Lord Blencathra (Con)

My Lords, my political antenna detects that my suggestion has not received universal acclaim. I say to my noble friend Lord Taylor of Holbeach, who was my superb Chief Whip, that I am sorry if I missed out the royal agricultural societies of Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland. That would put my list up to 130, from 129. He does not like lists, but the Bill is nothing but a list of 88 people to chuck out, so I suggest that it is a list as well. The esteemed organisation of the noble Viscount, Lord Thurso, is not a chartered institute or a royal society. I say to the Leader of the House that one has to create a cut-off somewhere. There are lots of other able organisations, but I wanted to pick those that were officially chartered institutes and royal societies, and which had therefore reached a certain level of acknowledged expertise, possibly among their peers. I note the points made by my noble friend Lord Leicester, and I largely concur. The noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton, was quite strongly against my amendment. He did not want these experts in here; he would prefer to pay them to speak to us. Suppose that, over the next few years, HOLAC had nominated each of these individuals. Why would it nominate them? It would nominate them because they were experts in their field. We would say, “Jolly good, welcome here; we need your expertise”. Of course this House needs experts and expertise. I say to the Leader of the House that I am not suggesting having 650 technical experts; I am suggesting 129 experts, plus any others we may have, which would leave another 400 or 500 Peers to exercise our judgment. I agree with my noble friend Lord True that we need to look at innovative ways. I said that I had the germ of an idea here. Most people think that this germ should be disinfected and done away with immediately, I suspect, but there is a possibility here to do things differently. He said that my plans were too corporatist. I thought that he said that they were too corpulent, which the House rather is at the moment; it is too large. I am clearly not going to succeed. I do not intend to bring this back on Report. I was floating an idea and in five years’ time, say, the House may wish to look at it. I am grateful for the Minister’s response. In view of the attitude tonight, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.