Member

This has been an interesting debate, and I think there will be more later. It underlines the fact that it is really not good enough to say again and again that we do not need to consider these things now. The House is being changed now, and we do not know where it is being taken yet. It is legitimate to ask, as we discuss the Bill and before we pass it: why these dedicated Members, whom even those who want to expel them praise fulsomely for their work in this House? Why not those who rarely, if ever, participate in the work of your Lordships’ House? How ironic it would be if the House were to exclude the hard-working, only for many to say later, when some of them are gone and no one can form a coalition of the willing to do all the things our excluded colleagues were doing, “Why did we not consider all the implications for the House before we sent some of the best among us on their way?”