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House of Lords Bill [HL]

I do not often agree with the noble Lord, Lord Graham, but I do on the limited issue that this is neither the right time nor the right place to start monumental alterations to the constitution. When I saw the list of amendments, I thought, ““Goodness gracious, here we go again””. It is fine for the noble Lord, Lord Steel, to ask, ““Do we want to discuss all these extraneous items?”” but he only wants to discuss the things he would like. The noble Lord, Lord Graham, is quite right—these are not extraneous items. When I first saw these amendments I thought that my noble friend Lord Caithness—I regret to say that I was absent during his speech—had taken leave of his senses. I do not know whether his senses have caught up with him—I think they probably have. Then I saw what he meant; if you remove what used to be called Peers and you are left with an appointed Chamber why should you call it the House of Lords? There will be no Lords there. This perfectly good argument is particularly germane to this Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, said that we need change in order to preserve the dignity of the House. That is the most absurd suggestion. You have only to listen to what was said about the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill—it was absolutely amazing. The standards of debate here exceed those in any other Chamber in the world. To say, therefore, that we need to increase our dignity is absurd. We are in danger of forgetting that the dignity of the House of Lords is very high. Some people get injected with the idea of change—that we must have change. In order to find a reason for change they say, ““Let’s improve the dignity””. I do not support that argument. This is not a suitable subject for a Private Member’s Bill. I have always thought that. It is all very well the noble Lord, Lord Steel, saying, ““Let’s decide the amendments we would like to decide””. That is not the way to handle Bills—heaven knows, he ought to know that. The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, said we were looking forward to reform and that the promoters do not like some of these amendments. It does not matter what the promoters like. Once you let this cat out of the bag it attaches itself to all sorts of things and other things get attached to it. If this Bill were ever to get to the House of Commons, it is open season for anything to get changed there. I do not like either of the amendments and I do not like the substance of the Bill. I do, however, think it is wrong to introduce this Bill in this way; it ought to be a Government Bill.