My Lords, I will speak only once, because what I have to say applies to the whole Committee. Some noble Lords were at what I think of as the Norton-Cormack meeting the other day, which Bernard Jenkin from the House of Commons addressed by saying that if the Bill were passed he would do his utmost to get it through the House of Commons. That is important for your Lordships to note, because often Bills from this House do not go smoothly through the House of Commons.
I am amazed at the tactics used on the Bill. They are self-destructive and against the interests of the hereditary Peers in this House. The only Labour leader I ever regarded as a friend was the late John Smith, who of course sadly never became Prime Minister. He once said to me that the worst job he had was, as he put it, with the queue of supplicants down the Corridor seeking to help the Labour Party by taking a seat in the House of Lords.
There will be a change of government one day—that happens in democracies—and the Labour Party will come into power. At the moment, it has 186 Peers including four hereditaries, and our side of the Chamber has 248 Peers including 47 hereditaries. Any Labour leader who wanted, first, to strike a radical pose, and secondly, to get himself out of a lot of people supplicating for membership of this House, could pass a simple Act that would have enormous popularity in the country: the abolition of the legislative rights of hereditary Peers. That would not take the title away, but it would take away the right to sit in the House of Lords. That would quickly change the arithmetic to there being just 201 Conservatives and 182 Labour Peers. That would put us well on the way to what is not an illegitimate aim for the governing party of the day; that is, to have slightly more seats than the principal opposition party of the day.
The late Jim Callaghan was fond of talking about turkeys voting for Christmas. I wonder whether the hereditary Peers, who seem to be the only ones backing this move, have actually thought it through. What is principally being discussed, particularly on the ultra left of the Labour Party, is the idea that perhaps they should go for abolishing the House of Lords. However, there are now two sorts of people on the ultra left of the Labour Party. There is the Jeremy Corbyn faction which believes in principle above everything else, but probably more important is the John McDonnell faction. John McDonnell believes in achieving his aims progressively. I think that the John McDonnell faction is quite happily in favour of this Bill being stalled in this place because it gives him a good cause for putting into the manifesto the abolition of the legislative rights of hereditary Peers.
I have said that I will speak only once, but my overall conclusion is that hereditary Peers are shooting themselves very firmly in their own feet.