Lord Howard of Lympne (Con)

I had the privilege of sitting in Cabinet with James, where he was listened to with the same respect and attention as he was later as a Back-Bench Member of your Lordships’ House. Why should we impair the quality of our proceedings by this act of self-harm? The committee’s report contains no reference to cost, so I asked the Library to do a few calculations. First, we must make a few assumptions—I hope that those I have made are reasonable, though one cannot be certain. Just suppose that the 200 or so Members of your Lordships’ House who rarely attend now decide that, in order to maintain their membership between now and 2029, they ought to fulfil the participation requirement and attend 20% of the sittings of the House. That might impose some strains on the facilities of the House. And they may decide to speak. We have a generous time limit of five minutes in this debate. Could we in future be allowed to intervene in debates only for a matter of seconds, and not just at Question Time as we were told earlier today? There is also the matter of the cost: those Members would no doubt claim the allowances to which they were entitled. I asked the Library to estimate the cost that might involve. It provided various estimates, the highest of which was £9.8 million—nearly £10 million. Is that the best use of taxpayers’ money? Has the Chancellor been told? Could this be the straw that breaks the camel’s back for the bond market? We are all familiar with the law of unintended consequences. Do we want to provide an example which may be cited with relish for many years to come? These proposals are unnecessary and could lead to consequences which I suggest many of your Lordships would find undesirable. They should be rejected.