Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

To deal with the final point made by the right hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg), I should like to seek the opportunity to press amendment 94 to the vote, if the occasion so arises. I also gratefully adopt his arguments for that amendment. I would be surprised if the Government were to resist a five-year moratorium between resigning from the Lords and coming—or perhaps coming back—to this place. In the 2007 White Paper, "The House of Lords: Reform", the Government said that the Wakeham commission and the Public Administration Committee had both recommended a 10-year waiting period, while the "Breaking the Deadlock" paper, which Members might remember, went for a five-year moratorium. The Government commented on those proposals and said that they were minded to agree with the five-year period. In the 2009 White Paper, "An Elected Second Chamber", the Government also suggested a cooling-off period of five years, and seemed to accept the arguments in favour of that proposal that the right hon. and learned Gentleman has just laid out. In particular, the Government said that the House of Lords should not be used as a political base for a House of Commons career. The reasons for that are twofold. The first, as the right hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham has said, is a matter of the dignity of the other place and of how it is regarded. The second is that relations between the two Houses would be enhanced if Members of the House of Lords were to go there in the knowledge that it was to be their political job for the foreseeable future to sit in the revising Chamber, to stick to their job, and not to harbour hopes of coming back to this House for a different role. I, too, cannot speculate as to why the Government appear to have changed their mind about this matter. Perhaps it does involve the noble Lord Mandelson, or perhaps the House of Lords is teeming with potential Prime Ministers or potential Chancellors of the Exchequer—the convention being that those two offices may be held only in this House. This leads us to another version of the first reason for a moratorium. That is that we do not want the House of Lords, whether appointed or elected, to be full of young men in a hurry—