Lord Rooker (Lab)

My Lords, I think our language should be quite moderate tonight. There is no crowing from this side of the House and no attack on the hereditaries. I wholly agree with everything that has been said. I have worked with the hereditaries, having been here 24 years now, after 27 years in the other place. One of our Members is missing—someone who really should be here tonight—and that is my noble friend Lord Grocott. He is indisposed at the moment; he is probably watching this from his hospital bed. He hopes to be home soon. He sends his regards, and one or two people have spoken to him. I have been told that I cannot read another Member’s notes into the record, but I want to use a few points issued by my noble friend, including on what he did after he ceased to be Chief Whip. My noble friend is sorry that he cannot be here today to see the completion of this process. He says that the Bill will mean a fine farewell to our wondrous system of hereditary Peer by-elections—something that, of course, many of my new colleagues have not experienced. The process in place over the last quarter of a century gave amusement to many, employment to my noble friend Lord Grocott and complete bewilderment to the public. He told me that, for him, the standout moment came during the 2016 by-election, when there were seven candidates and an electorate of three—twice as many candidates as voters. The winning candidate received all three votes on a 100% turnout. After that, my noble friend Lord Grocott thought— I shared a room with him, so I have lived a bit of this; your Lordships should see his files—that a Private Member’s Bill might be the solution to the whole system. He thought it would be a doddle. He thought that no one in the House would want to defend hereditary Peers by-elections but, as he admits, he got that wrong. After five attempts, his simple two-clause Bill never got further than Committee, because there were a few people here on a Friday who knew how to speak—without filibustering. At last, he says, the end is in sight. He told me this morning that he will be able to hand over his files to some unsuspecting PhD student, who will have the unenviable task of trying to work out what on earth it was all about. Finally, my noble friend has a message for anyone who is thinking of introducing a Bill to reform any part of this House: keep it short, keep it simple, keep it focused and, above all, be patient. “Who knows”, he said: “One day, you might end up as a footnote in Erskine May”. It is very sad that he is not here. Of course, he will get to see Hansard pretty quickly, if he is not watching us from his hospital bed, but I thought that we should at least recognise the perseverance he showed and how he entertained us. I will make one final point. When the clerk read out the results of the ballots for hereditary Peer by-elections, they never gave us any figures. They just said that so-and-so has been elected. We got no information. I would go round the corner to get some figures because we were interested in them. Occasionally, in some of those elections, all of us could participate. I join with my noble friend. I will be sad to see noble Lords leaving. It is hanging over me now. I was born in 1941, so I am with the group that is next in line. With that, I will sit down.