Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

My Lords, I briefly looked in on the debate of the students. When I heard the conclusion that they came to, I lost all hope for their generation. Unlike my noble friend Lord Prescott, I want a reformed House of Lords. The last time I spoke was 17 hours ago, so I hope that noble Lords will not mind if I speak again. I do not like either of the amendments in this group because they establish an unnecessary connection between the membership of this House and that of the House of Commons. There has never been any connection between the numbers of Members of the two Chambers. When Pitt the Younger entered Parliament, your Lordships’ House was half the size of the House of Commons. When I joined, it was twice the size of the House of Commons. Not only have the two Houses been independent but, from long experience, I know that the other place does not care very much about us, nor does it want to find out what we do. I do not complain about that. The amendment of my noble friend Lord Knight makes House of Commons membership conditional on reform of the House of Lords. The only optimistic thing about that is that my noble friend thinks that reform of the House of Lords will happen. I do not think that it will because, at the rate at which this Parliament is going, we will not have time to do it. However, even if there were time, it would not be a good idea to postpone what we wanted to do about the House of Commons until after the House of Lords had been reformed. That would be a bad precedent. I slightly favour the amendment of my noble friend Lord Grocott because it is not conditional on reform of the House of Lords, but merely refers to the other place having more Members than the House of Lords. If the latest report referred to by the Leader of the House about people leaving the House of Lords is implemented, we may get a membership of a reasonable size, which would be desirable. However, hitching the membership of either House to that of the other has no constitutional precedent, and so far no one has shown it to be at all desirable. We may continue to impact on each other for a long time but our roles, functions and methods of working are different, and therefore the number of Members required in the two Chambers must be different. I apologise to my noble friends for not supporting their amendments.