LORDS’ REFORM BILL

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26614, 10 November 1947, Page 5

LORDS’ REFORM BILL

FURTHER AMENDMENTS TABLED

SOLID SUPPORT EXPECTED Rec. 7 p.m. LONDON, Nov. 7. Conservative and Labour amendments to the Bill reforming the House of Lords, which is to be debated on Monday, were tabled in the House of Commons.

The Conservative amendment asking the Commons to throw the Bill out is in the names of Mr Churchill, Mr Anthony Eden, Sir David Max-well-Fyfe, Mr Oliver Stanley, Mr O. Lyttelton, and Mr H. Macmillan. The text is that the House of Commons refuses a second reading to the Bill which, without mandate, justification, or public demand, seeks to destroy the constitutional safeguards of the Parliament Act, 1911, when no complaint was made of the use by the House of Lords of its existing powers, when no attempt was made to deal with the composition of the Second Chamber, which the Act laid down as an essential condition of further reform, and when the immediate consequence can be only to distract attention from the country’s economic perils. A solid Opposition vote is expected in support of the amendment when the debate ends on Tuesday. Three Labour members of the House of • Commons, Mr Ellis Smith, Mr G. R. Strauss, and Mr J. Parker, tabled an amendment that the Government should make the House of Lords more democi-atic. The amendment says the House of Lords should represent the employers’ organisations, Trades Union Congress, chambers of commerce, industrial trades councils, each religion proportionately to membership,, and have 200 members representing political parties proportionately to the House of Commons.

A Liberal amendment urges the rejection of the Parliament Bill while it retains the hereditary principle in the Second Chamber. Meanwhile, three British peeresses began a battle for the right to sit in the House of Lords by launching at a press conference a nation-wide appeal for support. They were Viscountess Rhondda, Baroness Ravensdale, and Baroness Beaumont. Twenty-two peeresses in their own right would be entitled to seats in the House of Lords if the requisite legislation were passed.