Part of the debate – in Westminster Hall am 10:44 am ar 9 Mai 2001.
I certainly do not consider that the people who have been appointed are unsuitable to serve in the House of Lords. However, does not the Minister agree that the list of names suggests precisely the sort of people that one might have expected to be sent to the House of Lords under the old system? The whole thrust of the idea of people's peers was to reach out to other or further sections of the community that had not previously succeeded in securing representatives. Is that not the key failure of the appointment process?