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Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

Well, Parliament can legislate in a day; the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to pick me up on that. How many times have we legislated in a day, and always regretted it bitterly afterwards? We have usually regretted it most bitterly when we have all agreed on something. I still remember a dreadful piece of legislation that we passed after the Omagh bombing; fortunately I was able to get leave of absence to disappear and not support my party. That was a dreadful piece of legislation, but everybody signed up to it and it went through in one day. However, wisdom suggests that we should not legislate in a day. Reality also says that were we to be elected to government, we would have considerable problems in respect of our representation in the House of Lords, as would other parties, because of the age profile of our party's membership and because of the paucity of appointments that have been made available to us over recent years. Those are factors that we cannot ignore. For those reasons we would have to make the House of Lords operate. I hope that that answers the question asked by the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith).