My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time.

It may well be true that one cannot introduce major constitutional changes by means of a Private Member's Bill, but I hope that it is not the case with the very small change that I propose in this Bill. In its 1997 manifesto, the Labour Party undertook to end the right of hereditary Peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords, and in the Queen's Speech of 1998 the Bill to give effect to that proposal, introducing new arrangements for the appointment of life Peers—which need not concern us today—was announced. Although Parliament had agreed 88 years earlier that the House of Lords should be constituted on a popular instead of hereditary basis, and although the Labour and Liberal Democrat Parties were agreed that the time had arrived to implement those words from the preamble to the 1911 Act, the Government lost their nerve and accepted a compromise put together by a small group of Cross-Benchers.

The late Lord Weatherill told me in a conversation that I had with him on 15 February 1999 that the compromise was the work of the usual channels, but we were not consulted. The then leader of the Liberal Democrats, the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown, was told about it after the matter had been settled, as my noble friend Lord Rodgers records in his autobiography, and we abstained when it came to the vote on what my noble friend called,

"a thoroughly unsatisfactory dog's breakfast of a deal".

Lord Weatherill added, when I asked him whether the proposal was open to discussion, that any attempt to "unpick" an agreement of this kind would "make it fall apart". He said it had been agreed, though it was not in the note on the amendment, that there could be some Labour and Liberal Democrat creations to redress the unfairness inherent in the arithmetic—which was not carried through as far as the Liberal Democrats were was concerned. He added that, since the scheme had been worked out, there had been a large increase in the number of Cross-Benchers because many Peers who had previously taken no Whip at all had signed up, no doubt hoping to be included inter oves, but it had been decided not to increase the allocation of Cross-Benchers from the original number.

At about that time, I wrote to the then Leader of the House, the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, setting out an alternative to the Weatherill amendment. In her reply, without attempting to defend it in substance, she said that it would be,

"only of a temporary, transitional nature", and that was the basis on which it was agreed. If it had been made clear at the time that the 92 hereditaries would remain for at least the next nine years and that during that period there would be two nearest-runner-up successions, followed by eight by-elections to maintain the number at its original level, there might have been far greater difficulty in reaching agreement across the House. The purpose of this very modest Bill is to enable your Lordships to revisit the decision to freeze the number in accordance with that private deal that was made between the former Lord Chancellor and the former Leader of the Opposition.

Apart from the Tories' lingering attachment to the hereditary principle, which can still be detected occasionally, an argument for the retention of the 92 was that it provided an incentive to get on with stage 2. In that, it was manifestly ineffective, and the 92 themselves have not sought to block the road to reform, as this debate shows. Judging from the experience of the past eight years, to say nothing of the previous 88 years, it may not be too easy to reach agreement across the parties and between the two Houses about the final composition of a revised second Chamber. The last time I spoke on House of Lords reform was just over 38 years ago, in another place, and I well remember the frustration on all sides of a Committee stage that lasted 21 days on the Floor of the other place before Mr Wilson's legislation was finally abandoned. It would be rash to bank on the early implementation of a Commons vote in favour of an all-elected House, considering that a substantial minority down the Corridor were still opposed to that solution. Inevitably, a great deal of parliamentary time would still be consumed in both Houses by any attempt at more comprehensive legislation.

It may be objected that the Long Title of the Bill would also open up wider debate, and I acknowledge that the only way in which it will get through is if your Lordships will refrain from using it as a lever to prise open other issues on which there might be extended argument. If amendments are tabled, I am sorry to say that it would have to be dropped. I am hoping that if your Lordships agree to this Second Reading, you might also send a message to our colleagues that we hope that there will be no need for a Committee stage, and if any noble Lord does table amendments he will do so in the full knowledge that an amendment would scupper the Bill.

Presumably over the next two years Mr Gordon Brown will prefer to concentrate on electorally popular measures and will have regard to the fact that, however interesting we may find Lords reform, it is not something that ever crops up on the doorsteps. The Bill is simply intended to tide us over until after the general election, and perhaps even a bit longer than that if Lords reform is not a priority for the next Government.

If the Weatherill amendment had not provided for the 92 hereditaries to be topped up, first by the runners up in the original election and then after November 2002 by election from the ranks of the excluded Peers or their successors, the number would by now be reduced to 82, and in the process of time the hereditaries would have disappeared through mortality without the need for further legislation. That simplification would not have made it either easier or harder to reach stage 2, but it would have avoided absurd situations in which a small number of voters, who themselves derive their franchise from being hereditary Peers, elected a new Peer from the ranks of the hereditaries who had been unsuccessful in the original election. The eight who joined this House by that extraordinary process are no doubt making a valuable contribution, but as a method of replenishing the House of Lords it does not seem to be altogether appropriate in the 21st century.

Before 1832, there were the rotten boroughs, of which perhaps the most notorious was Old Sarum in Wiltshire, where there were 11 voters, though Gatton in Surrey was the smallest, with an electorate of seven. Perhaps an even better analogy would be the pocket boroughs, where the representation was controlled by one or more patrons. Buckingham, which was controlled by the eponymous duke, had 11 voters, as did Winchilsea, which was controlled by the Marquis of Cleveland. In the by-election at Silverbridge, still under the control of the Duke of Omnium in 1875, if he had wished to exercise it 43 years after the Reform Act, 623 votes were cast. Though pocket boroughs were a recurring theme in Trollope, he could never have imagined the bizarre process that we invented in 1999.

In the two Conservative by-elections, there were 43 and 42 voters. In the single Cross-Bench election, there were 19. The Liberal Democrats had four voters, and Labour had three. This is a process by which a very small number of people could decide on a member of the legislature, a process that has seen no parallel for the past 175 years. In the many discussions that I have had with colleagues, none has defended the status quo on its merits. They argue that under the 1999 compromise, it was agreed that the 92 would remain inviolate until stage 2, however long that might be. But that bargain was only approved by the House to the extent that the number should appear in the 1999 Act. Parliament could not and did not say that a private deal made to ensure that the progress of the Bill was not unreasonably impeded should remain in force until a hypothetical stage 2 was enacted.

The minority outside Westminster who do take an interest in constitutional reform probably consider that the legitimacy of this House was enhanced by the 1999 Act and by the moves towards a more politically balanced Chamber over the past 10 years. We have been more effective in judiciously challenging unwise government policies, as the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor observed the other day. This Bill does not in any way inhibit this or the next Government's freedom to propose wider reforms, but it does remove a serious and dysfunctional error in the Weatherill arrangements, which continues to undermine our credibility. I commend the Bill to the House.

Moved, that the Bill be now read a second time.—(Lord Avebury.)

My Lords, everyone will understand that there is total commitment in the Labour Party to addressing the issue of the 92, perhaps much along the lines that the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, has set out. But this is not the Bill to get that on to the statute book, and I want to explain why.

Let me set out a number of assumptions and a number of political realities. If people ignore them, they are either simply being naive or are introducing a spoiling measure. The test of whether a Bill has any chance of getting through the House of Commons in broadly the form that it leaves here is not the least of these considerations. There is a case for a Bill that could in the very near future get through the House of Commons with strong consensual support and could be a significant reforming measure, one which would, incidentally, change some of the caricature images of this House that persist in all parties and all sections of the public. That entails not only doing something like this but a fundamental reform of the appointments system. The Liberal Democrats have done some of that in their own ranks, but a statutory appointments commission would make a radical difference to the context in which people view the role of the House of Lords. I will develop that point a little later.

Why do I reach such an unequivocal conclusion about the Bill's prospects? Everyone understands, as the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, has said, that it would not be possible to rule out fundamental amendments in the Commons to a Bill simply on the 92. I am not just talking about amending the detailed arrangements so far as the 92 are concerned; I am talking about amendments for election in one form or another. That election is what the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, ultimately wants—at least it is what he voted for on a Liberal Democrat three-line Whip, although I do not know whether he did that of his own volition. It is not what the House voted for by a three-to-one or four-to-one majority in the various votes on 14 March. I have the highest respect for the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, in many areas of policy, but I hope that he will excuse me if I am somewhat acerbic on this occasion.

Such a spoiling vote in the House of Commons on a Bill with these narrow credentials would produce a dog's breakfast. It is a racing certainty that there would be amendments to this Bill, but another Bill to be debated on 20 July, that of the noble Lord, Lord Steel, who is the noble friend of the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, is a different kettle of fish. That requires us to look even more deeply into the dynamics and realities of what Parliament as a whole will wear.

Perhaps we should try to make a dispassionate assessment of where the Lords reform process has reached after what was—and I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, on this—a rather contrived majority in the Commons, based on a good deal of tactical voting. That preference for electing the lot has being kicked into the long grass in terms of legislation before the next election. After the general election, there may well be a royal commission on the constitution, but it should not be a rabbit hole down which everyone disappears in a state of utter confusion and waits to see what comes back out, but an assessment of concrete questions on the checks and balances in the legislative process between the two Houses.

We need that careful, dispassionate and cool examination, because many of the people who say "elect the lot" by first praying in aid the concept of greater legitimacy, then run away from its consequences of more challenges to the House of Commons and its primacy, which would also be a racing certainty. Those people then say, "Okay, scrap the conventions approach, meet that earlier point somehow and make these justiciable". However, as the unanimous Cunningham report pointed out, they cannot be made justiciable and set out in statute, because disputes between the Lords and the Commons would have to be interpreted by the Supreme Court in its new building over the road in Parliament Square. I can think of a number of statesmen from the past 500 years who must be turning in their graves at that prospect.

There is no way of achieving what many in the Commons think they want—and what at one stage Jack Straw told them they could have—that when the House of Commons does not like an amendment from the House of Lords it can simply cancel it out with a snap of the fingers. In summary, and I refer to my speech on 13 March, the policy of "legitimise it, then castrate it" is not a runner. That point has now, somewhat belatedly, been recognised by even Jack Straw and, in being forced to reflect on the clear and unanimous analysis of the Cunningham committee, we should now look forward because there will be three, four or five years before a royal commission can report following a general election fought on various manifestos.

The next logical question is: can nothing happen for the next one or two years? That is my view of this Bill. My answer and that of the cross-party group that includes the noble Lord, Lord Steel, and, prominently, the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, is that, not only is there a Bill tofill that gap, but it is available in the Printed Paper Office. That Bill had its First Reading on the same day as did the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Avebury—14 March—the day when we all voted. It has its Second Reading in this House in a full day's debate on 20 July, when, I predict, there will be a considerable number of speakers.

So what precisely does the Steel Bill say which the Avebury Bill does not, and why are they fundamentally different? The central point is that the Steel Bill provides for the creation of a statutory appointments commission in place of the present patronage system. Implementing this part of the White Paper is a sine qua non of any early progress to consensus—and I speak for the consensus of a clear, two-thirds majority of the Labour group, although there is a minority with another view.

It translates into practical action many of the words that have almost been flogged to death—democracy, legitimacy, transparency and ownership—in the process of elections and appointments. It is a far more fundamental reform than many people have appreciated. A caveat is that the Civil Service authorship of this part of the White Paper shows through because it is very unsure of its footing by neglecting the necessary internal processes of the political parties—presumably because they are outside its purview in some way. Perhaps Jack Straw took his eye off the ball or my noble friends on the Front Bench did not get their heads around this issue.

My criticism of the White Paper in this regard, which is germane to what I will say later, is that it often implies that it would be for the statutory appointments commission to select from party lists—not only on grounds of probity, but more generally. It has been recognised that that would be a disaster and be rejected because it would mean that the great and the good would be perceived by members of parties—this is certainly true of the Labour Party—as doing the job of selecting right-wing or left-wing candidates and so on. That section of the White Paper is, after all, the one that relates to members of political parties who have taken the Whip here. We are not talking about the role of the statutory appointments commission relative to the Cross-Benchers, we are talking about that role vis-à-vis the political parties—people who have to be whipped in this Chamber in the normal way that makes democratic government work.

We have to work out how political parties take responsibility in that new world—and I take my hat off to the Liberal Democrats for having more experience than others in this matter—and what the parties' obligations should be as regards the new process, because they will have to register their criteria and processes with the statutory appointments commission. I predict that it would not be for that commission to have anything to do with, say, choosing left-wing or right-wing candidates or whatever. Desirable as it may be to say that a certain percentage of the Members will be of a certain ethnicity or that so many per cent will be women, surely, if people are to be whipped in this House, that must be down to the political parties. If the parties are to take ownership of the system, which is the key to this, they have to be happy with that. In a sense, it would make them—

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord. Can he help in one respect? So far, he has not said whether he agrees with the merits of this Bill, which has identical provisions to those in the Steel Bill. He has said why he thinks that it may be politically inappropriate or inexpedient, but does he agree or disagree with the principle of the Bill?

My Lords, if the noble Lord, Lord Lester, reads Hansard tomorrow, he will see that I said that I have no difficulty with the words in the Bill concerning the 92 hereditaries. However, I cannot support the Bill, for the reasons that I am going through at the moment. Perhaps I may continue.

This would be the first time that stakeholders in this House, as well as in the House of Commons, had some ownership of the appointments system. I have written a memorandum on this whole question and shall send a copy to any Member who would like to see it. Certainly in the case of the Labour Party, this would be the first time in 100 years that we moved away from what might be called the default position, subconscious as it may be, of saying that, even if all the hereditaries were not still there, having been removed, we would still be very suspicious about how the life Peers got there. That is not too surprising when the conclusion is, "Let's abolish the whole thing". But the statutory appointments commission and the reforms that I am suggesting would, for the first time, change that. It would be a fundamental change, the absence of which has bedevilled this whole debate for many years.

I underline that, if people are to have confidence in the ownership of the House of Lords, it is not sufficient to remove the hereditary principle, much as we all agree with that, and of course that is in the Steel Bill as well. Making such a rule change in the Labour Party and providing a panel system at one remove from the National Executive Committee would not only change much of the psychology in the parties in the country but would remove much of the hostility to this place among our colleagues in the Parliamentary Labour Party.

I turn to my last point. I know a little about the Labour Party and what makes it tick, but others will have to describe how this all plays in the Conservative Party, which I find as inscrutable as the Tang dynasty or perhaps another dynasty with which I have mixed it up.

These are major preconditions for any legislation that is to be brought forward in the near future and, of course, we will have to take another look at the issue after the election. There is nothing wrong with some of the language in the Avebury Bill but I cannot support it. I ask the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, to acknowledge that, for the reasons I have given and if he is serious about early action on the question of the 92 hereditaries, he should support the Steel Bill, which has its Second Reading on 20 July. It could have the support of the Commons—perhaps not as it stands but after it has been picked up by the Government. It is an excellent measure in its own right. Even if it were faced with spoiling amendments, those could be voted down with the support of the Government, based on a White Paper supporting our approach at this stage and dealing with other matters later, after the election. Vis-à-vis this approach, last July I said to a senior colleague in the other place, "Why look a gift horse in the mouth?". I think that that message is now getting through.

My Lords, I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Lea of Crondall, said: this is not the Bill to get this proposal on to the statute book. I am grateful for his instruction as to what goes on in another place and for his views on the merits of another Bill to which I do not propose to speak.

This Bill has to be seen in its true perspective. That means, to use the expression of the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, that it has to be revisited. We have to revisit the Cranborne deal, a self-denying ordinance whose fundamental concept was to enable the House of Lords Bill to be passed by this House in the interests of this House.

It is now established as a wholly well founded concept that this House has never been in better shape and is working at its best with the formidable expertise and dedication of the hereditaries, who serve on the Woolsack, on the Front and Back Benches, and as chairmen and members of committees. The quality of those services is recognised on all sides of this House, including the Spiritual Benches and Cross Benches.

The Cranborne deal is reflected in the Weatherill amendment and in the 14th draft of Standing Orders to seek to avoid hybridity. It was made in honour of Privy Council terms and was binding on the Government. It was made with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, the then Lord Chancellor, who is a man of his word and would have honoured the deal. According to the fundamental concept, the deal was to continue only temporarily until enactment of substantial reform of the powers and composition of your Lordships' House—stage 2 of reform. There is not a word about powers in the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Steel. I shall not speak to that Bill but shall probably support some of his concepts for composition.

That substantive reform, as discussed in your Lordships' House, was inevitably related to reform of another place, and then the Cranborne deal was to end. It was also agreed under that deal that, only until that time, the remaining hereditaries should carry out elections to fill vacancies, as provided for in Standing Orders. It is easy to mock, as the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, has done—rather enticingly, if I may say so—but it is much more difficult to construct.

There is now no agreement on stage 2, substantive reform; as I said, no Private Member's Bill makes such provision. This Bill and Clause 10 of the Steel Bill put an end to filling vacancies so as to enable hereditaries to wither on the vine; they pre-empt a Bill on substantive reform. The concept of this Bill and Clause 10 of the Steel Bill commended itself to certain hereditary Peers. I am delighted to see the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, in his place. I believe that both he and I thought that it rather a good idea, but there was no amendment to that effect in the Bill. It could not have been in the Bill because it was the basis on which the hereditaries were asked to assent to the deal. There it is: it could not be accepted as it conflicted with the basis of the deal.

The Table advises that the Cranborne deal can be rescinded only by statute. The fact that it ends on stage 2 is under the deal, but its constitutional end can be achieved only by statute. It is interesting to revisit the essence of the concept. If this Bill were passed in your Lordships' House, it would inevitably, subject to what the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton of Upholland, may say—one never knows, but it is sometimes very helpful—be defeated by objection in another place as a Private Member's Bill.

Reverting to the true perspective—the interests of this House—what is the need or justification for haste to end a process that will end in any event at stage 2, confirmed by statute? If the purpose today were to afford discussion, it has been afforded—some of it a little wide of the essence of the Bill—and will again take place on Clause 10 of the Bill introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Steel, which appears to reflect an informal selective cross-party consensus. To what conceivable constructive end shall your Lordships give this Bill a Second Reading, which by convention, albeit not acceptable to Government, they may not wish to oppose? I have nothing further of use to say.

My Lords, the wisdom and propriety of a Private Member's Bill being used to effect the final and full reform of this House, which we were promised in 1999 would eventually happen, are very questionable. This is a grave constitutional matter, and as such I think it is quite wrong that it should be resolved by a Private Member's Bill, particularly one having its Second Reading on a Friday afternoon, when most noble Lords have gone home for the weekend. It should be resolved only by a government Bill, introduced in prime time, the contents of which should have been arrived at by all-party consensus. If it is not done in such a manner, what guarantee will anyone have that it will be accepted by the Government, the opposition parties and the country as stage 2 of the reform which was started in 1999? For that reason alone I am totally opposed to the Bill.

Even Part 1, which could have created an Appointments Commission truly independent of Prime Ministerial patronage, signally fails to do so. Far too much power is vested in the House of Commons, which has no idea at all of the qualities necessary for a Member of this House, and apparently this House is to have no say at all. That is only one small fault; I can assure your Lordships that there are plenty of others. As far as I am concerned, and I am wearing my hat as a hereditary Peer, Part 2 is not acceptable. The 92 hereditary Peers are supposed to remain here, as the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, explained, until the completion of stage 2 of House of Lords reform, which started in 1999. That was stated on 11 May 1999 at the Dispatch Box by the then Lord Chancellor, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, who said:

"I make it absolutely plain that stage two reform will take place, and when it does the hereditary Peers who remain, if the Weatherill amendment passes, will cease to be Members of this House".

Later in the same column, he said:

"The 10 per cent will go when stage two has taken place, and their presence is a guarantee that stage two will take place".—[Hansard, 11/5/1999; col. 1092.]

That was confirmed by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, on 13 March this year:

"The noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, reminds us that we agreed to the keeping of the hereditaries until stage 2 was in place ... We agreed that in the White Paper and stand by it".—[Hansard, 13/03/07; col. 722.]

What guarantee have we that, if this Bill were to receive Royal Assent, the Government, or anyone else, would be satisfied that the reforms embodied in it constituted stage 2? Absolutely none. In that case we, the hereditary Peers, would no longer be here as such, to be a thorn in the Government's flesh, a sort of politically incorrect gadfly to torment them by our very existence, an existence they had a manifesto commitment to terminate. Much is continually said about the ludicrousness of the Peers' elections, and I cannot deny that; but the principal thing that is ludicrous about them is that the electorate is made up only of hereditary Peers, so that in the case of Labour and Liberal Democrat elections you have two or three Peers voting for many more candidates. That would be simply remedied by making the electorate all the Peers in the relevant party, which, with hindsight, is what I now believe it should always have been. Other matters could also be tweaked and improved. But when stage 2 really has been enacted and comes into force, the 92 should go because that was the agreement. If all or any of them are offered life baronies by the Government, it will be up to them as individuals whether to accept them. I have said before, and I say again, that for any of us hereditary Peers to be party to abolishing the elections sticks in my gullet. It is tantamount to saying to our erstwhile colleagues, who were so meanly and cavalierly sacked in 1999 and whose only hope of either getting back themselves or of their heirs' doing so is to be elected, "I'm alright Jack, and you can go to the devil".

Turning to another part of the Bill, it is a pity to be so sanctimonious about Peers who have served jail sentences sitting in this House. They have paid their forfeit and should be allowed back into the game. I can think of one, the late Lord Kagan, who was born Lithuanian, whose knowledge of what we used to call the "Russian steamroller" and its ways was invaluable in debates about defence, although he was very diffident and it took a lot of persuasion to make him speak.

My Lords, I think the noble Lady refers to my noble friend Lord Steel's Bill. This Bill does not mention people who have served jail sentences.

My Lords, I beg your Lordships' pardon. I was looking at the wrong Bill.

Altogether, I like this Bill so little that, if it were not a Friday afternoon when most Peers have gone home for the weekend, I should have put down a Motion to kill it. As it is, I hope that it withers on the vine.

My Lords, I am sure that we are all grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, for introducing the Bill, which I support, for reasons that I shall mention later.

I was interested in what the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, said about the Cranborne amendment and in what the noble Lady, Lady Saltoun, said. However, stage 2 is a very long way away, and this Bill—which has not always been referred to—attempts to change a rather undesirable situation. I accept that the Cranborne amendment has allowed a good number of distinguished and useful Members of this House to come back to membership. Previously, I had the honour of being elected by the whole House as a Deputy Speaker. However, this system should not carry on until the end of time or stage 2, whichever is earlier. This is a House of Parliament, not a private club that elects its own members.

There are only four Labour Peers, including me. If there were a death, there would be three. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, mentioned a number of rotten boroughs and the numbers of electors they contained. I do not say that we are a rotten borough, but we are smaller than any of those that he mentioned. We are probably the smallest electorate in the world. However, there is worse to come. My noble friend Lord Simon and I were elected as Deputy Speakers by the whole House—life Peers and hereditaries. After our deaths, further elections by the whole House will take place. It is possible, indeed probable, knowing the numbers on the other side and on the Cross Benches, that our seats will pass to the Conservatives or the Cross Benches. If that should happen, the number of Labour hereditaries would be down to two. If one of them should die, the electorate would be down to one. That is positively Gilbertian and absurd. It is a further reason why these internal House elections should be cancelled.

A further matter, not mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, or any of the other speakers, is contained in the Bill: the question of the two great officers of state, the Lord Great Chamberlain and the Earl Marshal. There seems to be general agreement that those historic roles should continue, and I agree with that, but because the noble Duke, the Duke of Norfolk, and the noble Marquess, Lord Cholmondeley, are hereditary Peers, it is sometimes suggested in this House and outside it that they should move to the Royal Household at Buckingham Palace or St James's Palace. However, they are already members of the Royal Household. They have important duties, particularly at the opening of Parliament, and it is important that they should remain because they provide a link between the Crown and Parliament.

I support the Bill, which puts right something undesirable. I hope that the Government will give it a Second Reading and that the usual channels will arrange an early date for the remaining stages in this House so that it can be sent to another place without delay.

My Lords, it may be worth reminding the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, that the Parliament (No. 2) Bill in 1969 failed because of opposition in the other place, not because of any problems in this House.

Much of what I would like to say has already been covered in previous speeches, not least those of the noble Lord, Lord Lea of Crondall, and my noble friend Lord Campbell of Alloway. Given that, I shall endear myself to the Minister, and possibly to the whole House, by saying that I intend to keep my comments extremely short.

The noble Lord's Bill also has the merit of being short. However, it suffers from a number of limitations, some of which are apparent in what the noble Lord said as well as in what was said in preceding speeches. As we have been reminded, during the passage of the House of Lords Bill in 1999, the Weatherill amendment was accepted. It provided for the retention of 92 hereditary Peers as Members of this House and was accepted by the Government on the understanding that it was an interim provision pending stage 2 of reform of this House.

That understanding leads logically to two conclusions: first, that the composition of the House remains unchanged until stage 2 is agreed; and, secondly, that stage 2 must comprise more than the removal of the remaining 92 hereditaries. What follows is that if the provisions of the Bill are to be accepted, they have to be accepted as part of a wider set of provisions that are recognised as constituting stage 2. The Government accepted that this wider set of provisions should be reached by consensus. That was embodied in the Queen's Speech in November, and that was the extent of the commitment. In short, if we are to proceed, we should do so on the basis of general agreement on a set of proposals. The noble Lord's Bill fails to meet these criteria. We should therefore await a measure that does.

The other points I would wish to make have been said. Given that, I do not propose to go into the argument concerning hereditary Peers and the by-election provision. The hereditary Peers who serve in this House continue to contribute significantly to its work. Their value is recognised by the fact that the number of hereditary Peers sitting in your Lordships' House exceeds the statutory 92, some of them having been reintroduced as life Peers. Indeed, in the fullness of time, if the by-election provision were to be removed, there would be nothing to stop hereditary Peers being nominated for membership. I note that not only are there hereditary Peers sitting in this House as life Peers, but also three hereditary Peers sitting as Members of the other place. Whatever happens, hereditary Peers are likely to continue to make a significant contribution to public life. The noble Lady, Lady Saltoun, is incorrect therefore to say that the by-election mechanism is the only means by which hereditary Peers may become Members of this House. That is to underplay the merits of hereditary Peers.

I am familiar with the criticisms levelled at the mechanism for selecting a hereditary Peer in the event of a vacancy occurring—repeated by the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi—but that is the mechanism that has been agreed and embodied in Standing Orders. It is a mechanism that should remain until such time as agreement is reached on stage 2. We are not there yet. We should await a measure that seeks to deliver on generally agreed proposals.

Following the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Lea, I believe that a measure to that effect will soon be before us. The noble Lady, Lady Saltoun, is right to say that there will be discussion about whether that constitutes stage 2. But that is a discussion for another day.

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for bringing forward this Bill and want to take on a little of the blame for it having arrived here. We had something of a planning meeting in Prince's Chamber a few weeks ago. My noble friend said to me, "I think that we should do something to get rid of these absurd by-elections". My comment was, roughly, "Yeah, go for it". As your Lordships can see, the great amount of preparation for my contribution was probably left at "go for it". My noble friend clearly did.

I appreciate that, as a hereditary Peer, I am guilty of the claim to be pulling up the ladder once I have climbed up it. In thinking that we should do something about the situation, I agree with what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi. The idea of the rotten borough of all rotten boroughs, gilded and preserved for ever, is probably better on those Benches, but we get close here. Having been part of that electorate—four of us sitting down, having a chat and deciding on a Member of Parliament in one of the richest countries in the western world—I know that an almost irresistible weight of absurdity comes down on you.

Does stage 2 arrive with this Bill? Will it be stage 2 as envisaged by stage 1? The money must definitely be against that. One thing about yesterday's radical reform is that it ain't tomorrow's. Should we do something now? Yes, my Lords. If we are doing something now, we are addressing the current set of problems. Addressing the current set of problems in politics is one up on the norm because we are usually fairly reactive, so we should try to deal with the problems now. As the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, on the opposition Front Bench, suggested, so far we have been pretty lucky in the people we have in here. Those of us who survived by other methods rose or fell—occasionally we lost. I cannot but help remember the fate of Viscount Long, who was not included on the opposition Benches in 1999. If ever there was a quiet but effective servant of Parliament and his party who was excluded, it was that man. So we can get it wrong among ourselves.

Ensuring that the process of selection is more open will be dealt with later on, but let us just deal with the absurdity. We have several people sitting round asking, "Who shall we have in? Who did quite a good job last time?", but rapidly they will disappear and we will have to take a punt on someone who is untried. Let us get rid of this process. We are quite capable of looking ridiculous in other ways and we do not have to hang this around our necks.

My Lords, I have not so far participated in debates on the reform of the House. That has been, in part, because I feel that as a hereditary Peer I should leave discussions and decisions about the future of the House to those who are here in their own right and will remain after the next stage of reform when we, the surviving hereditary Peers, are finally phased out.

This short Bill, however, deals directly with the remaining hereditary Peers, so my participation is relevant. The Bill proposes gently and painlessly to get on with the phasing-out process. As we well know, the Weatherill/Cranborne agreement by which 92 hereditary Peers were exempted from the 1999 Act, pending the next stage of reform, was a deal which ensured the relatively smooth passage of that Act. But, as the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, pointed out, that exemption was clearly understood to be temporary. The replacement of deceased hereditary Peers, added, as I recollect, to the package at a rather late stage, was agreed to by the Government very reluctantly because it perpetuated a significant hereditary presence.

Seven and a half years have passed since the 1999 Act. During that time, 10 of the original 92 have died and been replaced. Clearly, as the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, pointed out, if they had not been replaced, only 82 would remain. As we age, the mortality rate will accelerate, so that in 10 or 20 years natural wastage will have gone a long way towards eliminating those 82. Eventually, of course, they will all die, but that might take 50 years or more—I look across the Chamber to one of our younger Members. Natural wastage was proposed during the 1999 debates as a humane method of bringing to an end the right of all hereditary Peers to sit and vote in the House. But this is not why the noble Lord has brought in this Bill.

The replacement of deceased retained hereditary Peers, particularly through bizarre by-elections, is an anomaly when the ending of their right to sit in the House is accepted as part of all serious proposals for the next stage of House of Lords reform. There is no mainstream view which advocates the retention of hereditary Peers in the legislature in the 21st century. My use of the word "bizarre" is fully justified when considering an election such as the one in which I was involved in 2003, which has already been mentioned. There were three electors—that is, hereditary Labour Peers—and 11 candidates, most of whom had no previous Labour Party connections. There were almost as many electors as candidates in five other by-elections—a strange form of democracy, to say the least, and one which makes a mockery of the proceedings of your Lordships' House. It was an opportunity for ridicule not lost by several commentators in the media.

When the 1999 Act was passed, it was expected that the next stage of reform would probably take place in the next Parliament. But now we are half way through the one after that, and despite the decisive vote in the other place in favour of a totally or mainly elected House, it is extremely unlikely that our new Prime Minister will wish to use the remaining two or three years of this Parliament to engage in a full-scale battle with your Lordships' House which has, as we all know, voted clearly in favour of a fully appointed House. Incidentally, the form which that House might take is well outlined in another Private Member's Bill, mentioned by my noble friend Lord Lea of Crondall and others—that of the noble Lord, Lord Steel—which is sitting in the wings waiting for its Second Reading on 20 July. It is in the context of the unlikely event of stage 2 coming soon that we should consider this Bill introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury.

The replacement of retained hereditary Peers on death is against the modernising spirit of House of Lords reform. It was only agreed to as a temporary expedient. As the date for the next stage of reform seems to stretch further and further into the future, is it not time for this anomalous temporary measure to be ended? To pass this Bill would be a simple way of doing it and I commend it to my noble friend Lady Ashton on the Front Bench.

My Lords, I find it slightly surprising that the Bill is being introduced by a Peer elected under the House of Lords Act 1999, although I note that it is supported by the noble Lords, Lord Strabolgi and Lord Addington. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, is usually vigilant and courageous in supporting minorities. In effect, however, he is pulling up the drawbridge on a minority of which he is one of the original members.

On politics.co.uk on 13 March, the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, is quoted as saying that the by-election,

"process ensures that replacements are drawn from those who were not seen as useful by their colleagues".

When the original 92 were selected—this certainly applies to those on the Conservative Benches—the election of the Front-Bench spokesman, my noble friend Lord De Mauley, completely invalidated that point. My noble friend was not even on the radar screen in 1999, and could not stand for election as his father was still alive. I also challenge the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, on the by-elections of the noble Viscounts, Lord Eccles, Lord Trenchard and Lord Ullswater, and the noble Earl, Lord Cathcart, all of whom we saw and continue to see as making important contributions to the House, as have those on other Benches who have been elected.

As many speakers have already said, one of the main points of keeping the 92 hereditary Peers was to act as a catalyst for further reform of the House. I reinforce, as other speakers such as my noble friend Lord Campbell of Alloway have done, what the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor said on the Floor of the House on 30 March 1999—that "the 10 per cent", or the 92,

"will go only when stage two has taken place. So it is a guarantee that it will take place".

He added that the amendment proposed by Lord Weatherill,

"would provide for the interim retention of one in 10 of the hereditary Peers, 75 out of the existing 750, plus 15 hereditary office-holders, until the second stage of House of Lords reform has taken place. The amendment reflects a compromise negotiated between Privy Councillors on Privy Council terms and binding in honour on all those who have come to give it their assent".—[Hansard, 30/3/99; col. 207.]

Since 1999, the most significant reform vote came when the other place voted this year for a fully elected, or predominantly elected, House of Lords. I am not in favour of this personally but, in the end, if it becomes a manifesto commitment, the House must consider it accordingly. The current system will cease to operate, I believe, only when this reform goes through. Just because stage 2 may be a long way away does not change the situation.

In the mean time, piecemeal Bills such as this do nothing to help the process of reform. I firmly believe that issues of major constitutional importance should not be legislated for in Private Members' Bills.

My Lords, I very much welcome my noble friend's proposed amendment to the House of Lords Act 1999. We have heard a great deal about the way in which the arrangement was arrived at as a result of the so-called Weatherill amendment, and I will not go through all that again. Experience has shown that at least part of the reasoning behind introducing the category of elected Peers was that the Government's real enthusiasm for reform was, as we feared, not terribly great. On the other hand, it is also difficult to feel that the continuing membership of hereditary Peers in this House now contributes much to furthering reform. Moreover, like others—the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, expressed this most vividly—I feel that the election system exposes this House to ridicule, and unavoidably so. As my noble friend reminded us, we are like a rotten borough, albeit a very small one. I, of course, do not have a vote in the election of these new Members to sit in my Chamber. There we go; that is only one of the oddities of the whole thing. The same is true of other life Peers.

Like all of us, I have my opinions about reform of your Lordships' House. My first preference is for an all-elected second Chamber, which in theory at least could be constructed relatively easily. In practice, of course, it would be almost impossible to achieve because of the English dislike of working from theory to practice, rather than the other way around, when constructing new ways of doing things. I shall not continue to fantasise about that possibility.

My second choice would be for an all-appointed second Chamber; I am firmly opposed to any mixture. That option received the greatest amount of support when we recently voted on the matter in this House. I also firmly believe that the number of Members of this House should be fixed, as in other second Chambers. We would have a limited number of Members, say 350, each appointed for 12 or 15 years. The delightful prospect offered by my noble friend's Bill is that of being able to move slowly and decorously, as is our wont, towards just such a second Chamber, or Senate as I would prefer to call it, which most of us seemed to support.

First, we stop electing substitutes for the 90 hereditary Peers who are not either the Earl Marshal or the Lord Great Chamberlain. We would then become a wholly appointed House. The Government would then bite the bullet and begin pensioning off willing victims among the life Peers, while creating a special commission for the appointment of new members of the Senate, only for 12 or 15 years and only for those—there are many in the House at present who would easily pass this test——who are willing to attend and to contribute regularly. In perhaps 15 or 20 years, we would arrive at our goal; not a perfect goal, but a quite acceptable one—a wholly appointed Senate, the membership of which changed as the years went by without requiring death or disability to play the decisive part. This approach ticks so many of the Government's own boxes that I look forward to the Minister telling us that the Government are considering my noble friend's Bill.

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Avebury epitomises the very best of conscience and reform in his dedicated service to Parliament and in the public interest. He is a great hereditary Peer and a fine former Member of the other House, and I salute him. We on these Benches strongly support the Bill, and we hope—hope dies last—that the new Conservative Official Opposition and the even newer new Labour Government-in-waiting will also do so.

This is a very modest Bill. It does not provide for the full-scale reform of this House, as envisaged in the Parliament Act 1911 and by new Labour's 1997 election manifesto. It does not provide for this House to be wholly, mainly or partly elected by the people, even though each of the main parties now claims to favour such a reform. It does not seek summarily to remove the remaining hereditary Members from this House, even though that would at last give effect to the agreement reached between the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats, known as the Cook-Maclennan agreement, and to the basis on which new Labour was first elected a decade ago. Nor does the Bill go as far as the House of Lords Bill of my noble friend Lord Steel of Aikwood, which deals with wider proposals for reform.

The Bill seeks merely to end the farcical and anomalous procedure that is put into effect when one of the remaining hereditary Members of the House dies, whereby his or her place is filled by another hereditary Peer chosen in a by-election by his or her peers, although unlike Brooks's, Boodle's, White's or the Garrick, without a system of black-balling. It seeks, gradually and by natural causes, to end a pocket borough worthy of the close attention of Plantagenet Palliser. When a life Peer such as me dies, there is no afterlife in this House. His or her place is not automatically filled by a new life Peer. Indeed, there is no prescribed quota of life Peers of any particular party. The Cook-Maclennan agreement on constitutional reform, which I helped to negotiate, promised that the hereditary element would be completely removed. The agreement clearly stated:

"There is an urgent need for radical reform of the Lords. Its current composition is indefensible, in particular the fact that the majority of its members are entitled to take part in the legislative process on a hereditary basis ... The two parties"— that is, Labour and the Liberal Democrats—

"are therefore agreed that there must be legislation to remove the rights of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords".

I am sorry to say that the Government broke faith with their Liberal Democrat allies by making a covert deal with the then Leader of the Official Opposition in this House, the then noble Viscount, Lord Cranborne, to retain some hereditary Peers so as to ease the passage of the House of Lords Bill. We were not consulted on what I have to describe as a sneaky side-deal to which we strongly objected. We explained that at the time and abstained. We on these Benches are not bound by that deal, whether as a matter of honour or otherwise.

I hope that I may be forgiven for quoting the Cook-Maclennan agreement again. It stated:

"The removal of the hereditary peers will still leave an imbalance in party representation in the Lords during the interim stage. Following their removal, we should move over the course of the next parliament to a House of Lords where those peers who take a party whip more accurately reflect the proportion of votes received by each party in the previous general election".

As I say, I was directly party to negotiating that with the late Robin Cook and other members of the Labour Party.

That was another pledge that was broken by the Government once they had secured our support for the removal of the hereditary element. We were told at the highest level that this was because we could not be relied on to support the Government in the Division Lobbies. As a result my party has remained under-represented after the removal of most of the hereditary Peers who took the Liberal Democrat Whip because, unlike the Labour Party, we had a very significant proportion of hereditary Peers. That does not augur well for the next stage in the reform of this House and for wider constitutional reform on which the Government will need cross-party support, but I hope that we shall be able to proceed on the basis of mutual trust and confidence across the parties and with the crucial support of the Cross Benches.

My noble friend Lord Goodhart said in the debate on the House of Lords Bill:

"It is now 88 years since the Parliament Act restricted the powers of this House and promised that the House should be reconstituted on a popular, not a hereditary basis. That is nearly a decade longer than the period that separated the Parliament Act from the Great Reform Bill of 1832".

He went on:

"While the whole process of democratic reform of our political system which started with the Great Reform Bill was in all other respects completed with the full enfranchisement of women in 1928, only this last piece of reform, the composition and role of your Lordships' House, was left outstanding and has remained so for decades".—[Hansard, 29/3/99; cols. 180-81.]

Therefore, it is not a matter of "haste", in the words of the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, for the reasons so clearly expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Rea.

No one who has spoken in this debate so far has given any good reason, as a matter of logic, principle or common sense, for enabling the remaining hereditary element to replace itself when one of its number dies. The process of election is a process of selection by a self-perpetuating group of unelected legislators, and it is no more democratic in our modern democracy than the process used to elect a new member of a Pall Mall social club.

What I say in no way underestimates the great contribution made in this House and beyond by hereditary Peers. One has only to recall my good friend and colleague, the late lamented Lord Russell, to recognise that contribution. I echo the remarks of another late lamented good friend, Lord Harris of Greenwich, when debating the House of Lords Bill. He said:

"There will be no sneers from these Benches about the contribution made by hereditary Peers. Indeed, it would be remarkable were there to be any given the fact that 24 of our colleagues are hereditary Peers. But the blunt reality is that their day has passed. It is impossible to justify a system which gives male children born in the right bed the right eventually to become members of the legislature".—[Hansard, 30/3/99; col. 210.]

Life Peers have no greater claim to democratic legitimacy than do hereditary Peers, but at least we are not automatically replaced when we are summoned by the Grim Reaper.

As I have said, this process of perpetual renewal does not happen in the case of a life Peer, and it is anomalous and absurd for it to happen when a hereditary Peer dies.

My Lords, the noble Lord used my expression "haste" in a context in which I did not use it. I totally accept what the noble Lord says about the deal not being binding in honour on his party. All I am saying is that it is binding on the Government because they made it. As they made the deal, and as the hereditaries on all sides of the House have done such a fine job, and the deal will end in any event—it is a temporary deal—there is no haste to get rid of the benefit of the services of the hereditaries.

My Lords, I understand that now and I stand corrected. I perfectly agree with the implication that the Government are bound by the deal unless and until they support legislation which removes it. Since the Government control the other place, they have the unique power to do that. Until this House is at last fully reformed—a process which is likely to take several more years at best—surely the right course is to accept that a hereditary Peer's place should not be filled after his or her death. That would have the additional advantage of reducing the size of this excessively large House of Parliament as a result of natural causes.

We hope that there will be a positive response from the Conservative Front Bench and from the Minister and that the Bill will be enacted in the lifetime of this Parliament. The anomaly should not be allowed to continue until wider reforms are made.

Everyone who has spoken in this debate is in some sense self-interested. There is a temptation to speak of the public interest without acknowledging the private and personal interests involved. There is a tendency to speak to each other and to ourselves without recognising that we are here as members of a Parliament with the power and the duty not to administer a club but, as the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, so pithily, wittily and authoritatively explained, to enact the laws of the land. The present position is untenable, and the longer the Government and the Official Opposition allow it to continue, the more they will undermine the legitimacy and authority of the House in the eyes of the public, or those who know about it beyond the Palace of Westminster.

I say to the noble Lords, Lord Lea of Crondall and Lord Norton of Louth, that the argument based on the doctrine of unripe time regarding the need for wider reform is not a cogent or convincing reason for retaining this absurd and unjustifiable anomaly, bearing in mind that we are not saying that we will abolish hereditary Peers today but that we will simply allow natural causes to take effect.

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for giving way again. The point I was making—I think the same is true of the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth—had nothing to do with unripe time. I do not think that expression was used. However, it was not the argument. The argument was that this Bill on its own cannot get through the House of Commons. So I can return the compliment, will the noble Lord support the Steel Bill?

My Lords, it is the doctrine of the unripe time. As I understand the doctrine, in the wonderful book that propounded it, it is that we should not do today what we believe to be right because we believe that the time is not right to do it but we should wait for some other occasion when it can be done. As I understand the noble Lord, he agrees with me that it is right to phase out the hereditary element by, at the very least, natural causes as part of wider constitutional reform. That is common ground. What the other House may or may not do is hypothetical. We are surely concerned with what happens in this House, especially on an issue that intimately concerns the procedures for the composition of this House. It is impossible to speculate—

My Lords, I do not follow the noble Lord's argument about unripe time, as the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Steel of Aikwood, was introduced on the same day as the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Avebury.

My Lords, this Bill and that of the noble Lord, Lord Steel, both of which I hope will be given a Second Reading, will give this House the opportunity to look at this issue either in the most modest way, which is the way of the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, or in a more ambitious way. It is entirely right that that should happen. I am saying that there is no reason why the most modest reform should be opposed on the argument that wider reform is desirable and might or might not win approval in the other place. Let us first deal with this Bill, then deal with the Steel Bill, then see what this House believes on both, and finally see what the Government and the other place decide to do. That seems right.

I found the intervention by the noble Lady, Lady Saltoun of Abernethy, rather depressing. She attacked the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, suggesting that it was wrong in principle to introduce constitutional reform by means of a Private Member's Bill. If that were correct, I would be very guilty indeed, because I introduced two Private Members' Bills on human rights, which I think led to the Human Rights Act, and, even more presumptuously, I introduced the Executive Powers and Civil Service Bill not once but several times.

It would be a serious abridgement of the rights and duties of Members of this House if the view expressed by the noble Lady were given wider currency or support. I believe that the Great Reform Bill was originally a Private Member's Bill, although eventually it was taken over by the Government. One of the great virtues of this House is that we are often a catalyst for wider reform. I would like to think that that was true of civil partnerships and I hope that it will be true of forced marriage. We in this House also have a unique possibility of initiating constitutional reforms, which it is then for the democratic Chamber to decide on.

I wholly agree with the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, that the present situation is Gilbertian; in fact, I would say that it is worthy of Lewis Carroll.

My Lords, I wish that I could say that it gave me pleasure to welcome a Bill introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, whose work in this House, both before and after he himself became one of the 92 excepted hereditary Peers, I greatly respect. But I cannot do so. The Bill touches on very important issues: nothing less than the future composition of one of our Houses of Parliament. I share the view of other noble Lords—although not, of course, the noble Lord, Lord Lester of Herne Hill—who do not think that these issues are properly addressed in a Private Member's Bill. That has never been our constitutional tradition and it is not a modernisation that I would want to see. In the debate preceding this one, my noble friend Lord Howard of Rising made exactly the same point about a Private Member's Bill, introduced by a member of my own party, which is also on a constitutional matter, albeit, some would argue, a more important one.

This Bill, drafted in isolation from any other reform, is not one that my party could ever support. It could create an all-appointed House—by a slow route, it is true, but by a sure route none the less. Over a period, and not a long one in the context of the history of reform of the Lords, this Bill, if passed, would reduce Cross-Bench strength by 16 per cent, Conservative strength by over 20 per cent, Liberal strength by over 6 per cent and Labour strength by less than 2 per cent. Even Mr Straw, in his recent White Paper, acknowledged that to be unfair, as it would benefit Labour disproportionately against the other parties and the Cross Benches. However, a new Prime Minister and a Labour majority in another place may well find that quite attractive, so I suggest that it is unwise of the noble Lord to expose the Government, by trying to send his Bill down the corridor, to temptations that could include amending it to exclude at a stroke the extant 92.

I did not think that an all-appointed House was the policy of the Liberal Democrats and I have heard nothing today to suggest that their policy has changed so as to move towards an all-appointed House, as this Bill would create. It would do so without any safeguards against the kind of abuse of the appointments system that we have seen on such a flagrant scale in the past 10 years—a scale not seen since the days of that noted Liberal, Lloyd George.

This approach is piecemeal and, as several noble Lords have said, does not even attempt to tackle the main issue of long-term reform. It will be interesting for all your Lordships, I am sure, to hear from the Minister the Government's new thinking on this matter, following confirmation of the identity of the next Prime Minister.

There are many ironies in this debate beyond the fact that the noble Lord, who put himself forward for election in 1999, is now trying to persuade me, who put myself forward for election in 2005, to join him barking in the manger to keep any other hereditary Peers with the wish to serve Parliament and their country from submitting their names to do so.

One of those ironies is that we are debating this so soon after we mourned the death of Lord Weatherill, whose proposal to keep 92 elected hereditary Peers on a transitional basis pending enactment of stage 2 reform was carried with massive majorities in both Houses eight years ago. I have seen no concrete and detailed proposal for stage 2 yet coming forward with the support of the House of Commons. While we await it, I feel, if I may say so with all courtesy, that it is perhaps surprising for someone such as the noble Lord, who has himself benefited from a system that Parliament agreed, to seek to force the early termination of that very system. If he felt that the principle was so wrong, perhaps he should not have stood for election in 1999.

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord but, in view of his remarks, I wonder whether he is aware of the fact that when I joined this House in, I think, 1993 it was completely controlled by his party, with the support of several hundred hereditary Peers, most of whom did not take part in debates but came at around 5.30 to stand at the Bar of the House waiting impatiently to vote. They would constantly vote in favour of the Conservative Government in a completely unprincipled way. One may criticise this Government, but they have at least got rid of that vice and have had the good sense not to seek to control this House, where they have no majority. Is the noble Lord aware of that?

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for his intervention, but it does not change my position one bit.

Were there not provision for replacement, the number of non-appointed Peers would already have fallen by 10 since 1999, as other noble Lords have said. The appointed element among Lords temporal, which was raised from 45 per cent to 82 per cent in 1999, would now have risen to over 88 per cent. From there, this Bill would carry us inexorably towards 100 per cent, something that the other place has clearly said that it does not want. Such a change can happen very fast and should not, I again respectfully submit, be sought in a Private Member's Bill.

The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, is quoted on his party's website—my noble friend Lord Northbrook referred to this—as having said of the process of elections for hereditaries, in commenting on his Bill on 13 March:

"This process ensures that the average age of the 92 hereditaries continually rises, and that the replacements are drawn from those who were not seen as useful by their colleagues when the original 92 were selected".

I respectfully point out to him that that misrepresents how the system works. I, for one, was not here before the reforms and, I suggest, I am manfully contributing to a reduction in the average age—as will others, as long as the system is allowed to continue.

This is the wrong Bill at the wrong time, dropped into a House that is functioning well and targeted at a rare category of new entrants untainted by the accusation of impropriety over their means of entry to your Lordships' House, a category that few outside the House, against the background of cash or loans for peerages, see as the most urgent target for reform.

Surely, we should await stage 2. While we await it, I hope that we will be invited to participate in discussion and debate by the Government. After all, they have a duty to seek consensus in these matters. As they do, they should surely also consider ideas for reform not only of this House but the other place.

The House of Commons is not working properly—for example in its lack of scrutiny of great chunks of legislation, which are often sent here unconsidered. That problem seems to be recognised even by Gordon Brown. That defect in our constitution cannot, sadly, be corrected by a Private Member's Bill in this place or the other. In the interim, we should surely not further expose this House to control by the operation of patronage, against which the Bill offers not a single safeguard. Instead, it moves us steadily in that direction.

If the Bill proceeds to Committee, we shall seek significant amendment. The noble Lord will not be the least surprised that we firmly oppose it as it stands.

My Lords, I join the sentiments expressed about the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, with whom I have had the privilege of working, and of having tea with yesterday. I congratulate him on introducing his Bill and giving us an opportunity to debate what is clearly, from the contributions made, an important subject. I reassure him that my noble friend Lady Farrington said that she has indeed had that issue raised on the doorstep once when canvassing in Lancashire. None the less, in my view, that is a good sign.

I am also delighted that we have had the useful contributions of the noble Lords, Lord Addington and Lord De Mauley. My noble friend Lord Strabolgi talked about the fact that this is not a private members' club, it is a House of Parliament. That is the backdrop to all our discussion and all the contributions made. We in this House are very mindful of the need to ensure that it is well understood that we are a House of Parliament—we are legislators—and that decisions are made by those who turn up, make their contributions and vote. I have learned a little bit more about how Pall Mall social clubs get their membership, for which I am extremely grateful.

The noble Lord, Lord Lester, said that we do not have an afterlife, but he then talked of exactly the person who came to my mind, Earl Russell. I can hear his contribution; he does not need to be here. I then thought about what my late friend Lord Williams of Mostyn would be saying in my ear were he sitting beside me. I very much regret that neither of them is here to contribute today, because I cannot possibly attempt to do as well as they would have done.

I was fascinated by the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas of Walliswood, who took us from the Bill all the way through to ending up with a wholly appointed Senate of about 350 members with a 12-year membership. It was wonderful to see that journey. The difficulty, as she will know, is that while she is on that journey, other people are travelling in equal and opposite directions. That is always the interesting and difficult part of our debates on the subject.

I shall pick up four or five key points. The first is whether the Bill goes far enough. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, made it clear that if it is amended, that would create great difficulty—indeed, that would be the end of that, as it were. I think that it was my noble friend Lord Lea who said that it is irresistible that that will happen. That is my concern. Members of this House and certainly those in another place will feel that, important though the measure is, they want additional measures in a piecemeal fashion and without the consensus that the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, felt was essential for the future. Above everything else, we have to bear that in mind. Whatever the merits of the initiatives that have been taken, it is a serious issue that we cannot ignore. Noble Lords have talked about another Private Member's Bill, which your Lordships will have the opportunity to debate on 20 July. I will say nothing about that now.

The noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, said that stage 2 must be achieved by statute, which is right, and the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, said that there should be something bigger. I, too, have looked at what happened. The noble Lady, Lady Saltoun, quoted from Hansard, which I will not repeat. However, on 7 March, my right honourable friend Jack Straw spoke about the stage 2 pledge. He said that paragraphs 3.27 and 3.28 of the White Paper correctly indicate the position,

"until the second stage of House of Lords reform has taken place".

He continued:

"For the avoidance of doubt, I spoke to my noble Friend, the former Lord Chancellor, this morning, and he authorised me to say that the passage in the White Paper, at paragraphs 3.27 and 3.28, is a correct summary of the position".

In the context of what the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, was moving us on to, my right honourable friend Jack Straw also said that,

"what was agreed in 1999 implied no guarantee of any particular stage 2".

He said that that was because,

"the commitment was made even before the royal commission had reported, and still less before there had been White Papers, Public Administration Committee reports and so on", which is important when we think about what we believe stage 2 should be. My right honourable friend went on to say that,

"we accept that the removal of the hereditaries should take place in the context of a Bill that reflects the views of this House"— that is, another place—

"as expressed in the votes today, the views subsequently expressed by those in the other place"— that is, of course, your Lordships' House—

"and any agreement that we can reach".—[Hansard, Commons, 7/3/07; col. 1597.]

I hope that that is helpful to explain precisely where we stand.

The noble Lord, Lord Northbrook, and the noble Lady, Lady Saltoun, talked about using a Private Member's Bill in this way and the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, also raised concerns. While the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, said that we do not have a constitutional tradition of this, the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, said that we do. There probably is a discussion to be had at another time about the use of the Private Member's Bill. I can say that only very recently have I found myself involved in Private Members' Bills; namely, two today and the forced marriages Bill. It has already become clear that they are incredibly useful vehicles to raise important issues. From time to time, as with the forced marriages Bill, it can lead to a great consensus across your Lordships' House to try to deal with a particular problem. I pay tribute to all noble Lords who introduce them.

I think that the point the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, was getting to, which certainly was the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Northbrook, and the noble Lady, Lady Saltoun, is that this issue is bigger and is an area where, because we know that we can only move forward in the kind of consensual way that noble Lords have expressed, it is very difficult to see how this Private Member's Bill, because it is so narrow—which is its advantage and its disadvantage—could take us forward. I interpreted that in that spirit.

I thoroughly enjoyed the discussions about the Gilbertian or the Lewis Carroll methods of electing, particularly those contributions from noble Lords who have been participating in those elections—my noble friends Lord Strabolgi and Lord Rea, and the noble Lord, Lord Addington. It is clear that across your Lordships' House there is a genuine desire to deal with this. I think that it is fair to say that noble Lords do not feel that this demonstrated the best of your Lordships' activities, which we need to do.

In saying that, I am not suggesting that I wish to say anything other than very positive words about the contribution of hereditary Peers in your Lordships' House. Noble Lords described the contributions before I arrived. I am from the class of 1999. I arrived as the vast majority of hereditary Peers left, so I did not benefit from witnessing their good or their bad contributions. Of course, I know that there have been very significant contributions from hereditary noble Lords subsequently, and I pay tribute to them. None the less, it is important that we continue with reform and move on.

On where we have to go next, my right honourable friend the Leader of the House of Commons has indicated that he is discussing the free votes in both Houses within the Government and will return to Parliament with a statement on the way forward. He intends to reconvene the cross-party group to assess the outcome of the debates and the free votes in both Houses, and to continue to work through the outstanding elements to the reform package. I do not doubt that in so doing he will talk to his right honourable friend the Chancellor and Prime Minister-designate—the word of the moment—not least because he is his campaign manager. I imagine that they have a close relationship on this, but I am not yet party to where that will take us. However, it is already clear that some discussions are to take place.

I have expressed my reservations about the scope of the Bill in that it is too limited in what it seeks to do, but in accordance with the traditions of the House, I will not oppose giving it a Second Reading.

My Lords, I am extremely grateful to all those who have taken part in the debate, particularly to the Minister for listening so carefully and for giving us assurances that the Government are thinking about these matters in the hope of moving on, perhaps through the medium of the Bill of my noble friend Lord Steel or in some other manner, to what may not be a full stage 2 but will be an ameliorating measure to get rid of some of the anomalies left over from the 1999 settlement.

Much of the discussion has concerned whether that settlement amounted to holy writ. One would certainly think it was, according to some of the contributions this afternoon, such as those made by the noble Lords, Lord Campbell of Alloway and Lord Norton of Louth. The contribution of the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, was particularly interesting. Not only does he support ardently the retention of 92 hereditary Peers, but he thinks it perfectly right and proper that Peers who were not Members of the House in 1999 and who may have no experience whatever should nevertheless be brought in through the process of by-election. I accept that some of them may be extremely valuable Members—the noble Lord is himself an outstanding example. However, the question is not about individuals—I carefully avoided mentioning any particular hereditary Peers, although the majority make a central contribution—it is about the principle of whether this is the right way to bring new Members into your Lordships' House. As the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, said, this is not a private club.

Among others, the noble Lord, Lord Rea, outlined his own experiences in the Labour Peers' by-election, while my noble friend Lord Addington revealed some of the secrets of the internal discussions which took place following the death of Lord Russell. All this amounts to what my noble friend Lord Lester described as an untenable situation. The question is therefore whether we should proceed with this Bill or, as the noble Lord, Lord Lea of Crondall, would like, place our bets on another measure coming down the track but which is not due to be discussed for several weeks. We could place an each-way bet on it. If we allow my Bill to go forward today and we have another go when my noble friend's Bill comes before your Lordships, we will be able to see clearly which one has the best chance of going through.

I reject entirely what has been said about what will happen in another place; it is in the realm of hypothesis and conjecture. If this Bill were to go through your Lordships' House unamended and the other place saw what had been done, it would think twice about attempting to graft on to it any other measures, however desirable they may be. I cite, for example, a statutory appointments commission, which I accept we would like to see in a comprehensive reform measure.

I shall not say any more at this stage, but I hope your Lordships will allow the Bill to have a Second Reading and go into Committee. We will then see whether the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, carries out his threat to ruin it by putting down masses of amendments or whether, on the basis of the opinions that have been expressed today, noble Lords will at least give it a chance of going through to another place.

On Question, Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

House adjourned at 1.56 pm.