Wednesday 12th March 2025
(2 weeks, 2 days ago)
Lords ChamberHouse of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill 2024-26 View all House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill 2024-26 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 49-III(b) Amendment for Committee (Supplementary to the Third Marshalled List) - (12 Mar 2025)
Lord Blencathra
“Attendance requirement of 20%A member of the House of Lords who attended fewer than 20% of possible sittings in the 2019–2024 Parliament must retire from the House of Lords within two months of the day on which this Act is passed.”Member's explanatory statement
Alongside other amendments in the name of Lord Blencathra, this amendment has been tabled to permit the House to vote on three options for requiring peers who have made little recent contribution to the work of the House to retire. According to analysis of Library figures, requiring a minimum attendance of 20% of sittings between 2019 and 2024 could remove 154 peers.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
My Lords, the Labour manifesto said that
“we will introduce a new participation requirement”.
My Amendment 26, in the next group, deals specifically with the very small number of Peers who turn up and then do nothing.
The Government keep complaining that many amendments to this Bill have nothing to do with the removal of hereditary Peers, saying that the Bill is narrowly focused. That is true, but it was a political decision by the Government to make it so narrow and not include the other priority issues from their manifesto. The Government are seeking to give the impression that dealing only with hereditary Peers is somehow sacrosanct or ordained from on high. If we were in the Moses Room right now, I would be looking at the tablets that he brought down from Sinai to see if there was an 11th commandment saying, “Thou shalt have no other provisions in thy Bill except the removal of hereditary Peers”. Governments often widen the scope of Bills and adjust the Long Title. Indeed, today in the other place the Government have tabled Amendments 262 and 263, which will amend the Long Title to the Employment Rights Bill. They could do so for this one also if they were so minded.
With these amendments, I am seeking to explore the possibility of retiring Peers who have attended few of our sittings. Let me make it crystal clear that I reject the idea of a full-time House of political professionals. The great strength of this revising Chamber is that, with a very wide range of expertise to call on, most noble Lords do not sit here all the time intervening on issues that are not their speciality, but participate in our debates and Select Committees on issues on which they are expert.
I recall a debate on an amendment to the precision breeding Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, was debating a point with the noble Lord, Lord Winston, concerning recombinant DNA—whatever that is. The rest of us sat there watching a very civilised ping-pong match, and they were the only two in the whole Chamber who knew what they were talking about. Indeed, when my noble friend the Minister wound up, he said that neither he nor his officials in the Box knew anything about the subject, either, and would both noble Lords come to the department and explain it to them? That is one tiny example of the superb strengths of this House—that is the House of Lords in action. For the record, both noble Lords had attendances in the last Parliament well above 30% and 40%.
I turn once again to the Excel spreadsheets produced by the Library, which have the attendance record for all Peers in the last Parliament. There may be some names missing and there are other little technical errors; however, these figures are not the full picture, since the attendance data is based on contributions made in the Chamber and Grand Committee and does not include participation in other committee meetings. The Library tells me:
“This is because of the way in which different types of data are stored in the House of Lords’ internal systems and the challenges in extracting it to provide a dataset which we can be confident is accurate for all members and across the full duration of the Parliament, unlike chamber contributions which we can be sure is robust. We are actively looking at ways of incorporating committee attendance into this analysis and hope to resolve this in future releases, conscious that we want to present as comprehensive a picture as possible.”
Nor do the attendance figures count all the days that Ministers are working away from the Lords in their departments, or abroad. Nor do they include the 25 days per annum when 23 Members of this House are away serving at the Council of Europe, the NATO Parliamentary Assembly and the OSCE.
With those caveats, the figures are nevertheless accurate enough for us to debate the concept of retiring Peers below certain attendance thresholds, and they give us a fairly good picture of attendance. If we retired Peers who attended fewer than 20% of possible sitting days in the previous Parliament, that would be 154 Peers. What does 20% mean in actual sitting days? Over the past 10 years—I have done the number-crunching myself —the number of sitting days has averaged 148.1 per annum. That ranged from just 15 days in 2019 to 350 during the 2017-19 Session; thus, an annual average is more accurate than a sessional average. Peers who attended 20% of the time therefore attended for just 30 days out of 148. Peers who attended 15% of the time attended 22 days out of 148, and those who attended just 10% of the time were present here for just 15 days.
If noble Lords access the spreadsheet, they can come to their own conclusions on whether the occasions on which some of those 154 Peers spoke or participated merit continuance in this House. I have seen a few names who made worthwhile speeches, but my recollection is that the vast majority of the 154 Peers in this category have not contributed much to the work of this House. Those who attended fewer than 15% of possible sittings number 118 Peers. When I look at the 10% and below—the 70 Peers who turned up for a maximum of 15 days per annum—I cannot see, in my opinion, any whose contribution was so essential or vital that we should retain their presence in this House for their very rare words of wisdom. Indeed, I can recall only three of them making any speech, and none has served on any of our committees.
This is not one of my amendments, but if we opted for removing those who have attended 5% or less of the time, that would be just 39 Peers. My noble friend Lord Hailsham has suggested a 1% threshold, but that is 12 Peers and, in my opinion, it would make us look a bit silly if we went that low. However, I agree with his other amendments: of course we must exempt those on leave of absence—but not for too long—or those with royal duties, such as the noble Duke, the Duke of Norfolk, or the new Lord Chamberlain, the noble Lord, Lord Benyon.
These figures are out by about eight because of judicial appointments and some deaths since the Library compiled them last year, but noble Lords can see the ballpark figure—if that American term is still acceptable. Noble Lords may say, “What does it matter if they don’t turn up? They are not getting any allowance and not costing anything”. I agree with that view, but we are here today because the Government say that there are too many Peers, and the Government’s solution is to get rid of 88 hereditaries, many of whom are assiduous attenders. Indeed, there are only 14 hereditaries who have attended less than 20% of sittings.
I do not have a firm view on my options, but I think that noble Lords would consider the 20% or 15% thresholds to be on the high side and a bridge too far to begin with. When noble Lords look at the names of the 70 who would be retired for an attendance figure of fewer than 15 days per annum, I think we might have some consensus around that, with the necessary exemptions suggested by my noble friend Lord Hailsham.
Now, where this gets really interesting is if one combines an age cut-off and an attendance cut-off. The Excel spreadsheet gives some interesting figures. I will not waste time by running through the extremes: at one end, a retirement age of 90 and an attendance of just 1% would retire 89 Peers; at the other, retirement at 80 and a 20% attendance cut-off would retire 420 Peers, which I think would be a tad excessive.
The more sensible criteria might be a retirement age of 85 and an attendance of 10%; that would retire 304 Peers by 2029. A retirement age of 85 and an attendance of 5% would retire 213 Peers. I suggest that that figure is on the edge of a possible solution, reducing our numbers to those who turn up, take part and are not perceived from outside as too old to do the job.
I have a couple of final points on attendance. I think that it has to be retrospective and based on attendance in the previous Parliament. That is highly contentious, but if we introduced, say, a 10% threshold for about 15 days in future, we would have some colleagues counting their attendance and rushing in to attend for a few days at the end of the year just to get over the threshold. We would also need some special appeal mechanism—a committee to which Peers could appeal if they felt that they were being wrongly excluded. I will say more about that when we debate Amendment 26.
I appreciate that this is contentious and goes against the precedents we have had for centuries. But I come back to my starting point that retirement of those who turn up infrequently and say little is infinitely preferable to throwing out all hereditaries, over 70 of whom who turn up regularly and participate fully in the work of this House.
Of course, if we were to go down this route in future, we would need complete and accurate figures for attendance in the Chamber, the Grand Committee and all our committees, as well as on Ministers and shadow Cabinet Ministers working away from the precincts of this building and those Peers on foreign delegations.
In conclusion, I look forward to the unanimous support of my noble friends, and I beg to move.
Viscount Hailsham (Con)
I rise very briefly to speak to the four amendments in my name, Amendments 22 to 25. The first three would amend the lead amendment, Amendment 19, moved by my noble friend. For reasons that I shall come to shortly, I very strongly disagree with it.
First, I express some cautious agreement with my noble friend as regards future participation. My noble friend Lord Blencathra has urged the case for requiring a future minimum degree of engagement as a condition of membership of this House, and there is clearly a case for that. My own Amendment 25 suggests a participation record of 10%. However, I would be a bit cautious about setting too high a requirement; first, because occasional interventions from those who are not regular attenders can be very valuable, sometimes on esoteric subjects, although not exclusively so.
Moreover, and more generally, there is a danger that too demanding a requirement could encourage interventions for the purpose of meeting the criteria from those who are not currently great participators. We all know that speeches in major debates are time-limited, and very often the time available is very short. The question that arises is: do we want to make a more restrictive timetable? I think not, but that could well be a consequence of an increased participation requirement. As my noble friend touched on, there needs to be a degree of flexibility with regard to minimum requirements. Members may very well have good reasons for not participating: illness, leave of absence, overseas commitments, family problems and so forth. My suggestions in Amendments 22, 24 and 25 are designed to address these problems.
Where I actively and positively disagree with my noble friend is in his Amendment 19 and his related Amendments 20 and 21. Your Lordships will have noticed that those amendments relate to the 2019-24 Session. That is retrospective in character, and my noble friend is suggesting that if a Member fails to satisfy the stated participation level in the past Parliament, he must retire.
I am against retrospective requirements or sanctions. My noble friend’s proposal is just that. It imposes a penalty which is entirely retrospective in character, in respect of a failure to meet a requirement which did not exist at the relevant time. I regard that as a thoroughly objectionable proposition and I very much hope that this Committee will not go down that road.
The Earl of Devon (CB)
My Lords, I rise briefly to speak to Amendment 64 in my name, to which the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, has added his name. Like the other amendments in this group, it addresses the question of attendance.
By amending the House of Lords Reform Act 2014, which sets a minimum attendance of one sitting day every Session of Parliament, my amendment aims to ensure that Members attend a minimum of 10% of sitting days in each Session, which is similar to some of the amendments already mentioned. As I have said previously, I am of the view that the broad and largely amateur membership of your Lordships’ House is one of its enduring strengths. The fact that those who sit are, for the most part, not professional legislators is important to ensure that a diversity of experience and views are heard from a wide range of backgrounds. I believe that that was the consensus view of the House when we debated an elected House on Monday.
That said, a minimum attendance is entirely reasonable and this amendment puts that at 10% of the sitting days in any one Session. Such a modest attendance will ensure that Members are committed to service in the House and are able to keep suitably abreast of developments in Westminster. It will not, however, require Members to attend so often as to preclude them from continuing to maintain their outside interests, and will equally not require them to make unnecessary and numerous interventions, slowing down the business of the House as Members seek to pad their records of contribution. This is in nobody’s interests.
I note that the amendment is similar to Amendment 21, proposed so excellently and with so much Excel detail by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, but his amendment would require 10% of sitting days within any one Parliament, whereas Amendment 64 requires it in any one Session, which will ensure a greater regularity and spread of attendance. On that basis, I recommend it to the Committee.
Lord Lucas (Con)
My Lords, I have Amendment 37 in this group. I think we have Members of extreme expertise in here but, unlike my noble friend Lord Hailsham, that we do not want to hear from them only when that particular expertise is engaged. We want their broader contribution and wider understanding of life; we want them to bring that expertise into our wider debates. We should expect people who are part of this House to turn up for a reasonable percentage of time—certainly 10%. As I learned from my noble friend Lord Strathclyde, Peers whose habit is to blow in, blow off and blow out are really no use to this House whatever.
The other characteristics of my amendment, compared with others, are to leave a lot of flexibility to the House of Lords in saying what the level should be and how it should be determined. That is rather better expressed in Amendment 32, which we will come to in a while and which I thoroughly support.
The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)
My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 64, which is the one I am most attracted by in this group. I have in my right hand a copy of the Writ of Summons that we each receive when we come here. I am going to read an extract:
“We, strictly enjoining, command you upon the faith and allegiance by which you are bound to Us that considering the difficulty of the said affairs and dangers impending (waiving all excuses) you be personally present at Our aforesaid Parliament with Us and with the Prelates, Nobles and Peers of Our said Kingdom to treat and give your counsel”.
I believe that the Writ of Summons is a very serious document and this is why I think that Section 2 of the House of Lords Reform Act 2014, which allows for only one day of participation, is not consistent with the Writ of Summons, frankly.
I have been looking at my own spreadsheet; my numbers came from the Journal Office, so they are no doubt slightly different. In looking at those numbers, I felt that, as I said in November and in December, by raising that one day to 10% of the days sat in a Session, we would lose between 50 and 100 of our number who did not live up to what is in our Writ of Summons. I felt that that was proportionate. However, although I clearly looked at other percentages as well, 10% is a figure that, selfishly, suits the Cross Benches, because we have a large number of people on our Benches who are low-frequency, high-impact Members. I need not name them, because all noble Lords will be able to think of several, but they are people at the very top of their professions. They are able to come here to give devastatingly good speeches, but they are not able to make more than 10% of the time here. They go on to our committees and do a lot of valuable work for our House. That is why I feel that 10% is the right number.
The pleasing thing about the amendment in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Devon, is that, in it, attendance is measured as it is today, so the very methods that we use to measure attendance are there. The methods that we use if a Member wants to appeal a wrong marking out, as it were, are there and work well. I have confirmed with the Clerk of the Parliaments that these methods could be applied to this type of amendment. Therefore, in my eyes, the noble Earl has scored a hit.
The Earl of Dundee (Con)
My Lords, as is proposed in Amendment 37 by my noble friend Lord Lucas, this matter ought to be dealt with proactively; for, as may be inferred from that amendment, individual Peers should make their own commitments in the first place. Therefore, at the beginning of every Session of Parliament, each House of Lords Member would sign a declaration of intent to attend more than a certain proportion of sitting days during that Session. Nevertheless, a key question obviously remains: what should this minimum number of days be?
Here, once more, my noble friend Lord Blencathra assists our thinking and comes to the rescue. He has just done so by gently nudging imprecision and indecisive conjecture towards mathematical certainty. For, as he points out, if there had been a 20% attendance stipulation between 2019 and 2024, we would have lost 154 Peers; if there had there been a 15% attendance stipulation, we would have lost 118 Peers; and, through a 10% attendance stipulation, 70 Peers would have been asked to leave.
Yet, having got thus far, mathematics then slightly escapes and retreats back towards conjecture; for, given that there was no minimum percentage attendance requirement between 2019 and 2024—and given that these years would not suddenly come to penalise Peers retrospectively—that leaves us guessing, of course, as to the number of Peers who, in the knowledge that they would be expelled if they did not meet that requirement, would have in fact failed the attendance test. Obviously, these numbers of failures would not be the same as —instead, almost certainly be much less than—those figures between 2019 and 2024, as has already been quoted, when Peers knew that there was no minimum attendance requirement as high as 10% that they had to consider at all.
Included in this grouping is Amendment 64 in the names of the noble Earl, Lord Devon, and my noble friend Lord Dobbs, to which the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, has referred. A minimum attendance requirement of 10% of House of Lords sittings is stipulated. Your Lordships may agree with that for two reasons, the amendment works efficiently and strikes a good balance when taken in conjunction with my noble friend Lord Lucas’s Amendment 37, as other speakers have said. First, following Amendment 64, Members would then know that if they do not adjust their diaries to a known quantity of 10% attendance, they will be asked to leave. Secondly, following Amendment 37, their necessary advance commitments to dates at the beginning of parliamentary Sessions would more than likely be made responsibly and, therefore, to well exceed a statutory minimum of 10% in any case.
Viscount Astor (Con)
My Lords, I offer a different opinion—perhaps a dissenting voice. My noble friend Lord Blencathra’s amendment is terrible. It is a bad amendment to a bad Bill. What he has not said is why, when he tabled it, he chose, for example, five years. What was the purpose of that? Was it one Parliament? Why not 10 years? Why not 15 years, as some noble Lords would like the Session to be? Why not go back further? In my case, the noble Lord could have gone back 50 years. I do not know what my attendance record would look like over that period—pretty shoddy, I suspect, but never mind.
It is a mistake to have this principle, because if it is carried forward we will find ourselves encouraging Lobby fodder—my noble friend is a former Chief Whip. Everybody would be here all the time to vote and get their name down but they would not participate in your Lordships’ House; they would just be here for the benefit of the Chief Whip. That is a bad thing. Also, if we are going to attract some younger Members to your Lordships’ House, they will have careers and other jobs, and maybe would not be able to attend all the time. Some noble Lords are retired and do not have other jobs to do.
This is a dangerous and bad precedent. It should be discarded and it should not be in this Bill. I welcome and look forward to hearing my noble friend’s response.
Lord Newby (LD)
My Lords, this group and the next deal with the vexed question of how we ensure that Peers do the job for which they have been summoned by the monarch, when we know—the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, has given us the statistics—that not everybody does. Equally, we are all of the view that everybody should.
This is an area where there is a dissonance, just as there is on retirement age, between what people outside think and what people inside think. All the discussion so far has been on how it affects us rather than how we are seen. If you say to most people, “I am an active Member of the House of Lords”, they might ask, “How often do you go?” If you reply, “Well, it’s very onerous you know; I’ve got to go 10% of the time”, then they would ask, “Well, what does that mean?” You would say, “It means that when the House is sitting I have to go—well, not once a fortnight, but roughly that”. They would then ask, “What time do you start?” “I probably go in at about 3.30 pm, 4 pm”, you would say. They would ask, “What time would you finish?” You would reply, “If it was a busy day, I might stay until the dinner hour”. This is not an onerous requirement. Suppose that it is 20%. That is once a fortnight, roughly speaking, possibly for a couple of hours. That, to most people outside, would not be seen as a hugely onerous requirement.
I also think that, following our Writ of Summons and as Members of a deliberative assembly, it is frankly not good enough to turn up just once or twice a year to discuss an issue on which you are an expert. In politics, many of the issues that we have to debate are ones that we would rather not debate, because we are not experts, but they are the most important. Some of them we would rather not debate because they are really difficult, and we are not experts. Take assisted dying: I am sure that many of us, in an ideal world, would at one level rather that other people took a decision on it, because it is so difficult. However, we are summoned by the monarch to give counsel on a range of things. If there is any suggestion, particularly in legislation, that a minimum level is acceptable, then that really would not be acceptable, even though that has been the pattern in the past.
I also have a question about whether legislation is the right place to put such an amendment, in terms of the amendments in both this group and the next. Apart from anything else, it goes in here and then it goes to the other place. Let us suppose that our colleagues in the Commons say, “Hang on a second, those people at the other end seem to think that 10% is enough—that’s ridiculous. Let’s change it and put in 50%. That sounds a bit more reasonable”. Are we then going to have ping-pong on what is the reasonable level of attendance here?
Lord Strathclyde (Con)
We should thank my noble friend Lord Blencathra for introducing this amendment. It is a subject worth discussing. Since this Bill is designed to fling out a cohort of your Lordships’ House who on the whole do turn up and play a part and some of whom hold very senior and important roles in the House, it is worth discussing for a few minutes those who hardly come at all and finding out whether there should be some kind of attendance threshold.
The amendment that we are discussing deals with attendance. My noble friend Lord Hailsham mentioned participation—but I think that participation, which is very important, is a very different issue from attendance, and we will come to it in the course of today’s deliberations. What the noble Earls, Lord Kinnoull and Lord Devon, said about the Cross Benches is very important. We do not want to discourage or reduce the ability of those Peers who have something to say but for a whole variety of reasons come less often than most of us; that is why the threshold should be realistic but relatively low.
I think that what my noble friend Lord Blencathra was saying was that, if it had been set at 10%, we would lose about 100 Peers, from past records. I entirely agree with my noble friend Lord Hailsham that we should not do anything that is retrospective. I do not think there is a problem and that suddenly a whole bunch of Peers would turn up because they wanted to be above the threshold—because the Peers who come hardly at all have already decided that they do not want to play a part in your Lordships’ House, but do not want to retire or take leave of absence. So this is a useful amendment and a useful debate and discussion—and setting the threshold at 10% I do not think will put anybody off.
Viscount Trenchard (Con)
My Lords, I, too, support my noble friend Lord Blencathra in bringing forward this topic, and I very much agree with what my noble friend Lord Strathclyde has just said.
When I looked at my noble friend’s three amendments, I was inclined to think that Amendment 20 struck the right balance. It is important to retain the concept of the House of Lords as a part-time House, but I also believe that, to remain sufficiently involved in what is going on so as to be able to make a contribution to debates on matters in which noble Lords possess expertise and knowledge, a participation level of 10% may be on the low side. But, as long as your Lordships’ House retains its present sitting hours, 15% is a reasonable minimum participation level—although it would be difficult to maintain a full-time job outside the House and a 15% participation level if the House were to adopt similar sitting hours to the House of Commons.
However, my noble friend Lord Hailsham is right to provide in his Amendment 25 for the possibility that the House may resolve to exempt a noble Lord from compulsory retirement if it concludes that there was a good cause for that noble Lord’s non-attendance. I entirely agree with the point raised by the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, about low-attendance, high-impact Members.
I also support Amendment 37, in the name of my noble friend Lord Lucas. This amendment would allow the House to provide exceptions to compulsory retirement, but, interestingly, allows the possibility of first fixing and later changing the minimum participation rate through Standing Orders, which would provide for more flexibility. My noble friend Lord Blencathra is absolutely right to ask your Lordships to consider this matter, because the Labour Party manifesto also committed to introduce a new participation requirement, at the same time as excluding the excepted hereditary Peers. Those who believe that the House is too large may also support the introduction of a minimum participation level. I would expect that the retirement of a number of inactive Peers would make it easier for the Government to find a better way forward that would cause less disruption to the ability of the House to discharge its functions in a way that serves the country well.
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)
My Lords, I find myself questioning the premise on which this amendment rests, and indeed on which the Bill it is amending rests—namely, that there are too many of us here. It is repeated very often, but it is rarely interrogated or properly analysed. The case against the amendment from my noble friend Lord Blencathra has been eloquently made by others, and I am not going to repeat the points that they have made. My noble friend Lord Astor made an extremely good point about the perverse incentives that it would bring in, my noble friend Lord Hailsham made a very good point about its retrospective nature, and who can disagree with the compelling case made by the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, about the low-frequency but high-impact Members?
But we would not be having this debate at all if it were not for this general assumption that we need to free up space. Before I came here, I took that as axiomatic. We are always told that this is the second-biggest legislative chamber after the National People’s Congress in Peking. But too many Peers for what? Do we have difficulty finding a seat in the Chamber? I do not think so; if we look around, we see that there is plenty of space. Do we have difficulty booking a table in the Peers’ Dining Room? Do we not have our Written Questions accepted? Are we pullulating in such numbers that the ushers are unable to cope with us? I do not think so. If we are, the one lot of people we do not have a problem with are those who do not turn up very often. They, by definition, are the ones who are contributing least to the problem and, indeed, claiming least from it.
This Chamber has existed in one form or another since Magna Carta—at least if we count the conciliar form of government that took shape under King John and Henry III as the progenitor and ancestor of this Chamber—and at no stage has anyone felt the need to insert a minimum attendance requirement. It was assumed that it could be left to the patriotism and judgment of the bishops and barons to decide when something was sufficiently important to merit turning up. Have we completely junked that idea of trusting people’s own discretion and judgment?
If it really were a question of numbers and we really did feel that we were massively overloaded, why is it that almost every day we keep on admitting more Members here? If Ministers think that the problem is that this is too large a legislature, why do we seem to be gaining half a dozen people a week? I sometimes feel we are in one of those Gilbert and Sullivan operettas where everyone gets a peerage. I sometimes wonder whether that is the end game—that this country will end up becoming an oligarchy, where the real power is vested in the hands of the last remaining 500 people who still have the right to vote for the other place, and everyone else will have the right to sit here. But, you know, as long as they do not turn up, it is still not a problem—so I come back to saying that I dispute the premise.
I know that Ministers share my view, because they are not proposing a cut-off based on attendance, or indeed a cut-off based on age. They have looked beyond their manifesto and have decided to do the right thing, rather than be bound by the dots and commas of what their manifesto says. I hope they will extend that logic to the only democratically elected element of your Lordships’ Chamber, namely our hereditary colleagues.
Lord Dobbs (Con)
My Lords, I am delighted to follow my noble friend Lord Hannan, but we do have a problem with numbers. We are constantly being compared with the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. It is a silly jibe but it does us damage. It makes us seem stuffed like a goose. When did we last see 800 Peers in this Chamber—or 700 or 600? Yet the impression out there is that there are far too many of us who are here only because we are stuffed geese. There is widespread, if not universal, agreement that our numbers should come down. That is why I was very happy to join the noble Earl, Lord Devon, on his amendment, which will help to achieve that objective.
The noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, talked about a part-time House. We all talk about the value of a part-time House. Do we want a full-time House? No, I do not think we do, but neither do we want a no-time house. A peerage is not a zero-hours contract.
It is strange that the Government set out their deckchairs in their manifesto—so far, so very clear about a number of different measures that would help bring down numbers—but for some reason they now seem content to sit on their principles and watch the boats sail by. It is baffling that they do not do what they said they would do, and why they aim their cannons simply at the hereditaries, rather than at, for instance, those who do not participate. A fellow might be forgiven for thinking that some in the Labour Party’s main interest is not so much reform as a bit of cynical old-fashioned class warfare—perish that thought.
I constantly bang on about the fundamental principle that inspires the relationship between individual Peers and our institution, which is that we are here to serve this House. This House does not exist to serve us. The institution, not the individual, must come first. It is not simply a numbers game. More fundamentally, it is about the need to refresh this House to ensure that its experience and advice are up to date and that this House remains relevant. Sometimes you need a fresh wind to blow away cobwebs. If numbers matter, and the Labour manifesto said that they do, I suggest that the amendments we are discussing today would help.
In a slightly wider context, we all know that the Government will get the Bill through, but why do it the hard way—the bitter way? Why strip away the desire to compromise? Why poison the well? Why not show a little willingness, allow a little wiggle room on the Bill? Is it really to be seen just as the use of naked power?
We have, of course, had different points of view expressed, even on this amendment. But I believe that a quick and honourable deal could be reached on the Bill and, indeed, on a wider reform package in line with Labour’s manifesto. That deal could be done this afternoon between the party leaders over a cup of tea, and even before that cup of tea has a chance to go cold.
It is important for the credibility of this Bill, this Government and this House that the Government should try, and be seen to be trying, to come to a broader agreement, than they have done so far. I hope that the Government will open their door and reach out for agreement. That would be so much more dignified and productive than simply being seen to reach out for our hereditaries’ throats.
Lord Sentamu (CB)
My Lords, I ask noble Lords to forgive me for echoing what the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, said on Monday. I listened to some amazing speeches, but their delivery will be in the future, not with this Bill. This Bill is so small and its effect on hereditary Peers is absolutely terminal in the end. I am not a prophet, nor a prophet’s son, but I like to have a healthy check.
Lord Bellingham (Con)
My Lords, it is a huge privilege to follow the noble and right reverend Lord, who made some very compelling points. I want to pick up on three points and make a suggestion.
First, on this Chamber being overcrowded and everyone being completely under pressure wherever they go, I agree entirely with the noble Lord, Lord Hannan. I come from the other place, where—as the Leader of the House will know only too well—in a Division, there can be up to 600 MPs voting. Even on a really busy Division here, there are never more than about 450, 470 or so. Frankly, when I was an MP, I often had difficulty finding a place in the Library or in the tea room. We do not have that problem here. The idea that that this House is ridiculously overcrowded is a non-starter. It is not the case.
I absolutely agree with what the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, mentioned. When those Members turn up here from time to time—but make a huge impact—the House is captivated by what they say. It would be a great shame to lose them by some rule around 10% or 20%. Would it not be better if the House looked at Section 85 of the Local Government Act 1972, which states that if a councillor fails to attend for a period of six months without due cause they can be disqualified? Would that not cover some of our colleagues who never turn up? If that rule was in place, would that not make them turn up? That would be better way of going about it than looking at 10% or 20%.
One of the reasons why the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, tabled these amendments was to show—and he made it clear enough—that there are many life Peers who hardly ever turn up and may have a lot to offer but do not take their role very seriously; whereas I am told by the Library that if we applied the 20% rule to hereditary Peers, only two hereditaries would be covered by that. All the other hereditaries have an attendance of more than 20%. None has an attendance of less than 10%. Their attendance record is quite excellent and impressive. Could the Minister comment on that point?
As the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, pointed out, we are going to be debating this in Committee for more than four days. We may progress, but, rightly, a lot of different subjects have been covered. We will then have a long time on Report and at Third Reading. Surely there is a compromise that can be found. The Government already know they are going to get rid of the elections. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, that it is very sad that the elections will mean that we will have no more hereditary Peers, but we have conceded that that will happen. If it is about numbers, then surely a deal can be done. Many of the hereditary Peers on our side—there are 40 or so left—have said that they are going to retire anyway. Some of the life Peers, well into their late 80s and early 90s, on our side have said that they would retire. Before you get too far, you find that figure of 40. Surely, we can have a compromise here. It would save everyone a huge amount of time, effort and money.
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, it is a great privilege to speak after my noble friend Lord Bellingham, who makes very clear points very persuasively. Attendance in Parliament has been a long-standing issue throughout British history, and my noble friend Lord Hannan spoke extremely well about the motivations of parliamentarians. Previous monarchs have looked at this issue very closely, and both King James and Queen Elizabeth brought in roll-calls and fines because they struggled so much to get parliamentarians to attend.
Many parliaments around the world have attendance criteria. In Belgium, salaries are docked if you do not attend enough. In Oregon, you get only 10 spare days and if you miss your 10 days you are not allowed to stand for re-election. This is an issue that many parliaments face.
The first three Lord Bethells never spoke in Parliament at all. They regarded it simply as an honour. That is a shame and not at all tolerated in modern times. The British public expect parliamentarians to play an active role, and they are absolutely right. I will say two things on that. First, the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, made the point about “deep and infrequent”. I think that is right and I have enormously valued the participation of some Peers with enormous expertise but other commitments. Secondly, there is a collaboration element to being part of what is a collective House. Scrutinising legislation, our principal endeavour, requires an enormous amount of co-operation between Peers, and that requires a relationship that needs a little familiarity. If people do not turn up at all, you cannot build those bonds of trust and collaboration and cannot do your job properly.
For that reason, I strongly support the spirit of the amendments from my noble friends Lord Blencathra and Lord Lucas, and endorse the comments of the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull.
Baroness Lawlor (Con)
My Lords, we are all here to bring different things, and I am not sure that participation rates are the best way of going about reform. Peers contribute differently. They bring their counsel, as we were reminded from the Cross Benches. Some bring their expertise or knowledge of a particular subject, and most bring their judgment on all subjects.
The options being proposed as we debate this short Bill are very different. Because there really is no agreement on the best way to proceed, I urge the Leader of the House to consider trying to find a consensus across the House to get some agreement, given the extraordinary differences we hear about how best we should proceed.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
My Lords, I am glad that we are debating this question of attendance separately from the question of participation, because they are materially different. I share the scepticism of the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Sentamu, about the Government’s willingness to accept amendments to this Bill and, indeed, his salutary warning about being careful of what we say now and remembering that it is taken down in the official record. These other issues are being raised because we all care very deeply about the future of this House, and one of the great tragedies of this Bill is that some of the people who care most deeply will not be here to give their opinions on the further stages of reform or the Government’s adherence to the rest of their manifesto once the Bill is passed. I know he will understand why they are getting their arguments in early.
As the Convenor of the Cross Benches reminded us, our presence here is not thanks to a democratic mandate of our own or any of our achievements but in answer to a call. We sit here in response to a Writ of Summons from our sovereign, who has commanded us, waiving all excuses, to be at the Parliament holden here at Westminster, to treat and give our counsel on certain arduous and urgent affairs. I agree with the noble Lords who have said that we are invited and treated to give our opinions on arduous affairs, even if they are outwith our own areas of expertise.
It is up to each of us to decide how we answer that call, and it is clear that noble Lords across the House do so in different ways. But we have some insights into how they do so thanks to the spreadsheets of my noble friend Lord Blencathra and to the data dashboard provided by the House of Lords Library. That shows that during the last Parliament your Lordships’ House sat for 701 days. On average, noble Lords attended on just under half—46%—of the days that they were eligible to attend. Of the 966 people who were eligible to attend at least some of the last Parliament in your Lordships’ House, 28 Members did not attend at all. More than 100 Members—116—attended on less than 10% of the days that they were eligible to be here, which is the threshold that many noble Lords have mentioned.
Further interrogation of these data by the Library reveals some interesting points. During our last day in Committee, we debated the ideal age of Peers. The data from the last Parliament show that the younger Peers are more likely to attend than older ones. Noble Lords aged 59 and under attended on more than half of our sitting days in the last Parliament. Noble Lords aged 60 or above were absent for most. While noble Lords in their 80s were with us on 45% of sitting days and those in their 90s managed 31%, those in their 30s were here on 55% of sitting days and the sole noble Lord in her 20s—the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Llanfaes—was here 78% of the time, despite travelling from much further afield than most.
Perhaps most pertinently for this Bill, average attendance rates were highest for our hereditary colleagues, at 49%. For life Peers it was 47%. For the Lords spiritual it was 14%, although we know that the right reverend Prelates have many other duties in tending to their flocks. Our remaining Law Lords were here on just 12% of sitting days that they could have been. These statistics, interesting though they may be, should not be taken at face value. Some may very well think it is better to have 12% of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hale of Richmond, than it is to have half of a thirtysomething.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
I am 41. We benefit from having busy people who are active in many areas of civic life and who bring their experience to bear on our deliberations as they see fit. As my noble friends Lord Blencathra and Lord Hailsham said, they contribute with great expertise on esoteric topics.
There are many good reasons for noble Lords’ absence. Many are still active in business and charities. Some serve as chancellors and vice-chancellors, or as ambassadors and high commissioners. Others serve in the no less noble roles of husbands, wives, grandparents and carers. Some are suffering the illnesses and ailments that afflict us all, and they speak very movingly about it when they do. Most of those people would, I think, still be able to meet the modest requirements of Amendment 64 in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Devon, particularly if combined with some of the leniency expressed by my noble friend Lord Lucas in his Amendment 37.
As my noble friend Lord Hannan of Kingsclere reminded us, a very important point is often forgotten when we look at attendance. If noble Lords choose not to be here or cannot be here, they cost the taxpayer nothing. They do not cancel out the votes of noble Lords who have chosen to express their view in a Division. I share my noble friend Lord Astor’s concern about stuffing your Lordships’ House with Lobby fodder. The people who are not here do not take up a seat in the Chamber or force us to queue longer for our sandwich at lunchtime—although, as we have heard, it is rarely a problem. What harm do they do? I am glad that my noble friend Lord Bethell picked up the point of history to correct our noble friend Lord Hannan, pointing out that, in some of the early English Parliaments, those who ignored their Writs of Summons found themselves fined. Perhaps that is an idea we should return to.
Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord. I fear I have been set a challenge by my Leader to try to get Andrew Lloyd Webber’s lyrics into my speech, but with very little notice, so no one is going to cry for me today.
Before I start, I wish the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, a very happy birthday. I am sure he could think of no better way to spend his birthday than to be in a debate with your Lordships.
Since I joined in 2022, one of my favourite parts of being a Member of your Lordships’ House is the fact that every week I learn something. The calibre of debate in your Lordships’ Chamber is exceptional. When I am asked about it by my friends—who do not necessarily follow our debates as much as they should, although I believe my mother now watches every one—I suggest that, at least once a month, I have the privilege of listening to my own version of a Reith lecture. That is the quality of the debate that we have in this House, from those who the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, highlighted as high impact, and from noble Lords across your Lordships’ House. It is a privilege to be part of it, and I welcomed very much that part of the debate.
I thank all noble Lords who have contributed. The debate on this topic has been valuable and insightful. I am aware that the next group of amendments looks at different ways of devising a framework for the changes that have been discussed, so I will try to keep my remarks brief and confined to the attendance requirements outlined.
From debates that we have had in the past, as well as the one we have had today, it is clear that there is broad agreement that Members should attend and participate in the core functions of this House. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Newby, highlighted, that looks very different internally and externally when it comes to quality and the demands that we may make on each other.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, for sharing his data with the Committee and the Government, particularly my noble friend the Lord Privy Seal. It has provided a structure for the conversations that we are having.
As noble Lords will be aware, there are existing measures to remove Peers who fail to attend the House once during a Session, and this Government have indicated their intention to go further in relation to requiring participation. Although this Bill is not the right vehicle to make such a change, this debate has been very helpful in examining the ways in which it might be achieved.
There is rightly a public expectation—and, having listened to the debate today, an expectation among your Lordships—about how Members should contribute. That is why we are developing a new participation requirement, a process which could include looking at the attendance of Peers. It is my hope that we can work together across your Lordships’ House to define what this new participation requirement should look like and how often Members should attend. There are genuine arguments about the quality of attendance and participation, as the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, highlighted. The range of amendments tabled on this topic and those in the next group, which considers other forms of participation, demonstrates that, although we are not at that point yet, we are focused on finding some agreement. As the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, stated in his opening remarks, not even he has a firm view.
The amendments that we are debating in this group all identify attendance as the metric through which to judge a Member’s contributions to this place. As we will see when we come to debate the group of amendments concerned with participation, attendance is not the only way in which contributions could be measured. Is a simple requirement to attend the House for a certain amount of time, as proposed in the amendments tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Blencathra and Lord Lucas, the noble Earl, Lord Devon, and the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, a reasonable measure of participation, or should we be more specific about the type of activities that need to be undertaken? I will refrain from pre-empting the later debate on this point, but this will be an important matter to consider when we look to clarify what is expected of Members of this House.
Before we consider the means by which we introduce a new participation requirement, I suggest that we should think not about the previous attendance records of the current membership, as the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, has suggested in his amendments, but about a long-term solution that is fair to Members. A priority is to ensure clarity on what the right and expected level of participation is, whether it be attendance or some more specific contribution, and to ensure that this is adhered to in the future.
Briefly, I thank the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, for the series of amendments that he has tabled to further shape the proposals for an enhanced attendance requirement. He has made a number of sensible suggestions that should be considered when addressing the matter of participation, such as whether a Member is on an agreed leave of absence. Any work on this area will need to include reasonable exceptions, such as those identified by the noble Viscount. There is a question about the implementation of any enhanced attendance requirement: should the requirement be comprehensively set out in legislation, or should the detail be left to this House to decide and subsequently set out in our Standing Orders, as proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas?
I will briefly address the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, on the commencement of the Bill—Amendments 101E to 101G. I addressed these amendments during Monday’s debate. They would bring forward removal of the hereditary Peers to Royal Assent of this Bill, and make the noble Lord’s other amendments subject to a further resolution of the House, potentially delaying the measures indefinitely should both amendments be successful. The Government cannot support this change to the commencement of the Bill. The arrangements currently set out seek to balance the timely delivery of a manifesto commitment that promised an immediate reform, while not undermining the business of the House. As I have previously noted, they follow the approach set in the 1999 Act.
It is clear that the Committee wants to discuss this issue, and we welcome the suggestions that have been brought forward as part of that. There is positive momentum behind ensuring that there are clear expectations of Members, but this Bill is not the right vehicle to introduce this change. I therefore respectfully request that noble Lords do not press their amendments.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to every noble Lord who has taken part in this debate. Again, as with retirement ages on Monday, we might be seeing some consensus on the proposals from the noble Earl, Lord Devon, supported by the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull. I will very briefly rocket through the comments of some of those who have spoken.
I take the point made by my noble friend Lord Hailsham on retrospectivity. Others made that point as well and I think it would be possibly better. Well, the House would never approve that in any case—any changes would be for the future. He also made the point that there is a danger that a threshold would cause Peers to come in to speak just to get past the threshold.
The noble Earl, Lord Devon, with his idea of 10% of sitting days in the future, may be on to a winner. Of course, the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, again supported that. It was a very good point about the Writ of Summons. It is not something that occurred to me—that the Writ of Summons would suggest that we should attend more frequently than some noble Lords do. I think my noble friend Lord Dundee also said no retrospectivity, and he also supported the 10% agreement in future.
My noble friend Lord Astor said there is a danger that it would encourage people just to turn up. And what about those brilliant young men and women, the executives, who could not afford to do 15 days per annum? I say to my noble friend that a threshold of 15 days per annum is not too high for brilliant whizz-kid young executives. If they boast about doing 18 hours a day in the City, I am sure they could manage to turn up here for 15 days per annum.
Oh—I am sorry. I should say, first and most importantly, a happy birthday to the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire.
The noble Lord, Lord Newby, was highly supportive of a minimum threshold level, but I suspect that his strong support from the Lib Dems will not enamour him to my noble friends behind and around me. Nevertheless, he did say that we would need future legislation on this. I say to the noble Lord and other noble Lords: look at my Amendment 32, coming up later, because there I see that, in order to avoid future legislation, we can take a special delegated power, a regulation, to make any amendments the House decides in future without further Acts.
My noble friend Lord Strathclyde also said no retrospectivity, and I think he supported 10% as well. My noble friend Lord Trenchard suggested about 15%, so long as the House does not change its sitting hours, and that is a valid point. My noble friend Lord Hannan made a brilliant speech as usual—tremendous rhetoric—and I agree entirely with him. Having 850 Peers on the books is not a real problem, and it is not a problem if only 450 turn up regularly and the others do not come. They are not claiming any money and there is no cost to the system. But the reason we are here, I say again, is that the Government say it is a problem. The Government say there are far too many Peers. The Government want rid of Peers and their solution is to get rid of 88 hereditaries, 70 of whom do turn up. I suggest it is better, if we want to reduce the numbers, to do it through the measure I propose here.
My noble friend Lord Dobbs supports the noble Earl, Lord Devon, and says that the Government should reach out across the House to try to reach agreement. The noble Lord, Lord Sentamu, criticised having these amendments to the Bill—but, as I said at the start, it is perfectly legitimate to amend any Bill. The Government have drafted it very narrowly. They do not have to draft it narrowly; it is legitimate to amend it.
My noble friend Lord Bellingham again supported the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull. He liked the idea of excluding those who do not turn up for six months at a time, following the Local Government Bill. It is an idea to be explored. My noble friend Lord Bethell said that parliamentarians need to appreciate—he thanked me kindly for raising this concept—that it is right that Peers do turn up.
My noble friend Lady Lawlor said that the Government should seek consensus across the House. I am grateful that my noble friend Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay said he found the Excel spreadsheets useful. He made a brilliant and witty speech. But I am not quite sure what percentage he would recommend to the House. If I missed that, I am sure I will be corrected later on. He played a very careful sitting-on-the-fence game, which is an important political skill.
As for the Minister, I like her generally warm welcome for the concept of a threshold, and I think she was being very honest and sensible in saying that. Of course, she says it is not for this Bill. Again, I refer her and noble Lords to my Amendment 32, which may solve that problem.
So I am pleased to have tabled these amendments and I take credit for two things. I think my amendments have provoked and prompted better amendments from some other noble Peers, and of course the Excel spreadsheets have given us all something of substance to talk and argue about. Without those spreadsheets, we would be talking in vague generalities.
Lord Blencathra
“House of Lords participation requirement(1) Standing Orders may make provision for a member to cease to be a member of the House of Lords if they have not met a reasonable level of participation based on requirements other than attendance.(2) A peer who does not meet the level of participation required may be notified and given six months to do so before the provision set out in subsection (1) takes effect.(3) For the purposes of subsection (1), “participation” includes—(a) speaking in the Chamber and Grand Committee;(b) serving on committees of the House;(c) asking oral questions;(d) tabling written questions;(e) participating as an official delegate in international organisations;(f) any other activity which the Committee considers to be participation in the work of the House.(4) The House of Lords may appoint a committee to consider and approve revisions to the Standing Orders to give effect to subsection (1).”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is intended to ensure that members who attend but then say or do little or nothing are removed from the House.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
My Lords, if one thought that my last amendment was slightly controversial, it is nothing in comparison to this one. I and the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, can again say to the Leader of the House, “Neither of us is from the Government but, again, we are here to help you”. We will help to implement the Labour Party manifesto that
“we will introduce a new participation requirement”.
Part of what I propose here is simple and straightforward, but another part would be difficult and highly contentious.
The first question is: why is this necessary? We all know that there is a tiny number of Peers who, shall we say, clock in and then disappear without any participation. Even if it is only one Member or up to 10, that brings the House into disrepute. There is more than enough abuse in the media about hard-working Peers getting the £361 per day tax-free allowance, so we must root out the small number who turn up and do nothing.
The easy bit is collecting the statistics, as per the list in the amendment’s proposed new subsection (3). Thus we know exactly who has spoken in the Chamber or in Grand Committee and how often. As the Library said, statistics are also being collected for our Select Committees. We know who has asked Oral and Written Questions, and how many. We may not record those who attend and work in other committees at the moment, as they do not count for attendance. That work is also vital to the functioning of this House. It can be very time consuming, but we can easily collect the names and statistics there also.
We know who serves on international delegations such as the Council of Europe, NATO and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, and that is 23 Peers in this House. As an aside, if noble Lords will permit me, the half-allowance that we get for that work is nonsensical. The hours and threats that the noble Lords, Lord Dodds and Lord Lancaster, and I faced when we observed the elections in Georgia last November were far longer and tougher than anything we do in this place. I can also say, with all certainty, that those of us who serve in those three organisations are going to some very long and hard days in our next few meetings as we wrestle with the new security threats in Europe. All our meetings start at 08:30 and end at 20:00 and we get £15 per hour for our attendance.
That was a personal aside—now, back to my amendment. My concluding item is to include any other work that a committee would consider to be participation in the work of the House. The only area in which I differ from the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, is that I would not let any Secretary of State get his or her fingers on this. We can set this up ourselves without government help, and either call on the Procedure Committee to do it or create a new committee specifically to decide on the metrics for adequate participation. A new committee would probably be best—one that would keep this under constant review and act as an appeal body for those Peers who objected to retirement on the grounds of attendance below any threshold, and participation below any new threshold also.
That is where the contentious parts will be. It is easy to collect the statistics, but how will we decide what minimum level of participation should entitle one to continued membership of this House? This is where I am looking forward to hearing from the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, particularly on his proposed new subsection (3) on a minimum participation level and the metrics to set it. Neither of us can say today what that should be, but I can pose some of the questions that the committee would have to adjudicate on.
If a Peer did nothing save put down a few Written Questions, would that suffice? If so, how many? Would one speech per annum in the Chamber or two in the Grand Committee qualify? Would we treat participation in all committees as equal, or would we say that some were more important than others and one would have to attend two or three lesser committees to equal one attendance at a more important one, however one defined “important”?
Then there is the vexed question of effectiveness. As soon as I was elected in Penrith and The Border to succeed the great Willie Whitelaw, he said: “David, you must distinguish between activity and achievement. Many MPs run around being active but achieve very little”. Suppose that we have a Peer who has asked only one Written Question in the whole year, but it revealed some terrible scandal or made the Government change policy; or a Peer who came high up in the Private Members’ Bill ballot and his or her Bill became law and changed the lives of thousands—for the better, one hopes and assumes.
I appreciate that, the more I talk about the difficulties of a minimum participation level, the more your Lordships will conclude that it is too difficult and we should leave well alone. But that is not our normal modus operandi in this House. The Lords tackles issues which Governments and departments shy away from. Just look at our Select Committee reports. I cannot believe that a committee of all sides of this House will be unable to draw up the metrics which the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, proposes. If it says after serious deliberation that it cannot be done, that is the end of the matter. If the great and the good of this House cannot find a solution to set a minimum participation level, no one can. Of course, we need to incorporate the exceptions proposed by my noble friend Lord Hailsham. I also look forward to my noble friend Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay naming names, if he has anyone in mind.
I conclude as I began. We have a very small number of Peers failing to participate at all, or participating very infrequently, and that is bringing the House into disrepute. Fixing it is not beyond the capabilities of noble Lords. I beg to move.
Amendment 27 (to Amendment 26)
Viscount Hailsham
Viscount Hailsham (Con)
My Lords, my amendment is very technical. It provides simply that the sanction should not apply if the Member has good reason for not participating.
Lord Cromwell (CB)
My Lords, I have Amendment 63 in this group. If we can help the Front Bench with musical lyrics, it is surely:
“Oh what a circus, oh what a show”.
I declare my interest as a so-called hereditary Peer. I will make two general points before I turn to the detail of my amendment.
First, as earlier speeches from right across the House have made clear, it is accepted that the hereditary principle is no longer suitable and that the suspension of by-elections should become permanent. The Bill achieves that, full stop—a piece of punctuation that seems to have taken on unparalleled significance in our debates on this Bill.
Secondly, on Monday some noble Lords stated either on their feet or in not very sotto voce sedentary mutterings that all amendments are irrelevant, because this is a single-objective Bill. While I understand that view and share the intense frustration with the speed of the debate, some of the degrouping and the gratuitous rudeness to the Leader of the House, particularly on the first day, I nevertheless understand that amendments have been put down and marshalled in the usual way. Most are probing and, while they may seek to go beyond the tight circumference of the current text of the Bill, I am not sure that they can simply be dismissed as irrelevant. Such amendments have arisen because there is a widely expressed concern that, once the expulsion of the hereditaries is done, all further reform will again grind to a halt and the House will sink quietly back into a pattern of prime ministerial patronage and ever-growing size, neither of which enhance its reputation or credibility.
My amendment does not seek to obstruct the purpose of the Bill, but it does invite the Government to take some practical steps to enable the further reform to which their manifesto commits them. Amendment 63, like some others, addresses the issue of participation, but not by prescribing in advance and in detail exactly what such reform should comprise—rather, by seeking simply to put in place a process and timeline to progress it, something that speaker after speaker has been calling for over the days of this debate. It is thus complementary to the single purpose of the Bill and could be added to it without obstructing that purpose in any way.
The focus of this amendment is participation, for the following reasons. First, it is a Member’s participation and contributions, be they aged 91 or 21, that most affect both the quality and the reputation of this House. To touch briefly on a related point of age limits, I understand the convincing argument for imposing an age limit as a matter of public perception, and a wide range of dates was suggested in the debate on Monday and examples given of very competent individuals who would be lost at each gradation. I am not against an age limit, but what the debate on Monday actually highlighted was the inability of Whips to require Members to retire when—and there is no point tiptoeing around this—participation in the work of the House has become too challenging for them. Maybe that is the problem that needs to be addressed.
Secondly, a participation requirement is a commitment that needs to be transformed from a manifesto statement to an implementable set of actions. Finally, and I apologise for introducing a personal note, it does rather sting to be dismissed en bloc but leave behind some Peers—and there is no shortage—who do not attend, or who attend, claim their allowances and then do not participate.
The amendment has three key features. First, it requires, within six months of the Bill becoming an Act, that a cross-party group be set up to consult, to define participation and to establish suitable metrics to measure it. I have been told that defining participation is too difficult. It is not. The “too difficult” mantra has been given as an excuse for far too long. No doubt a range of views will be contributed to the cross-party group, as other amendments in this group illustrate, and account should be taken of previous work in this area. This amendment embraces both those factors. We already collect most of the necessary data, but previous Governments have, I am afraid to say, simply lacked the firmness of purpose to act on it.
This brings me to the amendment’s second feature: it enables the setting up of the processes required to implement the participation requirement as a basis for continued membership. Not all aspects of the outcome will please everyone completely, but we need to move beyond the wringing of hands and the gnashing of gums in order to resolve the participation gap in a practical way.
Some time ago we had the excellent Burns report, which made recommendations that Members across the House supported, but these have not been implemented. Other speakers on Monday recited a long list of failures to implement change. We need to do better. That is why the third and final feature of this amendment is to require the Government to bring forward measures to ensure that the findings are implemented. While the amendment as drafted anticipates the Government getting a grip on this, the House might itself, if it has the powers to do so, take responsibility for setting up the group, ensuring its work is done and carrying it forward to implementation. That is certainly worthy of consideration, so long as it does not become yet another consultation that, in the best traditions of Sir Humphrey, in “Yes Minister”, simply delays and dissolves what actually needs to be done.
In conclusion, this amendment does not—and I underline this—seek in any way to thwart the single-minded purpose of the Bill. It does not prescribe how participation should be defined, quantified or implemented, but it does put in place a process and a timeframe of 20 months for reform, based on participation, once the Bill is passed. For a Government who are serious about reforming this House, it is an opportunity to address its size, effectiveness, cost and reputation—all things that most Members agree are not currently what they should be. I therefore hope that the Minister will seize on this amendment, both as a means to move forward with the Bill and to demonstrate in practical terms the Government’s absolute commitment to resolving the participation issue: not in a general, aspirational sense, or as something that, in a phrase heard earlier in the debate, “we are working on”, but with a structure and a timetable so that the House can both understand and benefit from long-overdue change. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Lord Grocott (Lab)
My Lords, like a number of noble Lords, I have sat here with Trappist vows avoiding contributions that might prolong the debate further. However, having listened to the whole of our debate on the first group, which took one hour and 10 minutes—and to the noble Lord, Lord Newby, saying in our debate on that first group that we should be careful to ensure that we try to see ourselves in the way we are viewed from outside—I think that we need to reflect on a couple of simple facts.
One is that this is a five-clause Bill. Everyone knows that no organisation is happier than when it is talking about itself. We have been demonstrating this—testing it to destruction, in fact—during our debate on this Bill so far. A simple five-clause Bill would not normally have an attendance such as this on the second day in Committee. So far, up to today, we have discussed 10 groups of amendments. There are 32 groups left to discuss, assuming that there is no further degrouping. We are averaging five groups a day per session. Members can do the maths better than I can but, at this rate of progress, we shall be debating this Bill for Committee day after Committee day.
Some of us will no doubt enjoy ourselves, as we all like talking about our own organisation and how we work, but, in relation to other matters that the Lords should be considering on the Floor of the House, to spend another six, seven, eight or more days on this Bill, as these stats suggest we will do, repeating arguments that have been heard on numerous occasions—as the right reverend Prelate pointed out, 90% of them are, we know, not directly related to the Bill, and some of them will, in any event, come forward at a later time—we really need, if we want to be seen as relevant and persuasive in the eyes of the public, to do better today than debating just five groups of amendments. Bearing in mind that I have spent precisely two minutes and 42 seconds speaking and do not intend to speak again, I hope that we will have the good sense to get through this Committee stage at a dramatically speedier rate than we have managed so far.
Lord Strathclyde (Con)
My Lords, can I just reply to the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, on what I thought was a disobliging and wholly unnecessary speech? He said that this is a five-clause Bill and does not therefore need much discussion. Well, I can remember—I expect that the noble Lord can as well—the Maastricht Bill of some years ago, which was four clauses long. The House was full every day and night, and this went on for a great deal of time. It was an important constitutional issue. This, too, is an important constitutional issue. The difference between me and the noble Lord is that he thinks this Bill is about getting rid of the hereditary Peers, while I think it is about creating a wholly appointed House, which we have never had before, with the appointments in the hands of the Prime Minister. That is why many of the amendments taken today and on previous days are so important.
There is no attempt to try to filibuster this debate. The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, cannot point to any individual who has spoken for very long. It is hardly surprising that so many of us want to get involved in this debate. I am sorry that we are not going to hear again from the noble Lord or the rest of the Labour Party, but that is their decision; perhaps they are so horrified by what the noble Lord’s Government are putting forward that they do not want to listen to it anymore. I, for one, am very happy to sit here.
Lord Swire (Con)
My Lords, I am now genuinely confused by this Bill. It seems to me that the purpose of this place, if it has any purpose, is to look at bad legislation—bad proposals—and seek to improve it. Every time we try to do that for this Bill, we are accused of filibustering. If the Government are simply not prepared to listen to anything we are saying, or to take into account any of our amendments, we are all wasting our time. I am equally confused as to what is really—
The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Smith of Basildon) (Lab)
The noble Lord said that the Government accused him of filibustering. He will have heard from every Minister who has responded from this Dispatch Box that we welcome these discussions. I think the point that my noble friend made was that some contributions seem a little long, but we on the Front Bench would not accuse anybody of filibustering.
Lord Swire (Con)
I am not saying that the Front Bench has accused anyone of filibustering, but we have been accused of filibustering when we have probed the reasoning behind some of these rather strange proposals.
To be honest, I am equally confused as to whether this Bill is about reducing the numbers in this House or whether it is about getting rid of the hereditaries. We have heard that the hereditaries contribute far more than some life Peers who do not attend this House. So is the Bill about getting rid of the hereditaries or about reducing numbers? It seems to me that it is not about both.
I have a real problem with this clause. We can argue until the cows come home about what “participation” means; some of the speeches have already conflated “attendance” and “participation”. I fully endorse what my noble friend Lord Blencathra said. During my early days in this Chamber, we listened to the electric exchange between the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and the noble Lord, Lord Winston. I did not understand what they were talking about—and neither did my noble friend, so he confesses. As he said, I do not think that those in the Box understood a word of what they were talking about, and Hansard probably had to stay up overtime to work it out. It was on such a different level that only a fool would have intervened at that point. I was reminded of the adage, which has been attributed variously to Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain, that it is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.
That makes me think about “participation” as defined in subsection (3)(a), in the new clause proposed in Amendment 26, which refers to “speaking in the Chamber”. Will we really judge noble Lords by how often they speak in the Chamber? Without naming names, we all know that, among our goodly number, there are people who pop up on every occasion to speak. Are we to judge the validity of their existence by the fact that, like Zebedee, they bounce up and ask a question on every topic? Alternatively, will we be a little bit more circumspect in how we judge noble Lords’ contributions?
I heard what my noble friend Lord Bethell said about his forebears, but that is nothing compared to John Erle-Drax, the MP for Wareham in the mid-19th century, who was known as the “Silent MP”. He made only one statement in the House of Commons: on a particularly hot evening, he inquired of the Speaker whether it might be possible to open the window just a bit. He is not recorded as ever having said anything before or since. This ought to be a question of what noble Lords say, rather than how often they say it.
The other issue I have been going on about is the quality of noble Lords’ speeches. I know that not everybody has a background in public speaking, has served in the other place or has the natural fluency and eloquence that the gods vested on my noble friend Lord Hannan. But, increasingly in the Commons—and, I am afraid, here—speaker after speaker gets up and reads out a pre-prepared statement. That is not a debate. That just means that they want to publicise what they have decided; or, worse, what they have been handed by a foundation—very often the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, I regret to say—or some PR outlet. I have sat in this Chamber and heard a speaker read out what was clearly provided to them by some kind of lobbying group, and they got their text muddled up between what “we want”, “they want” and “I want”; it was clear that they had not even previously read what they were reading out. We need to improve the quality of debate in this Chamber, and not judge people on how often they pop up and ask a question.
On
“serving on committees of the House”,
there are not enough committees for all Members to serve on. Are Members who are not fortunate enough to serve on a Select Committee going to be penalised because they do not?
On “asking oral questions”, that is perfectly good, but you do not always get in on an Oral Question session; you have to jump up and down very often, and you are lucky if your hit rate is high.
On “tabling written questions”, let us not look at the quantity of Written Questions; let us look at some of the Answers—let us try to get an Answer. I have noticed over the years that Answers are masterful in their evasiveness. They do not even attempt to answer the Question, and if the Question is too difficult, they say it is at disproportionate cost to gather the information. Why do we bother asking some of these Written Questions, particularly when they cost hundreds of pounds to the public to provide a non-Answer? But we can all do that, if we are going to be judged on asking Written Questions. We can do it remotely, lie in bed and table hundreds of Written Questions. Lo and behold, we will all be judged to be doing terribly well in terms of participation. I rather think not.
The amendment talks about
“any other activity which the Committee considers to be participation in the work of the House”.
What does that mean? That is an all-encompassing statement. What can it possibly mean? This is a terrible amendment.
We should concentrate far more on the quality of what and how we debate here, on the quality of the speeches and levels of engagement. To seek to prescribe and identify how each and every one of us—individuals here for completely different reasons—should behave in some hideous template way to be decided by a committee is not the way to improve what goes on in this place.
The Earl of Erroll (CB)
My Lords, I want to quickly say something about participation—I think back to a long time ago when I was involved in the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill. What goes into the law does not happen in here; by the time a Bill gets into Parliament, it is already set in concrete—the anchor is in the ground. If you want to see what goes into legislation, you have got to influence the thinking behind it with the Civil Service. I, and many others, certainly spent some time on that.
The statutory instruments and regulations that come out of it are the real things that affect how it works and operates. You need to talk to the civil servants behind it, before those regulations appear, because we cannot amend them or do anything about them. It was on that Bill, or perhaps another one, where we said that they had to come back with regulations within a year and that was seen as revolutionary because it almost seems beyond our powers. We did not actually turn them down and it has always been a big problem here.
How do you measure participation in the all-party groups, the discussions behind it, the influencing you have done and what comes out? It happened with that Bill, and it happened again with identity cards—there was a huge amount of work behind the scenes on that, and on the Digital Economy Act, Part 3, and all the age verification stuff—I chaired the British standard on that. The Government had something which they totally ignored, but it has become an international standard. There is all the stuff we do which may not be on the Floor of the House, because, in general, it is too late by the time it gets to the Floor. You have to get to the people who are writing the stuff before it gets here, and that means participation in other groups, such as the all-party groups and other influential ones, which you do not have recorded.
I do a lot with entrepreneurship—in fact, I am on X today, encouraging MPs to support entrepreneurship in their local areas. There is a huge amount of other parliamentary stuff and influence you can do. How on earth do you measure that? Maybe you say that the only thing that counts is talking on this Floor. For many, it is the last thing that counts.
Earl Attlee (Con)
My Lords, I remind the Committee that I intend to retire in the spring and would need a great deal of persuading not to do so.
I did not speak to the previous amendment. I had speaking notes, but I chose not to make a speech because I did not need to. I do use notes; I use them to regulate how long I speak and, actually, in my notes I have cut out several paragraphs because it was not necessary to use them. This is largely a presentation issue, and I agree with what my noble friend Lord Hannan said, but I would very strongly counsel against making any changes, especially strategy ones, because to do so could have perverse effects.
However, we are all grateful to the Guardian for its research, for pointing out that some Peers have been claiming large amounts of allowances while making little or no contribution to the work of your Lordships’ House. It will be obvious to the Committee that it is not just activity in the Chamber that should count as participation. The noble Earl, Lord Erroll, made that point. However, it is what the public are encouraged to think. Some Peers are not so good in the Chamber but are invaluable in Select Committees.
Earl Attlee (Con)
I was delighted to plan to stay overnight in Ipswich; what happened was that the abnormal load movement got cancelled, but I was still faced with the cost of the hotel, and I could not get the cost of the hotel from the heavy haulage company because of the risk of falling foul of the paid advocacy rules.
I did all this activity at my own expense and, save for one day, was not able to claim allowances. This is not unusual. Other noble Lords will be engaged in similar activity which would not be detectable as participation. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, that there could be some mechanism for measuring such activity; possibly at the end of the Session we might be required to say how much money we have claimed in allowances and what we have actually done.
We have already experimented with a participation test during Covid. Noble Lords will recall that we paid ourselves allowances only when we made a contribution. On one occasion we were debating an order that concerned vehicle testing and inspection. I thought that I was the House’s only subject matter expert. Imagine my surprise when I found that not only was the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, the country’s top psephologist but he had expertise on vehicle maintenance and inspection. Leg-pulling apart, we need to be careful to avoid creating perverse incentives to participate when it is unnecessary.
Finally, some Peers have quite low contribution rates but, nevertheless, I have found their private counsel to be invaluable. The noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, talked about low-frequency, high-impact contributions. One has only to think of the contributions of the noble Lord, Lord Owen.
Lord Desai (CB)
My Lords, there are many dimensions in which participation can be measured. We have two problems. As the noble Lord, Lord Swire, said, we do not know the quality of the participation but we know the quantity. These different dimensions are sort of related.
I was a statistician all my life—not a good one, but I was one. There are techniques to combine those dimensions in one single measure, and I urge the Government and the people in charge to use them. It is called principal component analysis—noble Lords can ask me, and I can find out more about it for them. That will give you a more or less objective way of measuring different people’s performance across a number of dimensions. This has been done many times; it is reliable. There is no doubt that quality is difficult to measure, but quantity can be measured, and I urge the decision-makers to use this to be able to sort out who is in and who is out. That would be helpful.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, given the comments of the noble Lords, Lord Grocott and Lord Swire, I will keep my comments short. Although I am reading from a piece of paper, I am reading from my scribbles, not a full text. I hope that is all right. I co-signed Amendment 26 from the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra. I do not think he needed any real encouragement, but I think it is very sensible. In fact, Amendment 63 from the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, has real value. If he took that to a vote, I would probably support it. I absolutely hate Amendment 28 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay. It might as well say, in brackets afterwards, “Kick the Greens out”.
I suggest that we could have got around this debate—all these days, hours and repetitions. We could have just made all the hereditaries life Peers, which would have removed all this. I understand that there is an issue about kicking them out but, personally, I think we will miss them. Making them all life Peers would have just shut them up, and we would be free to go and have an early supper.
Lord Cromwell (CB)
The rest of us are not blessed with the eloquence and wit that the noble Lord, Lord Swire, feels he has, but I think he has missed the point of my amendment and that, as a Committee, we are now trying to do all the detail on the Floor of the House. That is impossible. My amendment tries to establish that after this Bill a system is put in place to define these issues, to which we can all contribute usefully and sensibly—or foolishly, as we wish. That is the way to take this forward, not putting it into the Bill in detail. We need a system for the Government to show a bit of an ankle here and show us that they are really going to do this by putting this amendment into the Bill, not trying to work out the minutiae of percentages here. That is completely pointless.
Lord Lucas (Con)
I have Amendment 40 in this group. I find myself very much in agreement with the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, which is a travesty of history. My route forward would be by Amendment 32, because I think it leaves the initiative much more with this House than with the Government. I would say, if the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Sentamu, were in his place, that St Matthew recorded some excellent advice about getting to grips with your adversary as soon as possible as the best way to deal with something. I think it is rather more likely that the next four and a half years will see the second coming of our Lord than a second Bill on the House of Lords, so to have something like Amendment 32 would be a great advantage.
The thing that unites us all is a determination to improve the way this House serves the public. There are many aspects in which we can work on this. The amendments we have in front of us are restricted by the nature of the Bill, but I absolutely think that this is the right moment to bring them forward and discuss them.
In my years in the House, I can remember one occasion when a Starred Question made a difference to government policy, which was when the Government were asked what their plans were to celebrate the 50th anniversary of El Alamein, in 1992. The answer was, “There are no such plans; it is the Germans’ turn to celebrate anniversaries this year”. With a House full of veterans, that led to a fairly rapid reverse of policy. I cannot recall one since. Much as we enjoy Questions, I think we should be much more critical about whether what we are doing actually has a function. I believe we should commission outside research, be self-critical, try to self-improve as a House and find ways of doing better.
When it comes to looking at our expectations of participation, I very much understand what the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, and my noble friend Lord Attlee were saying. There are many ways in which this happens. The form in proposed new Section 2A(1) in my amendment, asking people to sign a declaration to, as it were, say on their honour that they are participating fully in the business of the House, may be a good way forward. What the noble Lord, Lord Desai, suggests as a way of measuring that is certainly something to explore. We could also explore following the advice of Elon Musk and each week writing a postcard to the leader of our groups naming five achievements. I think that would put some of us on the spot.
In thinking about the worthwhile work this House does, we should focus on committees in all their various forms. That is where I have seen most value delivered and, in terms of what my noble friend Lord Norton says about fitting our membership to our function, that is very much the direction in which we should be trying to go.
The Earl of Dundee (Con)
My Lords, as has been said by practically everybody, participation statistics—such as simply the numbers of annual interventions by any Peer, without enough reference to the contents, let alone to the parliamentary usefulness and quality of those interventions—are thoroughly misleading.
At the same time, adjudications should obviously take into account how a Peer may have contributed in the usual ways through speeches, Written Questions, committee work, voting and so on.
Your Lordships may agree with what I think has emerged very clearly from this debate: rather than going only by participation numbers, a far clearer picture would emerge from assessments made by a cross-party commission set up for this purpose, as proposed in Amendment 63, and just now so eloquently explained and spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell.
Viscount Trenchard (Con)
My Lords, I support the adoption of a participation requirement as provided for in Amendment 26. Standing Orders should be drawn up to set a minimum participation level but should take account of the fact that some noble Lords who seldom speak exert a considerable degree of influence, whereas other noble Lords who speak often and at length may exert rather less influence. Perhaps my noble friend Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay had this in mind when he tabled his Amendment 28, which I look forward to hearing him speak to. It is important that the committee appointed to consider and approve provisions should consider this fact.
I also support Amendment 40 in the name of my noble friend Lord Lucas, which seeks to do the same thing and provides for the House to provide an exemption from compulsory retirement in cases where there are good reasons why a noble Lord may have failed to live up to the declaration of intent that he or she signed at the start of each Session of Parliament. Perhaps the declaration of intent could be combined with the Code of Conduct so as not to lengthen the time required for oath-taking, which is already rather time consuming.
Amendment 63 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, is just another way of ensuring that noble Lords must achieve a minimum participation level to justify retaining their seats in your Lordships’ House. It seeks to establish a cross-party commission to make recommendations and ultimately, after 18 months, would require the Secretary of State to introduce a Bill to put the minimum participation level on a statutory footing. This has both advantages and disadvantages; it would be difficult and would require further legislation to make any changes to participation levels. The amendment is also silent on any provision for exceptions to compulsory retirement being possible in cases where the House considers that a noble Lord should be spared eviction.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
My Lords, before the birthday boy, the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, begins to wind up for the Front Benches, I will speak very briefly to my Amendment 28, which seeks to provide for a maximum participation threshold, as well as a minimum. I do so with the humility and self-awareness of one who is speaking on the Bill from both the Front Benches and the Back Benches.
My amendment is an important flip side to the debate and there are some salutary examples from what happened in another place. A few years ago, there was the invention of a number of websites and journalistic tools, such as TheyWorkForYou, which track the participation levels of Members of Parliament in the House of Commons. That encouraged some to game the system by making lots of short speeches or interrupting others with great frequency, preferring quantity over quality.
There is value in restraint. I was struck by what the noble Lord, Lord Desai, said about what we can learn from academic theory. The Swiss-American psychologist and pioneer of organisational development, Edgar Schein, set out the concept of humble inquiry. He said that those in public life or leadership positions should ask themselves three questions before making a speech. Does it need to be said? If so, does it need to be said by me? If so, does it need to be said by me now? I should say that I was put on to the work of Professor Schein by one of our more taciturn and thoughtful colleagues in your Lordships’ House.
I have often suspected that, if one looked at the top 10% of speakers and the bottom 10%, it would serve as an interesting competition about those who one would rather hear from. I asked the Library to crunch the numbers for me relating to the last Session. It is not as large or interesting reading as the now famous spreadsheets of my noble friend Lord Blencathra, but it certainly reveals some interesting points.
I am sure we can all guess some of the names that appear in the top 10%, so I will not name names, other than to confirm to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, that the Green Party is the group from which we hear most frequently. We have the pleasure of hearing from the noble Baroness on 68% of the days that she can speak. Personally, I find the other 32% of days to be days of great sadness.
All of us who miss our late noble friend Lord Cormack will be impressed to hear that he still made it into the top 5% of speakers, even though he was sadly taken from us before the end of that Session.
By contrast, 106 noble Lords spoke on only 1% of the days that they could have done. If one glances down that list, which is available from the Library, one sees many examples of what the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, has rightly described as low-frequency, high-impact Members. One sees the names of three former Cabinet Secretaries, a former Governor of the Bank of England, former Leaders of your Lordships’ House from both sides of the House, a director-general of the Security Service rendered quiet by his service in the Royal Household as Lord Chamberlain, and fellows, and indeed the next president, of the British Academy. I see some of them in their places today—I see them in their places frequently—and I am glad that they are using their brains more than they are using their mouths.
I agree with what my noble friend Lord Swire said about the dangers of debate that just repeats verbatim the briefings we are given from lobby groups. I agree with what the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, says about the many other valuable ways that Members of your Lordships’ House can influence the way that we are governed in this country. With that, I shall take my own advice and shut up.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, beneath the wide-ranging and sometimes unfocused discussion we have had on these amendments, there is a degree of limited consensus that we should build on. The amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, shows us the way we should go. I hope that between Committee and Report, we will have a number of discussions, off the Floor, about where we go from here that will build on that limited consensus. I hope that the Government will consider accepting a limited number of amendments, which would show us the direction in which we go further, as well as committing to make some clear statements about how they would see further developments.
On the questions of attendance, participation and retirement, I agree strongly with my noble friend Lord Newby that some of this can be done through Standing Orders and agreements of the House and does not require legislation. That is part of the way that we may go forward.
I suggest that we all know pretty well what we mean by a minimum level of attendance and participation, and can name quietly, but we will not, some of the people who fail to fulfil it. I recall some years ago being invited to an office in the City of London to brief the CEO of a rather major operation on how to make a maiden speech. He had been a Member of the House for almost a year and I do not think that he had attended more than two or three times. He did not understand the House and he felt that he ought to make a maiden speech. That is clearly below the level of attendance and commitment.
This is a Parliament in which we are supposed to parley with each other—to exchange ideas, to listen and to learn. I have learned a lot through taking part in Bill Committees. I look at the noble Lord, Lord Vaux of Harrowden, and I remember the Procurement Bill, which we worked through in the previous Session. It was not my area of expertise, but I learned a great deal from him and from a number of other participants. We are here to examine in detail proposals that the Government make and to discuss difficult issues that the Government sometimes do not want to grapple with. That requires a minimum level of attendance and interaction between us. That is part of what we are here for.
Having said that, I hope that we will now be able in the rest of this evening to get through several more amendments, much more rapidly. I hope that the Government will think about what assurances they need to give us in order that we can make greater speed on Report. We should never forget that how this House is seen from the outside is something that we all need to be conscious of. The size of our House and those who come in for just 20 minutes and go out again are an embarrassment, and are picked up by the media. Honours and obligations need to be balanced. A later amendment suggests that we should be moving towards separating honours from the obligation to attend and participate, but these are all questions for the longer term. Dividing what we think this Bill can achieve from what we need to commit ourselves to discuss for the future is part of what we need to discuss between Committee and Report. I hope that this amendment will be withdrawn, but we should bear in mind that the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, is offering us a very useful way forward.
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to all those who have spoken—sorry, I am forgetting that I am not a Minister anymore; that is what the noble Baroness says. This debate has generally conformed to the good-natured debates that we have been having. I am very grateful to the Front Bench opposite and to others that that has been the case.
If I may say so, I was disappointed by the intervention by the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, which slightly changed the atmosphere for a time. The noble Lord and I were good comrades, he will recall, in the Brexit years, when he and I were among the very few people in the House who thought that we should do what the British people had voted for. There were times then when I felt, and I am sure he felt very often, that the House did not really want to hear from us again on the subject. I beg him to understand that we are facing a situation where many of our colleagues are threatened with leaving this House, and it does not help if they are told that they should not be heard from again. We will never be able to hear from them again. I have to say that the noble Lord has never been known not to repeat arguments on the House of Lords that he has put before—I have heard them many times. I shall break the rules of the House and say, “Come on, Bruce, let’s put our smiles on again”.
This has been a good debate. Again, many noble Lords have said, quite correctly—the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, made this point in a measured and sensible way—that it is important that we should understand the direction the Government are going in, and it is perfectly legitimate that House of Lords, faced with a Bill to reform and change the House of Lords, should express views about the future of the House of Lords. Let us recall that this question of participation is not a subject that has been dreamt up by some deviant Back-Bencher to put before your Lordships’ House; it was put before us in the Labour manifesto, so of course we should look at it.
When I hear these debates, it seems there is a widespread feeling in our House that there is a strong case in equity, and in the interests of the whole House, for finding some way towards a transition that allows many of the best of us who are threatened with expulsion to remain. I also believe there is an equally widespread feeling across the House that we should not continue to protect those who never come here, while working to throw out people who do contribute.
The question on participation is, how do we define it? It goes far further than attendance, and this debate has illustrated that. The Government surely must have had a view on this when they put the Bill in the manifesto, but there are many ways in which we can measure participation, and these have been brought out in the debate. I could cite those who serve as Government and Opposition spokesmen, Deputy Speakers or indeed Convenors of the Cross Benches—they are vital to the operation and functioning of your Lordships’ House. Hereditary Peers currently make up 27% of our Opposition Front Bench, 21% of Deputy Speakers and 100% of the Convenors of your Lordships’ Cross Benches. I say these things because I believe that noble Lords who are already with us—all of us, not just the hereditary Peers—should be judged, if we are to be judged at all, on our participation and contribution to your Lordships’ House, and not on any of our identities or characteristics.
I acknowledge how difficult it is, potentially, to define participation, and this has come out in the debate. There are many ways that noble Lords contribute to the House, and my noble friend Lord Blencathra, in his repeated brilliant speeches, keeps bringing up so many of them. Noble Lords can make legislation, propose amendments to Bills, participate in Divisions, ask Oral and Written Questions, contribute to committees, participate in debates, serve as Opposition spokesmen and even take part in international work, as my noble friend pointed out. They can also make use of their expertise and experience—as have several noble Lords who have spoken in this debate—to contribute in myriad ways to the work of this House and the progress of our nation behind the scenes. The noble Earl, Lord Erroll, and my noble friend Lord Attlee spoke to those points eloquently. One Peer, who was recently attacked in the media for not speaking enough, has been a diligent, active and hugely valued member of your Lordships’ committees for decades.
My noble friend Lord Lucas focused on a broad definition of committee work in his Amendment 40. This is extended to participation in all Bill stages, Questions and Statements by my noble friend Lord Hailsham’s Amendment 42, but as I and this debate have illustrated, the participation net could be cast even wider. My noble friend Lord Blencathra suggested a practical solution in his Amendment 26, which sets out some initial suggestions but would otherwise allow for a participation requirement to be determined flexibly through Standing Orders and a committee of the House.
I will come to the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, in a moment, but the more we can do in this House—this is no disrespect to the Minister; I would have said it of my own Government—and the less we can leave to Secretaries of State in the House of Commons, the happier I will be. There is great wisdom in this House, and the more we can reach solutions here through the kind of consultations the Minister is initiating, the better.
In his Amendment 63, the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, has not sought to pre-empt the definition of “participation” or, in fact, the level at which it would be required. But he proposed a structure to make and implement decisions that would need to be made. Given the broad range of views that we have discussed today and our need to reach consensus, while avoiding any unintended consequences, I—like the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire—consider the content of the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, to be a sensible basis for progress. However, I repeat that I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Newby, and my noble friend Lord Blencathra that it would best to keep the House of Commons out of it as far as we can.
The Attorney-General (Lord Hermer) (Lab)
I thank all noble Lords for their amendments and for the thoughtful and good-faith contributions that have marked this debate. The amendments in this group share a great deal of commonality with those in the last group: all of them, in their essence, seek to expand the purpose of the Bill to introduce a participation requirement, attendance being just one aspect of participation.
This debate demonstrates that there is a very considerable measure of agreement that there should be an obligation on Members of your Lordships’ House to participate in our proceedings; that we should arrive at settled metrics to assess the adequacy of participation; and that, absent very good and legitimate reason, a failure to meet the recognised standards should be deemed incompatible with continued membership of the House. There, however, the considerable agreement, if not consensus, ends.
As the amendments and the debate have demonstrated, there is as yet no measure of agreement on what the requisite participation levels—the metrics—should be. As all noble Lords know, participation in this House can take many different forms, but specifying which metrics should be applied to requisite participation is a complicated and nuanced matter. Participation, and specifying responsibilities so as to capture genuine and active work in the House in a way that can be measured in practice, will require further discussion and thought.
For instance, is a simple requirement to attend the House for a certain amount of time, as suggested in the amendments that we considered in the previous group, a reasonable measure of participation, or should we be more specific about the types of activity that need to be undertaken, as suggested in the amendments that we are now considering? If more specificity is desired, is it spoken contributions that should count, or votes in Divisions? Likewise, tabling amendments is a fundamental part of the work of this House, as is the valuable contribution made through Select Committees. Whether any one vote counts as participation, or a single Written Question should have the same weight as an afternoon chairing a Select Committee, are all nuanced questions and issues that will need to be considered.
On top of the identification of the metrics, there is an additional important question about how we implement those metrics. Should the requirements be set out comprehensively in legislation, or should the details be left to this House to decide and set out in Standing Orders, as suggested by the amendments tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Blencathra and Lord Lucas. This throws up numerous problems. On the previous group, the noble Lord, Lord Newby, touched on why legislation might be thought on the one hand to be preferable vehicle for the certainty and solidity that it gives, but may create all sorts of unintended consequences that the noble Lord set out.
In the Government’s view, these questions serve to underline the utility in our intent for the current Bill to remain focused on the single issue of hereditary peerages, leaving the important—I stress “important”—issue of participation levels to be the subject of further consultation and discussion with all your Lordships, not least to see whether a general consensus can be found. It is the Government’s hope that we can work together across this House to define what this new participation requirement would look like. As I have said, although we are grateful for this discussion and for your Lordships’ focus on this issue in this group of amendments, the very range of the amendments and scope of the debate that we have had demonstrate that we are not at a point where consensus has been reached and that further work and discussion are required.
Turning to the particular amendments, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, for his amendment, which seeks to impose a maximum participation threshold. In listening to the noble Lord’s contribution, I assume that the amendment seeks to ensure that minimum participation levels do not have an adverse impact on the operation of this House or incentivise participation for participation’s sake. The Government agree that care will need to be taken when we come to discuss what participation levels look like. It is one factor that will go into the pot as we try to calibrate what requisite participation will look like through discussion—or, indeed, potentially through the algorithm suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Desai.
The amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, seeks to impose an obligation on the Government to establish the cross-party Lords commission which, within six months, would set out recommendations requiring the Government, within a further six months, to adopt those recommendations in a draft Bill. I thank the noble Lord for his engagement on this matter, the thought that he has given to it and the spirit in which it is adopted. In his speech, he said that the purpose of his amendment was to get the Government to show a little ankle as to where we were. I am anticipating that that was metaphorical, not literal and I hope that I can reassure him and this House that the Government are committed, once this Bill has passed, to moving forward, hopefully through consensus, to push to the next level of reform, at which participation will be key.
However, I hope the noble Lord will also understand that we cannot support his amendment, even as we work together collegiately on that issue, for two reasons. First, the Government do not believe that it is necessary or helpful to prescribe on a statutory basis the mechanism by which a proposal for participation requirement is identified. Secondly, the final aspect of the amendment would oblige the Government to publish a draft Bill implementing the recommendations of the commission. We fully intend to work with your Lordships across the House and are committed to finding solutions that have the support of this House, but binding the Government to the recommendations of a commission that is not yet established is not an appropriate way to proceed.
Amendment 26, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, seeks to create the participation requirement that is now based on metrics other than attendance and allow for removal of Members who have not met a reasonable level of participation. The amendment seeks to appoint a committee to approve the relevant standing changes. I thank the noble Lord for his amendment. As I said in response to the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, the Government are committed to working collaboratively on the issue. I also thank the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, for the series of amendments that he has tabled to further shape the proposals for the participation requirement. He has made a number of very sensible suggestions that must form part of any further discussions on participation. They will need to take account of the sensible points raised by the noble Lord.
These are all significant and nuanced questions across the range of amendments, to which thought will need to be given carefully and collaboratively. The Government will welcome that discussion. As many noble Lords will know, my noble friend the Leader of the House has already engaged in over 60 discussions with your Lordships, trying to fashion and develop how we move forward after this Bill. Channelling the spirit of the debate, I respectfully request that noble Lords do not press their amendments.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
My Lords, once again we have had a fascinating debate. The Government may not have wished us to discuss this and to take an hour to do so, but noble Lords on all sides of the House have welcomed the chance to raise this important point. As I said at the beginning, like it or not, a tiny number of Peers come into this place for only a few minutes each day—then they disappear. That is quite a different matter from those who come here and participate at some level in discussion, including on a committee.
I do like Amendment 63, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell. He made the point that, if we do not tackle this now, we never will. Both our amendments call for this special committee to be set up, which will come up with metrics and decide on a level of participation. My noble friend Lord Strathclyde was right to say that this is an important constitutional matter and that it is right to discuss it now.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
—we would never dream of kicking her out of this place. She was absolutely right to say that all hereditary Peers should be given a life peerage. That would kill this nonsense stone dead.
My noble friend Lord Lucas has proposed an excellent amendment. As he said, we are all engaged here in trying to improve the effectiveness of the House. Asking new Peers to make a commitment for the future has merit, but we still have the genuine problem of the handful of Peers who come here, clock in and do nothing. I say again to my noble friend Lord Swire that I am not suggesting measuring the quality of speeches. If Peers are making speeches, then they are participating in the work of the House. The quality of their speeches is not something to be measured by this committee. My noble friend Lord Trenchard also supports participation level, but I would say to him that legislation is not necessary if we accept Amendment 32 when we come to it later.
As I am leading on all six groups of amendments today, I fear I have fallen foul of my noble friend Lord Parkinson’s exhortation not to speak too much. He quoted an incident that occurred years ago in the Commons, when I was a junior Whip and the marvellous Harold Walker was Speaker in the Chair. We were in government, and we had an agreement with the Opposition on a two-minute time limit for speeches on Commons consideration of Lords amendments. We were rocketing through our consideration of Lords amendments to yet another criminal justice Bill. We were getting on fine until our friend Sir Ivan Lawrence QC —I am not naming names, this is in Hansard—got up and said, “Everything that could possibly have been said on this Bill has been said, but not by those of us qualified to do so”. He spoke for 20 minutes, and the Labour Chief Whip said, “That’s it—the deal’s off!” We spent another two hours in Committee.
The noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, whom I congratulate on his birthday, showed support for the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, and a minimum level of participation. He also criticised those who, as he said, turn up for 20 minutes and then leave. I think those were my exact words, too, and we did not collaborate on that.
My noble friend Lord True, speaking from the Opposition Front Bench, said that it is legitimate to discuss these issues, which were in the manifesto. He said that there is a widespread view in the House that we have to do something about the problem of those who do not participate. Peers contribute in myriad ways. The committee that the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, and I are suggesting setting up would take those myriad ways into account before establishing a minimum.
The noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General said that agreement on doing something, having a metric and removing those who fall short of that level is important and that we should do something about it, but we are not setting it up here. All we are asking for is a committee to decide on the detail. The noble and learned Lord was justifying not doing anything because, he said, there were too many nuances. Of course there are nuances, dozens of them—there are hundreds of things to be taken into account—and that is the purpose of the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell. If we pass his amendment and set up the committee, it will do the consultation on all sides and spend a year or two figuring out the details.
I say to the noble and learned Lord that he reminded me of that wonderful “Yes Minister” attitude, where Sir Humphrey says, “Yes, Minister, that is a very good idea. We will set up an interdepartmental working group and consult the Cabinet committees and this, that and the other. Then we will publish a Green Paper first and then a White Paper. I am sure that we will be able to deliver on your promise—eventually”.
In conclusion, there is a mood in the House to take this participation problem seriously. Most noble Lords favour the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell. He stressed that some noble Lords were fussing about the details. He suggests that could be done by the committee.
Lord Blencathra
“Removal of peers with a criminal convictionAny peer convicted of a criminal offence on indictment ceases to be a member of the House of Lords within seven days of the conviction, or the loss of appeal if the peer appeals the conviction.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment intends to ensure that peers who have committed a serious offence are removed from the House, using an indictable offence to provide a clear threshold.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
My Lords, I am sure noble Lords will be relieved to hear that my speech will be much shorter on this occasion. I leave it to my noble and learned friends and other noble Lords to suggest improvements to my amendment.
Again, my starting point is the Labour Party manifesto. It said:
“Labour will ensure all Peers meet the high standards that the public expect of them, and we will introduce a new participation requirement as well as strengthening the circumstances in which disgraced members can be removed”.
The term “disgraced” is a bit vague. If we get into the business of removing Peers who have disgraced themselves, there will be quite a few, depending on how we judge the subjective word “disgraced”. It is safer to stick with those who have brought the House into disrepute and have committed a crime which has resulted in a prison sentence. My suggestion is that the prison sentence which triggers expulsion should be reduced from 12 months to six. My noble friend Lord Hailsham is right that his amendment would rectify my sloppy and imprecise legal wording. I hope noble Lords will agree that, however it is properly and legally phrased, the term should be reduced to six months from 12.
There are a number of related issues that the Committee needs to tackle. Suppose a Peer is convicted of drunk-driving and gets a three-month prison sentence and a 12-month driving ban—any drunk driver is a potential killer—should we not suspend him or her from the House for the same period as the driving ban, for example? We have a problem—some Peers, two I believe, who have served time in prison are still here because we did not have the expulsion power when they were convicted. Another defrauded the House of over £120,000 —the largest ever expenses scandal—but was never charged with a crime. We need to use the legislative power to retrospectively deal with those disgraced Peers.
No matter how heinous the crime might be, right up to the level you get when applying for a visa for the United States—“Have you ever waged thermonuclear war against the United States?”—if a Peer was instantly expelled and could never enter the House again, their title, Lord, still remains. In those rare cases, I suggest the title must be removed.
A peerage can be removed only by an Act of Parliament. The most recent Act that did that was the Titles Deprivation Act 1917, which I am sure is on the tip of your Lordships’ tongues. It was used to remove peerages from enemies of the UK during the First World War. Specifically, Section 1 introduced powers to remove a peerage from anyone who had
“during the present war, borne arms against His Majesty or His Allies, or who have adhered to His Majesty’s enemies”.
The Act meant that any Peers suspected of assisting the enemy could be investigated by a committee of the Privy Council, which would then lay a report to both Houses of Parliament for 40 days. If this period elapsed without either House tabling a Motion disapproving the report, the report would be taken as final and presented to the monarch. The Peer would then be struck off the peerage roll and would have all rights to receive a Writ of Summons and sit in the House of Lords removed. The Act took away four titles. Three of them—the Dukes of Cumberland, Albany and Brunswick —were high-ranking German noblemen and their peerages came from Victoria. The fourth, Viscount Taaffe, an Irish title, was serving in the Austrian army.
It would be a simple matter to have a new Act of Parliament replicating that, called the “Titles Deprivation Act”, for serious criminal offences, implementing exactly the same procedure of a committee of Privy Counsellors of both Houses deciding whether or not a title should be removed because of the severity of the crime committed by the Peer. Of course these issues are not in the Bill, and I am not asking that they should be, but I cannot think of any other opportunity I would have, this year or in the next few years, to raise that little issue, which I believe should be addressed by Parliament in the future to remove disgraced Peers. I beg to move.
Amendment 30 (to Amendment 29)
Viscount Hailsham
Viscount Hailsham (Con)
My Lords, I think the Committee would agree that disqualification from membership of this House should follow only a serious conviction. My suggestion is that a better indicator of the gravity of the conviction lies in the sentence rather than simply in the fact of conviction. That is why I have tabled an amendment whereby disqualification should follow the imposition of an immediate custodial sentence or a suspended sentence of at least six months. I suggest that that is a better mark of the gravity of the offence than simply the fact of a conviction, albeit on indictment.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
My Lords, I want to make sure that in this debate we do not forget the case of our late noble friend, Lord Montague of Beaulieu, who was imprisoned for 12 months for homosexual acts and would have fallen foul of my noble friend’s amendment, even as amended by my noble friend Lord Hailsham. He was charged under the same Act of Parliament as Oscar Wilde and many other gay men. The Montague case of 1954 gave direct rise to the Wolfenden report of 1957 and the decriminalisation of homosexuality 10 years later—a campaign led in your Lordships’ House, incidentally, by a Conservative hereditary Peer, the eighth Earl Arran, following the sad suicide of his brother.
On his release from prison, Lord Montague of Beaulieu returned to your Lordships’ House and remained an active and greatly esteemed Member, as well as highly engaged in civic life. He chaired the Historic Houses Association and English Heritage. He was elected to remain in your Lordships’ House in 1999 and announced his plans to retire only in 2015, the year that he died. So, while I agree with the sentiment that lawmakers should not be lawbreakers, it is important to remember that what constitutes a criminal offence is a question for legislation, and I for one am glad that the late Lord Montague was able to remain a legislator.
Lord Hacking (Lab)
I would like to add to what the noble Lord has just said. Some 53 years ago, when I first entered the House, there was a Cross-Bencher who had been convicted and served his penal sentence. I have forgotten where it was. He was greatly respected and was treated as an expert in your Lordships’ House on penal matters.
Lord Keen of Elie (Con)
I am obliged to the noble Lord. I am not able to claim that same degree of expertise.
In speaking to these amendments, I fully understand what lies behind them: a desire to ensure that those who serve in this legislature exhibit the standards of integrity and character that the public would surely demand of them. My concern is that the amendments are perhaps too narrowly focused. We already have a means, since the 2015 Act, of dealing, by way of the Conduct Committee, with recommendations for expulsion or suspension. That broad remit seems to me a more equitable and sensible means of addressing these issues.
I give but a few examples. In the past few years, at least one of your Lordships was convicted of a serious offence in the United States of America. He was sentenced to three and a half years in prison. Would that sentence be attached by the proposed amendments? It would be necessary to extend the amendments to sentences imposed by courts not just within but outwith the United Kingdom. What if a noble Lord was charged with an offence in the Russian Federation on highly dubious grounds and was convicted and sentenced to a number of years in prison? How would we deal with that issue if we had extended these provisions to sentences imposed by courts outwith the United Kingdom?
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
My Lords, this has been a short but interesting and thoughtful debate on the amendments trying to probe these issues. The comments of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, on how the House can deal with this matter were very helpful.
Currently, as the noble and learned Lord said, under the House of Lords Reform Act 2014, a Member of this House automatically ceases to be a Member if they are convicted of a serious offence—that is, if they are given a non-suspended prison sentence of more than a year. We have already heard about the House of Lords (Expulsion and Suspension) Act 2015; the Standing Orders of this House and the Code of Conduct deal with that very clearly. If a Member receives a prison sentence—of any length and regardless of what the sentence is—that is deemed to be a breach of the code.
There has been a general view across the House about having some strengthening of their roles but, as the noble and learned Lord has said, a number of factors have to be considered in the round. For example, would it be right automatically to expel a Member if the Crown Court considers that the offence is not sufficiently serious to warrant a custodial sentence? Are there particular offences that the House may consider should be treated more seriously, or as being incompatible with membership of your Lordships’ House and warrant automatic expulsion?
Noble Lords also raised the question of somebody being prosecuted overseas. As well as what we might determine malicious or political prosecutions, somebody could be prosecuted overseas for something that is not an offence in this country. Further debate is needed on how we can strengthen the rules. Another factor that I will take into account is the rules across both Houses. It was interesting that the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, set the threshold in his amendment lower than the recall conditions for Members of Parliament, but the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, set it higher. Some consistency across Parliament would be helpful.
The noble Lord also raised a very interesting point about the removal of peerage. I am sure I am not the only noble Lord to have heard this point—the noble Lord, Lord True, may have had similar correspondence: if somebody has been stripped of another honour, why do they remain a Peer? In fact, that has nothing to do with the membership of the House of Lords. Someone can retain a peerage. That is not a matter for this House, but I think that those comments should be taken on board as well.
That indicates that we would be willing and happy to maintain an ongoing dialogue on this particular matter—
Lord Blencathra (Con)
The manifesto mentioned “disgraced” Peers. I know that the noble Baroness may be consulting on this, but can she indicate what she means by “disgraced” Peers? Is it only those who have committed serious criminal offences?
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
It is hard to look at this without looking at criminal offences, but if noble Lords have other examples they would wish us to consider, we would be happy to do so. Ultimately, these are matters for the Code of Conduct and further dialogue, so I respectfully request that noble Lords do not press their amendments.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
My Lords, we have spent 15 minutes on this, so I hope we will not be accused of filibustering in this small but rather important debate. I take on board the complexities that my noble and learned friend Lord Keen of Elie and the Minister have described. Nevertheless, it has been a worthwhile debate.
There has been a surprising amount of consensus over the deprivation of titles. If one can take away a knighthood, it should be possible, in very controlled circumstances, to take away the title of Peer. It is a matter for this House in conjunction with the Commons, because the Titles Deprivation Act 1917 said that a Joint Committee of privy counsellors from both Houses should look at peerages and decide who had aided the enemy. If we had removal for serious offences, however we determine “serious”, again, it would be determined by a committee of privy counsellors from both Houses. And it would not be automatic; we would not be looking back at someone like Lord Montague and automatically doing it. The committee would determine whether the seriousness of the offence, whether in the last few years or further back, was worth taking forward. It would not be an automatic removal of title.
Lord Blencathra
“Legislating for changes to the composition of the House of Lords(1) Where a resolution of the House of Lords establishes or changes—(a) the age at which peers must retire,(b) a minimum attendance requirement,(c) a participation requirement, or(d) a type of criminal conviction which results in expulsion from the House,a relevant Minister must, within 12 months, take the action set out in subsection (2).(2) Where a resolution is passed by the House of Lords in accordance with subsection (1) (a “relevant resolution”), a relevant Minister must, by regulations made by statutory instrument, amend this Act in order to translate the relevant resolution into statute.(3) The regulations must use the wording of the relevant resolution, without any alteration.(4) The relevant Ministers are the Leader of the House of Lords and the Leader of the House of Commons, by whatever titles they are then known.(5) A statutory instrument containing regulations under this section may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before, and approved by a resolution of, each House of Parliament.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to establish changes regarding the composition of the House in law, while allowing the House flexibility to change them.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
My Lords, I consider this amendment quite important and a solution to many of the problems that have been posed by noble Lords on Monday and today; that is, that we may want to change things in the future, but we need to wait for an Act of Parliament to do it—an Act which may never materialise.
Let us suppose for a moment—and it is not beyond the bounds of possibility—that we make an amendment to this Bill which succeeds, so that the Act of Parliament may contain provisions that set out a retirement age, a minimum participation requirement or an attendance requirement, or sets up the committee that the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, described in his amendment. After 12 months or two years or longer, when that committee reports, if this House decided that we needed to tweak it and that the retirement age or attendance criteria were not right, we would need primary legislation to change it.
The justification for my Amendment 32 was in fact made, I believe, by noble Lords on Monday night. Noble Lords may recall the debate we had on retirement ages and the amendment on transitional arrangements proposed by the noble Earl, Lord Devon. It was supported by the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, who said that it
“proposes a simple set of transitional arrangements with two legs that would reduce that organisational shock enormously and allow the House to transition to an age limit of 80 without pain or any loss of our capability and effectiveness … The second leg would give everyone who comes in a minimum of 10 years”.—[Official Report, 10/3/25; cols. 560-61.]
The noble Lord, Lord Burns, said
“if we are going to have an age limit, we do not have to choose between 80, 85 or 90 for ever. We could begin with an age limit of 85 and then, for the following Parliament, have an age limit of 80: we would get two bites at the process of bringing down the numbers. I support what my noble friend Lord Kinnoull says. I think the transition arrangements for this are just as important as they have been in the whole debate about hereditary Peers”.—[Official Report, 10/3/25; col. 563.]
Winding up that debate, my noble and learned friend Lord Keen of Elie had a similar argument—to bring the age down to 85 by the end of this Parliament and to 80 by the end of the next Parliament.
What those four speeches have in common is that, at some future point, a further Act of Parliament would be required on House of Lords reform. It is highly unlikely that we will get any new legislation on changes to the House of Lords, even little ones, and it would probably be outside the scope of even the usual Home Office “Christmas tree” Bill—a criminal justice Bill. The Government have had their fingers burnt with this Bill and will not want a rerun of it, even if they worked out ideas on improving
“national and regional balance of the second chamber”,
as they said in their manifesto. Thus, my solution is to have a special regulation-making power in the Act to enable any of the suggestions on retirement ages, term limits or anything else.
As your Lordships will know, all Governments over the last 40 years have ruthlessly extended the delegated powers in Bills to include more inappropriate delegations. I submit that no Government can be trusted with an open-ended regulatory power to change the four Lords rules that I have suggested in my amendment. I was interested in what the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, said about delegated powers: that, in the past few years, they have expanded dramatically, which is not acceptable. The report from our Delegated Powers Committee, when I chaired it, suggested that every Government over the last 40 years had increased their delegated powers.
Therefore, we need a tightly constrained delegated power that the Government could not change or delay. That is why I state in my amendment that the regulation must copy verbatim the wording of the resolution of the House of Lords, and it must be made within 12 months of our House passing such a Motion. We would need to look at it first, just to ensure that there was no accidental wrong wording in the government regulations.
The Committee may think that I am being a bit cynical, but after four years as chairman of the Delegated Powers Committee, I can show noble Lords real cynicism in some of the appalling delegated powers that government departments have inserted into Bills. We revealed that in our report, Democracy Denied? The Urgent Need to Rebalance Power between Parliament and the Executive, and I can slip noble Lords a few copies at very little cost.
Let us build in now the power to make changes in the future. It would not commit us to making any of those changes, but it would ensure that, if this House of Lords decided on a retirement age or term limits or participation—or to implement anything that the committee described by the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, agreed on—we would not have to wait many years for a new Act of Parliament and for the Government to find time in their legislative programme. Looking at the myriad problems that always affect the country every month and year, I cannot see any Government in the next two or three years finding time for another Bill on House of Lords changes. The regulation-making power that I suggest should be tightly drawn, unlike a Bill, which would be fair game for another 116 amendments as per this Bill.
Before concluding, I must say that I was impressed by the transitional arrangements propositions. If those four noble Lords—the noble Earls, Lord Devon and Lord Kinnoull, the noble Lord, Lord Burns, and my noble and learned friend Lord Keen of Elie—can agree some consensus amendment for Report, I will happily not push ahead with the more blunt instrument of retirement at the ages of 80, 85 or 90. In the meantime, I commend my Amendment 32 to the Committee and beg to move.
Earl Attlee (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for moving his amendment. However, I am not convinced that it is a very good idea, not least because it would alter the constitution and enable this House to exclude Members of another place from coming here at some point, without affording them the opportunity to say no or to express their concerns.
Lord Northbrook (Con)
My Lords, I am not quite sure what
“resolution of the House of Lords”
means: whether it is by amendment and, considering the mechanics of the whole thing, whether it would also have to go through the House of Commons. I am slightly perplexed at how this amendment would work in practice.
Lord Lucas (Con)
My Lords, I find this a very attractive way of approaching the amendments proposed previously by the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, because it moves the initiative back to the House of Lords, which has to initiate the change. Given that it has to result in a vote of both Houses, the Government can just vote it down—so in reality it would have to be something negotiated between the House of Lords and the Government.
The amendment does two really important things. First, it produces a mechanism that can actually happen. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hermer, said that this Government are determined or committed on making further changes. Some of us heard that 26 years ago and it sounded just the same—and I believe it was just as real. There was a real determination then to move forward with stage 2, but it did not happen. I do not believe that under the circumstances in the world, in this Government, in this country or in this economy, any Government could find the time in the next four and a half years for another House of Lords Bill. It just will not happen. If we use this mechanism, we get the ability to change most of the important things that we are talking about in this Committee. The Government would retain control because it would require a vote in the Commons—but the House of Lords would take the initiative. That is a very attractive way of dealing with a lot of what we have talked about in the past three days.
Lord Newby (LD)
My Lords, I am afraid I cannot agree with this amendment, because it requires all these changes to be implemented via a legislative route. As I said in my earlier speech, I do not believe that minimum attendance or participation requirements should be dealt with through legislation—they should be dealt with directly by a resolution of your Lordships’ House. As we have just heard, the Conduct Committee is perfectly capable of dealing with criminal convictions and recommending the expulsion of a Member of your Lordships’ House when it believes that he has behaved in a criminal manner.
Baroness Finn (Con)
My Lords, this is an interesting amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Blencathra. To continue the Lloyd Webber theme, he has certainly been a diamond in our dull grey lives today.
As my noble friend described, this amendment seeks to provide a mechanism by which resolutions passed by this House on matters such as retirement age, attendance, participation or criminal convictions could be translated into statute through regulations. I know that my noble friend, as a former and long-serving chair of our Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, makes this suggestion with a great deal of knowledge and consideration for the workings of our House.
This amendment also reflects an important principle that we have discussed throughout our debates: that constitutional reform should be done with consensus and that your Lordships should have a say in any reforms that affect your Lordships’ House. However, we must also acknowledge that the House of Lords is an unelected body, and allowing it to self-regulate its membership with legal force would raise democratic concerns and risk undermining trust in our institutions. Traditionally, and rightly so, significant changes to the composition of the Lords have been matters decided by Parliament as a whole, not merely by your Lordships’ House.
While I understand the spirit of the amendment, I have some practical concerns—for example, about the proposal to require that resolutions be translated into statute without any alteration. Some House resolutions, though well meaning, can contain ambiguities or practical challenges that would need refining before they could be translated into statute. By requiring strict adherence to the wording of resolutions, there is a risk of making ineffective or impractical law and creating unintended complications.
To conclude, there is much to commend in the principle of this amendment, namely that your Lordships’ House should have a meaningful role in shaping its own composition and standards for the future. However, allowing the House to self-regulate its membership in this way would raise democratic concerns that have not been satisfactorily addressed today. That said, my noble friend’s proposal rightly challenges us to consider how we can translate our internal deliberations into actionable reforms, should there be consensus to do so.
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
My Lords, it has been an interesting debate. One thing that strikes me is that the House itself wants to lead on the issues of participation, retirement age, attendance and criminal conviction. The noble Lord, Lord Newby, said that legislation was not the way forward, and the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, was very suspicious of legislation, because he thinks that it is not going to happen. It is interesting how Members are now much more engaged in these issues than we have been in the past, so I am grateful for those comments.
On the noble Lord’s amendment, I feel the hand of mischief here a little. It feels a bit like a Henry VIII power; I wonder whether noble Lords are comfortable with an unelected House passing a resolution and then saying to the elected House, “You must put this in statute”. It goes against the grain of every speech I have ever heard the noble Lord make on that issue, with which I have always agreed, so it is a curious amendment—but just a probing one, I am sure.
On the issue of the House making these arrangements and looking at how it can do that—including whether we can do things more quickly—there are always arrangements in our manifesto for legislation. But if noble Lords can find a way to agree on a way forward on the issues in the noble Lord’s amendments, I am sure the House would be willing to have those discussions.
I am grateful to the noble Lord for raising those issues. As I say, this amendment raises constitutional issues. In any other aspect of the work he has done, I do not think he would ever have agreed to it, but I thank him for his contribution and hope he will seek leave to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Lucas (Con)
Can I ask the noble Baroness a couple of questions? First, as I read my noble friend’s amendment, the duty on the Government would be to put the matter to the vote, not put it in statute. So the House of Commons would have a controlling vote over whether these changes happen.
Secondly, in response to what the noble Lord, Lord Newby, said, is it the noble Baroness’s understanding that the current arrangements would allow us to change the Standing Orders so that we excluded Peers on the basis of non-attendance or non-participation—or would that require legislative change?
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
In our Standing Orders we are already able to exclude Peers for non-attendance. That right exists at the moment. The discussion we have had is about whether it is at the right level, but we could do that through our own Standing Orders.
I am not sure that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, is right in the first point he made, because the amendment says:
“Where a resolution is passed by the House of Lords in accordance with subsection (1) … a relevant Minister must, by regulations made by statutory instrument, amend this Act”.
So there are instructions for the Minister to amend the Act—there would have to be a vote, I am sure, but it is an instruction.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for making that clear. It would be an instruction for the Minister to lay it as a statutory instrument but, of course, there would be a vote on it in the House of Commons at any rate.
My noble friend Lord Northbrook asked about the mechanics of the resolution. We write Standing Orders and they are perfect, so we would draft a new Standing Order on whatever it may be; the resolution of the House would then ask for that Standing Order to be a statutory instrument, which the Government would implement.
My noble friend Lady Finn was worried that we would impose on the Government the wording of this statutory instrument but get it wrong. If I may say so, there is a better chance that the House of Lords will get the wording of a statutory instrument right than any government lawyers; that has been my experience in the past. I welcome my noble friend Lord Lucas’s support.
I am sorry to disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Newby, but I believe that we are capable of drafting sufficient regulations on some of the issues in my amendment and that we do not need an Act of Parliament. I regret that I put the criminal convictions in—that was a step too far—but, hypothetically, surely we should have the power to do as I have suggested as far as the retirement age and a participation rate are concerned. Those things do not need massive outside consultation or an Act of Parliament. As the House of Lords, it should be within our power, if the committee of the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, comes up with metrics on participation—or if the suggestions from the noble Earls, Lord Devon and Lord Kinnoull, on retirement ages and transitional rules come up—to say, “These are the rules that we want”. In the current circumstances, we would say that to the Government. If the Leader of the House, on whatever side, said, “Jolly good idea”, he or she would then go to the Government and say, “This is what the House of Lords wants to change. Can we please have an Act of Parliament sometime to make these amendments to our rules?”.
I am suggesting that we would not need to go through that palaver if we built in a tightly constrained regulatory power. It may have to be tweaked—I am not suggesting that my wording here is perfect; clearly, it is not—but, if we gave ourselves the power to change our rules on retirement ages and participation rates, say, and that regulation power could go to the Government, as I suggest, the Government could then put it in an SI the way we have worded it. The House of Commons could then vote on it. I suggest that this would be a simple solution but, as I think I am the only one here with an amendment, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.