My Lords, I agree with the sentiments of the noble Baroness, Lady Deech. We will come to the main discussion on this a little later. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, for enabling us again to discuss gender equality in the peerage, and I congratulate the noble Lord on pushing the Bill further forward.
On these particular amendments I will be brief. I am not sure that at this stage we should be overtightening the Bill and prescribing so precisely what it contains in the title. In the way that it stands at present it contains peerages and baronetcies. In the next group we will be discussing other Crown offices and rights, so I do not think that we should yet be jumping to any conclusions about what necessarily will be covered in toto in the Bill.
It is probably no surprise to the House that I support Amendment 4. Irish peerages are an identifiable group under the current jurisdiction of the Crown and stem from a time before the current United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, which of course excludes the Republic of Ireland. “Great Britain” therefore is a term which has a certain ambiguity attached to it. My own peerage, the Earldom of Clancarty, is Irish, though I sit in this House by virtue of a viscountcy which is an English title. It would be wise to include the reference to Ireland, just as England and Scotland have already been included.