---

House of Lords Bill [HL]

We have just heard from the noble Lord, Lord Steel, a brilliant exposition of the frustration of what it is to be a Minister of the Crown. Any of us who have been Ministers—and in this House there are many who have held ministerial office—know just how often one thinks of a good idea for new legislation that is naturally supported by everyone who is sensible and right-thinking; one then makes a proposal to Parliament, and those wretched parliamentarians have the temerity to come forward with amendments to it. I have known countless examples of Ministers who wanted to bring forward perfectly sensible proposals, only to discover that other people in this House and in another place have an entirely different view and wish to debate the issues. That, of course, is the point of these two Houses of Parliament. I join the noble Lord, Lord Richard, in this tremendous sense of déjà vu. He and I have been debating these issues for donkey’s years, and I expect that we will continue to do so. In fact, your Lordships have been discussing this issue since the party of the noble Lord, Lord Steel, championed the whole idea of an elected house in 1911. If it was so easy or so obvious we would have solved this problem years ago, but it is not. It is so fiendishly complicated and extremely difficult that, even when the noble Lord and his friends try to promote what looks like a Bill of limited ambition, we create 200 amendments. I do not know whether that is a record; perhaps the Minister can tell us. To think that I foolishly accepted the burden, as Leader of the Opposition, of leading from the Dispatch Box on this Bill! My dear wife, when she realised that I would have to give up all my Fridays for the rest of the year, was rather appalled; she was delighted, however, when the noble Lord, Lord Steel, decided to bring the Committee forward to a Thursday afternoon. That noble Lord also made an excellent point about the Select Committee report in another place, because something has changed since we debated this at Second Reading. It is an important report, not just because of the difficult issues that it dealt with—the potential scandal of cash-for-peerages, and the workings of the Appointments Commission chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Coddenham—but because it came forward with various proposals for change, some of which I am not entirely sure that I agree with. What the noble Lord, Lord Steel, did not say is that this report has yet to be debated in another place—I do not think that that has occurred. Given that it affects this House so much, it would be fair to wonder whether there ought to be a debate here as well on the report’s suggestions. However, we should get a response from the Government before we get to that, given the normal practice in these instances. I hope that the Minister can give us an idea of when he believes that a report will be made—whether it will it be made in the proposed White Paper, or be separate, or whatever the answer is. In all this, I have not actually mentioned the amendment itself, which I come to now. That was just a little introduction to all these amendments. Now, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Caithness for having introduced this amendment, and indeed to the noble Lord, Lord Richard, whose Amendment No. 2 is tied to it. It is entirely fair that we should consider the name of the House. In fact, I rather hope that my noble friend will consider accepting the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Richard, which I slightly prefer to that of my noble friend. I certainly hope that my noble friend will not press his to a Division, but will consider the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Richard. The name of the senate conjures up certain important parallels for me. It is not just the Senates of Rome or Venice, which were in their time hugely influential bodies. We also have Senates in the United States and in Italy, and those two chambers have the most significant powers and authority of any Upper House in the world. In the past, my party has advocated the use of the word ““senate”” to replace a House of Lords. This is not the most essential item that we shall be discussing in this Committee, but it would probably be better to have a senate rather than the House of Lords if we are to change the method of selection to this House. That is partly because it conveys a sense of authority, and what is the purpose of all this disruption and reform if not to create a more powerful House, more able to help the other place to do its job properly, and help it to hold the Executive to account? It also reflects the fact that the House which we have now is already very different—in many ways arguably better, and in some ways worse—from the House that we used to have. The House that we should want to create will also differ from the House that we have now. What we have now is no longer a House of Lords; it is a House of some Lords, because, in 1999, more than 650 Peers were excluded from the House, so we have Peers outside the House and Peers who are not Members of the House of Lords. Although it is not grouped with Amendment No. 1, the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, has tabled a most interesting amendment, Amendment No. 6, which we will no doubt discuss later. That takes the logical step of separating the peerage from membership of this House. The noble Lord does not go the extra inch—or perhaps I should say ““centimetre”” to the modernising noble Lord, Lord Dubs—and stop calling your Lordships’ House a ““House of Lords””. Instead, he suggests that he should be ““Mr Dubs ML””, which I find deeply unconvincing, but that is a debate to which we shall come later. As the hereditary Peers become progressively excluded from this House—the Bill removes the remaining 92, albeit over time—we can no longer reasonably retain the name ““House of Lords””.