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Queen’s Speech

My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Cobbold, I propose to deal with only one topic: the part of the Government’s Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill that deals with the reform of the House of Lords. As we move into 2010, we shall be celebrating the centenary of the first promise by government to replace this House with an elected Chamber. It is, as far as I know, the only political promise that is eligible to receive a telegram of congratulation from the Queen. Were she to send such a message, she would be fully justified in wishing it many more anniversaries, because I do not believe that this will happen in the near future. In fact, I am astonished that the noble Lord, Lord Bach, could read out the interim proposals from the Bill with a completely straight face, given that his colleagues on the Front Bench spent so much time if not actually obstructing then stonewalling the very same proposals in the Bill that I presented on behalf of so many Members in all parts of the House. I will recap again the four proposals in my Bill. The first was the appointment of a statutory appointments commission. That is the one bit which the Government have not taken on on the spurious grounds that, as they are going to propose an elected Chamber, there is no need to have a statutory appointments commission in the mean time. That, of course, assumes that they win the next election and will introduce an elected Chamber. The other three proposals, however, are taken over lock, stock and barrel: ending the by-elections for hereditary Peers; enabling retirement from the House, which is the most important part simply because of the size of the numbers in the House and the fact that so many do not come to it—this is long overdue and I am very glad that it is in the Government’s legislation—