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Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

If ever there were a demonstration of the need to go further than the clauses in the Bill, it is clause 33. It is sensible for someone departing from the House of Lords to renounce their title, but we all know that that is not the issue. The issue, which has dogged all discussion on this matter from the beginning of time, is the confusion of service in the second Chamber of the legislature with a title. Until we address that squarely, we are going to keep coming back to it over and over again. The House of Lords Appointments Commission laments the fact that many of those it appoints to the House of Lords as distinguished people do not attend properly. They do not attend properly because it turns out that what they really wanted was the peerage, not to sit looking at Bills. We know that most people want the title, so I could understand a provision that said, "Let's separate these things out. Let's remove the peerage from people who sit in the second Chamber." That would be a sensible way to proceed. Simply proceeding by saying, "Let's give people who are departing the ability to renounce their peerage too" offers a kind of choice, but not the kind that will make any difference.