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House of Lords Bill [HL]

It is a pity that my noble friend Lord McIntosh was not here a little earlier on. If he had been in his place an hour and a half ago, he would have heard the speech that I made proposing my amendment in which I made the enormous mistake, as it turns out, of speaking to the amendment and not to the generality of the argument. This has been a fascinating debate on the general arguments, which we have been round and round and round, and we will go around them again in this Bill. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Steel, that he cannot have it both ways. If he produces a Bill that was bound to be controversial, and which he knew would be once it is in the public domain, any noble Lord would be entitled to table amendments to it and to have them discussed. If the amendments were not in order, I have no doubt that the excellent Clerks at the Table would not have allowed us to put them down. The noble Lord, Lord Steel, cannot now say, ““Oh gosh, isn’t it terrible? You want to discuss things which I don’t want to discuss. I merely want to discuss the things that I want to discuss””. That is not on. In the circumstances, I have considered carefully what to do with the amendment. It is a clear and simple proposal that there should be some input from the Secretary of State and the House of Commons before we move to a change to the name of this House. On any view of the matter, that is a sensible way to proceed. I have thought very hard about whether I should seek a vote on the amendment, and in the end I have decided not to. But I give warning to the noble Lord, Lord Steel, and the promoters of the Bill that I shall return to this subject at a future stage, if there ever is one. But I do not think that there will be.