Member

It has been suggested that some of us in this House have come rather late in the day to wanting to see reform and retirement ages and so on. Some noble Lords will be aware of the spreadsheets which I commissioned from the Library. We had a debate on day 2 using all the information on them. They came about last year when I emailed the splendid Mr Tobin in the Library. I said, “Dear Mr Tobin, do you remember all those spreadsheets that you prepared for me in 2015 to send to the Lord Burns committee? Could I have them updated, please, for this?” I used that information then, and many of us have believed in reform for a long time. The information that I supplied to the noble Lord, Lord Burns, was about retirement ages, participation rates and attendance rates. There was also a suggestion that the Government could introduce a non-legislative Peer: Prime Ministers need to give out gongs to people; they could give out gongs and call people Lords but not necessarily with a writ to come to this House.