Viscount Hailsham (Con)

My Lords, in view of the lateness of the hour, I will be very brief. I will say out of an abundance of caution that I will not test the opinion of the House. However, I think there is a very strong case for introducing peerages for a limited period and a retirement period. There are two reasons for that. First, membership of this House needs to be refreshed, otherwise you get inflationary numbers of an intolerable degree. My two proposals, of a retirement age and limited peerage duration, address that. If one is honest about this, one’s experience decays over a period of time. When I first came into the House, I knew rather a lot about criminal law. That was about 15 years ago, and I knew a great deal more when I went into the House of Commons in 1979. But one’s knowledge changes and, while I have an understanding of the general principles of criminal law, I do not pretend I have the expertise I previously did. So my first point is that one’s expertise declines. Secondly, many of the issues one is wholly conversant with have changed. When I first came into Parliament, we knew nothing about transgender, artificial intelligence was wholly unknown and we did not have to worry about the internet. But now we have to regulate and debate the application of these matters to try to regulate AI, social media and debate transgender in a sensible way. It is much easier for those who are more conversant with these issues than my generation are to address them. That requires, in part, a refreshing of the membership of this House. For those reasons, I see merit in a retirement age and limiting the period for which peerages are created. So I beg to move but, as I said, I will not be testing the opinion of the House.