Procedure of the House: Select Committee Report
(12 years, 10 months ago)
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The Chairman of Committees
That the Report from the Select Committee on Members Leaving the House (5th Report, HL Paper 151) be agreed to.
The Chairman of Committees (Lord Brabazon of Tara)
My Lords, I shall speak only briefly to explain the process whereby this report from the Procedure Committee has been put before your Lordships.
As noble Lords will be aware, this report arises out of the report of the Leader’s Group on Members leaving the House, which was chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral. The group’s report was published in January, an interim report having previously been debated on 16 November 2010. I am delighted to see the noble Lord in his place, and I understand that he may speak later and respond to any points of substance that are made by noble Lords. I shall not comment on the substance of the report, although I will of course do my best to answer any outstanding questions at the end of the debate. On the same day as the group’s report appeared, 13 January, the noble Lord the Leader of the House published a Written Statement indicating that he would ask the Procedure Committee to bring forward proposals to implement the Leader’s Group recommendations. This is what we have done.
The most important parts of our report are Appendices 1 and 3. Appendix 1 proposes text for inclusion in the next edition of the Companion to the Standing Orders describing a revised leave of absence scheme and the new voluntary retirement scheme. Appendix 3 proposes amendments to Standing Order 22, which governs the leave of absence scheme.
Before concluding, I draw the House’s attention to one aspect of the committee’s report that is not found in the Leader’s Group report. It is our recommendation that the Procedure Committee should appoint a leave of absence sub-committee to advise the Clerk of the Parliaments on the operation of the leave of absence scheme. The sub-committee, chaired by the Chairman of Committees, will be made up of the Chief Whips and the Convenor of the Cross Benches. It will help to ensure that the new strengthened rules on leave of absence are applied sensibly and fairly. It could, for instance, recommend in particular cases that the three months’ notice period for terminating leave of absence be abridged in accordance with what will become Standing Order 22.7.
I hope that the appointment of this new sub-committee will be welcomed across the House. I beg to move.
Lord Steel of Aikwood
My Lords, the report by the Procedure Committee simply demands that leave of absence be pursued more rigorously, which I am sure will be welcomed in the House but is unlikely to make a noticeable contribution to reducing our numbers. However, the committee under the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral, set up by the Leader of the House, recommended that,
“the House should introduce arrangements to allow Members to retire from membership of the House on a voluntary basis”,
and accepted that legislation would be necessary to achieve this.
The committee further argued that a reduction in numbers would result in an overall saving to the taxpayer and that part of that saving should be used to offer a modest pension. It called for this to be investigated in detail, but this has not yet been followed through. Perhaps in reply we could hear whether the House authorities intend to take actuarial advice on this matter, as recommended by that report. Because we are unpaid, it cannot be a pure pension and therefore requires a new statutory provision. The Chairman of Committees may be aware that a Private Member’s Bill awaiting Committee provides such statutory authority.
When this was previously discussed, the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, said that any such payment,
“would … not be understood by the British people”.—[Official Report, 16/11/10; col. 675.]
Of course, if he is talking about extra money from the Treasury, he is absolutely right, but I suggest that if it is money from savings of expenditure within the House of Lords budget, contrary to that view redundancy pay is well understood in the country at large and accepted as saving money. The current redundancy lump sum permitted tax free is £30,000, which is less than the annual attendance payments for those who come to this House, say, 75 per cent of the time.
Therefore, I hope that in due course, the Government may come forward with a modest payment proposal of a lump sum of, say, £30,000 to those choosing to retire after, say, 10 years’ service or having reached the age of 75, provided that they have had an attendance record of at least 50 per cent in the previous two Sessions. Those in the business world tell me that a modest lump sum of that kind is much more attractive than the financial sum appears. One can imagine Members of your Lordships’ House discussing with their spouses whether they might buy a new car for their retirement or go on a world cruise and listen to lectures by the noble Lord, Lord Steel of Aikwood—or choose another one to avoid that peril.
In any event, that a scheme is needed to get the numbers down is not in doubt. Of course, the Hunt committee was right to suggest that if that were pursued, Members who chose to retire should enjoy the same use of House facilities as former hereditary Peers do. I hope that this matter will be pursued as recommended by the Hunt committee and not simply neglected and brushed aside by this report, which we nevertheless welcome.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I was a member of the Leader’s Group, chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral, to whom I pay tribute for his leadership of the group. He led it with great distinction and I very much support the conclusions of the group and the recommendations of the Chairman of Committees’ Procedure Committee report before the House today. I also welcome the initial and positive response of the Leader of the House, the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, when the report was first published. We on this side certainly support the Motion before the House.
I shall follow the noble Lord, Lord Steel, but in rather a different vein. The note in the report to the House says that the Procedure Committee has not considered those elements of the Leader’s Group recommendations, such as the provision to override entitlement to a Writ of Summons, the scheme of associate membership and extension of legislation. Nor has the committee considered the financial aspects of any scheme for voluntary retirement, which, if the House agreed to the report, would be a matter for the House Committee. I do not know if the House Committee will consider this report, but I imagine it will need to consider the implications very carefully.
I return to the issue of the potential for primary legislation. I hesitate to return to last week’s enjoyable debate on reform of your Lordships’ House. I realise that the Chairman of Committees cannot speak for the Government; perhaps we can tempt the noble Lord the Leader of the House to intervene helpfully in this debate. However, I wonder whether the Government have given thought to the potential for primary legislation on the issues to which I have just referred. The Government may take the view that they took last week on the Private Member’s Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Steel: since they have published a draft Bill on substantive reform, they cannot contemplate the noble Lord’s Bill. That, in essence, would accept that the Government do not think they will get very far with their own substantive Bill. Having been there myself, I understand the line that the noble Lords, Lord Strathclyde and Lord McNally, used last week.
However, it is just possible that, at the end of the work of the Joint Committee chaired by my noble friend, the Government might decide to pause on reform. We might not see a substantive Bill before your Lordship’s House in the next Session of Parliament. In that case, there must surely come a point where the matters in this report and the items covered by the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Steel, ought to be considered. If we simply carry on in a situation in which Governments cannot contemplate sensible interim changes because they will always have a proposal for substantive reform on the table at some point, the business of this House will become more and more difficult.
All I should like to do is to invite the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, to give some consideration to these matters. It may, in his eyes, be extremely unlikely that the Government will not proceed with a substantive Bill in the next year. However, there will come a point when such sensible interim reforms need to be considered.
Baroness D'Souza
My Lords, we can wring our hands about the House being too large. We may, unintentionally but unfairly, have made newly appointed Peers feel less than welcome, but until now there has been no serious consideration of what might be done. This is, therefore, a much needed report and a step forward. The real difficulties with which the group has had to grapple are very clear, but at least the issue is now being addressed.
The only feasible option is that of voluntary retirement. However, in common with the noble Lords, Lord Steel and Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, I feel this cannot be achieved in significant numbers in the absence of some form of payment. I recognise that there is a public perception issue here about additional costs. However, we may be looking at a saving. My maths may be somewhat different from that of the noble Lord, Lord Steel, but the outcome is the same. By my reckoning, if a Peer attends even irregularly—on, say, 100 out of 150 days—at the lower daily rate of £150, the cost over a year would amount to something like £15,000, plus travel costs of around £2,000. We are looking at something like £85,000 over five years.
Why would it not be possible to make the saving and offer something between £20,000 and £30,000 in order to promote and encourage Peers to take voluntary retirement—voluntary is a word that might not always be entirely appropriate here? It would be a major incentive for many Peers who have given years of service, some at the expense perhaps of a full professional salary, and would most probably achieve what this excellent report aims to do. However, for this to be effective there must also be a moratorium on appointing new Members and possibly a cap on numbers for the future.
The House is too large. It will be pointed out that many turn up only irregularly, but perception is important. As long as the media continue to talk about a House of well over 800 we will continue to appear ridiculously overstaffed. For this reason those who rarely attend should be asked in no uncertain terms to avail themselves of the retirement option. As I said before in this Chamber, there are a few among the Cross-Benchers who have not shown their faces for something like 10 years, which is ridiculous. I also feel that those who, through infirmity, are unable to attend might welcome the option of a dignified retreat from this House with the offer of some dining rights plus a lump sum. I think that the Cross-Benchers could be reduced by something like 30 Members, which would be very welcome news to those who think that there are too many of us. The truth is that over the past 10 years there has been a net gain of 55 Cross-Benchers, which is just over five a year. I do not think that that is a flood.
We will have to bite the bullet, grasp the nettle, acknowledge that one cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs. Leaders of each of the groups will have to approach those who attend very rarely, or make no contribution to the work of the House, with a firm proposal to take up the option of retirement, but this can be done only, in fairness, if there is to be some monetary compensation.
The Lord Bishop of Birmingham
My Lords, in our response to the draft Bill on House of Lords reform, we on these Benches identified the increasing size of the House as one issue demanding particular attention. I therefore welcome this report and hope that many of its recommendations, especially those on voluntary retirement, will be given swift and serious attention. The proposal for some kind of financial remuneration, which has already been mentioned by noble Lords, especially for those who have given much of their working life in service to this Chamber but have gained no pension provision in return is, I think, a just solution and one that is likely to speed the implementation of what would be a voluntary process. Of course, the details of that, as we have already heard, have many ramifications.
Unlike roughly 96.5 per cent of this House I am already able to retire, although under the present arrangements I have no intention of doing so until 14 April 2022. Retired Lords spiritual have access to the House and its facilities and I hope that, in respect of the provisions, that might provide a model for others. I notice also that the report ventures into areas other than the remit of retirement. I would be grateful if at some stage the Chairman of Committees or the Leader of the House would be able to confirm whether the recommendations of paragraphs 64 and 67, which call for limited-term appointments and restraint to be exercised by parties in creating new appointments, will also be given careful consideration alongside the retirement provisions.
Lord Elton
My Lords, if I may join in at this stage, I want to make the simple observation, which needs to be kept in mind, that if one of those invaluable people who come to the House four times a year contributes words of absolute wisdom and infinite knowledge that others do not have and is given £30,000 not to do so in the future, we would be losing in both directions.
Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Elton, has just explained why this is actually quite a complicated set of circumstances. However, my question is: whose task would it be were a business case drawn up? Would it be that of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt? His committee, whose report we are debating this afternoon, has discharged its responsibilities well—I have no objections; it is an excellent set of suggestions and we should approve it—but it does not answer the question about a House that might, after 2015, consist of 1,000-plus Members. We cannot ignore that, because it has reputational issues for the House.
It is much easier to do nothing. Some of the suggestions might be unpopular; they might be very difficult to sell to the great British public in a period of austerity. My noble friend Lord Steel of Aikwood is absolutely right; if serious and sensitive consideration can be given to it, I am certain that a profoundly robust business case can be made for offering a voluntary redundancy package—with severance pay, emeritus status, visiting rights and all the rest of it—in a way that would be attractive to Members. I am very pleased to hear from the noble Baroness, Lady D'Souza, that there might be as many as 30 such colleagues on the Cross Benches; I am sure that that proportion will be reflected across the whole House.
That would at least demonstrate that we understand the consequences of a House that is overmanned—and it is overmanned, not overpeopled. If we do nothing, we will find that people will start looking at the costs. We have had some very interesting Answers. I do not know whether colleagues have followed the Written Answers that the noble Lord, Lord Bassam of Brighton, obtained on 22 November 2010 about costs incurred on average by a new Member. I take the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady D'Souza, that the report is not antipathetic to new Members at all, but the cost on average of a new Member is £30,000. That has a certain symmetry with the sum that my noble friend Lord Steel of Aikwood mentioned as a potential severance package.
We were also told in a Written Answer to the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, on the same date that the overall cost of the House of Lords per Member who is not disqualified or on leave of absence is £156,000. All sorts of assumptions, averages and difficulties lie behind those figures, and they are not absolutely robust as they are presented. However, my point is: who is looking into this? Who is doing the arithmetic, the calculus and the sensitive consideration of all the different options that would need to be taken into account before we have a saleable package for the public?
Finally, I have one more figure. The noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, did the House a service in our consideration of reform of the House when he did some arithmetic himself, which suggested that a Lords election would cost £433 million over the course of the next Parliament. Without getting into the politics of reform or party politics, I am concerned about the reputation of the House. I know, as chairman of the Information Committee, that the pressure on the services is becoming inexorably higher. Standards will be diluted unless we grasp that nettle.
It is not easy, it will be a hard sell, but I do not see anyone anywhere in the precincts who is doing any of the work that is essential before we can start thinking about it in a constructive way. My question to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, the Leader of the House or the Chairman of Committees is: who is being tasked with that work, because it is urgent and we need to start it right now?
Lord Parekh
My Lords, I welcome the report. It is absolutely right to say that there is an anomaly in our membership of your Lordships' House. I cannot think of any institution to which one can belong without having the right to resign. Therefore, it is absolutely proper that the anomaly should be set right and that one should be allowed to resign after a certain period.
My worry is about the way in which people can be persuaded to take voluntary retirement. I may be being puritanical here, but to talk of payment does not accord with the public mood or with the spirit in which your Lordships' House is run. It has been a privilege for many of us to belong to this place. It has been a privilege over the years to propose amendments, to participate in debates and, we hope, to contribute something to the well-being of this great country. Then to be told that in order to leave you must be paid a certain amount of money is like asking: “What is your price to get out of this place?” I, for one, have no price, because I am not for sale.
I should have thought that if, on leaving, Members of your Lordships’ House were to be given access to dining facilities, the Library and research—a great privilege for which people would pay hundreds of thousands of pounds—that privilege would be enough to persuade a person to say, “I am happy to take voluntary retirement”. One can also put it in a more public spirited manner. We are 700 plus. It is necessary to reduce the number. There is no other way of reducing the number than either persuading people to take voluntary retirement or bringing in retrospective primary legislation which says that anyone over 75 or anyone who had been here for 10 years should go.
If people were told it is a matter of public service—the same spirit of public service which brought us here and kept us going—that one should take voluntary retirement after having served in your Lordships’ House for 10 or 15 years, that should be enough to persuade people. I would rather appeal to moral and public spirit than financial incentives. However, if we decide at some point to bring in financial incentives, I very much hope that we will not call it either a pension or a resettlement payment. Neither of these terms applies to the role that we have played. We have not been paid. We have only been given allowances—and only those who wanted to take allowances did so. To be told that when we leave we will get a pension is not only incoherent with the spirit in which we have been here but would also look very bad indeed outside this great House.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
My Lords, I briefly point out to the Chairman of Committees and the Leader of the House that the root of this problem lies in the coalition agreement, which says that members will be appointed to this place in order to reflect the balance of votes obtained at the general election. If that policy is continued the membership of this House will increase to well over 1,000 and if, at a subsequent election, there is another change of government and they apply the same policy, it would grow exponentially.
I make this point because of something I read in the Times today. My noble friend Lord Ashdown, writing about reform of this place repeated something which he has said in our debates—that the political parties have appointed Members to the House in order to obtain a majority to get their legislation through. That is simply not true. This House has always operated on the basis that there should be no party with an overall majority. For that reason, it operates in the distinctive way in which it does.
To those who argue for some kind of financial incentive to leave this House, I respectfully point out that it is a funny way of trying to get and restore trust in Parliament: to inflate the size of Parliament and then ask the taxpayers to find the money to deal with the consequences.
Lord Tebbit
My noble friend Lord Forsyth is exactly right. If we were to appoint people to the House in proportion to the votes cast at the last general election, on my calculations we should have about 24 UKIP Members and also, interestingly, about 14 Members of the BNP and a few Greens. I am not sure that that would be greeted with universal acclaim. However, it is clear that something has to be done.
I am beginning to think that we need a market solution. Perhaps whoever is working out these matters—somebody must be working them out, after all—should arrive at a conclusion as to how many Members they would like to leave this House. Let us say that the number is 100 in the first tranche. They could the issue a notice to tender for redundancy; the tenders would be issued in reverse order so the lowest tender would be able to achieve redundancy with some small amount of money. It would have the added attraction that we could look at each other’s estimates of how much we valued ourselves. I think this would add greatly to the mirth and hilarity not only of this House, but of the nation.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
My Lords, I welcome the report and its limited recommendation. I see it as a positive step forward. I understand the decision to make only changes that do not require primary legislation at this time, but I hope that, as part of the scrutiny of House of Lords reform, or via some other mechanism, further and more far-reaching changes can be made.
I am concerned, especially if we are to remain an unelected Chamber that we respond adequately to the modern expectations people have of us as public servants. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, about redundancy payments and that access to the Library and other facilities is a huge privilege. Because of that, I am disappointed that all Members granted leave of absence and permanent retirement will be treated equally and will continue to benefit from access rights. Attendance and participation in the legislative process is a privilege but it is what we as Peers are appointed to do. To people outside the Chamber, that is our job. Where else can someone decide not to do their job any more but retain the perks associated with it? On access to the Palace and its facilities, it seems wrong to me that those who have not bothered to fulfil their responsibilities to the House will be treated in the same way as those who have served the House well for a long time and have decided to retire for honourable reasons. Will the matter be reviewed again in another forum?
On a separate matter, Paragraph 63 of the Leader’s Group report recommended that,
“in future the honour of a life peerage should not automatically entail appointment to membership of the House, which should be reserved to those who are willing to make a significant commitment to public service in Parliament”.
I wholeheartedly support that recommendation, believing that if we are to remain unelected, there must be a clear set of expectations for Peers both in terms of attendance and active engagement, with penalties if a Peer fails to meet those expectations. Will my noble friend say whether the Joint Committee on reform of the House of Lords will consider options such as this?
Lord Cormack
My Lords, I was not going to say anything but I have been slightly provoked into doing so by my noble friend Lady Stowell of Beeston. It is very dangerous to talk of membership of this House as being a job. It is not a job; it is a calling to public service. It is also very dangerous to talk in terms of attendance as measuring the effectiveness or otherwise of a Member of your Lordships’ House. There are so many Members in this place—it was a sub-theme of our debate last week that this was the case—who are here because of what they have achieved outside and because of the knowledge, experience and expertise that they can bring to our proceedings. That is the essence of your Lordships’ House.
Noble Lords will know that I do not wish to see significant change in the manner of composition of this House. I, of course, accept that the number of Members is an issue and I welcome the thoughtful and constructive comments of my noble friend Lord Hunt and his committee. Clearly these things have to be examined by all of us. It has to be recognised that at some time each one of us should seek leave of absence. It is not retirement, nor should it be provided with a consolation prize of dining rights and Library access, even though it might, as a courtesy, be good to have that. We have to face up to these issues. We certainly should not be dictated to by arbitrary retirement ages. There are those in the House, far, far, older than I, who make a magnificent contribution to our proceedings, sometimes regularly and sometimes less so, but when they speak the House listens. One has only to cite the example of the remarkable speech last week of the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, to illustrate that fact. This is an issue that must be dealt with extremely carefully and sensitively. Please let none of us be seduced into talking of our presence here as holding a job.
Lord Empey
A few years ago, it was decided in Northern Ireland to reduce the number of councils and to reduce the number of councillors. At that stage, it was advanced that, in order to encourage older members to retire, a financial reward would be worked out on the basis of £1,000 per year of service, or something to that effect. Local government reform was very slow to come about and eventually, about a year ago, it stalled, and that coincided with the financial restraints that we are all facing. The effect of that was that the old councils were re-elected last month, and those councillors who were being encouraged to leave hung on like grim death in the hope that the financial rewards would be forthcoming. My concern is that while the idea that there may be a reward in respect of retirement is out there, who in their right mind, except the most public spirited, is going to come forward?
I have to say to the Chairman of Committees that that issue needs to be resolved immediately because as long as it is possible for people to believe that they will receive a financial reward, there is a high prospect that they will not put their names in the hat. That issue needs resolving immediately otherwise the effect of this discussion will be that nobody will come forward.
Lord Hunt of Wirral
My Lords, no one will be surprised if I say how important I believe this debate is and how warmly I pay tribute to the Chairman of Committees and to the Procedure Committee for bringing forward the subject on which there has always been extensive debate, but very little decision. I say to my noble friend Lord Elton that I have been enjoying myself reading through back copies of Hansard from the 1950s and found some significant contributions on this very subject from his late father Lord Elton. I commend them because they demonstrate exactly why it is so difficult for us to reach a decision.
First, I must pay tribute to the other members of the group that I had the honour of chairing, in particular to my namesake the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath. We have a wonderful life together because he is constantly being upbraided for comments I have made and, if I may say so, so am I for comments that he has made. On this occasion, we came to a unanimous view.
Much of some of the last few speeches was about the financial implications, but all of us on the Leader’s Group were united that there must be a rule: not a penny more. The public would not accept it if we were to spend a great deal of taxpayer’s money in making sure that people had an incentive to retire. If I may answer some of the questions asked in the debate, the Procedure Committee’s report states:
“We have not considered … the financial aspects of any scheme for voluntary retirement, which, were the House to agree to this report, would be a matter for the House Committee”.
Therefore, I am not sure we should occupy a great deal of important time by debating this issue at this stage because we are not asked to decide it.
What we have come forward with for the first time ever is a scheme to allow Members of this House to retire with honour and dignity. I want to say a few words about that, but I also want to pay tribute to the other members of the Leader’s Group and to the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and the Leader of the House my noble friend Lord Strathclyde, who initiated this whole debate, to the nearly 100 Members of this House who have spent a great deal of time and effort putting forward their views in debate or in correspondence with the Leader’s Group and to Mary Ollard who did so much fine work in bringing together all that we decided.
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Strathclyde)
My Lords, my noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral deserves the gratitude of the whole House for the report that he provided as chairman of the Leader’s Group, which has now been turned into a report of the Procedure Committee and has been introduced by the Chairman of Committees.
My noble friend Lord Hunt is entirely correct that, up until now, the only way of leaving the House permanently, if I can put it as indelicately as this, is through death. In recent years, more and more noble Lords have indicated an interest in being able to retire from the House before death. In the course of the past two or three years, my noble friend Lord Steel has championed his Bill, a part of which provides for permanent retirement from this House. My noble friend Lord Hunt has found a way of doing so with honour and dignity and I commend the report to the House.
The noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, quite rightly raised the question of a legal underpinning for what I hope we will agree today. While it is unlikely in the extreme that any Peer who applied for permanent voluntary retirement from the House would ever wish to come back, given the performance that we will go into, there is at least that possibility. Therefore, if a suitable legislative vehicle appears in the next few months or even years, we will take the opportunity to give that legal underpinning.
There are one or two other outstanding matters, such as the power to suspend Members of this House, for which we also wish to find a legal underpinning. We are very aware of these issues. They may not have the highest priority, but we should look at them.
The second issue that has been raised is that of a financial contribution for Peers leaving this House. I was entertained by the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Empey, who raised the spectacle of numerous Peers waiting for some sort of handout from the taxpayer. He asked for some clarity on this. Let me be utterly clear: there is no prospect of any public money being made available for Peers wishing to retire from the House. The noble Lord, Lord Parekh, spoke with great sense when he said that it is a great privilege to be a Member of this House. It is voluntary to attend. A generous but hardly excessive allowance is made available for Peers who come. If you do not come you do not get anything. If you wish to retire, you do not get anything either. That is the way it is going to be. Whatever business cases are made to me or to the Treasury, they will be greeted with a thumbs down. I urge noble Lords who think that their time has come and they are ready to retire to do so quickly and take advantage of this scheme.
My noble friend Lord Elton also raised an important point about Members who attend the House rarely but when they come make an important contribution. They should be much valued Members of this House and should be encouraged not discouraged. I am nervous of the line taken by the noble Baroness the Convenor, although I understand why she took it. She said that some Members of the Cross Benches had not appeared for 10 years. If they have not appeared for 10 years, they should be encouraged perhaps to take up permanent retirement, but they should not be encouraged to stay away by being given a handout from the taxpayer.
A number of other issues were raised that are more properly to do with long-term reform of the House, which we discussed at length last week. The House of Commons is discussing that today. We have another debate to carry on so I will not add any more save to say that I lend my full support to the report and I thank on behalf of the House my noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral and his committee for their work.
The Chairman of Committees
My Lords, I think that everything that can be said about this report and a lot not within this report has been said. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral, gave a very good summary of it including an example of someone who might well wish to avail themselves of the opportunity for voluntary retirement. The Leader of the House has made the position clear so far as the financial aspects are concerned. Therefore, there is little left for me to say other than that I beg to move.