Palace of Westminster: Restoration and Renewal

Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope Excerpts

Tuesday 6th February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope (LD)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie—I spend my parliamentary life doing that—and he has again demonstrated his characteristically expert, forensic line of questioning. He asked some important questions. I respect the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, and I listened carefully to his speech. I will read it again tomorrow. I think he has a role in the future evolution of this project. As the noble Lord, Lord Carter, said, this is a dynamic situation. His experience is obviously invaluable. But I think—I hope—he has sufficient experience of parliamentary occasions to know that the argument is going against him at the moment. I hope he will consider that carefully—I know he will—when he comes to decide whether to divide the House.

It has been a very good debate. There is a huge amount of experience in this Chamber. Like the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, I was on the House of Commons Commission at the time we were commissioning Portcullis House. I was press spokesman for the commission at the time, which was my misfortune, because I discovered —and this was a point made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, when he said that the detail of the contract would be important—that I had missed the fact that the architects had allocated 2% of the contract for what they called “soft furnishings”. The contract was a huge amount of money and I had to appear on the “Today” programme to defend the fact that we had imported 18 special trees from California to put in the atrium at a cost of £250,000 when the same trees could be bought in Homebase for £17.50. It was a lesson hard learned and I hope we do not get into that situation in future.

I also had the pleasure of serving on the Services Committee under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Laming, who made some really important points. You do not have to be on the Services Committee for long to learn about gas leaks and the risks. The extended seven-year period extends the risks, as a number of colleagues have said, and it is very important that we make what speed we can. I also want to underscore what the noble Lord, Lord Maude of Horsham, said—and this also comes from my experience with Portcullis House. You cannot deal with anything like this scale of project on a steady-state basis. You need to have your sponsoring boards and your delivery authorities and we must take that seriously.

Like others, I think that the Joint Committee’s report is excellent. It is a really thorough piece of work which is hard to contradict in any way. I would be interested in talking offline to the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, about this. The Joint Committee worked so well and yet the two Houses have completely separate services. Apart from the bicameral IT contract, everything is run separately. Well, the wiring downstairs does not run separately, so you think to yourself, “Why are we not taking this opportunity to have Joint Committees in a grown-up fashion which would secure efficiencies of scale in how we manage this place?”. That is something that we should be contemplating as well as the bricks and mortar as we move forward with this project.

I am in favour of a full decant. It is the cheapest and quickest option and it minimises the risks, so therefore it is a bit of a no-brainer. The one point I really want to make, if your Lordships are going to take away anything from my remarks, is that we should be much more optimistic about selling this project. Again, the noble Lord, Lord Maude, made some important points about technology. He is right that, if we are going to do this, we must take the opportunity to make it future-proof. It is difficult to future-proof technology because it moves so fast. But this could be a beacon programme for people around the world. There is a government policy at the moment called Digital Built Britain. We have world experts in places such as Cambridge who can look at intelligent buildings. We have a manufacturing technology centre which is world-beating. This building could be an intelligent, sustainable, accessible exemplar project—and we should be selling it as that.

The sense I get from the debate is that we are being very defensive about the costs and the time. That is true. I am not stupid. I do not have another election to face, so I can be a little bit more long-term in my thinking, but we really could be making more of what we can achieve. A number of colleagues have spoken about the ability to change the terms of democracy and the way it is operated. We will come back into this building in 2030—just think about what we could be doing then. I do not have time to go into it in detail, but we should think about the fact that we have been using iPhones—smartphones—for only 10 years. The change has been delivered by consumer need generating inexorable change in the way that we communicate. I now talk to my wife through text messages. It causes fewer arguments. So everything that we do gets changed, and we need to factor that in.

I learned the other day that Rolls-Royce does not really sell aero engines any more. What it sells is the data that tells the airlines what is happening to the aero engines at 37,000 feet over the north Atlantic. That is the power and the value of data. We have to capture that, and we can. We are clever enough to do it. We have people in here—the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, who was here a moment ago, is a world leader in this kind of dynamic situation.

I have one further thing to say to the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, in my last minute. I am a fan of technology but we must always remember that, while we may be digital by default, there are other systems that need to be put in place which allow people to work at their own level in their own way. The method of individual Members’ working is discrete from an enabled building or asset, so we must always protect the rights of individual Members to do their job in the way they think is best—but otherwise it is an absolute no-brainer. We must get on to the front foot, we must get a communications package, we must tell people what we are trying to do and we must sell it as an invaluable opportunity to extend democracy. If we do that, we can win the argument hands down.

Iraq

Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope Excerpts

Friday 26th September 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope (LD)]

My Lords, I start by declaring an interest. I have been part of a project for the past five years that is financed by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Conflict Pool to assist with capacity building in the high council of representatives in the Iraqi Parliament in Baghdad. On the basis of that experience I will spend a few moments underscoring a point that was made by, I think, the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton, about the significance of the challenges faced by the new Administration in Iraq.

Before I turn to that, I should say that I entirely support the recall. It is correct that Governments should test parliamentary opinion by recalling both Houses. Even if they lose occasionally, it is still the right thing to do. I also concur that it is right to support and join the coalition, military and otherwise, that has been created by President Obama and the Prime Minister. The work of that coalition should be continued not merely through the difficulties of a military campaign but on a wider basis as well.

I first remind the House, and I am sure that there are colleagues with more foreign affairs experience than I have, of the significance of the British influence in the region, thanks to our history and the quality of our diplomats. In particular, I cannot help but recognise and acknowledge the excellent work of Ambassador Simon Collis in representing Her Majesty’s Government in very difficult circumstances. The Arabist perspectives that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has been able to promote are now paying dividends in using our influence to good effect. I hope that we will do that.

However, the international coalition needs to be quite clear—the noble Lord, Lord Reid of Cardowan, made this point earlier—that when you get down to it, for the communities that are subject to this insurgency it is as much about education, water and public utilities as it is about bombing with smart weapons from 10,000 feet. I absolutely subscribe to that. The new Prime Minister of Iraq is an excellent man—British trained, of course—who understands very well what his country is able to offer, and I am very pleased that our Prime Minister responded positively to his request for help.

The Iraqis face immense difficulties, domestically and politically. They have an embedded system of corruption, which they are trying to deal with. They are facing failures of public utility in water quality, desertification and electricity supply. In addition, they have an overall lack of capacity to deliver because those of the professional classes who have families and have been able to leave have been under pressure since 2003 and have left. They are now in other countries. So even if the policy is right and the money is there, the capacity to implement change in a positive way to benefit the population is not always open to them. We can help with that.

I understand perfectly well why DfID does not consider Iraq a country in need of support, because of the oil resource, but in these new circumstances, particularly when we are trying to support communities that are subject to this insurgency, DfID should be able to provide the expertise necessary to undermine the insurgency from within. I conclude by reminding the House of an apposite Arab proverb:

“My son and I against my cousin, my cousin and I against the stranger”.

We can help to undermine that insurgency through our unique relationship with the country and by deploying professional as well as military support. I hope that we will do so in tandem with the international coalition that has been put together as soon as we possibly can.

House of Lords: Working Practices

Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope Excerpts

Thursday 1st November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hughes of Woodside. I enjoyed his speech. I agree with him on two things. Certainly, the role and functions that we invite the Lord Speaker to oversee and moderate need urgent reconsideration. I do not have time to develop that point but I believe that the Lord Speaker, whoever it may be—it is an elected position for which we can all vote—should have the overriding responsibility to protect the institutional reputation of this House because in my view no one else holds that position at the moment. No one else exclusively looks after the interests of the wider concept of the House of Lords and its Members. The Chairman of Committees and the Leader of the House have other overriding priorities. That is something we need to address.

I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, has just left as I was about to say something nice about him. I do not believe what I read about him in the papers. He is correct that we should take this opportunity to make a suggestion to the Leader of the House. It may seem quite soon to do so given the recent work carried out by the Leader’s Group. I commend those Members who performed that extremely valuable service for the House. People forget that we now have a planning date. It might not hold because politics is never certain but we have until May 2015. After that, things will change as we enter a new Parliament. We should use that time sensibly to plan what we want to happen in the new Parliament when it starts in 2015. The vexed question of elections is off the agenda for that period.

I pick up a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, who referred to the importance of piloting change. I am an enthusiast for change and I think that there is a majority for change. However, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ripon and Leeds rightly said, we want to make sure that it is incremental. I think that we should pilot it. I absolutely agree with him that to give comfort to those who are nervous—one or two colleagues have made perfectly valid and powerful speeches about hastening slowly—we should adopt as a matter of course piloting of any change that we introduce into this place. That would give comfort to some and would mean that we could try things and if they did not work we could revert to our previous practices. This is a very important debate and a very important time. We must not waste the next two years.

I have a suggestion for the usual channels, which have more influence in this area than they often imagine. As a Back-Bencher, I think that we need to try to open up the usual channels and make them a little bit more accessible, as someone said earlier. After my participation in the most recent major piece of legislation in which I have been involved, the Welfare Reform Bill, it occurred to me that three or four of the active participants in that process could have sat down with both sets of Whips and held a debriefing on our experience of the legislation. The seminars promoted by the Minister were very valuable. The Committee stage of the Bill was held upstairs, which I thought was extremely good although it had been a controversial question. A lot of the Commons clauses had not been debated when they arrived in this House and the use of financial privilege as a way of rejecting House of Lords amendments was unconscionable. Earlier, we heard that we needed to look at secondary legislation again because we cannot amend it. It needs to be more flexible. Therefore, perhaps we should have a sweeping-up process so that we can share experience on that.

As chairman of the Information Committee I believe that we need to make more use of information and communications technology in order to help our processes and improve the service offered to Members of this House. There are advantages and cost savings to be made in that direction. I hope that the Leader will bear that in mind as well.

Procedure of the House: Select Committee Report

Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Elton]

My Lords, if I may join in at this stage, I want to make the simple observation, which needs to be kept in mind, that if one of those invaluable people who come to the House four times a year contributes words of absolute wisdom and infinite knowledge that others do not have and is given £30,000 not to do so in the future, we would be losing in both directions.

[Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Elton, has just explained why this is actually quite a complicated set of circumstances. However, my question is: whose task would it be were a business case drawn up? Would it be that of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt? His committee, whose report we are debating this afternoon, has discharged its responsibilities well—I have no objections; it is an excellent set of suggestions and we should approve it—but it does not answer the question about a House that might, after 2015, consist of 1,000-plus Members. We cannot ignore that, because it has reputational issues for the House.

It is much easier to do nothing. Some of the suggestions might be unpopular; they might be very difficult to sell to the great British public in a period of austerity. My noble friend Lord Steel of Aikwood is absolutely right; if serious and sensitive consideration can be given to it, I am certain that a profoundly robust business case can be made for offering a voluntary redundancy package—with severance pay, emeritus status, visiting rights and all the rest of it—in a way that would be attractive to Members. I am very pleased to hear from the noble Baroness, Lady D'Souza, that there might be as many as 30 such colleagues on the Cross Benches; I am sure that that proportion will be reflected across the whole House.

That would at least demonstrate that we understand the consequences of a House that is overmanned—and it is overmanned, not overpeopled. If we do nothing, we will find that people will start looking at the costs. We have had some very interesting Answers. I do not know whether colleagues have followed the Written Answers that the noble Lord, Lord Bassam of Brighton, obtained on 22 November 2010 about costs incurred on average by a new Member. I take the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady D'Souza, that the report is not antipathetic to new Members at all, but the cost on average of a new Member is £30,000. That has a certain symmetry with the sum that my noble friend Lord Steel of Aikwood mentioned as a potential severance package.

We were also told in a Written Answer to the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, on the same date that the overall cost of the House of Lords per Member who is not disqualified or on leave of absence is £156,000. All sorts of assumptions, averages and difficulties lie behind those figures, and they are not absolutely robust as they are presented. However, my point is: who is looking into this? Who is doing the arithmetic, the calculus and the sensitive consideration of all the different options that would need to be taken into account before we have a saleable package for the public?

Finally, I have one more figure. The noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, did the House a service in our consideration of reform of the House when he did some arithmetic himself, which suggested that a Lords election would cost £433 million over the course of the next Parliament. Without getting into the politics of reform or party politics, I am concerned about the reputation of the House. I know, as chairman of the Information Committee, that the pressure on the services is becoming inexorably higher. Standards will be diluted unless we grasp that nettle.

It is not easy, it will be a hard sell, but I do not see anyone anywhere in the precincts who is doing any of the work that is essential before we can start thinking about it in a constructive way. My question to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, the Leader of the House or the Chairman of Committees is: who is being tasked with that work, because it is urgent and we need to start it right now?

House of Lords: Working Practices

Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe. He has made an important speech, and I agree with most of what he said. I am really encouraged by the tone of the debate so far. The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, referred to this earlier. I think it is right. For the first time, certainly since I arrived here in 2005, we are beginning to get a sense that there is a desire for change. I welcome that, and I think it is largely down to the way that this report has been put together, the vision that the Leader had for the need for this report, and the setting of a serious man, the noble Lord, Lord Goodlad, to do the job, which has been done in a way that has done great credit to the committee and a service to the House.

As a direct result, I want to say that I think and hope that this is a process, not an event. I was encouraged when the Leader opened the debate by saying that his ears, if not his door, or maybe even both, are still open. Therefore, if people have ideas and if new issues emerge, we have some method of considering them and responding sensitively and reasonably quickly to change. That way, we will become a much more relevant, up-to-date, modern and understandable institution that is, as the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, said, more user-friendly to the public.

Some colleagues, such as the noble Baronesses, Lady Prashar and Lady Howe, and, to a lesser extent, the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, have raised concerns. I agree with the noble Lord about the issue with the 2 pm start for those trying to get to important lunches by pressure groups and others. The key safeguard is that for the first time we have the concept of trialling some of these suggestions. I think that should be a comfort. I am for all of this. I want it all, and I want it now. I am for radical change, and I want it immediately, but I am not stupid, and you have to carry colleagues with you. Therefore, the trialling process—and, if a trial is to be worth anything, an evaluation process—must be built into what we are discussing this evening, so that if some colleagues are a bit more nervous about moving too quickly and losing some of the important culture and traditions, which I understand perfectly well, I will stand full square with them at the evaluation if the processes have not worked properly. We then need to be sensible about what we do in the long term. These recommendations are all worth trialling, and I hope that the committee will go ahead, but we need to be able to give comfort to colleagues who think that there are dangers ahead by saying that the trial is for real, it is meaningful and we will get an evaluation at the end of it.

The Leader of the House specifically asked for suggestions and opinions about paragraph 38 on the role of the Lord Speaker. I support everything that has been said, although one or two colleagues took a slightly different view. I think that if we do not get the shift in the role, I am much more comfortable with a Lord Speaker whom I have a chance of electing, and that quite soon. I am looking forward to that. If I get a chance to elect somebody, I have more confidence in them than I have as a Back-Bencher with the government Front Bench dictating things, although, as has been properly said, it has done it perfectly properly in the past.

There are a couple of other points that have not been drawn out. I have said that I am in favour of everything so—except on the Lord Speaker’s role—I do not have to go into any more detail. We should consider information technology in the process of changing the ways we work, partly because it is the way that the modern world works and partly because it can provide us with some of the saving that the Leader of the House rightly alluded to. We cannot go around creating new structures that have manpower, capital and revenue expenses involved without being careful about how we can make savings. On the appropriate use of technology, again there have to be safeguards because some colleagues will not be comfortable with technology, but information technology can be used in a sensitive way to make progress in future.

We also need to pay close attention to style and language. It is a barrier to understanding. Public involvement, which has been alluded to earlier, is so important, but it can be made more difficult by the style, format, tone and language that we use to one another, so I hope that that will be looked at.

For me, it is very important that the Leader appears at the Dispatch Box monthly. That is a very good suggestion. I think the usual channels need to be a bit more transparent about the way that they discharge their business. I know that they do the best they can to try to get information spread as these changes are made, but as a Back-Bencher, I can foresee increasing pressure—this is a point that the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy made—in trying to get opportunities to participate in future. Finding more time and ways and the usual channels respecting the honourable and traditional role of Back-Benchers’ opportunities in this place are extremely important, but more than anything else, I exhort the Leader, nobly and ably assisted by the noble Lord, Lord Goodlad, to keep up the momentum and sustain the energy that is necessary to get these recommendations in front of the appropriate committee and get them crystallised, brought back, voted through and started. The sooner, the better, as far as I am concerned.

Interim Report: Leader's Group on Members Leaving the House

Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope Excerpts

Tuesday 16th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Viscount, Lord Astor, because I absolutely agree with him that if we do not do something ourselves, we will have change visited upon us. There has been an air of unreality in the debate so far.

I should like to start by looking at this issue the other way round. I am absolutely certain, although my experience is not as great as some, that this House has a valid and crucial role in the constitutional and political life of our country. I am also persuaded that, come 5 May 2015, it will be significantly changed. Other noble Lords may take a different view. Longer-serving noble Lords have said to me, “We’ve heard all that before. We can sit tight and do nothing and wait and see what happens”. I think that we should be much more practical and pragmatic, and think carefully about what the nation would expect from this institution come May 2015. I will answer that question by saying that by then the size will need to be reduced. There is a case for an institutional size for the House of Lords of between 400 and 450 Members. It would have a purpose and would do its job more efficiently. The question is how to get from where we are now to 5 May 2015 and to a position where we can withstand what might be coming in our direction from the House of Commons or wherever.

I will make one other broad point. I spent a lot of time working happily on the House of Commons Commission in my previous existence. It seemed that there was more of an institutional determination of what was in the House of Commons' interests among the professional staff and the Members who were appointed to the Commons Commission to work with the Speaker. I may be wrong—my experience is not as great as that of some other noble Lords—but I get a strong sense that no one in the House of Lords thinks about the House as an institution. The business managers do this in part through the usual channels. Obviously, the Leader of the House does it, but he has other considerations to bear in mind. We need to think about giving someone—perhaps the Woolsack or some other mechanism—a unique responsibility and duty to go to bed at night and get up in the morning thinking about what is in the House of Lords' collective institutional interests. That is absent, and that makes debates such as this much more difficult.

This committee has done excellent work. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, is a very serious politician for whom I have enormous respect. However, he has been given a very difficult job. Someone has to come up with recommendations that we can vote on and agree, otherwise nothing will happen. If nothing happens, by 2015 something very unpleasant may be visited on us. I invite noble Lords to contemplate grafting grandfathering on to electing a third of the Chamber, and to contemplate what that would look like. We would start with 730, although by that time it will be 800, probably more—and then we would elect a third on top of that. One could go out on to the highways and byways of the United Kingdom and try to explain how that makes sense. I would not like to try that, because I do not think that it makes any sense whatever. The good thing about the coalition agreement and the changes that are being made is that we know that we have a five-year period in which to start thinking carefully about this. It does not make the decisions any easier, but we know the timeframe. We must make use of that time.

I always enjoy the virtuoso performances of the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, but he recommends doing nothing—and doing nothing is dangerous. I invite noble Lords who do not believe me to talk to some of the staff. Ten days ago, I witnessed some of the custodians downstairs trying to deal with people coming in through a Peers’ entrance. Many noble Lords do not, as they should, give notice of the fact that they have guests. Sometimes the guests come in big numbers. When new Members come in, it is a natural thing to want to bring in guests and show them round. That is important and I make no complaint about it. However, the system that we have down there was designed for a much smaller House, where people were much closer to one another and Members were much better known to the staff who protect us. I make clear that on this occasion there were no complaints, but the staff were overwhelmed. I do not know whether anyone has ever asked them whether in their heart of hearts they believe that they can give us the level of protection to which they have always aspired, but I think that a House of this size makes that impossible. Therefore, if this is to be done properly, serious new security arrangements, for example, will have to be organised. I could give lots of other examples of what would really need to be done if you were going to be thirled to a House as big as this, and it is not just a question of accommodation—Oral Questions would be the least of your problems. I think that we should also take the staff into consideration.

I have the great privilege of being the chairman of the Information Committee. I am still quite new at it but I enjoy the work and, with colleagues, I am responsible for looking after the Library. For the first time I am looking at graphs relating to usage that are all exponential. I can tell noble Lords about costs per Member and I can tell them how many Members are active. The answer is 420. They make proper requests for information at the Library and they receive a service. However, that service will be diluted. If we leave things as they are until 2015, noble Lords can forget the levels of service that they have enjoyed in the past unless we move to digital support mechanisms, although I know that some colleagues are not as comfortable about that as others.

Therefore, if we do nothing, we will walk blindfold into a situation in which we will be behind the curve when this tsunami of change occurs. It is only my view that such change will happen and other noble Lords may have a different view about it, but even those who do not think that it will happen will have to admit that there is a risk that serious change will come in our direction and, if we do not get ahead of the curve, we will deserve all we get.

I want to say two other things. First, I believe that using age as a basis for any change would be discriminatory. I would want to see a House that reflected the population of the country, and the fact is that people are living longer. We must not forget that, and I would want people here, as already happens, making sure that that point of view is available when important policy-making occurs. If the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and his committee decided to investigate the matter and to give people commissions to look into the issue, we could with a little ingenuity—I promise your Lordships that there are mechanisms, skills and procedures available—arrive at an index of activity that demonstrated whether people were contributing substantially to the work of the House. For my money, I think that we should certainly consider moving in that direction, and I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, will look at that seriously. I would be very happy, working with the staff in the Library and others, to assist in that process if, as I hope, his committee deemed it a sensible thing to do.

My second point is that you have to be realistic about asking people to relinquish their roles here. Why would anyone in their right mind want to leave this place? We are looked after, it is comfortable, it is collegiate and it is warm in the winter. What is not to like about the House of Lords? It is a wonderful place to be, and anyone who wants to leave it must be off their trolley. Therefore, I think that one has to be practical, and I make an offer to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt.

I think that it is possible—the skills are available to us within the House—to work out the marginal cost of Members’ use of the Library and so on. There are businesses all over the country that do that kind of thing. They carry out cost-benefit analyses of how, if you reduce your staff load over the distance, you save money. It is an invest-to-save policy. There are distinguished civil servants among our number who have been doing that for years. Therefore, there is a value-for-money case to be made—the figure arrived at might not be £50,000 but it might be significant—for saying that between now and 2015, for argument’s sake, some of the institution’s resources would be freed up, and that we should encourage some of our colleagues to consider what would be a rather grand redundancy package. I certainly think that that work has to be done. I do not know whether the figure would come out right; I do not know that many would take the money even if they were offered it. We have heard that some colleagues would not go for £1 million—I would seriously think about £1 million. Figures can be established and worked on, and I would be perfectly prepared to go into the high streets of the United Kingdom and say, “In the interests of the institution”—

[Lady Saltoun of Abernethy]

Has the noble Lord considered what the press would say if any Peer were given a penny to leave this place?

[Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope]

Yes, I have thought about that. It is an important question, but there are commercial and business standards for reducing workloads that are long-term cost-effective to an institution. I would be brutal and say that the needs of the institution are such that we have to change the system of introducing new Members—whether by elections or otherwise is a debate for another day. The figure could be worked out and justified by saying how we arrived at the per head offer. It would not be age discriminatory as that would be indefensible.

My plea to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, is that we must do something about this, although I know that it is not for his committee to decide. He must come to a conclusion and make a recommendation. I hope that he will think seriously about the practical approach that I have suggested. I know that I may be in a minority, but if he does not do that, the danger is that we will stagger on to 2015, which is not in the long-term interests of this institution. I am convinced about that.

[Lord Grenfell]

We are all agreed that we need to do something about the size of the House, but I am having difficulty in following the noble Lord’s logic. His party is a driving force behind the movement for the abolition of the House of Lords as early as possible, so why is he saying that we must do something now to reduce its size when his party’s policy is to abolish it? I am not sure about the logic of his plea to do something immediately. That also applies to what the noble Viscount, Lord Astor, said. Why the hurry to do something immediately if your intention is to abolish the House, which would take care of the problem?

[Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope]

The Liberal Democrat policy might be slightly out of date, but I thought that we were in favour of a substantially elected House, which is a long way short of abolition. Maybe the noble Lord knows more about it than I do. I am making a practical suggestion; I am not making any value judgments. I am giving a practical reaction to what I think will come from the House of Commons in the next five years.