House of Lords Reform Bill [HL]

I am most grateful to the noble Lord for that clarification. The noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, along with one or two others, questioned the precise drafting of the statutory commission proposals. I had some sympathy with his view that it should be more open and transparent, perhaps on the lines of the United States. I am very sympathetic to any amendments that may come forward along those lines when we get to Committee. The noble Lord, Lord Wills, raised the whole question of democratic accountability, which again I think is the debate that we are still to address. I particularly welcomed the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Desai, because he is a conversion to support for the Bill. He was quite right that we should retain the same sort of occasional club rights that we have for the hereditary Peers who have gone. My Bill does not in any way trespass on that. The important thing that we have to recognise is that two things will happen, whatever happens to this Bill. There are two pieces of work going on that this Bill does not trespass on and which I would argue it assists. One is the work of my noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral and his committee. They have to continue to work, even under the proposals of my Bill, which would provide the primary legislation that the report recommended, because the House of Lords would still have to come forward with a standing order. The details of that obviously have to be worked out in conjunction with the Government. My Bill does not trespass on that work or on the work of the cross-party committee, to which frequent reference has been made. I very much welcomed the very honest speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, at the beginning of the debate, when she talked about the time that would be required to bring forward the Bill for prelegislative scrutiny. The combination of what she said and what the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, said makes me more and more anxious about how long this is going to take. We now discover that they have not yet decided whether it is to be a wholly or mainly elected House. Well, hang on a minute, that is a pretty fundamental issue. If we have not got past that gate, how long is it going to take? The noble Baroness, Lady Royall, who is a member of the committee, underlined my point when she talked about the Bill being introduced in the spring. That is the latest definition that we have had. The spring is an elastic thing; it could be late April, I suppose, but it was to happen before Christmas. The noble Baroness, Lady Verma, talked about the number of issues that the committee was still considering and deciding. I do not see the Bill coming forward for prelegislative scrutiny for some considerable time. With the amount of time that it will take for the prelegislative scrutiny to take place and then the actual introduction of the Bill, it will be very long indeed. On previous occasions, I gave up on this Bill after one Committee stage. That is why I referred to four debates. This is the third Second Reading, but we also had a Committee day. I saw no point in going on with those days because the Bill was being obstructed, but if there is consensus in the House that we need these measures, let us put it into Committee and try and fine-tune it before passing it on to the other place. We can say, ““Look, this Chamber is willing to see reforms””. While these more fundamental issues are still being discussed, let us send it down to the other end of the building and see what the House of Commons makes of it. I hope that it will be sympathetic. For that reason, I beg to move. Bill read a second time and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.