Member

That is good, but the language sounded very familiar, to those of us who actually remember those days, to the pledge that then came from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, in 1998, when he promised that keeping 90 elected hereditary Peers would “guarantee” stage two reform. My noble friend Lord Howard of Lympne made a very powerful and apposite intervention on that very point. We all know that those quite genuine good intentions led nowhere; there was no stage two reform. How can we know that what happened then will not happen again now?