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House of Lords (Amendment) Bill [HL]

My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. It might be useful to explain first why this Bill is being reintroduced when the Bill of my noble friend Lord Steel, of which it is a subset, had its Second Reading and first day in Committee just over a month ago. My noble friend’s Bill has attracted a large number of amendments, and it seems unlikely that the time needed to dispose of them will be available. My Bill is concerned with only one issue: the by-elections for maintaining the number of hereditary Peers at 92, as provided for in the Weatherill amendment of 1999. None of the existing hereditary Peers would be displaced by the Bill, nor would the Earl Marshal and the Lord Great Chamberlain be affected by it, and the hope was that such a modest and uncontentious reform would be readily accepted and would attract only a very short Committee stage. However, if any noble Lord was determined to oppose it, purely on the grounds that the Weatherill scheme was binding on us until the second stage of comprehensive reform, they would find that it is not susceptible to the wide range of amendments that have been tabled to my noble friend’s Bill. I am advised that its strictly limited purposes restrict the scope of amendments to the situation of the hereditaries, and would not allow for debates on the many other issues raised in the 200 or so amendments to my noble friend’s Bill.