Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

Accepted—but I am entirely content with the powers that the second Chamber has at present. We all know that there are perfectly sound and good arguments for not increasing the powers of the second Chamber. The second Chamber is a good revising Chamber, it does hard work, and nobody is complaining about the quality of its debates or anything else, so let us leave that on one side. We all know that if we have an elected Chamber, it will be stuffed with inferior Members looking for ministerial office. Most of this place is stuffed with people looking for ministerial office—why should an elected second Chamber be any different? Why get rid of something that is doing an excellent job? However, Mrs. Heal, I do not want to be held to account by you for getting into that wider debate—I want to concentrate on why the compromise brokered by Lord Irvine was a very good one. The Lord Chancellor was extremely rude about the candidates who have been elected under that system. He said that an ancestor of one gentleman had taken part in the massacre of Glencoe—