Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)

My Lords, I will of course withdraw the amendment. Before I do, I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General for answering the question about the Irish peerages. I will look very carefully at what he said in response to the rest. I had a wry smile when the noble and learned Lord said that it is unnecessary to duplicate legislation. I started off with that aim as well and I ended up with the Pet Abduction Act 2024. It is all very well when you are faced with a lawyer across the Dispatch Box here, but when you are faced with a group from the House of Commons with the wind in their sails, it may be more difficult to hold to that. I used to tell people that the statute book was not a form of semaphore to send signals, but that often fell on deaf ears. I am grateful for the support I had en passant from my noble friend Lord Northbrook. Respectfully, I fundamentally disagree with my noble friend Lord Hailsham. There is an interesting—by which commercial lawyers normally mean expensive—legal question raised by the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, as to whether a peerage is a matter of property or not. Quite beyond that, we do not want these cases starting in the county court and going all the way up. We need somewhere to resolve them, and the Privy Council is the obvious place. It resolves other sorts of disputes to do with universities and things like that. It would be a bit of fun for it, in between all the other difficult jurisdictional work that it does. My noble friend Lord Moynihan gave a good example of a disputed peerage. My answer to the question from the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher—who was obviously satisfied with the Attorney-General’s answer, because she has now gone—was going to be slightly different. I was going to encourage the noble Baroness to stay for groups 5 and 7, when the questions of commencement and when we will have the last hereditary Peer will be before the Committee. I was not going to give an answer now, so that she would stay and listen to the debates on those groups. I hope that she comes back. On a more serious note, if there are discussions, as we have heard, through the usual channels on the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Mobarik, the answer given might be that it will be when one of the current hereditary Peers in the House reaches the ripe old age of 120. Subject to that, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.