Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)

My Lords, I remind the Conservative Benches that if we are talking about what has been in manifestos, there was a very clear pledge in the 2019 Conservative manifesto to set up a commission on the constitution to examine some of the underlying difficulties of the British structure of government. I recall the noble Lord, Lord True, on a number of occasions, defending from the Government Front Bench the reason why nothing had happened on that. Constitutional matters get easily put off and, once put off, we tend not to get back to them. With these amendments, we are now beginning to talk about where we go from here, which I am sure the Leader of the House will recognise we all want to hear more about. Where do we go next, after this? This is a rather ingenious proposal from the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. I am not entirely sure that ,as an electorate, this House is the best place. There might be a certain tendency in our current composition to overselect people who have been to the same school as we had, or people who are very like us, when actually, some of the people who are not like us are particularly good. For example, if you had asked me to vote for a ballerina, on first impression I would have thought that was totally the wrong person for the Lords. I regard the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, as one of the most valued Members of the House, which was a great and wonderful surprise. If you had asked me to vote for the noble Lord, Lord Bird, as the candidate, again I might not have thought at first impression that he was a good person for the Lords. That is the hesitation I raise: elites selecting new members of the elite tend to go for the safe people like them, which is not necessarily ideal. I will make a few wider remarks about where we go from here. I have on my shelves a full shelf of reports on House of Lords reform and previous Bills. The 2012 scheme, which I had the duty of trying to move in this House, was relatively clear. It was agreed by the coalition partners, although it was Conservative Back-Benchers, as much as the Labour Party, who let down that scheme.