House of Lords Bill [HL]

My Lords, I begin by congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Steel, on his expertise and diplomacy, one result of which is that, for the first time, all the Back-Bench speakers support one set of propositions. That is remarkable. I may stand to be corrected, but I think noble Lords will find that all nine Labour speakers will speak along the same lines and that they reflect the great majority. I do not know whether the noble Lord, Lord McNally, will be able to say in a few minutes that that is true of those on his Benches. This reflects the fact that we have been developing this consensus for three years. The majority of the Labour group decided that we should write to the Prime Minister. His response to our question about what should be done was that we should go away and find a consensus, which we did; so that is the position. I was very interested in the line of argument of the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, who is not in his place. He is the representative of the Bourbon tendency, in close alliance, I have to say, with our own Front-Bench representatives of the Trotskyite tendency. After all, both of them have in common the fact that neither of them actually believes in incrementalism or even in implementing before the next election, apparently, the last Labour Party manifesto, which referred to the creation of a statutory Appointments Commission and action on the 92 hereditaries, on which we were ready to give the softest possible interpretation: in other words, the suspension of by-elections. People on the Front Bench may say that we now have to wait for the next manifesto, but why should we believe what is said in the next manifesto if we do not believe—I am thankful to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford on this—that it will be as sacrosanct as the last manifesto? The reason for not waiting for the next general election is surely that, after the election there will be an even greater dilemma about what the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, describes as the need to wait for stage 2, even though it is, as we all now know—and we have been at it for 10 years—like waiting for Godot: the doctrine of unripe time. My noble friend Lord Grocott said that this was a well constructed Bill and that we should just get on with it. Those on the Front Bench can no longer sustain the doctrine that you cannot do anything until you have done everything. I have to say to my very good friend the Minister that the platform that he is standing on, or at any rate has been standing on until today, is collapsing under his feet. I speak with some authority on this; I spend half my life standing on collapsing platforms, so I recognise one when I see one. On a practical point, which, again, arises from a question from the noble Lord, Lord Jay of Ewelme, who, unfortunately, is not now in his place, I wish to clarify one aspect of the work of the statutory Appointments Commission where there is a serious and dangerous possible misunderstanding. I just wish to get on the record what I think we are talking about. None of us on the party-whipped Benches, which I think is true of the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat Benches—I stand to be corrected—believes that, as hinted in paragraph 8.32 of the White Paper, it would be up to the statutory Appointments Commission in any way to pick and choose between candidates for the whipped seats. How could that be? It certainly could not be true in the Labour Party. There would be all sorts of accusations about choosing right-wing or left-wing candidates and about seven people being able to make decisions on the whole second Chamber. I hope that the Minister will tell us that that is a narrow point in the White Paper which needs to be rewritten. There are many ways in which the statutory Appointments Commission could participate, along with the political parties, in looking at how people get to be here. I have written extensively on how this could work as regards the Labour Party being more transparent, albeit with some confidentiality in regard to the final stage after the trawl, but that is for another day. It is time to say, in reverse of what I said a few minutes ago, that the time is now right to get on with it.