House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) (Abolition of By-Elections) Bill [HL]

Lord Dubs Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 7th September 2018 Lords Chamber

The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, spoke about the whole-House by-election in March 2017. It was for a seat previously occupied by a Conservative Peer, so under the Carter convention a Conservative should be elected. The noble Lord argued that the fact that 346 out of 803 voted in the election indicated a lack of enthusiasm among your Lordships for the election. He argued that a turnout of only 43% was very low. However, given that few of your Lordships other than these Benches would naturally have an interest in electing a Conservative, one can assume that among Conservative Peers there was a very high turnout. Even if all 250 Conservative Peers had voted, which was obviously not quite the case, 96 Peers from all other parties would have voted. Perhaps one can assume—

[Lord Dubs (Lab)]

My Lords, I am not an expert in procedure, and I have listened quite hard, but are we not in a Second Reading debate? I thought that was not acceptable.