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House of Lords Bill [HL]

Nineteen, is it? My noble friend may well be right. Most of the arguments have been heard. But, as has often been said, all the arguments have been heard, but not yet has everybody put them. I suspect that a certain amount of the debates in Committee will be repetitious. I say at the outset that I propose to be repetitious, for one good reason—because it is important, now that the Bill has been introduced, that the arguments for and against the Bill and its principles are expressed clearly and unmistakeably, so that those who are not in this House may have a clear opportunity to see what these views are. I turn to the amendment of the noble Earl, Lord Caithness. My amendment to the new clause is simple. It is to say that the section on creating a senate and calling us all senators, "““shall have effect upon the making of an order by the Secretary of State, and no such order may be made unless … the Secretary of State has published a report stating that the policy of Her ""Majesty’s Government is that the House of Lords should be renamed the Senate; and … the House of Commons has approved the report by resolution””." However one looks at it, the idea of calling this Chamber a senate and us all becoming senators is a pretty major step. When I was a boy I had four ambitions. First, I wanted to be a senator; secondly, a cardinal—which one could not be; thirdly, a tenor; and fourthly, a jockey. Alas it is the tragedy of my life that I ended up as a double bass and weighing 17 stone. Nevertheless, the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, is giving me the opportunity at some point to become a senator. I cannot help but observe in passing on this issue that senators were usually elected; certainly they were in Rome. They were not appointed, but gained their position as the result of an election. If I were elected as a senator, I would be more pleased than if I were to become an appointed one. More seriously, the principal argument against the amendment is that the new clause pre-empts the forthcoming White Paper. We all know that the Government have been in intense discussions and that an all-party group has been meeting. We have been assured that the result of those discussions will emerge in the not too distant future, so to pre-empt the result of the talks and the forthcoming White Paper by taking a decision now on whether we should be called senators, is going too far. As I have said, I do not necessarily oppose the principle of calling the second Chamber a senate, but I do object to pre-empting the White Paper. For those reasons, we should not pass this new clause until it has emerged. I beg to move.