Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

As the noble Lord is passing from the topic he has been dealing with, I wonder whether his memory is as long as mine. He will remember that when in opposition the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats agreed upon a way of dealing with the problem he is referring to when we were an appointed House. It was that the Liberal Democrats would help Labour to exclude hereditary Peers provided that we were given life Peers in rough proportion to the way we had done in the previous general election. Is he aware that having agreed to that, when we asked the then leader of his party what had happened to the promise that had been made, we were told ““You can’t get back your Peers because you aren’t voting with us. You aren’t voting the right way.””? As a result of that, the leaders of my party and his were not on speaking terms for six months because of the betrayal by his party. Secondly, I wonder whether the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, recalls that I was independent adviser on constitutional affairs to the right honourable Jack Straw and Mr Michael Wills, as he then was, trying to get constitutional reform through. Does he recall that the pathetic Bill that was eventually produced, causing me to resign because it was worthless, was a ragbag Bill full of many more issues than this Bill, which deals with only two? Therefore, does he not think that it is a little arrogant for him to condescend in the way that he does towards the coalition?