A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
LORD SAMUEL, in raising the question of an all-party conference on the reform of the House of Lords on Tuesday, succeeded in eliciting from Lord Salisbury the assurance that such a conference would certainly be held, and perhaps sooner than was generally expected. It is a thousand pities that after getting so near agreement the all-party conference of 1948 broke up with nothing achieved. There was agreement that membership based on heredity should be abolished; that the House should be so constituted as to secure that no permanent majority should be assured for any one political party; that members of the new Second Chamber should be drawn from hereditary peers and from commoners who would be created Life Peers (Lord Simon is introducing a Bill providing for this), women being equally eligible with men. What the conference broke on was the length of delay the Lords might impose on legislation sent up from the Commons. The Act of 1911 provided for a delay of two years. The Labour mem- bers of the 1948 conference proposed one year, and that has since been settled by the Act of 1949. The Conservatives stood out for fifteen months. The passage of the 1949 Act undoubtedly changes the situation, and a new conference might well agree on a Chamber which without actually possessing new powers would possess much new influence and prestige.
* * * *
Previous page
