Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

I shall give way to the two right hon. Gentlemen, but I want to make some progress before I do so—if they can hold themselves. We suggest that the arrangements for these by-elections, and their results, are even less satisfactory than accepting the continuance of the existing 90 hereditaries. That is because those 90 could claim, and have claimed—I do not necessarily endorse this—some legitimacy because they were sitting there before and they were elected at the time as part of the deal. Ten years on, we have a ridiculous arrangement. It is worth taking the House through the circumstances of the 10 by-elections that have taken place. Of the two that involved the whole House, the first had 423 electors and the other had 348 electors. Since then, in all the rest, the total number of electors has been fewer than 50. The Conservatives usually manage about 50 electors, but they also usually manage between 30 and 45 candidates, which is absurd enough. [Interruption.] I am glad that the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) recognises how absurd this is given a moment's examination. When we come to the position of the Liberal Democrat party and the Labour party, it is utterly absurd that in the first election of a Labour peer following the death of Lord Milner there were 11 candidates, but—guess what?—only three electors. That makes Old Sarum appear to be a remarkably democratic arrangement. In the case of the Liberal Democrats in 2005, there were three candidates and only four electors. That is slightly better—30 per cent. better—than the Labour party could manage in terms of electors. However, is anyone seriously going to go out and argue on the stand publicly—