My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend of many years. He reminded us of the mission creep that might be involved in a Bill such as this, which I will come to in a moment. It is also a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Cooper. It is always a daunting experience to kick off here, but I am sure that he will have no difficulty with the interests that his speech evoked.
Those are the nice things that I am able to say, but I now turn with considerable weariness—I think that is the best way describing it—to yet another attempt by this coalition Government at constitutional reform. Following the old Nye Bevan maxim of not looking in a crystal ball when you can read a history book, I will have two minutes’ history lesson on this Government’s record so far on constitutional reform. Let us not forget that this is a significant constitutional reform measure. No less a body than the House’s own Constitutional Committee made that clear in its report just published.
I have two or three examples so far. The first is the proposal for a referendum on changing the voting system. Some of us said, “Please don’t do this”. It was supported by the leadership of all three parties, which is always a danger sign. Incidentally, that is a characteristic of the Bill that I shall talk about in a moment. Happily, it was rejected by the electorate, but at great cost—some £75 million. Then we had the proposal for a directly elected second Chamber, but without any attempt to define its powers or the relationship between the two Chambers. Happily, that again was rejected, in that case by the House of Commons, and not without an expenditure of well over £500,000.