International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill

Lord Steel of Aikwood Excerpts

Friday 23rd January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Steel of Aikwood (LD)]

My Lords, I am proud of the fact that both the authors of the Bill, in the other place and here, are my constituency successors—Michael Moore in the House of Commons and my noble friend Lord Purvis in the Scottish Parliament. Perhaps there is something about the air in the Scottish Borders that conveys a sense of proportion. I am proud because during all the time when I was the MP there, particularly during the three elections that I was party leader, I emphasised the target of 0.7% and insisted that it went into the party manifesto. However, I simply articulated it, whereas my colleagues have had the satisfaction of not only seeing it happen but now entrenching it in legislation, and I fully support that.

A few weeks ago, I was asked to speak at a dinner in south-east London to raise money for the Ebola crisis. It was a very successful event that raised £30,000. It was in the hall of a mosque. The proceedings began with an imam reading some verses from the Koran, which of course I did not understand. However, when someone got up and gave a translation of it, I was very struck by the similarity between that passage from the Koran and the passage with which we are all familiar from St Matthew’s Gospel, which I was brought up on as a son of the manse, particularly during my father’s time in Kenya. We remember how people asked:

“Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?”,

and received the answer:

“Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me”.

The point that I want to make at the start of the Bill is that there is a moral imperative that we are fulfilling today. The verses from the Koran that were read on that occasion were chapter 76, verses 9 and 10:

“And they feed, for love of Him, the poor, the orphan, and the prisoner, Saying, ‘We feed you for Allah’s pleasure only’”.

It is astonishing that, in a world where there is so much conflict between Christian and Muslim in different areas, these passages are the same in the holy books of both religions.

I stress again that there is a moral imperative, but there is also the imperative of enlightened self-interest. It cannot be right that so many people are fleeing from poverty and conflict in different parts of the world to Europe, and we must try to put that right. There is therefore self-interest in ensuring that this target is reached. A year or so ago my noble friend Lord Chidgey and I were in Malawi, working with the DfID representatives there, and we were full of admiration for what they were doing. I know that those same people will be dealing with the flood crisis that has hit that poor country so dramatically in this past week.

Yet, in some places, I have to say that DfID is sometimes accused of being interested only in rather grandiose projects—I have written to the Minister on the subject before. I was very struck by the invention of the community cooker in the Kibera slum in Nairobi; it is not photogenic but it is a wonderful community project that deserves support, yet it has not been given support by DfID. I was delighted to get an e-mail from Nairobi only yesterday saying that, where DfID had failed, the Prince’s Trust had moved in to support a project that involves the burning of rubbish and the provision of hot water and cooking facilities in the shanty towns of that great city.

We all have our own recollections and experience of seeing people working on the ground in poor countries. My own abiding memory is of talking with a woman doctor who was alone in a very poorly equipped hospital in the north of Malawi some years ago. We came to a young boy lying in a cot with a very swollen head, and she said to me, “I’m going to have to operate on this boy tomorrow, and I’ve never done anything like it”. I said, “How do you manage?”. She said, “I phoned a colleague at home who’s a specialist and they told me what I should be doing, but I’m just hoping it will go all right”. The great thing about the Bill is that it sends a message of support and comfort to all those people who work so diligently in most parts of the world, and that is another reason why I think we should support it.

Malawi

Lord Steel of Aikwood Excerpts

Thursday 23rd October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Steel of Aikwood (LD)]

My Lords, the House should be very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, for initiating this short debate on a small, faraway country of which many people know little but which he and I know extremely well. I join him in congratulating the Scotland Malawi Partnership. I was on the preparatory committee that set up that partnership and he was the First Minister who saw it implemented. It has gone from strength to strength. The Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government have continued to support it very strongly, and I endorse what the noble Lord said. When the noble Lord referred to the history of Malawi, I remembered on one occasion sleeping on the bed of Dr Laws in Livingstonia—not an experience I would recommend to anybody. It was simply a bed constructed out of rope.

In a very short speech I want simply to raise two issues. The first is the question, to which he alluded, of “cashgate” and our aid programme. The figures may not be on the DfID website but sources in Malawi suggest that some $500 million went missing over eight years during the period of the previous Government in Malawi. That is, according to Malawi sources, something like 30% of Malawi’s total budget. When you think that it is a very small country with a population of 16 million and an economy smaller than the London Borough of Hackney, you realise that the damage done by the “cashgate” scandal is enormous. Therefore, it is understandable that not just Her Majesty’s Government but the new Malawi Government are doing their best to see that those who were responsible for this are brought to book.

The former President, Joyce Banda, in a lecture at the LSE this month, said that she was alerted to this scandal at the tail end of her regime by Alexander Baum, who was the European Union representative in Malawi. That enables me to say that I do not share the general view that has been put about that the European diplomatic community is somehow less effective than our own. In my many visits to Malawi, I have found that the small diplomatic community there worked together more cohesively than I have seen in any other country. I pay tribute to the European representative as well as to our own.

In the lead-up to the referendum after Dr Hastings Banda’s period, I was involved in the struggle to bring better democracy and transparency to Malawi. It must be frustrating for the population of Malawi to realise that they have suffered under kleptomaniac rulers who have made a mockery of democracy. I know that our Government and the German Government have financed the external audit that is trying to track down what exactly happened. The United Kingdom has to be tough on this issue. It cannot resume the full aid programme until it is resolved. It should also warn even the new Government that extravagance will not help. There have been press reports from Malawi that the current President took 68 people with him to the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York—not a good example to set when he is doing his best to track down the blatant corruption of the previous Government.

Although we have suspended budgetary aid to the Government, I hope that it will still be possible for DfID and other organisations to continue to give direct programme support to various factors in Malawi. In the areas of health, education, agriculture and support for the judiciary, it is important that, even though we cannot give government budgetary aid, we continue to give direct assistance.

To give an example from my own experience, the last time I was there, which was a couple of years ago, I visited a hospital which was very well organised. It had rural outreach clinics and took drugs out to the villages on motorbikes. Somebody had given about a dozen motorbikes to the hospital. I am not a motorbike expert but I think they were probably Chinese—they were quite cheap—and a lot of them had broken down. In fact, there was only one left that worked; the others were all in a shed. Here is an example of when a little ingenuity and a little money, to get a mechanic out there to cannibalise the motorbikes so they could work again, would greatly increase the efficiency of that service. Not a large sum of money was involved. That is the kind of imaginative thinking that our hard-pressed DfID staff in Malawi should be looking at. The Government should be willing to finance such individual projects even if they cannot give direct help to the Malawi Government.

The second issue I want to touch on is the visa regime, ably mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord McConnell. As it affects Malawi, it is particularly bad because visa applications have to go to Pretoria in South Africa. Under the Malawi rules, one cannot pay in rand without clearance from the banks. The whole thing is a bureaucratic nightmare. We had a debate on this issue, which is totally unsatisfactory, in the Moses Room a few months ago. We have lost accountability for the visa service. It has been farmed out to an agency, which in turn has farmed it out to subcontractors, presumably on a cheap contract basis. The result is that the service is extremely expensive for Malawi citizens and it is very time-consuming. Mr Tom Greatrex the MP who represents Blantyre, David Livingstone’s birthplace, feels very strongly about this. He has raised it several times and is about to have an Adjournment debate in the Commons on the issue.

In the mean time, I want to make two suggestions, which my noble friend might pass on to the Home Office. First, I do not understand why, when people are coming for short contributions to public seminars of a kind that I complained about before, and will be here for only a few days with firm sponsorship, those issuing the visas cannot telephone the sponsors to make sure that the application is genuine. The idea that visa applications are rejected because people might overstay or give up their careers, families and everything else in Malawi to stay in Britain is simply ludicrous. Another suggestion is that we might change the visa system to insist that sponsors for short-term visits should themselves sign declarations accepting responsibility for the person returning and being liable to a fine if the person does not return. That might cut through a lot of the bureaucracy and establish a visa regime that is fit for purpose.

Better still, I would like to be rid of the agency and go back to the system we used to have. I can remember as an MP on several occasions having to phone a high commissioner or an ambassador and say, “I hear that so-and-so has made an application for a visa and has been turned down. Can you have a look at this?”. They would look at it and say, “This is why it has been turned down. It is perfectly reasonable. It is good policy not to let this person come here”—or, alternatively, they would say, “We have looked at this. It is bureaucratic nonsense and we are issuing the visa”. There is no accountability any more. It has gone. If we cannot get it back, at least steps should be taken, as the noble Lord said, to ensure that the system is improved. I hope that the Home Office will respond in the debate which Mr Greatrex is having shortly in the other place and will come forward with positive ideas on how to improve the system for the benefit of good relations between Malawi and ourselves.

Health: Ebola

Lord Steel of Aikwood Excerpts

Wednesday 15th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

We can see how we are all interlinked—something that happens in one part of the world may very well affect another. It is encouraging to see that the pharmaceutical industry is now picking up speed. However, the noble Baroness is quite right: that has not been its history.

[Lord Steel of Aikwood (LD)]

Will my noble friend be kind enough to have a word with the Home Secretary because there is a problem that doctors from west Africa working in this country who go to help in this crisis might run foul of the visa restrictions? It is very important that that sort of bureaucracy does not get in the way of sending the most valuable doctors—those who know the area and can speak the languages.

[Baroness Northover]

I am very happy to reassure my noble friend that the Home Secretary is looking at this at the moment. Tier 2 skilled workers can indeed return to their home country for short periods to provide support and can take their annual leave to volunteer. However, the Home Secretary is looking at this.

Malawi

Lord Steel of Aikwood Excerpts

Wednesday 20th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Verma]

I come back to my original Answer. I reassure the noble Lord that we have not cut back on aid but are redirecting the aid that was going through budget support to the health and education sectors, so we will be providing even more support by directing the aid to those sectors and having better oversight of where that money is being spent.

[Lord Steel of Aikwood]

My Lords, I appreciate the real difficulty that the Government have with the increasingly autocratic President of Malawi, but can the Minister give us any indication of whether relations are on the mend following the expulsion of our high commissioner?

[Baroness Verma]

My noble friend knows that while we have difficulties, we are continuously working on improving relationships. It is key that our relationship with Malawi is maintained and strengthened. The negotiations will continue but we will not stop our programmes from being delivered, because at the heart of everything that we are doing is the delivery of aid to poor people.

House of Lords Reform Bill [HL]

Lord Steel of Aikwood Excerpts

Friday 3rd December 2010 Lords Chamber

Moved By

[Lord Steel of Aikwood]

That the Bill be read a second time.

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, I have it in command from Her Majesty the Queen to acquaint the House that Her Majesty, having been informed of the purport of the House of Lords Reform Bill, has consented to place her prerogative and interest, so far as they are affected by the Bill, at the disposal of Parliament for the purposes of the Bill.

[Lord Steel of Aikwood]

My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. The rules of the House require me to begin in that way, but it might be more accurate if I were to move that the Bill be now read for the umpteenth time. In fact, this will be the fourth debate that we have had on this, as the Bill is substantially the same as the one that I first introduced way back in July 2007.

I know that this debate has been eagerly anticipated. My noble friend Lord Strathclyde, the Leader of the House, said the other day that the House was looking forward to this debate with “inestimable pleasure”. The mind boggles to think what alternative attractions have kept him away on this occasion. On the opposition Benches, the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, also said that he looked forward to the debate. I have been wondering about this eager anticipation. I worked out that it is rather like booking to go to a concert where a particularly favourite symphony is to be played. Looking forward to it gives you a pleasurable glow of anticipation at revisiting a favourite work.

However, there is a difference today, as some new Members of your Lordships’ House are participating. We look forward in particular to the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, who is a practitioner in these matters. Also, it is a particular pleasure for me to welcome my noble friend Lord Lothian, who is a former constituent of mine, although I do not think that I ever persuaded him to vote for me when he had the capacity to do so. I look forward to hearing what he has to say.

We shall also have the pleasure of hearing from a former Speaker of the House of Commons, the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, and from a former Deputy Prime Minister, my noble and learned friend Lord Howe. Without in any way being disloyal, I hope that the current Deputy Prime Minister will read carefully what he has to say. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, will of course recognise that a symphony is a work of four movements. The Bill that I have introduced consists of four movements—three of which his colleagues, shamelessly and without attribution, adapted in their own way in the constitutional reform Bill introduced by the previous Government. These three proposals were lost in the wash-up.

I begin by saying that this debate is not about whether in future we will have an elected or non-elected House. When I heard the decision of the coalition Government to create an all-party committee to work on a Bill, my original inclination was to say, “Let’s drop the Bill and wait for the Government to come forward with their own proposals”. We were promised them by Christmas, then January, then February. The latest promise is “early in the new year”—but which year is not specified. I was prevailed on by Members in all parts of the House to proceed with my Bill on the basis that we are getting a little impatient, and that even if the coalition Government's proposals in draft form were to proceed smoothly and to timetable, the earliest moment at which the House could begin to enact them would be late in 2012. In the mean time, Members are increasingly concerned that the House goes unreformed.

It is important that we relay to Members in the other place that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, we are not sticks-in-the-mud who are saying that this House is perfect. We are willing to embrace sensible reforms and we are anxious to proceed with them. I was interested the other day to hear one of the new Members opposite, the noble Lord, Lord McAvoy, who has a distinguished record of service in the other place, say this:

“When I came to the other place, quite a long time ago, I did not have much time for this place and did not understand it. I thought that this place was undemocratic, illogical, irrational and all the rest of it. That was quite a naive attitude to take and was based on a lack of knowledge of this place”.—[Official Report, 16/11/10; col. 740.]

That is quite common in the other place—and I speak from personal experience. Although I led the Liberal Party for 12 years, and therefore had a close association with my opposite number in this place, at the end of that time I still did not understand how the House of Lords worked, even though I was responsible for nominating new Members to it. That is the problem: we have not got across to the other place how we operate. I hope that, by embracing this Bill, we will signal to Members there that we are keen to press on with updating our procedures and composition.

A moment ago, I said that the Bill consisted of four movements. This metaphor has outlived its usefulness, so let us say four substantial sections. The first is the one that the previous Government dropped, which deals with the statutory Appointments Commission. It was not in the Labour Government's Bill, primarily because the phrase “wholly or mainly elected” still applied and they had not made up their minds—any more than the present Government have—whether a future Chamber should be wholly or mainly elected. Of course, were it to be wholly elected, there would be no need for an Appointments Commission. That was the argument of the previous Government. However, I still believe that if we move in future to a mainly elected House, a statutory Appointments Commission will still be required. In the mean time, it will be required until we get to that point. Therefore, my Bill sets out both the composition of the commission, the principles under which it operates, and in particular the important one that the Government of the day, whether they be a single party or a coalition, should not have a majority in this place. That would set it in statute for the first time.

The noble Lord, Lord Jay, who is not with us today but who has spoken on previous occasions, is the chairman of the present Appointments Commission. He supports strongly the idea that the commission should have a statutory basis. One obvious reason for this is provided by the case of Lord Laidlaw, who promised the commission that he would give up his tax exile status if given a peerage, but went back on that. The commission had no power to do anything about it. The case for making the Appointments Commission statutory is strong: that is the first section of my Bill.

The second section brings to an end the by-elections for hereditary peers. These were introduced as a temporary measure in 1997 and were to last for “a couple of years”—that is the phrase that appeared in Hansard. The system has now lasted for nearly a decade and a half. Clearly, it is completely out of date, and while the election of hereditary peers passes muster—just—in the Conservative Party and on the Cross-Benches, the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats view it as a farce. One has perhaps three or four electors and 10 candidates. A Member can be elected to Parliament by something like two votes to one, which makes Old Sarum look like a model of democracy. It is time that this came to an end.

The third section of the Bill deals with the vexed question of whether we should provide for leave of absence or remove those Members who never attend. I will quote from the report of the committee chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral, which states:

“The House currently has before it relevant legislative proposals in the shape of Part 3 of the House of Lords Reform Bill … introduced by Lord Steel of Aikwood and awaiting Second Reading. Clause 11 of the bill would allow members to apply for permanent leave of absence; clause 12 provides that a member who fails to attend the House during the course of a session should be deemed to have taken permanent leave of absence; clause 13 provides that a person granted permanent leave of absence shall no longer be a member of the House of Lords. A number of members who responded to our consultation reiterated their support—previously expressed in debate on comparable bills introduced by Lord Steel of Aikwood in previous sessions—for the provisions contained in the current Bill”.

The committee came to the astonishing conclusion that, in order to deal with the excess numbers in the House, one would need primary legislation. This is the primary legislation: it is here and available, and we would be sensible to adopt it.

The committee does not specify how the proposals would be introduced. It refers to the fact that the House of Lords, by standing order, would have the ability to introduce a scheme, but that it would be up to the Government to devise the equivalent of a silver handshake. In our debate on the proposals of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, my noble friend Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope rightly pointed out that any actuary could provide a simple method of calculating redundancy pay that would benefit the taxpayer and not be an excess burden on them. As far as concerns removing non-attenders, even though they do not occupy space on these Benches, they receive all the papers, some of them have desks and lockers in your Lordships' House, and there is no case for retaining their services. Therefore, the third section of the Bill provides for the first time the capacity for Members to leave this place with dignity and honour after they have given a reasonable amount of service, or after they have reached a certain age.

The fourth and last section is the simplest. It would bring the House of Lords into line with the other place by removing those convicted of offences that carry a sentence of more than one year in prison.

These are the four provisions of the Bill, with which the House is now probably painfully familiar. I will conclude by quoting the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, who spoke in a previous debate. He was responsible for the drafting of this Bill, which has been expertly done. He said that there would be those in the House who regarded the Bill as necessary but entirely insufficient, and others who regarded it as necessary and wholly sufficient. He said that noble Lords could disagree on that, but that the one thing on which they should agree was that it was necessary.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Trefgarne]

My Lords, I begin my remarks by saying how much I welcome the maiden speech of my noble friend Lord Lothian, who spoke to us a few moments ago. I had the privilege of serving with the noble Marquess in the Administration of the then Mrs Thatcher. I also had the privilege of serving in your Lordships’ House when his father was a Member here a number of years ago, and I very much welcome his arrival here now.

This is the fourth time—is it?—that my noble friend Lord Steel has introduced a Bill along these lines, but I am sorry to say that his Bill is no more timely now than it was on the previous occasions. That said, I do not necessarily quarrel profoundly with some of its provisions, although I have some detailed points to make. I am not against reform of your Lordships’ House per se and I am looking forward to the government Bill coming forward in draft, as we now hear that it will next year. However, why are some of your Lordships, such as my noble and learned friend Lord Howe and the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, so opposed to the concept of an elected House? While I recognise the potential difficulties, which have been described, they seem to me to have been overcome with considerable success in the United States, for example. I will not dwell on the differences now, but that model is one which I must confess that I am attracted to.

I shall now refer briefly to some of the provisions in my noble friend’s Bill which may need further clarification, amplification or even revision. The noble Lord refers to a new Appointments Commission; of course we already have an informal Appointments Commission appointing the so-called people’s Peers. It seems to have worked comparatively well. It leaves the Prime Minister able to make his own appointments, if he so chooses, while allowing the appointment of people whom we very much welcome in your Lordships’ House: for example, the retired Chief of the Defence Staff, who generally comes here as a matter of course. That is not part of any formal commission, which I suppose would be the case if these provisions became law.

I shall also refer to the question of the hereditary Peer by-elections, as your Lordships would no doubt expect. I need to remind your Lordships that the 1999 Act was passed with the concurrence of the then hereditary Peers in this House, who had a majority and who could have opposed the Bill and prevented it from passing at that time. No doubt it could then have been passed by the Parliament Act, had that been thought necessary, but it was definitely thought that that was too difficult and that a deal therefore had to be struck. A deal was struck that allowed the 92 hereditary Peers to remain, including the by-elections, until House of Lords reform was complete. I am happy to accept that undertaking, which was given at the time and which has been repeated by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, on at least one occasion and, indeed, by my noble friend Lord Strathclyde.

I put it to your Lordships that the by-elections should remain as part of the deal—the undertaking that was given to secure the passage of the 1999 Act—and that when House of Lords reform is complete, the by-elections will cease. That is well understood. Incidentally, I am looking forward to hearing about the grandfather arrangements that my noble friend Lord Strathclyde has referred to. However, I dare say that they will not include by-elections and I shall not be insisting that they do. Sooner or later, the hereditary Peers will, I fear, be on their way but not, I suggest, under the provisions proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Steel.

The noble Lord proposes in his Bill some statutory arrangements for leave of absence. I am not in favour of those but I would not oppose some more rigorous arrangements of an informal kind for leave of absence. For example, Peers could automatically be considered to have taken leave of absence if they did not appear for an extended period of, perhaps, six months or a year, or it may be that the Clerk should write to them at the end of the year, asking, “You have not been for a whole year. Would you like leave of absence?” or something of that nature. However, I am not in favour of statutory arrangements.

[Lord Steel of Aikwood]

The problem with what my noble friend proposes is that, if he reads the report of our noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral, he will see at the back that there is a memo from the Clerk of the Parliaments indicating that that cannot be done. It requires a statutory provision, I am afraid.

[Lord Trefgarne]

I understand what my noble friend is saying. I am thinking—I confess that I need to apply more thought to it—of some more informal arrangement where Peers could be persuaded to take leave of absence as a matter of course if they did not appear for an extended period.

I did have a problem with one aspect to which the noble Lord referred. I think that he mentioned some silver handshake arrangements. That will cause me very considerable difficulty because, in 1999, there were no silver handshakes and 600 Members of your Lordships’ House went without as much as a penny. It would therefore be very difficult to introduce a new silver handshake arrangement if that was what was now proposed. The noble Lord also referred to arrangements for Peers to be removed or disqualified for serious misbehaviour. It is very difficult for anybody to quarrel with such arrangements or provisions although I point out that recently, when there were some serious allegations against certain noble Lords, the matter was dealt with very effectively without any new legislation. I hope that that, too, can be borne in mind.

I make the general point that a Private Member’s Bill—no matter how distinguished the proposal, if I may say so—is not really the way to introduce major reforms of a constitutional kind. I am therefore, as I say, looking forward to the Government’s Bill coming forward. It will, of course, receive our very close attention. We will be moving into a Committee stage soon and I dare say that I shall have some suggestions to make to this Bill when that time comes. In the mean time, I can do no more than say how much I am looking forward to the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Steel of Aikwood]

My Lords, I think that everyone will agree that this has been a very interesting debate. In fact, I have to say that, of all the debates on my Bill, this has been much the most interesting and constructive, because there has been much more agreement on the need for the measures that it proposes than has been exhibited in the past.

I do not propose to refer to everybody’s speeches, because, for me, it is not a question of when I get home but whether I get home, and I am anxious to make a move as soon as possible. However, it was quite interesting that, out of the 25 speeches, we had only two which were opposed to the Bill. I say to the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, and the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, that I have much more sympathy with their arguments than they would suppose, because a perfectly good case can be made out for scrapping the House of Lords as it is and having instead a small senate, on the American pattern, which would then be a complement and a competitor to the House of Commons. But that would mean a rewriting of the conventions on a much larger scale even than we have been contemplating up till now. That circumstance would lead us ever closer towards a written constitution, which I am in favour of, and would mean, I suspect, a resumption of financial powers of that senate, which we do not have at the moment.

However, that is a debate for another day. My Bill does not cut across such an eventuality if that is what were decided. The cheerful thing about this debate is that more and more Members have come round to the view that these provisions are necessary and that we would like to explore them further.

The debate was greatly enhanced by two quite outstanding maiden speeches, from my noble friend Lord Lothian and the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy. Strangely enough, they seemed to dovetail in their approach. My noble friend spoke very wisely about the principles of governance which should direct us, while the noble Lord was very instructive on the history and updating us to what he called a Chamber of “respected revisers”, a very different view from that put forward by the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, and my noble friend Lord Trefgarne. The question is how we update our composition and procedures to make that more a reality.

[Lord Trefgarne]

I am not opposed to my noble friend’s Bill as a matter of principle, except for the passage on the removal of the hereditary Peer by-elections. The other passages have some short-comings, but perhaps they can be improved in Committee.

[Lord Steel of Aikwood]

I am most grateful to the noble Lord for that clarification.

The noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, along with one or two others, questioned the precise drafting of the statutory commission proposals. I had some sympathy with his view that it should be more open and transparent, perhaps on the lines of the United States. I am very sympathetic to any amendments that may come forward along those lines when we get to Committee. The noble Lord, Lord Wills, raised the whole question of democratic accountability, which again I think is the debate that we are still to address.

I particularly welcomed the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Desai, because he is a conversion to support for the Bill. He was quite right that we should retain the same sort of occasional club rights that we have for the hereditary Peers who have gone. My Bill does not in any way trespass on that.

The important thing that we have to recognise is that two things will happen, whatever happens to this Bill. There are two pieces of work going on that this Bill does not trespass on and which I would argue it assists. One is the work of my noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral and his committee. They have to continue that work, even under the proposals of my Bill, which would provide the primary legislation that the report recommended, because the House of Lords would still have to come forward with a standing order. The details of that obviously have to be worked out in conjunction with the Government. My Bill does not trespass on that work or on the work of the cross-party committee, to which frequent reference has been made.

I very much welcomed the very honest speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, at the beginning of the debate, when she talked about the time that would be required to bring forward the Bill for prelegislative scrutiny. The combination of what she said and what the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, said makes me more and more anxious about how long this is going to take. We now discover that they have not yet decided whether it is to be a wholly or mainly elected House. Well, hang on a minute, that is a pretty fundamental issue. If we have not got past that gate, how long is it going to take? The noble Baroness, Lady Royall, who is a member of the committee, underlined my point when she talked about the Bill being introduced in the spring. That is the latest definition that we have had. The spring is an elastic thing; it could be late April, I suppose, but it was to happen before Christmas. The noble Baroness, Lady Verma, talked about the number of issues that the committee was still considering and deciding. I do not see the Bill coming forward for prelegislative scrutiny for some considerable time. With the amount of time that it will take for the prelegislative scrutiny to take place and then the actual introduction of the Bill, it will be very long indeed.

On previous occasions, I gave up on this Bill after one Committee stage. That is why I referred to four debates. This is the third Second Reading, but we also had a Committee day. I saw no point in going on with those days because the Bill was being obstructed, but if there is consensus in the House that we need these measures, let us put it into Committee and try and fine-tune it before passing it on to the other place. We can say, “Look, this Chamber is willing to see reforms”. While these more fundamental issues are still being discussed, let us send it down to the other end of the building and see what the House of Commons makes of it. I hope that it will be sympathetic. For that reason, I beg to move.

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