Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that point and simply add this: the fact that people were seeking to avoid tax is important, not whether they actually ended up paying tax on one basis or another. The Liberal Democrats made a slightly different proposal that did not involve the deeming provision. It would simply have meant that if someone admits to being a non-dom and takes advantage of that for tax purposes, they should resign from the Lords—they would simply not be allowed to be a Member of the Lords. If they are not willing to say whether they are non-doms or not, they should be suspended from the Lords until they do so. If they make a declaration about their status but lie about it, that should be a crime and they should be disqualified from the Lords. That is a straightforward approach. It is not vindictive or retrospective, but it is firm in its central purpose, which is to say to people who do not have that real level of commitment to this country that they should not sit in our legislature. One can quibble about the detail in all these proposals. I accept that the Government's proposals are better than the present situation, and better than the Conservatives' proposals, which lack any transparency. However, a different approach would come closer to the reality at the heart of the matter, and I ask the Government to think about whether what we are doing here is legislating about reality or appearance.