My Lords, I add my congratulations to the Attorney-General, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hermer, on an excellent maiden speech. The content was deeply refreshing and the tone was hugely appreciated. I heard him say he would be an active listener, and I look forward to both his listening and his speaking. I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Khan, to the Front Bench, and I note the excellent maiden speech from the noble Lord, Lord Booth, and the good valedictory of the noble Lord, Lord Warner.

There is a great deal in this King’s Speech that I warmly welcome. I think my colleagues on these Benches and I will find ourselves able to vote in favour of quite a lot of it, although I suspect that, in good Liberal fashion, we will find a number of points of detail that we feel need to be explored and that we are able to object to in one way or another. But we look forward to a period of stability and competence.

I start by saying a brief word about devolution, before going on to an area of the constitution. I was greatly encouraged by the word “reset” in looking at how the devolution settlement is conducted, particularly in respect of Scotland. The trench warfare that has sometimes characterised the relationship between Westminster and the devolved Parliaments over some recent years has been deeply unhelpful. As somebody who, in my first incarnation in this place, fought very hard for the Scotland Bill and took part in it, I am one who wants to see devolution flourish. It will flourish only when it is a system that allows for opposing Governments in the different parts of the constitution and allows them to work together in a workmanlike if not always amicable way, but with confidence in each other. I greatly welcome what the Government are doing there, and I hope that we will have a chance to speak more on that on a latter occasion.

Before preparing for this debate I took an educated guess that it would have a large number of speakers, and took a further educated guess that I would be very near the bottom of the list. I therefore came into this Chamber with nothing written down, but I spent the weekend reading Hansards, not simply from our debates on the composition of your Lordships’ House in this place but from the many debates in the other place that I took part in. There was one in 2003, and a wonderful one on 6 March 2007—and one or two other of those who took part in that debate are here now, in this Chamber.

I do not have the time or the will, frankly, to go through all the detailed arguments, but let me say that, through all that process, I have become more and more convinced that the upper Chamber needs to be elected. It needs to be elected because to have a strong Parliament you need a robust second House, and to have a robust second House you have to have moral authority. While in some ways and in some constitutions that may come from appointment, the history of this place means that the only way in which it will have true legitimacy will be through the ballot box. Therefore, throughout my many discussions on the subject, I have pushed that forward. The House is too large and it is composed by patronage and heredity. It does superb work, and I have huge respect for everybody in the House, but it does not command the respect of those in the other place, the media or people in the country.

The lack of aspiration in what the Government are proposing for the constitution is the lack of will to do something proper with this House. We need that strong Parliament, and we need a robust second Chamber, and it cannot be achieved without democratic selection. To me, it is unthinkable that we arrive at the end of the first quarter of the 21st century with a Chamber that is still left in the time warp of heredity and patronage. It really is time that we trust the people. If we want the people to trust us, we need to trust them, and the ballot box is the way to do it.