It is a pleasure and a privilege to follow the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr Shepherd). I shall be in the Lobby with him to vote against the programme motion and against the Bill, as it is a bad Bill.
I am not one of those people who has great admiration for the House of Lords. I agree with Bagehot, who was quoted earlier, that one need only go along the corridor and look at it more often. It is not such a wonderful place, even though there are some excellent and extraordinarily capable people there.
I believe in democracy and in improving our constitution, but the proposals do not do that at all. They diminish democracy in this country by setting up a counter-Chamber at the other end of the corridor. The problem, which has been mentioned in many excellent speeches, is that we have an over-mighty Executive and that this House has not kept as many powers as it should have done to itself over the years. I have not heard one speech from the people in favour of the proposal that told us how they would prevent power from being taken away from this Chamber if the Bill were passed.
The Bill will not improve the accountability of the Executive but will set them free to do more of what they want to do while being less accountable. So, the first argument in favour of it, which is that it improves democracy, falls. The second supportive reason given by the Deputy Prime Minister was that all the other countries he could think of had an elected second Chamber, which, as right hon. and hon. Members have corrected him, turns out not to be 100% true. Even if it were true, virtually all the countries that have such a second Chamber have a written constitution to deal with precisely the matter covered by clause 2, which is primacy. With no written constitution and elections to the second House, we will lose the primacy of this House.