Baroness fires warning shot over Lords reform

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A legal expert has warned the government that their plans for reform of the House of Lords will face a "strong" legal challenge.

Baroness Deech, writing on the Lords of the Blog site, has warned that Nick Clegg's proposal to replace existing peers with an elected chamber will encounter "plenty of legal hurdles and complications".

On Tuesday the deputy prime minister told the Commons he envisages a slimmed down 300 member upper House elected by proportional representation for terms of 15 years.

A draft Bill provides for 240 elected and 60 appointed members, as well as 12 Church of England bishops sitting as ex-officio members.

Baroness Deech, a former tutorial fellow in law at St Anne's College Oxford, said the coalition government is planning "the removal of the existing peers and their replacement by political hacks".

"I shall argue at some point in the debates that the Parliament Acts, which enable the Commons to override the Lords if the latter resist the will of the former for too long, do not apply, on their construction, to the abolition or total overhaul of the Lords," she wrote.

"There are strong legal arguments to this effect, sufficient to enable lawyers to mount a challenge to any Act that purported to remove the existing peers and revamp the House to such an extent that it is no longer the House it has been for centuries.

"If that argument were to fail, then the next line of argument is that the existing Parliament Acts could not continue as they are.

"It would no longer be 'democratic' to give the Commons supremacy over the Lords in the enactment of legislation, for both Houses would be equally mandated to govern."

Baroness Deech's comments echo the concerns of some Conservative MPs about the Clegg plan.

In the Commons on Tuesday Conor Burns received vocal support from Tory colleagues when he said: "It is the view of many on the government benches that we did not come to this place to vote for measures that will undermine the democratic supremacy and legitimacy of this House."

Burns, MP for Bournemouth West, called for a free vote on Lords reform.

His Tory colleague Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) went further, describing the plans as "yet another tatty roadshow brought to us by the same people who thought that the British people wanted the alternative vote".

Clegg told Conservative MPs that Lords reform is government business and they will be expected to vote in favour of it.

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