My Lords, I commend my noble friend Lord Cormack for his courage. I probably would not have got up first but I now get up to support him. We really are in a terrible mess. We have a Prime Minister who has the confidence of virtually no one. I have been trying now for three or four days to get either a Private Notice Question or a Question to the Government because I understand that the Prime Minister, before he leaves office, intends to create a number of Peers. That is totally wrong. The Prime Minister is now a caretaker. When he leaves office, he will have a Resignation Honours List and that is quite appropriate.
It has proved impossible to get anything on to the Order Paper of this House. It really shows us up as being a rather ineffectual House if we cannot even get a Question to ask the Government to make a Statement as to whether they consider it appropriate that a caretaker Prime Minister should now be about to appoint another group of Conservative Peers. This is the time to make this speech, not when there are names on the table and it appears that we are attacking individuals. I have no knowledge whatever of who may be on that list but I believe that it would be
completely improper for an acting Prime Minister to issue a list of Conservative Peers when he can issue his own Resignation Honours List.
I have a solution; the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, has one. We have a Deputy Prime Minister who is not a candidate, as I understand it, and my answer is quite simple. The Deputy Prime Minister should take over and we should run the Government how it is run during a general election: in other words, no new policies, a caretaker, and we look after problems as they emerge but do not seek to shape legislation or anything else.
I fully support my noble friend Lord Cormack and ask the Opposition to consider their position because frankly, if they went on strike I would join their picket line—I have been on lots of picket lines—because now, and in this way, is not the time for us to be passing legislation. We are turning ourselves into something that we will soon come to regret.