Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)

My Lords, if this was a proxy for capacity, we would not be bringing it forward, and we would not do both at the same time. I think the noble Lord misunderstands the reasons why the retirement age has been proposed. I was perfectly willing to accept that our manifesto was rather crude in its approach: it said Members would retire at the end of the Parliament in which they were 80. The proposal brought forward by the committee is much more sophisticated and thoughtful for Members of the House. But the noble Lord seems to think that no Member of the House should ever retire unless they want to. If we constantly do that, the House will continue to grow in size and we will not bring in Members with new experience and expertise to understand what is happening. This is not in any way to disrespect Members who have given many years’ service—a lifetime of service in some cases—to the House or those who thought they would be here until they chose not to be. It is about how we can have an effective House, do our best work as the House of Lords and best contribute to the role we have. The noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, who probably now has a different title that I cannot remember, made a comment about donors, and I entirely agree with him. If the only reason somebody is being made a Member of this House is because they have made large donations to a political party, that is entirely inappropriate and wrong. He also talked about the size of the House and ensuring that, as people left, it was not a case of just creating a vacancy. He is absolutely right, and I agree with him on that. The noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, was particularly concerned that the House could be packed and flooded with Members to keep a Government in power for a long time. In a sense, that could have happened at any time in our history; we had an unlawful Prorogation under a previous Prime Minister, which the courts were able to deal with. This House has the right to say how Members are introduced. It is not sharing a secret, because I spoke to a number of noble Lords opposite about this at the time, but shortly after I became shadow Leader, Jacob Rees-Mogg said that he would introduce a thousand new Peers to force Brexit through in exactly the way that the Government wanted. A number of us felt that, if he tried that one on, we would introduce one Peer a week, and it might have taken him some time. There are ways of addressing that through our constitutional arrangements at the moment as well. We have already taken some action on the Appointments Commission. We have strengthened the transparency in appointments and worked with the House of Lords Appointments Commission to update its vetting forms. The vetting has to be stronger, and we are looking at that. We have looked at my own party’s vetting processes as well. I reiterate my thanks to the committee. It was given an almost impossible task, and it did it with great aplomb and sensitivity. I value the work of this House, but if we say that we will never change, always do things in exactly the same way and leave others to make the change and take no responsibility ourselves, we do not get the change that we want. This is an opportunity for the House to show that we can manage our own affairs. We do not need things to be done to us, and we can show that we have a responsibility for the work that we do. I was struck by the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, and I think that is the point to end on: if it is not led by us, it will be led by those who know less and care less. We have a responsibility.