Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)

The noble Baroness is implying that there is no notice. To give notice is the very reason for these proposals. It sounds like they are going to happen tomorrow, but these proposals do not come into force, or start to come into force, until 2029, when there will be a retirement age of 85 which will go down each year to 80 by 2033 or 2034. I just make the point that every time a change is suggested, there are those who say, “We want change, but not this change, in this way, and not now”. I think that to survive and do our best work, we often have to embrace some kind of change. The noble Lord, Lord Sherbourne of Didsbury, and others asked why I set up this committee. I think he attributed motives which I would dispute. On Lords reform issues, our manifesto looked at certain stages, and there are number of issues there. When we were debating at one of its early stages the Bill on hereditary Peers, there were more amendments, more pages of amendments and more pages of Hansard about retirement age and participation—and a number of noble Lords on the other side spoke far more about it—than about hereditary Peers: “Why aren’t we doing anything about this?” So, that is why I set up the committee. I promised this House that rather than just bringing forward legislation, we would give this House the opportunity to examine and look at the issues, to give it the opportunity, as noble Lords asked for, to take some responsibility. No good deed goes unpunished, does it? But there is an opportunity for us to look at this. That is the first point. Also, I thought we would have learned a lesson from the hereditary Peers legislation. Time and again, my noble friend Lord Grocott brought to this House proposed legislation to say, “We’ll end the by-elections, which means no new hereditary Peers come in and those who are here remain”. That was rejected time and again by the party opposite when it was in government. That would have been a much smoother transition. If the noble Lord wants to intervene on me, please do.