Baroness Manningham-Buller (CB)

My Lords, it is getting late, so the House will be pleased to hear that I have cut what I was going to say. I start with the report itself. I was a member of the committee and I have been quite surprised by some of the comments. On the committee, there were four members of the Government, four members of the Opposition, two members of the Liberal Democrats and two members of the Cross Benches, of whom I was one. The report was agreed, and not only because of the skilful chairmanship of the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor. It has been said many times this evening that we are a self-governing House. We all subscribe to that, which is why this report is pragmatic, practical, modest and reflective of a manifesto commitment. While I accept it is not the business of a Select Committee to implement a manifesto commitment, this softens its edges in such a way that we would hope—referring to what the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, said—avoids a simplistic law coming from the other place, which we would not welcome. We also need to listen to ourselves. I find it arrogant to assume that major damage will be caused by the gradual—I use that word deliberately—retirement of current Members. What price recent experience, fresh generational perspectives, recent employment, experience in cyber and AI and younger perspectives? Of course it will be a sad loss to say goodbye to some of our Members, as it was to say goodbye to many of our hereditary friends. We liked them, they contributed in most cases, and we miss them. Here I quote Dylan Thomas, like the noble Lord, Lord True, who equated death with leaving the House. There is a further quotation from that poem, that “wise men at their end know dark is right”. There are three things I would like to mention which were not in the remit of the committee. Inevitably, the House would have liked us in different ways to do things that we were not asked to do. The first, which many noble Lords have mentioned, is about how people arrive here. What my noble friend Lord Burns recommended—one in for two out, and about 600—still looks appealing. Secondly, please can the shackles on HOLAC be removed, so that it can go back to putting forward a few more people than two? Thirdly, from my recollection, the committee was not about capacity; it was about retirement age. We talked about capacity, and at one stage we had a draft paragraph, but given that the House authorities themselves are addressing the issue, we did not pursue it. I hope that the House will approve the principle of this report, and I recommend it.