Mark Ferguson

My long-standing views on reform of our Parliament can be looked up by any Member if they so wish. I very much welcomed, both on Second Reading and from the Front Bench today, the comments on the future reform of the Lords and what that might look like. However, I dare say to the hon. Gentleman that we might agree on some specific aspects more than he imagines. There has not been much discussion of Lords amendment 2, on Ministers’ pay. I welcome the Conservative party’s stout defence of working people and of ensuring that people are paid what they are owed. We have also heard references to equalities law from the Opposition Benches, and I welcome that. I just think it is such as a shame that it is only being applied specifically and uniquely to hereditary peers. As Conservative Members well know, there is a limit on the number of Ministers who can be paid. I think that is right and I do not believe that now is the right time to expand the cost of our politics with more paid Ministers. However, if the Conservative party believes, genuinely and deep down in its soul, that it needed to have more paid Ministers, it had 14 years of Government in which it could have done that, rather than tacking it on as a distraction from the issue at hand here, which is incrementally but crucially reforming our constitution. I support the Government’s position on all the amendments. Let us get on with this. We have had 62 hours of debate—and counting. Let us crack on. It has been 1,100 years; I think it is time to cut it short.