House of Lords Bill [HL]

My Lords, like every other speaker in the debate so far, I hugely welcome the Bill but am rather puzzled as to why the spokesmen for the Government in both Houses yesterday did not seem to. Why is this? I offer a slightly roundabout explanation. My politically formative years were during the era when the country was plagued by Marxists and Trotskyites of various kinds. They did not agree on much— remember, there were a thousand minor splits in their ranks—but they were agreed on one thing: they were totally opposed to any ameliorative legislation to improve the condition of the people. They said, ““We must fight this to heighten the contradictions of cap-it-alism””—that was how they pronounced it—““and advance the revolution””. Far be it from me to accuse present Ministers of any affinity with Marxism but, in the same way, the opponents of the Bill are not against it for anything that it does. They agree with what it does, but oppose it for one reason only: they think that if it passes, it will remove their most plausible, popular arguments and complaints about the present House. Put simply, they want to preserve the bad things about this place to help them to destroy the good thing about this place: its expert membership. That position is both disingenuous and immoral. Without wishing to be controversial, let me cite a current example. Wholesale reform will not take place until 2014, even by the Government’s plans. By then, it may be that the noble Lord, Lord Black of Crossharbour, will have served his sentence. Unless this Bill, or something like it, is passed, he could then sail back into this House, install himself on the Cross Benches—since the Conservatives have wisely expelled him—and opine on what laws this Parliament should pass, laws which a jury has found him to have utterly flouted. Yes, that would be a great propaganda coup for the root and branch reformers, which is why we should proceed today to make it impossible.