Lord Cromwell (CB)

My Lords, I will be brief. I have very much enjoyed the last contribution. I am sure we all did. We are all encouraged to declare if we are hereditary Peers, so I do so. The irrelevance of this was brought home to me at breakfast today, when one of my life Peer colleagues said to me that they did not even realise I was a hereditary after all these years. As the House has heard from me at each stage of the Bill, I am hesitant to speak again. Members will be comforted to know that I am not here next week, so this will be my last opportunity to contribute, assuming we pass the Bill this week. I have great respect for and friendship with my Cross-Bench colleague the Lord Great Chamberlain, and have told him in advance what I propose to say: I am not clear why ceremonial duties should come with the ex officio right to legislate by sitting and voting in the House of Lords. Rather, I would point to his string of contributions and successful vote last evening as a better measure of his commitment and worth to the House. That is the same metric I would apply to any of our so-called hereditaries, regardless of their availability to perform royal or ceremonial duties. I only wish we were applying that metric to the life Peers. To save time later, I add that I have the same, albeit milder, view of special pleading for other automatic ex officio appointments, such as the Lord Chancellor, as set out in Amendment 10 in group 9. They should be selected rather than have just the legal right to expect that they will come here.