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House of Lords Bill [HL]

If the Government decide that it is stage 2—and they are the same Government who made the binding commitment—that is a different story. That will be debatable when that comes along. We will have to agree that. My memory from the 1999 discussions is that there was going to be a major stage in situ. I see the noble Lords, Lord Desai and Lord Richard, nodding because we can all recall those long hours spent into the night. On his first intervention, the noble Lord, Lord Steel, quoted as support for his Bill a couple of paragraphs from the summary of Propriety and Peerages. I will also quote a paragraph from that summary so that I am consistent with him. Last year, the report argued that, "““the link between the honours system and the award of seats in the legislature—already significantly weakened—should be broken for good. Honours and titles should be for past service; a seat in Parliament for potential future service””." That is exactly the basis behind Amendment No. 72, which is grouped with Amendment No. 1. I hoped that the noble Lord, Lord Steel, would welcome this amendment. After all, he set the precedent by dropping his title when he was Presiding Officer in the Scottish Parliament and then came back here, while Presiding Officer, and took his title back. In support of my amendment, my noble friend Lord Strathclyde has said that we must not forget that there are a lot of Peers outside this Chamber who are not Members of this House. The noble Lord, Lord Desai, in the wonderful way that he does, has said that this is a wonderful English compromise. I like the idea of an English compromise proposed by a Scot against a Scot who does not like it, but, besides that, let us call it a British compromise. It does not solve the problem but makes it less urgent. That is another reason for me putting down the amendment against some points in this Bill. I fear that this Bill will delay stage 2. It might be a useful hook for the Government to use to say that, actually, there has now been a little reform of the House of Lords, that the hereditary Peers are going to wither, that there are no more elections, and that we do not need to do anything very much in a hurry. That worries me. It is a fundamental flaw of this Bill. From my own experience, when I was a Minister sitting where the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, is now, and having suffered yet another defeat at the hands of your Lordships—