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Constitutional Renewal

My Lords, that is the precisely the point I am making. Through having the Human Rights Act, judges have gone into new areas of the law which Parliament has not decided upon. Another thing we have seen is a cascade of referendums, but none on the EU constitution. I know the noble Lord, Lord McNally, will be stressed about this but it is worth repeating how ironic it is that many enthusiasts for renewal and a written constitution in this debate broke their written pledge in the Labour and Liberal Democrat manifestos for a referendum. I know why that was done. There was a deal struck between the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats which went, "We do not need to debate this at the general election because we will promise a referendum. Then, when we get to the other side of the election, we will scrap that suggestion". That is why it is an unanswerable question and why the Liberal Democrats hate it being raised. If you cannot keep your own written promise, what price drumming up respect for a written constitution, and what claim do you have to be among the authors of it? A year ago, amidst national mourning, the Government lost the services of the noble Lord, Lord Lester of Herne Hill—he explained why this afternoon—as their constitutional adviser. He praised the deal in the mid-1990s with the Labour Party but as soon as there is a deal in the House of Lords he bleats that somehow it is unfair. Now the noble Lord also spoke in a code. He said that he was not interested in getting into the debate between an elected House and an unelected House. What that means, in my experience, is that Peers feel that you could not elect anybody better than themselves, and the same, I suspect, is true for the noble Lord, Lord Lester of Herne Hill.