Lord Grocott (Lab)

My Lords, I never quite thought this day would come. We have had endless Private Members’ Bills and numerous discussions on the Floor of the House, and now we have recognition, which I am delighted about, from the usual channels that to hold two further hereditary Peers’ by-elections at a time when Parliament was considering ending such elections would make us even more of a laughing stock than these by-elections do in any case. I have to say it slowly: this almost certainly means the end of hereditary Peers’ by-elections. That is wonderful as far as I am concerned. It means an end to the clerk having to moonlight as a returning officer; it means an end to me having to give observations on the political significance of a particular by-election as and when it is declared; and of course it means that I shall not fulfil my ambition, which was to become the House’s equivalent of Professor Sir John Curtice in relation to by-elections. I should say as well, just as a general observation, that it means an end to elections that are men-only elections and an end to elections such as one where there was an electorate of three and six candidates—unknown in the western, eastern, northern or southern world, as far as I know. So the time has come at last, in a puff of smoke on a damp Thursday morning, when these wretched by-elections will come to a conclusion. I simply say to the noble Lord, Lord Moylan: know when it is over.