Lords reform stumped New Labour in 1997 when they had a whopping majority. With that kind of incident in the recent past, you’d think Nick Clegg would know he was about to start fighting a battle that he’d already lost.
It has been suggested that this is Clegg’s consolation prize for his failure in the AV referendum. If that’s the case, it’s not much of a prize. All the signs suggest that he’s about to put his name to another failed package of reforms. The only difference is that this time the failure is going to be slowly drawn out over the next couple of years.
The deputy prime minister will today publish a “range of options” for reforming the upper house. There are various details flying around about this draft Bill – James Landale suggests it will propose a chamber of 300 members serving 15-year terms, with one-third elected by PR every five years. Elsewhere, it is suggested that the bill will propose that 80% of this new chamber be elected. But Rachel Sylvester’s column in the Times this morning reveals that government sources say that this is a “purely illustrative figure” and that they “have no preferred option”. Sounds to me like Clegg is on his own with this one.
Add to that the lengthy process that lies ahead of this bill. The publication today is of an annexe to a White Paper on the future of the Lords. Clegg has already said that any resulting bill won’t be introduced to the Commons for at least a year. A joint committee of MPs and peers will scrutinise it, and will presumably have their own problems and suggestions for it. And then if and when it actually comes to votes in both the Commons and the Lords, it is far from certain it will be passed. As our survey from last month shows, the vast majority of Lords of all parties don’t support an 80% elected house and say they wouldn’t stand for election to it. Turkeys don’t vote for Christmas.
It’s a “third-term” issue, No 10 say. In reality, there are so many points between today’s publication and the actual implementation of reform where these ideas can be quietly jettisoned that you could be forgiven for thinking that Downing Street weren’t wholly committed to reform.
Once again, it would seem that Nick Clegg is being set up to fail.
UPDATE 1445: ComRes have just released some new survey data on how the Lords feel about the latest proposals. Here are the headline figures:
Nearly 80% think it's fairly or very unlikely that any major reforms will be passed during the current Parliament. 78% oppose replacing the current house with 300 senators elected by PR. Their opposition seems to be hardening.
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