House of Lords Reform Bill

Nadhim Zahawi Excerpts

Monday 3rd September 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

Of course I am satisfied that the Prime Minister did all he could. This happens in politics, but thankfully our political parties are not North Korean political parties that jump when their leaders say jump. I should know that as well as anybody after this weekend’s press coverage.

This debate divides opinion and provokes strong reactions in people. In this instance, as the Prime Minister has said, he sought to persuade Members of his own party, but the commitment that he and I made to having the first elections take place in 2015 proved not to be possible. What we have done is perfectly sensible, and it happens from time to time in politics. We have drawn a line under that issue and the boundaries issue, and we will move on with the many important matters, particularly economic ones, that we must now tackle.

[Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)]

The Deputy Prime Minister talks about the shortcomings of the Steel Bill, but he also speaks passionately about the unwieldy number of Lords, about patronage and about all the other things that we can get on and reform now. I implore him to produce a short Bill to get on with those reforms, building on Lord Steel’s Bill. Or is he just an all-or-nothing man?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

As I have said, I suspect that if the situation was quite as straightforward as the hon. Gentleman feels, reformers in the past and over the past couple of years would have reached the eureka moment. As I explained, the Steel Bill would make only a tiny difference to the size of the House of Lords. As the debates over the past several months have proved, anything more substantial appears to be too controversial right now. That is why we have rightly said that the Government are now going to focus on the things that people want us to focus on, as I believe he has urged me to do in the past. We want to ensure that we create circumstances in which growth and an increase in jobs take root in our economy.