Sir Gavin Williamson

I am more than happy to do so. More Conservative Members voted in favour of that legislation, and it collapsed not through lack of support on Conservative Benches or Liberal Democrat Benches but because Her Majesty’s official Opposition at that time were going to vote against it, which meant that the numbers were not going to stack up. The decision by the Labour party and its leadership to collapse that piece of legislation meant that a significant body of reform did not happen. I turn to the Labour party manifesto. Perhaps the hon. Member for Bolton West (Phil Brickell) has had a glance at this, but possibly not. It says on page 108 that Labour would introduce “legislation to remove the right of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords. Labour will also introduce a mandatory retirement age. At the end of the Parliament in which a member reaches 80 years of age, they will be required to retire from the House of Lords.” The subsequent paragraph says: “Labour will ensure all peers meet the high standards the public expect of them, and…will introduce a new participation requirement as well as strengthening the circumstances in which disgraced members can be removed.” Those are perfectly sound points of policy, which the party stood on at the last general election, but now it chooses to ignore them.