House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) (Abolition of By-Elections) Bill [HL]

My Lords, I should like to speak as a Peer appointed to this House and pick up the remarks of my noble friend Lord Trenchard that we appointed Peers are somehow deserving of being in this House. I have always considered myself to be very lucky to be in this House; I am not sure how deserving I am. Let us face it, if you have an electoral system, which the hereditary Peers do, surely that picks out the best of the hereditaries and raises the quality of people in this House overall. That is the only point I want to make. It would be very sad, when we think of the very high quality of some of the hereditaries who we have in your Lordships’ House, if we introduced a system to make it impossible for them to be here any more. That is why I support the amendments and hope to have a chance to demonstrate that in the Division Lobby.