My Lords, I observed in Committee that everything in life tends to have a retirement age, so I feel that it is vital to bring in Amendment 20, or something like it, as part of the modernisation of the House.

I will make only two points. The first is in respect of the cliff edge. In organisations that I have worked in, we have often done mergers and acquisitions and had cliff-edge problems with people. It is generally the case that an organisation that expels the seasoned and the good—expelling the human capital that it has bought—without replacements right away, is an organisation that weakens itself. In our House we have people aged beyond 80 —we now know that there is a large number, thanks to the spreadsheets of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra—and, were we to show them the door, that would be very weakening.

This has an elegance in it, because it does not expel anybody but sets down the premise for the future. It is the route that is peculiarly British, in that it was chosen, as we have heard, by the senior judiciary when they did the same thing many years ago, and indeed by the bishops when they brought in a retirement age. In both of those circumstances—I have spoken to people who were around at the time—the people, in any event, chose an earlier retirement age. So we would smooth out the great problem of the cliff edge.

My second and final point is about the wrinkle that the noble Earl, Lord Devon, has cleverly introduced about the 10-year minimum alternative. From the Cross-Bench perspective—and indeed, through us, from the House’s perspective—this is a very good wrinkle. The Cross Bench has to provide quite a lot of judges. We need to provide judges for Special Public Bill Committees, the Ecclesiastical Committee and other purposes, for which we are lucky to have members of the senior judiciary on the Cross Benches—I am looking at at least one here—who are very valuable to the House. The trouble is that the Supreme Court has a retirement age of 75 so, if they can get trained up only by the time they are 77, say, we will have them for a very short period of time. So it is extremely helpful for us if the senior judiciary gets at least 10 years at bat. That is helpful for the Cross Benches and the House.

When I was at the Bar school, I was told that the judge only ever hears the point the third time you make it. I have now made this point four times. The Leader was pointing out that we are all judges and that we are here for judgment. I hope that noble Lords will ponder, for the fourth time, that this might be a good point.