Earl Attlee (Con)

I was delighted to plan to stay overnight in Ipswich; what happened was that the abnormal load movement got cancelled, but I was still faced with the cost of the hotel, and I could not get the cost of the hotel from the heavy haulage company because of the risk of falling foul of the paid advocacy rules. I did all this activity at my own expense and, save for one day, was not able to claim allowances. This is not unusual. Other noble Lords will be engaged in similar activity which would not be detectable as participation. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, that there could be some mechanism for measuring such activity; possibly at the end of the Session we might be required to say how much money we have claimed in allowances and what we have actually done. We have already experimented with a participation test during Covid. Noble Lords will recall that we paid ourselves allowances only when we made a contribution. On one occasion we were debating an order that concerned vehicle testing and inspection. I thought that I was the House’s only subject matter expert. Imagine my surprise when I found that not only was the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, the country’s top psephologist but he had expertise on vehicle maintenance and inspection. Leg-pulling apart, we need to be careful to avoid creating perverse incentives to participate when it is unnecessary. Finally, some Peers have quite low contribution rates but, nevertheless, I have found their private counsel to be invaluable. The noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, talked about low-frequency, high-impact contributions. One has only to think of the contributions of the noble Lord, Lord Owen.