Oral Answers to Questions

Sadiq Khan Excerpts

Tuesday 1st March 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I do not agree with my hon. Friend, for the simple reason that a principle is at stake—that those who make the laws of the land should be accountable, as is common to bicameral systems across the democratic world, to the people who have to abide by those laws. That is a simple principle. As he knows, we are committed by the coalition agreement to introducing legislation for a wholly or mainly elected House of Lords. As I said, we shall publish a Bill shortly, and it will then be subject to extensive scrutiny by a Joint Committee of both Houses.

[Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

The Deputy Prime Minister has just confirmed what he said at the last Deputy Prime Minister’s Questions, which is that he has not made up him mind whether the draft Bill will keep his promise to have a 100% fully elected second Chamber, or whether there will only be a partially elected one.

On another issue of timing, the Deputy Prime Minister has said that he will publish the draft Bill shortly. Before the general election he said that a Bill would be published within six to seven weeks of a new Parliament being formed, and the coalition agreement said that one would be published by December 2010. I know that he is a busy, hard-working Deputy Prime Minister, so when exactly can we expect to see this draft Bill, and what is the reason for the delay?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I profess to being a little surprised, given that the right hon. Gentleman sat in the cross-party Committee that I chair, and I seem to remember that our last meeting was shortly before Christmas. He may profess ignorance of this matter, but he knows very well that the Committee, which I think has been proceeding in a methodical, co-operative and cross-party manner to try to create a cross-party consensus, concluded its work only relatively recently. He attended the last meeting shortly before Christmas, and we are now doing the work in government, which is entirely reasonable, to present a draft Bill based on that Committee’s work—and as I said, we shall do that shortly.