Labour will create new democratic second chamber as current House of Lords set-up ‘indefensible’, says Gordon Brown

Labour will create a new democratic second chamber called the Assembly of Nations and Regions, Gordon Brown has said – as he branded the current House of Lords set-up “indefensible”.

The former prime minister said his party will make abolishing the House of Lords a key part of reforms to the parliamentary system and revealed that it is a proposal included in the Commission on the UK’s Future report which he has produced for Labour.

The report also sets out proposals for tackling corruption in politics, and banning MPs from having second jobs.

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“The current House of Lords is indefensible,” the former Labour leader told journalists.

He added: “Every second chamber in the world, with very few exceptions, is relatively small and usually smaller than the first chamber. And we’ve now got a House of Lords that has got 830 members.

“That is compared with the American senate which has 100 members to cover 300 million people – we have got a House of Lords which is 800-plus to cover only 60 million people.

“Therefore the current system is indefensible.”

Mr Brown said the new second chamber Labour proposes would have a “role in protecting the devolution settlement”, seeking to prevent the Sewell Convention – which states Westminster should not normally legislate in areas reserved to the devolved governments without their consent – being “overridden”.

He added that he believes the issue of House of Lords reform will “come to a head again” when Boris Johnson reveals his resignations honours list.

Mr Brown also insisted there will be a ban on second jobs for MPs if Labour wins the next election – though he indicated there could be an exemption to that for those MPs who need to work to maintain professional qualifications such as doctors and lawyers.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer appeared to hint that some of the reforms contained in the report he commissioned may take some time to deliver.

“Whether it’s the reforms in this report or more generally, it is realistically going to take more than one term for Labour to turn our country around,” the Labour leader told The Sunday Times.

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He added that consideration about “when and how this is implemented” would come after Monday, when the report is published.

But Tory peer Lord Norton has urged caution over “Big Bang reform” to parliament’s second chamber after suggestions it should replaced with elected representatives.

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He told Times Radio: “The problems with Gordon Brown’s proposals and to some extent with what Keir Starmer has been saying, on the one hand he was talking about getting rid of the Lord’s while maintaining to continue its current functions, as if you can separate discrete entities – the way a body is chosen and the job that it does – and the two are clearly linked.

“So the present task does add value in terms of the law of this country, in regards to ensuring this nation has good law is a public good and I think the House of Lords contributes to that which is its principal role – its detailed legislative scrutiny, it improves the law of this country.

“So we want to, I would argue, retain that.

“So one has to be wary of some Big Bang reform, grand reform, which often takes the form of displacement activity – the nation’s got problems, people must come up with constitutional reform because it’s a fairly simple, straightforward proposal, rather than actually getting down to the real issues.”