Orders of the Day — House of Lords Bill

House of Commons, 10 November 1999.

New Clause

Andrew MacKinlay (Labour, Thurrock)

I beg to move amendment (f) to the Lords amendment, after 'time', insert 'no more than'.

Betty Boothroyd (Speaker, West Bromwich West)

With this it will be convenient to take amendments (b), (c) and (e) to the Lords amendment and Lords amendments Nos. 3 and 5 to 12.

Andrew MacKinlay (Labour, Thurrock)

I understand why the Government accepted the Weatherill proposals. Although I do not welcome them, I always recognise the need to seize political opportunities. That is precisely, and legitimately, what the Government have done in furtherance of our objective to abolish the hereditary peerage and establish a reformed upper House. However, there are some consequences of the Government accepting the Weatherill amendment which I do not accept. The devil is in the detail, as I shall draw to the House's attention. As a result, I tabled amendments (c) and (f) to the Lords amendment. As the Bill stands, it provides for elected hereditary peers to be succeeded on death. The Weatherill compromise threw up, by election, some 90-odd hereditary peers. When we heard of the instigation of the so-called Weatherill compromise, many of us assumed that those who were elected would be the last of the large body of hereditary peers. However, in the detail—detail that was added in the final stages of proceedings on the Bill in the House of Lords, and therefore not part of the original so-called deal—there is provision for an elected hereditary peer to be succeeded by another when he is called to the great parliamentary Chamber on high. That is not satisfactory or in the spirit of what we were led to believe was the Weatherill compromise. My amendments would ensure that those who have been elected would remain in the House of Lords for life, but, as a group, their membership of it would wither on the vine. Indeed, the consequence of striking out subsection (4) would be to create life peers of the elected hereditary peers. I remind my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House that, in so doing, we would be fulfilling a manifesto commitment. I, my right hon. Friend and our hon. Friends are the custodians of our election manifesto, which it is always helpful to have with one on these occasions. I hope that the House will permit me to refer to the explicit undertakings in our manifesto, which says: As an initial, self-contained reform, not dependent on further reform in the future, the right of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords will be ended by statute. This will be the first stage in a process of reform". There is no ambiguity about that. We made a firm election commitment to abolish the hereditary peerage in this Parliament. I have acknowledged the need to accept the so-called Weatherill compromise, but I believe that we can still do so and fulfil to the letter our manifesto commitment. I invite my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House to break new ground and accept amendments (f) and (c). During the hocus-pocus and consternation relating to the Weatherill compromise, when the Leader of the Opposition in the House of Lords was sacked, it was never spelled out that we would allow hereditary peers to be succeeded. A very generous compromise has been reached, and I believe that we should say that we stand by our election manifesto in that regard. I believe that I can call upon historic precedent in this matter.

Michael Fallon (Conservative, Sevenoaks)

I am puzzled by the extent of the hon. Gentleman's amendment. Is he excluding from it the Earl Marshal and the Lord Great Chamberlain? Does he consider that they should be able to hand their great offices down to their descendants?

Andrew MacKinlay (Labour, Thurrock)

I had hoped that the hon. Gentleman would not notice that, because even I am not always as candid as I should like. The Earl Marshals—I believe that there are about three office holders—will probably remain until whenever Parliament returns to the matter. I am a reasonable man, so I do not want to go to the wall on that narrow point. I am concerned about the great bulk—the great tranche—of 90 hereditary peers who are being given the right to sit in the House of Lords for the time being. I have reluctantly conceded that they should be given that right, but in my view there was never any suggestion that they should enjoy the opportunity to be succeeded by further peers.

Desmond Swayne (Conservative, New Forest West)

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Andrew MacKinlay (Labour, Thurrock)

No, because I guess that the hon. Gentleman is likely to have an opportunity to catch your eye, Madam Speaker, and I should like to develop my argument on precedence. As a consequence of the legislation, passed by Parliament, that created the Irish Free State in the early 1920s, elections were no longer held for the elected representative Irish peers. Those peers were allowed to wither on the vine. I believe that the last Irish peer to sit in Parliament was the grandfather of Richard Needham, who is known to us all. There were never any more elections. As a consequence of that Irish legislation, the elected peers became de facto life peers, and that is precisely what I am suggesting should happen in this case. It would be highly appropriate. I know that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House intends that there should be a second stage of reform—I do not doubt her personal commitment to that. I note that my right hon. Friend and my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary are nodding, but they might not be on the Front Bench for ever. There are also likely to be other compelling pressures on Government legislative time, which may, in all probability, kick the matter into touch. Indeed, that has been the history of House of Lords reform. There has never been a suitable time or date—there has never been an occasion when there could be concord across parties. Let us hope that we are wrong, but let us assume that this will be the last time that Parliament visits the issue for a little while. If my colleagues say that I am being unfair or unrealistic—a charge which I do not accept—I suggest that they examine the Lords amendment. The provisions that we are discussing, which I wish to amend, underscore the fact that there will be some perpetuity in the idea of hereditaries continuing. As the provisions stand, for the next two years, if a vacancy occurs among the elected hereditaries, the agreed system is that he should be succeeded by the next person in ranking order in the recent election. However, after 2003 there is provision for by-elections. That takes us well into the next Parliament, and I have a feeling that things will be bedded down by then. There may not be the opportunities that exist now to achieve even limited agreement across parties. The new Labour Government will be rapacious in their appetite for parliamentary time and the implementation of their social programme—I certainly hope so—and I foresee therefore that this matter will not be revisited. The Bill, as before us, buttresses my argument that provision is being made for hereditary peers to go on and on. 3.45 pm Bearing in mind the historic precedent of the Irish peerage and the fact that there is agreement throughout the country that reform of the House of Lords must be completed in this Parliament, at least as an interim, I hope that we will not negate the manifesto commitment to do away with the hereditary peerage and that the House will find merit in my amendments, which will ensure that there are no hereditaries hereafter.

Margaret Beckett (Labour, Derby South)

In 52 days from now, we shall reach the end of the 20th century. Few of those who saw the start of this century, and certainly not those who founded the Labour party almost 100 years ago, would have found it credible that the crucial step that we propose to take today— a step that they advocated when our party was founded— would still be incomplete some 89 years after those in this House imagined that reform had begun. We have spent more years discussing Lords reform in this century than it has days left to run, yet the Conservative party is still calling for more time. As we begin the discussions today, we take the next and arguably the most crucial step in the journey that began so long ago. During this century of breathtaking change, much has been done to change, modernise and improve our Parliament. All men and even all women have gained the right to vote—the right to have their say in how and by whom our country is governed—yet while not just a wind, but a hurricane of change has swept through our country and most of our institutions, in one corner of our legislature time has, in effect, stood still.

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Conservative, Cotswold)

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

Margaret Beckett (Labour, Derby South)

Not for a moment. Some 750 of our fellow countrymen and, in a few cases, fellow countrywomen retain to this day the right to a place in the other House solely on the basis of their birth, not of their achievements or even of their capacity. Some of them have a record of achievement or service of which anyone would, rightly, be proud. Some of them are wise. That is beside the point, because they do not need to be so. The acceptance of the amendment in the House of Lords was, in effect, an acceptance that the right to sit in our legislature can no longer be handed down as though it were a possession or a piece of property.

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Conservative, Cotswold)

I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for giving way. She criticises the right of hereditary peers, which has been in existence for 600 years. The Prime Minister is using his patronage to create between two and four Labour life peers a week. How long is that likely to continue?

Margaret Beckett (Labour, Derby South)

If the hon. Gentleman has been paying attention to the debates—I think that he is a new attender—he would know that the Government have made it plain that the most that we would seek in the House of Lords is parity with the Conservative party. The hon. Gentleman refers to the number and speed of creations since the general election. I do not recall when he entered the House, but I am sure that he has been present from the 1980s. He knows that the former Tory Prime Ministers—both Lady Thatcher and the right hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major)—used their power of patronage to create twice as many Conservative peers as Labour peers, although the Conservative party already had—

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Conservative, Cotswold)

indicated dissent.

Margaret Beckett (Labour, Derby South)

It is no good the hon. Gentleman shaking his head. The numbers are on the record, and the Conservative party already had a majority in the House of Lords. I repeat that the Government have said that we do not believe that any political party should have a majority in the House of Lords, which the hon. Gentleman's party has been most reluctant to echo. We seek not a majority, but broad parity in the House of Lords.

David Winnick (Labour, Walsall North)

As regards the hereditaries, did not the recent incident in another place illustrate the argument? Someone was protesting because in future he would not be able to sit there. His father's title stems from a relationship between Charles II and Nell Gwynne more than 300 years ago. How can it possibly be justified that someone should sit in Parliament because of a relationship between a monarch and a lady that took place so long ago? That person performed a good service by showing how absurd it is for the hereditaries to continue.

Margaret Beckett (Labour, Derby South)

I am usually most grateful for my hon. Friend's interventions, but I was trying to avoid introducing the Earl of Burford into the debate, although I agree that, from our point of view, he came straight from central casting as, indeed, did his argument. As my hon. Friend says, in this day and age it is absurd to find people who still argue that they should serve in our legislature on such a basis.

Andrew Tyrie (Conservative, Chichester)

The right hon. Lady sought to justify the huge number of life peers created by the Prime Minister by saying that Margaret Thatcher did something similar. As a matter of record, 175 peers have been created in the two and a half years since the election. That is almost as many as Margaret Thatcher managed in 11 years. Since the introduction of life peers in 1958, no Prime Minister has appointed more than 50 per cent. from his or her own party, except the current Prime Minister.

Margaret Beckett (Labour, Derby South)

The hon. Gentleman made that point earlier in our debates. To do him justice, perhaps he did not entirely follow the point I was making. I was not talking about numbers. First, Lady Thatcher and the right hon. Member for Huntingdon appointed far more Conservative life peers than life peers of any other party. Indeed, until 1989 more than twice as many Conservative as Labour peers were created and almost twice as many were created up to 1996. Secondly, although numbers decrease in all parties over time through ill-health and death, Lady Thatcher in particular absolutely refused to create Labour life peers to make up the numbers, as previous Prime Ministers from any party had done. That is why the decline in the number of Labour life peers was so stark and why my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has been forced to make redress in the early days of this Parliament.

Tony Benn (Labour, Chesterfield)

To revert for a moment to discussing Lord Burford, can my right hon. Friend explain exactly why a new category of hereditary electors should have been created so that, when he succeeds to the dukedom of St. Albans, he will be allowed to vote for a Member of the new second Chamber? Indeed, he will be eligible to be elected, if his behaviour improves, and will be voted for only by other hereditary electors. What part is there for a modernising Government in creating a category of persons who can stand for election and vote only if they are hereditary? Is not my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Mr. Mackinlay) absolutely right?

Margaret Beckett (Labour, Derby South)

The system to which my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Mr. Mackinlay) alluded—I shall return to his point in a moment—will come into being only if we are unable to achieve agreement on the way in which we should proceed to stage 2. If, as we all hope, the royal commission reports on time and there is broad acceptance of its proposals, it is more than likely that the mechanism to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) alludes will never have to be put in place.

David Heath (Liberal Democrat, Somerton and Frome)

Is the right hon. Lady saying that in order to deal with the Government's failure to complete the reforms, she has to create two alternative mechanisms for bolstering the numbers in the Lords—a rotten democratic system that would be recognisable to the ancient voters of Old Sarum or patronage from the Prime Minister? Why on earth are numbers in the other place not allowed to dwindle while the reforms go on, thereby accelerating the move towards total reform?

Margaret Beckett (Labour, Derby South)

I am not saying either of those things. As the hon. Gentleman may have noticed, the proposals that I am describing do not come from the Government. The issue before us is whether the Government, as a means of achieving our principal end, are prepared to accept the amendment. I shall come back to that in a moment.

John Gummer (Conservative, Suffolk Coastal)

The right hon. Lady said earlier that a great deal of time had been spent on discussion of reform of the House of Lords. She will recall that that time was spent on discussing what should replace it. I have not played a large part in the argument, because it strikes me as being largely esoteric, given what the Government have decided to do. My problem is that I have never encountered another circumstance in which those in charge have decided to get rid of what is there before deciding what to put in its place. The hon. Member for Thurrock (Mr. Mackinlay), with whom I never agree except in a religious context, is in a difficult position, because he has identified the Government's own problem. If the Government had proposed to the House an alternative, we could have voted positively. The Government, however, are suggesting that we get rid of what we have, and have not a hope in hell of deciding what we are to put in its place. Would not the right hon. Lady be happier if she could propose something positive, rather than being in such a difficult position with her own side?

Margaret Beckett (Labour, Derby South)

The right hon. Gentleman is kind to be concerned, but I assure him that I feel no difficulty whatever. Indeed, I am grateful for his intervention, which brings me to the point that I was about to make. The Government have a simple and straightforward reason for proceeding in this way, which we have made crystal clear from the beginning. Debate on the issue has always been hamstrung, and proposals to change the principle of membership of our legislature on the ground of heredity has always been defeated, because those who fought all change have been joined in their resistance by those who disliked one or all of the proposed alternatives. That is precisely why the Government chose to separate the removal of the hereditary peers from proposals for their future. Given that that is what has prolonged this debate for 89 years, it is, I suspect, very meaningful that the Conservative party is trying, unsuccessfully, to continue the same tactic.

Christopher Gill (Conservative, Ludlow)

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

Margaret Beckett (Labour, Derby South)

Yes, but then I really must get on.

Christopher Gill (Conservative, Ludlow)

Will the right hon. Lady explain what is the democratic legitimacy of life peers?

Margaret Beckett (Labour, Derby South)

The legitimacy of life peers is exactly the same as it has been since their establishment by, I think, a Conservative Government in 1958. They are appointed, or given their position, by the Queen, on the suggestion of the Prime Minister of the day.

Eric Forth (Conservative, Bromley and Chislehurst)

That is not very democratic.

Margaret Beckett (Labour, Derby South)

The right hon. Gentleman says, sotto voce—well, not very sotto; voce, anyway—that that is not very democratic. The procedure was established by a Conservative Government in order, I believe, to make the House of Lords more acceptable than it would otherwise have been without any element of life peerage. The issue will, however, be brought into context when we discuss stage 2 of reform. The hon. Member for Ludlow (Mr. Gill) will appreciate that we are not discussing that today. I simply remind him that, when the hereditary peers are removed, a substantial number of life peers will remain on the basis of their achievement, along with some hereditaries chosen by their peers, also on the basis of achievement.

Tony Benn (Labour, Chesterfield)

Will the right hon. Lady give way on that specific point?

Margaret Beckett (Labour, Derby South)

I will, but I will not give way again until I have made much more progress, and, hopefully, finished what was intended to be a very short speech.

Tony Benn (Labour, Chesterfield)

May I draw my right hon. Friend's attention to two points? First, hereditary peers who are elected will be able to claim a certain electoral legitimacy, while life peers will not. An hereditary peer who is elected will say to a life peer, "You were appointed, but I was elected." Secondly, is my right hon. Friend aware that there is another way of appointing peers? I refer to their appointment by the House of Commons itself. On retirement, every Speaker is made a peer, not by the Prime Minister but through a humble address praying that a signal mark of royal favour may be conferred on the right hon. Jack Weatherill, or whoever it happens to be. The House makes peers in respect of its own Speakers. Were the present Speaker—whose retirement I hope does not occur in my lifetime—to come to the end of her term, I have no doubt that the House would ask the Crown to act. It is entirely untrue to say that there is any democratic legitimacy in a leader of either party putting people into Parliament and allowing them to vote on the laws that we are all expected to obey. That is the problem that the Government simply have not addressed from the beginning.

Margaret Beckett (Labour, Derby South)

My right hon. Friend believes that hereditary peers—presumably, those who remain—will have a greater legitimacy because they are elected by others of their fellows. It gives them a reason for being there. It is a mechanism for deciding those who will remain—I hope for a fairly short period—but whether it gives them democratic legitimacy is another point. It is not a point that I would make. If he wishes to make it, it is a matter for him. My right hon. Friend separately pursues the issue of what he believes the Government should do instead. Again, it is open to him to do that, as it is to Opposition Members. I remind him simply that it is through doing that that Opposition Members have managed to keep the discussion going for 89 years. He should not fall into the trap that they clearly still seek to set, of so prolonging an interesting discussion about the best way to have legitimacy in what succeeds the present House that we keep it in its present form.

John Bercow (Conservative, Buckingham)

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

Margaret Beckett (Labour, Derby South)

I apologise to the hon. Gentleman, but I did say that I would not give way. I remind both my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield and Opposition Members that our Prime Minister is the first ever to volunteer to give up some of the power of patronage that he enjoys and that he has already done so by passing—

Eric Forth (Conservative, Bromley and Chislehurst)

Pull the other one.

Margaret Beckett (Labour, Derby South)

I am sorry to say it, but the right hon. Gentleman is insulting when he says, "Pull the other one." He should consult the Leader of the Opposition. If he does, he will learn that the Prime Minister forwarded to the relevant authorities the names—unchanged and unchallenged—of those nominated by the Leader of the Opposition. He had every right to change and to challenge them. He has not done so; he has forgone that right. That makes him the first Prime Minister in history both to offer and actually to carry out his offer to reduce his patronage.

John Bercow (Conservative, Buckingham)

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

Margaret Beckett (Labour, Derby South)

It really will be the last time.

John Bercow (Conservative, Buckingham)

I am grateful to the right hon. Lady, whose better nature is always on display in the House. Does the right hon. Lady's unwillingness to state what the democratic legitimacy of appointed peers is result from the fact that, in 1958, if memory serves me correctly, Labour Members did not support the Life Peerages Bill and, in that respect, if not in any other, they formed an alliance with Enoch Powell, the former right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West?

Margaret Beckett (Labour, Derby South)

I apologise to the hon. Gentleman: as someone was speaking to me, I did not follow all the point that he made. He is right that there have been all manner of unholy alliances across the Chamber, which have, between them, managed to scupper all previous attempts to reform the House of Lords with the removal of the hereditary element. Certainly there were those who, no doubt because they wished to see that reform, had reservations about the introduction of life peerages. Therefore, he is right that it has been a checkered process. That is all the more reason to begin to draw it to a close. It is kind of him to suggest that my better nature is always on display here. It shows that he has not been in the House for longer than the current Parliament, although I was a little hurt to see Madam Speaker shaking her head, but I move on.

Betty Boothroyd (Speaker, West Bromwich West)

It was the flattery and audacity of the hon. Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow) that made me do so.

Margaret Beckett (Labour, Derby South)

Ah! I am grateful to you, Madam Speaker, for clarifying that point. It has long been accepted that, among the ranks of hereditary peers, some played a larger or more significant role than others. It has also long been accepted that, although a continued right to inherit a seat in the Lords could not be sustained, a continued presence for some of those whose past membership was by inheritance was not, of itself, inconsistent with a transitional House. Those who attended our earlier proceedings will recall that there was some fairly lengthy debate on such a principle, instigated by the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs. Laing). During that debate, I made it clear that our manifesto commitment—as my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock correctly identified—was to propose to remove the right to sit and to vote in our legislature on the basis of heredity as an initial self-contained reform, not dependent on further reform in the future, so the Government's underlying preference was for the Bill as drafted in all its elegant simplicity. I also made it clear, however, that should such a scheme be worked out, and should it command support in the other places—which is by no means a foregone conclusion—the Government would be prepared to consider whether it might, after all, lead to a broader consensus and broader acceptance of the Bill itself. It was also made quite explicit that, should the Opposition use their huge built-in majority among hereditary peers to disrupt the Government's programme, in defiance of legislative conventions, that would be seen as destroying any such consensus. On that basis—the acceptance of progress on Lords reform, without the initially threatened total disruption of Government business—we were able to make progress on the Food Standards Bill, and even on the Railways Bill, in addition to the programme originally announced in the Queen's Speech. We are not, of course, quite at the end of the Session, and one should never presume the consent of Parliament—I never do—but, on the basis of what now seems to be the position, I am prepared to recommend to the House that we accept this group of Lords amendments. My hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock has spoken to his amendments, expressing his reservations—which I suspect are shared by other hon. Members—about the Lords amendment. He drew attention to the fact that the final text of the Lords amendment allows for hereditary peers to be succeeded and for a mechanism to replace any of those who might die. He also expressed his belief that the hereditary peers who might remain because of what has come to be known as the Weatherill compromise would be the last to serve in the other place. My hon. Friend said, quite correctly, that the proposal in Lords amendment No. 1 was not part of our original manifesto; as I said, we made that clear both on Second Reading and in Committee. He also said that the succession—or by-election—mechanism was not part of the original deal. He was right about that, too. The proposals were accepted by the Government for the precise reasons expressed by my hon. Friend. I was sorry to hear him say—although I understand his reasons for doing so—that he doubts the speed with which we might proceed to stage 2. He will know that those doubts were shared in spades by those who discussed the issue in the other place and by hon. Members in this place—some of whom will undoubtedly make the same point later in the debate, should they catch the eye of the Chair. I do not share those doubts, and do not believe that stage 2 is receding into the far distance. Undoubtedly, genuine concerns were expressed in the House of Lords that, should the introduction of stage 2 be unduly prolonged—for more than a couple of years—it would seem increasingly wrong for those who have been allowed to remain in the transitional House to be replaced by earlier runners-up. The Government agreed to accept those proposals to reassure all concerned of our good will and good intentions on the matter. As I said, those proposals—like the Weatherill proposals themselves—were not made by the Government or a part of our original intentions. Nevertheless, although they did not form part of our original intentions, we take the view that they will allow us to pursue a prudent and sensible route towards early removal of all hereditary peers, which is the Bill's underlying purpose.

Gerald Howarth (Conservative, Aldershot)

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

Margaret Beckett (Labour, Derby South)

I said that I would not give way again, but shall do so briefly to the hon. Gentleman.

Gerald Howarth (Conservative, Aldershot)

I shall not seek to emulate my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow) in the flattery stakes, because I am not as good at it as he is. Will the Leader of the House reply to my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer), who said that the Government have nothing with which to replace the current Upper House? Why is she so confident that a consensus may be found—not only in this place, but among the public—on a new formulation for the Upper House, when such a solution has eluded us for the past 89 years?

Margaret Beckett (Labour, Derby South)

For one thing, the Government have made real progress by breaking the link between stages 1 and 2. I also believe—the hon. Gentleman has attended our debates and may have heard me say this before—that the maintenance of that link has prevented any sensible and constructive debate about what stage 2 ought to be and what the nature, role and, indeed, the position of a second Chamber should be. All our previous discussions of the matter have been bedevilled by anxieties and deals, of the sort to which my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock referred, relating to the position of hereditary peers in a future second Chamber. In many ways, those discussions have had the sword of Damocles hanging over them because the substantial number of hereditary peers entitled to sit in the existing second Chamber has meant that they have had the whip hand over what should succeed them. Only when we have completed stage 1 can we properly discuss stage 2. The hon. Gentleman may be right: it may not be possible to reach absolute consensus. However, I suspect that we will get further forward and have more chance of achieving a sensible outcome to stage 2 than we would ever have done in previous discussions.

Andrew MacKinlay (Labour, Thurrock)

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, who has been patient with interventions. On how the procedures have emerged during the legislative stage in the House of Lords, does she share my irritation and think it an irony that when the Bill was presented to this House it was described as tightly drawn? On Second Reading and in Committee, the Clerk told us that there was little scope for tabling amendments. It was a challenge for us to table an amendment—I succeeded, but it was extraordinarily difficult. In the House of Lords, the peers have been able to open up the Bill and add all these amendments without there being any reciprocity for the elected House to shape and mould the legislation. Hurt is put on hurt. It is repugnant that those in another place can have all their say and that we, who have a mandate, cannot.

Margaret Beckett (Labour, Derby South)

I cannot follow my hon. Friend down that path. For one thing, it is for the Chair to decide what is not in order. He is right to say that the Bill is simple and well drawn from that point of view and that it was not possible for Members to raise many of the issues that they wished through tabling amendments. However, if my memory serves me right, we managed in one way or another to deal with most of them in the debate. Equally, it is wrong to suggest that in some way different rules apply in the House of Lords. The simple answer is that the Lords found a way to put the matter in order. As for whether one should feel great resentment and whether reciprocity should apply in this House, first, as Leader of the House of Commons—I have always said in this context that I am a House of Commons woman—I am resolute in my defence of the supremacy of this House. I hope that any proposals would never threaten that supremacy. On my hon. Friend's anxiety that hereditary peers had a greater opportunity to discuss or change the Bill in the House of Lords than we had, he should console himself with the thought that, for most of them, it was for the last time.

Christopher Gill (Conservative, Ludlow)

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

Margaret Beckett (Labour, Derby South)

I am sorry, but I have given way to the hon. Gentleman before and I must finish. I must place on record the fact that the Government are well aware that, apart from the specific issues of replacement and potential by-elections that my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock raised, there are other matters about which hon. Members on both sides of the House are unhappy. The first concerns some of the detail of Lords amendment No. 1—the Weatherill amendment. Some hon. Members also object to the principle of the proposals. I accept that those are valid and legitimate concerns, but the Government believe that the House can live with and accept what are transitional proposals for a transitional House. Everyone has gained something from the understanding that we have reached. The Government have not only gained but added to their legislative programme, with measures—in particular on food safety—that are of much worth and importance to the British people. The House of Lords has gained a broadly—although not universally—supported mechanism that allows the continued participation, albeit on a different basis, of some of its most active and experienced hereditary Members. The country will gain if, as a result of the passage of the Bill, we begin for the first time in our long and varied history to have a mature and considered debate about what a second legislative Chamber ought to be and do without that debate being driven almost exclusively by the interests of hereditary peers and how those interests should be accommodated in a new House.

Eleanor Laing (Conservative, Epping Forest)

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

Margaret Beckett (Labour, Derby South)

I am awfully sorry; I would have given way to the hon. Lady earlier, but I have almost finished. If we accept the amendment and put the Bill on to the statute book tonight, we can honestly say that Britain will have taken a massive step forward that is at least a century overdue and has been resisted by the forces of conservatism, with and without a capital C, to this day. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."]I am pleased to hear that reaction from the Conservatives, because it places their opposition to the change firmly on the record. We believe that putting the Bill on to the statute book will be an achievement of which we can be justly proud. That achievement will resonate not just down the years, but down the centuries. I commend it to the House.

George Young (Conservative, North West Hampshire)

If one wanted an epitaph to the Government's management of the legislative programme and their record on constitutional reform, one could do no better than look at the amendments before the House this afternoon, hours before the Government plan to prorogue. Some badly managed business over the past few days concludes with this half-completed business on the Lords today. The Third Reading of the Bill, as amended in another place, was on the Thursday before last—nearly a fortnight ago. We could have dealt with the amendments on Monday and Tuesday of last week. The House finished its business early on those days after an interesting but perhaps less challenging debate on whether Acts of Parliament should be printed on vellum or on paper. That would have given more time for the other Bills that we have been dealing with in the past week. Instead, after those two quiet days we have had guillotines or announcements about them almost every day and an unseemly rush to complete the Government's business, which has at times degenerated into farce. We should be grateful that the Bill was not drafted by the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, which tabled 800 Government amendments to the Greater London Authority Bill in another place. The Government have held back consideration of this important amendment until the end of the Session as part of some crude pressure on the second Chamber. They invite us to deal with it now, as the lights dim before Prorogation. It was only thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest (Mrs. Laing) that we were able to debate the issue the first time round. It is possible, as the hon. Member for Thurrock (Mr. Mackinlay) has said, that the second Chamber, whose powers and composition are affected by all the amendments, may last for some time, yet we discuss it in this unsatisfactory way. With the hasty consideration of all the other Bills over the past few days, I have to say that this is no way to manage the legislative programme. This is a Bill without vision or purpose, without principle or strategy. It is an attack not so much on privilege, but on wisdom, independence, duty and public service. The Bill makes way not for something that is better and permanent, but for something that is inferior and temporary. The Government have embarked on a constitutional journey without a compass. When they were getting lost, they decided to throw overboard many of the more experienced sailors. They then had second thoughts and despatched a lifeboat, manned by Captain Weatherill, to rescue some of them. Then they rang down for Admiral Wakeham to see if he could tell them where to go. That is no way to reform the British constitution.

John Gummer (Conservative, Suffolk Coastal)

Does it strike my right hon. Friend as curious that all previous Governments bent on reforming the House of Lords, led by experienced politicians, have recognised that it was their constitutional duty to propose to the House of Commons an alternative? This is the first Government to produce a reform Bill that proposes no alternative. Is it just possible that all the others were right in their judgment of constitutional propriety and that this Government are wholly wrong?

George Young (Conservative, North West Hampshire)

I agree with my right hon. Friend. He makes an interesting point, which sits neatly against that made by the Leader of the House. She asserted that breaking the process into two made it more likely that stage 2 would be reached. One could equally forcefully put precisely the opposite proposition—that after completing stage 1 and disposing of the hereditary peers, stage 2 becomes less likely. The amendment deals with the so-called Weatherill peers. The hereditary peers, who we are told are an offence to the democratic process, conducted their elections during the past few weeks with a dignity and decorum that has so far been absent from the process of choosing a Labour candidate for the mayor of London; a process allegedly conducted by those more familiar with the democratic process. The electoral college in the amendment is all the hereditary peers, and most will not be in the transitional House. Frankly, they deserve better than the charmless "thank you and goodbye" from those on the Government Benches in the other place, with the emphasis, as it was, on the goodbye rather than the thank you. I read in The Sunday Times on 7 November that a spokesman for Baroness Jay said: They'll be getting a glass of champagne when the House prorogues. What more do they want after 800 years? On behalf of the Opposition, I want to place on the record our deep appreciation of the work of those hereditary peers who are not covered by the amendment. They and their predecessors have a record of public service to Britain of which they should be proud and for which we should be grateful. We are sad to see so many distinguished parliamentarians leaving the upper House, including scores of people who have given dedicated voluntary services over many years. Time and again, they have stood up for common sense and the rights of the weak against powerful Governments of all colours, and we saw them do that again last Monday. History will judge those peers better than fashion now does. Parliament will be the lesser for their going. They deserve better than the graceless and charmless farewell from the Leader of the upper House. If the new House has a shred of the decency, courtesy, independence and open-mindedness of the old, it will be the better for it.

Angela Smith (Labour/Co-operative, Basildon)

The hon. Gentleman's comments go to the heart of the Opposition's misunderstanding of the matter. Labour Members have never criticised those active individual peers who have given a great deal of service; it is because they have no legitimacy that we have criticised them.

George Young (Conservative, North West Hampshire)

An elementary matter of courtesy should be discharged by those in the other place. That was omitted and I was happy to put that fact on the record on behalf of the Opposition.

Dale Campbell-Savours (Labour, Workington)

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

George Young (Conservative, North West Hampshire)

I should like to make some progress. I doubt that the Leader of the House enjoyed delivering the speech that she just made, inviting, as she did, her right hon. and hon. Friends to vote down a clear manifesto commitment. Last week, I heard hon. Members ask where the manifesto commitment for the reductions in benefits for the disabled was. They were referred to some rather general commitments to reform the welfare state, which persuaded enough of them to support the Government. Today, however, Labour Members must have listened to the President of the Council—a title that has survived modernisation—with some incredulity. The manifesto commitment could not have been clearer: As an initial, self-contained reform, not dependent on further reform in the future, the rights of the hereditary peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords will be ended by statute. Now they will not. Hereditary peers will be sitting and voting in the other place in the next Parliament despite the efforts of the people's party, and that Parliament will be the better served by their presence. Unlike life peers, they will owe nothing to the patronage of anyone living for their place there. Labour Members want to replace time-honoured privilege with modern patronage. They are a party which hates the past, but which is afraid to shape the future. Many of my hon. Friends will have seen The Sunday Times last Sunday, which stated: Blair wants the Committee on Lords reform to stop discussing policy. He wants it to start discussing tactics. Denis Carter lost his temper. 'Tactics! Tactics! All he thinks about are tactics! He's got no policy at all! Policy he may not have; patronage he has. The Prime Minister has created 171 peers in less than two and a half years—more, as we have heard, than my right hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major) managed in seven years. One third of all life peers have been appointed by the Prime Minister. One quarter of the new House will owe its presence there to the Prime Minister. Is that the sort of second Chamber that we want?

Margaret Beckett (Labour, Derby South)

The right hon. Gentleman will recognise that despite what he and his colleagues suggest is the unreasonable exercise of patronage, there are still more Conservative life peers than Labour life peers. This reflects the point that I made to him earlier.

George Young (Conservative, North West Hampshire)

I hope that the Leader of the House is not concluding that we want a house of patronage, which would be deeply damaging to Parliament. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer) has said, we should not be dealing with this amendment at all. If the Government wanted to reform the second Chamber, they should have done so rationally and thoroughly. If they had made faster progress—as we urged them to—we would have the report of the royal commission before us, and we could have dealt with the whole matter sensibly and coherently. We could have dealt with stage 1 and stage 2 together—demolition and reconstruction. We could then have judged whether what the Government proposed was better or worse than what we have at the moment. The Times put it very well in a leader on 15 May, which said: We see no sufficient justification for a measure which merely abolishes the participation of the hereditary peers before the composition of the new second Chamber has been determined.

Dale Campbell-Savours (Labour, Workington)

In years to come, when the hereditary peers have had time to reflect on why, in the early 1990s, the Labour party suddenly took a greater interest in the question of reform, they would do well to reflect on a few votes in the House of Lords in the late 1980s and early 1990s, such as on the community charge or poll tax. Labour activists were incensed that these people came to London uniquely to vote in favour of their own self-interest. When they reflect on these matters, they might then consider why this has happened.

George Young (Conservative, North West Hampshire)

The hon. Gentleman asks an interesting question—should a revised second Chamber have the right to overthrow a manifesto commitment of the elected Chamber? That is the implication of what he has said. Even if one concedes his argument, it does not deal with my point. We should have reconstruction at the same time as demolition. The Government's failure to approach this task in a logical and considered way is typical of their approach to the constitution, which they treat with cavalier disregard.

Andrew MacKinlay (Labour, Thurrock)

It will not have escaped the notice of the House that the Conservatives never proposed reform of the upper House—at least not on the scale that we are talking about now. The right hon. Gentleman said that we should wait for the royal commission. Will he give an undertaking, on behalf of the Opposition, that they will support the recommendations of the royal commission, and will be prepared to do so in the Lobby? If not, it will underline the point that there is not much prospect of getting consensus and legislation for the next stage.

George Young (Conservative, North West Hampshire)

The hon. Gentleman asks me to give a commitment which I very much doubt his right hon. Friend the Leader of the House would have given had he asked her. We are delighted that the royal commission has been appointed, and we await its deliberations with interest. However, it is not right to say that we have not reformed the House of Lords—we introduced life peerages in the 1950s.

John Bercow (Conservative, Buckingham)

It seems as if the hon. Member for Thurrock (Mr. Mackinlay) misrepresents the thinking of Conservative Members of Parliament. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the most distinguished Conservative philosopher of all time, Edmund Burke, was right to say that the state which lacks the means of change lacks the means of its conservation, but that the criterion according to which we should judge the desirability of change is whether it is practically effective, and not on the basis of some abstract theory?

George Young (Conservative, North West Hampshire)

I agree entirely. In the amendment, we see the 92 Weatherill peers as the hereditary grit in the constitutional oyster, provoking the Government to produce a pearl of constitutional reform. Indeed, we need to press the Government to move to stage 2—proper, genuine reform. We may then have not a house of patronage, but something better than what we have lost. The amendment keeps in public service a number of people who would otherwise have been lost, bringing with them continuity, experience and judgment. 4.30 pm I disagree with what the hon. Member for Thurrock said about the by-election arrangements. I welcome the proposals on the replacement of Weatherill peers who die. That will happen from the end of the first Session of the next Parliament if stage 2 has not been enacted by then. Until then, places will be filled by the nearest losers in last week's ballot. The ballot for the 15 Deputy Speakers disproved the assertion that the House is run by Conservatives for Conservatives. The top two were a Cross Bencher and a Labour peer. Originally, the Government said that by-elections should be left to Standing Orders. That would have meant that the remaining hereditary peers could have been allowed to wither on the vine and we could then have seen a quango House created by stealth. If the transitional Chamber lasts and is not to be wholly appointed, we need some means of replacing the elected peers. The amendment means that if the Government subsequently want to knock out peers who are elected, they will have to do so by primary legislation in the full glare of public debate. In the meantime, the Bill has been a distraction for the second Chamber, whose main task has been to hold this Government to account and scrutinise this Session's massive legislative programme. Worse, the Government have sought to set House of Commons against House of Lords when the real battle today is between Parliament and the Executive. The two Chambers are allies in that battle, not enemies. This is all being done in the name of democracy and modernising Parliament. However, the Government are not modernising Parliament but marginalising it. Parliament needs not modernisation but strengthening. As this Session draws to a close, we see a Government losing control of their legislative programme. We see a Government who never had control of the constitutional programme. They are in disarray as they choose a candidate for mayor and ignore the English dimension of devolution. They are in disarray on the second Chamber and proportional representation, on which they are walking away from their manifesto commitment to hold a referendum—all this from a party that has the nerve to lecture the country about joined-up government. Tonight, we should say goodbye not to the hereditary peers but to this Government's irresponsible approach to the British constitution.

Tony Benn (Labour, Chesterfield)

This is the second time the Weatherill amendment has been before the House. The hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs. Laing) moved it earlier in the Session and I received a three-line Whip to vote against it. Today, I have a three-line Whip to vote in favour of it. That puts loyal party members in some difficulty, although I think that André Maurois, in his famous book "Ariel"—about his time as a French liaison officer with the British Army in the first world war—said that orders contrary in sense from officers equal in rank cancel themselves out. The amendment is a total breach of the manifesto on which we were elected. I have to say that, because there was no provision whatever not only to allow hereditary peers to remain but to let them elect each other in perpetuity. I think that parties should take their manifestos seriously, particularly as we had an overwhelming majority. By now, we could have had what I would like to have seen: a wholly elected second Chamber. I agree with what was said by Opposition Members about personal abuse. I see no reason to abuse any person who has inherited a peerage. It would be difficult for me to take a contrary view. Indeed, I accept that many of the people who are hereditary peers have worked long and hard in the second Chamber. My objection to them is not their inheritance but their power. That is the question to which the Labour party has often given its attention. As a matter of fact, I could justify my view on the ground of revenge, because on 18 February 1955, I was sitting in the Moses Room when five peers forced me out of the House of Commons, to which I had been elected, on the ground that I had a duty to go to a Chamber to which I had not been elected. However, I put that all aside. The objectionable thing about hereditary and life peers is that neither have been elected. That is the problem: not how they get there. The national lottery could produce a second Chamber with the same difficulties. It is amazing that a House whose entire authority rests upon election—none of us is here by any reason other than the fact that people put us here—should be unable to manage to advance a credible argument for the election of the other Chamber. What makes this place different—and here I should like to argue the democratic case if it is not too controversial, although I sometimes think that it is—is that we are elected and removed by the people we represent. Because of that, we have to listen to them. I spoke about that during the Adjournment debate on this subject in the small hours of this morning. Our relationship with the electorate is the most important relationship of all. People seek out their representative; they say to me, "I have written to you, Mr. Benn, because you are my MP." There is none of that in the House of Lords, whether we are talking about life or hereditary peers. Not having to listen to people means that they can do what they like. The prejudices of hereditary or life peers may be good or bad, but they are prejudices, and have no legitimacy or accountability. It is an insult that that should be put forward in a democratic society, even as part of a secret deal. I do not know when the negotiations with Lord Cranborne began. I read somewhere that it was before the election. Whether that is true—whether the Labour party was telling the public that it was going to get rid of the hereditary peers while Lord Cranborne was having private discussions with the then Leader of the Opposition—I do not know. Anyway, Lord Cranborne has been rewarded with a life peerage—the Cecils always end up on top. The reality is that we were deliberately bypassed and, without being offensive—because it is not my purpose to argue in that way—I have to say that patronage is corrupting. I am not saying that corrupt deals take place, but to have the power of patronage corrupts the giver and to receive patronage corrupts the person who receives it. Surely a democratic Chamber should be able to argue that case without embarrassment, even in the presence of distinguished people who may be observing us from afar. It took 700 years to make the House of Commons democratic. I have in previous debates cited some of the arguments that were used against extending the vote. When, before the first world war, suffragettes demanded that women should have the vote, Mr. Asquith, the great Liberal leader, said that if women got the vote it would destroy parliamentary democracy. I have looked it up in Hansard. When the Great Reform Bill went through, the Duke of Wellington argued that extending the franchise would destroy parliamentary democracy. These phrases have been used in every period of parliamentary history. When, in 1972, I proposed having a referendum on the European question, Jeremy Thorpe said that it would destroy parliamentary democracy. We, who rightly acquire and lose our power and authority because we are elected, should be in no doubt about the basis of parliamentary election. I shall vote against the amendment. When the Epping amendment was moved earlier, I told the House that I would vote against it then and I shall vote against it now. I know that it will not have any impact on the outcome. However, I do not believe that there will be a second stage in my lifetime, although 1 aim to live to 100. Why should a new House of Lords, recipient of a fresh statute, get rid of itself to please Lord Wakeham, the Prime Minister or anybody else? The House of Lords will not do that. I have seen Lord Wakeham's proposals, which were leaked to The Daily Telegraph. He thinks that some of the Lords should be elected. I was staggered at his radicalism and boldness. There is no desire in the British establishment for an elected second Chamber. The British establishment has never liked democracy in this House, and it has no intention of seeing the virus spread to a second House. Until we make that clear, we shall be muddling along with small compromises that contribute nothing to the advancement of the people's right to determine how they are governed.

Robert Jackson (Conservative, Wantage)

In her opening remarks, the Leader of the House referred to a long journey, beginning at the start of the century. I suggest that the journey began much longer ago. One of the clichéd adjectives applied to the Bill as we reach its final stages in this debate is "historic". I should like to take up a little portion of time in the debate, as the substance of the hereditary legislative rights of the peerage passes into history, to say a few words about that history and its significance, as I see it, for this House, today and in the future. It is a pity that much of the debate, especially speeches by Labour Members, has failed to recognise that we are touching on a fundamental matter. In his book "Germania", Tacitus describes the political institutions of our Teutonic ancestors as they were in his time, 1,900 years ago; they were already old then. He wrote: They choose their kings on account of their nobility, their leaders on account of their valour. On smaller matters the chiefs debate, on greater matters all men, but so that those things whose final decision rests with the whole people are first handled by the chiefs". In that account, we see the germ of the British constitution as it has survived to this day. There is a monarchy, essentially a sacred institution associated with the bloodline of a single family; thus the Queen can trace her ancestry back to Cerdic and the beginning of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in England. There is a popular assembly, no doubt informally representative even in its earliest form as described by Tacitus; that is the germ of the House of Commons. Finally, there are the chiefs: the great men, leaders in war and counsellors in peace, whose shades we disturb today as we debate this measure of House of Lords reform. To see this set out in pristine clarity, we can do no worse than to turn to the formula that prefaces the Bill, as it does all other Acts. It clearly states the constitutional basis on which we make law and sets out the historic balance between the different elements in the process of lawmaking. It stands at the beginning of every one of our laws, which might explain why it is so little noticed. I shall read it out, so that the House can note the order and proportion of the words: Be it enacted by the Queen's most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons"— a bit of an afterthought, reflecting the late place of this House in our national history— in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows". It is interesting to consider how and when the composition of the councils of the chiefs became hereditary. There must have been an hereditary element, even in the earliest German assemblies: the principle of sacred blood rights did not attach only to the kingship. The reception of Christianity in the sixth century brought into the king's council the presence of bishops and abbots, who were not there by hereditary right. Nevertheless, when the representatives of the commons, the burgesses and the knights of the shire, came along in the 13th century—quite late in the day—the lay element of the king's great council had long enjoyed the right of hereditary succession. As the concept of the royal council faded into that of Parliament, that became one of the principal points of difference between what became known in the 16th century as the House of Lords and the House of Commons. So far, my account may have struck some hon. Members as being of merely antiquarian interest, but if those now frowning bear with me, I shall attempt to demonstrate its relevance to our current position, because it relates to the discussion about legitimacy which marked the speech by the Leader of the House. The reason why—

Michael Martin (Deputy Speaker, Glasgow Springburn)

Order. Almost everyone has to lead into an argument, but the hon. Gentleman must lead into the amendment being debated, or I shall have to stop him. He should start talking about the amendment.

Robert Jackson (Conservative, Wantage)

That is precisely what I want to do, because this is the first opportunity we have had to discuss the issue. The reason for the presence of the leading men in the royal councils was that property is power: even when the feudal monarchy was at its most powerful, property held from the Crown tended to be hereditary. That association between property and power draws our attention to the fundamental principle that underlay the historic House of Lords: that it is to the advantage of the realm that the most powerful men of the possessing classes should be involved in government and its responsibilities. Throughout English history, there have been episodes of aristocratic anarchy. There was factionalism among the great men—

Michael Martin (Deputy Speaker, Glasgow Springburn)

Order. I am reluctant to interrupt the hon. Gentleman again, but he must speak to the amendment. The history of these matters is extremely interesting, but it is best reserved for another debate, not this one.

Robert Jackson (Conservative, Wantage)

I am pursuing the subject of our debate. Legitimacy is relevant to the hereditary principle; it is at the heart of the issues that underlie the amendment. I want to continue to present my argument.

Michael Martin (Deputy Speaker, Glasgow Springburn)

Order. I tell the hon. Gentleman that we cannot go into the issues that underlie the amendment; we must discuss the amendment. If the hon. Gentleman cannot do that, I am sorry to tell him that he will have to resume his seat.

Robert Jackson (Conservative, Wantage)

I am considering the hereditary principle, which is the subject of the amendment.

Angela Smith (Labour/Co-operative, Basildon)

I share the confusion in the House about the hon. Gentleman's comments. Is he defending the hereditary principle and claiming that it should persist today and save the House of Lords?

Robert Jackson (Conservative, Wantage)

I want to persist in my speech so that I can answer that question. We have had a system that served the country well for a long time. One of the reasons for the contrast between English and continental history is that our solution to the problem of accommodating social and economic power with political power has been more successful than that in our neighbouring countries. Today, we are putting aside the remains of that great system. The amendment would preserve little more than a relic of it. It is interesting to consider when our historic solution began to fall apart. Its failure is recent. Even today, if we were to examine the list of the 500 largest property owners in Britain, we would find that it included a striking number of peers, most of them descended from families that have held a similar position for more than a century. Until the 1960s at least, conscious efforts were made to introduce to the peerage most of the significant new power holders in business and industry. As we approach 2000, however, we must acknowledge that we are in a different world. Our world today is not different in the way that most Labour Members and some on the Opposition Benches consider it different. The difference is not that democracy and the elective principle have triumphed, but that the rise of an industrial economy and the relative decline of agriculture, and the growing separation of control from ownership in business, have meant that property ownership has become increasingly anonymous and, at the same time, more international. The hereditary House of Lords is fading because national coherence, the national public realm and national capital are also fading. During the debates on the Bill in this House, hon. Members have tended to condescend to the poor old hereditaries. We feel secure and justified because we have been elected. The right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) made it clear that that was the basis of his argument. However, we make a grave mistake if we conclude that we can dismiss the principle on which the historic House of Lords was based. That principle is infinitely older than that of one man, one vote—as I have tried, perhaps in vain, to demonstrate. OMOV, as the Labour party calls it, is a 20th century phenomenon. It is associated as much with the tragedies of 20th century totalitarianism as with the triumphs of 20th century democracies. One of the enduring facts of life will continue to be that property is power. The difference today is that, as we move into the 21st century, Britain will no longer have a constitutional mechanism for binding the ownership of property to the exercise of public responsibility.

Angela Smith (Labour/Co-operative, Basildon)

We should accept that the proposals in the Weatherill amendment are transitional. I do not accept that we have reached the end of the argument. We are at stage 1 and we shall move on to stage 2. I was grateful for the assurances of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House that we shall move to stage 2 as quickly as possible. My hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Mr. Mackinlay), who is my neighbour, said that he was cautious about the amendment. However, it is up to hon. Members to ensure that the Leader of the House keeps her promise—I have no doubt that she will do so.

Robert Smith (Liberal Democrat, West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine)

Will the hon. Lady hazard a guess as to when she thinks that we will reach stage 2?

Angela Smith (Labour/Co-operative, Basildon)

I do not presume to be able to answer that question; it is a matter for the Leader of the House. However, if delay is unacceptable, I am sure that hon. Members will communicate that fact to my right hon. Friend. The Liberal Democrats are ill equipped to comment about that issue as they gave us the current configuration of the House of Lords in 1911 and have not done anything further since then. I have more faith in my Government than in the Liberal Democrats. Why should we accept the Weatherill amendment and allow peers to remain in the transitional House? Unlike the hon. Member for Wantage (Mr. Jackson), many of my hon. Friends and I stand by the principle that there should be no hereditary peers in the second Chamber. The arguments have been well rehearsed here and in another place. The issues were debated with more decorum here than in the other place, so I was surprised to hear the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir G. Young) say that debates in the House of Lords were conducted with great decorum. Fortunately, hon. Members' children have been far better behaved than the offspring of one of their lordships who, to the amazement of many, jumped up and down on the Woolsack. While claiming to defend tradition, he clearly showed no respect for it; while decrying the will of the elected House to be "treason", he showed no respect for democracy. In any other walk of life, such bizarre behaviour would disqualify a person from involvement in a given activity. Yet the Earl of Burford behaved in that manner in an attempt to defend his right to legislate on the basis of his birthright. It was a bit like the tantrum of a naughty child—and we all know that naughty children who throw tantrums do not get what they want.[Interruption.] Conservative Members groan; I hope that they are not defending the Earl of Burford' s actions. The Conservative party's 1997 campaign guide was extremely illuminating on this point. I wonder whether the Conservatives were thinking of the Earl of Burford when they wrote: An asset to democracy, hereditary peers bring colour, tradition, youth and a wealth of experience to Parliament. They are linked to the customs and traditions that formed and shaped this country". We could do without customs and colour such as that. The amendment is an interesting distraction, but let us consider the legitimacy of the second Chamber as a transitional House rather than the antics of one rather bizarre peer.

Richard Allan (Liberal Democrat, Sheffield, Hallam)

I agree with the hon. Lady that this amendment is about colour and tradition rather than who holds the power. Does she share my concerns that, in the foreseeable future, people will continue to serve in the upper House who have never faced an election and who cannot be removed by the great British public? That is the key difference between the two Chambers.

Angela Smith (Labour/Co-operative, Basildon)

I shall come to that point in a moment. Given the comments of Opposition Members, I do not think that today's debate is about the quality of hereditary peers. I have not heard any criticism from Labour Members of those peers who have performed their duty to this country. On the contrary, credit has been paid to those men and women of great ability. It has been said that peers are fulfilling voluntary duties and will no longer be able to perform that service. As a former officer of the all-party group for charities and the voluntary sector, I can suggest numerous voluntary organisations that would be pleased to welcome their services. This debate is about the legitimacy of the second Chamber, and hereditary peers give it no legitimacy. The peers would have had much greater legitimacy if they had been elected or appointed to the second Chamber on their own merits rather than appointed on the merits or otherwise of their forebears. The amendment provides a temporary reprieve. In order to pass important legislation, we have reached a temporary—I stress that word—compromise. To be honest, I do not particularly like that compromise. In terms of the contents and principle of the Bill, I think it is unnecessary. Most agree that the principle of hereditary lawmakers is outdated and inefficient. However, our commitment to reforming the House of Lords must be viewed alongside our commitment to change and the other promises that we made to the electorate. It is not our only policy.

Eleanor Laing (Conservative, Epping Forest)

I understand from her comments that the hon. Lady intends to support the amendment. However, on 15 February this year, she voted against an almost identical amendment that I proposed. How can she reconcile voting against the measure in February and for it this evening?

Angela Smith (Labour/Co-operative, Basildon)

I urge the hon. Lady to be patient, because I am coming to that point. A compromise has been reached, but I would much prefer it if the amendment were not before the House. Reform of the House of Lords is not the only policy that the Government have. We made a commitment to the electorate to get our policies through, and we have obligations to fulfil. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) said, we have to take our manifesto seriously. We cannot fail to keep our obligations to the electorate because we are pursuing only the issue of the second Chamber, which is based on those put into position by the actions of their ancestors.

Gerald Howarth (Conservative, Aldershot)

How many of the hon. Lady's constituents came up to her at the last election and said that, over and above new schools and new hospitals, the one thing that they wanted her to do was to abolish the check on the House of Commons?

Angela Smith (Labour/Co-operative, Basildon)

The hon. Gentleman, who I know is in favour of hereditary peerages, makes my point for me. People did not want this issue to be put above the issues of health and education. That is why we have had to accept a compromise to get the Bill through without jeopardising our policies on issues such as health and education. The nature of compromise means that not everyone is completely satisfied, and I stress that I am not completely satisfied. If everyone were satisfied, it would not be a compromise. The proposal is imperfect, but it is not the end; it is stage 1. Whenever we debate in the Chamber, we should always have a sense of history. This issue is not just about those who were in this place before us, but about those who will come after us and how we will be viewed in the future. This debate, and the issue that we are debating, will be viewed with some incredulity by those who come after us. They will be incredulous not that the debate is taking place, but that we are holding it now and that it has taken so long to get here.

Robert Maclennan (Liberal Democrat, Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross)

When the Government introduced their original Bill, they set out quite clearly their view of its purpose, which was effectively to remove hereditary peers. As a result of the amendment passed in another place, sadly, the Government's purpose has been defeated and we are left with a very diminished Bill. It will certainly greatly change the upper House, but it is far removed from what I think that the Government had in mind and certainly from what Liberal Democrat Members had in mind when we argued that we would introduce and support proposals to end hereditary peerages and the powers of those who had come to the upper House solely by descent. In the debate that we held courtesy of the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs. Laing), who tabled an amendment when the House was considering the Bill, it was made clear that the Government's preference was to have the Bill in its original form. The Leader of the House even tonight has suggested that she would have preferred the Bill in its original form. I do not doubt that she is sincere in expressing that view, because it certainly conforms with her political history. Even if stage 1 of the reform of the House of Lords had gone through as the Government intended, it would not have legitimised the upper House and it would not have made it a House that is appropriate for a modern democracy. Therefore, one has to ask why on earth we approached the reform in that way. The experience of the right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) may be called in evidence. He spoke of the attitude of the Liberal party in 1911 and earlier to votes for women and other issues. It is true that the Liberal party gutted the power of the House of Lords by reducing its role to the mere power to delay, but it did not substantially alter its membership. However, the right hon. Gentleman did not refer to the failure of the succeeding Labour Government and later Labour Governments, including the Government of which the right hon. Gentleman was a member, to effect the democratisation of the upper House. We are entitled to try to learn from that experience. 5 pm I do not doubt that the right hon. Member for Chesterfield, as a member of the Labour Government in which the issue was led by the late Dick Crossman, was firmly of the view that a democratised upper House was appropriate. What has to be said is that it was never regarded as so important that it should be given the full weight of commitment that would have been required to use powers under the Parliament Act to disrupt all other Government business, and to give it the priority over other business that would have been necessary to achieve that democratisation. We have to face that history in deciding how to bring about the democratisation of the upper House.

Tony Benn (Labour, Chesterfield)

Although the Parliament Act allows us to override obstruction of legislation by the Lords, that House has an absolute veto on statutory instruments. I do not know whether the House realises that, if the Lords vote down an instrument requiring an affirmative vote, there is nothing that the Commons can do about that. I pay tribute to the work of the Liberal Government, because my father was a Liberal Whip at the time of the Parliament Act, so I know of the struggles that took place, but we have not ever tackled the issue since.

Robert Maclennan (Liberal Democrat, Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross)

I want to avoid the trap of giving a lesson in constitutional history or seeking to be totally comprehensive in my elucidation of these issues, thereby sustaining my reputation for a somewhat academic approach. I am anxious to cut the cant.

John Gummer (Conservative, Suffolk Coastal)

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Robert Maclennan (Liberal Democrat, Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross)

I think that the right hon. Gentleman should allow me to make a little progress.

John Gummer (Conservative, Suffolk Coastal)

rose—

Michael Martin (Deputy Speaker, Glasgow Springburn)

Order. The right hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Mr. Maclennan) is not giving way.

Robert Maclennan (Liberal Democrat, Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross)

This is simply the preamble to my speech, and it seems inappropriate to add to it by allowing the right hon. Gentleman to intervene. We have set ourselves the task of democratising the upper House. I say "we" advisedly because, before the election, the Labour party and the Liberal Democrats reached agreement on this matter. I have to ask myself whether the Bill accelerates that democratisation process at all. It takes a modest step in that direction by removing a substantial number of hereditary peers, but it does no more than that. I find the Weatherill amendment, as it is called, insupportable.

Andrew Tyrie (Conservative, Chichester)

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Robert Maclennan (Liberal Democrat, Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross)

No, not at the moment. I am trying to develop an argument. I do not intend to support the Weatherill amendment. In another place, my noble Friends did not support it and gave their reasons. I am not constrained by the Government's whipping arrangements and therefore feel no obligation to go into the Lobby in support of an amendment that, frankly, will produce a fairly nonsensical arrangement. However, the objective of reform will be advanced to the extent that the new House may be able to participate more constructively in the discussion of the composition and powers of its successor than could a House so hopelessly dominated by hereditary peers as is the present House of Lords.

Dominic Grieve (Conservative, Beaconsfield)

Will the right hon. Gentleman enlighten us as to how the current upper House has in any way suggested in its debates or by its actions that it would be unable to co-operate with the Government in coming up with a full range of complete proposals without having to go through this halfway stage?

Robert Maclennan (Liberal Democrat, Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross)

I have read reports of the debates in another place. They were not enormously constructive as to the future role or structure of the upper House. I had the sense that the noble Lords were defending their own; they were not considering the matter from the point of view of the electors and the public; they did not consider such matters as the efficacy of the control of the Executive, or the greater legitimacy of the upper House. Legitimacy is a word that does not come easily to the lips of those who are Members of a House by virtue either of patronage or of inheritance. Consequently, the idea that is central to the issue has been almost entirely neglected in the other place. That cannot be so for much longer. I hope that, increasingly, we shall find common ground. I am very much in agreement with the remarks made by the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir G. Young), when he opened the debate for the Conservatives. We should be trying to create a legitimate upper House that is capable of holding the Executive to account. That must be the role of a proper, reformed upper House.

Nicholas Winterton (Conservative, Macclesfield)

What does the Commons do?

Robert Maclennan (Liberal Democrat, Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross)

The House of Commons, by virtue of the fact that it is considerably dominated by patronage and by the substantial presence of the Government, is much less capable of holding the Executive to account than an independently elected House of Lords—or senate as we would prefer to call it—would be. For that reason, I hope that we shall enjoy the support of several Opposition Members for the proposals that we have put to the royal commission on that subject. I understand the Government's dilemma—in negotiations with the Cecils, it is not entirely unsurprising that they were outsmarted. However, I hope that the result will not be a second House with the structure that would be brought about if the measure were accepted. That would be indefensible in principle, and would do nothing to enhance the authority of the House of Lords with the public. It fails the first task set by the Government—of ending membership of the House of Lords by virtue of holding a hereditary peerage. For those reasons, I cannot commend the amendment to the House and I advise hon. Members to abstain.

Bill Rammell (Labour, Harlow)

It is pleasing to follow that clarion call for principle—in support of abstention. I am happy and more than pleased to support the Cross-Bench amendment. In the 1997 general election, my party made a clear manifesto commitment—to seek a two-stage reform for the abolition of the hereditary peers from the House of Lords. That is what the measure will achieve, because 90 per cent. of the hereditary peers will go straight away, and even the other 10 per cent.—those who have been elected to remain in the second Chamber—will also go in the sense that they will no longer be hereditary peers. Their status will change; in effect, they will become life peers and there will be no right to succession. That is sensible government and politics—the achievement of our ends through a pragmatic compromise. We support that pragmatic compromise because, without it, the whole of the Government's legislative programme would have been delayed or blocked. The abolition of the hereditary peers is an extremely important measure, but it is not important enough to allow all our key programmes—on health, education, public transport and other matters—to be blocked. I could not, in all conscience, have told my constituents that, because we were not prepared to make a sensible compromise, we had lost legislation on significant matters that were included in our general election manifesto.

Michael Fallon (Conservative, Sevenoaks)

That is the second time that the allegation has been made that, somehow, the upper House was, or has, or is, intending to block legislative programmes on health and education. What is the evidence for that allegation?

Bill Rammell (Labour, Harlow)

The evidence is very clear. When the crisis in the Conservative leadership in the House of Lords first developed, unattributed briefings in numerous newspaper articles made it clear that that leadership would attempt to use reform of the second Chamber to harry, delay and block legislation. The Government would not have been right to accept that.

John Gummer (Conservative, Suffolk Coastal)

How did the hon. Gentleman fail to notice that those in the other House rejected the proposed reduction in benefits for disabled people, which many Labour Members supported? Is he really suggesting that a House that has taken what to many of his hon. Friends seemed a progressive view was likely to hold up legislation on health and education? Surely that is nothing to do with the facts. Is he believing what he reads in the newspapers rather too much?

Bill Rammell (Labour, Harlow)

The former leader of the Conservatives in the House of Lords said that he was prepared to act like a hooligan to block the Government's sensible reforms. Anybody who has considered the issues, listened over the years to the Conservative party and observed the way in which it has defended its vested interest in the House of Lords, would draw the conclusion that it would have used its clear majority in the other place to block sensible Government reforms.

Stephen Ladyman (Labour, South Thanet)

Perhaps we can nail this nonsense that there would not have been a concerted effort to block legislation in the Lords. Has my hon. Friend forgotten that the leader of the Conservatives in the Lords was sacked for entering into negotiations to achieve a consensus, and precisely because he would not follow a campaign of outright opposition, as the Conservative Front-Bench team in the Commons wanted?

Bill Rammell (Labour, Harlow)

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I had forgotten that point, which shows just how long we have been debating the issues.

Patrick Cormack (Conservative, South Staffordshire)

The hon. Gentleman is mixing his facts. First, he has confused Lord Onslow with Lord Strathclyde. Secondly, I should put on record, as did Lord Cranborne both before and after leading the Conservatives in the House of Lords, that he abided by the Salisbury convention.

Bill Rammell (Labour, Harlow)

I have certainly seen quotations from Hansard in the other place that have clearly shown that Conservative peers were not prepared to abide by the Salisbury convention if it did not suit their purposes. I remember specifically one Conservative peer arguing that it was a constitutional outrage to suggest such changes.

Michael Martin (Deputy Speaker, Glasgow Springburn)

Order. We cannot have shouting across the Floor of the House.

Michael Fallon (Conservative, Sevenoaks)

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Is it in order for the hon. Member for Harlow (Mr. Rammell) to say that he remembers quotations, but not to provide them?

Michael Martin (Deputy Speaker, Glasgow Springburn)

That is a matter for debate; it has nothing to do with the Chair.

Christopher Fraser (Conservative, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. When an hon. Member cites a quotation, do not Hansard Reporters ask for the exact version and, if it cannot be provided, it does not go on the record?

Michael Martin (Deputy Speaker, Glasgow Springburn)

I did not hear the hon. Member for Harlow (Mr. Rammell) quote anybody.

Bill Rammell (Labour, Harlow)

I say explicitly that, following the debate, I shall be more than happy to provide the direct quotation and the exact time when the Conservative peer made the outrageous accusation. The number of interventions and the hostility that I am receiving from Conservative Members reminds me of the saying of the colonel in "Dad's Army": They don't like it up 'em. We are fundamentally challenging the position and interests of the Conservative party.

Peter Bradley (Labour, The Wrekin)

He was not a colonel; he was a lance corporal. Rank is everything in this place.

Bill Rammell (Labour, Harlow)

I promoted him by mistake. My right hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) spoke in support of 100 per cent. direct elections to the second Chamber. I imagine that most Labour and Liberal Democrat Members would instinctively support such a proposal. However, the more that we consider the issue and imagine the results, the more difficult it becomes to envisage such a second Chamber not challenging the supremacy of the House of Commons—not in acting as a legitimate check on the Executive or reasonably and legitimately asking the Commons to revise its proposed legislation, but simply because Members of the second Chamber, who would have a different electoral mandate, fundamentally disagreed with the Government of the day. I say honestly that I have not worked all my political life for the election of a Labour Government—other Members are in exactly the same position—to see their programme stymied and blocked by a second Chamber that thinks that, simply on the grounds of politics, it is legitimate to oppose my party's election manifesto commitments.

Richard Allan (Liberal Democrat, Sheffield, Hallam)

I shall not follow the hon. Gentleman in a debate that is properly for the reformed second Chamber. I simply point out that two elected Chambers seems to be the global norm in a bicameral system. Everybody else gets by with two elected Chambers, including the United States.

Bill Rammell (Labour, Harlow)

The Chambers in the United States have very different functions from those proposed and debated here. The concern that I am expressing about a 100 per cent. elected Chamber is not some novel, new Labour concern. The Brice convention in 1917-18, under Lloyd George, rejected the option of a directly elected second Chamber on the ground that it would inevitably become a rival to the House of Commons. The same concerns were voiced in 1948—

Michael Martin (Deputy Speaker, Glasgow Springburn)

Order. The hon. Member must be careful. We are debating amendments that are far more narrow than his comments. We should try to concentrate on the Weatherill amendment.

Bill Rammell (Labour, Harlow)

I take your guidance, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I was merely responding to some of the points raised by Conservative Members. The right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer), for whom I have great respect—he knows that I agree with him on matters European—asked why I am in favour of a two-stage process. It is because history teaches us not to trust members of the Conservative party on this issue. Throughout the past 89 years, Conservatives have said, "Of course we are in favour of the notion of a reformed second Chamber, but we need to see what will follow it." The lack of consensus on a second stage has then been used as a means to block reform and the abolition of the hereditary peerage.

John Gummer (Conservative, Suffolk Coastal)

If the hon. Gentleman had a leg that gave him pain, would he think it sensible if someone suggested that it should be chopped off before it was decided what should be put in its place? No, he would want to know first what was on offer instead of his defective leg. The hon. Gentleman is offering the House a curious concept: we will get rid of what we have got—

Michael Martin (Deputy Speaker, Glasgow Springburn)

Order. The right hon. Gentleman is making a speech, not an intervention.

Nicholas Winterton (Conservative, Macclesfield)

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Leader of the House, the hon. Member for Hove (Mr. Caplin), has passed between you and the hon. Member for Harlow (Mr. Rammell) and between the hon. Gentleman and a Conservative Member who was intervening. Is that in order?

Michael Martin (Deputy Speaker, Glasgow Springburn)

I shall deal with the things that I see and hear. At the moment, I am trying to deal with the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer), whose intervention is too long. The best thing would be for the right hon. Gentleman to resume his seat.

Bill Rammell (Labour, Harlow)

Let me answer the point of the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal, by saying that, by agreeing now on the first stage of reform, we shall concentrate minds on achieving the second stage. The past 89 years of history show that, if we abolish hereditary peers now, we are far more likely to get second stage reform than would otherwise be the case. I hear protestations from Conservative Members—

Eleanor Laing (Conservative, Epping Forest)

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Bill Rammell (Labour, Harlow)

I shall finish the point; then I will give way. I hear protestations from Conservative Members that their integrity is being impugned and that of course they are in favour of reform. I would not ask you to believe me or believe the Government, Mr. Deputy Speaker; I shall quote to you Lord Chalfont in a debate in the House of Lords, who said: One of the things about which I am sorry is that the Conservative government, when they were in power, did not take some steps towards reforming this House."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 26 October 1999; Vol. 606, c. 225.] The fact that the Conservative party never took those steps, and certainly never did so in 18 years in government, undermines the Conservatives' claims that they are in favour of reform.

Andrew Tyrie (Conservative, Chichester)

Lord Chalfont is an ex-Labour Minister who now sits on the Cross Benches. As for the hon. Gentleman's wider points, for the better part of 100 years, the Conservative party has been proposing forms of direct or indirect election to the second Chamber. For much of that period, the Labour party has been proposing complete abolition of the second Chamber, and has done so in three manifestos since 1911

Angela Smith (Labour/Co-operative, Basildon)

Do not quote manifestos.

Michael Martin (Deputy Speaker, Glasgow Springburn)

Order. Once again, I urge the House to get back to the amendments. We must deal with the amendments before us.

Bill Rammell (Labour, Harlow)

I shall follow your guidance, Mr. Deputy Speaker. An accusation has been made that the Labour party and this Labour Government are unfairly using their position to create a significantly increased number of life peers. That fails to take account of what has happened over the years, with the huge Conservative majority in the second Chamber. Are Conservative Members arguing that we should continue to accept that we shall permanently be in a minority position vis-a-vis the Conservative party in the House of Lords? When we are judging which party is being dogmatic and trying to use the situation in a partisan way, we might make an instructive comparison. We have a Labour Government and a Labour Prime Minister who, for the first time, are giving up the rights of patronage, and are seeking a second Chamber in which no party has an overall majority. Contrast that with the Conservative party in 1979, with Lady Thatcher as Prime Minister. Despite the fact that there was already a significant majority of Conservative peers over Labour peers, she sought to increase the disparity between the Conservative party and the Labour party. That shows which party and which Government are being straight and fair on these issues.

Margaret Beckett (Labour, Derby South)

As the last intervention suggested that the Conservative party's bona fides were demonstrated by having been said to be in favour of some form of different system—perhaps election to the House of Lords—for such a long time, I remind my hon. Friend that, on paper, since 1948, the Conservative party has been in favour of no party having a majority in the House of Lords, but it has added to that majority ever since.

Bill Rammell (Labour, Harlow)

Absolutely. In responding to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House, I am very conscious that the word hypocrisy is not allowed to be bandied around in the Chamber, so I choose my words carefully. She makes her point very forcefully. The nub of the amendments—

Eleanor Laing (Conservative, Epping Forest)

rose—

Christopher Fraser (Conservative, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

rose—

Bill Rammell (Labour, Harlow)

I shall not give way again, because I know that other hon. Members wish to speak. The nub of the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Mr. Mackinlay), and of some of the concerns expressed by Conservative Members, is that this is not a two-stage process—that the Government will complete the first stage and then things will remain the same for ever and a day. I honestly do not believe that to be the case. The Government are arguing, on the record, that this is a temporary solution. We are today abolishing the right of hereditary peers to sit in the House of Lords. The Wakeham commission will report by the end of the year, and we have committed ourselves to setting up a Committee of the two Houses afterwards. Given the sequence of events that will flow from that set of propositions, I find it inconceivable that the Labour party will not have to give an explicit commitment, in its general election manifesto, to the second stage of reform. Therefore the Conservatives' accusations are without foundation. Finally, I would return—

Eleanor Laing (Conservative, Epping Forest)

I can understand the hon. Gentleman's passion against the hereditary principle from the arguments that he has made. I can also understand why, despite that, he may well support the Lords amendment this evening out of expediency; but why did he not vote against it when I proposed it on 16 February, when he was free to do so?

Bill Rammell (Labour, Harlow)

The hon. Lady well knows the answer. It is about tactics and practical politics and government. Had we agreed to that amendment at that stage, that would have reinforced those Conservative peers who wanted to block our proposals for reform. The Bill would have returned to this place and, because it was not in its original form, we could not have enforced the Parliament Acts. That seems to me to be perfectly sensible.

Eleanor Laing (Conservative, Epping Forest)

Absolutely. The hon. Gentleman is consistent. So why did he not vote against it in February? I have just checked, and he did not.

Bill Rammell (Labour, Harlow)

Because I want the issue to be resolved once and for all, after 89 years, and I believe that the Cross-Bench amendment is the most practical and effective way to achieve that. I finish by returning to the comments of the shadow Leader of the House. The right hon. Gentleman spoke about the common sense that the hereditary peers had shown down the years. In fact, their record has been based not on common sense but on a biased view of life and a degree of political partisanship that is clear for everyone to see, because, by and large, the hereditary peers come from one class, one interest group, with one set of values, and they predominantly support one political party. I am more than happy to pay tribute to the service of some hereditary peers, but please, please, please do not ask me to weep for the ending of a one-sided, partisan one-party racket that has been taking place in this country for far too long.

Andrew Tyrie (Conservative, Chichester)

Parts of that speech by the hon. Member for Harlow (Mr. Rammell), with its class-based attacks, sounded slightly nauseating. I want to place on the record right away my tribute to the service of the hereditary peers, who have done an outstanding job. I absolutely agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir G. Young), who began his remarks with a similar tribute. The old House did work, after a fashion. It was imperfect, but that is true of many British institutions that have grown up over the years, and we should not expect it to be perfect. Now that it has been fundamentally shaken up, I believe that, in the 21st century, there will be no logical stopping-off place short of a democratically elected second Chamber. The majority of Opposition Members probably believe that, and I suspect that a very large minority of Labour Members believe it, too. However, I am afraid that that does not enable me to support the Blair-Cranborne deal, which has been renamed the Weatherill amendment because Lord Weatherill is a Cross-Bencher and it sounds slightly more cheerful. I shall explain why I shall not support the deal, but first I want to say a few words in support of amendment (b), which stands in my name and those of a good number of my right hon. and hon. Friends. We have always been told that the Bill is an interim Bill, yet it has never contained even the briefest reference to stage 2 of reform. However, now there is one. Subsection (3) of the Lords amendment says that peers who satisfy the Weatherill conditions shall be excepted throughout their life until an Act of Parliament provides to the contrary". I wonder how that got into the legislation. I wonder what the Government have in mind. We were not enlightened at all by the Minister as to what that Act of Parliament might contain. I have two views on that wording—one optimistic, one pessimistic. Perhaps in a minute the Minister will tell me which one I should assume to be right. One view is that the Government have started to think seriously about plans for an elected, or largely elected, second Chamber; there are a few reasons for thinking that they might have gone down that road. As I said, there may be a majority in the House for such a proposal. I strongly suspect that there would be, on a free vote. Eighty per cent. of the population support that approach in all opinion polls. Even Lord Wakeham is feeling the need to nod in that direction. Moreover, that approach is logical. If the Executive wants to create an effective second Chamber, democracy is the only sensible route to take, for only an elected Chamber can hope to challenge the Executive in this place. However, I am a pessimist. I expect that my pessimism will be confirmed in a moment.

Margaret Beckett (Labour, Derby South)

I hope that the hon. Gentleman will realise that he is straying down an unnecessary diversionary route. I remind him that the proposal was not made by the Government. It was put forward in the House of Lords by a group of Cross-Bench peers, including Lord Weatherill. I understand that the words to which the hon. Gentleman referred were included to make it clear that this section of the amendment does not confer membership of the Lords in perpetuity to those who are covered by the provision. It gives them legitimacy in the transitional House, but only in the transitional House. One could argue that it is a belt-and-braces approach, referring to the fact that a later Act of Parliament could remove them. That, as I understand it, is the reason for the wording.

Andrew Tyrie (Conservative, Chichester)

I hope that the right hon. Lady understands her own legislation. The idea that it was drafted by a group of Cross-Benchers in a fit of absence of mind, while the Government hardly knew what was going on, and that the Government will now vote for this rather defective measure is absurd, as is the argument that the origins of the idea lay anywhere else but in meetings between Lord Cranborne and the Prime Minister. It is well documented that back-room deals were done time and again by Lord Cranborne and the then Leader of the House of Lords, Lord Richard, in order to secure the Executive's objectives. It is scandalous to suggest that this is not a piece of Government legislation. Of course it is. That is why there is a three-line Government Whip to get it through, and why I am pessimistic. The right hon. Lady has made me even more pessimistic about the purpose of the wording of subsection (3). My best guess is that, as she implied, it is a threat to the 92 survivors who have made it through the Blair-Cranborne deal into the lifeboat. The bracketed words tell them that they do not even have life peerages, and that they could be chucked overboard at any moment. So I come to the wider question of whether the Blair-Cranborne amendment strengthens or weakens the interim House. If the 92 peers could be chucked out at any moment, it would weaken the House. The hereditaries who remain have heard their death sentence read out and seen some colleagues' blood run, and the lucky few have been given a stay of execution. I do not believe that those peers will want to make trouble for the Executive or rock the boat. The Lords have been bought off by the short-term survival of 92 hereditaries who are virtually hostages for good behaviour. Those are the words of a hereditary peer in a letter in The Daily Telegraph today.

Patrick Nicholls (Conservative, Teignbridge)

My hon. Friend may be right, but there is another explanation as well, which is given by many of the 92 hereditaries. They believe that they can still make a contribution in what would otherwise be a House of cronies. It is unthinkable that peers whose families have been in the other place for up to 500 years are impressed by the prospect of another two year in a House of cronies, just because it gives them some power or prestige. Will my hon. Friend at least do them the credit of taking them at their own estimation and say that, although he may disagree with them, their motives are entirely honourable?

Andrew Tyrie (Conservative, Chichester)

I think that the motives of those peers are honourable, and I hope that they will act in that way, but I fear the worst. I fear that they will be all too easily cowed by the threat that they will be booted out if they misbehave. The same goes for the lifers, as they now have an interest in hanging on to the remaining hereditary peers. They know that once the hereditaries have gone, the next thing that will come their way is democracy, which is as much a threat to the life peers as the Bill is to the hereditaries. I fear that there will be much synthetic opposition from the interim House. There will be some genuine attempts to make it work, but I do not believe that it will amount to a genuine second Chamber playing an effective role—quite the opposite. Once the amendment is on the statute book, the Government and all peers will have a vested interest in minimal further change. Writing the amendment into the Bill will make change less, not more, likely. There are many other reasons for voting against the amendment. It is "riddled with anomalies", an "artificial fix, a sop", or "a gigantic Pooh trap". Those are the words of three hereditary peers speaking in debate in the House of Lords. They use colourful language in another place—the Official Report is well worth reading. As for the election rules and the rules of procedure, Lord Mancroft said: It is ludicrous, it is a farce, it's a complete joke". He rather spoiled it by going on to say that he would none the less stand for election as one of the 92 remaining hereditaries, "but only reluctantly." The Blair-Cranborne amendment has nothing to do with what is right for the constitution and everything to do with an understandable struggle for survival by some hereditaries, and a determination by the Executive to minimise any checks to its authority from another place. It is insulting to the electorate in the 21st century that part of our legislature will be chosen by electoral colleges of 92 hereditary peers. That proposition contains many absurdities, but I shall list just a few. The electoral colleges that are being created mean that a couple of Liberal or Labour hereditaries will be able to choose who should replace one of their number if he or she dies. Those places in the legislatures will be even more rotten boroughs than Old Sarum or the one whose name I forget, which disappeared into the sea—

John Gummer (Conservative, Suffolk Coastal)

As it is in my constituency, I can tell my hon. Friend that Dunwich has not yet disappeared into the sea, and those who live there are, I am happy to say, staunch voters for me.

Andrew Tyrie (Conservative, Chichester)

I hope that the rest of my right hon. Friend's constituency does not disappear into the sea for a long time. I am always grateful for his interventions. No provision has been made for the possibility that one of the remaining hereditaries may wish to move from one party group to another. Under the interim arrangements, it is impossible to change parties. I understand that there was not even a serious debate about the matter. So there is to be some semblance of a legislature—I am not sure whether the Government want a serious legislature—but no proper scrutiny of the election system. We would find that unacceptable in almost any other country. The Clerk of the Parliaments will have the final say on whether the election was held properly and in any dispute about the rules. That is why I tabled an amendment to subsection (6). I understand that none of the procedure in an election or a by-election for one of those places in the interim Chamber is justiciable. The courts can have no say. If there is a dispute about an election to this place, we can go to the courts, which can scrutinise what has happened. That remedy will be unavailable for those places in the interim Chamber. We are witnessing a mockery of the second Chamber. The proposals are as unworkable as they are unjustifiable. It is demeaning to the electorate to be asked to put up with that. It is demeaning to all hon. Members that we are being asked to vote for it. It would be a supreme irony if we saw tonight one of the largest majorities in this Parliament, with three-line Whips operating on both sides, for a measure that probably commands less respect and support than any brought before the House in living memory.

David Winnick (Labour, Walsall North)

We know the hon. Gentleman's views about a democratically elected second Chamber, and we respect those views, even though I do not share his sentiments. Did he listen to his hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (Mr. Jackson), who made it clear that he believed the hereditary principle to be more important than the democratic principle, and derided democracy, saying that it was the result of the totalitarian age? That was hardly a speech in favour of democratic principles and parliamentary democracy, to which the Opposition are supposedly committed.

Andrew Tyrie (Conservative, Chichester)

I find the hon. Gentleman's intervention astonishing. That is not my view. I am giving my view and other hon. Members have theirs, but half the people eligible to do so signed an early-day motion in my name that supports an elected second Chamber. I had discussions with many of my party's Front Benchers and I can assure him that there is widespread support there too. I do not know when my party will come out in favour of an elected second Chamber, but I am reasonably confident that it will do so before the Labour party.

Robert Jackson (Conservative, Wantage)

I think that my hon. Friend was in the Chamber when I made my speech. Does he agree that that account of what I said is an absolute travesty? [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] My hon. Friends agree with me. I forgive the hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick) for that travesty because I am afraid I was unable to deliver my speech in the way that I should have liked to have done and it is quite clear that that has caused misunderstanding on the Labour Benches.

Andrew Tyrie (Conservative, Chichester)

My hon. Friend has fought his corner well and I should perhaps have made a similar remark on his behalf—

Michael Martin (Deputy Speaker, Glasgow Springburn)

Order. I hope that the hon. Gentleman is not criticising the Chair for keeping the hon. Member for Wantage (Mr. Jackson) in good order.

Andrew Tyrie (Conservative, Chichester)

We should have had single-stage reform; the two-stage process is quite ridiculous. It is a disgraceful, unjustifiable farce and if that is what the Government mean by—

Peter Bradley (Labour, The Wrekin)

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Andrew Tyrie (Conservative, Chichester)

No. If that is what the Government mean by modernisation of the constitution, we can do without it. It seems to me that the modern last-ditchers are sitting on the Treasury Bench, delaying further fundamental reform. Now we know what the Prime Minister really meant when he talked about the forces of conservatism, for his Government are keeping the second Chamber in the hands of the few rather than the many. In fact, they are placing it in the hands of the even fewer. The Prime Minister may talk about wanting to create a young country, but he acts as if he wants to hang on to—

Margaret Beckett (Labour, Derby South)

rose—

Andrew Tyrie (Conservative, Chichester)

No, I shall not give way. The Prime Minister acts as if he is hanging on to an old Chamber.

Margaret Beckett (Labour, Derby South)

rose—

Andrew Tyrie (Conservative, Chichester)

I have said that I shall not give way. I believe that the Government are rigging the constitution. The right hon. Lady had the effrontery to suggest that the Bill will resonate down the centuries. If it resonates at all, it will do so as a Bill that constituted a disgraceful fiddling and rigging of the British constitution. If the Government carry on in such a way, they will be seen as one of the greatest-ever mess-makers in respect of the British constitution. Deals such as that done on the amendment behind closed doors at No. 10 give politicians and British politics a bad name. I, for one, shall not support it.

Robert Marshall-Andrews (Labour, Medway)

I am pleased to support the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Mr. Mackinlay), which also stands in my name. It would remove the ability of the rump of hereditary peers to self-propagate in perpetuity by means of by-election. Such a process has its own inherent absurdity, but that is not a distinguishing feature when considered in the context of the Bill. The real vice of the proposal is that it undoubtedly appears to endow the existence of the rump of 90 hereditary peers with a measure of permanence. According to the Bill, by-elections will occur only on death. I have had a good look at the 90 self-anointed, or self-appointed, recipients of this electoral gain and they all seem pretty fit to me. Therefore, it must be clear that the Bill at least envisages a period of years—perhaps many years—the so-called transitional arrangement is repealed. That fuels the fear and trepidation felt on both sides of the House that the Bill will become not an instrument for reform, but an instrument for reaction. There is not the slightest doubt that it manifestly, dramatically and obviously increases the power of patronage by removing the countervailing powers of the hereditary peers. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) rightly pointed out, patronage is always the handmaiden of corruption. 5.45 pm The continued existence of 90 hereditary peers is a wholly inadequate safeguard against that corruption, but the problem appears to be that, as time passes, the existence of such a rump will be perceived to be an excuse for the maintenance of the status quo.

Christopher Fraser (Conservative, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

The hon. and learned Gentleman argues that patronage corrupts. To take that a step further, is he suggesting that promotion to the Front Bench in the Labour party should be achieved by election, not patronage?

Robert Marshall-Andrews (Labour, Medway)

Patronage always tends to corrupt. [Interruption.] Certainly not. Patronage, in certain circumstances, is a necessary vice. In other cases, it is not, but the tendency to corrupt is counter-balanced in the House by the fact that all Members, whatever Bench they sit on, have the mandate of their own electorate. That is the safeguard here, but it will not be introduced to the other Chamber. I appreciate that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has signed up to his own self-denying ordinance as to the number and type of peers that he proposes to create. By my calculations, that still leaves him with about 100 to go, so all is not lost in Camelot. He is a luminous and beautiful human being, and I have not the slightest doubt that he will live by that ordinance, but, like all Prime Ministers, he is ephemeral and will pass away in due course. The Bill contains no guarantee whatever that the transitional period will not, in the fullness of time, achieve permanence. In urging my right hon. Friend to consider adopting the amendment, may I sound a mild word of warning? Governments are rarely put to the sword; almost always, in the due course of time, they fall on their own. The self-inflicted wound, which is most likely to do for this otherwise outstanding Administration, is the public perception of over-rigorous political control. There is no greater exemplification of that than the arbitrary donation of rank and favour by the process of patronage. We are looking at the Achilles heel of the Government, which must be addressed. We have tabled our amendment so that the Government, by adopting it, can show that we are not embarking on a permanent process, but are on the way to real reform. As far as I am concerned—if I may trespass on your indulgence for a moment, Mr. Deputy Speaker—that reform means abolition of the House of Lords. As far as the House is concerned, we do not need a royal commission to tell us that an elected Chamber and a Chamber arrived at by the process of patronage do not both fulfil a democratic process. Let us have done with them, once and for all, and let us take to ourselves the task of providing the checks and the curbs on the Executive. Let us understand that the continued existence of a House of Lords is an alibi, and only an alibi, for our own inadequacies. I commend to my right hon. Friend at least the consideration of what I hope is a helpful amendment that will improve the Bill immeasurably.

John Gummer (Conservative, Suffolk Coastal)

May I return to the presentation made in support of one of the amendments by the right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn)? He recommended that the House look on democracy in its purest form, but I wonder whether we are rather overdoing it. One remembers that he was removed from his former constituency by the democratic vote. The electorate threw him out, so what did he do? He did not remain to fight the seat, in order to regain it—

David Winnick (Labour, Walsall North)

Nor did you.

John Gummer (Conservative, Suffolk Coastal)

I will return to that parallel. The right hon. Gentleman found another seat, to which he was more likely to be elected. That is a perfectly reasonable thing to do: indeed, I have done it myself. I shall not press the hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick), because I remember whence he came and where he went. Those who chose the right hon. Member for Chesterfield as the candidate comprised a small, self-elected group. They chose the Labour candidate in a constituency where the Labour candidate was bound to win. The difference between us is that in my constituency every member of the Conservative party has a vote, and a large number of people were kind enough to choose me. Perhaps those who speak so glibly of democracy ought to look a little more carefully at the various differentiations that appear to be made when people are elected either to the House of Commons or, through the new mechanism, to the House of Lords.

Margaret Beckett (Labour, Derby South)

I do not wish to disturb the flow of the right hon. Gentleman's eloquence, but may I issue a gentle reminder? If he thinks that those who selected my right hon. Friend—or, indeed, him—imagined that the selection was for a safe seat, I can only say that he has wholly forgotten the circumstances of the Chesterfield by-election.

John Gummer (Conservative, Suffolk Coastal)

I note that the right hon. Member for Chesterfield has sat there ever since, relatively safely. Moreover, he is leaving of his own volition, not by the choice of the electorate. I am not sure that what I am saying is so far from the truth. I think that, in discussions such as this, we are sometimes a little extreme in our adherence to theory. The House might do better to consider fact—and the fact is that it is normal for one who proposes a change to suggest what will follow that change. Indeed, that is not only normal but, I think, universal. The right hon. Lady has had some difficulty in defending her case against her own side, not because she is not elegant and eloquent, but because her case is not very good; and her case is not very good not just because of the amendment, but because the Bill is in two stages when it ought to be in one.

Michael Martin (Deputy Speaker, Glasgow Springburn)

Order. The House is discussing the amendments, not the Bill.

John Gummer (Conservative, Suffolk Coastal)

In that sense, the hon. and learned Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews) is entirely right. He has brought to our attention a fundamental problem that lies at the heart of the Bill, and, although I think that his amendment is wrong, I honour him for recognising that mistake that at the heart of the Bill. The amendment is wrong because the hon. and learned Gentleman is applying theory to what ought to be practice. Here we are in a society that has found it very difficult to discover what ought to constitute a second Chamber. We have had a perfectly good system up to now, which I defend. I am one of those who see no great need to change what works. It is an old-fashioned view, and no doubt the hon. Member for Basildon (Angela Smith) would counter it with theory; but I still maintain that our second House has worked extremely well. Indeed, by and large it has given a more difficult time to Conservative Governments than to Labour Governments. The Leader of the House may laugh, but that is a matter of fact. If she counts the number of amendments that have been made and notes the changes that have been made over many years, she will see that I am right. She must accept, as a matter of fact, that the House of Lords has been tougher with Conservative Governments than with Labour Governments.

Margaret Beckett (Labour, Derby South)

I can only say that, if the right hon. Gentleman thinks that that is a matter of fact, he has seen an entirely different set of statistics from the statistics available to me. In recent years, on average, the House of Lords has defeated a Conservative Government some 13 times a year; the last Labour Government were defeated some 68 times a year. I accept that the last Labour Government had a very small majority, and, sometimes, no majority. I believe that the current Labour Government, who have a massive majority, were defeated 38 times during the last Session, and that 33 of those defeats were due solely to the votes of Tory hereditary peers. The notion that the House of Lords is tougher on Conservative Governments is by no means borne out by the facts.

John Gummer (Conservative, Suffolk Coastal)

I do not think the right hon. Lady is right about that. The truth is clear, not just from the published statistics but from the comments of independent, non-Conservative historians. However, I am happy for the right hon. Lady to say what she thinks, because I doubtless shall not convince her.

Phyllis Starkey (Labour, Milton Keynes South West)

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

John Gummer (Conservative, Suffolk Coastal)

No. The hon. Lady has not been present for much of the debate. The House of Lords enables second thoughts to be had, and that is reasonable. What we are discussing now is whether it is reasonable for it to be done by those who are more than place men and women. I personally consider the hereditary system to be much more justifiable than a system of place men. I find it difficult to understand how it can be more democratic to be in the House of Lords because a politician has decided that one ought to be there than to be there because of who one's father was. If one politician is deciding on all those who are to go into the House of Lords, while a large number of fathers are producing sons, I am not sure that there is not a better argument for the hereditary peerage. What the House of Commons has been offered is not a reform. All that it has been offered is the chance of placating a number of Labour Back Benchers who are upset that the Government have not been able to implement a full-blooded socialist economic policy and give them something to be cheerful about. The abolition of the House of Lords is part of a series of policies led by a Government who know that they can placate those who do not like their economic policies with a series of measures that are class-based and class-ridden. The hon. Member for Harlow (Mr. Rammell), with whom I agree on a number of issues, gave the game away, as I am afraid he always does. At the end of his speech, it all came out: the same attitudes, and the same concepts. I do not think that the hon. Gentleman has ever listened to a debate in the House of Lords. The idea that its Members all have the same concepts and the same attitudes cannot possibly be maintained, not just in general but in particular.

Bill Rammell (Labour, Harlow)

My point was that, by and large, the hereditary peers come from the same background, and have supported one political party over the years—the right hon. Gentleman's party. That is what is fundamentally unfair and unsustainable about them.

John Gummer (Conservative, Suffolk Coastal)

rose—

Michael Martin (Deputy Speaker, Glasgow Springburn)

Order. I remind the House again that we are discussing the amendments.

John Gummer (Conservative, Suffolk Coastal)

The hon. Member for Harlow referred to the amendments in another part of his speech. I was commenting on the part in which he said that hereditary peers always had the same attitudes and the same views, which is manifestly not true. What we are now discussing is a proposal enabling us to retain some hereditary peers. I am in favour of that, because it means that the second House will not consist entirely of place men, which must be a good thing; but I do not like the way in which it has been arrived at. I think that the explanation advanced by the hon. Member for Harlow was pretty bad from all our points of view. He said that he did not like it, that it was not sensible, but that he and his colleagues thought that it would be a better way of shoving through a lot of Bills. He could not prove that those Bills would not have been passed otherwise; indeed, the opposite appears to have been true. The only peers whom he could mention in that connection seemed not to be the same to whom he had been referring. He gave no quotation. I do not know what Hansard will do: I am longing to see the bit of paper that will be sent to him, on which he will be able to specify whom he meant.

Bill Rammell (Labour, Harlow)

I am happy to inform the right hon. Gentleman. The specific quotation to which I was referring was from Baroness Young, who said: I believe … that it is a constitutional outrage to use a manifesto"— which was put forward during a general election— to make a major constitutional change."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 14 October 1998; Vol. 593, c. 943.] That statement underlines the degree of unreasonableness of some Conservative peers in the House of Lords.

John Gummer (Conservative, Suffolk Coastal)

That is an interesting argument. That quotation is meant to prove that the House of Lords would have stopped Bills on health and education. It has about as much connection to that as the climate change levy has to the reduction in the number of tonnes of carbon in the air: it is totally unconnected. The hon. Gentleman should be ashamed of himself, particularly as he said that the quotation referred to the leader of the Conservative party in the House of Lords, which it did not, and then that it referred to someone else, which it did not. He has now found it and it does not have any relevance at all. What Hansard will do about that I do not know. The Labour party is uncomfortable about the amendments because, although you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, have rightly not allowed us to talk about the generality of the Bill, they go to its heart. They draw attention to the fact that the Government propose abolition without an alternative. Any of the passing decisions that are made are unsatisfactory because they are but partial and do not address the real issue. Although I do not agree with the solution of the hon. Member for Thurrock (Mr. Mackinlay), he is right to draw the House's attention to the fact that the Leader of the House has not got it right. We think the same; our solutions are different. What she should do, although, of course, she will not, any more than she will accept his amendment, is say that, in the light of the amendments, she has had a conversion on the road to Damascus—that she has recognised that it is a constitutional outrage to propose the abolition of a second House without proposing its alternative.

Edward Leigh (Conservative, Gainsborough)

The reason why the Government will not do that is because they know that the people will always favour change until confronted with the alternative.

John Gummer (Conservative, Suffolk Coastal)

That is the last point that I want to come to. My hon. Friend has put his finger on the real issue. I listened with great care to the Leader of the House's explanation of why we are where we are. She gave an historic—

Edward Leigh (Conservative, Gainsborough)

Histrionic.

John Gummer (Conservative, Suffolk Coastal)

Not histrionic. She gave an historic view. She suggested that, because it had taken us so long to come to this point, it was reasonable to accept what we now had. Her real answer to the hon. Member for Thurrock was that, because it had taken so long to get here, we may as well accept what we had. I wonder why she has not looked at why we did take so long to get here. The reason is simply that no alternative to the system that we have has found favour with Parliament. No alternative will find favour with Parliament because there are different views. There are those hon. Members who support the amendment because they do not want an elected House of Lords. Then there are those who support the amendment because they do not want a second House at all. Then there is the hon. Member who supports his amendment because he does want an elected House of Lords. Then there are the Conservative Members who support the amendment because it is better than what we would have without the amendment. It is the most miserable collection of supporters for an amendment that I have ever heard of. All of us are voting for it because everything else is worse, but, then, that is true of the Bill as a whole. It is stuck in front of us because there is no alternative. That is serious; it is a constitutional outrage. We are discussing the constitution of the United Kingdom, which has no written constitution and needs its checks and balances. We need those who are not cloned one after the other at a particular moment in time, but who think independently and differently. One can argue that the House of Lords does not fulfil that role entirely and that we should have a change, but one must argue what that change should be. The hon. Member for Thurrock did at least argue what it should be. In that, he is different from the Leader of the House, who struggled through her speech because she knew that its content was less powerful than its language. She knew that she really did not have a case. When we go into the Division Lobby, we should support the deal with the House of Lords. There are various reasons why. My own is that it at least retains something that is not in the hands of the Prime Minister; that is a good thing. I will vote for it because it retains some of the hereditary element. I will vote for it because it has some historic continuity—that is a good thing—and because it retains something about which we should think seriously: subsidiarity. Subsidiarity was invented as a concept by the popes when they were trying to deal with the danger of concentrating all power in one place. Listening to the Labour party, I believe that it has that fault in spades. It really does believe that there is only one way, only one method and only one place where any power should be—over there. That is not true. A society is better run when, even if it is not entirely rational, power is spread a bit, with the opportunity for different people to make different comments about different things.

Peter Bradley (Labour, The Wrekin)

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

John Gummer (Conservative, Suffolk Coastal)

I will finish my speech. Over the years, many of the discussions in the House of Lords have been helpful and have contributed very much. The reason why they have contributed very much is precisely the one that the right hon. Member for Chesterfield found so embarrassing: people spoke for themselves in their own person and did not constantly look over their shoulder at others. We have to do that. It is right; that is why we are here. We should not think of our role in any other way, but that does not mean that everyone who contributes to the legislative system should always have precisely that legitimacy. All the people who do not want an elected House of Lords had better recognise that no other system is as free from opposition as the odd system that we have had up to now. The only alternative is to put in the hands of a very small number of people—namely, one—the appointment of all those who will make the decisions up there. If we want a collection of clones even more clonic than Labour Members—who are elected—it will be the place men peers in the new House of Lords, as directed by this modernising Government. It is not modernisation. It is the sort of patronage that would have looked out of place and out of date in the 18th century. It is not moving forward. It is moving backwards. At least in the earlier patronage, more than one person made the decision and patronage was found in more than one place. Instead, we are voting for a new second House that will be entirely in the hands of one man, or woman. The only thing that stands between that and a more sensible system is the group of a few hereditary peers who are to be elected, so I do not agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr. Tyrie), who did not support that; I am very much in favour of it. I am sorry only that there are not more of them, so that they can stand out against the constant list of people who have done something and are being paid for it by being put into the House of Lords, introduced three a week to ensure that the only thing that matters is the political balance. I disagree with the reasons that the hon. Member for Harlow gave for supporting the Government amendment. I do not think that all political decisions are about political balance. The view that we should choose people simply because they are on one side or the other is old-fashioned and pretty nasty. I like the House of Lords because, very often, many peers who say that they are Conservatives vote with Labour, and many socialists are tough enough to disagree with the current Prime Minister—unlike the Back Benchers in this place, except for the hon. and learned Member for Medway. Most of the Back Benchers in this place do what they are told. I should like to have a House of Lords that never did what it was told. The more hereditary peers we have, the more likely we are to have such a House.

Peter Bradley (Labour, The Wrekin)

I have never before in the Chamber heard so many weasel words from an experienced politician. The right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer) knows that every attempt to reform our constitutional system, and the House of Lords in particular, has foundered on the inability of the political parties to agree on the second stage. He also knows very well that Conservative Members, who do not have the audacity to defend the hereditary principle, are hiding behind the wispy smokescreen of objecting to two-stage reform. The right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir G. Young), who left the Chamber very shortly after his speech, talked about demolition and construction, saying that it was very unusual to demolish an edifice before drawing up plans to rebuild it. However, if the structure is not only ancient but decrepit and dangerous, it would be very sensible to demolish it, regardless of whether plans are on the drawing board to redevelop it. The right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal used a similar metaphor, questioning whether it would be sensible to cut off one's leg if it was injured and causing pain. I say yes. If a leg is infected, gangrenous and threatens the rest of the body—political or otherwise—it would be very sensible to cut it off, and there is much precedent for doing so. The House of Lords will be a better place in transition than it has been under the current arrangements. In the transitionary period, it still may not be entirely legitimate but it will certainly be less illegitimate than it has been. It will also hold the promise of a modern Chamber—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh, no."] Conservative Members reveal their own prejudices—they cannot abide the word "modern". We had a lecture from the hon. Member for Wantage (Mr. Jackson), who took us back to the days of the Teutons and said that we should follow their example of burgeoning democracy. I do not know whether he was talking about the Huns or the Vandals, but their commitment to democracy was not half as impressive as their commitment to demolition. We need a Parliament that, in both its Houses, is modern and reflects both the composition and the concerns and aspirations of our community. A transitional Chamber will also promise further reform, giving way to a relevant second Chamber that commands respect and serves the public at least as well as, and probably better than, the current institution has done for the past 1,000 years. The current arrangements are unacceptable in any circumstances. In the course of his lecture, the hon. Member for Wantage—I am sorry that he is not in the Chamber to defend himself, should I misconstrue his comments—seemed to suggest that a valuable aspect of the other place is that many or most of its Members are men of property. He seemed to say that with property should go power and the right to transfer that power within a family from one generation to the next. There is no logic in that. How does that conform to the democratic principle or deliver justice? What is the justification for that system? The hon. Gentleman was correct in his description of the House of Lords as a place dominated by hereditary peers who are propertied and come from the same social background.

Michael Martin (Deputy Speaker, Glasgow Springburn)

Order. As I have frequently told the House today, we should concentrate on this group of amendments. That is what the hon. Gentleman should be doing.

Peter Bradley (Labour, The Wrekin)

I am trying to argue that we should support amendments producing a transitionary Chamber, in order to create a more democratic upper House than we have now. The provisions will create an upper House without vested interests and without, as is currently the case, a block vote against the Government of the day, who are seeking quite legitimately to exercise their democratic mandate and pursue policies spelled out in their manifesto.

Michael Fallon (Conservative, Sevenoaks)

The hon. Gentleman could certainly argue that the Bill and Lords amendment No. 1 will provide for a different Chamber, but how can he argue that either will provide for a transitional Chamber? Where in the Bill or the amendment is there any commitment or promise to create a reformed Chamber?

Peter Bradley (Labour, The Wrekin)

At the beginning of his speech, my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews) talked about a "measure of permanence". I was hoping to be able to challenge him on that expression and ask him if it did not mean temporary, what would constitute a measure of permanence. The Bill's clear intention is to move, in two orderly stages, to a comprehensively reformed upper Chamber. 1 do not understand why the hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Mr. Fallon) has any difficulty with that. I also suggest that the hon. Member for Sevenoaks and other Conservative Members have been entirely opportunistic and unprincipled in their opposition to the Bill. Do they want a reformed upper Chamber? In both today's and previous debates, I have had great difficulty in defining exactly what Conservative Members stand for on the issue. If they support a reformed upper Chamber, what did they do in their 18 years in government to bring it about? It is extraordinary that we should be hearing arguments against a transitional Chamber from Members such as the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal, who belong to a party that has waited 1,000 years for change but now want change to be accomplished at a gallop. They have waited a millennium for change to our constitution and political system, but want it to be completed in the twinkling of an eye. There is a tradition among Conservative Members, and their Tory forebears, of opposition to constitutional reform. They opposed it in 1832, in 1867 and in 1884, until they were forced to accept it. Today, some Conservative Members have been talking about one man, one vote as if we did not have women's suffrage—which they also opposed. They have had to be dragged kicking and screaming into every constitutional reform that we have ever had in Britain.

Patrick Cormack (Conservative, South Staffordshire)

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Peter Bradley (Labour, The Wrekin)

No; I should like to make a little progress and keep my comments brief, so that other hon. Members will be able to speak. Conservative Members support the upper Chamber because they enjoy an in-built majority in that place.

Christopher Fraser (Conservative, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

Will the hon. Gentleman give way on that point?

Peter Bradley (Labour, The Wrekin)

No, not on that point; but the hon. Gentleman may intervene on the next one, if he cares to. If Labour had enjoyed for just 10 years the type of majority in the House of Lords that the Conservatives have enjoyed for 100 years, the previous Government would have abolished the House of Lords in one fell swoop.

Christopher Fraser (Conservative, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Peter Bradley (Labour, The Wrekin)

No; I am sorry. [Interruption.] I tried to intervene previously in the debate to ask questions, but was not allowed to. I wanted to intervene, for example, on the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal to ask him which chair in Cabinet he occupied when the previous Government abolished the Greater London council. Where was he then? Was he arguing for plurality in th debate, which he says is so healthy?

Michael Martin (Deputy Speaker, Glasgow Springburn)

Order. The hon. Gentleman is wide of the group of amendments that we are considering, and many of his arguments would have been better suited to Second Reading. He is not the only hon. Member who is guilty of going wide of the amendments.

The rest of the debate is in Hansard.