Downing Street Says » House of Lords Reform

The Leader said that the votes would start at 5.30pm on March 7, following the approval of a Business motion earlier this week. Currently, there were nine motions before the House, and voting would take two-and-a-quarter hours if there were divisions on each of them. Although he could not be certain, he suspected that one or two of them might not be the subject of a division. It had also been agreed to suspend the Standing Orders which prevented inconsistent motions being put to the vote. That would mean that MPs would vote on each of the key propositions even if one had been carried already.

Asked about comments on his own voting intentions, the Leader said that, in an exchange during Business Questions earlier, he had confirmed that he would support a 50pc elected element of a reformed second chamber, and also 60pc and 80pc. Mr Straw said that he wanted to see a result. His preference, as spelt out in the recent White Paper, was for an evenly-balanced chamber between elected and appointed members. He would vote for that. However, since he was urging other MPs not "to make the best the enemy of the good", he also favoured that or a majority elected chamber. Thus, he would vote for the 60pc and 80pc options. Ministers would then have to make a judgement about the size of the majority on each – if indeed there was a majority. Mr Straw said he did not regard that position as inconsistent. He would be voting against a wholly-elected and wholly-appointed second chamber, as well as the options for a 20pc and 40pc elected element. Asked if he was attempting to set an example to the "purists", he agreed. He had been making the argument in favour of the alternative vote system (which had since been dropped) in that it would have enabled the House of Commons to come to a clear decision, and enable individuals to express preferences. His voting intentions would have been his preferences under an AV process. In the absence of the AV system, he was following the advice he was giving to others about not making "the best the enemy of the good".

No Comments »

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Post a public comment

Name (required)
E-mail (required)
(You must give an email address, but it will not be displayed to the public.)
Website
(You may give your website, and it will be displayed to the public.)

Comments:

This is not a way of contacting the Prime Minister. If you would like to contact the Prime Minister, go to the 10 Downing Street official site.

Privacy note: Shortly after posting, your name and comment will be displayed on the site. This means that people searching for your name on the Internet will be able to find and read your comment.

Original PMOS briefings are © Crown Copyright. Crown Copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen's Printer for Scotland. Click-use licence number C02W0004089. Material is reproduced from the original 10 Downing Street source, but may not be the most up-to-date version of the briefings, which might be revised at the original source. Users should check with the original source in case of revisions. Comments are © Copyright contributors. Everything else is © Copyright Downing Street Says.

» Thursday, March 1, 2007

House of Lords Reform

No Comments »

Post a public comment

Search

Supported by

Recent Briefings

Archives

Links

Syndicate (RSS/XML)

Credits

Enquiries