House of Lords Reform and Size of the House of Commons — 19 Oct 2016 at 18:48

The majority of MPs voted in favour of having fewer MPs but against reducing the number of members of the House of Lords.

The motion rejected in this vote was:

• That this House
• notes with concern the size of the unelected House of Lords which, with more than 800 members, is considerably larger than the elected House of Commons;
• believes that there is no case in a modern democracy for the number of members of an unelected chamber to exceed the number of members of the democratically elected House;
• cannot condone any Government action that may increase the number of unelected members while reducing the number of elected Members of Parliament, particularly when there are no published plans to concurrently reduce the number of Ministers or amount of support to Government departments;
• believes that, in the event of an exit from the EU, the return of significant powers will mean additional work for a smaller number of Members of Parliament;
• calls on the Government to put in place plans to significantly reduce the number of unelected Lords;
• further calls for a full review of reform of the House of Lords; and
• calls on the Government to abandon any plans to reduce the number of Members of Parliament until the issue of the size of the unelected chamber is resolved.

Debate in Parliament |