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Liaison Committee

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken on this report. The noble Baroness the Leader of the House has dealt with the matter of the statistics committee. Unfortunately, as she has said, it is not possible to form a Joint Committee if the other half does not want to know about it. With regard to the noble Lord, Lord Barnett, and his formula, I thank him for his kind words and I am grateful for the words of support for them from the noble Lords, Lord Sheldon and Lord Forsyth. Membership of the committee will be a matter for the Committee of Selection, but it will have heard what has been said in this debate. The noble Lord, Lord Soley, is welcome to come back to the committee on a future occasion and we will look at the proposal on its merits. Regarding the fact that the report of the noble Lord’s committee was not available at the time of the deliberation of this Liaison Committee, I would just say that it always meets at this time of year to consider what is going to be done in the next Session. However, the fact that the report was not available is a slightly two-edged sword. The Liaison Committee’s report deals with the matter on completely separate grounds to whatever the report might or might not have said. It is probably a good thing that the report was not available. Although I am sure it will be admirable, we would not want our decision to have been influenced by whether we thought the report was good or bad. On Question, Motion agreed to.