Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)

My Lords, given the hour, I can also be brief, because the essential points have been made by the Convenor and by my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham. In essence, what lies behind all these proposed amendments is the question of effectiveness and the importance of putting in place some transitional arrangements to make sure that we do not face the cliff edge, to pick up that phrase from the Convenor, which would be to the detriment of all of us in this House and, indeed, to Parliament generally. We have, as my noble friend Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay reminded us, a bicameral Parliament and we have to make sure that both Houses work well together. So, the critical point here is that of effectiveness. This group shows again why analogies are dangerous in this area. The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, spoke in the last group and we had, yet again, the analogy with MPs. It is not a good analogy. The problem with analogies, as a Court of Appeal judge once put it to me, is that they are different, and we are dealing with a vastly different circumstance here: hereditary Peers leaving this House as against MPs leaving the House of Commons in a general election. The central issue here is one of effectiveness and proper transitional arrangements. Therefore, I look forward to the response of the noble Baroness the Lord Privy Seal to these various options as to how we might best proceed here.