Reform of the House of Lords is now on agenda. How do we make Government relevant to the people of the country?

The last ten years has seen some big changes already – with devolution to Scotland, Wales and London and the beginning of a process of reform to the House of Lords.  Last week, this process took its next important step forward with a statement from the Leader of the House and a White Paper setting out the options available to us.

The importance of the House of Lords is sometimes underestimated.  Not all countries have a bicameral or a two chamber Parliament, but most big ones do.  This is because the amount of legislation that there is means that a second chamber is needed to scrutinise the decisions of the House of Commons.  Getting a workable House of Lords is therefore an important step towards getting fit for purpose laws.

This is something that Labour promised to take action on back in 1996 and again in our 2005 Election Manifesto, so I am pleased to see that the process is underway again. There are a myriad of views as to the best way forward but I think that if people are prepared to work towards a broad common position, then we have a real opportunity to make some progress.

The Government is proposing that a reformed House should be partly elected and partly appointed. It will now be for Parliament to set out what the exact composition of a reformed House will be.

When he was launching the White Paper, the Leader of the House, Jack Straw said: “I believe that the approach outlined represents the best opportunity to make progress. It is, in our view, a unique opportunity to move forward with reform to make the House of Lords a more effective, legitimate and representative chamber, fully playing its part in a 21st century democracy.”

I would like to see the hereditary principle where members of the House of Lords still sit in the chamber because of their ancestry removed.  We also need to think about whether there is still a place for appointed peers, and whether it would be right to elect some members of the House of Lords.  Ultimately, we have to find a way of making the House of Lords work as a revising chamber without it in any way undermining the supremacy of the House of Commons. It is in the Commons that directly elected MPs raise and discuss their constituents concerns.

This debate will quite rightly go on through the spring and I would be very pleased to hear from constituents with their views on this historic decision.