House of Lords (Amendment) Bill [HL]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for bringing forward this Bill and want to take on a little of the blame for it having arrived here. We had something of a planning meeting in Prince’s Chamber a few weeks ago. My noble friend said to me, ““I think that we should do something to get ridof these absurd by-elections””. My comment was, roughly, ““Yeah, go for it””. As your Lordships can see, the great amount of preparation for my contribution was probably left at ““go for it””. My noble friend clearly did. I appreciate that, as a hereditary Peer, I am guilty of the claim to be pulling up the ladder once I have climbed up it. In thinking that we should do something about the situation, I agree with what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi. The idea of the rotten borough of all rotten boroughs, gilded and preserved for ever, is probably better on those Benches, but we get close here. Having been part of that electorate—four of us sitting down, having a chat and deciding on a Member of Parliament in one of the richest countries in the western world—I know that an almost irresistible weight of absurdity comes down on you. Does stage 2 arrive with this Bill? Will it be stage 2 as envisaged by stage one? The money must definitely be against that. One thing about yesterday’s radical reform is that it ain’t tomorrow’s. Should we do something now? Yes, my Lords. If we are doing something now, we are addressing the current set of problems. Addressing the current set of problems in politics is one up on the norm because we are usually fairly reactive, so we should try to deal with the problems now. As the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, on the Opposition Front Bench, suggested, so far we have been pretty lucky in the people we have in here. Those of us who survived by other methods roseor fell—occasionally we lost. I cannot but help remember the fate of Viscount Long, who was not included on the Opposition Benches in 1999. If ever there was a quiet but effective servant of Parliament and his party who was excluded, it was that man. So we can get it wrong among ourselves. Ensuring that the process of selection is more open will be dealt with later on, but let us just deal with the absurdity. We have several people sitting round asking, ““Who shall we have in? Who did quite a good job last time?””, but rapidly they will disappear and we will have to take a punt on someone who is untried. Let us get rid of this process. We are quite capable of looking ridiculous in other ways and we do not have to hang this around our necks.