be made when we come to consider the issue of form.

rose—

Will the hon. Gentleman allow me to make some progress?

I want to deal with three final points that might help to answer some of the questions that hon. Members have asked. With the leave of the House, I shall seek to respond at the end of the debate to any further issues that have been raised. The hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills asked about the political balance of the Committee. He expressed surprise that its formula for here was 7:3:1, which departs slightly from the traditional formula for Commons-only Committees of 6:3:2. The 7:3:1 formula has been adopted because this will be a Joint Committee. Overall, there will be 11 Labour Members out of a total of 22, so they will not even be in the majority. Of that number, seven Labour Members will be from this place and four from the House of Lords. For the Conservatives, there will be six altogether: three from this place and three from the other place. For the Liberals, there will be one from this place and two from the Lords. The balance will be made up by two Cross-Benchers.

The second issue—it has not been raised so far but it might be, so let me put it on the record—is the time that has elapsed to establish the Committee. Mrs. May might be about to raise that. I know that everyone in the Chamber would have preferred the Committee to have been set up earlier, but I gather that that was not possible. We spent a lot of time consulting other parties and, within the confines of our manifesto commitment, the terms of reference that we debate tonight have been agreed with the other parties. The leaders of the other parties voted for those terms of reference and the motion in the debate in the other place on 25 April.

The final point—to anticipate an issue—is the timetable from now. The proposed date for the Joint Committee to report is 21 July, four days before we rise for the summer recess, which, including the Whitsun recess, is around 10 weeks away. That is a short, but not unreasonable, deadline. Some Members have drawn a comparison, as did Members of the other place, with the Joint Committee of 2002, on which my hon. Friend Chris Bryant served. That Committee was appointed in July 2002 and reported in December. However, the period in between included the summer recess—around two months—and the state opening of Parliament, which accounts for some of the additional time given. Furthermore, the remit of the 2002 Committee was far wider than that of the one that we are debating today.

I was indeed going to refer to the 21 July deadline in the motion. The Leader of the House says that that is 10 weeks away. As I understand it, however, the motion will be subject to a deferred Division, so technically, the Committee will not be set up until next week. Therefore, it will be set up only a week before the Whitsun recess, and is unlikely to meet until after that recess. That significantly reduces the time.

If the motion is agreed tonight, it is agreed. If it is objected to, however, the Division will be deferred. I hope very much, however, that the House will agree to accept it tonight. Deferred voting is a separate issue, but I understand, although I had absolutely zero to do with the idea of deferred voting one way or the other, that it is for the convenience of the House. If representations are made about changing that, I will certainly consider them. Although I accept that 10 weeks is not all that long, if the Committee comes to the view that it needs more time, we can return to the House to seek an extension—it will not be my intention to stand in the way of such a request from the Committee.

This has turned out to be a livelier and more interesting debate than I had anticipated, but it shows the appetite for this issue—

Insatiable.

I hope that it is not quite insatiable; otherwise there will never be any change. Meanwhile, for the reasons that I have explained, and that others have elaborated, I hope that the motion will enjoy unanimous support from the House, and I commend it.

I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to what, as the Leader of the House has said, has become a somewhat livelier and perhaps longer debate than many had expected, with contributions from a significant number of hon. Members.

Before I deal with the substance of the issue, may I welcome the right hon. Gentleman to his new position as Leader of the House? I also welcome his comments yesterday in response to Leader of the House's questions about his understanding and recognition of his responsibility to this House, and about how he intends to serve in his position in the best interests of this House. All Members of the House will welcome that.

There is, of course, a precedent for a Foreign Secretary becoming a distinguished Leader of the House—the late Robin Cook.

And Geoffrey Howe.

Yes, I was not in the House at that time. There is more than one precedent, but I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman will follow in those steps and serve with distinction.

The motion arises from a pledge in the Labour party manifesto. We have already had quite a debate about manifestos and what the terms of manifestos mean. Last year's Labour party manifesto stated that the Government would

"seek agreement on codifying the key conventions of the Lords", hence the motion setting up the Joint Committee to consider the practicality of codifying the key conventions and setting out the particular conventions that the Committee is intended to consider.

The Leader of the House referred to the time that it has taken to set up the Committee. It has indeed taken nearly a year. I understand that discussions between the Government and other parties began last summer, and that terms of reference were agreed some time ago. In the meantime, the Lord Chancellor has spoken of establishing a Committee on House of Lords reform. An idea that was due to be presented to this House at a time when House of Lords reform was not being actively considered has now been presented precisely when such reform is being actively considered. That obviously gives rise to questions about why it is being presented at this stage, and about its interaction with the debates on House of Lords reform.

On the basis that it represented a fulfilment of a manifesto commitment by the Labour party and on the basis of discussions between the parties, we supported the motion in the other place. I intend to support this motion, but, as has been made clear by Lord Strathclyde, the Leader of the Opposition in the other place, we do not accept any reduction in the powers of the House of Lords. It is on that basis that we have agreed to the establishment of the Committee. I therefore think it important to set out exactly what we understand it will do.

There has been some interaction between the Leader of the House and hon. Members, and indeed between hon. Members, on the Committee's role and on what its role should be. It is important to note that the terms of reference do not even ask it to codify the conventions of the House of Lords: they ask it to consider the practicality of codifying the key conventions relating to the relationship between the two Houses, which is one step back from setting out the conventions in any form.

I have long held that codification is desirable, because it is difficult to establish the precise relationship between the two Houses other than on the basis of a gentlemen's agreement signed in a club many decades ago. Some constitutional lawyers, however, believe that codification is impossible. What is the right hon. Lady's personal view?

My personal view is that it is doubtful whether it will be able to codify in a way that would retain the flexibility that I consider necessary. I shall deal with that point shortly, because I think that we should take it into account when examining the rather tricky role that the Committee will have to play.

The Committee is not being asked to decide whether certain conventions should be scrapped or amended, or indeed what the powers of the two Houses should be. The motion simply asks it to "consider the practicality" of codifying its role. It is, however, understandable that some Members have—in the words of my hon. Friend Mr. Shepherd—smelled a rat, because the commitment in the Labour party manifesto on which the establishment of the Committee is based goes further. Having stated

"we will seek agreement on codifying the key conventions of the Lords", it continues:

"and developing alternative forms of scrutiny that complement rather than replicate those of the Commons; the review should also explore how the Upper Chamber might offer a better route for public engagement in scrutiny and policy-making. We will legislate to place reasonable limits on the time Bills spend in the second chamber—no longer than 60 sitting days for most Bills.

As part of the process of modernisation, we will remove the remaining hereditary peers and allow a free vote on the composition of the House."

So the manifesto commitment on which the motion is based goes considerably further than the motion.

My right hon. Friend may have observed that three of the Members who intervened on the Leader of the House—members of his own party—clearly believed that one of the terms of reference was to discuss what should happen in the future. Indeed, Mr. Howarth—who is no longer present—referred to discussing what was acceptable and what was not.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Indeed, the implication of the intervention from Simon Hughes was that, according to his understanding of the Committee's role, it could go further than the terms set out in the motion. My point is that we have accepted this Committee on the basis of the motion, which sets it a very specific task. I will discuss later some of the problems of codification—an issue raised by Chris Bryant.

I do not want there to be any misunderstanding. I am very clear that this Committee will deal simply with stage one, assessment, and stage two, consideration of whether we can codify. Its remit does not extend to thinking about what we do with the Lords after that.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for clarifying that point.

I confess that I disapprove of the whole basis on which Select Committees of this House are currently constituted—a view that I last expressed in the main debate on the composition of Select Committees on 13 July last year. Does my right hon. Friend know on what basis this Committee was constituted and at what point approaches were made? More specifically, did those approached know what the terms of the motion by which they would effectively be bound were to be?

I am afraid that I am unable to enlighten my hon. Friend on the question of exactly when particular individuals were approached and asked whether they would be prepared to participate in the Committee. My understanding, however, is that when approached, it was made clear to them exactly what the Committee was about and what its job would be. The Government and other parties had discussed the terms of reference before the motion came before the House, so they were known and understood before people were asked to participate in the Committee.

Just to put at rest the mind of John Bercow, I was familiar last week with the broad terms of reference, although not the specific wording. Nothing in the wording gives me cause for concern about my role as I understood it.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for explaining his own experience.

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

Yes, and then I will make some progress.

I am simply trying to assist the debate. There was much discussion of this issue after the general election, but no agreement was reached. I do not think that the wording was shown to anybody in the Opposition parties until a couple of weeks ago—before this matter was first debated in the House of Lords.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that clarification.

I want to move beyond the wording of the motion and on to the issues that lie behind this project, the first of which is the problem of definition and codification. There is a danger that codification could remove the flexible relationship between the two Houses that enables better governance. Indeed, in some cases, such a relationship enables the Government to pass business that would be difficult to get through if the codification was as suggested in the Labour party manifesto.

Let us consider the example of the planning and compulsory purchase legislation that, at one stage, the Government were on the verge of losing because of the incompetence of the former Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. Agreements were reached in the House of Lords on progressing that legislation in such a way as to ensure its enactment. If the rules had been absolute, that would not have been possible, which is one reason why I said earlier to the hon. Member for Rhondda that it is very difficult to codify, while at the same time providing the necessary flexibility in the relationship between the two Houses, in the interest of getting legislation through Parliament.

My hon. Friend Mr. Shepherd made several good points with great passion, as he always does, especially on issues relating to the constitution and Parliament. He talked about the problem of defining manifesto commitments, and he was right. It is one of the greatest problems that the Committee will face when considering the Salisbury-Addison convention. One example is the recent debate on the Identity Cards Act 2006, in which the Labour party's commitment to voluntary identity cards was challenged by the Opposition, because we believed that the manner in which they would be introduced effectively meant that they would be compulsory—because of the increasing requirement to hold a passport. If an identity card becomes automatic on having a passport, holding the identity card effectively becomes compulsory. That was a debate on the definitions of voluntary and compulsory in this House, and it shows how difficult it will be to define manifesto commitments, as David Taylor made clear by quoting his party's manifesto. Manifestos are often drawn very wide, so it is difficult for anyone to say exactly what was meant in terms of legislation. The danger is that codification will mean that decisions as to what such manifesto commitments mean are not taken by elected representatives in this House, but are left to lawyers, who will have to find a way through the problems caused by trying to codify the conventions. The Committee will face real difficulties in attempting such codification.

Why has this issue come up now, juxtaposed as it is with the whole question of House of Lords reform, including the intervention by Lord Falconer? The problem is that it is a circular argument. The hon. Member for Rhondda said that form should follow function, but the problem is that function may be determined by form in relation to the House of Lords. The functions that one would anticipate an elected House undertaking would be very different from the sort of functions that one would anticipate an unelected House undertaking. Therefore, if one identified the function and then fitted the form to it, the function might change once the form had been decided. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will say that one has to break the circular argument at some point, but in this instance the function of the House of Lords will be determined by the form of the House of Lords.

Surely the point is that this is about the very important matter of how power is distributed within government in Britain. The only way to get the architecture right is by deciding what function Britain needs the House of Lords to perform, to add to the functions of this House, in terms of scrutinising legislation and the Executive. One has to start with function, not form.

The hon. Gentleman has just made my point very well for me.

I raised the issue of timing, as have other hon. Members, and some of them may be concerned at the impact that the Committee will have on the debate about House of Lords reform—whether it will speed that up. In fact, it may be a way for the Government to kick House of Lords reform further into the long grass—despite the comments by the Lord Chancellor—by saying that it cannot take place until the Committee has met, deliberated and reported. Indeed, there was a slight hint of that in one or two of the comments by the Leader of the House, when he referred to the need to set out the conventions before considering reform.

A number of questions arise and I hope that the Leader of the House will answer them when he winds up. How will Lord Falconer's proposal for talks on House of Lords reform relate to the work of the Joint Committee? Will nothing happen until the Committee has reported, and who will Chair the relevant Cabinet Committees?

Moi.

The right hon. Gentleman uses a foreign word in a way that I thought was not permitted in this Chamber, but he confirms that he will chair those Committees.

The question about the timetable was raised, and I am grateful to the Leader of the House for making it clear that, if more time is needed, he will be prepared to come to the House to seek an extension.

The motion specifies a date of 21 July for the Committee to report. If it is discussed on the Monday of the following week, 76 days will have passed before the House can scrutinise it. Does my hon. Friend agree that this matter is being rushed through?

My hon. Friend is well known for his concern about the fact that the House does not sit in the summer recess. His point about timing is valid. One concern is that the Committee will not have enough time to deliberate properly, and another is that, even if the deliberations are rushed through to meet the 21 July deadline, neither House will be able to consider them until the autumn.

Lady Amos told the House of Lords that it will be up to the Committee, when it has met and decided what it will look at, to come back to both Houses and seek an extension if it thinks that the time scale is too short. Will the Leader of the House confirm that the motion does not mean that the 21 July report cannot be an interim report? If that is so, the Committee could report on that date, which might not be the end of its deliberations.

We supported the establishment of this Committee because it was a Government manifesto commitment. It will look at the practicality of codifying the conventions, and will not try to amend them or reduce the power of the House of Lords. However, I hope that the Leader of the House will answer one final question. If the Committee decides that it is not practical to codify the conventions and does not produce recommendations for improving the present arrangements, will the Government undertake not to produce a unilateral Bill constraining the powers of the Lords? That might achieve the same end by another means, but it would lead to confrontation with the House of Lords and with some Members of this House.

As I have said, we do not want the power of the House of Lords to be reduced, and we do not want the Committee to be a back-door route to that end. I trust that the Leader of the House will confirm that is not the Government's intention either.

If I had been presented with this proposition a year or two ago, I would have opposed it instinctively. I would have made a speech saying that it was inconceivable that the conventional arrangements of the two Houses could be considered without looking at the larger context of what should be done about the Houses' broader composition and relationship.

That would have been an excellent speech.

It would, and probably even better than the short one that I am about to deliver, but things have changed. I hope that the House agrees with me that we must not repeat statements in respect of House of Lords reform that have already been repeated endlessly. On these occasions, we tend to make the same type of speech, saying the same type of thing, putting forward our favourite nostrums on reform, with the effect that we never achieve reform of any kind.

I was a member of the public when the House last debated this subject, but there seems to be a degree of myopia. This Parliament is not the only bicameral Parliament in the world. Rather than reinvent the wheel or tie ourselves up in endless detail, would not it be better to look at best practice throughout the world and learn from it?

We should certainly look at best practice throughout the world, while bearing in mind our distinctive history and the distinctive nature of the relationship between Parliament and the Executive in this country.

I do not want to make the speech that I have made many times before, and I do not want to hear other Members make the same speeches that they have made many times before, which makes me well disposed towards any initiative that will move things on. One initiative could be to establish what the current conventions are, for reasons that the Leader of the House has given, although as I pointed out, the picture is changing.

The current conventions—at least, the central one: the Salisbury-Addison convention—were forged during the post-war Labour Government, who had a huge popular majority while the Conservative party had a huge entrenched majority in the House of Lords, based on the hereditary peerage. We have only to remember that context to realise that simply to codify those conventions now would not tell us much about the relationship that should exist between the two Houses in very altered circumstances.

There are difficulties about the practicality of carrying out the exercise, even though it would be extremely useful to have it done. That is a conundrum that the Committee will have to face. It is clear to me what the conventions ought to be, so perhaps I can save the Committee a little time, if it considers my suggestion practicable.

In essence, there are three conventions. The first is that this House should, in the last resort, get its way. The second is that the Government should be entitled to get their business in reasonable time. The third is that the House of Lords should have proper opportunity to perform its function of scrutiny and revision. That is what governs the relationship between the two Houses, and it does so from the perspective that there is no rivalry between the two Chambers; the task is to make the Chambers work in a complementary fashion to make Parliament itself more effective.

People talk constantly about the primacy of the Commons; in fact, it is Parliament that is sovereign. We have to strengthen and emphasise the sovereignty of Parliament. That is the real challenge that faces us.

My hon. Friend makes an interesting point, but he is slightly wrong. One of the elements in the primacy of this place is that Finance Bills can be considered only here, which is important. Secondly, the Government can be formed only by virtue of a majority in this Chamber. No matter how many times another Chamber might choose to have a vote of confidence, it would never be able to dislodge the Government. That is the essence of the primacy of this Chamber.

I give way to Mr. Shepherd.

Dr. Wright—my neighbour and good friend—is right to remind us about the supremacy or the primacy of Parliament, but people such as me believe that that is so only because it is an expression of the sovereignty of the people. If the other Chamber is elected, it will be accountable and it, too, will be an expression of the people's view. Primacy between Chambers is a matter of negotiation between two legitimate bodies. I start from that constitutional principle, which is clearly at odds with the hon. Gentleman's constitutional principle.

Of course, the point about constitutional principles is that they are endlessly at issue with one another. The point that I want to make is that there is a reputable case for doing almost anything about the House of Lords. There is a reputable case for electing it, for electing it indirectly, for appointing it or for leaving it is its semi-reformed state. What there is not a reputable case for is not having the intellectual and political energy to think what its role might be in a strengthened Parliament and then to ensure that it performs that role.

We are having this discussion at a time when the relationship between the two Houses is changing quite rapidly. I suspect that there are different agendas at work. I can quite understand why a Government might feel that they would like a second chamber that is rather more pliant than the current one. I suspect that they may want—it is a perfectly proper thing for a Government to want—to find a way to codify conventions that will enable them to get their business more conveniently.

The hon. Gentleman has opened up the whole debate about the future of the second chamber. Many people will disagree with him on many of the obvious distinctions between the two Houses. Even if we retain the view recently expressed by Chris Bryant that only this House can determine whether the Government stay in office and vote them out or keep them in, it does not mean to say that the other place, in whatever new form, cannot have pretty strong legislative powers and, if elected, arguably similar legislative powers to those of this Chamber.

It is possible to emphasise the final primacy of this House, while recognising that the other House has a crucial complementary role in strengthening scrutiny function as a whole in relation to the Executive. I fear that many of the arguments that we have heard have suggested that there is zero-sum game at work, but there is not. I hope that one of the consequences of re-entering the argument will be to see it in a rather more useful way than we have sometimes seen it in the recent past.

There is often an underlying assumption in these debates that a legislative stalemate between the two Houses is necessarily a bad thing, to be avoided if at all possible, whereas I believe that, in many situations, it is a positive good to be celebrated. May I put it to the hon. Gentleman that, in referring as he did to functions of scrutiny and review but with assumption of primacy for this Chamber in the end, it is important not to exclude the importance of delay as a positive good, not to avoid an ultimate decision, but precisely to slow up the process for further such review and scrutiny?

I agree very much with that, and I want to draw the House's attention to some work that has just been done on the current activity of the House of Lords. We talk about it a rather general way. Some very interesting work has just been done by the constitution unit at University college on exactly what the House of Lords did during 2005. I shall read out the unit's conclusion. It has gone through every Division and every aspect of the relationship between the two Houses, and it says:

"The new dynamic of the House of Lords may alter British politics in fundamental ways and prove difficult to reverse. Despite continuing dissatisfaction with the undemocratic basis of the chamber, this appears to suit the public. Survey evidence released by the Constitution Unit in December 2005 showed that two-thirds of the public believed the Lords was justified in voting down measures that were unpopular or on which Labour MPs had rebelled. These views were shared by a majority of Labour voters, and even of Labour MPs. Unless this changes, governments of either colour may find it hard to suppress the will of the House of Lords."

The unit says one more thing, based on its work and analysis:

"The strengthening of the second chamber has often been presented as a threat to the elected House of Commons. However, events this year showed it might instead lead to a strengthening of Parliament as a whole."

I put it to the Leader of the House that that is the crucial consideration. It would be profoundly a ill advised approach to the business of a Committee to look at the conventions in the spirit of asking whether we can somehow put the House of Lords back in its box again, because, in its funny, semi-reformed state, it has come out of its box feeling more confident and legitimate—in a way that the public like. In fact, in many respects, they like it rather more than they like us.

It would be politically difficult and not sensible to proceed with an agenda to tame the House of Lords. We need to put the two Houses together on a common task. That is the job now. The worst outcome would be to produce a second Chamber that was, in any sense, a replica of the first. We want neither a replica, nor a rival of this Chamber, but a genuine complement to it in exercising the task of scrutiny, which we know to be deficient in this House.

Having said at the beginning that I was not going to give Members my favourite nostrums, I think that there would be some profit to the House in looking again at a report that a number of us produced on a cross-party basis last year. Those involved included the late Robin Cook—the immensely distinguished Leader of the House at the time—and Mr. Clarke. We produced a report called "Reforming the Lords: Breaking the Deadlock". I am not necessarily recommending the conclusions and practical recommendations of that report, but I urge the House to look at the arguments that brought us to those conclusions. We argued that we needed a House that had enough legitimacy to be taken seriously, but enough independence to be justified in being taken seriously—a House that, as I said, is neither a rival, nor a replica of this House, but which joins it in the task of scrutiny. I hope that, in supporting the establishment of the Committee, we see things in that context and that there is not what I fear would be an ill conceived and ultimately ill fated attempt to neuter the second Chamber.

Any thoughts that this might be a brief or perfunctory debate have been adequately dispelled already. It is a pleasure to follow Dr. Wright, with whom I agree on many of these matters. I want to challenge the Leader of the House on two details of what he had to say. I think that he made an uncharacteristic slip of the tongue when he introduced the motion in his name and that of his right hon. Friends. Of course, he has no right hon. Friends in this instance. He was introducing the motion as Leader of the House—his new role. He is speaking on behalf of not the Government, not the House. That is an important distinction and I know that he understands it.

Secondly, I want to chide the Right hon. Gentleman about the fact that he appears not to have been sufficiently assiduous in studying Liberal Democrat manifestos over recent years and was unable to quote from them. I know that he has had limited reading time in his new role, but I am sure that he will rectify that omission. If he is not able to do so, I refer him to the Parliament Act 1911 and its preamble. I do not think that we have largely changed our view about reform of the upper House. The tragedy is that it has taken so long for something to be done about it.

It is no secret that we were extremely reluctant to enter into the arrangements before us today on this particular Joint Committee. We were worried when the idea was first suggested by the Lord President of the Council because, at that time, it was proposed in isolation. There was no suggestion that we would make further progress on reform of the upper House, or that the Committee would form part of an integrated approach on the whole question of the relationship between the Houses. It was predicated on an assertion by the Prime Minister in an unguarded moment that he wished to clip the wings of the Lords. He was expressing irritation, which is frequently shared by Ministers and Government Back Benchers, that the House of Lords occasionally does not do exactly what the Government wish it to do when considering Bills.

I say hallelujah to the fact that the House of Lords does not do what the Government want it to do because even in its present illegitimate form, it has a substantial amount of not only expertise, but, more importantly, independence from the Executive. That enables it to take a view on matters put before it and to express a view that often hugely improves legislation. Over the past few years, I have dealt with countless Home Office and Department for Constitutional Affairs Bills on which the views of the Lords, as a revising Chamber, have been invaluable when we have tried to avoid the worst excesses of sloppy legislation that is not only internally discordant, but has a profound effect on the liberties of this country's citizens. The view that formed the basis of the original proposal for the Committee, which was that there was somehow a need to reduce the power of the Lords because it was an inconvenience to the Government, is one that we wish to resist.

An even worse suggestion was that the Government at the time wished not only to reduce the powers of the Lords, but, simultaneously, to complete their initial process of reform by removing the remaining hereditaries. I hold no candle whatsoever for the retention of the hereditaries in the Lords. People should not be Members of the House of Lords by accident of birth. I am convinced that whether they are elected by their colleagues or not, they do not have a legitimate part in a modern legislature. However, the effect of what the Government appeared to be proposing would have been first to reduce the powers of the Lords and, secondly, to make it exactly the fully appointed Chamber that this House had rejected conclusively—so much for the primacy of the House of Commons.

The problem is not only the accident of birth, but the fortune of the wallet. For as long as that possibility remains, the legitimacy, and thus decency, of the House of Lords will always be up for question.

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. That is why the option of an appointed House would not improve the legitimacy of the Lords one whit. It is also why many of us are convinced—this is certainly my party's position—that an elected, or predominantly elected, House must be the right way forward.

Having said that the present composition and certainly the composition envisaged, I think, by elements within the Government are illegitimate, as we have heard from the hon. Member for Cannock Chase, the House of Lords, even in its unreformed state, has utility. That is why it is appreciated by the public. That is not because they believe that its composition is justified or is arrived at by an appropriate means. The public see it doing its job in holding the Executive to account in a way that sometimes this place is incapable of doing.

The hon. Gentleman seems to have a rather glowing understanding of what their Lordships do these days. Some of us would point to some of the legislation that the Government have brought forward, which has been extremely progressive—for example, on lesbian and gay rights. The Lords, in their reactionary nature, have not seen fit to allow that legislation to go forward. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will recognise that sometimes the democratic process can enlighten while sometimes, perhaps, it is subject to the overpowering influence of the Whips.

Were the Upper House to be accountable to an electorate, I think that it would take a different view. However, reaction is not something that is exclusive to the Upper House. There are powers of reaction within this House as well.

This was not a proposal in which we wanted to take part. We made it plain to the Government that they had to think again. We made it plain also that, despite our feeling that we would in no circumstances support the hereditary principle, we were not prepared to countenance yet again partial reform that did not arrive at a satisfactory conclusion for the House of Lords. If there is a responsibility for the delay in this matter, it is us. We take responsibility for and, indeed, pride in delaying this matter.

What changed everything was the scandal of cash for peerage. In a road to Damascus conversion the Prime Minister suddenly realised that it was time to re-enter the list in terms of House of Lords reform. The order went out to the Lord Chancellor that he was to create a Committee to that effect. Then we had the prospect of two Committees working on entirely different matters. We suspected that one would report very quickly and that the other would take a very long time to reach a conclusion.

Our proposition was simple. It was that the two Committees needed to be linked for exactly the reasons that have been adduced by several Members. We cannot divorce form and function in the House of Lords. We cannot separate out the way in which we arrive at a composition for the House of Lords and what its function within Parliament will be. Nor can we divorce either of those considerations from the way in which we do our business in this place. Reform of the House of Commons is just as important as reform of the House of Lords.

The hon. Gentleman is either being very naïve or generous to a man who irons only the front of his shirts. Does he agree that the intervention of the Lord Chancellor was intended to be not constructive but diversionary?

I am not sure that I understand the reference to ironing habits. I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman undertakes that duty himself. However, I understand what he is saying about the Lord Chancellor's Committee being something that was intended to take the heat off the Government at a time of great stress. It was our view that it would not reach a conclusion.

We have been arguing behind the scenes and in another place that we want to make substantive progress. We believe that the Committee can inform that process but should not pre-empt it. It certainly should not be seen as a way of introducing partial reform that is a substitute for the basic reform that we believe to be necessary. There are the conventions of the House, and I think that the Salisbury convention is on the back of history. It was a cosy arrangement between the Conservative and Labour parties—our party was not a party to it, nor were other parties—and it is does not have any relevance to politics in this country. The day that we have justiciable manifesto is the day that we finally reach the asylum. Judges should not assume responsibility to interpret manifestos—if they did so, the proposal for compulsory ID cards would have been an instructive test case.

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that many people do not think that the Salisbury convention is a convention at all? Indeed, we are indirectly debating the future form of the House of Lords, and if a significant proportion of its Members were elected, as he and I want, that would completely change the nature of the proposal. With an elected House of Lords, the Salisbury convention and the credibility of the manifesto would fall.

I agree, and I shall come on to the changes to the composition of the House of Lords and their implications.

We made three points when we reluctantly agreed to serve on the Committee. First, there is a necessary linkage between its work and that of the Committee on the Lord Chancellor's Department, as one informs the other. Secondly, the Joint Committee is non-deliberative. Naturally, it will reach conclusions, but they are not binding on anyone, and they do not formulate anything that the House or, indeed, the Government are required to accept. It does not define the relationship between the Houses, as we do not know what their nature will be in future. Thirdly, we sought a fairer composition of the Committee, but we have failed to achieve that, given the affiliation of members from the Commons. I have complete confidence in my hon. Friend Simon Hughes—I am glad that he represents both parts of his constituency—who provides us with a substantial presence on the Committee. I am worried, however, that the Committee is not representative of the wider House, and that Government Members who were nominated to serve on it have a particular perspective on Lords reform.

It is not for the hon. Gentleman to say that people who hold different views from his should not be allowed to express them in Committee or anywhere else.

I was arguing for a diversity of views in Committee. [ Interruption. ] If Mark Tami wishes to continue our dialogue, I am happy to give way to him, but if he is satisfied with my response, perhaps he will be quiet and allow me to continue.

I have the Adjournment debate.

It is true that the hon. Gentleman has the Adjournment debate, so he has a vested interest in this debate.

As I said, the composition of the Committee would, in a perfect world, represent all shades of opinion on both sides of the House. Inevitably, it fails to do so, given its size.

To return to the key point, if the Committee is successful, it will provide information for the House and the other place about codification. I worry about the word "codification". What does it mean? Does it mean "statute"? I hope not. The matter should not be bound by statute. If it is bound by statute, I would argue for much wider statutes—a proper written constitution in statute form, a proposition which I do not believe the Government are prepared to accept.

At the very least, however, I hope we arrive at a concordat—that is the present term of art between the two Houses—which will be derived from the future form and functions of the two Houses. That comes back to the point made by Mr. Cash. Those who argue vigorously for the primacy of this House and also argue vigorously for a largely or wholly elected element at the other end of the Corridor are deluding themselves. The two are not entirely compatible. We can say that this House has reserved competences, which may include the formation of the Government from its number and as a result of its composition. We may argue that at the end of the day this House should win an argument between the two Houses, but we should understand that if we have an elected or predominantly elected second chamber, it will have a legitimacy that it does not currently have.

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

I will not, if the hon. Gentleman will forgive me. We will stay here all night if I take every intervention.

There is a huge spread of opinion in the House and at the other end of the Corridor about what should happen. That ranges from those who are out-and-out unicameralists, which, as has been said, is a perfectly respectable position—there are legislatures that work on a unicameral basis, although I do not share that view—to those who would like to turn the clock back and return to an hereditary peerage, which I do not think is a way forward for a modern country. Between those two views, there is a wide range of others.

We need to establish where in this House, because this House has legitimacy, there is a centre of gravity for reform. We could have done that the last time we debated the matter, if it had not been for the interference of the usual channels on both sides of the Chamber. The House demonstrated a clear preference for a largely elected second chamber, which was deliberately obscured by process. When we are asked the question again, we must have a much clearer view about what functions are properly reserved to this House, what functions are properly carried out by another place, how the two interrelate and how we establish legitimacy for both Houses.

If we can do that by defining complementary roles that are not identical, we will strengthen Parliament in the way that the hon. Member for Cannock Chase suggested. It is not, as has been said, a zero-sum game. We can improve the way that this House and the other House work, in order better to serve the country. The one way in which we will not do that is by allowing the Executive to grab yet more power at the expense of the Legislature. We must oppose that and reverse it.

I begin with a quotation from the introduction to "Erskine May", which is well worth considering:

"At the very highest level, there is much in the observation that if the United Kingdom has in any sense a constitution and that constitution is capable of restraining an elected dictatorship, the standing orders and the practice of the two Houses, shaped over the centuries by changing political pressures, and since 1884 described in May's Treatise, are an important part of it."

At the beginning of the introduction, with regard to codification, which Mr. Heath touched on, "Erskine May" states:

"Those elements of parliamentary procedure which have been codified in standing orders or—more rarely—statute law tend to be relatively modern and easy to track.."

Those statutes include the Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949 and others, such as the Oaths Act 1978 and the Royal Assent Act 1967.

There is another aspect of the elective dictatorship that has not been touched on, yet it is fundamental to the question of what those conventions, which is how they can be described, include—namely, the Whip system. In practice, the elective dictatorship comes about through the convention of the Whip system. In a debate on the reform of the House of Lords some years ago, I asked whether the Whip system had got out of control. It is because of that point that there is a more justifiable case for the House of Lords periodically to put its foot down. It is perfectly apparent that, because of the Whip system and Standing Orders, we end up not considering legislation properly in this House, which confers legitimacy on the House of Lords.

Parliament consists of two Houses, which affects the consideration of legislation. It is extremely important to remember that the House of Lords is, as the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome and my hon. Friend Mr. Shepherd said, part of the parliamentary process, although it has acquired different functions. The two Houses cannot be separated, although they have evolved in different ways over time—the beneficial intrusion of democracy in the mid-19th century made a fundamental difference.

If there were to be a new House of Lords with a significant elected element, it would not be possible to apply the Salisbury-Addison convention—even if it is a convention—because the Lords would acquire legitimacy for its decisions on the basis that the voters had expressed their view. I wonder whether the reference to the Salisbury-Addison convention should be abandoned in the context of considering the practicality of codifying what have been described as the key conventions. I doubt whether those conventions are the key conventions, because I could mention many other conventions—for example, the convention of comity is an important aspect of the relationship between the two Houses.

For those who are interested in what some would regard as a fairly abstruse subject, the issue of conventions has been at the heart of many of the biggest constitutional crises that this Parliament has experienced over the past several hundred years. That question arose in the context of the Canada Act 1982, with which I happened to be involved because I advised Quebec on that matter in a professional capacity. The ultimate decision taken by the Supreme Court of Canada turned on the application of conventions in this House, because under the British North America Act 1867 the lexis of the constitution of Canada was not in Canada, because it was resident here. Those considering the case had to consider the application of the Statute of Westminster, and in doing so were governed by the conventions of this House. The question of what are the key conventions between the two Houses is a matter of very great importance. I am not satisfied that the assertion that they are those in the motion is at all accurate.

My next question concerns the meaning of "codification". The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome alluded to that a few moments ago. The Whip system has a direct relevance to the House of Lords. After all, in respect of comity and the practical application of relationships between the two Houses, we know, if we have been in the shadow Cabinet or on the Back Benches, that discussions take place between the Whips and the leaders' offices of both Houses to decide the extent to which, for example, the ping-pong between them is going to continue. That is governed by conventions, and it can be incredibly important. It is also governed by the conventional manner in which the Whip system and the usual channels operate, either within the House or between the two Houses.

I am interested in how codification would apply in relation to Standing Orders if that becomes the basis on which decisions are taken and it is not just left to float off into the ether. According to the sources I have read, in 1866, when the great battle took place in this House over home rule, Lord Randolph Churchill and two or three others spent the entire latter part of the Session on the one question of whether the Speaker's rules should, by consensus and by a carve-up between the Front Benches, be transferred from the Speaker to the Executive. A very distinguished former Clerk of the House of Commons goes so far as to allege that when that was codified into Standing Orders, it reduced the power of the House of Commons to such a low point that until it was reversed there would never be the kind of authority that the House of Commons ought to have by virtue of its elective system. People refer to the elective dictatorship, but it is not that at all. It is a dictatorship by the Whip system enforced by various methods such as cajoling and various other things—sometimes a bit of a threat here or there. I have experienced some of that in my time over the years, and resisted and sometimes rejected it.

We should be very careful about what "codification" is likely to mean. The attempt to have a discussion, which is embedded in the motion and the debate, about whether there is a practical way of progressing, has some sense. However, I am apprehensive about where it would be likely to lead if the consequence was, by the back door, to put a straitjacket on the way in which, for example, an elected House of Lords could operate, or to undermine the freedom of debate and the democratic basis on which this House operates.

I can think of at least one matter that was most emphatically not in the governing party's manifesto—the European constitution. The question of whether there should or could be a referendum was determined by the Prime Minister's saying that it caused no fundamental change. The Leader of the House and I spent the best part of a year debating that. Ultimately, the Prime Minister decided that it meant fundamental change after all—perhaps to some extent because of my arguments—to primacy. We must be careful when we decide what affects the conventions because many of the most important matters that are discussed in the House do not appear in manifestos.

Many of the most difficult issues that arise in the Chamber and Parliament as a whole depend on the flexibility that the conventions afford. The problem with other constitutional arrangements, even in the United States, is that they cannot move easily with the times because they operate on a fixed set of rules that have been codified. Our advantage is that we can be more organic and flexible and respond to the practical requirements of the time.

I am dubious and concerned about the proposal. I appreciate that it states,

"to consider the practicality of codifying the key conventions" but the case for that is not made on the basis of the necessity of maintaining flexibility.

There is no point in setting up a Committee if its purpose is to codify what is best left uncodified, as a convention.

My hon. Friend summarises the case—that is exactly my anxiety. I smell a rat. I believe that the motion and the arrangements are trying to reduce flexibility, just as, in 1886, the Speaker—foolishly, if I may say so, with all respect to Chair—allowed the Speaker's rules to be taken away and given to the Executive. In those days, there were only about six Speaker's rules. We now have approximately 170 Standing Orders. Almost every time a new Standing Order has been imposed through the Whip system, it has been at the expense of hon. Members and their ability to debate freely.

I am extremely concerned and I would be pleased if, by one means or another, it was decided that the arrangement should not proceed.

When this debate began, I smelled a rat. My hon. Friend Mr. Shepherd said that he smelled a rat, but the Leader of the House assured him that there was no rat. I have to say that the more I hear of this debate, the more I am convinced that there is a rat, although it might be a different rat from the one that I originally smelled.

Everything hinges—as so many of these matters do—on what the motion means. My right hon. Friend Mrs. May drew to our attention the terms of reference of the proposed Committee, which are

"to consider the practicality of codifying the key conventions on the relationship between the two Houses of Parliament", so I shall not go over that territory again. I asked earlier what was meant by the word "codifying". I am now beginning to understand that it means more than simply writing down the conventions. It means writing them down as though they would acquire some force as a result of being written down. That seems to be the interpretation that many hon. Members on both sides are putting on the motion. I started by thinking that, while it would not be particularly constructive to approve the Committee, it would not be particularly damaging to do so either. However, I am now beginning to think that it might be damaging to approve the Committee, particularly if it takes its terms of reference as being to codify rather than merely to consider the practicality of codifying.

The original rat that I smelled involved the development of the code in a way that Mr. Howarth—who is no longer in his place—described as discussing what was acceptable and what was not. That interpretation of the motion was shared by Andrew Miller when he said that he hoped to change the arrangements. Chris Bryant then said something rather similar, with which the Leader of the House agreed. There was some confusion, certainly on the part of Labour Back Benchers, about the intention behind the motion. Perhaps that was because they had read their manifesto rather than the motion or, more likely, because they had read neither and simply accepted the assurances given to them by the Whips—if, indeed, they needed any assurances.

So rat No. 1 involves the question of whether there is to be an interpretation and a further development of the conventions. Rat No. 2—a more recent and more lively rat, it has to be said—involves the question of whether codifying implies giving some kind of force to the conventions.

A Committee of politicians is singularly ill suited to doing anything other than arguing about how things should develop. It is almost inconceivable that a group of right hon. and hon. Members of this House and noble Lords from another place will simply sit down and write down in an academic way what the present position is. There are two reasons for that. First, I do not think that there is much agreement on what the present position is. That is certainly true of some of the claimed key conventions set out on the Order Paper. Secondly, politicians much prefer mission creep. In fact, it is almost part of our nature to try to drag the debate into the areas in which we are interested, rather than the areas in which the Government, the Opposition Front Bench or even—dare I say it?—the House of Lords are interested. I am convinced that the rat of developing or trying to shape the future of the conventions is alive and well too; it might not be as smelly a rat as it was at the beginning, but that is because it is alive and well, not because it is not there.

If we want a memorial of the existing codes, it would be far better to leave it to an academic to write down what the codes are, obtain evidence and set out lots of footnotes—I am sure that an academic would follow me. The only problem is that it would take far longer than two months for an academic to do that work. That is the other reason why I do not believe that this work can be done effectively, even by a full-time Committee sitting for two months. As we have heard from my hon. Friend Mr. Cash, there are a huge number of conventions and something like 1,100 years of history behind the development of Parliament and the relationships between its two Houses.

As for whether the conventions exist, the Salisbury-Addison convention was of a different time, and as Mr. Heath said, it was between two parties that were in very different positions in the two Houses. Even the Government have moved from time to time from the strict interpretation of the Salisbury convention, as we have seen not only with the Identity Cards Bills but, more significantly, with the smoking-related elements of the Health Bill. Under the Salisbury convention, the House of Lords was entitled to throw out the smoking-related elements of the Bill on the basis that they were not what the Government were elected to introduce. The manifesto said one thing, and the Government said something else. The Government do not adhere to the Salisbury convention; more and more frequently, they submit what I suspect is the rather one-sided convention that the Government are entitled to get their business through, or that the elected House is entitled to have its decision upheld in another place.

It is fair to say that my noble Friends on the Front Bench in the House of Lords have been careful to stick with the letter of the Salisbury convention, although I can sometimes detect a reluctance to do so. As far as I can tell, however, Liberal Democrat Members of the House of Lords are no longer signed up to the Salisbury convention, if they ever were. I do not see a reason to sign up to a convention between a hereditary House and an elected House when the elected House and the other House are in the exact form proposed by the Government. We have two Houses in a form that the Government, certainly at the time of invention—which in the case of the House of Lords was not long ago—approved of. Therefore, how can they conceivably argue that it is not doing the job that it was set up to do? I suspect that they did not know what job it was set up to do, and that they merely disagreed with its composition.

In other words, in the early years of this Government, form did not follow function at all; form followed prejudice. Perhaps the prejudice was justifiable, and perhaps not. It seems to me, however, that we cannot decide on the future form of the House of Lords without agreeing what its function should be. I think that its function is pretty much right at the moment, although I would like to propose some improvements. However, most of those improvements would not be upheld—and even the current functions would not be improved—by reducing the appointed element and increasing the elected element of that House. The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome accepted the fact that a House cannot scrutinise well in detail if it consists of people like us. That is not our métier.

Another key convention mentioned in the motion is the convention on secondary legislation, but that convention is under fire. I see no reason why a House of Lords in the form in which the Government created it should not have exactly the same ability to reject secondary legislation as we do. Indeed, I do not see why the House of Lords should not amend secondary legislation. Perhaps there are good reasons and perhaps there are not, but the House of Lords could perfectly well say, "If we are not allowed to amend it, we will reject it." If not the House of Lords in its current form, the House of Lords in a future form could wield over the Government the big stick of rejecting all secondary legislation that it wished to see not rejected but amended. That would be the only way of forcing the Government to introduce revised secondary legislation in a form that the House of Lords would find acceptable. The convention will change if the composition of the House of Lords changes. Indeed, it could change without a change in the composition of the House of Lords should noble Lords wish that to happen.

I will say no more about the existing conventions, but there is an absence of conventions, and a deliberate—may I say—casting aside of conventions that worries me no end. Perhaps the Committee, if established, could examine the history of other conventions that have now disappeared.

Not only are there many conventions that are buried but nonetheless important, extant and necessary; there are the works of Jennings, Dicey and, in particular, Geoffrey Marshall. Sadly, Geoffrey Marshall died a few years ago. I think it would benefit the Leader of the House to read those works carefully as he proceeds with this matter.

I suspect that it would benefit all of us to read those works—except those who have clearly read them already. But the convention that concerns me most, and which I hope the Committee will examine if it is established, is the convention that changes in the electoral system should be subject to a Speaker's Conference before being presented to either House.

My hon. Friend is presenting the House with a powerful argument, in which he is revealing all the detail that will be involved if the Committee is set up—but how can we set it up when it must report by 21 July this year? That would be nonsensical.

If my speech is doing anything, it is persuading me—if no one else—that it is impossible for the task be undertaken successfully by 21 July 2006. The Committee will scrape the surface, but it will certainly not delve deep enough to reveal all the conventions to which my hon. Friend the Member for Stone referred, examine their origins and establish whether they continue to exist.

Like so many proposals that emerge from the vague words of a manifesto, the motion should have been examined in more detail before being presented to the House. I fear that the Committee will not find it possible to do what it is being asked to do in the time available. I fear that it will suffer from mission creep. I fear that it will be confused, as Labour Members have been, about whether form should follow function or function should follow form. Such work could better be done by an academic than by politicians, and interesting though it may well be, and necessary though it certainly is, it will need to be done again if the House of Lords is further reformed or reconstituted.

As an academic and a politician, I rise with some trepidation after the speech of Mr. Turner. The debate has centred on two terms—"codify" and "primacy"—and I want to say a few words about each.

The hon. Members for Stone (Mr. Cash) and for Isle of Wight have already pointed out some of the dangers of codification—that it can arrest development and be a way of reducing the power of an organisation or body to develop its own capabilities and long-term powers. There is another danger. French lawyers, who are very familiar with the idea of codification, have a saying, which, translated as crudely as possible, is: "To codify is to modify". In other words, whenever one tries to codify practices, general principles, ideas and—above all—arguments, one takes away the essence of those various attempts to get at principles and ways of behaving, reducing them to rules and statements that start with the words "Whenever" or "If". When a codification is attempted, what comes out at the other end is very different from what went in. My fear is that this attempt to codify will change and diminish the existing situation, and that it will be used to arrest future development.

I want to spend slightly more time—though not much more—on the word "primacy". The debate began by considering that topic, but we seemed to have moved off it to some degree. The motion before us contains the phrase

"accepting the primacy of the House of Commons".

The key question is: what does that mean and why is it so, if it is so? When there is ping-pong between this House and the other House—when a Bill goes backward and forward in different forms between the two—Ministers repeatedly say that, in the end, the elected House is entitled to have its way. That is the usual way of expressing the principle of primacy, but as Members have said, if the other House became an elected House, that version of primacy would cease to have any meaning. There would be no force behind it, and it would cease to be a reason for this House to have primacy. Indeed, if the other House were elected according to a different, more proportional electoral system, one could even argue that it would have the advantage in terms of democratic legitimacy.

The present situation is very peculiar, in that this House is accountable to the electorate but is far from being representative. The other House is accidentally representative, but it is not accountable. If the other House were also accountable, it would have the advantage over this one.

So if election is not the reason for primacy, what is? Chris Bryant expressed earlier a view that the Lord Chancellor also put to the Constitutional Affairs Committee. The hon. Gentleman said that primacy is the power of this House to make and break Governments: that if a Government were to lose their majority in this House—to lose its confidence—they would no longer be entitled to be the Government. However, if that situation occurred in the House of Lords, no such consequence would follow: the Government would continue to exist. The question then is what follows for the relationship between this House and the other place if that is the basis of primacy. What sort of relationship between the two Houses, especially when legislation is discussed, follows from the function of this House being to make or break Governments?

If we are to say that this House's function is to be expressed in terms of making or breaking Governments, nothing follows for the function of the House of Lords in terms of legislation. The argument about primacy has come to a dead end. If the other House were elected and had democratic legitimacy, its right to discuss and modify legislation would be just as great as the right of this House to do so. All it would mean is that the two Houses had different functions.

Indeed, it could be argued—my hon. Friend Mr. Heath was on the cusp of making this point and other hon. Members have alluded to it—that one of the problems of this House is that because the Government's existence depends on the confidence of this House, it is very poor at scrutinising and modifying legislation. A defeat for the Government in this House—I have seen a few, but not very many since being elected last year—threatens their existence. That is why the convention—another interesting one—developed that, to avoid the immediate consequence of the resignation of the Government, a vote of confidence had to be called after a serious defeat, whatever that might mean. In any case, there is a relationship between the legislative function of this House and the confidence that the Government need to remain in existence.

Is not taxation another source of primacy? There are many reasons why it is asserted that this House has primacy, but one prime reason is the right to tax. However, the right to tax comes from the fact of election. Democracy, as in the case of no taxation without representation, is the key factor.

That is right and the same point applies to the mandate theory. That theory works because of election, and if the House of Lords were elected, it would have the same sort of legitimacy on that point. The fact that there might be a conflict between the two Houses on their different electoral mandates could not automatically be resolved in favour of this House. In those circumstances, there would be a conflict of democratic mandate, with each House having its own. It follows that it is impossible to derive a meaning for primacy from the relationship between the two Houses as it will be when the House of Lords is predominantly elected that leaves it even close to the situation that we have now. That is the fundamental problem with the motion. It is equivocal about the meaning of primacy.

For some hon. Members, primacy means the situation we have now, based on the difference between an elected and a non-elected House. For others, it means primacy regardless of the end of that situation in the future. The former assertion is legitimate, but the latter lacks any reason.

With the leave of the House, I shall attempt to sum up the debate and respond to the points raised.

First, this intelligent and thoughtful discussion has reminded me of what I missed during my otherwise fascinating five years as Foreign Secretary. Nothing is more important than this subject, and David Howarth was right to say that any significant change towards election in the other place would be bound to change its sense of power. Although getting elected is the easy bit—getting re-elected is always more difficult—any such change would alter the other place's relationship to this House. House of Lords reform is not a discrete matter that is separate from what happens in this House or from our democratic arrangements as a whole. It would change altogether the nature of governance and democracy in this country.

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

No, as I want to respond to the debate rather than take further questions.

I am not opposed to changing this country's governing arrangements—far from it, but the House should be aware of the enormity of the task. I know that Mr. Shepherd and all those attending this debate are aware of that, but I am not sure that the same is true of everyone who has taken a position on the matter but who has not been present today.

Secondly, one party has now been in government for the relatively long time of nine years. I am returning to a debate like this after an interval of five years, but I had a domestic portfolio in the first Parliament of this Labour Government. I am struck by how Labour and Conservative Members see our constitutional arrangements almost entirely through the prism of whether they are in government or opposition. That is an obvious danger.

I hope that I may be able to bring to these debates the experience that I gained through serving in opposition for 18 years. I am glad now that I had that experience, although I did not entirely enjoy acquiring it. In the dog days of the 1980s or the depressing days of the early 1990s, there was a real tendency among hon. Members to think that the constitution should serve only the party to which they belonged. We must think about what best serves effective and accountable government—with a small "g"—in this country.

The hon. Member for Cambridge made a very interesting contribution and knows a lot about France. In that connection, I emphasise that we must make sure that the rush to secure more accountability through more democracy in the other place does not make governing through this House almost impossible for whichever party is in power.

I turn now to what my hon. Friend Dr. Wright said. I absolutely accept that this is not a zero-sum matter. I am not giving away any official secret, as I have said this often: other Ministers may have found the experience comfortable enough, but I found it irritating to have to come back and deal with amendments that I thought had been sorted out either here or in the other place. But that is not a bad thing; in aggregate, it is a good thing because it keeps Ministers on their toes. Moreover, as there are no more than six or seven Ministers in a Department, but thousands of officials, being the subject of such scrutiny enables one to keep control of the Department on behalf of Government and Parliament, so it is in no sense a zero sum—nor is additional scrutiny from the other place. However, everybody must understand that just as in the end it is for Ministers to propose but for Parliament to dispose, Ministers have a responsibility to ensure that government continues, so there has to be a balance.

I want to deal with some of the specific points that were raised.

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

If the hon. Gentleman will allow me, I will not because, although I love him to bits, I know that he has an unrivalled ability to keep the House for a long time, which does not necessarily lead to the approbation of his colleagues.

I thank the right hon. Member for Maidstone—[ Interruption.] I am sorry, I meant Mrs. May. Miss Widdecombe was very effective in holding me to account when I was Home Secretary, which was good for me, although it did not always feel like that.

The right hon. Member for Maidenhead asked whether the Committee could produce an interim report. My understanding is that it cannot make an interim report to the House without first coming back to the two Houses to change the 21 July deadline. It could then produce an interim report if it wanted to do so. We have debated the timetable and I hope that members of the Committee will be able to complete their work by the 21 July deadline, but if that is not possible the Chair of the Committee can come to see me and I shall do my best to respond positively to the Committee's requests. I cannot say more than that.

The right hon. Lady's second point was about Lord Falconer's proposals for consensus. As the House knows, I have had responsibility for House of Lords reform and other easy matters, including party funding, only since last Friday, so Members will forgive me if I take a deep breath before looking at my noble Friend's proposals. I will take the opportunity to consult representatives of Opposition parties about what they feel to be the appropriate way forward before making decisions about how we progress the commitments.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase said that we needed a second Chamber that was neither a replica nor a rival. I agree, but the devil will be in finding a Chamber that complements the role of this place. The hon. Member for Cambridge suggested that it would not be a bad idea if the second Chamber were seen as a rival, but that would have serious problems for governance.

Mr. Heath used the word "concordat", which was probably right. Governance will work better, and always has worked better, when there is consensus about the balance about powers between each end. We must have that, whatever the composition and powers of the other place; otherwise, there really would be gridlock. On this occasion, it is for the Committee to consider whether it is possible to describe that concordat—that consensus—without turning it into the straitjacket of a Napoleonic code. If we get a draft recommendation that begins with the words "whereas" and "if", we know that the task is impossible.

Mr. Turner may be suspicious about many things, but I would not be suspicious about this one. We have a manifesto commitment. This is a very tricky but very important issue. We must take it stage by stage. Perhaps I should not have set the hare running on how to codify the issue. I was simply describing, for the sake of completeness, what form codification could take. Of course, I will consider any recommendation from the Committee with very great care. Subject to that, the idea of legislating for the balance of powers between the two Houses would probably be the worst option, rather than the best.

I hope that I have responded to the points made by the hon. Member for Cambridge.

As for Mr. Cash, I was about to say that he turned up like a bad penny, when I was dealing with Europe and followed me around on Europe. I finally ensured that the Government served up what he was demanding in respect of Europe—a referendum on the EU constitution—and no sooner was that over and we dealt with that, he turns up here. I wonder whether the Bruges group and all the other flat-earth societies to which he belongs on the issue of Europe had any idea whatsoever that he was, figuratively speaking, in bed with the French, with the Québecois. I also wonder how the devil William Cash & Co.—a very distinguished firm of lawyers—was instructed by the Québecois, rather than other perhaps more obvious firms; but perhaps for that, we can wait until the next debate. Meanwhile, I recommend the motion to the House.

Question put—

I think the Ayes have it.

Hon. Members: No.

Division deferred till Wednesday next, pursuant to Standing Order No.41A (Deferred divisions).