Member

That brings me to the various amendments on offer. On the whole, I rather favour Amendment 68 in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Banner and Lord Murray of Blidworth, to grant a peerage on appointment to all the Justices of the Supreme Court. To limit it to the president and the deputy president, of which I was one, would not go far enough. However, that reform cannot be considered without an understanding of the rules that we are going to introduce in the House as a whole, for a very particular reason: one of the points that we are all interested in is the rule about participation. I rather think that a large number of those who would be made life Peers by the amendment would not want to participate. We are therefore dealing with a difficult position. I am not sure how much the present president and his deputy would want to take part here after retirement, so we run the risk of not really filling the gap left behind by the Law Lords when they left us.