House of Lords Reform and Size of the House of Commons

Ian Murray Excerpts

Wednesday 19th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Pete Wishart]

I would support Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan and their many hordes if it helped to defeat this Government. I have no issue or problem with supporting the House of Lords when it gets something right, but that does not make it any better on these issues. I have sensed the pain in the past few months of so many Conservative Back Benchers who have looked at this place and got increasingly upset that the Lords has defied its will. This Government do not particularly like to be challenged, but the fact that they are being challenged by an unelected, undemocratic House is beginning to disturb the Conservative party, and so I say join us in dealing with this undemocratic disgrace.

[Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)]

I agree that we should be doing something about the House of Lords quickly. I know that the hon. Gentleman is an intelligent character, so perhaps he can help me out with some maths. The current Prime Minister and the former Prime Minister have wanted to cut the number in this place from 650 to 600 to save £12 million, yet they have stuffed the other place, costing £34 million. To me, that sounds like a cost, not a saving.

[Pete Wishart]

The hon. Gentleman is spot on, although actually it is worse than that, as the last figures we have are for 2014-15, when the cost of the House of Lords was approaching £100 million—that is what we are actually spending on it. Instead of reducing that, this Government’s sole intention and ambition on the House of Lords is to continue to increase the size of that place.

Let us take a cursory look at our latest batch of new parliamentarians—the 16 new appointees from the former Prime Minister’s resignation list. This list was oozing and dripping with patronage and cronyism. We now have 16 shiny new parliamentarians to welcome to these Houses of Parliament, but let us look at who they are. Thirteen of them are Conservative—[Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] Let me tell people exactly what they are like before they say that. Five of them were senior members of staff in the former Prime Minister’s office, with one a former special adviser to that Prime Minister. One was a special adviser to the former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. One is a Conservative treasurer who just so happened to have given the Conservative party millions and millions of pounds over the years. Curiously—this is the one that gets me—one is the former leader of the Conservative remain campaign, who, I suggest, is not getting a peerage for any great success that he has delivered to the Conservative party.