Lord Strathclyde (Con)

My Lords, my support for this amendment is largely symbolic, but at least it is consistent with things that I have said and stood for in the past. The noble Lord, Lord Newby, talked about my Amendment 32, which we will come to late next week. Its purpose is to provide an echo of the Parliament Act 1911, that there is still a requirement for a democratic element to House of Lords reform, and to remind not just the House but the people of this country that democratic reform was a worthwhile stage 2 objective, which has been sadly missed by this Government in this Parliament, and that is the greatest missed opportunity of this entire Bill. Of course, a wholly appointed House in itself has no democratic legitimacy, or very little. The argument I favoured and supported in 2012 under the Cameron-Clegg Bill of that year was precisely to provide the case for an elected House which included an unelected element—the great Cross Benches—which provided a good, tempering role on the whole of the House of Lords. At present, the House of Lords does an excellent job. It revises and scrutinises legislation, and it debates the great issues of the day. It does not overdo the power that it has. The noble Lords, Lord Rooker and Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, are entirely correct in saying that we are governed by conventions. The fear some of us have had, if we change the composition of the House of Lords, is: would those conventions exist and continue to provide that slight softening of the attitude of your Lordships’ House? Of course constituencies are important, and I join my noble friend Lord Hailsham in saying that the only way of doing it—here I disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Newby—is to have constituencies, perhaps based loosely on the old 80 or so European constituencies in the country, with voting in perhaps a third of them every five years to get the kind of difference that this House needs.