Lord True (Con)

My Lords, I have spent a whole life in the Conservative and Unionist Party, and I dare say people in the Labour Party could probably say the same thing. The desire for election therefore is not just in the Liberal Democrat party. There are people on our Benches who have spoken on it; we heard from my noble friend Lord Brady of Altrincham. The reality is that this Bill, as presented, creates something unique in the world, outside Canada, which is an all-appointed House, stocked by the Prime Minister, now with the aspiration to be able to remove people. No other democratic nation allows the Prime Minister of the day to decide who his opponents in Parliament will be, and how many, or to stock the Chamber. We will stand alone in the world. They used to say that this House was the only house outside Lesotho which had a hereditary element coming into it. If this legislation goes through, we will not find many models without the kind of additional elements that my noble friend Lord Hailsham talked about earlier. We have to look at the shape of the House being created as the result of this Bill as presented. I welcomed what the noble Baroness the Leader of House said earlier about an opportunity; we have not discussed the shape of it in the usual channels, but we obviously will, and I welcome that. The only thing that she did not say was anything about a Bill, although we have a later debate on the amendment tabled by the noble Duke. When he moves his amendment, I would like to hear a little bit more about whether there will be a Bill—the first I heard of it was at the Dispatch Box. The Minister told me she has been having consultations, and she has come to House and said that, but we still do not know the full shape of what is proposed. What she said earlier seemed quite narrowly confined to the issues of age and participation. The challenge by my noble friend Viscount Hailsham that we will need to look a bit more at the full nature of reform is important.