Downing Street Says » Constitutional Reform

» Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Constitutional Reform

Asked if Constitutional Reform included House of Lords reform, the PMS referred to the Prime Minister’s statement on the Constitutional Reform Agenda on 3 July and said that it was much wider than just the issue of the House of Lords reform.

Asked if it was fair to characterise it as everything except House of Lords and voting, the PMS said that the House of Lords was being taken forward; there was a broad agenda of constitutional reform matters and the House of Lords was clearly part of that. There was a statement on a wide-ranging package of measures announced by the Prime Minister in July.

Put that the Prime Minister’s ideas highlighted in his Constitutional Reform Agenda statement on 3 July, e.g. a statement of British values/a British Bill of Rights and Duties, amounted to a British Constitution and would consider having a referendum on that, the PMS said that that was getting way ahead of ourselves; the proposals set out in July were how we could work up a British statement of values which might then be a pre-cursor for a British Bill of Rights at some point in the future should a consensus emerge around that following discussions; we needed to take this step by step.

Asked, to that end, if there would be anything constitutional in the Queen’s speech, the PMS replied that the draft Queen’s speech had stated that there would be a Constitutional Reform Bill.

Asked if Jack Straw had specified any areas where progress had been made re the Constitutional Reform Agenda, the PMS replied that progress had been made across a broad front but that it was for Jack Straw to set out the next steps, which we would expect him to do shortly.

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