House of Lords (Amendment) Bill [HL]

My Lords, there would have been no incentive to go on to stage 2. Some were unsure whether Mr Blair and his Government meant it when they said—not, I might say, the noble Lord, Lord Richard—that they wanted a full democratic House. Some of the advisers around the then Prime Minister have confirmed that they never had any intention of going forward to an elected House. So when the hereditary Peers left as they did, it was on the understanding that stage 2 would be brought in and the by-elections would continue until that took place and be, in part, an incentive for it to happen. One reason we have this White Paper is that the by-elections are still in place. In that context, the noble Lord, Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank, was indeed one of those wise people who foresaw that stage 2 might not happen for some time. What is all this about? What is getting at the noble Lord, Lord Avebury? Why has he come forward with this Bill? I listened to his speech and am still as baffled as I was at the beginning. The noble Lord, Lord Addington, is angry. He is very steamed up about the outrage of a failure to bring forward stage 2. He is right to be, but he must concentrate his ire on the Government, not on us. We are the incentive that will provide the force for change that this Government need. Since 1999, the edge between hereditary Peers and life Peers has become very fuzzy, but the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, is in fact a hereditary Peer. It may shock the House to know that he was elected to this House by his fellow Peers. I find it inexplicable how he, who stands up for human rights, freedom, liberty, justice and democracy on so many issues around the world, can take advantage of a system and immediately pull up the ladder to ensure that nobody else can be like him. That is what is so shallow and disgraceful in the manner in which he has brought forward this legislation. That is his first incentive, I suspect. The second incentive is entirely partisan. Nearly half the former hereditary Peers are Conservatives, so perhaps his plan is to ensure that the Conservative Party cannot elect new hereditary Peers and keep its numbers up. That is a perfectly valid political aim, but why does he not say so? Why does he not come forward and tell the House exactly what he is after? The third possibility is that he does not want any further change at all. He prayed in aid my noble friend Lord Norton and my honourable friend Patrick Cormack, the Member of Parliament for South Staffordshire. Neither of them is very keen on further changes to this House, so perhaps the noble Lord is with them. I do not know, but why does he not tell us what his incentive is for this change? When my noble friend Lord De Mauley spoke last time, he said something so good I could have said it myself, so I shall read it out: "““This is the wrong Bill at the wrong time, dropped into a House that is functioning well and targeted at a rare category of new entrants untainted by the accusation of impropriety over their means of entry to your Lordships' House, a category that few outside the House, against the background of cash or loans for peerages, see as the most urgent target for reform””.—[Official Report, 18/5/07; col. 438.]" I agree. If the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, insists on taking this forward to Committee, I shall certainly be one of those who seeks to amend it.