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Lord Cromwell (CB)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 3 March 2025

Debate

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Contribution

My Lords, we started the debate today with a conciliatory and constructive tone from the Front Benches, which I found optimistic and encouraging. I fear that things have gone pretty steeply downhill since that time, and they have also gone way off track from the amendments under discussion. I have Amendment 63: I am beginning to wonder whether I will live long enough to ever reach it. For all the shadow-boxing and enjoyable eloquence that we have had, this really seems to come down to a numbers question. That is the real horse-trading that is needed here. It is a number between 0 and 88, and I really wish we could lock the noble Baroness the Leader of the House, the Front-Bench leaders and our Convenor in a room, adjourn for the afternoon and see whether they can hammer out that number. If they could, I suspect that a lot of these amendments would fall away. If they could not, battle could recommence.

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