Luke Taylor

I agree 100%. I expect to be able to champion this measure on the doorstep, and to boast about speaking in this debate on making this incremental gain and removing the egregious historical anomalies still in our system. I give special thanks to the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell), who made the key, almost blockbuster, point about the gender imbalance among those who are eligible to become hereditary Members in the other place, and about the sheer insanity of the hereditary peer cohort being entirely male. Protecting that astonishingly unequal status quo is utterly indefensible. I thank him for making that point, which should surely have ended the debate on its own. I look forward to voting for the Bill’s Second Reading tonight, but I implore the Paymaster General to bring forward as soon as possible further measures to reform the House of Lords. The Liberal Democrats will continue to act as a constructive Opposition, as I hope we have done today, and to push for more radical proposals for reform of the House of Lords, some of which have been teased by the right hon. Member for Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge (Sir Gavin Williamson)—I hope that I have pronounced his constituency right. I look forward to working with him to develop those plans. I hope that the measures before us will restore voters’ trust, which the previous Government trashed. I implore the House to support the Bill.