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House of Lords: Financial Support for Members

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon, the Chairman of Committees, for his skilful exposition for the benefit of the House of the background and main points of the report from the Senior Salaries Review Body on financial support for Members of your Lordships’ House. Once again, we face today important issues for this House to consider and it is crucial that we get these issues right. In line with the importance of our considerations today, and with the leave of the House and the agreement of the usual channels, I will be taking the unusual step of speaking twice in today’s debate, now, with the other leaders of the party and non-party groupings, and then at the end of the debate, as Leader of the whole House and as a member of the House Committee, to reply to the points that noble Lords have put and to draw the debate to a conclusion. My noble friend Lord Peston asked why I was responding to the debate today. There was a discussion in the House Committee, at the end of which I was asked to respond to the debate. I said that I would be honoured so to do and am doing so today, but I must stress—