House of Lords Bill [HL]

I am grateful to my noble friend for that. If she were the only person supporting the amendment, I would say that that is fine because I have total confidence in her views and judgment, except for one thing. Other Members of this House interpret the Bill differently. The noble Lord, Lord Steel, obviously does. That is my difficulty. If everyone supporting the first amendment is rejecting the proposal by the noble Lord, Lord Steel—apart from the noble Lord himself—perhaps we will begin to see where we are going. I want to put a question to the noble Lord, Lord Steel. Would he support inserting in Amendment A1 a paragraph (e), "to prepare the way for a totally or largely elected House". If the amendment said that, I would begin to understand what the Bill was about, but short of that, I am not sure. I am prepared to read Hansard again and again to see whether I have made a mistake in interpreting what is being said. But I am confused and I think some Members of the Committee share my confusion. Someone said that this is a matter of running repairs. I had a discussion with an eminent Member of this House, who is not here at the moment, who accused me of making the best the enemy of the good. I would never do that and I believe in an incremental approach, provided that the good is the good. If I was totally satisfied of that, I would go along with this. However, my main point is to say how concerned I am about the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Selsdon. We would be getting a decision made which as an unelected House we have no right to make. The Commons clearly said that it wants either a 100 per cent elected House or an 80 per cent elected House. To put forward that amendment and make a decision on a Thursday afternoon just like that, ignoring what the Commons said, is wrong and flies in the face of what the House of Commons wants. The Commons should win any argument of this sort. In future, when I am asked, "What did you do on the Steel Bill, Daddy?", I will be hard put to respond. It seems that people who agree with me and those who do not will have been on both sides of the barricade. I am confused, but I am certainly clear that the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Selsdon, should be defeated.