Off with their hereditaries!

The government is determined to modernise Parliament

The government has provoked censure in both houses with its latest proposals for Lords reforms.

The Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, gave a statement to the House of Lords on Thursday morning outlining the government's plans.

Conservative leader in the House of Lords Lord Strathclyde responded: "This is a fundamentally dishonest statement. It is pretending the government is still interested in long-term reform when it is pushing a short-term political fix."

Exclusions

At the centre of the scheme is the abolition of the remaining 92 hereditary peers in Parliament's second chamber and disqualification for peers with criminal convictions.

Proposed changes Removal of all hereditary peers A statutory, independent Appointments Commission, with transparent processes, to ensure a balanced chamber with no governmental majority Retain current size, reducing to 600 members over time Peers convicted of a criminal offence lose right to sit and vote and hold titles PM able to make up to five ministerial appointments per Parliament to the Lords Peers have option of renouncing peerages to vote in national elections

Lord Falconer explained that the latter proposal would simply bring the House of Lords into line with the Commons and the policy would be applied retrospectively - meaning the exclusion of the recently released perjurer Lord Archer.

"Parliament is a privilege not a possession," he said.

He maintained the proposals did not relate to the powers of the Lords, but were: "part of the programme of constitutional reform which the government has been pursuing since 1997...to make the institutions of the state fit and responsive to the demands of our citizens in the modern world."

The statement also set out an intention to establish a statutory Appointments Commission for overseeing appointments to the Lords.

Commons response

Junior Constitutional Affairs Minister Chris Leslie repeated the statement in the Commons later in the afternoon and drew even fiercer criticism.

Shadow Attorney General Bill Cash said: "Anyone would think the constitution of this country was the personal chattel of the prime minister and his cronies."

He went on: "The government is engaged in short-term gerrymandering and cynical political arithmetic."

The government's suggestions follow the failure of attempts to develop a solution to reforming the Upper Chamber by consensus earlier in the year.

They are inviting responses to the suggestions - detailed in the consultation paper 'Constitutional Reform: next steps for the House of Lords' - by 12 December.

For further details write to:-

Bola Akinbileje
Constitutional Policy Division
Department of Constitutional Affairs
1st Floor
South Side
105 Victoria Street
London
SW1E 6QT

or telephone [phone]

or

click here for the Department of Constitutional Affairs website

You can watch Lord Falconer's statement and the ensuing debate on BBC Parliament at 2155 BST on Sunday 21 September.

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