House of Lords (Amendment) Bill [HL]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for his intervention, but it does not change my position one bit. Were there not provision for replacement, the number of non-appointed Peers would already have fallen by 10 since 1999, as other noble Lords have said. The appointed element among Lords temporal, which was raised from 45 per cent to 82 per cent in 1999, would now have risen to over 88 per cent. From there, this Bill would carry us inexorably towards100 per cent, something that the other place has clearly said that it does not want. Such a change can happen very fast and should not, I again respectfully submit, be sought in a Private Member’s Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, is quoted on his party’s website—my noble friend Lord Northbrook referred to this—as having said of the process of elections for hereditaries, in commenting on his Bill on 13 March: "““This process ensures that the average age of the 92 hereditaries continually rises, and that the replacements are drawn from those who were not seen as useful by their colleagues when the original 92 were selected””." I respectfully point out to him that that misrepresents how the system works. I, for one, was not here before the reforms and, I suggest, I am manfully contributing to a reduction in the average age—as will others, as long as the system is allowed to continue. This is the wrong Bill at the wrong time, dropped into a House that is functioning well and targetedat a rare category of new entrants untainted by the accusation of impropriety over their means of entry to your Lordships' House, a category that few outside the House, against the background of cash or loans for peerages, see as the most urgent target for reform. Surely, we should await stage 2. While we await it,I hope that we will be invited to participate in discussion and debate by the Government. After all, they have a duty to seek consensus in these matters. As they do, they should surely also consider ideas for reform not only of this House but the other place. The House of Commons is not working properly—for example in its lack of scrutiny of great chunks of legislation, which are often sent here unconsidered. That problem seems to be recognised even by Gordon Brown. That defect in our constitution cannot, sadly, be corrected by a Private Member’s Bill in this place or the other. In the interim, we should surely not further expose this House to control by the operation of patronage, against which the Bill offers not a single safeguard. Instead, it moves us steadily in that direction. If the Bill proceeds to Committee, we shall seek significant amendment. The noble Lord will not be the least surprised that we firmly oppose it as it stands.