I am grateful. I was wondering what the chuntering was—I did not quite catch what the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, was talking about.

It is an interesting proposal from the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. I cannot recall—and I think the noble Lord had this right—the last time any political party had an overall majority in this Chamber. He talked about an overall majority, as the Conservative Party has been the largest party for a very long time; before the passing of the 1999 Act, it had over 40%, so it was the Conservative Party that had that majority prior to the hereditary Peers leaving at that time. Since their removal, no party has ever had more than 40% of the seats. Even when this Bill is passed, the Government Benches will still only be 28% of the seats of this House.

I was not quite sure what the noble Lord meant by a “ratchet effect”. The noble Lord will know that I have decried that. It worked very badly under the last Government, where it seemed that every time the Government lost a vote, they would put more Peers in, even though they had a much larger group than any other party and still lost votes. The issue of losing votes is often to do with the quality of the legislation; it is never just about numbers in this place.

The purpose behind the amendment from noble Lord, Lord Lucas, is to address the fact that it has been said, in the media and in the Chamber, that today’s Government are trying to remove hereditary Peers to create vacancies and bring in more Labour Peers to create a majority. My very strong view is on record—in Select Committee in the other place and here—that this House does its best work when there are roughly equal numbers between Government and Opposition.

I would like to see a House of Lords that is more deliberative. We got into some bad habits under the last Government, where a system of “We have the numbers and can get this through” came about. That largely started during the coalition Government, when there was a very large majority for the coalition. Almost anything the coalition Government wanted to do would get through. When we have roughly equal numbers between the main opposition and government parties, we do our best work, because we are more deliberative in our approach and more engaged in how we work. We are not just thinking it is all about vote; it is about the quality of debate and the quality of advice we can offer.

The noble Lord mentioned again about the Prime Minister making appointments. The Prime Minister does not make all appointments; appointments go through the Prime Minister, but political parties nominate. The noble Lord smiles at me, but he will know that under the last Government the proportion of new appointments to the Opposition was significantly lower than the proportion the Government took to themselves. I have given this figure before but, at the end of the 2010 Session, when Labour had been in government, we had 25 more Peers than the Conservative Party. After the same period of time, but a period of Conservative Governments, there were more than 100 more Conservative than Labour Peers. That imbalance does not serve the House well, and I would like to get back to having a better balance between parties.

Perhaps an indication of our good faith on this is that, despite the disparity in the parties, at the last round of appointments I know that the Conservative Opposition did not expect any new Peers to be appointed. However, on top of the resignation honours list that is still to come from the previous Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, we suggested to the Opposition that there could be six or seven new Peers, even given the disparity in numbers. I say that in some good faith, because I do not want to play the numbers game; it does not serve the House well.