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House of Lords (Amendment) Bill [HL]

My Lords, I rise briefly to support what the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, said. It is a difficult question. First, we have had some very complicated debates over the past few years as to power of the House to expel or suspend. I am not sure whether it is right to, in effect, give this House the power to expel a Member by a provision inserted at Third Reading of a Private Member's Bill. Perhaps that is not the way we ought to do it. The principle that the House should have the power to expel may be right. It may even be right that the way to do it is by standing order. I am not sure about that. Secondly, I strongly support what the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, had to say about the right of appeal. I should have thought that the one thing we would wish to do in a situation in which the House decided to expel someone was to keep the courts out of the decision, or have a situation in which there is an appeal to the courts or in which the courts can be appealed to, even if there is not a formal right of appeal. That would be dangerous. These are essentially parliamentary matters; they should be treated as such and the division of responsibility is in our constitution. It leaves the courts looking after judicial matters and Parliament looking after parliamentary matters. I do not want those two to be mixed.