Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

Indeed, that is why I originally tabled my own amendment, why I am happy to support the Liberal Democrat amendment and why I feel comfortable with amendments 60 to 66. One could advance several arguments in support of what the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) has just said. First, one would not be doing an injustice to any peer, because under the current composition of the other place, everyone sitting there is a volunteer: they are either hereditary peers who have chosen to stay on as one of the 90, or they have accepted a life peerage. So they are all volunteers. That is different from the situation before—I think—the Peerage Act 1963, when Anthony Wedgwood Benn, and, for that matter, my father, were obliged to go to the House of Lords. Therefore a nobility was created to be disclaimed, thus enabling them to come back here, but they were not volunteers; they were protesters who did not want to be in the House of Lords, so there is a difference in kind. Every Member of the House of Lords now is a volunteer. The second point is this. If we allow swapping of the kind that we are talking about, it will diminish the dignity and standing of the other place. As I want the dignity and standing of the other place to be enhanced whenever I have the opportunity to enhance it, I am happy to move amendment 60. Allowing such swapping would also, I suspect, diminish independence. One of the most important things is that Members of the other place have jolly little to gain prospectively, unless they hope to be Ministers. Incidentally, I agree with the points made in a previous debate by the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome. There is a powerful argument for saying that Members of the other place should not be Ministers, but that is a broader argument, which I suspect you do not want me to pursue now, Sir Michael. However, the point is that one does not wish to create in the other place any circumstances that could diminish the independence of mind of those who sit there. If their lordships think that by resigning they can come back to this place and perhaps occupy a prominent part in the affairs of this House, they may achieve great things, but that would diminish their independence, and I am very much against that. I heard the Minister say earlier that there is nothing in clause 32 that is designed to benefit a particular person. I think that I know who that person is—Lord Mandelson, for whom in many ways, particularly because of his political skills, I have a great deal of admiration. However, he is a good case in point, because he has chosen to go to the House of Lords. It is not clear to me that we are doing him an injustice by preventing him from coming back here—and goodness knows, we do not want to create any further incentive, lest he should lose his remaining sense of independence. Although it is just possible that the clause was not crafted with Lord Mandelson in mind, if it is possible that it was, he is a good example of why we should not pass it. My final point is that I think that either the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome or the hon. Member for Cambridge (David Howarth) is minded to press amendment 94 to a Division, which would be dependent on my not pressing amendment 60 to a Division. If I had the leave of the Committee to do so, I would be happy not to press the amendment standing in my name; and if you were minded to call amendment 94, Sir Michael, standing in the name of the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome, I would personally be happy to support it.