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House of Lords Reform Bill [HL]

Okay, he cannot answer. I did not know that. The Minister has some responsibility for implementing the coalition agreement which has led to the dramatic escalation in the size of the House. By virtue of the ludicrous formula in that agreement, the House has to reflect the voting in the previous election. If we were to take the last election as an example, there would be 1,100 in this House if we did not get rid of anybody. The getting rid of somebody is not to do with age but with this ridiculous formula. In order to reduce the size of the House you may as well say, ““Let us get rid of people by lot””, or, ““Let us get rid of everyone whose surname begins with L, M, N, O or P””. There is as much sense in this proposal as that.