Lord Newby (LD)

My Lords, I thank everyone who has spoken, and I slightly apologise for initiating such a long debate. I am grateful to noble Lords who have supported our proposal, and doubly grateful to those who have supported me today who have never supported me before—I thank them very much. I obviously cannot deal with all the points made, and I will try to be brief. The noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, made the classic argument for not having an elected House of Lords, the nub of which relates to the primacy of the Commons. The only thing I would say is that, in 2012, the House of Commons voted by a majority of 338 to have an elected House of Lords, so presumably, it did not think its position was being fatally undermined at that point. The noble Lord was the first person to raise the possibility of Cross-Benchers being included under our proposals, and they absolutely would be. There was a provision for Cross-Benchers in the 2012 proposals, and having them would be perfectly possible under my amendment. On the question of looking at functions, as I said in my introductory remarks, there is no bar to that happening during the consultation period. However, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, that, at worst, wherever one ends up, one is likely to get a crunching of gears rather than a car crash.