On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. On 21 February, in reply to a question about antenatal services, the Prime Minister said:

“we are also increasing the number of midwives in training.”—[Official Report, 21 February 2007; Vol. 457, c. 260.]

In January 2006, however, we were told by the Minister of State, Department of Health, the hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) that the number of students who entered midwifery training during 2004-05 was 2,374. But in October 2006 it was reported that there were 2,220 midwifery training places for 2005-06, which is a fall of 154 training places, and the Council of Deans estimates a further 10 per cent. fall on top of that. What can we do to ensure that the Prime Minister returns to the House to correct the misleading statement that he made in answer to my question?

It would have been unintentional.

Unintentional.

The hon. Lady has had a good go at putting the matter on the record as a point of order; it was not really a point of order or a matter for the Chair. I urge her to table more questions to the Prime Minister: she is able to table written questions as well as seeking oral answers.

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Yesterday the Secretary of State for Health announced that there would be a review of the unfolding disaster that is “Modernising Medical Careers”. What indication have you had that the Secretary of State will come to the House to explain her plans, and to tell us why she has supervised so much of the chaos that has been inflicted on junior doctors and our national health service?

I think that the Secretary of State for Health will somehow or other hear of the hon. Gentleman’s concern.

I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to provide for the establishment of an indicator for rural tranquillity; to provide for the protection of rural tranquillity in the planning process; and for connected purposes.

In the past week, I have distributed tranquillity maps to every Member of Parliament in England. I hasten to add, Mr. Speaker, that you were not discriminated against because you are a Scottish Member; nor was I discriminating against the Welsh. It is simply that the Bill would apply only to England—unless a Member of either the Scottish or the Welsh Executive has the wit and intelligence to take up the issue, as I hope one of them will.

The maps that I distributed did something that was both new and importantly different. For the first time ever, they provided a quantified, logically evidenced and robust way of measuring tranquillity across the country. I should pause here to record my thanks to the Campaign to Protect Rural England, which, in concert with some heavyweight academics, has done an enormous amount of work to quantify tranquillity and to provide us with a robust and logically sensible evidence base on which the Bill can be built.

Before we become too caught up in pretty tranquillity maps, however, we ought to ensure that we understand precisely what “tranquillity” means. Put simply, it is peace and quiet. It is the ability to find a part of the country that is free from intervention by man. Let me give some examples. If you go out at night and look around, do you see street lights or starlight? If you go out looking for peace and quiet, what do you hear, jumbo jets and juggernauts or birdsong? If you want to find a beautiful view and you go out and lift up your eyes unto the hills, do you in fact see hills, or high rises? If you take a deep breath of fresh air, do you smell wild flowers or the kebab van on the corner? That is what tranquillity is all about, and why it is so important. It is not just about preserving green spaces; it is about the way our country feels. It is about why it is good to be in our country. It is about the quality of life and the quality of our environment, and that is why it is important to preserve it.

It is important also to bear in mind that while there is more tranquillity in the countryside, it is not exclusively a countryside issue. There are significant pockets of tranquillity in our towns and cities as well. Urban parks and suburban gardens are essential green lungs which make our urban environments better to live in than they would otherwise be. They deserve protection just as much as green belts and areas of outstanding natural beauty in the countryside as a whole.

I am not saying, and the Bill is not saying, that everywhere must be tranquil. There are plenty of places that we want to have bright lights and loud music. If we go out on a Friday night to meet our friends, we probably want to go somewhere that has a buzz and an excitement to it. In my constituency, the seafront on Friday and Saturday nights is vibrant and exciting, and full of people enjoying themselves. We do not want to change that, but—particularly if we have had a very good Friday night—on a Saturday morning we may be in search of a place where we can find some tranquillity. It is therefore important for the country to contain both types of place: places that are lively and vibrant, and places where tranquillity exists. We need a Britain where wildlife and nightlife can co-exist.

The crucial point is that tranquillity is fragile. The pace and the hustle and bustle of modern Britain destroy tranquillity; the two cannot coexist.

There are some very startling and frightening statistics on the extent to which tranquillity is on the retreat throughout the country. The statistics on road transport show that that is projected to increase by between 20 per cent. and 30 per cent. in the next eight years. In the last 15 years, air travel has exploded and it is expected to continue rising for many years to come. The worst statistic I saw is that in England alone we are every year concreting over an area of land the size of Leicester. Clearly, we cannot carry on doing that indefinitely. Also, light pollution rose by 24 per cent. between 1993 and 2000, and the sad fact is that in only 11 per cent. of England’s land mass is it now possible to go outside at night and see a sky that is lit only by the moon and stars, as opposed to by man.

What is to be done? The Bill is very simple—and, I hope, the more powerful because of that. It has only two clauses, the first of which says that the Government should report on and publish the results of the measurement of tranquillity, probably along the lines of the system that I have just described which has been put together by the Campaign to Protect Rural England. That will allow us to track tranquillity to see where it is strong and where it is weak and where it is advancing and where it is retreating. Having tracked and measured tranquillity effectively, the second clause is equally simple. It says that the Government should put a duty on planning authorities to protect, preserve and enhance tranquillity in every decision that they take.

The good news is that the Government should be onside on this issue. They have been using the word “tranquillity” in approving tones since as long ago as when the rural White Paper was produced, in 2000; they have mentioned it several times since in many different sorts of official environmental documentation. I therefore hope—even expect—that the Government will be able to support the Bill either by providing it with time or by picking up on this issue and including measures to address it in some of their future legislation. I certainly hope that we will be pushing at an open door, and I encourage Members of all parties to take them at their word: they say that tranquillity is important, so let us give them the chance to act on their words.

If there is only one reason why Members of all parties choose to support the Bill, let it be the following one. I have said that tranquillity is under threat: it is retreating throughout the country. If we do not act now, tranquillity will soon be nothing but a folk memory. All those wonderful quiet places free from human interference that everyone knows of will be gone—all Members probably have places near our homes in our constituencies where we like to go. If for no other reason, we owe it to our children and grandchildren to turn from merely uttering warm words to taking action to preserve tranquillity. If we do not act now, the things that we take for granted today will be denied to them tomorrow. Tranquillity is important, and it is in trouble. It deserves our attention and requires our help and protection. I commend the Bill to the House.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill ordered to be brought in by John Penrose, David Taylor, Mr. John Gummer, Mr. Nick Hurd, Norman Baker, Derek Wyatt, Mr. Philip Dunne, Mr. John Whittingdale, Mr. Frank Field, Kelvin Hopkins and Jeremy Wright.

Rural Tranquillity

John Penrose accordingly presented a Bill to provide for the establishment of an indicator for rural tranquillity; to provide for the protection of rural tranquillity in the planning process; and for connected purposes: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Friday 18 May, and to be printed [Bill 73].

It is something to speak following a speech on tranquillity, given that that word will probably not be used to describe this particular debate. That said, yesterday’s debate was very entertaining, and since it took place my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House has been described as having the courage of 300 Spartans. Whether that makes the rest of us part of the 700 Thespian volunteers, I do not know.

Yesterday’s debate reminded me of the football pools: one could perm any eight from 10 in terms of the views expressed in the House. As we know, this is a debate of two halves, and it falls to me to blow the whistle to start the second half today. The House will forgive me if I express the hope that the second half does not last quite as long as the first, not least because there is another game of two halves in which I have a great interest: Celtic versus AC Milan this evening. [Interruption.] I hope that that sedentary intervention was said with the light-heartedness with which it appeared to be said.

Mr. Speaker, the House will be grateful to you to know that when the votes take place, the monitors will indicate exactly which motion Members are voting on. That is already a break with the past, and one which I hope will help to steer Members into the appropriate Lobby for each vote.

If the monitors are going to indicate which motion we are voting on, that will be very helpful to Members. However, can we be assured that, when reference is made on the monitors to “the appointed House”, the word “reformed” will be included?

The title given on the monitors will explain exactly what each motion is on. I hope that the situation will be sufficiently clear, but I am sure that there will be plenty of Members in the Chamber and elsewhere guiding their friends and colleagues into the Lobby.

A considerable amount of work has already been done on this issue. There is the excellent report of the Joint Committee on Conventions, chaired by my right hon. and noble Friend Lord Cunningham of Felling, and, of course, the substantial work done by the cross-party working group, chaired by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House. I hope that today’s debate will be another major step in a century’s-worth of steps on the road to reform. Members will be relieved to know that I will not be giving them a year-by-year account of the history of reform—[Hon. Members: “Go on!”] Well, otherwise, there will be no time for any of this evening’s votes, and as I have said, I must get away in time to see Celtic defeat the mighty AC Milan. However, there are some points along the time line that I would like to highlight.

The first such point was the Parliament Act 1911, which was a response to the crisis arising from the Lords’ rejection of the 1909 Budget. That Act ensured that money Bills could receive Royal Assent without the approval of the other place, and it shortened the maximum length of a Parliament from seven to five years. Public Bills, with some exceptions, were to receive Royal Assent without the consent of the Lords if they had been passed by this House in three successive Sessions. The Parliament Act 1949 reduced that period to two Sessions, and reduced the period between the first Second Reading and the final passage of a Bill to one year. Those Acts are key pillars of the primacy of this House and they are fundamental to its relationship with the Lords.

Then there was the development of the Salisbury-Addison convention. The 1945 general election produced a Labour Government with a massive majority of 156, but of course, at that time there was only a small number of peers—16 out of 831—who took the Labour Whip. That imbalance had to be addressed. The then Viscount Cranbourne, Leader of the Opposition in the Lords and fifth Marquis of Salisbury, and Viscount Addison, the Labour leader in the Lords, came to an agreement that we now refer to as the Salisbury-Addison convention. They agreed that, because major Government legislation had been put before the country at the general election, and the people, with knowledge of those proposals, had returned a Labour Government, the Government had a mandate to introduce their key proposals, and the Lords should not oppose them.

The Joint Committee on Conventions has given an excellent description of the convention as it stands today and I commend its report to the House. That Salisbury-Addison convention gives effect to the primacy of this House, and it is vital to how the other place responds to manifesto legislation. Parliament would be very different without it.

Does my hon. Friend agree that the primacy of one Chamber over the other is as much about perception as about legislative framework, and that it is for that reason that many of us feel that a largely or wholly elected Chamber would claim a degree of legitimacy that the present Chamber could not, which could be to the detriment of the Chamber? Does she agree that the Salisbury-Addison convention was a voluntary arrangement between both Houses, and that a completely different House at the other end of the corridor may wish to seek another sort of convention?

I have much sympathy with what my hon. Friend says; politics is very often about perception. But I should say to him, as my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House said yesterday, that should the House decide to go for a partly or wholly elected second Chamber, whatever it decides it will also decide the rules by which that Chamber is governed, so I hope that my hon. Friend will accept, as I do, that it would be for the House to decide what those rules are likely to be.

rose—

rose—

I shall give way just once more.

The hon. Lady said that perception is extremely important. It should be remembered that there is a perception in the country that gradually over the years—especially in the last 10 years but also before then—the Executive have been seen to grab more powers to the Executive and become less accountable to Parliament as a whole, and that the reform of the House of Lords is part of the process of giving more accountability again to the Executive, which in the long run will benefit the Executive as well by keeping them more in touch.

I can agree with the hon. Gentleman in one sense: I agree that making these reforms will make the Executive, and Parliament as a whole, more accountable. I would say to him too, however, that over the past 10 years the Executive have probably been more accountable in many ways than any previous one, so I would not accept his point on that.

I want to move on to the third key point along the timeline—the Life Peerages Act 1958 and the Peerages Act 1963. They allowed life peers to sit in the other place; the Lords would no longer be limited to those with an hereditary title; and they even allowed women to sit there too. The 1963 Act also famously allowed hereditary peerages to be disclaimed for life or relinquished for a period of time.

Fundamental and far-reaching reform did not come, however, until this Labour Government came to power in 1997. The House of Lords Act 1999 removed the majority of peers who sat in the other place as a right of heredity. It was an absurdity in a modern democracy and it had to go. I see from yesterday's debate that both sides of the House agree that this should be so, although I do recall the campaign literature for the Conservative party in 1997, drawing attention to the advantages of the hereditary peers.

Our job was incomplete, however. Running through these parliamentary reforms demonstrates that which is obvious but which may also be so close to us that we miss it. Those reforms are now embedded in our culture and conventions. The Salisbury-Addison convention, the introduction of life peers and women peers and the removal of the majority of hereditary peers have all strengthened the other place, and in so doing have strengthened Parliament as a whole. It is quite clear that where reform is necessary, the Houses do not crumble but are reinforced.

This history demonstrates something else, loud and clear. Reform of the second Chamber has been on the agenda for too long. We must now today have the courage of our convictions, as our predecessors did. We must today complete that to which our manifestos commit us. It is time to complete the job that the Government started in 1999. I therefore urge Members today to remember that, and not to allow the fine detail of reform, which there will be ample time to debate later—

The hon. Lady mentioned convictions and I am hugely interested in hers. My recollection is that she was not in support of election last time. If I am wrong, I am happy to be corrected, but I do not think that she supported the election options last time. Will she, like the sinner that repenteth, her right hon. Friend the Leader of the House, support elected options this time?

I am perfectly happy to tell the hon. Gentleman that last time I voted for abolition and for a fully appointed second House. I shall do the same this time. However I will, in order that we do complete reform of the House of Lords, vote for a 50 per cent. elected House should we get to that stage. But I urge Members today not to allow the fine detail of reform—which we shall be able to debate in due course—to get in the way of the important decision on the composition of the other place. That is why I shall be voting in the way that I shall tonight.

I am now going to blow the whistle, step back from play and let the second half commence.

Yesterday we had a very long and very interesting debate. Some of the issues that were not clearly in focus at the start of it actually emerged during the debate, which was an unusual process in the House. I want to dwell on what I think we learned from yesterday's debate, and address some of the points that hon. Members made.

Interestingly, yesterday’s debate was not a debate about a principle; there was a clash between two principles. Many Members, mainly on the Labour Benches, although there were one or two on my own side, argued that we should have an elected or largely elected House of Lords on the grounds of the principle of democratic legitimacy. They argued that it was necessary for a group of people who had an influence on law making to be democratically elected. Interestingly—I was here for the great bulk of what happened yesterday and I read the report of the remainder—no voice was raised against that principle. On reflection, that is not terribly surprising; anyone in the House who objected to the principle that law should generally be made by those who have been elected would find themselves in an odd position, as they are here by virtue of having been democratically elected themselves. So that principle was accepted on both sides.

The other clash centred on the principle advocated by my hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Sir Patrick Cormack) and some of my other hon. Friends. In a very eloquent speech, my hon. Friend, who is not in his place now but was present for yesterday's debate, argued persuasively that we should not worry about whether an item conforms to a general democratic principle, but should worry about a different question—whether our constitution works and whether it is calculated to deliver results that are in the interests of our people. The clash between those two principles—the principle of democracy and the principle of what works—formed the basis of much of yesterday’s debate.

Today, I want to take on the argument made by those who supported the second principle, and who also argued that an elected or largely elected House of Lords would not work, because it seems to me that, given the structure of yesterday's debate, if we could assure ourselves that an elected or largely elected House of Lords would work, we would then have what we have all been seeking all this time: consensus. One set of people think that everything should be democratic; another set of people think that everything should work. If it was the case that this elected House of Lords was both democratic and workable, we would all agree on having an elected or largely elected House of Lords.

Did my right hon. Friend also notice the argument that I and other hon. Members made yesterday, and with which I am sure he would agree—that if we are to have an elected House, it is essential that the elected Members of the other place are not clones of MPs? Does he see any merit, therefore, in ensuring that they are genuinely concerned with scrutiny of the Executive rather than their own ambitions by stipulating that they may not become Ministers of the Crown if they are elected to the other place?

Yes and yes is my answer to that. I shall address that point in a moment, as my hon. Friend will hear. In his own eloquent performance yesterday, in which he successively advanced an argument and then advanced a series of sub-arguments in case he lost the first and then the second and the third, he brought out well a point with which I agree: we will have to take steps to try to make the Members of the upper House as independent as possible. I agree with my hon. Friend that one of those steps could be to prevent them from serving as Ministers.

Let me return to the question whether a largely elected House of Lords could work. There were two sides to that argument yesterday. One side argued that if the upper Chamber were largely or wholly elected there would be a productive tension between it and our House, or between it and the Government. My right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke) both made speeches to that effect. On the other side of the argument were those who argued that a largely or wholly elected House of Lords would create deadlock. The right hon. Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Williams), who is not in his place today, made a powerful and eloquent case for the proposition that it would engender deadlock—[Interruption.] I am aware that some of my hon. Friends agree with that proposition. Those two positions are at the centre of the debate.

On the question whether an elected House would create a productive tension, some of my hon. Friends and some Labour Members suggested that there was no problem to be solved in the first place. They argued that we did not need to worry about whether the tension would be creative or lead to deadlock because we did not have a problem at the moment. Therefore, they argued, there was no need for change. I do not believe that that argument has much weight. One of the few issues in this whole vexed area on which we can almost all agree is that the Executive have too much power. That is not a reflection on the present Government, or on previous or future Governments, because the simple fact is that we live under a Government who are dominated by the Prime Minister of the day because of his powers of patronage. By definition—or by hypothesis in our system, because of our fused arrangements—the Government have a majority in the House of Commons and are, broadly speaking, able to do what they like with insufficient check between elections. That is a problem not only for the people of this country but for the Government of the day who would benefit from being more effectively checked. That is common ground between the occupants of the Front Benches, but it is also a widely shared view in the country and in the House.

What are you going to do about it?

My hon. Friend is telepathically interpreting the stages of my speech. Some of my hon. Friends and some Labour Members argued that what we needed to do was mainly—some argued wholly—to reform the House of Commons. I have considerable sympathy with that—

Quite right!

My hon. Friend is doing so well with his telepathy that I may shortly withdraw and allow him to make this speech instead. Unfortunately, he and I will disagree about the conclusion.

My colleagues in the shadow Cabinet and I—and, I suspect, Ministers—profoundly agree that there is a need and scope for reform of the House of Commons. I hope that the Leader of the House, who takes these matters seriously, may be one of those Leaders of the House who takes Commons reform seriously. That would be a wonderful step forward. Will it be enough? I doubt it. In the nature of a fused constitution, the Government have a majority in the House and are therefore unlikely ever to accede to the House being used as a mechanism to check them with sufficient challenge and ferocity. It is possible, but unlikely. It is much more likely that the other place, which has a longer record of independence and a greater distance from the Executive—if its Members were not allowed to be Ministers and had long terms of office, it would be yet more independent—would be able to exercise that check. I suspect that most people, if they examine their consciences and deprive themselves of the glories of rhetorical debate, would agree with that proposition.

I am following the right hon. Gentleman’s speech closely. The primary subject of yesterday’s debate was whether this House had primacy over the House of Lords. The right hon. Gentleman seems to be arguing that we need to give the Lords more power to challenge what happens in this House, but that ignores the point about primacy.

If the hon. Gentleman will bear with me, I am just coming to the point about primacy. My argument so far is that we need to have a House of Lords that has more confidence to challenge the Government of the day. I will explain why primacy is not the issue, although it was raised in the debate yesterday.

The next question is whether being largely elected would give the House of Lords greater confidence to challenge the Government of the day. I think that that proposition is unchallengeable. It is clear that if it were largely elected—80 per cent., to choose a figure—it would feel much more confidence in challenging the Government. I do not say that it would be perfect or that it would always challenge the Government, but it would have more confidence.

I am not sure that I share my right hon. Friend’s confidence that an elected second Chamber would do that. The Leader of the House has indicated that the elections would take place on a proportional representation list system, but the list would be packed with party stooges who would just do the parties’ bidding. The only difference would be that we would lose the expertise and experience in the House of Lords that has been built up, for no positive benefit.

As a matter of the logic of the argument, it is important that my hon. Friend should recognise that we are dealing now with composition and will deal later with the rules governing election. However, as a matter of fact, I share the view of my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh) that one has to take steps to make the elected or largely elected members of the upper House independent. One step might be not to allow them to be Ministers. Another might be for them to serve long terms and a third should be for them not to be elected on a closed list system of the type that my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) mentions. There are other possible steps, but it must be possible to devise rules that will make it more rather than less likely that those Members will be independent minded. It must also be the case that if they have a mandate, they will feel more empowered to challenge the Government.

I come now to the salient point made by the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Mr. Hall). The answer of most of those who spoke in yesterday’s debate, who rejected the proposition despite everything that I have just said, was that the problem did not reside in the House of Lords not having a function, or in it not attaining more oomph and vigour in pursuing the function of challenging the Government as a result of election, but in the fact that the system would work too well. The House of Lords would somehow—in the phrase used yesterday, which the hon. Gentleman repeated—challenge the primacy of this House.

I invite right hon. and hon. Members to reflect on how we look to the outside world. That is a difficult thing to do, because it is difficult to look at oneself. Who on earth in the United Kingdom cares about the primacy of the House of Commons? If I went out in the streets with a big banner that said “I’m in favour of the primacy of the House of Commons.” I would not attract large groups of people to follow behind me—[Interruption.] Yes, there are some hon. Members who are concerned about that, but my point is that the 60 million people out there could not care less about the primacy of anything, especially the House of Commons. Indeed, if one asked them about the primacy of the House of Commons, they would probably think that one meant whether it should be filled with primates—a very different subject.

The primacy of the House of Commons is, in constitutional terms, neither here nor there. What matters is whether the Government can govern, and that is what hon. Members were trying to get at yesterday. That does matter to hon. Members, but more importantly it matters to 60 million people in this country. It matters that when the Government of the day have been elected in a general election they are able to govern and do their business. Forget the primacy of this House and concentrate on the ability of the Government to govern.

The Leader of the House was persuasive and eloquent on this point. The question is whether the Government, if they are in possession of a majority in this House—which they must have in order to form the Government in the first place—and if this House has control of Supply, which it undoubtedly does by convention and deep constitutional theory, and if the House and Government are possessed of the Parliament Acts, as they will be, face any realistic prospect of not being able to get their business through, spend their money and follow their policies. Manifestly, the answer would be no. There is no such prospect and, interestingly, those who opposed large degrees of election did not argue that there was. It is significant that, as part of his conversion, my hon. Friend the Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) withdrew from that position. He considered that things would change in 10, 20, 50 or 100 years, and that somehow the Government of the day would be deprived of the vital powers conferred by the Parliament Acts, the right of Supply and so on.

I do not know what will happen in 100 years. None of us can. However, I do know that, when a new system with a largely elected House of Lords is introduced, the House of Commons will retain the powers needed to ensure that the Government of the day can govern.

I agree with the right hon. Gentleman’s analysis but, even if no party has a majority in the other Chamber, certain issues could arise about which a broad section of opinion there might believe that the Government must be forced to think again, repeatedly, before taking a drastic step. If the progress of Government business were to be impeded in that way, would not most of the general public believe that that was much more important than any concept of the primacy of the House of Commons?

I very much agree. If we have a House of Lords that is largely elected, under any of the arrangements that we have discussed, it will feel more empowered to challenge. As a result, the Government of the day will be delayed more often. They will always get their way in the end, but will have to take account of the great heat that will be generated in public as a result of the delay. That will be a more effective check between elections on the overweening use of power by the Government of the day. That is the argument that those of us who believe that there should be a largely elected second Chamber want to advance.

May I suggest to my right hon. Friend that it will not be 100 years before those elected to the other place start to claim an authority that they do not have at the moment? They will say, “We are elected, and we are as legitimate as the people down the Corridor.” They will demand a greater say, including over matters such as the Budget.

I think that my hon. Friend ignores the fact of what happens at a general election. The theory is that we are sent here as independent representatives of our seats, with no party affiliation, but the fact is that the public elect a Government. They select a person to be Prime Minister, they select the colleagues of that person to be the Government, and they select the party that those people represent to govern them. As long as that is what happens at general elections, I do not believe that the fear that the other place might seek to become the Government of the day is more than fanciful.

rose—

I shall answer one more question, and then sit down.

I am following my right hon. Friend’s argument closely. Does he accept that equating elections with legitimacy means that it is possible that a majority of the elected representatives to Parliament may be in disagreement with the Government? Would not that call the legitimacy of that Government into question?

I am glad that my hon. Friend has raised what I think is the centrepiece of this debate. First, if people know that they are electing a Government when they vote at a general election, it is very unlikely that another set of people will be able to persuade them that it is they who have been elected. The dynamic of media and public opinion will not allow that to happen.

Secondly, it is enormously important to recognise that when a group of people are elected on the basis that they will not form the Government—and, moreover, elected in ways that reinforce the assumption that they will not do so—it would take a heroic effort of self-importance on their part to persuade themselves nevertheless that they did, somehow, constitute that Government. That heroic self-importance would be greater than anything that even we in this House can manage and, God knows, we can do very well in that regard.

I accept that human beings can do strange things, but it is unlikely that the sober-minded people elected to the House of Lords would behave in that way.

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

I am sorry, but I am going to sit down now; otherwise I shall be accused of hogging the Dispatch Box.

I am most grateful to be called to speak, but I have to admit that I do not know what comes over Labour Foreign Secretaries when they are made Leader of the House of Commons. Like Robin Cook, my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House was a brilliant Foreign Secretary—by that I mean that I agreed with everything that he did—but, also like Robin Cook, he has come over all funny since he has been Leader of the House. The proposals that he has put before us, the speech that he made yesterday and the letters that he has sent out only confirm my diagnosis.

Let us be clear: there can be only three logical positions in respect of whether we should have a bicameral or unicameral legislature. The first is that the second Chamber should be abolished. The second is that it should be 100 per cent. elected, and the third that it should be 100 per cent. appointed. All the rest, as set out by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House, are gibberish.

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

No, as I want to advance my argument a little.

What is special about 50 per cent., 60 per cent., or 80 per cent.? What is the logic? The Government are trying to involve us in a kind of constitutional sudoku, in which we fill in the blank spaces. Other metaphors for what they are getting us into might be spread betting, or the premium phone-ins on ITV that my good friend Michael Grade is bringing to an end.

This is an utterly irresponsible way to create a new House of Parliament from scratch. After 800 years of the other Chamber’s evolution, the Government basically want to abolish it and to start anew. However, if that is what they intend, they must proceed only on the basis of total logic.

The Leader of the House is my friend as well as my right hon. Friend, but I have to tell him that what he is proposing to vote for this evening is constitutionally disreputable. What is more, the dark warnings that he has given the House of Lords of the terrible fate that awaits it if it obstructs what the House of Commons votes for this evening—assuming that we vote as he wants us to—are useless if there is an elected element there.

The House of Lords has obstructed the House of Commons even when nobody there has been elected. Under the proposals, Members of the other place may secure an elected mandate on the 20 per cent. of the electorate likely to turn out if their polls are held at the same time as European elections. Even so, they will say, “We’ve been voted for. You, friends, get lost!”

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

In a moment. Elected Members of the other place will say, “We’ve got as much right to do what we’re doing at out our end of the Corridor as you have at yours.” The same argument applies to the answer to the question put to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House by my right hon. Friend the Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Williams) about whether elected Members of the House of Lords would have the same freedom as hon. Members to make representations on behalf of their constituents. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House replied:

“Members of the House of Lords are not there to represent constituencies. Paragraphs 6.8 to 6.15 of the White Paper…explains that one of the key principles that should underpin a reformed House is the complimentary”—

by the way, Jack, you don’t know how to spell complementary—

“nature of the House of Lords. The House of Lords should not duplicate the functions of the House of Commons.—[Official Report, 1 March 2007; Vol. 457, c. 1468-9W.]

Dream on, Jack. Anybody—

Order. The right hon. Gentleman has been a Member for a long time, and used to tutor me in how to conduct myself in the Chamber. Now the apprentice is telling him.

As always, Mr. Speaker, I bow to your ruling. Dream on my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw).

If Members of the House of Lords are elected—probably by proportional representation—they will take on our cases. If they win, they will say that they were successful because we could not win the case. If they lose, and there is a Labour Government, as I hope that there will be, they will blame the Government. They will have it every single way there is.

At the beginning of the right hon. Gentleman’s speech he suggested that there were only three possibilities—

Three possibilities in logic.

Indeed, so why, when the right hon. Gentleman was a member of the Wakeham Committee, did he sign up to a fourth—a mixed House by proportional representation?

I did not—[Interruption.] I specifically did not. If the hon. Gentleman looks at that part of the report he will see, first, that it was not a recommendation but an option and, secondly, that the section to which he refers was supported by a majority of the royal commission. I had that provision included because I told the secretary of the royal commission that I would not sign the report if it recommended election to the other place, so I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for allowing me to make that absolutely clear.

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

Of course.

I am most grateful to my right hon. Friend, who is also my friend, for giving way.

It is curious that my right hon. Friend says that simply because people in the other House might be elected it would give them the confidence to interfere in constituency matters. Does he have much trouble with his local Member of the European Parliament taking up constituency casework? I do not think that any of us experience such trouble; there may be occasional events, but they are very occasional. MEPs have a different remit.

As my hon. Friend knows, there are several local MEPs, because of the absurd way in which the European Parliament is elected. One of them, my very good friend, Arlene McCarthy, who is Labour, of course supports everything I do. Others, from different political parties, do not have the same credentials.

I have to tell my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House that there is no future whatever for his proposals, regardless of what happens this evening. Whatever happens here this evening, the other place will make its decisions and, in addition, we have to take account of the fact that later this year we shall have a new Prime Minister who will not be barmy enough to allow the only full Session of this Parliament before he calls a general election—which Labour will win—to be bogged down with this ludicrous nonsense. Whether it is my right hon. Friend the Chancellor or somebody else, he or she will want to spend the Session presenting excellent, sensible, constructive Labour policies to help us win the election; he will not want it bogged down by the same absurdity that bogged down the Labour Government in 1966—with Michael Foot and Enoch Powell—and the same absurdity that Robin Cook, brilliant as he was, proposed to the House of Commons.

Whatever we decide this evening has no future in this Parliament. However, I want to make it absolutely clear to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House that if—as I think quite possible—there is a vote for some elected element, the Government had better not use that vote to put in our Labour party manifesto a commitment that we will carry out the decision on a three-line Whip in the next Parliament. In 37 years I have never voted against the Labour Whip, but if the Government try that on—[Interruption.] I have been unanimously reselected in my constituency and if the Government try that on, I shall be there watching—subject to the wishes of the electorate in Gorton, bless them. I tell my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn—I am abiding by the Speaker’s rulings and strictures—that I am very fond of him but I hope that under the new Prime Minister he will move on to a post where he can exercise his talents in a more constructive and sensible way.

It was instructive to hear the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman) constructing the obituary of parliamentary democracy: whatever this House decides, a new Executive will ignore it. That was the tenor of the right hon. Gentleman’s speech. Irrespective of the majorities that may be secured in this House, a new Prime Minister will ignore it. That is the argument in a nutshell.

There is a slight sense of “after the Lord Mayor’s show” about today’s proceedings, because we had such an excellent debate yesterday. However, I want to record my appreciation to the Leader of the House for his work on the cross-party group. It was an interesting group on which to serve; we did not always agree, but we found much common ground. The White Paper that resulted from our deliberations was not in every detail what we, the Conservatives or even the Government would have liked, but it gives us a basis on which to discuss the matter.

I proffer apologies to the House from the Liberal Democrats for the fact that we failed miserably to finish the job properly in 1911. The preamble to the Parliament Act states:

“And whereas it is intended to substitute for the House of Lords as it at present exists a Second Chamber constituted on a popular instead of hereditary basis, but such substitution cannot immediately be brought into operation.”

The expediency of 1911 has been a matter of much regret since. Here we are, discussing the matter yet again nearly 100 years later.

I agree with all those who say that we should be talking about reform not just of the House of Lords but of Parliament. We should also be talking about democratic renewal because there is a great need to revitalise our democratic institutions at all levels. This reform is simply a component part of that process.

I have been tussling with a conundrum that the hon. Gentleman may be able to solve. Why are he and his party so determined that there must be elections to the House of Lords, which has no powers at all, bar those of revising and advising this place, yet they are more than happy to give more and more powers to the European Union and thus to an unelected European Commission that controls 80 per cent. of UK laws? He and his party have nothing to say about that.

The hon. Gentleman is quite wrong to say that we have nothing to say about democratic renewal in the European Union, but that is not the matter before us today.

May I deal with the various points raised in the debate yesterday and today? First, there is the perfectly respectable argument that is put forward by those who favour a unicameral system. Those who believe that we should not have a second Chamber have a degree of logic on their side. It is not a position that I particularly agree with, but at least I can see that there is an internal logic to their argument. Their difficulty lies in establishing how the House of Commons would properly function as a Chamber instigating legislation and revising it in one move. That is done in some legislatures, but the majority of larger countries—countries with more complex legislation and economies—find that there is the need for a revising Chamber that can take some of the work load, although I agree with one of my colleagues, who said yesterday that the work load argument cannot be carried to a conclusion, because we can organise our work more effectively than we do at the moment. At least those who believe in abolition have a clear view—a view that I respect, but do not support.

I have a great deal more difficulty with some of the other arguments that have been adduced. First, it is argued, on the grounds of utility, that the House of Lords does an excellent job and, that being so, that it is unnecessary to make any reform. I am certainly one of the first to say that there should be respect between the two Chambers. I respect enormously the work done by many Members of the House of Lords, as presently constituted in its capacity as a revising Chamber. They do us many favours in looking at legislation that we inadequately scrutinise and often asking this House to think again.

I am not sure, however, that that respect necessarily extends to every current Member of the House of Lords. Many of them appear rarely, if at all. Some are suspected of owing their place more to their cheque book than to their intrinsic merits. Some, frankly, are the dead wood of this House who have been moved to the other place to make way for perhaps more enterprising replacements. Some have been convicted of criminal offences, but retain their seats in our legislature. There is a limit to the arguments about respect.

Secondly, there is the argument about the effectiveness of the other Chamber. Again, having dealt over recent years with difficult Home Office and Department for Constitutional Affairs legislation, I have reason to be grateful for the good sense of those in the Lords who have been prepared to defy the Government and say, “Think again.” But I am also conscious of the fact that, at the end of the day, they have always had to give in to this House, without this House properly considering the arguments that have been put. That is a key issue. We have an extraordinary system at the moment—at the end of the Session, when we have the ping-pong—whereby we have a so-called message from the Lords, which we dispose of in an hour’s debate, with most Back Benchers not being able to contribute, scant real debate on the issues and no opportunity for conciliation. That does not demonstrate respect between the two Houses and it does not allow for this House and the other place to do their work effectively.

I do not know whether my hon. Friend has ever sat on a Reasons Committee for one of its one or two-minute meetings, at which it sets out the reasons for the Commons disagreeing with the Lords. If he had, he would realise that the extraordinary pointlessness of that exercise demonstrates the cavalier way in which we sometimes treat this process.

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. I have sat on many Reasons Committees. I clearly remember one occasion when it was decided that, “the reason that this House disagrees with the House of Lords is because we do not agree with it.” That was the only argument that could be produced in the little room behind the Speaker’s Chair. We do not agree, so we send the legislation back and eventually we win the day in this House because of the primacy of the Commons. That is not the way to get good legislation and good legislation is what we should be about.

The third argument relates to the unique expertise in another place. Again, there are some wonderful experts in that place, but they are in well-defined areas. We have wonderful lawyers, excellent generals, and a few—not many, and certainly not many in the scientific disciplines—academics, but there are no expert plumbers, carpenters or waste disposal operatives. The other place has a limited range of expertise. A Conservative Member argued yesterday that we should have a House derived from specific guilds, which would provide that expertise. That might be a Platonic ideal, but it is not one that should commend itself to a democratic 21st century country such as the United Kingdom.

May I take the hon. Gentleman back to the argument about what happens at the end of the Session, when we have ping-pong, and about the negotiations that take place between the two Houses to get the legislation on to the statute book? We are not going to change that system today; what we are going to change is how the House of Lords is comprised. What has he got to say about that?

What I have to say about that is that not all the reforms that I want to see encompassed are within the White Paper or included among the motions on the Order Paper today, but I hope that we can discuss the reform of Parliament in the context of this debate.

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there is a fuller answer to the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Mr. Hall)? If the House of Lords is largely elected, the relationship between the two Houses will have to be one of greater respect, because it will be more often invoked and it will be necessary for us to negotiate more.

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I was going to come on to that argument in relation to the legitimacy of the other House.

May I dispose of one more argument? There is a broad argument for the status quo. It is heard a lot in the other place from some people who have scrambled up the ladder of privilege to be Members of the House of Lords and who survey the world from the top of that ladder and think that it must be an exceedingly good system that put them there. It is a ladder of privilege. I am not talking about privilege in the normal sense. It is a privilege to serve in our Parliament—in this House and in another place. But that needs to be based on legitimacy. I just wonder whether some right hon. and hon. Members in this House may have their feet somewhere up that ladder of privilege and may be reluctant to let go of the higher rungs.

The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful point. Perhaps the House of Lords would have more legitimacy if its Members turned up and did anything. According to TheyWorkForYou.com, the average number of appearances in the last year for most peers is five. Does he agree that that is not good enough?

I certainly agree that there are a large number of people who are created peers of the realm, with a place in the House of Lords, who do not use that place effectively. If people take the privileges associated with the title, they should also accept the duties of the job.

The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) is absolutely right on that point. Surely what we need is a much more concerted and professional focus. Is it not emblematic of the problem of amateurishness and part-time commitment in the other House that 25 per cent. of Members of the Second Chamber ask 87 per cent. of the questions and make 76 per cent. of the speeches and interventions? Vast numbers contribute scarcely at all. That is the reality.

The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point. I must now make progress because of the limited time.

The issue is not utility, but legitimacy, which is why I want a legitimate second House. I am astonished by some people’s argument that they want a House that is illegitimate—something that cannot be defended—as part of our constitutional settlement. It is extraordinary for people to identify the illegitimacy, yet to say that nothing should be done about that because they are pleased to have an illegitimate House making the laws on behalf of this country.

It does not make the laws.

Despite what the hon. Gentleman says, even under this Government it is still Parliament that passes Acts, and there are two Houses in our Parliament.

I do not accept that there is a threat to the primacy of this House, about which there has been a lot of debate. I wish that the House would take its primacy more seriously, especially in the area of Supply. My hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (David Howarth) said yesterday that we should be doing an awful lot more to scrutinise the Supply functions of the House.

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

I am sorry, but I cannot at the moment.

We need to recognise that our primacy comes primarily from our ability to make or break a Government. That will be the case irrespective of reform of the other place.

There are those who argue that we must debate function before we can debate form. That circular argument is a delaying tactic that is designed purely to obfuscate, rather than to elucidate. We know the present functions of the Lords. Yes, we would like to see them evolve, but we know what they are and how they could be best suited to the form that we are suggesting.

There are those who argue that deadlock will inevitably emerge from reform. Why? We are not the only country in the world that has ever contemplated having two elected Houses of Parliament. Are all countries with an elected upper Chamber hamstrung and in deadlock? Of course they are not. I reject that argument.

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

I do not have time.

The slippery-slope argument is precisely the argument that has been used over the years by every reactionary voice against any democratic improvement in this country. We heard about the slippery slope of giving men who were not peers of the realm the vote, for heaven’s sake, and of giving people who were not householders the vote. People said, “Giving women the vote—where will it all end?” The situation has always been the same: the voices of reaction, from wherever they appear in the Chamber, have always sung the same tune.

It is quite wrong that hon. Members should contemplate for one moment a wholly appointed House that would have no legitimacy and would be a House of political patronage. That is not what the people of this country want or what this House wants, as it has demonstrated previously. I am confident that we will reject that option, but if we do so, we must support amendment (c) to the motion on hereditary places. It would be quite perverse for us to reject an appointed House, but to end up with a fully appointed House simply through the removal of the hereditaries. I want them removed—let there be no doubt about that—because there is no case for a hereditary principle in a modern Parliament, but if the hereditaries were removed without any further democratic reform, we would end up with a fully appointed House.

rose—

I am sorry, but I am not going to take any more interventions because the debate is time limited. I know that you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, would want me to conclude soon.

We have a clear manifesto commitment to a predominantly elected House, which I interpret as one in which at least 80 per cent. of Members are elected.

Look in the dictionary.

I do not need to look in the dictionary to understand the word “predominantly”. It does not mean half and half.

The word “predominantly” does not mean half and half, but will the hon. Gentleman explain how, according to the Liberal Democrat lexicon, it means wholly elected, but not 60 per cent. elected?

If the right hon. Gentleman believes that appointing four out of every 10 peers by a political process will result in a predominantly elected House, I fundamentally disagree with him. In a debate in which we are being asked to express our preference, I will not vote for an option that would result in a House that would be unsupportable and unsustainable.

rose—

This is taking time.

It is a shame, that.

I think that the hon. Gentleman’s argument is that he is trying to be true to his manifesto. However, the manifesto said nothing about a wholly elected second Chamber, so I assume that that was not supported by the Liberal Democrats. Why are the Liberal Democrats thus saying that they will vote for a wholly elected second Chamber, which is palpably not consistent with their manifesto, yet that they will not vote for a 60 per cent. elected second Chamber, which, it is highly arguable, would be consistent with what their manifesto said?

Perhaps it is difficult for the right hon. Gentleman to conceive of the idea that my hon. Friends might have looked at the manifesto and the proposals before us and decided that 60:40 would not be something that they would wish to support. Those who want that option as an expedient because they think that it might scrape its way through the House are basing their position on the wholly optimistic view that that option would inevitably result in a higher proportion of elected Members. I take the totally pessimistic view that if such an option were passed by the House, some in Government circles would be happy to grab that proposal and say that it was the end of the story. We would thus end up with a House that was almost 50 per cent. composed of Tony’s cronies, and I will not vote for that.

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that if we were to go for 80:20, we could squeeze out the patronage? Surely that is important in the current climate.

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I only hope that he can carry a majority of his hon. Friends with him. I have the quaint idea that manifestos should mean something to Back Benchers; even they should feel a sense of shame when they do not support the view expressed in them.

Three parties are committed to the democratic reform of the House of Lords. We will find out later whether that translates into a majority in the House. I worry about the siren voices who say that they want democratic reform of the House of Lords, yet want the new Members of the House of Lords to look as much as possible like Members of the House of Commons, with constituencies near to the size of those of hon. Members, and want those Members to be elected by the same system used for elections to the House of Commons. We should resist those siren voices because we know that that would be unacceptable to the House.

The House should take a clear view. It would be a great shame if we were unable to do so. If we are unable to reach a clear conclusion, it will be because of the voting system that will be used. It is instructive that the people who were vociferously against the preferential voting system proposed by the Leader of the House are exactly the same people who are expressing the view that they want no change—over their dead bodies will they see change in the House of Lords. I regret that. They took a potentially dishonest view. However, even within the constraints of a very poor voting system, the House can take a view, and that view should be for reform.

If the Commons votes for electing some or all Members of the House of Lords, we are likely to be heading for a constitutional shambles with two sets of elected representatives in perpetual conflict. I want Lords reform—I go further: I want a lot more parliamentary reform—but we will not get that if we vote for such an option. We would be changing the membership of the Lords without clarifying and codifying its functions. As a result, when the Prime Minister moves out of Downing street to concentrate on his memoirs and lectures, his successor would be left with a parliamentary mess on top of all the other problems of government.

A House of Lords that was wholly, or even partly, elected would change the whole basis of our parliamentary system. At present, the House of Commons always gets its way, providing it can tolerate delay. However, most of the constraints on the Lords are voluntary conventions that peers have had to accept because they have no democratic legitimacy. People elected to the House of Lords would have democratic legitimacy. Indeed, if the new Lords are elected by any system other than first past the post, supporters of proportional representation will tell us that the House of Lords has more legitimacy than the House of Commons. The dynamics of the Lords, and of the relationship between the Houses, will change. No self-respecting elected peer will be bound by conventions arrived at before they took their seats. That is why I believe that what is proposed is likely to lead at worst to a major constitutional crisis, and at best to debilitating and protracted friction between the two Houses, which will add further delay to the workings of Government. Instead of bringing about much-needed improvements to Parliament’s process of legislation and scrutiny of the Executive, it would make matters worse.

Before we decide how the House of Lords should be made up, we need to decide what job we want it to do, and what limits there will be to its powers. Until that is decided, we cannot sensibly say how its Members should be chosen. It would be like being asked to pick a team before we knew whether it would play rugby league, with its orderly play the ball rules, or rugby union, with its disorderly rucks and mauls—or, for that matter, before we knew which of any pair of virtually irreconcilable games was being played. If we want to retain the ultimate supremacy of the Commons over the Lords, we will have to thrash out each Chamber’s powers and responsibilities and enshrine them in statute law; conventions will not do.

The usual arguments put forward for the House of Lords refer to its three distinct functions. The first function is to act as a revising Chamber that amends parliamentary Bills, yet the vast majority of the amendments agreed to in the Lords are proposed by the Government. It is really more of a Tipp-Ex Chamber, correcting things that the Government got wrong or forgot in the Commons. The House of Lords makes up for the Government’s failure to produce well thought out and well drafted Bills, and for the inadequacy of Commons procedures for scrutinising Bills. The next argument is that the House of Lords is there, in sporting parlance, to mark the Commons—for example, to prevent a Government from using their Commons majority to ride roughshod over basic human rights. However, as Winston Churchill pointed out as long ago as 1910, there can be no democratic justification for giving hereditary peers the right to thwart the will of the elected House of Commons. The same principle must apply to appointed peers.

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

No, I shall not. I want to get on, and other people want to speak. I understand that my hon. Friend spoke yesterday.

The converse of the proposition that non-elected peers have no right to interfere with the Commons is the proposition that elected peers would claim that right. The remaining argument is that some peers bring to debates an expertise that is not generally available in the Commons. There is some truth in that. For example, no Commons Members have expertise and distinction to compare with that of, say, a former president of the Royal College of Physicians or a fellow of the Royal Society. Such expertise would clearly be eliminated from a wholly elected House of Lords, and much diminished in a partly elected one.

Before we decide on the membership of the Lords, we need to sort out its powers and duties, but a much bigger job is needed if we are to turn back the rising tide of public dissatisfaction with our democratic institutions—with Parliament in general, and with the House of Commons in particular. We must strengthen Parliament’s relationship with the Government. We need to augment and strengthen the law making powers and procedures of the House of Commons. We frequently produce faulty laws that cannot possibly be understood by the lay people who are expected to implement them. Just as importantly, many Acts of Parliament do not, in practice, have the effects intended by the Government of the day, and messing about with the membership of the Lords will not change that.

Very few people have ever complained to me about what the House of Lords is doing wrong. They complain about the failure of the House of Commons to do its job properly. We are failing to take on the real issues of how we improve our own procedures, and how we could do a better job for the people of the country. We are diverting our efforts into messing about with the House of Lords. Ultimately, the House of Lords will need to be changed, but we need to sort out what we are doing first. We must do that, as a proper response to growing concerns about the effectiveness of our system of government. We are at the heart of that system, which needs sorting out, as our current set-up is not satisfactory. The people of the country deserve better, especially at a time when all the main parties say that they are open to fresh ideas. The public want our country to be better governed, and they are right. Making any of the changes that are proposed today will have precious little impact on that, and it will not be a worthwhile exercise.

I begin my short contribution with a confession: as a legislator—but not, I hope, as a parliamentarian—I have been an abysmal failure since I entered Parliament in 1997. [Hon. Members: “No!”] I appreciate the noises of protest, but it is true. Not one piece of legislation has been changed as a result of my presence in this House for nearly 10 years. I suspect that that would have been the case, even if I had been fortunate enough to sit on the Government Benches—as a Back Bencher, at any rate—but perhaps that is not the case.

It was not always thus. Back in the 1980s, I had the privilege of acting as specialist adviser to a small group of peers, one of whom was Baroness Cox. Sadly, the other four are no longer with us.

The hon. Gentleman is a jinx.

I am not sure why the hon. Gentleman finds that amusing. I think that when distinguished Members of the other House pass away, we ought to show some respect. The other four with whom I worked were the late Lord Beloff, the late Lord Kimberley, the late Lord Orr-Ewing and, in the latter part of the late 1980s, the late Lord Wyatt of Weeford. As I say, it was an immense privilege to know and work with those gentlemen and that lady, who were of various parties. I worked with them to consider legislation that was being considered in the Commons in a party political way, but that could benefit from amendment on a cross-party basis in the other House.

As a result of that work, the Trade Union Act 1984 was amended after a revolt in the House of Lords. The Lords introduced registers for properly secure postal ballots for trade union elections. Postal ballots for trade union elections were made law in the Employment Act 1988. The Education Act 1986 was amended, against the wishes of the Government, to prevent political indoctrination in the classroom. The revolt in the House of Lords was so strong, and the arguments so compelling, that when the Bill came back before the House of Commons, the House of Commons and the Government listened and the law was changed. Similarly, in the Local Government Act 1988, measures were introduced to prevent indoctrination and propaganda about the rates. Those measures still hold good today, and they have been good enough to be carried forward in subsequent legislation. In the Broadcasting Act 1990, detailed provisions were included to ensure impartiality on television. Although the provisions are not always observed, they at least set a benchmark and set out what should happen when controversial, politically contentious issues are aired in the mass media.

As a result of the Lords’ ability to combine expertise and cross-party commitment to a cause when considering a Bill, it was possible to amend legislation. I have to ask myself whether that job of revision, improvement and refinement would be in any way improved if we had a wholly or partly elected upper House. I answer my own question with a resounding no. Yesterday, I experienced another failure. Despite trying on 11 separate occasions to persuade the Leader of the House to give way to me, I was not successful. That is rare, as he is usually extremely courteous.

rose—

I am about to be courteous to him.

If the hon. Gentleman wants to ask his question now that the positions are reversed, as it were, he is welcome to do so. May I point out that I accepted 24 interventions, so my speech, which was scheduled to last less than 20 minutes, ended up as a 40-minute speech?

I am delighted that the Leader of the House has responded as I calculated that he would, and I shall proceed to ask him what I was trying to ask him yesterday. On reflection, does he wish to give me a slightly different answer from the one that he gave to the question that I asked in the meeting of peers and Members of Parliament that he kindly attended on 30 January? I asked how precisely would the function of the House of Lords be improved as a result of the incorporation of an elected element. As I recall, he said that in the 21st century, it was no longer legitimate to have a purely appointed House. If I missed something, I will happily give way so that he can clarify that response.

As I spelt out yesterday—I am glad that the hon. Gentleman was listening—a fundamental argument in favour of change is the issue of legitimacy. People can make up their minds, but I do not think that it is acceptable, this time, to have a wholly appointed Chamber. That is my opinion. I believe, too—I spelt it out yesterday—that as the second Chamber becomes more legitimate so its scrutiny of Government will increase. I do not fear that, because it is perfectly possible to accommodate it without challenging the primacy of the Commons and its ability to sustain a Government.

That is a classic case, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Maples) said in his excellent speech yesterday, of a solution looking for a problem. There is a determination in different parts of the House, including among Ministers, to introduce an elected House of Lords because they think that is right. I am indebted to the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath)—we should all be grateful to him—for stating that the issue is not utility but legitimacy. There is a visceral or emotional rejection of the notion that the upper House should be appointed, as we have not heard a rational explanation of how an elected Chamber would perform the function of the upper House any better. Indeed, if it is elected under any conceivable electoral system discussed in the long hours of debate yesterday and today, we can be sure that independence and cross-party co-operation will vanish in a puff of smoke. We will end up with a situation that no one in their right mind would vote for if they were asked whether they thought that the House of Commons had too few—not too many—professional politicians, and if they were asked whether it should be doubled in size.

We are being asked to double the community of elected politicians, and put them in two Chambers, rather than one. We are expected to believe that the second Chamber, having secured the same legitimacy as the Commons Chamber—everyone is anxious to give it that legitimacy—will be content to be regarded as the subordinate Chamber. That shows breathtaking naivety, but I do not think that everyone who has enunciated that proposition believes it. I recall a conversation with a profound Front-Bench thinker in my party.

That limits it.

Indeed. I suggested that that proposition was in danger of creating deadlock between the two Houses, and it would undermine our ability to function if we ever came to power. He gave a purist, nihilist response: “Julian, you must realise that if you oppose interference by Government that would be a very good result.”

It was Eric Forth.

No, it was not. In fact, it was someone who has taken part in this debate.

It took a great deal of effort for me to enter the House, and I did not do so to sit around playing a deadlocked game of chess or draughts. I wanted to try to improve things as best I could for my constituents and, perhaps in a small way, for the country. We have been told that the upper House does not include experts in everything. The logic of that argument is that because it does not have experts in everything it should not have experts in anything. As a shadow Defence Minister, I believe that we get far more out of a second Chamber in which the Chief of the Defence Staff, who served under the Prime Minister during his first four years in office, now serves. He has been released from his shackles or harness to serve in the House of Lords, and he can say what he thinks the Government are doing right, and what they are doing wrong. To replace Lord Guthrie with a list-elected party political hack is absolutely absurd. If they are to carry the argument, people who want an elected second Chamber must do better. They must show how elected Members will improve the role of the second Chamber to revise and improve legislation. The role of the Commons Chamber is to introduce legislation, and that complementary role will be served in future, as it has been in the past, only by an appointed second House of Parliament.

I would have been more impressed by the contribution of the hon. Member for New Forest, East (Dr. Lewis) if I had not just reread the debates on the Reform Act 1832. The arguments about the catastrophic consequences of introducing democracy in the House of Commons find a striking echo in the arguments about introducing a degree of democracy in the second Chamber.

We have been here many, many times before. I sometimes think that these debates on the House of Lords are the parliamentary equivalent of predictive texting. We need only hear a certain word and we know the speech that will follow. It must be easy for Hansard reporters, as they hear the words “legitimacy” or “gridlock” and off they go, knowing everything that will follow. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House can claim to have listened to us, because he is probably the only Member of the House who has come before us and said, “I’ve thought about the issue again, and gone back to first principles. I have read and thought my way through it, and I have submitted a proposition that is different from the one in which I used to believe, but I have been persuaded by the arguments.” That gives him a particular kind of authority.

We ought to be resolute and fixed about the purpose of any reform, but flexible about the means of achieving it. In a sense, that is a second order issue. In many respects, the compositional question is a second order issue. We ought to be resolute about the purpose of the second Chamber and the purpose of reform.

I can claim some slight affinity with my right hon. Friend—I have changed my mind several times on the compositional issue. Before I was a Member of the House, I wrote to The Guardian saying that the second Chamber should be composed on the basis of random selection. I remember that my letter was decorated with a cartoon which showed two readers of The Sun talking to each other at the public bar. One was saying to the other, “Cor blimey! Look, I’ve just been put into the Lords.”

I have believed in functional representation. I have even believed in this House being the electoral college that should choose Members of the second Chamber—not an entirely absurd suggestion, by the way, because it was recommended also by an official commission in 1919. So I have been round the circuit on the issue, but the fixed part of the argument has always been that the House of Lords—the second Chamber—can help us to strengthen our democracy, if we get the design of it right.

As it happens, the public can help us not at all on the matter. There was a splendid Populus poll for The Times about a year ago, which found that 75 per cent. of people believed that

“The Lords should remain a mainly appointed house because this gives it a degree of independence from electoral politics and allows people with a broad range of experience and expertise to be involved”—