Lord Newby:

Moved by Lord Newby

4: After Clause 1, insert the following new Clause—“Duty to take forward proposals for democratic mandate for House of Lords(1) It is the duty of the Secretary of State to take forward proposals to secure a democratic mandate for the House of Lords.(2) In pursuance of the duty under subsection (1), the Secretary of State must carry out the steps set out in subsections (3), (4), (5) and (6).(3) Within 12 months of the day on which this Act is passed, the Secretary of State must lay before each House of Parliament a consultation paper on methods for introducing directly elected members in the House of Lords.(4) After laying the consultation paper under subsection (3), the Secretary of State must seek the views on the matters covered by that paper of—(a) each party and group in the House of Lords,(b) each political party represented in the House of Commons,(c) the Scottish Government,(d) the Welsh Government,(e) the Northern Ireland Executive,(f) local authorities in the United Kingdom,(g) representative organisations for local authorities in the United Kingdom,(h) the general public, which may include citizens’ assemblies, and(j) such other persons and bodies as the Secretary of State considers appropriate.(5) Within 16 months of the day on which this Act is passed, the Secretary of State must lay before each House of Parliament a report on responses to the consultation.(6) Within 18 months of the day on which this Act is passed, the Secretary of State must lay before each House of Parliament a draft Bill containing legislative proposals on the matter mentioned in subsection (3).”Member’s explanatory statementThis new Clause imposes a duty on Ministers to take forward proposals to secure a democratic mandate for the House of Lords through introduction of directly elected members.

My Lords, excuse me while I find my notes; I am not used to the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, being so reticent. Before I begin, following the injunction of the noble Lord, Lord True, I feel I must declare the interest that I am a life Peer.

I rise to move Amendment 4 in my name and those of my noble friend Lord Wallace, the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Llanfaes, and the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde. The question of whether to elect the second Chamber is one of the longest-standing unresolved issues in British politics. Amendment 32 from the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, helpfully reminds us of the wording of the preamble to the Parliament Act 1911, which says that the Lords should be elected but at a more convenient time than the present. For 124 years, no convenient time has presented itself, and we on these Benches think that at long last we should put that right.

Our amendment sets out a timetable for doing so. It would require the Government, within a year of the passage of the Bill, to publish a consultation paper on methods for introducing directly elected Members to the House of Lords. This would contain a number of options and could, for example, include the option of retaining an element of non-party Members of your Lordships’ House.

Having produced this paper, the Government should then have an intensive period of consultation involving the groups set out in proposed new subsection (4). Importantly, and having taken account of comments made in Committee, the consultees would include members of the general public, possibly involving citizens’ assemblies. I strongly favour the use of the citizen assembly mechanism on an issue such as this; ordinary citizens should have a direct say on how they are governed, and the citizens’ assembly route has proved itself very effective in a number of countries for deliberating on contentious public policy issues. At the conclusion of the consultation period, the Government would then be required in short order to produce a report on the conclusions of the consultation and to come forward with a Bill for introducing direct representation into your Lordships’ House.

This issue was debated at great length in Committee. As the arguments have not changed since then—indeed, some of them have not changed for over a century— I will not belabour them all. In short, we believe that the Lords should be elected on the basis that, in a democracy, Laws should be passed by people chosen by the people to act on their behalf. It should be elected because the unelected House has a strong geographical imbalance in which London and the south-east are greatly overrepresented and the north, Scotland and Wales are underrepresented, and because it would almost certainly be more representative of the ethnic and party-political diversity of the country.

I will not elaborate on all these arguments, but I would like to say something about geographic representation. It is unfortunate that we do not even know the geographic breakdown of the complete membership of your Lordships’ House, but on partial evidence collected by the Library we find that, between them, London and the south-east provide 45% of our membership, compared with 32% of the population. By contrast, the north-west, with 13% of the population of the UK, provides only 4% of Peers. All other northern regions, the Midlands, Scotland and Wales lag behind. This severe imbalance is reflected in our debates. At a time when the cohesion of the country is under threat, this is clearly unsatisfactory.

In Committee, noble Lords across the House argued that the Prime Minister had too much power over appointments, and I strongly agree. I think that if people realised quite how much power the Prime Minister already has, they would be appalled. The Prime Minister decides not only how many of his own party should be in the Lords but its balance. There are no rules. Opposition parties have to play the role of Oliver, pleading with the Prime Minister for more. Sometimes they get it; more often, they do not. Either way, this sort of horse-trading over the composition of your Lordships’ House is demeaning to our democracy and should be brought to an end.

On prime ministerial patronage, it was extremely interesting to see the recent research by the Constitution Unit of UCL, which showed that an overwhelming proportion of people oppose the idea that the Prime Minister should appoint Peers at all. They have seen how the current system works, and they do not like it. But the way round the issue of prime ministerial patronage is the same as the way round issues of balance between the parties, the size of the House, retirement, attendance and participation requirements—all the things that we have been spending many tedious hours discussing. But it is very simple: let the place be elected.

I am pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Brady of Altrincham, is also in favour of an elected Lords, as set out in his Amendment 22. I am afraid, however, that there are two elements of that amendment with which I cannot agree. First, I do not think that the Lords should be elected on the first past the post system. His amendment would potentially replicate the Commons in terms of both constituencies and method of election. This is a recipe for maximum conflict. Although our amendment does not specifically explain the electoral basis that we prefer, I believe people know that we have consistently—

I note what the noble Lord says about the Amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Brady, and the risk of first past the post in two Chambers. Although I agree with the principle of what he is arguing, why does his amendment say nothing about how the powers of the two Houses are to be resolved in the event of both being elected? Does he accept that one of the great failures of the Clegg Bill was the fact that Mr Clegg refused to have any debate at all about what the respective powers should be?

My Lords, this is the main argument that has been used consistently by people who do not want this place elected. It is based on a false premise, which is that, if both Houses are completely or largely elected, it will lead to persistent and irresolvable conflict. If the noble Lord looks at the work that the convener has instituted, which compares second chambers around the world, he will find that there are many that are wholly or partially elected, in countries that have mature democracies, in which there is not persistent stasis because they cannot agree. There may be arguments about the relative powers of the House, but I simply do not believe that having the sorts of elections that I am talking about will lead to the complexities that many noble Lords raised and that, in many cases, are raised as a basis for opposing a principle to which they object.

Does the noble Lord accept that most of those countries, which I have looked at as well, have a written constitution? We do not. That is the thing that would make it incredibly difficult to resolve disputes between the two Houses. There has to be another formula for that.

I am not sure the noble Lord is right about that. We do not have a written constitution now, but we have conventions that enable us to deal with difference—

My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt again, but this is a really important point. We have conventions. We voluntarily decide not to exercise all the powers that are given to us. Why on earth would an elected second Chamber keep to those conventions?

My Lords, we on these Benches have argued consistently for a written constitution, which has been opposed by the rest of the political establishment. We would definitely support a written constitution, but, in the absence of a written constitution, Parliament operates in a manner based on conventions. If the rest of Parliament—the other parties—will not have a written constitution, there is no reason why a new basis of election here should lead to the tearing up of all the conventions.

The noble Lord would surely agree that, if we were going to have an elected second Chamber, which I strongly support, it would require legislation. In the course of the debate regarding that legislation, we would have to put in anti-deadlock procedures.

Of course, that would be debated as part of that process; I accept that.

If I could proceed, I was saying that I believe that, under our proposals, people should be elected on a regional basis, so that they could look to the common interests of a wider area than a single Constituency. They should be elected by proportional representation, so that we can avoid the dramatic swings in membership that we have seen in the Commons.

After the 2015 General Election, I was mocked—very effectively, if I may say so—by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, because we did very badly in that election yet retained significant numbers here. After the last election, the Tory party finds itself in the position we found ourselves in. If we had the system that the noble Lord, Lord Brady, is proposing, a future Conservative Party in the House of Lords could be decimated in the way it has been in the Commons. What I am proposing here is a more balanced system that means that these wild swings, which you see through first past the post, do not persist. That would bring an element of stability to Parliament that would be extremely sensible.

I wonder whether the noble Lord would stand for election under this system. I am thinking about how it would operate: I knock on someone’s door and they say, “I’m worried about the health service”, “I’m worried about housing”, or whatever, and I say, “Actually, that’s for the House of Commons, but I’m very good at revising legislation”. There might be a reaction on the doorstep that is even more hostile than we are used to—certainly those of us who were in the House of Commons. How does the noble Lord expect the voters to take us seriously if we are not able to say that we will absolutely fight for whatever it is? This Division of powers will mean that we are second-order operators. I suspect that the noble Lord’s answer is that he would not stand for election, and that is probably true of most of the Members of this House. So what we will get is a whole load of party-list B-team people.

If we had succeeded with the Clegg Bill and I had been summarily evicted from your Lordships’ House, nothing would have given me greater pleasure than to knock on doors across Europe—

Noble Lords:

Oh!

Doors across Yorkshire—and Europe; I am quite ambitious, really. Nothing would have given me more pleasure than to knock on doors across Europe—

Noble Lords:

Oh!

Across Yorkshire, and to say to people, “I am standing for election here to fight for the things that I believe in on the economy, the health service and so on; and I am doing so because I think there should be a group of people who represent the whole of my region, not just a small proportion of it”. I believe—indeed, I know—that there is a raft of issues being dealt with at the moment at a regional rather than Constituency level, for which there is no accountability. I would have been extremely confident in standing and making that argument anywhere in Yorkshire. I am only sorry that the delay in getting a democratic basis for the House of Lords means that I will be far too old to exercise that opportunity if and when it comes.

I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Brady, that I have not been able to do it in a coherent manner because of the interruptions, but I was attempting to say that his suggestion of holding elections metronomically, two years after the Commons, would not work. We could have in future, as we have seen in the past decade, periods of instability or situations such as we found ourselves in in 1964 and 1974 when the Government had a slim Majority and called a second election soon after the first. In these circumstances, having a second Chamber that is elected independently from events in the Commons would give a degree of stability, rather than adding to the level of instability. The noble Lord, Lord Brady, is right to want this Chamber to be elected but wrong in his recipe for how to do it. Our Amendment sets out a clear process to consult and then decide upon a method of electing the House of Lords, and I commend it to the House.

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Newby, is right to want to see an elected upper House but completely wrong in the way that he wants to see it enacted. However, the reason I want to speak briefly to my Amendment 22 and, I think, also to support his Amendment 4 is that the principle is correct that we should have an elected House. The kind of process that he suggests in Amendment 4 would be valuable and important, but it is also important to make it clear that there is a very wide divergence of views, both about the appropriate powers of the two Houses and indeed the way in which they should be elected and put together. I favour geographical constituencies—not as big as the whole of Europe, which he appeared to want to represent—but that is obviously very different from party list systems and the PR system of election that the Liberal Democrats want to see.

I am delighted to speak here with my noble friend Lord Hailsham sitting in front of me because one of the great authorities on this issue who is always cited is of course his ancestor—his father—who famously talked about an “elective dictatorship”. My concern, having spent 27 years as a Member of the House of Commons, is precisely grounded in that worry that a Government with a significant Majority in the House of Commons—unless it has completely lost control—can get its legislation through with almost no impediment. It is also free to ignore amendments sent from this House, precisely because we do not have the legitimacy that an elected House would have.

I discussed this a little while ago with the great constitutionalist, Professor Sir Vernon Bogdanor. He said to me, “I completely disagree with you. It would be quite wrong to have an elected upper House”. But his next comment made, for me, the argument as eloquently as anybody could for an elected upper House. He said, “I’ve written many times that what we have achieved in Britain is the perfect unicameral Parliament, just with two Chambers”. I am afraid that, all too often, that is how our Parliament operates. For this House to have effect, we depend entirely on a Government with a large majority in the House of Commons deciding whether they will accept or take an interest in amendments and improvements that come from the often excellent revising work done by the House of Lords.

I do not want to detain the House for long, but I do think that, in principle, it is right to move to an elected House. I completely disagree with the prescription from the noble Lord, Lord Newby, for how to go about it—and I am greatly reassured to find that he disagrees so profoundly with me. This is a debate that has been going on for over a century, as he said. It will continue, but it is important that we engage with it in the spirit of accepting that it is not a given that the House of Commons operates so well as a democratic assembly that it automatically deserves unquestioned precedence. My time in the House of Commons tells me that it works very poorly in most ways. Its principal function is to select a Government and, most of the time, it then then lets the Government get on with pretty much what they want to do. More challenge in our Parliament, which comes with democracy, is the way forward.

My Lords, I strongly support, with one qualification, the observations of my noble friend Lord Brady. I have always been a strong supporter of the concept of an elected second Chamber. My real reason is that I want to see a second Chamber being more than a revising Chamber; I want to see it as a determinative Chamber with powers commensurate with the House of Commons. I accept, however, that in the modern world it has to be legitimate, and the only legitimacy that this country—indeed the world—recognises is an election. Therefore, having settled on the view that I think the second Chamber should be a determinative Chamber with substantial powers, I favour an elected Chamber.

I accept that there are problems about deadlock and this and that, but I do not think that they are insuperable. They are in fact addressed in many other jurisdictions in other parts of the world. I think that we would need staggered elections and that—here I disagree with my noble friend—the method of election should be some form of proportional representation. I am very much against party lists. I think too that there should be constituencies, probably similar to the European constituencies that existed in 1979—very large county-based constituencies. The fundamental justification is that we would be able to face down the “elective dictatorship” to which my noble friend referred.

I agree that, after the chaos of yesterday in the House of Commons, one wonders whether we have an over-mighty Government, but we can have such Governments. My experience is very similar to my noble friend’s experience in the House of Commons, where I was for 30 years. I find the power of the House of Commons, when it controls its Back-Benchers, a deeply worrying fact. That is why I want to see an elected second Chamber.

My noble friend said that he was concerned about gridlock. What would he do about it?

We need to have anti-deadlock mechanisms. That is perfectly right. I think that you could have qualified voting, but there are a variety of measures that you could put in place. My noble friend is right to say that there are problems and that they would have to be addressed, but they are not insuperable and they would be addressed in the context of any debate on the legislation setting up an elected second Chamber.

My Lords, before I begin my remarks in support of Amendment 4, I will comment on the announcement by the noble Baroness the Leader of the House earlier. I welcome the establishment of a Select Committee to look into retirement age and participation. Although, obviously, I would like to see it go much farther, it is a good first step: I accept that even small changes are progress, so I look forward to that Select Committee being formed.

I turn to Amendment 4 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Newby, to which I have added my name. In Committee, I tabled my own amendments on an elected House, but I am pleased that, since then, successful cross-party work has led to a single, unified amendment on an elected House being presented to the House today. I will not repeat remarks I made at Second Reading and in Committee, but I will speak to a new aspect of this amendment, in order to be helpful to the House. The new addition is the inclusion of citizens’ assemblies as a mechanism for deciding the second Chamber’s form and composition. We are at a dire time in our politics, when trust is at an all-time low. This is largely due to ordinary people not feeling that they have a voice that is listened to by decision-makers. Can we blame them? We can and must do so much better.

The British Social Attitudes survey, published by the National Centre for Social Research last month, found that 79% of those surveyed believe that the present system of governing Britain could be improved “quite a lot” or “a great deal”. I am not saying that there are not good things about this place; there are. There are many individuals here who bring expertise in their field, and that is invaluable. Our conduct through cross-party work could perhaps be learned by the other place and other Parliaments. However, its form, composition and procedures are not fit for the 21st century. It is clear that this Chamber needs reform. I believe that this work can begin only once we establish that those of us who scrutinise and draft new Laws must be accountable to the people who live under those laws.

So what is a citizens’ assembly? It is a group of typically 50 to 150 randomly selected citizens, broadly representative of the population. Members are selected by a civic lottery and brought together to learn, deliberate and make recommendations on a specific policy issue. Governments around the world have used them to engage citizens in decisions on complex issues, such as constitutional reform, climate change, social care and electoral reform. I support using citizens’ assemblies as a mechanism for shaping a new elected House for two main reasons. First, trust in Parliament is at an all-time low. Secondly, I trust ordinary people to know what is best for them.

Citizens’ assemblies and similar deliberative forums are well established and used all around the world as a way of delivering informed and trusted decisions on complex issues. In Ireland, citizens’ assemblies were utilised in 2016 and 2018. The Irish Citizens’ Assembly involved 100 randomly selected citizen members who considered five important legal and policy issues. In France, the Citizens’ Convention on Climate took place in 2019-20. It was formed following the yellow vest protests and resulted in 149 policy recommendations, many of which were incorporated into national legislation. In Canada, the British Columbia citizens’ assembly took place in 2004 on electoral reform.

Here in the UK, citizens’ assemblies have been used across our nations and regions, covering a range of topics from climate change to constitutional reform. For example, in 2020, six House of Commons Select Committees commissioned Climate Assembly UK to examine how the UK should reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050. It was the first UK-wide citizens’ assembly on climate change and published its final report in September 2020. The process was well run, highly engaging and produced a highly impressive report that shows how seriously the participants took their responsibilities. Between October 2019 and December 2020, the Scottish Government commissioned the Citizens’ Assembly of Scotland, which met regularly to deliberate on issues and challenges facing the people of Scotland. Closer to home—for me—in 2019, the National Assembly for Wales commissioned a national citizens’ assembly to examine how people in Wales can shape their future through the work of the National Assembly for Wales.

I turn back to the amendment at hand. It is not off-brand for the Labour Party to support this amendment as drafted. In fact, we have heard from senior members of the Labour Party who are supportive of citizen juries. The recent biography of the Prime Minister stated that Labour wanted to take a new approach to government by directly consulting voters on some of the most vexed questions on Britain’s future. It was suggested that citizens’ assemblies could be used to come up with positions on devolution, assisted dying and House of Lords reform, while recognising that Whitehall will not like this as it will not have control. Of course, we can pursue this option only with the political will of this Government. However, on something that they have history in supporting, why the delay? I ask them to join as supporters of this amendment and let us crack on with getting this done.

My Lords, I shall say just a few words about Amendment 4, which I support wholeheartedly. It is a move in the right direction. The problem is that if this House does not have some democratic authority, it will lose the powers that it has left. In this modern day and age, we must have some democratic legitimacy, as has often been referred to, in particular on the previous amendments. To survive, we must have a democratic element. I am not here to talk about exactly what that should be. The whole point about this amendment is that it does not specify what it should look like, despite some comments from across the House that seem to presuppose what the outcome of this consultation would be. If moving in the right direction is starting to implement the promise given by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, all those years ago then we might be moving in the right direction, but we have to get some democracy into this Chamber or it will not survive into the future.

My Lords, I support the Amendment from my noble friend on the front bench and I very much echo the noble Earl’s thoughts. I have spent 30-something years, between this House’s first incarnation, the other place and this House’s second incarnation, arguing for a democratically elected upper Chamber. I do so because I believe wholeheartedly that we need and deserve a strong Parliament, which requires two Houses, both of which can exercise complementary authority to give parliamentary activities what the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, described as legitimacy. This House as it is currently composed, even after we hereditaries have all gone, still lacks the legitimacy necessary for a strong Parliament.

My support for my noble friend is because this amendment offers a route map to getting consultation without prescribing the exact manner of how that democratic legitimacy can be achieved. I am not going to be tempted into a long speech on what I think: if anybody is remotely interested, they can find it in Hansard. What I will say is that the principle of a democratically elected second Chamber is essential for a legitimate Parliament. As I think I said at Second Reading, I am a parliamentarian first and foremost. Therefore, I hope that my noble friend will seek the opinion of the House, and I will certainly support him.

My Lords, my support for this Amendment is largely symbolic, but at least it is consistent with things that I have said and stood for in the past. The noble Lord, Lord Newby, talked about my Amendment 32, which we will come to late next week. Its purpose is to provide an echo of the Parliament Act 1911, that there is still a requirement for a democratic element to House of Lords reform, and to remind not just the House but the people of this country that democratic reform was a worthwhile stage 2 objective, which has been sadly missed by this Government in this Parliament, and that is the greatest missed opportunity of this entire Bill.

Of course, a wholly appointed House in itself has no democratic legitimacy, or very little. The argument I favoured and supported in 2012 under the Cameron-Clegg Bill of that year was precisely to provide the case for an elected House which included an unelected element—the great Cross Benches—which provided a good, tempering role on the whole of the House of Lords. At present, the House of Lords does an excellent job. It revises and scrutinises legislation, and it debates the great issues of the day. It does not overdo the power that it has. The noble Lords, Lord Rooker and Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, are entirely correct in saying that we are governed by conventions. The fear some of us have had, if we change the composition of the House of Lords, is: would those conventions exist and continue to provide that slight softening of the attitude of your Lordships’ House?

Of course constituencies are important, and I join my noble friend Lord Hailsham in saying that the only way of doing it—here I disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Newby—is to have constituencies, perhaps based loosely on the old 80 or so European constituencies in the country, with voting in perhaps a third of them every five years to get the kind of difference that this House needs.

I have referred to speeches that I have made in the past. Rather like the noble Viscount, Lord Thurso, if anybody really wants to go and have a look at them, they will see them in some great detail, because we used to debate these issues regularly, several times a year.

I am not convinced that this amendment will be agreed tonight and I discourage the noble Lord, Lord Newby, from putting it to a vote. The other aspect, as I look around the House, is that many of my noble friends and many Labour Peers do not favour an elected House. The hallmark of this debate that has run for the last 100 years is that the differences exist within the parties more so than between them. The only way that there will ever be any kind of long-term, sustainable reform of this House is to do it on a cross-party basis, which is why I return to the royal commission chaired by my noble friend Lord Wakeham in 2000, which was promoted by Prime Minister Tony Blair. Even that, 25 years on, has seen no further progress whatever.

My Lords, when I am at a college in the Midlands this Friday morning with the Learn with the Lords programme, the first thing I will say is that the House of Lords is nothing more than a large sub-committee of the House of Commons with the power to ask it to think again. That being so, it does not matter how its composition is arrived at.

The legislation that would be required by the Amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Newby, must by definition reduce the powers of this House. It would have to remove the right to chuck out a Bill. We have the right but do not use it, for self-evident reasons, but what is to stop a troublesome elected second Chamber throwing out a Bill before it even revises it? That would be chaos. That would have to be put in the legislation before the new Chamber arrives. Would the Prime Minister down the other end appoint the leader of this new Chamber? Of course not. Self-evidently, that could not happen. So would there be Ministers in the second Chamber? There do not have to be; Ministers can be summoned by this Chamber from the other place to Select Committees and to explain Bills.

There are a few issues to be raised here that are not being talked about, which is why this idea is a bit more complicated than people think. I fully accept that the Chamber should be half the size of the Commons and should not have any Ministers. I have formed that view since I first came here. Noble Lords talk about the House of Commons as it is now, but I can tell them that between 1974 and 1979 we Back-Benchers had a lot more power, because the Government did not have it. The Lib-Lab pact was there. We have the problem of the current situation; we should not form ourselves on the basis that it will always be the same. There are a few more questions to be asked of the noble Lord, Lord Newby—which I do not expect him to answer—than have been asked so far today.

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, is nothing if not consistent on this issue. We voted together on the seven options that your Lordships’ House was presented with in February 2003 following the royal commission. The noble Lord will recall that, in the Commons, none of the options got a Majority and the whole thing failed.

If I am to be critical of what happened with the original proposals put forward by the Lord Chancellor, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine, the royal commission and the various proposals put forward since, including Mr Clegg’s Bill, the proponents of an elected House—of which I am one—need to do the work on the powers and relationship. You cannot get away with simply saying, “We should have an elected House”. I absolutely agree with this, but my noble friend is right that, to make it work, you would have to constrain the current powers of the Lords to make the relationship work effectively.

You would also have to tackle secondary legislation. You could not leave an elected second Chamber with a veto power—which we have used six or seven times in our whole history—particularly if it was elected under proportional representation. Clearly, a second Chamber elected under proportional representation is bound to claim greater legitimacy in the end than the Commons; the claim would always be that we represent the voters much more accurately than a first past the post system.

The noble Lord, Lord Newby, may not realise this, but I am very sympathetic to what he seeks to do. But, for goodness’ sake, let us do the work on what the relationship between two elected Houses should be.

Does the noble Lord agree that this House prides itself on being a Chamber that gives excellent views and expertise? In general, people of expertise tend not to stand for election. They tend to be chosen, for whatever reason. Is that not rather relevant to how this Chamber is supposed to work? Maybe we ought to have more experts in the House of Lords and fewer politicians.

My Lords, my noble friend, whom I respect greatly and have worked with over many years, underestimates the calibre of many Members of Parliament. I take his point that many of the people who come forward in relation to an appointed House might not put their names forward for an elected second Chamber. But at the end of the day, as the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, said, it is very hard to justify a second Chamber of Parliament that does not have electoral legitimacy. My plea is that we make sure that that legitimacy is produced in a way that does not bring us to conflict.

My Lords, I am very torn on this. I favour a unicameral approach and a lot of the arguments against the elected second Chamber have been made very well, even though I want a more democratic way of making decisions.

There is a crisis of democracy at present that expands far beyond this debate. What really struck me in the debate on assisted dying in the other place was the number of times that MPs effectively said, “Let’s leave it up to the House of Lords to sort out”. That is a disaster, because it is anti-democratic. It worries me, as we increasingly watch a certain implosion happening at the other end, that the House of Lords is given far too much credit for being able to sort that out. The unelected House being the ones who are trusted is the profound crisis of democratic accountability in this country. That is what we should be debating. I feel very self-conscious about being in an unelected House of Lords debating the survival of an unelected House of Lords—which people stay and which people go. It is so self-regarding.

As for the notion of a House full of experts—philosopher kings and all that—I cannot imagine anything more off-putting to the British public than us patting ourselves on the back and saying that we know more than anyone else. I appreciate that is fashionable, but it should not be something we embrace. That is not to undermine the expertise that is here, but please do not try to make it a virtue in terms of democratic decision-making.

However, to go back to the spirit of the Amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Newby, one problem with the discussion on hereditary Peers is that it is too limited. It suggests that it is revolutionary and reforming; in fact, it is just going for low-hanging fruit when we should be having a proper discussion about a democratic shake-up at both ends of this Westminster Palace. I feel that we are wasting an awful lot of time while Rome burns.

My Lords, it has been an interesting debate, even if it started slightly predictably. If an all-appointed House is eventually created by this Bill, many—whatever some of us think—will contemplate the logical next step in reforming the House of Lords, which is to consider a democratic mandate. We must not get away from that. I heard talk earlier of “bringing the House into disrepute” by our debating the issues we were, but I am not sure that it helps to be seen laughing at the idea of election, which we did earlier, although it might have been that we were laughing at the Liberal Democrat obsession with proportional representation—one never knows.

As the noble Lord, Lord Newby, explained, it has been a long-held aspiration of the Liberal Democrats and, before them, the good old Liberal Party, which really was liberal, to replace your Lordships’ House with an elected Chamber. It is there in the preamble to the 1911 Act, as my noble friend Lord Strathclyde always reminds us. There have been various attempts, often supported in this Chamber, to achieve a democratic second Chamber: in the 1960s, in the 1970s and most recently by the coalition in 2011. My colleagues are not unhappy with me at the moment, but I will upset them by saying that it was a proposal which I and many others in this House assented to. As we know, it could not be prosecuted because it was frustrated procedurally in the other place by a number of Conservative MPs and the Labour Party.

There is logic and consistency in the noble Lord’s position. I hugely respect the noble Lord, Lord Winston; he really is an expert, whatever others say. However, speaking humbly as someone who has fought seven elections in my ward and won them all, and twice fought elections to be leader of my council and won both—sorry—I hope your Lordships do not consider me to be a complete nincompoop. I do not claim to be an expert, but I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, that some people who are elected can be good.

Noble Lords:

Oh!

My Lords, I have spent a whole life in the Conservative and Unionist Party, and I dare say people in the Labour Party could probably say the same thing.

The desire for election therefore is not just in the Liberal Democrat party. There are people on our Benches who have spoken on it; we heard from my noble friend Lord Brady of Altrincham. The reality is that this Bill, as presented, creates something unique in the world, outside Canada, which is an all-appointed House, stocked by the Prime Minister, now with the aspiration to be able to remove people. No other democratic nation allows the Prime Minister of the day to decide who his opponents in Parliament will be, and how many, or to stock the Chamber. We will stand alone in the world. They used to say that this House was the only house outside Lesotho which had a hereditary element coming into it. If this legislation goes through, we will not find many models without the kind of additional elements that my noble friend Lord Hailsham talked about earlier. We have to look at the shape of the House being created as the result of this Bill as presented. I welcomed what the noble Baroness the Leader of House said earlier about an opportunity; we have not discussed the shape of it in the usual channels, but we obviously will, and I welcome that. The only thing that she did not say was anything about a Bill, although we have a later debate on the Amendment tabled by the noble Duke. When he moves his amendment, I would like to hear a little bit more about whether there will be a Bill—the first I heard of it was at the Dispatch Box. The Minister told me she has been having consultations, and she has come to House and said that, but we still do not know the full shape of what is proposed. What she said earlier seemed quite narrowly confined to the issues of age and participation. The challenge by my noble friend Viscount Hailsham that we will need to look a bit more at the full nature of reform is important.

Returning to the basic issue, we have to do that, because this House as reformed by this Bill will be a House with no adequate protections against the use of patronage. I may be a Cassandra—her prophesies were not believed, although they often turned out to be true—but in removing the shielding screen of the easily criticised hereditary peerage, it will lay bare the stark question of by what right those of us who sit here as life Peers do so? Who appoints us, to whom are we accountable and by what right should we stay? Those questions will inevitably be asked, and that is why we need the kind of protective reflection on improving the situation in this House that follows on from the Bill which has been adumbrated by the Minister and asked for by others.

I have little doubt that the calls for election, or even abolition, as we have heard from Mr Farage—although he seems to change his policy from time to time—will grow. As the noble Lord, Lord Newby, reminded us, 22 other free democracies have directly or indirectly elected bicameral parliaments, and they do not seem to have huge problems; 48 do not bother with a second chamber at all. It may therefore be only prudent not to discount the advice from the noble Lord—although I do not go with his model or necessarily his methodology —that we should consider how a democratic mandate might be implemented. We might reject it, but it would be responsible to look at it in all its various strengths and weaknesses. We really should not fear to consider it.

Of course, what will be most interesting to know, when the Minister responds, is the view of the Labour Party. It has long talked about having an elected element, but it is rather as with having a woman Prime Minister: they talk about it, but they have never—well, not quite yet—got round to doing it.

The plan for an alternative, democratically based second Chamber was very enthusiastically received by Sir Keir Starmer when it was proposed by Gordon Brown, and it apparently remains the Government’s aspiration. The lodestar that is the Labour manifesto committed them to replacing this House with

“an alternative second chamber that is more representative of the regions and nations”,

so we all look forward to hearing how work on this is progressing in the Labour Party when the noble Baroness responds, particularly in the light of the declared shared interest with the Liberal Democrats in replacing your Lordships’ House with an alternative second Chamber.

I will not be able to support the noble Lord, Lord Newby, if he presses his amendment to a vote, but, as I said, I would not discourage him from pressing the case that we should consider the implications and nature of the points that the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, and others made on the relations there would be between the two Chambers. These things have to be thought about because they are issues that might rise up and confront us as the politics of this nation develops.

My Lords, this has been a genuinely interesting debate, and I thank the noble Lords, Lord Newby and Lord Brady, for tabling their amendments. First, I reassure the noble Lord, Lord Newby, that I am one of the minority: a West Midlands-based Peer.

My noble friend Lord Winston as always makes a pertinent and interesting point with regard to experts. He is someone I regularly reference when I talk about our House of experts. I usually say that I doubt he, like many of us, would ever have put his name forward for an election—but we are lucky to have him.

Amendments 4 and 30, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Newby, are similar to his Amendments 11 and 115 in Committee. They seek to place a duty on Ministers to take forward proposals to introduce a democratically elected element to the House of Lords. In bringing forward proposals, the Government would be required to consult with a number of groups—I am glad the noble Lord remembered to add the public to his list this time around.

Amendment 22, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Brady of Altrincham, is similar to his Amendment 90D in Committee. The amendment seeks to place a duty on the Government to produce a Bill which makes provisions to limit the size of the House and provide that all its Members be elected.

We had a spirited debate on similar amendments on the second day in Committee, when your Lordships made a number of insightful and intriguing points about the fundamental nature of this House and its place in our constitution. That debate and this one underscored the importance of considering the potential benefits of reform, alongside the implications for the balance of power within Parliament. Like then, I note that the debate today has demonstrated that the House has yet to settle on a particular side of this issue. This remains a fundamental issue with all the amendments.

Put simply, amendments of this kind are not for this focused Bill. This legislation is the first step in reforming the House. As stated at the beginning of Report, once the Bill receives Royal Assent, the Leader of the House will set out in more detail how we plan to approach the next stage of our reforms.

The longer-term aim is that the Government will consult on proposals for more fundamental reform through the establishment of an alternative second Chamber that is more representative of the nations and regions of the United Kingdom. There will be an opportunity for the public to provide their views on how to ensure that this alternative Chamber best serves them. Amendment 22 in particular cuts across this aspect of the Government’s manifesto commitment as it does not make any provision for consultation with the public.

It is clear that there is an appetite for reform and that there are ongoing conversations that we will need to have, but it is also clear that we are not yet ready to have a settled position within your Lordships’ House. With that in mind, I respectfully ask that the noble Lord, Lord Newby, withdraws his amendment.

My Lords, I am extremely grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken in this debate. It is normally the case that at this point, one says that it has been an extremely interesting debate. Despite us having debated this many times, it has been a very interesting debate because it has illuminated the central issue that a democratically elected Lords would raise. Are we to be a mere adjunct of the Commons—and, at the end of the day, a totally powerless one—or not, and are we to be part of a more effective parliamentary system in which the Government are challenged effectively?

The truth is that under the current system, the Government are challenged effectively in the Commons only when they have a rebellion in their own ranks. The Opposition cannot challenge them because, at the end of the day, they always win. We cannot challenge them, because at the end of all the ping-pong, we have no legitimacy to stand firm. I do not think anybody who has followed recent decades of British parliamentary activity would claim that the Government have been challenged effectively and that nonsenses have been called out effectively by Parliament, so I am extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Brady, and the noble Viscounts, Lord Hailsham and Lord Thurso, for making that point.

Obviously, as noble Lords have pointed out, there will be tensions between two elected Houses, but I believe that—as in many other countries which have this—it is possible to resolve them. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, said he opposed having the House of Lords elected under PR because it would give us more legitimacy in some senses than the Commons elected under first past the post. Of course, there is a very easy answer to that, which is to elect the House of Commons by PR as well. That would clearly be a great advantage.

The Government’s approach is an Augustinian one of “We want to reform, but not yet”. We ought to be putting a bit of pressure on them, nudging them towards the goal which they claim to espouse. Therefore, I wish to test the opinion of the House.

Ayes 84, Noes 263.

Amendment 4 disagreed.

Consideration on Report adjourned until not before 8.37 pm.