House of Lords (Expulsion and Suspension) Bill [HL]

I very much support the amendment, and apologise that I was unable to be in the House for Second Reading, but I also support the Bill. As some of your Lordships may recall, I was chairman of the Privileges Committee during the saga of the first suspensions to take place in the modern era. They were not as simple as all that, because a number of people thought that we should not have been able to suspend noble Lords from the service of the House. We found that we were, but we also found that we were unable to suspend noble Lords beyond the length of a Parliament. In other words, if someone was suspended today, they could be suspended for only five or six months or so, whereas if someone was suspended on 1 June, they could be suspended for five years. The press and the public were rightly unable to understand why we did not have the power to suspend for longer or, indeed, to expel. The Bill appears to deal with that matter extremely well, and I very much support it and the amendment.