House of Lords Reform

I am more than delighted to follow the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (John Thurso). He is the living embodiment of what can happen when somebody goes native when changing from one Chamber to the other—of what a good thing it can be to be subjected to the process of election. I start with a point that the hon. Gentleman made well. If we want a strong Parliament, we cannot have a partly illegitimate Parliament. We can have a strong Parliament that is able to do a proper job by its Government—incidentally, I believe that good government can happen only when Parliament does a good job by it—only if we make sure that it is not hampered, hobbled and crippled by part of its very constitution. There are significant problems with the way in which the House of Lords is presently constituted. It is extraordinary that some Members have argued today that part of our Parliament should be deliberately illegitimate. It is extraordinary that we are happy to see so unrepresentative a second Chamber as we presently have. I merely note the fact that the average age of Members of the second Chamber is 68. In the 19th century, this House had to introduce legislation to protect children from being sent to work at the age of 10 or 12. We should be protecting the ancient, the elderly and the decrepit, who should not be forced still to work at the age of 85 and 93. We should be enabling them to retire or to resign. It is extraordinary that people appointed to the second Chamber have their jobs for life. Of course, that means that somebody convicted of perjury, for instance, cannot be sacked and removed from the second Chamber. For that matter, peers cannot retire. One Liberal Democrat peer has tried to retire—sort of; he is just not attending any more—but officially and technically, he is still a Member of the second House. One Member pointed out earlier that the second Chamber now represents London almost exclusively. Of the 323 new peers appointed since 1997, 147 come from London and 38 come from elsewhere in the south-east of England; only three come from the north-east, and only five from the east midlands. It is wholly unrepresentative because appointment very rarely leads to anything other than an unrepresentative selection of people.