House of Lords Bill [HL]

My Lords, I attended this debate not to speak but to listen. I was greatly impressed by the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, because he hit the nail straight on the head; that is, that an evolutionary process is our constitutional tradition. It is evolutionary and, in this context, cannot evolve in one House only without the other being considered. That is and was the reason for my previous opposition, which I shall not dream of repeating; it is boring anyway, and in any event most people know the reasons. However, I shall take one point quickly out of the hat. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, is in his place. He knows that I regard a deal as a deal and why I stand by it. So does most of the House, and there is no object in going over that again. I am only grateful to the Government for having kept their word. I am beginning to wonder whether I should be speaking at all. As for the 15-year term, I have been here for 28 years and on any age requirement, I would have been a candidate for imposed retirement some time ago. So I speak with some hesitation and deference to your Lordships. I shall not be long, because most of what has been said is, frankly, open to judgment. It has been said that it is not necessarily conclusive. There was one speech on the commission made by the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, with whom I usually disagree—in fact, I disagreed with him on practically everything else he said—but on his assessment of the commission, I think that he is absolutely right. I am very fortunate to be able to use what he said in aid of my view on that. On leave of absence, I am not repeating what I said earlier, but it is related also to the convictions for criminal offences. We should basically retain that within our own standing orders. There is no justification or reason for us to surrender our entitlement in that regard. Indeed, there is every reason why we should retain it, because if you are going to have severe penalties—the time has probably come when we have to have them—there should be a form of judicial assessment on the gravity, the circumstances, what has been done, how it happened and the quality of evidence. I will not go into this in detail, but the essence of my argument is that it is not fair to deal with people without a form of judicial or quasi-judicial determination of the merits, the severity and what should be done. I served on the Privileges Committee for some 12 years; four Law Lords also served on it and I hope that they still do because they are essential on this committee. When the new arrangements are made, I hope that some account will be taken of that. If you try to do it by statute, you can make rules but you cannot ensure that they are fairly applied. That is the main thing that I have to say. It affects the provisions on absence and convictions. I do not think that I can add any more, other than this. There has been this cross-party affair for three years. They have been beavering away for three years and now have the assistance and support of a large number of Labour Back Benchers. I doubt whether they have the support of many more—it is a matter about which one wonders. In a way, there was an assessment. I did not realise until I retired from it—I went to the early meetings—but a group of people was determined to put forward its point of view to pre-empt government business. I am totally against that; I think that it is wrong. I do not think much of this Government but I do not think that their business should be pre-empted. Why do noble Lords say that is a question of doing something or doing nothing? It is far better to do nothing than to pre-empt what will happen at the end of a very short time when some other Government could be in power, even a Liberal Government. Anything can happen—you do not know. I think that the Government are dead right and I support their view. As a Back Bencher on the Conservative Benches, I feel a bit awkward supporting the government Front Bench, but I think that they are totally right.