Lord Soames of Fletching:

Moved by Lord Soames of Fletching

5: Clause 1, page 1, line 1, at end insert—“(A1) In section 1 of the House of Lords Act 1999 (exclusion of hereditary peers), at end insert “except for peers who are members of the House of Lords on the day on which the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Act 2025 is passed and who are currently serving or have previously served as—(a) a Minister of the Crown,(b) a Deputy Speaker of the House of Lords,(c) a Convenor of the Crossbench Peers, or(d) a Chair of a House of Lords or joint select committee.””Member’s explanatory statementThis amendment would retain hereditary peers who have served the House of Lords as ministers, Deputy Speakers, Convenor of the Crossbench Peers, or Chairs of committees.

My Lords, in moving the amendment in my name, may I say first, without sounding too much like Lord Copper, what a great privilege it is to take part in this debate, and to have listened in particular to two magnificent speeches from my noble friends Lord True and Lord Forsyth? These matters are not just events and things to be trifled with; they matter. As my noble friend Lord Strathclyde said, English legislation in particular is bedevilled with the law of unintended consequences, so these things matter.

I do not want to detain the House unduly and I have no doubt that other noble Lords will wish to say a few words. I wanted to put down this amendment just to urge the House to recognise the extraordinary service that has been given. I absolutely accept what the Leader of the House said about not differentiating between life Peers and hereditary Peer, which both make a very important contribution to the House. But if you look at the Opposition Front Bench today, of the 33 Peers currently serving on it nine, or 27%, are hereditary Peers. Of the 24 Deputy Speakers currently serving, there are the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, the noble Lord, Lord Ashton of Hyde, the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, and the noble Lords, Lord Russell and Lord Geddes; many more have served as Deputy Speakers in the past. I suggest that that is a staunch reminder of what a significant contribution the hereditary Peers make to this House.

There has been a lot of talk about hereditaries and life Peers. I am still not sure how I got here—which list I was on—because I was fired by the Prime Minister who I thought had promoted me to this House. Whatever it was, I very fortunately made my way here and was lucky to do so, but I recognise the extraordinary role that the hereditaries play, considering their numbers.

I do not wish to sound controversial but while this is a constitutional Bill, obviously of the first importance, it is also a mean Bill. That meanness can be unleavened by my amendment, which will particularly cover the question that the noble Lords, Lord Forsyth and Lord True, asked about honour and justice. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, said at the beginning of this debate that the world is falling about our ears, and here we are debating reform of the House of Lords. But a sense of certainty and tradition is now more important than ever, and that is represented in this House in a very meaningful and formidable way by the hereditary Peers. I beg to move.

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Soames and agree with everything he said, particularly his praise for the two excellent speeches we had at the beginning.

We are removing the 88 hereditaries, but in the first 234 days of the Government’s existence the Prime Minister has created 45 life Peers, which creates a record, and in this Bill, we are removing some of the hardest-working Members in the House. Hereditaries have a better attendance record than we life Peers, they have a better turnout record at Divisions and they participate fully in all aspects of the work of the House. My noble friend talked in general terms about the contribution they make. I think it is time, if the House will permit me, just to briefly name names. Who would we be chucking out?

According to my noble friend’s amendment—I am grateful to the Library for producing this for me at rather short notice—we will be chucking out: my noble friends Lord Ashton of Hyde, Lord Bethell and Lord Camrose, who were also Ministers; the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, a Deputy Speaker; my noble friend Lord De Mauley, a committee chair and a former Minister; my noble friend Lord Courtown, a Deputy Chief Whip since 2016; the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, a Deputy Speaker, Convenor of the Cross Benches and a committee chair; my noble friend Lord Minto, a former Minister; my noble friend Lord Geddes, a Deputy Speaker; my noble friend Lord Harlech, currently a Whip; my noble friend Lord Henley, a committee chair, former Chief Whip and former Minister; and my noble friend Lord Howe, who is currently deputy shadow Leader, and who has been continuously on the Front Bench since 1991.

I do not know whether noble Peers remember the great Raymond Baxter, who was the best-ever commentator at the Royal British Legion Festival of Remembrance. He used to introduce the Chelsea pensioners during it; I can imagine that if my noble friend Lord Howe were there, he would have said, “And now we have the great Earl Howe, known to his mates as ‘Freddie’ and 34 years with the colours”.

Of course, there is also the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, a committee chair and former Minister; my noble friend Lord Peel, the Lord Chamberlain of the Royal Household for almost 20 years, and a superb Lord Chamberlain he was; my noble friend Lord Roborough, a shadow Minister; the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, a Deputy Speaker; and, of course, the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, a Deputy Speaker, who has graced us with his presence for the last hour.

Then there is my noble friend Lord Trefgarne, a committee chair and former Minister; the noble Lord, Lord Vaux, the former finance committee chair—he did a superb job there; my noble friend Lord Younger of Leckie, almost continuously in ministerial office since 2013; and my noble friend Lord Effingham, currently a Whip. Last but not least, there is my noble friend Lord Strathclyde, a Minister and Leader of the House, who was an absolutely superb junior Environment Minister under my command as Minister. I would like to say that I taught him all he knows, but that would not be the case.

Those are the colleagues—the hereditaries—who will be slung out by the Government and who are on the list in my noble friend Lord Soames’s amendment. But, very briefly, that is not the full story; his amendment does not go far enough. Many other hereditaries who do a superb job chairing other committees of this House and doing other work are not included in my noble friend’s amendment. If the House will permit me, I will run through them briefly; I will not use titles, such as “my noble friend” or “the noble Lord” but simply list the names which the Library has kindly circulated in a superb Excel spreadsheet.

Those Peers are: Lord Aberdare, Lord Altrincham, the Earl of Arran, Lord Borwick, Viscount Bridgeman, the Earl of Clancarty, Lord Colgrain, the Earl of Cork and Orrery, Lord Crathorne, Lord Cromwell—I know that the noble Lord was in Georgia, heading up the OSCE delegation that observed the elections; I was with the Council of Europe delegation, and he did a superb job there—and the Earl of Devon, who has also chaired committees. In the main, these are hereditaries who have served on committees or are currently serving on them.

To continue: the Earl of Dundee, who served for many years on the Council of Europe as well and did a superb job, Viscount Eccles, Lord Fairfax of Cameron, Lord Glenarthur, Lord Grantchester, Lord Hacking, Lord Hampton, Viscount Hanworth—we are halfway through.

A noble Lord:

Oh!

But it is worth knowing the names of all those hereditaries who have been working their socks off in this place for years and will be thrown out. There is the Earl of Leicester, the Earl of Lindsay, Lord Londesborough, Lord Lucas, the Earl of Lytton, Lord Mancroft, Lord Meston, the Duke of Montrose, Lord Mountevans, Lord Moynihan —whom I see in his place in front of me, and who has already been rightly praised—Lord Ravensdale, Lord Reay, Earl Russell, Lord Sandhurst, the Earl of Stair, Lord Thurlow, Viscount Thurso, who has already spoken —I think that he welcomed his own demise—and Lord Trefgarne, also a former Minister, Viscount Trenchard, Lord Trevethin and Oaksey, Lord Vaux of Harrowden, and finally, the Duke of Wellington.

I make no apology for reading out those names; I have not taken very long to do so—less than six minutes. If the Committee is going to go ahead with ejecting hereditaries, we simply need to know all of those colleagues, the work they have been doing in this House and the expertise we will lose. We will not only lose their expertise but be doing them a disservice by rejecting all the work they have done over the last few years by saying, “You’re just a hereditary, you can now be slung out.” I think that is an insult to the hard work they have been doing.

My Lords, I knew that I was unimportant when my noble friend Lord Blencathra omitted me from his list, but now it has been confirmed. I am very grateful to him for doing that. As we approach the dinner hour, it is obviously time for very long speeches, and I intend for my speech to be very long and to cover a number of hugely important issues. I congratulate my noble friend Lord Soames on his amendment, because it would actually affect me, as a former Minister of the Crown, by inserting proposed new subsection (A1)(a). I thank my noble friend and support his amendment.

I observe briefly to the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, that he is partial in his recollection of the career of the great Raymond Baxter. The other programme that he was famous for was called, “Tomorrow’s World”. I was an avid watcher of that programme as a young boy, and I never remember a prediction on “Tomorrow’s World” that, 50 years later, people would still be sitting in Parliament by virtue of the hereditary principle. On his list and his partial recollection of Raymond Baxter, I point out to the noble Lord that we live in tomorrow’s world, not yesterday’s.

My Lords, Walter Bagehot once observed that the British constitution derives its strength not from rigid design but from its adaptability. Its value lies in its ability to preserve what is valuable while reforming what is necessary. It is in that spirit, and not in defiance of reform but in defence of wisdom, that I support Amendment 5 in this group, in the name of my noble friend Lord Soames.

We are debating the fate of those who have committed themselves to the service of this House, as my noble friend Lord Blencathra has pointed out so brilliantly, and who have earned their place not by entitlement but by endeavour. The amendment before us seeks not to enshrine privilege but to preserve expertise. It does not defend hereditary peerage as principle; it defends the experience of those who, having risen above the circumstances of their birth, have dedicated their careers to the betterment of our legislative process.

Some would have us believe that the mere fact of a hereditary Peer holding office is an anachronism, but I ask this: what is more outdated, a Chamber that recognises merit in all its forms or one that would dismiss its most dedicated servants on the basis of an ideological formula? The numbers tell their own story. Despite comprising only 12% of this House in the last Parliament, hereditary Peers held 20% of government roles and 26% of Deputy Speakerships. This is not a symbol of idleness; it is a testament to diligence.

To those who believe that experience and institutional memory can simply be swept away and replaced at will, I say look at history. When institutions strip themselves of wisdom, when they discard those who have mastered their craft, they do not modernise but wither. There is a reason we do not empty the judiciary of its most seasoned jurists, nor the military of its most battle-hardened commanders. Why, then, should we purge this House of those who have proved their worth in government, scrutiny and debate? We do not strengthen Parliament by weakening its collective intelligence.

Those who propose the indiscriminate removal of hereditary Peers do so in the name of reform, but reform must be guided by the principle that what works should be preserved and what fails should be improved. The amendment before us today embodies that principle. It seeks not to halt the tide of change but to channel it wisely. It recognises that Ministers, Deputy Speakers, convenors and Chairs of Committees are not relics of the past but pillars of the present. To discard those who have upheld the dignity and function of your Lordships’ House is not reform; it is amputation.

Let us keep the best of what we have rather than discard it blindly. Let us not mistake destruction for progress. This amendment supports the very principles that have kept this House a vital force in British public life.

My Lords, at the risk of repeating what I said at Second Reading, I have always been totally confused as to why, for some reason, we who are appointed Peers are somehow superior to hereditary Peers—who, let us face it, as the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, has never failed to point out, may be elected by a very small electorate, if they happen to be Labour or Liberal Democrat Peers, but are at least elected. That is not something any of us who are appointed can say about ourselves at all. We are put here because the leader of our party or the Prime Minister of the day put our names forward. Does that make us superior to hereditary Peers, who have, let us face it, been elected by their own number and chosen to be the best people who they can choose at the time? That must give them an edge, I should have thought, over we who are appointed to this House, because at least they have gone through the process of election.

As has been said by my noble friend Lady Finn, these people have, on the whole, dedicated themselves more to our House than the collection of appointed Peers, such as me, have done. It is extraordinary that we have to pick on these people in this way.

I go back to the point I was making about the link now being broken, if this Bill passes and we get rid of all hereditary Peers, with the hereditary principle. This is the critical thing about the monarchy. The monarchy is hereditary, and having hereditary Peers in your Lordships’ House gives a link between the hereditary principle and the monarchy. This is something that we should certainly value.

It is extraordinary that we have picked out this group of people who, in my view, have more legitimacy in your Lordships’ House than appointed Peers, and decided to get rid of them. It is quite clear that they have given much more of their time and effort and skills to the effectiveness of your Lordships’ House than the great majority of us who have been appointed to it have managed to do.

My Lords, I support my noble friend’s amendment. The exceptions to whom his amendment would apply are people who contain and are characterised by many qualities, but I mention only four here: experience, knowledge, constancy and loyalty to this Chamber, and a non-political aspect. This may seem strange coming from the Conservative Bench, but for many of us who have not been part of a party-political machine, it is very important to see how a non-political Front Bench can work to reach out across the Chamber to all sides of this House. It is these qualities of experience, knowledge, constancy and a type of non-politicalness which allows this House to do the work it does, and which brings it respect right across the world, as has been mentioned today. I commend my noble friend for tabling this amendment, and I hope it will be listened to with sympathy.

My Lords, I think this amendment shows the problem that we were discussing earlier with the groupings, because we have actually been discussing, along with this amendment, Amendment 9 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord True, and they both deal with the question of the future of those hereditaries who play a major part in your Lordships’ House.

The noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, told us what he finds extraordinary. I think the vast majority of the country would find it extraordinary, if they realised it, that 10% of the legislature derives from fewer than 800 families in the country. Most people do not really realise that; if they did, they would be very surprised and most of them, frankly, would be appalled.

I looked at the hereditaries as a group one wet, sad afternoon. I divided them not into sheep and goats but into three: those who were active, those who were partially active, and those who were inactive. In response to the list of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, of those who are very active, I could, but will not, read out to the Committee a list of equal length, if not longer, of hereditaries who are virtually inactive. This is not a criticism of them more than it is of any other group. However, it is the case that some Members in the hereditary group are very active and well respected, but, like in all other groups, there are others who, frankly, are not.

Therefore, if we are looking to what should happen next and whether we should seek to retain some of the expertise that the hereditaries have, surely the way to do it is not as proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Soames, nor by the noble Lord, Lord True, but to encourage the parties to appoint those hereditaries who are very active and eminent in their groups to life peerages as those numbers come up. I hope very much that we will do so in respect of the Liberal Democrats—we have fewer hereditaries than some of the other groups—but that seems to me to be the logical way of doing it. It is what we did, to a certain extent, in our party after the vast bulk of hereditaries left in 1999. That is the precedent that we should seek to follow now, rather than having a broader category of exemptions, as the noble Lord suggests, or a complete continuation along the lines previously proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, which the noble Lord, Lord True, is about to suggest.

Can I correct the noble Lord on one factual error that he has made—quite inadvertently, I am sure. According to the Library list, leaving aside the one mistake in the case of my noble friend Lord Astor, there are fewer than 20 hereditaries who do not participate in the work of the House or who are, as he said, doing nothing. The vast majority have served the House, are working in the House on committees or have been Ministers.

If the noble Lord looks down the list, he will see that there may be some people who come twice a year and vote three times a year, but I did not include those in the list of people whom I consider to be active. I am happy to go down the list with him; I did not do it with the intention of proving anything but wanted to satisfy myself as to the true position.

My Lords, the difficulty with the noble Lord’s suggestion, in my case, is that I would be relying upon knowing the leader of my party. I do not properly know any of the party leaders, and they do not know me either, so I would have as much chance as a snowflake in a blast furnace of getting a life peerage.

My Lords, I am sorry to disappoint the noble Lord, Lord Newby, but I am responding on Amendment 5, moved by my noble friend Lord Soames of Fletching from these Benches. In speaking to this amendment, I take the opportunity to recognise the significant and invaluable contribution that hereditary Peers have made to your Lordships’ House. With respect to the noble Lord, Lord Newby, this amendment is a different point conceptually from Amendment 9, tabled by my noble friend Lord True, which is essentially, if I may put it without any disrespect, the Grocott approach.

As my noble friend Lord True said earlier this evening, if we are to exclude anyone from the House, it should be those who do not contribute rather than those who have contributed and do contribute. To introduce a personal perspective, I say that as someone who makes every effort to play a proper part in the business of your Lordships’ House while maintaining a full practice at the Bar. That sometimes means that I miss the odd vote—may I record in Hansard for posterity my entirely sycophantic and appallingly oleaginous thanks to my Whip for his constant understanding? More seriously, that cuts into my downtime. I do not really have any downtime because of my work at the Bar and my obligations here. If I can use this rather demotic phrase, it does hack me off when some people do not contribute at all.

I therefore share the concern of my noble friend Lord Soames that we are removing people who contribute while leaving people who play very little, if any, part in the House. The key to a sensible approach, I suggest, while recognising that the hereditary principle has come to an end—like the noble Lord, Lord Brennan, I also enjoyed “Tomorrow’s World” in its day, and what was innovative then is commonplace now—is to retain those who have demonstrated over many years their commitment to public service and duty to the House. She is no longer in her place, but I respect fully agree with what the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, said in an earlier group. She expressly invited the Government to just look, to use what I think was her phrase, at those whom the Government are removing. She said that the approach in this Bill, which removes the fully involved and the truly indolent alike, was “profoundly wrong”. She is right about that.

Turning to the text of this amendment, I know that there are many ways in which noble Lords can contribute to the business of the House, but those who currently serve or have previously served as Ministers and Whips, Deputy Speakers, chairs of committees or as Convenor of the Cross Benches have made a determined and determinable contribution. Their institutional knowledge and dedication to public service has made them indispensable, I suggest, to the functioning of the House and thus to the functioning of Parliament. The positions which they have undertaken in the House have been earned through merit and service. To remove these noble Lords would be to discard a wealth of experience that simply cannot be replaced. I therefore agree with the points made by my noble friend Lady Finn in that regard.

We have had some stats thrown at us; let me try to identify what the position actually is. During the 2019-24 Parliament, 168 Members had official roles. This includes government and Opposition ministerial posts and parliamentary positions such as the Lord Speaker and Deputy Speakers. Life Peers filled 143 of these roles, 23 were filled by hereditary Peers and two by Bishops. About 18% of life Peers served in an official role compared with 26% of hereditary Peers. Despite making up only 12% of the total membership of the House, in the last Session hereditary Peers made up 20% of government posts and 26% of Deputy Speakers. My noble friend Lord Hamilton of Epsom rightly made the point that hereditary Peers as a group have contributed very significantly.

I will not read out my Excel spreadsheet, but do we really want, I ask rhetorically, to lose people such as my noble friends Lord Courtown and Lord Howe—who, as your Lordships have heard, has provided simply incredible service to the House? My noble friend Lord Strathclyde serves as chair of our Constitution Committee is a former Leader of the House and a former Chief Whip. He has served as a Minister over four departments. The noble Lord, Lord Ashton of Hyde, is a serving Deputy Speaker and Deputy Chair of Committees. His CV in the House reads for several pages.

I am not sufficiently brave to stand for much longer between your Lordships and your Lordships’ dinners, so I will not refer to every hereditary Peer, but I trust that noble Lords recognise the expertise, experience and dedication that those individuals have brought to our parliamentary system.

I make one final point. Some years ago, the House removed a number of Peers. The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, gave us the correct figure, which I think was 667. Yes, I was listening. I always do to the noble Lord, indeed to all noble Lords but especially the noble Lord, Lord Grocott on this topic. Does removing the final 88, or however many are left now, make any difference? Of course, the difference goes to the heart of this amendment. Those who remained some years ago were chosen wholly, or in the vast majority of cases, because they were contributing. That is why they remained. That is what this amendment seeks to do.

They were actually elected; they were not chosen.

Sorry, I was using “chosen” as a short form for “elected”. They were elected. My noble friend was here, and I was not, but when the elections took place, the electorate was keen to ensure that experience was not lost. That is exactly the point of this amendment—to retain those who have contributed, are contributing and will undoubtedly contribute more in the future.

My Lords, I am grateful for this debate and to the noble Lord, Lord Soames of Fletching, for raising these issues. One thing that concerns me is that, although I do not think that anyone in this Chamber would deny the valuable work of individuals, particularly of the hereditary Peers, the problem with this debate is that it is about selecting people for congratulations on their hard work. That diminishes the work of some of the others. The noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, talked about the period from 2019 to 2024, when 143 of the officeholders that the noble Lord, Lord Soames, talked about were life Peers and 23 were hereditaries, so a huge amount of the work that kept this House going was undertaken by life Peers.

It is important to understand that those people who came into this House from other occupations have huge amounts of life experience. We have had a nurse come in today, and we have had doctors, solicitors, trade unionists—a whole range of people have come in as life Peers. I am not denying the experience of the hereditary Peers in the offices that they have held—in fact, I have sat on committees with many of them—but those offices have not always been held by hereditaries. With the list that the noble Lord points to, if someone served on the Front Bench of the Labour Opposition for 12 years their experience would not be considered appropriate for being maintained if they were hereditary, so I think there is something partisan about how these have been selected.

The simple fact is, though, having gone from a debate about the principle of hereditaries to one about specific contributions made by noble Lords, that no one can deny that the Government have a clear mandate to deliver this Bill through their manifesto commitment to remove the right of hereditary Peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords. That means all hereditary Peers. That is what the manifesto commitment said. To concede this amendment would breach that manifesto commitment and retain dozens of Peers, which would severely undermine the intention of the Bill. The work of the House of Lords will not be diminished—

The manifesto commitment, as the noble Lord has just quoted, is to “remove the right” of hereditary Peers to sit and vote in this House. That right was removed in 1999. We are discussing removing not the right but hereditary Peers from this House. The noble Lord quite rightly said that there is not a lot of difference in working between one hereditary Peer and another, or one hereditary Peer and a life Peer, but there is one crucial difference: life Peers cannot just be thrown out. We are just about to be thrown out.

Of course, the principle was established in 1999, and we are now dealing with that remaining temporary arrangement that has gone on for 25 years or longer. That is the reality. No one can deny that that remaining element—that temporary arrangement—is specifically addressed in the Labour manifesto for the last general election. It specifically addressed it in the way that this Bill seeks to implement it, so there can be no doubt about that.

I am sorry to intervene on the noble Lord, but he is making much store about the manifesto, which also says that Peers who are over the age of 80 by the end of this Parliament should also be slung out. Does the noble Lord think that is really going to happen?

As my noble friend the Leader of the House has reminded me, she will be consulting on that and looking at ways for it to be implemented—she is already doing so, as she reminds me. The fact of the matter is that we have a clear commitment. The Government have a right to determine when and how they implement their commitments. The noble Lord knows that. I have heard speeches from him telling me that we should not push amendments because the democratic House has laid something down in the manifesto. He has made those points to me over the past 12 years, so this does not really wash with me.

The simple fact is that we established in 1999 that the hereditary principle would no longer apply. We put in temporary arrangements and we have now addressed that in our manifesto. Solutions were put forward in 1999. I say to the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, that his contribution is well known. Leaders know it. I certainly assume that the leader of his party knows the contribution that he has made, both outside and inside Parliament. Why would he not be considered worthy of a life peerage? I do not see why not. It is really important that we can establish a principle—

I am grateful for the kind things the noble Lord said to me, but the fact of the matter is that I do not know any of the leaders of my party. I do not know David Cameron—my noble friend Lord Cameron—or any of his successors. I simply will not be able to get a life peerage. They do not know me. I am not known. None of the special advisers know me. I am nowhere.

I do not accept that for one moment. The noble Earl is well known. His contributions are well known and valued—he must not undersell himself. The important thing is that there was an opportunity in 1999, when people left this House because they were hereditary Peers, for some to be made life Peers. That certainly is the case in relation to this last act, contained in our manifesto, to ensure that the temporary arrangements agreed 25 years ago no longer continue. I do not think that people would understand this amendment breaching that commitment in the outside world, but it is wrong to—

The noble Lord keeps mentioning the manifesto. Would he agree that, if I had a pound for every promise that had been in a manifesto from the Labour Party and the Conservative Party that had not been kept, I would be a billionaire?

The noble Lord must be happy that at least one manifesto commitment is being kept, and it is this one. We will deliver on it.

I conclude by saying that it is wrong to single out Peers for their contribution. All Peers have made a tremendous contribution to the work of this House, and no one is undermining that. However, this is a commitment that we have made to the electorate, and it is one that we will keep and deliver on.

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Wolfson and the noble Lord, Lord Collins, for their contributions. I particularly express my thanks for another wonderful speech from my noble friend Lady Finn, who, to my mind, absolutely nailed it. I thank my noble friend Lord Blencathra in particular for his encyclopaedic knowledge of the committees and the very important points that he made. I am delighted to be party to the support for my noble friend Lord Astor’s job application and will do what I can to help. I say to my noble friend Lord Attlee to make himself known to my noble friend Lord Hamilton, who acts as a marriage agency in these matters, and would be delighted to introduce him to all the former leaders of my party—it may take some time.

This is an important matter and there is no point in pretending that, manifesto or no manifesto, we are not cutting out a great reservoir of expertise, knowledge, steadiness and experience, and the guardians of the traditions and principles of this House. There is no question about the argument, which is dead and buried—it is gone; it is going to happen—but there is a way to make it happen in a less aggressive and disagreeable manner. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 5 withdrawn.

House resumed. Committee to begin again not before 8.20 pm.