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House of Lords Bill [HL]

I would like to make two brief observations on my noble friend’s amendment. I remind the House that the founding fathers of the American constitution engineered the US Senate as a device to restrict the skittishness that they predicted would characterise the House of Representatives. That seems to sit a little oddly with the proposition, which we hear on all sides, that we must respect the primacy of the House of Commons. My other observation is that, while the model of a committee to determine the future name of a second Chamber may be, as proposed by my noble friend, appropriate when the time comes—and I do not think that the time has yet come—it does not need to be established by statute. It can simply be done by any of the normal devices for setting up a committee.