House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) (Abolition of By-Elections) Bill [HL]

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 15th March 2019 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Grocott]

That the report be now received.

[Lord Trefgarne (Con)]

My Lords, may I say a few words?

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[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, before I speak to my amendment, I say—on behalf of everyone in the House, I am sure—how glad I am that there will be an opportunity for a minute’s silence at 11 am in the wake of the thoroughly barbaric and appalling outrage in New Zealand.

I also very much hope that we will be able to conclude proceedings on this Bill in good time to enable the Bill brought forward by the noble Lord, Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames, which potentially affects hundreds of thousands of people in this country, to have a decent Second Reading.

My amendment is essentially a tidying-up amendment and a simple one, and I have discussed it with the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, who has kindly indicated to me that he is minded to accept it. There are 92 hereditary Peers in your Lordships’ House, but only 90 of them are subject to the by-election provision. I strongly support the Bill—the noble Lord knows that: I have spoken in its favour and may have to do so again—but there are two hereditary Peers who are not subject to by-elections, who are here by virtue of the fact that they hold important offices of state. Neither of them ever participates politically in the proceedings of your Lordships’ House, but the Lord Great Chamberlain has the duty from time to time to deliver messages to your Lordships’ House. Therefore, his membership is important although peripheral. The Earl Marshal has the very real burden of being in charge of notable affairs of state. Again, it is appropriate that he should be a Member of your Lordships’ House, and the measure adopted some 20 years ago accepted that.

All I suggest in the amendment is that we make it abundantly clear that the Bill is dealing with what it says it is dealing with—by-elections—and that those two posts are not relevant to the Bill and therefore should not form part of it. I beg to move.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords—

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[Lord Northbrook (Con)]

My Lords, I firmly support my noble friend Lord Cormack’s amendment but it needs a little tweaking. In moving Amendment 2 I will speak also to Amendments 16 and 31. I am amending my noble friend’s amendment because I believe, contrary to the Bill, that the current royal officeholders—the Earl Marshal and the Lord Great Chamberlain—and their successors should remain Members of the House of Lords.

The Earl Marshal is the eighth of the great offices of state. The Duke of Norfolk’s family has held that position since 1672, being responsible, as my noble friend Lord Cormack said, for organising major ceremonial occasions, the monarch’s coronation and state funerals. He also oversees the College of Arms. The Lord Great Chamberlain is the sixth of the great offices of state, having charge of the Palace of Westminster. The office goes back to William the Conqueror’s reign. It is quite right that these two royal officeholders should remain Members of the House of Lords due to the importance of their roles and duties. Amendment 16 would adjust the Bill’s wording to put that into effect.

Amendment 31 covers a slightly different situation. At the end of last year, I was pleased to see the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, elected as one of the 90 hereditary Peers through a by-election. However, when Her Majesty dies, the noble Lord will become the Lord Great Chamberlain, as the position rotates between different peerage families on the death of the sovereign. As a result, there will be a vacancy among the 90 excepted hereditary Peers. This situation is not covered by the new subsection (4) proposed by Clause 1(3), which refers only to,

“the death, retirement, resignation or expulsion of an excepted person”.

Hence I believe that in these circumstances, a by-election should be held. I beg to move.

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, I fear that we may already be losing the dozen people I understand to be following this discussion in the country at large. I will try to expedite things. The retention of these two positions is completely anachronistic. Two hereditary positions remaining in perpetuity when they do not take part in events here is odd, particularly when we are trying to reduce the size of the House to 600. However, it is not germane to the Bill’s central purpose, which is to end by-elections, as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, said. On those terms, I accept the amendment and hope that we can get on to Amendment 2A.

Amendment 2 (to Amendment 1) agreed.

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I can put it no better. I beg to move.

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, someone from this side should perhaps say a few words at this stage. I wholly associate myself—I am sure everyone in the House does—with the remarks made about the events resulting in our minute’s silence at 11 am. I fear that that might be the end of the consensual feeling I am able to express today.

The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, began his remarks by saying that he thought the Bill was unlikely to become law, and then spent 16 minutes making it less likely to become law. He knows perfectly well what he is doing; he has been here for 34 years, so I imagine that he is getting the hang of it by now. Mind you, he is a newcomer compared with our friends the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, who has been here for 49 years, and the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, who has been here for 56 years. So they have had 140 years between them, and that is a pretty good innings. Maybe they can listen to some more recent voices.

I simply say this to the noble Lord: it is a pity he was not able to join us in Committee to familiarise himself with what has happened to the Bill so far. It was introduced 18 months ago in September 2017, when I was lucky enough to draw number one in the ballot for Private Members’ Bills, which should give one a reasonable hope of the Bill passing through its stages in the Lords. It had its Second Reading then; it has since had three days in Committee, which the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, was unable to get along to.

Had the noble Lord made it to the third day in Committee, he would now be aware that the precise amendment he is proposing now was debated at length and overwhelmingly opposed by those who spoke, including no less an authority on procedure—admittedly, not in this House—than the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, who pointed out, quite correctly, that this is a single-issue Bill that I am proposing. It is a three-clause Bill on one page. The noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, said, in terms, that to introduce this kind of additional related material into a single-issue Bill of this sort was a rather “generous” way of interpreting our procedures. The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, knows perfectly well that, if this amendment were accepted or debated in any detail now, it would add enormously to the time involved in establishing this Bill, it would add to the costs of the Bill and, most importantly of all, it would do what I am sure his amendment is intended to do and make it even less likely that this Bill will become law.

I am so conscious on these occasions that we have these ragged debates—we have had several on this—that are unintelligible to the public outside. The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, suggested that he was a moderniser; well, not in this respect. It needs someone—and it falls to me—to remind the House why we are doing this and why I am introducing the Bill. It is simply to end these idiotic by-elections, which are occurring with increasing frequency, in which only hereditary Peers on the hereditary Peers list, of which there are 211—I remind the House that 210 of them are men—can take part. In the first 10 years of the 20 years for which this system has been in operation, there were 10 by-elections. In the second 10 years, to date there have been 26. There is one pending, which bears a moment’s thought. It is due to be announced on 27 March. There are 28 electors who will elect this new Member of Parliament on 27 March, and 14 candidates; that is two electors per candidate. The cost of the by-election will be £600. Noble Lords might think that is not much, but I think—my maths is not very good—that is roughly £8 per vote. I would do it for less, should the offer be made to me. Needless to say, it is an all-male shortlist, which is quite unusual these days and takes some defending—which the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, is presumably capable of doing.

Most of what I want to emphasise today is what is happening in this House. In the last 10 days, 63 amendments have been put down to this simple, three-clause Bill, 53 of them by the same two Members—our old friends the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, and the noble Earl, Lord Caithness. They have degrouped all the amendments—I will not go into the details of degrouping, because I really would lose an audience if I were to try to do so—but it simply means that today we are discussing 42 groups of amendments. Most Chief Whips will say that if you are very lucky you can get through six groups in an hour—we are certainly not doing that now—so I reckon it would take seven hours of debate to get through those 42 groups. Of course, every one of them needs opposing, because most of them are ridiculous.

I will give two examples; I will spare my noble friend Lord Adonis on this side—I think he would win the prize for the silliest amendment. Actually, I cannot resist; I will mention it in a moment. But there are two that I will mention now. Amendment 47 says that in order for the Act to be implemented there would need to be an approving ballot among not just hereditary Peers here, but all hereditary Peers. There are about 900. I have not counted them, but I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, knows how many there are. I have no doubt that many of them are living abroad and are in various stages of excitement about the arguments that they can deploy—that is as politely as I can put it. The idea that you can organise a ballot of 900 people worldwide in order to sort this out is just ridiculous.

The amendment that takes second prize is Amendment 54, which says that the Act will be implemented when the number of women hereditary Peers equals the number of women hereditary Peers who were Members of the House of Lords at the time of the 1999 Act—you know it makes sense. There were four women hereditary Peers at the time of the 1999 Act. The progressive series of elections has resulted in the fact that there is now one—so the number has gone down from four to one—and the Act would come into effect until that number got back up to four. Please spare us that amendment. I ask that all the amendments be withdrawn or not moved, but let us concentrate to begin with on the most idiotic amendments. The idea that in the 21st century we should be arguing about whether we should have one woman or four women among the 92 reserved places is beyond satire.

However, I have to give first prize to my noble friend Lord Adonis. He says—

[Lord Cormack]

I support everything that the noble Lord, my friend, has said, but would it not look ridiculous in the country if this debate prevented a proper discussion of the Cohabitation Rights Bill, which is due for a Second Reading and in which many people throughout the country are taking a real interest?

[Lord Grocott]

That is absolutely right. This Report stage is scheduled to finish at 1.30 pm. That is ample time to deal with any reasonable amendments that anyone might wish to put down. It is generous time—but I am losing track of my desire to get to my noble friend Lord Adonis’s amendment. It would provide that, when the next by-election takes place, which we know will be on 27 March, when there are 28 electors, as I pointed out, the vacancy would be filled by a vote of the whole of the electorate of the United Kingdom. I will say that again because I do not think it has quite sunk in; the electorate would be the whole electorate of the United Kingdom. I cannot tot that up off the top of my head, but the electorate is about 40 million, so I suggest gently to my noble friend, who is known for his hyperbole, that to substitute 40 million electors for 28 electors to elect a hereditary Peer is overdoing it, so I hope my noble friend will have enough sense not to press that amendment.

This is all serious as far as I am concerned, but there is a real test here, particularly for the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, and the noble Earl, Lord Caithness. It is this: they can decide to expedite these amendments, and move them if they must, to conclude this Report stage by 1.30 pm. The House would then be orderly, it would have given the Bill more than enough time—more than anyone could reasonably expect a Bill of this length to have given to it—or they will be in grave danger of bringing the whole proceedings of this House into serious disrepute if they do not withdraw the vast majority of the amendments.

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

Before my noble friend sits down, perhaps I may ask his advice on one point. Surely the Government should end this whole pursuit and provide time for the Bill to conclude during this Session and to be introduced in the Commons and then carried over into the next Session so that we can really make some progress and end this ridiculous farce that is bringing this House into terrible disrepute.

[Lord Grocott]

I sincerely wish it were possible to carry this Bill over into the next Session, because there is no doubt whatever that it has overwhelming support in this House in all parties and, I guess, even among the hereditary Peers—but it is not within the power of the House to do that. The Companion to the Standing Orders is quite clear. I reassure my noble friend that if I should be unfortunate enough, despite having been first in the ballot, not to get my Bill on to the statute book this year, despite the wonderful support that it has had, I shall bring in exactly the same Bill in the next Session of Parliament. I know it will succeed some time. It is just a matter of persistence, and I can be extremely persistent if required.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, it might be for the benefit of the House if I speak to my Amendments 58, 59 and 60, which my noble friend Lord Strathclyde mentioned in his speech. I am glad I am now following the noble Lord, Lord Grocott. I do not have my name down to 53 amendments, as he claimed. That was a very misleading statement. He also derided the amendment relating to female hereditary Peers. There is a slightly deeper reason for that. My name is not to that amendment, but I think my noble friend Lord Trefgarne, who will doubtless speak for himself on this matter, has introduced a Bill to change the rules regarding succession to hereditary peerages. I believe that it should be the eldest child. If the eldest child of the monarch should succeed, so should the eldest child of a Peer succeed. I would support any Bill in that direction.

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[Lord Trefgarne]

If it will satisfy the noble Lord, I am happy to declare that I am a hereditary Peer.

A few moments ago, the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, described what he sees as the principal shortcomings of the by-elections—namely, that there are very few voters and candidates for the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats as compared with the Conservatives. I hope he therefore agrees that, if the Bill does not become law, voting in by-elections should be done on an all-House basis, which I shall very much support.

[Lord Grocott]

Can we dispose of this matter? One would think that lots of people would vote in a whole House election. I never take part in these things, but I am very happy to report that at the last whole House election earlier this year, 33% of this House took part in the ballot. I think that that is a sign of people voting with their feet—they know how silly the whole thing is. The percentage taking part has steadily declined since the 1999 Act.

[Lord Trefgarne]

No doubt, if there is another all-House by-election, the noble Lord will persuade them otherwise, particularly those in his own party. I will not detain your Lordships any longer unless any other noble Lord wishes to intervene. I simply repeat that I support the amendment proposed by my noble friend.

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[Lord Grocott]

I know that my noble friend is a very keen tweeter. I have had the pleasure of reading one or two of his tweets, although I am not sure how I acquired them because I am not part of the system. For example, I think he is comparing our present situation to the one Britain faced in the spring of 1940. He is given to hyperbole, but as he tweets—and no doubt the wisdom he is expounding will be tweeted out to a large number of people as soon as he leaves the Chamber—could he please promise me that he will tweet the details of the amendment he will propose later and the arguments for allowing 40 million people to take part in the next hereditary Peer by-election? Will he also please give an estimate as to what the cost of that would be? Finally, could he explain to us how he thinks that would reconnect him with the public?

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, let me be completely frank. If it is a choice between the next election to this House taking place with an electorate of—what is it?

[Lord Grocott]

Forty.

[Lord Adonis]

Or an election by 40 million of our fellow citizens of this country, I believe it should be the 40 million. I believe that they would support that in the pubs of Birmingham, too.

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[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, perhaps I may now be allowed to join this debate. I said in my opening remarks that I had not spoken in this debate at all; I had tabled one small amendment on which I was about to reply. If my noble friend Lord Cormack thinks that what he did was a clever little ploy, he has another think coming. As a result of that, I shall now speak on every single amendment that I can. It was outrageous for those who support this Bill to deny me, as the mover of the previous amendment, an opportunity to reply, particularly when the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, had electrified the debate on the purposes of the Bill and, frankly, had shot the fox of the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, in explaining exactly what its motivation was. That is why I am deeply shocked that so many Peers voted against that amendment, which would have provided for a statutory appointments commission.

I would like to calm things down while we go through the rest of the amendments. When the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, asked Peers to declare whether they were hereditary Peers, I rather cheered that he could not tell the difference. That is the point. I know exactly why I am here. I am here as a result of legislation passed at the end of the last century and by election. I am an elected hereditary Peer under law. More than 200 hereditary Peers voted for me, and in that list I came second.

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords—

[Lord Strathclyde]

No, my Lords, I am not going to give way to the noble Lord until I have finished this point. I was proud to have come second to my late noble friend Lord Ferrers—I hope that my noble friend Lord Trefgarne is not going to argue with me about that—and my noble friend Lord Trefgarne was third. I hope that the next time the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, gets up, he will tell us in some detail, as the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, did, why he is a Member of this House. Let every other noble Lord who is going to speak declare their interest and explain what brought them to this House and who ticked that box. I am happy now to give way to the noble Lord, Lord Grocott.

[Lord Grocott]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, for lowering the temperature. Perhaps we have had just enough of this faux anger. I was going to point out how lucky he was to be elected with 200 votes, because when I first stood in Lichfield and Tamworth I got some 25,000 votes and lost.

[Lord Strathclyde]

I notice that the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, ducked the opportunity to explain to this House why he is a Member.

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[The Earl of Erroll]

My Lords, briefly, I think we should look at rejigging the balance between the parties represented here, because freezing the 1999 position is silly. I suspect that when we get to Amendment 9, that is the one I shall support. They are not grouped properly, but I pre-warn noble Lords that I think they are interesting and we should look at them.

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, this is the fifth amendment of 61 that we have to consider. What has been happening is a complete abuse and I am shocked that the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, who has been here since he was very young and has held high office on many occasions, should be party to this filibuster. I am not going to waste the House’s time by responding to every amendment; I am simply going to recommend, as the sponsor of this Bill, that every single amendment is resisted. I appeal to the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne: even at this stage we have an hour and a quarter left, which should be easily enough to dispose of these amendments, all of which wreck the Bill. He has the opportunity to wreck the Bill quite legitimately by voting against Third Reading after this stage. That is the proper way to do it: the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, will perhaps nod in assent to that. If you object to the Bill in principle, you vote against Third Reading. So, please, I appeal to him—for anyone who is watching to make sense of what is happening here—that he does not move the rest of his amendments and we get on with the next business.

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[Lord Grocott]

It obviously does not even begin to solve the problem, because the elephant in the room is that the only people eligible to fill these vacancies will continue to be those who have inherited titles. The noble Lord, Lord Colgrain, said that if you happen to have inherited a title, that gives you a dispassionate view of the world. Let me put it in more personal terms. The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, is an hereditary Peer. The noble Lord, Lord Howard, is a life Peer. Explain to me the crucial difference. I thought that they were both Tories who normally voted Tory and are indistinguishable from one another in that respect, but according to the noble Lord, Lord Colgrain, there is a fundamental difference between people who inherited the title and others.

How can it possibly continue to be right that 900 people, in this country of 60 million plus, who happened to have inherited a title have a one in 900 chance of becoming a Member of Parliament by being successful in an hereditary Peers’ by-election; whereas the rest of us—not us life Peers, but the remaining millions—have a roughly one in 75,000 chance of being a Member of Parliament? They have to get elected to do it. Why on earth should the descendants of Messrs Trefgarne, Colgrain, Caithness and Strathclyde have this assisted places scheme, as it has been referred to, which is denied to the rest of the population? Unless someone can give me a sensible answer to that, we will have to agree to disagree and, I hope, vote very soon.

[Lord Strathclyde]

I am not aware that anyone has made an argument in favour of the hereditary peerage since the end of the previous century. That is why, as I briefly tried to explain, the hereditary peerage came to an end in 1999. We are dealing with the dissatisfaction with the Labour Government. Let us remember who created these by-elections and introduced the Act: it was a Labour Government, whom the noble Lord supported. It was unsatisfactory at the time. I know that it was intended to continue to stage two. That has not happened yet, but we are patient and should continue to be. After all, it was in 1911 that the Liberal Prime Minister promised us reform on a popular basis, and no doubt we will get to that debate later.

I hope that that clarifies for the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, that no one is trying to defend the current position, but we do not want to create a wholly appointed House.

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[Lord Adonis]

I am very grateful to the noble Lord for explaining the amendment. I now understand it and will hold in my mind the complex formula that he has just set out. However, my fundamental point is that it does not matter one whit whether this House has 600, 700 or 800 Members; it will be equally legitimate or illegitimate, whatever your view on how many it should have. Those are still very large numbers. I think it will function more effectively with its existing remit if it has a larger number of Members. That will mean that we have a steady flow of new appointments to the House, rather than drying up the appointments. However, all that is fundamentally beside the point. The current House of Lords is illegitimate. It will be just as illegitimate as the existing House, and arguably more so, if it is wholly nominated. The right thing is not to do any tinkering—either of the sort proposed by my noble friend Lord Grocott or any other variant—but to set up a constitutional convention and get to grips with fundamental reform, which, in the context of Brexit and the governance crisis across the United Kingdom at the moment, is long overdue.

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, as my noble friend Lord Adonis repeats his arguments on successive amendments, he is getting more and more fluent but that does not make him any more persuasive. As it is now 1.15 pm and we have been going for three hours, it is up to me to say a sentence about what has been happening here today for the benefit of a baffled public, should anyone have been watching.

We have had three days in Committee and a Second Reading, and the Bill has been going for a year and a half. On Report, we have now reached Amendment 13. We have 62 amendments to consider. We have made ridiculously slow progress due to quite deliberate tactics by less than half a dozen Members of this House, of which I am sad to say number one is my noble friend Lord Adonis. Another culprit—I am shocked rather than sad to say—has been the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde. The number of amendments is almost entirely the responsibility of Messrs Caithness and Trefgarne—of course, they are noble Lords not Messrs. I know and assert that what has been happening is a clear abuse of the procedures of this House. I do not have to worry about that too much; Members must answer for themselves whether they have been abusing the procedures of the House. But the net result is that Bills with overwhelming support will not reach the statute book. It is a bad position for any assembly to be in, when half a dozen people can thwart the direct wishes of hundreds who have expressed themselves in sundry votes on this issue as well as numerous people who are not here.

[Lord Howard of Rising]

I thank the noble Lord for giving way. What does he think about the House of Commons opposing the will of 17 and a half million people?

[Lord Grocott]

I do not see the direct relevance of that to what I am saying. I have expressed my views on the 17 and a half million people ad nauseam in this House; to be absolutely clear, I am very much on their side.

What has happened is not just an abuse of the House, a waste of its time and, to a degree, a waste of taxpayers’ money. To be personal about it, it is also a waste of precious Private Members’ time. We rarely get the opportunity to introduce a Private Members’ Bill. It is bad for the House to appear threatening to any future Member who wants to introduce a Private Members’ Bill.

We are closing the debate at 1.30 pm, when I will conclude. But this is a Bill that will not go away; I want to make that quite plain. They all know they are playing King Canute. This Bill will pass. I say that with absolute confidence, although I occasionally wonder whether it will be in my lifetime. The House needs to look very carefully at its procedures to ensure that the farce that we have endured today is not repeated. I hope that the Procedure Committee will see whether there are ways of dealing with this. Otherwise, the risk of further disrepute being brought on our House will only grow.

[The Earl of Caithness]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, once again mentioned my noble friend Lord Trefgarne and myself. I did put my name to a small number of amendments, but the noble Lord cannot accuse either my noble friend or me of filibustering by talking for far too long. We have talked very little, to make a short point. When the noble Lord accepted my amendment in Committee, I sat down immediately, as he will recall. I think he has forgotten one person who has prolonged the proceedings today, and that is the noble Lord, Lord Cormack.

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[Lord Strathclyde]

Okay, my Lords, I can see that I have lost that particular argument with the noble Lord, Lord Snape.

At the end of the last amendment, the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, wanted to place on the record exactly what was going on. That was his version—his truth. But what is also going on here is an attempt to create an all-appointed House with no guarantees of representation from anywhere in the UK, as laid out in this amendment, which of course would be solved if we had an independent statutory appointments commission. It is in no way an argument to say that, just because the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, believes he is right, no one from any part of the House should be able to argue against him. I have witnessed the noble Lord arguing many times on Bills, and it would be an absurdity to change the rules to stop him, any more than it would be to stop my noble friend Lord Caithness.

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, I am absolutely in favour of every Member of this House expressing their views on whatever subject is before us in a reasonable way and for considerable periods of time. The problem we have here is that it is not only me who wants this Bill to go through but the overwhelming majority of people in this House. There is a tiny minority, all of whom we have heard from today. They are perfectly at liberty to speak—I fully support that—but I do not support their right to use procedural tricks to thwart the will of the majority.

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I do not look forward to the next Labour Government, but there will be one. When that Government come in, I look forward to seeing, in their first Session of Parliament, a House of Lords Act, or a fully formed constitutional reform with this change at its heart. That is how things happen in this country: you win elections and control the legislative agenda. There is an opportunity for Private Members’ Bills, but this is a major constitutional issue and I do not think it is appropriate for the Private Members procedure. That is the underlying problem. The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and I disagree on most things, coming from opposite sides of the political fence, but we share a birthday and stand shoulder-to-shoulder on opposing this piece of legislation, because it is the wrong thing to do.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, before I—and, I suspect, many others in this House—lose the will to live, I declare an interest: Lloyd George knew my great-great-grandfather, and that is why I am here. I also share a reflection from my great-grandfather, Stanley Baldwin. When he arrived in this House, he said, “It is one of life’s great ironies that I am arriving in a place to which I have sent so many people, devoutly hoping never to see them again”. I suspect some of their descendants have contributed to these proceedings. This is the law of intended consequences, rather than the law of unintended consequences.

There are 90 hereditary Peers in your Lordships’ House. I would suggest that the fact that so few of us turn up at these proceedings, following this Bill, and an even smaller number take part is not an accident. Most of us have absented ourselves quite deliberately, first, because there is an obvious conflict of interest, and secondly, because, although I have not taken John Curtice-type soundings on this, I suspect that the great majority are strongly in sympathy and in favour of the noble Lord, Lord Grocott. I wanted to put that on the record.

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, I am profoundly grateful for that intervention from the noble Lord, Lord Russell, which is one of the most effective contributions that we have heard in this long discussion. I stand now because we are close enough to 1.30, when we had agreed that this would finish, to move that debate on amendments be now adjourned.

[Lord Northbrook]

My Lords, I am thankful to all noble Lords who spoke. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.