Parliament has returned to a sea of fresh faces, but unlike you, Mr Deputy Speaker, I recognise hardly any of them. They include my brother-in-law, my hon. Friend Charlie Elphicke, and my former association chairman, my hon. Friend Jacob Rees-Mogg. The party political landscape is transformed and there is a feeling of refreshed optimism, but if we do not apply a new way of thinking to fixing our nation's problems, the very same old politics will, I fear, return.

Mark Field (Cities of London & Westminster, Conservative) I agree with my right hon. Friend Sir George Young that it essential for us to put these matters on to a statutory footing, and I welcome the Government's determination for that to be done. As my right hon. Friend said, nothing would be more damaging to the reputation of parliamentary democracy in this country than for the allowances scandal to permeate the next Parliament as it has permeated this one.

Mr. Mark Field: The Lord Chancellor wishes to belittle the Earl of Stair and the Earl of Glasgow, but doubtless if they had been large-scale donors to the Labour party, they would have been welcomed as life peers for the remainder of their days. The Conservatives would be quite happy to go along with clause 29, if the Lord Chancellor had been true to his word. We made it clear in a Division in the House almost three years ago that we wanted to see how phase 2 would pan out, with an 80 or 100 per cent. elected House. Had he introduced that at the same time as the clause, we would have had no objection whatever, but our objection is the only safeguard to ensure that there is going to be a proper phase 2. Without it, we could wait 100 years, as he and Asquith have pointed out, to get rid of the remaining hereditaries. The risk is that if we allow clause 29 to go through, within 30 or 40 years, there will be no further reform, and the Government will have got their way.

I welcome the fact that we are having this debate today and I thank the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Mark Fisher) for introducing it. Regrettably, I must say that I do not entirely agree with the thrust of what he said. I am afraid that the report to which he has referred was far too timid; it needed to be a good deal more robust. I accept that there was an element of compromise about it and one certainly hopes that at least what has been proposed in the report will go through as a starting-point to what I think will be a radical reform.

Mark made two interventions on the Second Reading of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill. The first was on the potential for temporary peers, the second on protests in Parliament Square. Mark Field: The Justice Secretary has rightly pointed out the temporary nature of these arrangements, ...