Baroness Taylor of Bolton (Lab)

My Lords, it has been a very interesting day. I think all Members have learned something from somebody else. I am not sure whether there are any two Members in the House who actually agree perfectly on every aspect of what we are talking about, but I thank everyone who has participated. I will not even try to go through every contribution—my noble friend the Leader has done a great deal of that—but I want to mention a few of the themes that have come up. Several people have criticised the remit. It is the remit that we were given, but, on the basis of the discussion we have had today, if we had been given a wider remit, we would still be here well into the next Parliament, because these issues run very deep and there is a great deal of feeling on everything. The size of the House was not in our remit, though we had to look at the implications of it. If the Burns report, which the House agreed all those years ago, had been implemented, then perhaps we would not be talking about these issues quite as much at the moment. The lessons of the Grocott Bill should be remembered in all of this. In terms of us saying little on appointments, we said clearly that, if numbers are going to be reduced, there would be implications if there is not better consideration of the open door and the flow in as well as the flow out. I will be very careful about what I say on HOLAC because I am a member of it, but we do talk clearly to prospective Members about the commitment. That is appropriate and has probably happened more in recent years than perhaps was the case previously. Questions have also been raised about the impact on the Cross Benches. My noble friend’s comments about the years in which there were no appointments from HOLAC are a salutary reminder that we need to keep that drumbeat going. It is important that we do not do anything in a way which causes unbelievably difficult problems for any element in the House, in particular the Cross Benches. However, I was very reassured by what the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, said about this being difficult but manageable for the Cross-Benchers. It is a fact that a larger number of Cross-Benchers would be affected by the participation requirement, but when we looked at the numbers, we saw that quite a lot of those who were in the “under 20%” were not that far off it. If it were to apply over two Sessions, there would be far more opportunity to be aware of where you are and to get that kind of information. Incidentally, one of the things that we suggested, to make it easier to be precise about attendance, was an ability for noble Lords to clock in in the Chamber with their passes, so that everybody knows that they have actually been in the House. That would make sure that there was a proper record. The noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, quoted what we said in the report on implementation. It is true that, if we do this by resolution, we would be talking about a self-governing House, with Peers respecting that. The noble Lord, Lord Smith, made the point that it is incumbent on each of us to take responsibility for respecting exactly what the House wants to happen. That was an important consideration. One of the things that was most interesting about the discussion today was the question of refreshment, which quite a few Members mentioned, including the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller. My noble friend Lady Hayter talked about having experience in consumer affairs and charities but noted that somebody else now might have more recent experience. The noble Baroness, Lady Watkins, said the same about nursing. It is interesting that it was the women who mentioned those aspects. It really matters that we have up-to-date experience. The pace of change in every field is accelerating, so we need to make sure that we have relevant and up-to-date experience. There is a concern about the reputation of the House. We are not elected and we are vulnerable, and therefore we have to do things that matter. That was the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, made. The noble Baroness, Lady Scott, said that we are being discriminatory when we talk about people who have been put here for life having to leave. However, it was a Conservative Government, with the Liberal Democrats, who produced the Clegg Bill, which would have got rid of so many noble Lords—and we could be abolished at any time. Yes, we have a right, but it is not something that can never be changed. I share my noble friend Lord Grocott’s concern that there will always be those who oppose any change, but I think that those who oppose any change should be aware of the consequence that a bigger change very often catches up with them. It has been a very useful debate. I agree with what my noble friends have said: it is better that we take this on board ourselves and that we do not have change imposed on us. I hope that the Leader of the House will be able to find time, in the not-too-distant future, for the House to come to some decisions on these matters. I beg to move.