Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)

My Lords, I know the House is anxious to get on, so I will be pretty quick. It is normally good manners to namecheck your supporters. I hope that those who have spoken in support of this will accept a group thank you for speaking up and supporting the amendment. I do that not because I do not value the support or to show bad manners, but because I sense that the House wants to move forward. I will spend one minute on the speeches made opposing the amendment, because that is important. My noble friend Lady Fraser of Craigmaddie raised the question of a loophole. There may be a loophole but, assuming we pass this today, we will send it down to the House of Commons and there will be another chance to have a look at it there to see whether it achieves what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, and I have set out in the drafting. Much of what my noble friend Lord Carrington said was not relevant to the Bill. This will not affect the running of the hall or the policing around his flat. I was grateful for the history lesson but, as is often the case, it forgot the fact that the hall became a charity. If it had gone on as it had started, we would be in a different place, but the hall chose to become a charity, and that took it into a different area of the law. You simply cannot run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. You cannot say that you want to be a commercial organisation here but a charity there and think that you can get away with it, in the year of our Lord 2025. My noble friend and, I am afraid, my noble friend Lord Harrington, have a familiar phrase: “If you don’t do it, we will withdraw the Bill”. That is what happens when you talk to the hall; it has always said that nothing needs doing now and, if there is something that needs doing, it will be done later. And so we go round and round on that point. Finally, my noble friend Lord Moynihan of Chelsea made a number of assertions. He said—this is more sand in the eyes—that I had not helped in getting to the hall the names of the people to whom I had circulated the amendment. I thought this might happen, so I brought the letter with me. It is addressed to Ian McCulloch, the current chairman, and reads: “Dear Ian, thank you for this prompt follow up. I have read your briefing with interest. As regards the names of those Peers to whom I sent the briefing, I am afraid I do not have a list. Probably best if you want to ensure that no stone gets left unturned you send your briefing to every Peer”. What is unhelpful about that? I am told that I was being unhelpful in sending that. That email was sent on 27 January. I think my noble friend Lord Harrington is The boy stood on the burning deck Whence all but he had fled. He has worked very hard on this, and I have enjoyed working with him on it, but he too misunderstands. We agree with the intentions of this Bill, but we say that we need some more hurdles. The hurdles are in the amendment that we have tabled, and we have been round those already. My noble friend believes that the Bill will be withdrawn, so back we go again, with no progress ever made to deal with the fundamental position that there is a conflict. We have been round and round this, year after year. I believe it is time now for the House to make up its mind, decide what it wants to do and decide whether there is a conflict. I beg leave to test the opinion of the House.