|
Questions
> House of Lords Reform
> Back
From House of Commons
Hansard 18th October 2005
Mr. Sadiq Khan (Tooting):
When the Department intends to proceed with the next steps
towards establishing a reformed House of Lords.
The Minister of State, Department for Constitutional
Affairs (Ms Harriet Harman): We
intend to continue with reform of the House of Lords to
create an effective legitimate Chamber while maintaining the
primacy of this House.
Mr. Khan: I thank my right hon. and
learned Friend. With the greatest respect, is she happy with
the answer that was drafted by the civil servants? Can she
let us know when we can expect a Joint Committee to be
established and what its remit will be? Will she ensure that
when the options from the Joint Committee come back to this
House we are given options as to preference rather than a
yes or no option? She will remember—some of us will not—what
happened last time this House was asked to vote on the
options.
Ms Harman: The civil service gave me
a very long and good answer to kick off the point raised by
my hon. Friend, but I made it short to give him as much time
as possible to ask his supplementary and so that I could
deal with the issues that he raises.
We want to get the Joint Committee established as soon as
possible so that it can codify the key conventions of the
House of Lords. My hon. Friend raises a very important
point, of which he did not give me notice—although I am not
criticising him for that—[Interruption.] I am saying
that it was not a planted question. What he is asking is
whether we will have sensible proceedings in this House when
we have a free vote on the composition of the House of
Lords, and how we will go about reaching that outcome. That
is a very important point.
We know where we got to in 2003. When we vote this time, we
want to have absolute clarity. We want all Members to be
absolutely clear that the choices that we are presenting to
the House are those that they want to vote on, and we want
to ensure that we vote on them in such a way as to achieve
consensus. My hon. Friend pre-empts me in raising issues
that I would like to explore—for example, whether we
simply stick with a yes or no option or have a range of
choices, which is sometimes called a referendum. We must
have a better process to ensure that the will of this House
on the composition of the House of Lords is better expressed
than we were collectively able to achieve in 2003, and I
will certainly strive to achieve that.
Back to Speeches
Page
| 
