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Address in Reply to Her Majesty's Most Gracious Speech

My Lords, I chose my words without due care and attention. I meant that there are more Members of this House taking the Labour Whip than there are taking the Whip of any other party or indeed those of us on these Benches who have the privilege of taking no Whip from any party, which is a freedom that I relish. I still say that the origin of the Salisbury convention was when there was an overweening majority in this House, which has gone. It is true, as the noble Baroness says, that Labour does not have an overall majority—heaven help us if it did, or if any other political party did. This House is much more valuable with a balance of parties, and, I suggest, an in-built swinging majority of the Cross Benchers, but that would be a minority view. I add one last word about the hereditary Peers. I understand the argument that there can be no possible justification for people taking their seat in this House simply because their father had a seat here. That has gone. We now have about 90 elected hereditary Peers. As long as there are any hereditary Peers it is going to be said by ill-disposed and ill-informed people that this is a House of hereditary Peers. When a taxi driver drove me here the other day, he said, "Was your father a Member?". I immediately said, "No", and explained that I was a life Peer, as were the majority of Members of this House. That is a problem of perception rather than reality. The 90 hereditary Peers that we have render yeoman service to this House, and one can get rid of the perception problem by making them all life Peers. That will not alter the balance of this House but, as I said, it will produce a perceived democratic solution to a perceived problem and one can then get rid of the elections, which, in theory, are a complete nonsense. They stem from the arrangements that were made when the remainder of the hereditary Peers left this House. I apologise for having made some inconsequential remarks but, unless and until the Government tell us where they are going, it is difficult to make consequential ones.