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House of Lords (Members’ Taxation Status) Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 1: 1: Clause 1, page 1, line 3, leave out ““and domiciled”” The noble Viscount said: I shall speak also to the other amendments in my name. I was unable to be here at Second Reading but I have read carefully in Hansard what was said. I shall say at the outset that I do not think that the Bill should go very far. I do not think that it should leave this House. The Bill that is being promoted in another place is a more satisfactory answer to the issue and the whole thing should be wound up in the debate when we consider how this House is reformed in future. I do not think that we can just pick one thing. The noble Lord’s Bill brings up some interesting issues that are worth exploring. I find it extraordinary that a party that is so keen on Europe and everything European and which has not put down a single amendment to the Bill on the Lisbon treaty wants to prevent anybody who sits in this House from living perhaps part of the time in France or Italy, or wherever it may be in the European Union, and then attending this House. If we take the fact of the European Community as it is, one should be able to do that. I see no reason why, in theory, one should not do that. We can stand for the European Parliament and we do not have to live in this country to do that. I remember that the noble Lord, Lord Steel, stood for the European Parliament in a seat just outside Rome—