House of Lords Bill [HL]

This morning, I suddenly saw a range of manuscript amendments and I thought that there was dirty work afoot or that something dastardly was in the air. I recalled, back in my family history, Glencoe, when we were invited to dinner by the wicked Campbells, who henceforth had to have a yellow stripe in their tartan. I wondered why the Liberals had chosen yellow. Last week I wore a yellow tie, and I wonder why the noble Lord, Lord Williamson, has suddenly seemed to have switched sides and moved to the yellow. I have gone blue with a yellow anchor. I would now like again to correct the noble Lord, Lord Steel, because at his Second Reading debate, he turned to me with a sort of evil look in his eye and called me an enemy because I had not voted for his Bill. He had forgotten that one of the traditions of this House is that when at Second Reading something benefits you, you do not speak in favour of it. Being an elected hereditary Peer and being effectively told that if I supported him I would be a life Peer was wrong. More than that, I am one of his supporters because he was a Member of Parliament for Peebles and I am the Baron of Polmood in the County of Peebles, so we are roughly on the same side. What worries me is this yellow business. There is yellow-belly and yellow also denotes jealousy—of which the Liberals have a multitude—or it can mean cowardly, but it is not. It means someone who wishes to change something. They wish to change the Government and good luck to them. I have supported them on many things, and in many aspects of this Bill I would support them again. It is always an important day. Last week we had the ides of March and today is the feast of San Giuseppe, which is the feast of St Joseph where the Pope speaks in the Vatican areas of the role of the worker in society—man effectively lives to work and does not work to live, but it is actually the other way round. Here we are trying to determine the future of a great institution but without an awful lot of knowledge. I disclose my interest here: I was part of the team paid by the Labour Party in 1968 to look at the reform of the Lords. As your Lordships may know, over a period of time, I have produced paper after paper and analysis after analysis and I really supported a wholly elected House when I first came here. I, too, have perhaps been contaminated a bit by change—but more, I think, influenced by your Lordships. As I research, I suddenly find that there is a breadth of knowledge and experience that could be directed towards the outside world rather than towards some elements of internecine strife. In our recent debates, opinions have shifted and changed. I have moved my amendment because there is a certain misrepresentation of what you call an elected hereditary Peer. Under the 1999 Act, for which I did not vote, we were exempted, I was not sure what that was, but I thought that we were exempted, then we were excepted, and then some of us were elected. To be honest, I did not expect to be elected. In general, in any of these strange elections, if you have 10 people who all agree to put each other in the top 10, William Hill advise me that no matter how many there are in the race, you will automatically get in. So it was a put-up job, or a dastardly deed. Now that we have moved on, I must accept that my excepted and elected colleagues have done a pretty good job over time. However, they are permanently assaulted from outside by people saying that they are hereditary. They are hereditary Peers—who were elected. Parties opposite have often tried to remove the word "elected". It was not a perfect election; it was totally imperfect. But it exists. I tabled this amendment and Amendment 40 because one should recognise that these new manuscript amendments are a little insulting. Under the 1999 Act there is a register of people who can stand for elections should one come. I suggest in Amendment 40, to which I will not speak now, that all 175 on the register should be placed before the Appointments Commission. You cannot exclude them totally just because they are hereditary. My amendment would, in part, determine the view of the House and also create the correct position. If we place the list of Peers who wish to stand before the Appointments Commission, that effectively removes the election. They would be appointed. I would not wish your Lordships to feel that I was interfering, but over the past weeks and in the coming months, I have put in hand a complete analysis, an assembly, of all your Lordships’ contributions to this House since each noble Lord arrived. The preliminary research shows that it is a remarkable collection of ideas and differences of opinion. It also shows that your Lordships, individually and collectively, have shown an ability to change opinion by almost 180 degrees, and then 180 degrees back. I am slightly doubtful, although I still believe that there is an election role here, and I would like to move my amendment and see what the opinion of the House is.