House of Lords Bill [HL]

I reply briefly to the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde. Frankly, he is trying to write into the purpose of the Bill something that is not in the Bill at all. He ought to recognise that, although he is of course right that the detail of the Appointments Commission—how many members there should be, what should be its powers, and all the rest—are perfectly legitimate matters for debate, the purpose is to establish the statutory Appointments Commission as has been promised for several years by the Government. Why did that come into the public domain? Because of the concern in the country about the cash-for-peerages scandal, which, if I may say so, mutually affected not just the previous Conservative Government and the current Labour Government, but even the Liberal Government of Lloyd George. That has been a long-standing grievance in the public eye, so the creation of the statutory Appointments Commission was a sensible measure, the details of which are of course open to further debate and discussion. It is simply not the case that the Bill proposes that those people should identify the entire membership of the House in future. Quite the contrary. If the noble Lord reads Clause 9, for the first time we suggest that the commission should require the political parties to have some criteria for proposing names to the commission. Technically, someone must be responsible for submitting the names; therefore the statutory commission is named, but it will not sit there and choose members of the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats or the Conservative Party. That would be ridiculous. I know that that has been proposed in the other place; I disagree with that and it is not in the Bill; so why is the noble Lord trying to introduce a purpose that is not there? As he said that he will not press the amendment, I hope that he will withdraw it quickly so that we can get onto the main Division on the purposes of the Bill.