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House of Lords Bill [HL]

My Lords, the length of this debate and the number of speakers is interesting for somebody who has resisted the opportunity to talk about House of Lords reform for a number of years, and has found himself having to catch this pass today. As the noble Lord, Lord Graham, suggested, the scores are becoming more even; the ticks versus crosses—my scientific way of checking the score—are starting to balance out. My noble friend Lord Steel has initiated a debate on what people on both sides are thinking. A few of them have both ticks and crosses in my assessment of what they were saying. There are pros and cons. I have always started from the premise that I have signed up to a programme that says there should be an elected second Chamber. On several occasions—with gritted teeth—I have voted for an elected second Chamber. If the Bill puts off that process, or even if we suspect that it will, we must cautious of it. If it is something that could be used to delay the process, we must be cautious of it. Political will and drive are also required. The noble Lord, Lord Baker, with considerable political craft, pointed out that the realpolitik is that this may not be happening soon; it may not be happening at all in the cycle of the current Government. We do not know what the next election will bring, or what will happen. We are in interesting times once again. Everybody who assumes they will not win or will not lose should place a hedging bet. We must ensure that we carry on the agenda so that the Chamber can develop. If we are using the Bill as a way of stalling that and patting ourselves on the back, we must think twice. We always think we are wonderful and that no one else understands us. Every interest group to which I have spoken thinks that, and we must guard against it. The House of Commons is probably the biggest offender. Whatever the vote was in the other place, undoubtedly games were being played. Usually political games come back and bite you—very hard. Whether the one with the biggest scars on their political anatomy on this occasion is us or the Commons, time will tell. We must guard against that, too. This is an opportunity for the Government to let us know what their drive is on this and how much they will give us, or whether they regard this as just another paper. I threw out a great pile of House of Lords reform papers the other day because they were irrelevant. The world had moved on. But they were all published with a great deal of concern about what was going to happen, what was not going to happen, when it would happen, and so on. Timetables that we never realistically envisaged have come and gone; they were out of date before the ink was dry. If we are having another one of those, we will not achieve very much. The noble Lord may not be totally in control of this, but I would be interested in finding out exactly what the Government have in terms of firm plans at the moment. If they do not have firm plans, what do they regard as the impedimenta to them? Do they think they need to win a majority of a certain size in the next election? It might be realistic to hear that if the Government have only a small majority, they cannot take this on and still conduct the rest of their governance. He shakes his head now and can confirm this later. At least then we could start to form an opinion on what will happen to the Bill. There are very few measures in the Bill with which I have any serious disagreements, although I have some about the provision relating to serious criminal offences. Several noble Lords made a small attack on it by saying that a House of expertise should have some experience. That might have a logical thrust, but it is a matter of how many months as much as anything else. There is also the provision about permanent leave of absence. Those of us who work in this House tend to get on our high horses slightly about people who are not here often enough. The noble Lord, Lord Lloyd-Webber, referred to being in a different world and being asked to come in every now and again. That may have been the system then, and he may well have been sold a pup on it. The rest of the House gets very annoyed. We do not like that, and we feel affronted by it. I supported the Bill introduced by my noble friend Lord Avebury to exclude hereditary Peers. We had hours of fun comparing ourselves with Old Sarum and rotten boroughs. Let us leave that where it stands. If we are going to have people appointed for any long period of time, a more firmly based Appointments Commission is the only way forward, but that brings us to political will and where we are going. Can we hear from the Government exactly what their commitment is and what they are going to do because then, if the Minister is having to run a diversionary tactic, we can blame his masters who sent him out?