Alex Burghart

I echo the words of the Paymaster General in thanking everyone who has spoken this afternoon. It has been a good natured and interesting debate. I want to echo some words of my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) in praise of the House of Lords. When I first came to this place, I bumped into Lord Young of Cookham, who I had known a few years previously, and I said, “How are you getting on in the upper House as a Minister?” He said, “It’s rather harder there than it is down your end.” When I asked him what he meant, he said, “Well, you see, when I stood up as a Minister in the House of Commons, I normally felt that, with the support of my officials, I was probably the best informed person in the room. But when you get to the Lords, you face five former Secretaries of State, three former heads of the civil service and people with expertise from across the sector, and what you find there is real scrutiny.” I love this place and I do not wish to take anything away from it, but I do not wish to see it replicated; one of us is enough. That is why, despite the fact that the Opposition disagree with many of the things that the Labour Government are doing, we have been pleased to see that they have edged away from their long-standing commitment to an elected upper House. An elected upper House would replicate this place unnecessarily. It would inevitably get in the way of the primacy of the Commons and make the passage of law harder. It was very significant that, on 5 March, Lord Mandelson made an intervention with the Lord Speaker—on his very popular podcast—and said that the proposals of the former Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, for constitutional reform had “barely been put in the oven…let alone…baked.” I am very pleased that the Labour Government have taken that on board. That said, the Bill in its present form cannot have the support of the Opposition. The Labour party has reneged on the solemn promise it made in 1998 not to get rid of the remaining hereditary peers until it brought forward a comprehensive plan for a reformed upper House. Many Government Members have said that the hereditary peers sit in the House of Lords by duty of right; well, that is not entirely right. The reason the remaining hereditary peers are in the House of Lords is that the Labour Government put them there. That was the agreement that was reached in 1998. The remaining hereditary peers—who already sit in the Lords and scrutinise, night after night, the legislation introduced by this House—should not be treated in this way. Had the Government respected their position and made provision for them in a reformed Chamber, it would be very hard—not impossible, but very hard—to oppose this legislation. However, as it is, the Government are seeking to remove established scrutineers in order to replace them with Labour appointees, and we cannot support that. The Minister’s argument that the Conservatives can nominate replacements is obviously not entirely genuine. Although we can put people forward, we cannot guarantee that they will go into the upper House. The Government could make that commitment tonight, but they have not done so. They have said nothing about the 33 Cross-Bench hereditary peers who will be removed by the legislation. Labour has broken its promise from 1998, and it has broken its promise to bring forward all its reforms immediately. The Conservative party will not support it.