Tuesday 25th March 2025
(1 day, 13 hours ago)
Lords ChamberHouse of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill 2024-26 View all House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill 2024-26 Debates Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 49-IV Fourth marshalled list for Committee - (21 Mar 2025)
Lord Inglewood
“Review: changes to the composition of the House of Lords in the future(1) The Secretary of State must, within six months of the day on which this Act is passed, review the impact of this Act and any subsequent legislation which alters the composition of the House of Lords on the process by which changes are made in the future to—(a) appointments to the House of Lords;(b) the composition of the House of Lords.(2) The Secretary of State must lay before each House of Parliament the report of the review within one year of the day on which this Act is passed.(3) Thereafter, the Secretary of State must initiate a review of the subject matter in subsection (1) within the six months after any future General Election and must lay before each House of Parliament the report of the review within one year of the day on which the General Election took place.”
Lord Inglewood (CB)
My Lords, this is a probing amendment. What I am suggesting is a stalking horse, so the detail is not important other than to engender discussion and debate. It is the reasons which lie behind it that matter. Dr Johnson, that quintessential Englishman, was clear when he said:
“Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully”.
And so I have been thinking.
Looking back to the last time the House considered the matters we are discussing now, some 25 years ago, I find that some things are similar but others are not. In particular, the wider political context is vastly changed. At that time, we were all basking in the glow of the collapse of the Berlin Wall and its political and emotional consequences. Now, sadly, it is all very different. Since those heady days, a great shadow has fallen across the globe. Democracy, freedom and the rule of law have lost at least some of their appeal and popularity, and with it some of their resonance and potency. They have been replaced all around the world by new personalities, new policies, and new political approaches and priorities which are greatly at variance with our national traditions and values. The concept of “good chaps” from the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, then generally accepted across the political spectrum here in this country, is at best questioned and at worst dismissed in some quarters.
As I thought about the implications of the Bill in a wider context against this background, it became apparent to me how potentially fragile some of our constitutional arrangements might be. Members of the Committee should forget about the Salisbury/Addison convention and rather focus on the Parliament Acts. In raw political terms, an unscrupulous and determined Government with a big majority of seats in the House of Commons—which we know does not necessarily require as huge a number of votes in the country as one might expect, under the rules of our existing electoral system— could, in pretty short order, completely alter the entire composition of the second Chamber or even abolish it entirely, as happened under the Commonwealth.
I know from my time on the Constitutional Affairs Committee in the European Parliament that many countries deal with this kind of possibility through differential systems of voting, referenda and/or super- majorities as forms of checks and balances. We know that we do not do things quite like that here, but we have a provision in the Parliament Acts which excludes from their scope proposals to extend the life of Parliament. For the future, once this Bill will have become law, it seems sensible to me to envisage an amendment which would extend this rule to proposals to change the composition of the second Chamber and/or to abolish it. Under this approach, the House of Lords itself would become the check and balance of last resort.
I tried to table such an amendment, but it was ruled out of scope by the clerks, and this is the best I was allowed to table, the wording of which, on my own admission, is inadequate and is merely a peg upon which this wider important topic can be discussed. I hasten to add that I have done this for exactly the same reason that I insure my house against fire. It is not that I am expecting my house to burn down—on the contrary—but were it to do so, the consequences would be dire and very difficult to deal with without having taken out an insurance policy previously.
Finally, let us remember that the phrase “It just couldn’t happen here” is weasel words and is frequently the first step on the road to political disaster. I may well be accused of setting a hare running. I hope I have, and I hope it will run and run.
The Earl of Devon (CB)
My Lords, I shall speak to three amendments in this group. Amendments 91 and 94, in my name, seek to address gender equality in hereditary peerages once Clause 2 of this Bill ends for ever your Lordships’ ancient jurisdiction to determine peerage claims. Amendment 97 considers whether the name “the House of Lords”, with its inherently gendered, privileged and feudal connotations, remains appropriate once the gendered, privileged and feudal hereditary Lords have left. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hannan of Kingsclere, and the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Llanfaes, who have added their names to Amendment 97.
Equality of succession to hereditary peerages is an issue I care about deeply. I had hoped we might change the law to remove this discriminatory patriarchal anomaly while I was here, but that now appears unlikely, given this Bill. The best we can do is require the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, to which peerage claim jurisdiction now moves, to exercise its functions in a non-discriminatory manner and to consult on the challenges posed thereby.
Throughout the debate on the hereditary peerage, we have been assailed for our gender. Since the Countess of Mar departed, we have indeed all been male, and it is right that we should not reserve seats in Parliament for a predominately male cohort. However, the equitable solution is not to abolish us due to our gender but to change succession laws to alter our gender. It is discriminatory to critique us for a protected characteristic over which we have no control while refusing to allow us to change the law. These amendments are our last hope of dragging the hereditary peerage into modern times and establishing equality at the heart of British society. Once we leave your Lordships’ House, I think no one will care.
Here, I note my interest as the Earl of Devon. I am the 37th man to have held that title. There has been one woman, Countess Isabella, the last Queen of the Wight—an example of powerful feudal female leadership. The title was most recently restored in Tudor times, since when it passes exclusively to all heirs male. My grandfather, my father and I each grew up as the only brother among multiple sisters, poster boys for male primogeniture. The youngest of four, I was uncomfortable that my gender charted my life. That my mother “would have gone to any lengths” to have a son was a phrase that echoed somewhat awkwardly through my childhood, particularly given the prominence in our home of the portrait of the ninth Earl with his 13 sisters, painted in 1779. There are no male spares in the Courtenay family tree, which is so verdant with female branches. “Kind hearts and Coronets”, we are not.
It is not just the personal embarrassment of male preferment that motivates me but the earldom itself. It was granted to Baldwin in 1142 when he was the first Norman baron to raise his standard over Exeter Castle in support of the Empress Matilda’s claim to the Throne of England. She was usurped by her cousin Stephen on the death of her father, Henry I, because Stephen and others felt that Matilda, being female, could not rule. Baldwin disagreed. From inception, therefore, the earldom of Devon championed female leadership. Lost and recovered some five times during the Middle Ages, the earldom was most recently restored in 1553 by our second female sovereign, Queen Mary I, because once again the family championed her right as a woman to rule England upon the death of her father, Henry VIII. We had been beheaded for these radical views in 1538, but through Queen Mary’s good graces the family recovered and have since kept our heads sufficient for me to be here now to continue that fight—and perhaps risk a further beheading.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, there can be no doubt from the very witty speech by the noble Earl, Lord Devon, that he is a hereditary Peer—but it is not always clear. Did we know when the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, spoke? Do we know when others speak? I would have thought that every hereditary Peer would be obliged to declare that interest at the beginning of their speech. If I was in the other place, I could ask the Speaker to rule on that, but that does not apply here. I hope the Leader of the House might indicate in her reply that it would be helpful not just for the House but for the public outside to know whether the Member speaking has a vested interest.
Lord Lucas (Con)
My Lords, that is an interesting concept, but I do not think there is a vested interest of mine in this set of amendments. I very much support what the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, said. I think this is a good direction to go down. Of course, I support the first two amendments from the noble Earl, Lord Devon. I was a supporter of Lord Diamond on those Benches in the days of John Major’s Government, when he tried twice to abolish the male exclusiveness of the hereditary peerage. I have promoted Bills to that effect, and it has never appealed to the Government of the day.
However, I rather like the noble Earl’s formulation, which puts a duty on the Privy Council to sort things out. I think leaving bits of sex discrimination lying around in prominent places matters. It is only a label, but I do not think it should be allowed to continue. It is not that hard to make a change, as the noble Earl shows, and I very much hope that the Government will feel inclined to consign one of the last bits of formal sex discrimination in our constitutional arrangements to the dustbin.
Amendment 62, like the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, is a device to get my proposed new subsections (2)(a) and (2)(b) discussed. My interest in participating in the Bill is to make sure that, if we can, we use it to make sure that, going forward, the House without us will be in a better place and able to function better than it does now.
The first barrier that needs to be removed is that the Government should not only let us but positively encourage us to innovate and improve. We ought to have that motivation too. Things stay the same and change only slowly in this place, but we need to do better. We are sure of the effectiveness of our scrutiny when it comes to legislation, but I have never seen it really examined. Where are the research reports and the independent investigations? Where are the committees looking into this and proposing how things might be done better? We ought to be in a condition of constant improvement.
To my mind, the same applies to our interface with the public. For a long time, we have been limited by the fact that it is only us and that there are no staff. What we can do is throttled by that and by the need to work in this Chamber, but artificial intelligence is in the process of changing that and making it possible for someone in our position to engage with a great deal more information and conversation than was ever possible in the past. It also makes it much easier for people outside this Chamber to have a connection with and understanding of us and what we are doing, in a way we can join in with, without overwhelming ourselves. We ought as a House to be determined to give the public the benefit of these technological changes.
I am not particularly attached to the mechanism in my proposed new clause. It will take some rethinking before Report to produce something that gives the House the initiative, but also the duty, to improve, that allows it to push forward and that encourages the Government to support that. Obviously, big changes need a Commons veto, but we can move so that most of this goes via Standing Orders, while the bits that cannot should go via secondary legislation. We would need the approval of the Commons but would not need to go through the rigmarole of a Bill. House of Lords Bills happen very occasionally, but our process of improvement ought to be constant.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, I am standing up to speak before the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, because he is very fluent and I do not want to embarrass myself by following him. I can tell the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, that I am not a hereditary Peer, but he knows that because I am a woman.
I wholeheartedly support Amendments 91 and 94 from the noble Earl, Lord Devon. They make absolute sense and it would be a good move for the Government to take them forward as soon as they can, even if it is not in this Bill. In a sense, this are trivial—it does not affect many people—but, at the same time, it is an indicator of a lack of balance and equality in our society.
On the noble Earl’s Amendment 97, I really could not care less what we are, what we call ourselves and how we look. This whole architecture is Victorian kitsch. It is falling to pieces and it is time that we renovated. It is time that we sat not two sword lengths apart but in a circle like a modern second chamber. But I very much support Amendments 91 and 94.
Baroness Deech (CB)
My Lords, I rise to support my noble friend on Amendments 91 and 94 and to extend them a bit. Titles are not trivial. I have been involved in this in a certain way, which I am coming to, for more than 10 years. Titles are property and they go back to feudal times. We cannot have two laws, one of total equality for people outside this House and another for those who are affected by the ability to sit and be addressed in this House. We all take a rather shallow course called Valuing Everyone; let us start, indeed, by valuing everyone.
This is what I want to move on to: I speak for hundreds of Dames who have husbands and dozens of noble Baronesses who have spouses. It is not a trivial matter that our spouses do not share our titles, whereas it works the other way around. I was in correspondence with Buckingham Palace about this a long time ago, having tried in this House. The Palace told me it was a matter of property and a very serious matter, and that only if Parliament willed it could titles be changed so there would be equality.
So, once more, I put in a plea. If someone is a Lord, of course their wife is a Lady, though I wonder why; it certainly ought to work the other way round if that is how it is. Likewise for Dames, because we cannot exempt ourselves from the equality that applies outside and not apply it in this House. Unfortunately, the last time I tried, I was undermined by the late, lamented Lady Trumpington, who told the House that, when she and her husband, whose name was Dr Barker, checked in to a hotel together, it gave them a frisson.
Baroness Deech (CB)
This brought the House down—as it has done again today—and I lost my point. But it is a serious one: if we are going to share titles, although I am not sure that we should, it should work both ways.
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)
My Lords, what a pleasure it is to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, and, indeed, one half of our Green Party. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, and I have known each other since we met on the slopes of Mount Sinai nearly 40 years ago. She knows how fond I am of her—she supplies my family with her lovely homemade jam—but, as always, I completely disagree.
She cared very much about the gendered amendments but not about the name of the House; I am exactly the other way around. It seems to me utterly bizarre that the Government should have a view on succession to titles. I get the argument of republicanism and I get that it is an irrational thing to have younger brothers inheriting before older sisters. But it is equally irrational to have a prejudice in favour of first-born children rather than younger children. In fact, the whole thing is irrational and cannot be justified wholly on logical grounds. If you start pulling at that thread, you very quickly end up with a French Revolution-style abolition of the entire shebang. If we want to do that, fine, but the idea that you can keep the titles but apply a Guardian public sector equality test to them seems to me extremely strange.
I speak in support of Amendment 97, standing in my name and that of the noble Earl, Lord Devon. I think I said at Second Reading that even the architecture of this Chamber is a link back to the old House of Lords: that it was in the minds of Pugin and Barry to recreate the idea of a throne room and a monarch taking the counsel of his bishops and barons. There is, I think, a thread in the make-up of this House that connects us back, certainly to the earliest House of Lords in the reign of Edward III and probably to the Magnum Concilium of which the noble Earl spoke; or, before that, even to the pre-Conquest witans—I think a Saxon king taking the counsel of his thanes and aldermen would have been doing something not unrecognisable to a Chamber that contains a partly hereditary element.
That thread is being snapped; the link is being sundered. It is being sheared in two, as the Fates were said to do with the thread of a man’s life, and we are being cut off from a part of our history and our constitutional inheritance. I am Tory enough to regret that, but I am Whig enough to recognise that there is something irrational about having an inherited element of a legislature. I wish we were replacing it with something better, as was originally the deal promised in 1998, but we have lost that argument and it is an argument for a different time.
I come back to the bizarre anomaly of having a House of Lords that does not contain any “lords”—as the word would have been understood for the previous 1,000 years. That seems a case of having our cake and eating it. If there are no lords of the traditional, recognised, aristocratic variety then by what virtue and on what basis do we continue to appropriate the name?
This question has been faced before. During the Cromwellian interregnum, the Lord Protector was always trying to bring the old aristocracy back into government. He wanted to sustain the legitimacy of his rule by returning to bicameralism. His problem was that none of the lords would agree to serve. If memory serves, there was one—the sixth Baron Eure, who was a parliamentary soldier who inherited his title when the fifth Baron Eure, who was a distant cousin of his and a royalist soldier, was killed on the battlefield at Marston Moor. He was the only lord, in the old sense, to serve in what came to be known, with spectacular banality, as the “other House”—hence the convention of how the two Chambers refer to one another that we have to this day.
If you do not have any lords, in the Cromwellian sense, do you not face exactly the same dilemma? We can probably do better than “the other House” as a title—we could call ourselves a senate—but it seems utterly extraordinary that we should pretend to the authority and legitimacy that comes from this very old institution when we have deliberately, and in contravention of promises made at the ballot box, torn that thread in two.
I would like an answer to this when Ministers come to respond. Let us please hear their defence of titles.
Baroness Hayman (CB)
My Lords, I have resisted so far the temptation to participate in the debate on the Bill. I shall keep to that, in the sense that I will resist the temptation to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, on the byways of nomenclature for the House itself.
However, I urge the Government Front Bench to think seriously about and respond positively to two issues raised by the noble Earl, Lord Devon. The first is the inappropriateness of this House in any way involving itself in the determination of peerage claims. This was an argument that I made, and lost, before the turn of the century, but I still agree with what I said then and I believe that it would be far better for the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council to take on that responsibility.
Secondly, we need to right the implicit wrong in the hereditary peerage: the sex discrimination against generations of women who should have inherited not only the title but the estate—which in many ways is much more important. I hope the Government will give us some hope that they will make progress on that.
I talked about inheriting the title. The noble Baroness, Lady Deech, pointed out the other anomaly of the husbands and wives of baronesses and barons. We should not right that wrong by creating another anomaly of giving someone else a title because of their sexual relationship with another person who has a title. That does not seem to make a great deal of sense or to be progressive in any way. I would just stop anyone giving their partner a title because of something that they have inherited or achieved.
The Earl of Erroll (CB)
My Lords, I want to say to the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, that while I am a hereditary Peer, I am not here to try to stay here; whatever happens, happens. The reason that I and the other 91—92 in all—stayed here was to ensure the further democratic and proper reform of the House of Lords. That was the promise given; not that we would be turfed out, 20 or 25 years later. The whole point is that the Government are trying to do one bit, and I bet we will not see more. That is why Amendment 55 is essential, to try to start putting a timetable on reform happening. Otherwise, after this, nothing will happen; we will end up with a House with no democratic legitimacy, and that will be a problem. I therefore very much support Amendment 55.
I am here because my mother was here before me. She was one of the first five Peeresses to sit here when they allowed Peeresses to sit; she was the Countess of Erroll, in her own right. It was quite amusing, as my mother and father used to have trouble getting tickets for the train. If they were travelling from Perth, where they were known, they could travel down in the same compartment as the Countess of Erroll and Captain Iain Moncreiffe, as he was when they were first married. If they booked from London, they had to go up as Mr and Mrs Moncreiffe, or otherwise that would not be allowed—they did not allow that sort of behaviour. In fact, Claridge’s would not give them a room on the night of their honeymoon for the same reason, so this has been a perpetual problem.
Interestingly, there was always that issue of equality. My mother was also Lord High Constable of Scotland, as that has been in the family since about 1314. As such, at the Coronation, when the Queen went up to receive the Honours of Scotland, my mother was not allowed to carry the sword, as it was not thought suitable for a woman to do that. The Earl of Home carried it as her deputy, but she stood next to the Queen as the Queen received the Honours of Scotland. She had to be there to supervise and to make sure that it was done properly. As a woman, there was no bar to her holding what was traditionally thought of as a male position, and there is no reason why there should be in the future.
I heavily support the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lord Devon, which I think are very sensible. We have got to move forward. There comes a point when it gets too difficult.
I want to say a little about how things get taken over. My father always told me that the communists took over the colour red, not as the people’s blood but because the nobles in Russia, as everywhere, used red as their colour; it is the colour of nobility. What they were doing was usurping the nobles, and taking over their mantle and structure. That is why the communists wave a red flag.
Personally, I am looking forward to future reform of this House, to bring it forward into the 21st century and onwards, in a proper form, not just as a whole lot of people appointed by one person who may be so-called democratically elected but not necessarily by the majority of the country. It is wrong.
Lord Northbrook (Con)
My Lords, I support the amendment in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Devon. I declare two interests: first, as a hereditary Peer, and, secondly, as having three daughters and no son.
I promoted the Succession to Peerages and Baronetcies Bill, which said that daughters should be able to inherit the title when there were no sons. This upset the House; the mood was that the eldest child should be enabled to inherit titles regardless of sex, as per the Royal Family. My concerns are over existing expectations, as mentioned by the noble Earl, and matters such as long-established family trusts. I am not sure about children born to unmarried parents—this might lead to some title-hunters. But I like his amendment on this, which gives some flexibility.
As regards the name of the House, I feel it should perhaps be called the Senate, and that we should go with the Wakeham commission’s idea of LPs—lords or ladies of Parliament—or senators.
Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)
My Lords, I shall make one point about the amendment in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Devon. Until the Law Lords were removed from the House, these peerage claims were decided by a committee on which the Law Lords sat. Members of the House who were not Lords were not allowed to vote in those committees, so he would in effect be restoring the position to what it always used to be.
Lord Sandhurst (Con)
My Lords, I support Amendments 55 and 62 as the first modest steps to build in safeguards as to the future composition of this House. The speech by the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, reminded me of the circumstances in which and the speed with which the Weimar Republic was replaced by a bullying minority Government. I say that not—and I really mean this—to cast aspersions on the party opposite or the present Government, but because we can take nothing for granted in constitutional matters. Who knows who will be in office in five or 10 years’ time, when there may be difficult economic circumstances and big residual problems from the waves of immigration we have had, and when the mood in the country may be much worse than it is now? Without safeguards, a populist Government—supported by, say, 34% of the electorate—in such difficult economic times and under such pressures might seek to pack this House and drive through dangerous legislation if there are no proper safeguards over its constitution and who is put here. Beware a House of nodding donkeys.
I commend these two amendments as a first step to securing our parliamentary democracy and the constitution that we love. Those who believe in a constitutional democracy and the rule of law must take nothing for granted.
Baroness Smith of Llanfaes (PC)
My Lords, I support Amendment 97, which I have signed, in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Devon. The amendment invites consideration of the suitability of the name “House of Lords” after the removal of the hereditary Peers from Parliament. “Lords” is a word associated with aristocracy and a class-based society that stems from our feudal system. The name of this House and the use of titles bridges a further gap between citizens and Parliament.
If we are removing the rights of hereditary Peers to sit in the House—this Bill does that, and I support doing so—the name of the second Chamber should reflect that. When further reform takes place, the name of the second Chamber should also reflect the make-up and composition of that Chamber. As of March 2025, the Inter-Parliamentary Union database contained details of 187 active parliaments worldwide, 81 of them being bicameral. Names of second Chambers worldwide include “Senate”, “National Council”, “House of Councillors”, “National Council of Regions and Districts”—and then us, the “House of Lords”. “Senate” is the most popular, with 54 countries choosing that name for their second Chamber. The Labour Party’s own work in the past favoured the name “The Council of Regions and Nations”.
The name “House of Lords” is also discriminatory with regard to gender. Although the name does not reflect the make-up of the Chamber, with women being allowed to be Peers, it feeds into a narrative that places of power are reserved for men—specifically, men of important social status. This comes back to my other argument about achieving further reform that would give people from every kind of background and walk of life the opportunity to be seated in a second Chamber. While renaming alone would not address deeper concerns about democratic legitimacy and accountability, it could serve as a symbolic and meaningful step towards broader constitutional reform. That is why I urge the House to support Amendment 97.
Lord Wrottesley (Con)
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 62 in the name of my noble friend Lord Lucas. I shall make a few comments in support of his amendment, and I am grateful to him for tabling it. I declare an interest: I am an excepted—or, as the noble Earl, Lord Devon, calls us, elected—hereditary.
I shall build on the analysis that my noble friend Lord Blencathra presented earlier in Committee. As I mentioned at Second Reading, I feel that the issue of the composition of this House needs serious consideration. Few, I expect, would disagree, but what has always troubled me in our discussions is that far too often, measures in the Bill may have been drafted and defended based on partisan grounds, not principle.
I believe that this House deserves better. That is why I wholeheartedly support a review of the composition of the House of Lords. My understanding, based on what the Leader of the House has said during the passage of the Bill thus far, is that the Labour Party believes that, currently, it is not represented fairly in this House. I would like to look at the numbers to see whether the Labour Party’s claim about the House being weighted against it stands up to scrutiny. At Second Reading, I suggested that the House’s composition should be based on a weighted average of the composition of the parties in the other place over 25 years, which is the period I suggested as a term limit and is also in line with what is widely recognised as a generation. Perhaps a review, as the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, suggests, could consider this as a metric.
Some simple maths: since the Life Peerages Act 1958, the Conservatives have been in government for 42 years, and Labour for 24 years, which breaks down as 64% and 36% respectively. Over the same period, the parties appointed 924 and 745 Peers respectively—incidentally, 374 were appointed by Sir Tony Blair, after the hereditary principle was done away with—which breaks down as 55% and 45%. So in fact, Labour Governments have appointed far more Peers, proportionately, in their years in power.
Even if we use the current composition of the House, the Conservatives hold 34% of the seats, and when the hereditaries are expelled this will drop to 31%. Meanwhile, the proportion of seats held by Labour will rise from 25% to 28%. Some noble Lords opposite may consider many of the Cross-Benchers to be conservative with a small “c”, but the reality is that they are very much of an independent mind. You just have to ask the last Government, who rarely won votes when, more often than not, the Cross-Benchers were massed against them. Under these proposals the proportion of Cross-Benchers will also drop slightly, from 22% to 20%.
Through this analysis, which is pretty simple maths, really, under current plans the Labour Party is with one hand demanding balance and with the other tipping the scales. By expelling the hereditaries, this Labour Government will be redressing the balance—in their favour. But this does not seem like rebalancing; it seems more like gerrymandering, as we have heard before in Committee. By getting rid of 85 Peers who are in opposition to them—all the non-Labour hereditary Peers—they will once again skew the numbers even further in their direction, and who is to say they will not take other measures to achieve more? Far from modernising and improving our institution, this would seem little more than a way to consolidate power. It is the constitutional equivalent of bulldozing down one of the walls in our great Chamber and insisting that the roof will stay up. What wall, what group of Peers, will be demolished next under this Labour Government’s plans? That is the main issue here: no one really knows what is coming next. No one will tell us.
My noble friend Lord Lucas’s amendment is a sound one: let us please carefully review who is here, who will remain here and whom they represent. We must be sure that this evolution—maybe the revolution the Labour Government speak of—in our House and our democracy does not descend, as I fear it might, into an erosion of our great House. We must protect this place from plans which I believe are designed deliberately to diminish this place, a place that has supported our democracy for centuries.
With all that is going on in the world today, we must not let any Government, now or in future, use the guise of constitutional reform or modernisation to remove dissenting voices. We know it is too late for all, or the majority, of us hereditary Peers—to paraphrase Lord Byron, I am not long for this House. But I believe that a proper review by those who understand this place could offer some protection against what seems to be the Labour Party’s modus operandi, which is— I hate to say this, having just paraphrased one of our greatest poets, but, to quote a Taylor Swift song—“Death By A Thousand Cuts”.
Baroness Finn (Con)
My Lords, these amendments relate to the review of appointments, the composition of the House, claims to peerages within it and, indeed, its very name. I thank all noble Lords for their thoughtful contributions to this debate.
At the heart of all these amendments lies a common impulse: a desire to reflect, scrutinise and reassess. That instinct is of course the defining virtue of this House. We are not a body that accepts institutions, policies or conventions unquestioningly. We test, examine and refine: that is our duty. But scrutiny should lead to improvement, not distraction. We should consider these amendments within the context of the broader debate about the future of your Lordships’ House.
First, I turn to the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, which calls for an impact assessment on appointments and the overall composition of the House. We acknowledge that the composition of the House is an ongoing topic of debate. It is after all crucial that the House reflects a range of voices and expertise to represent the diverse concerns of the nation. In this sense, we understand the desire for a more comprehensive review of the effectiveness and composition of the House.
However, it is also important not to fetter the right of political leaders to appoint those who demonstrate true merit in their opinions and expertise. The right of political leaders to appoint individuals based on their judgment remains a cornerstone of a functioning, flexible system. Ultimately, it is the diversity of thought and expertise, not just demographics, that should guide appointments.
I would be interested to hear from the noble and learned Lord, the Attorney-General, how the Government see the balance between reflecting these different perspectives and maintaining the autonomy of political leaders in making appointments.
The noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, made a valid point that the Prime Minister has great powers of patronage to determine the legislature, and that the removal of hereditary Peers will place even greater powers of patronage in the Prime Minister’s hands. At Second Reading—my noble friend Lord Wrottesley has just raised this—I made the point:
“Judged by legal status alone, none of us can be secure that our future in this place will not be cut short at the whim of the Executive”.—[Official Report, 11/12/24; col. 1858.]
I look forward to hearing the views of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hermer, on this subject.
The amendment from my noble friend Lord Lucas seeks a review of the overall composition of the House. Again, this is a fair question to pose. Should we not periodically take stock of who sits here, how they are appointed and what the right balance should be? It has commanded support from several noble Lords, including my noble friend Lord Sandhurst, to give added protection. But let us examine this more closely. If we were to conduct such a review, what would it be for? There are those who argue that this House is too large, but size alone does not determine effectiveness. If this House is to be judged, let it be judged on its ability to scrutinise legislation, revise policy and hold the Government to account. We should beware the temptation to equate numerical reduction with institutional improvement.
Others might argue that the party balance needs adjustment, but again we must be cautious about imposing artificial solutions. The strength of this House has always been that it evolves over time and reflects experience and judgment rather than crude arithmetic. A formal review risks turning the question of appointments into a matter of quotas: political engineering rather than political wisdom.
The reality is that this House’s composition is already subject to ongoing reflection by Prime Ministers, leaders of parties and the House itself. This is why we have argued throughout that it is critical that reform and review should be carried out through consensus and with full discussion.
Finally, Amendments 91 and 94 from the noble Earl, Lord Devon, as we have heard, raise the plight of gender equality for hereditary peerage claims. I listened with interest to the arguments and have considerable sympathy with points made on both sides of the debate. It is a difficult and delicate issue, with merit on both sides. But it is also a private and personal matter—as my noble friend Lord Hannan made clear, and as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, also pointed out—on which there is unlikely to be agreement.
Amendment 97 invites review and consultation on the appropriateness of the name “House of Lords”, and this is an intriguing suggestion. Words have power and names shape perceptions. The title of this House evokes centuries of history and tradition and it is certainly reasonable to ask whether it still reflects the institution as it is today. But I would say that the reputation of this House—its credibility and authority—will never be determined by its name; it will be determined by its actions, the quality of its debates, the sharpness of its scrutiny and the seriousness of its deliberations.
In conclusion, I recognise the intent behind the amendments to improve and scrutinise the composition of the House, but more clarification is needed on the specific objectives of some of the proposals. While we certainly value the input of new voices and perspectives in our appointments and the overall composition of the House, it is equally important that we do not compromise on the merits and expertise of those appointed. If we are serious about the future of this House, let us focus on what really matters: scrutiny, legislation and the real business of holding the Government to account. That is what the public expect from us and that is where our credibility lies. We look forward to hearing the views of the House on these important matters.
The Attorney-General (Lord Hermer) (Lab)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their contributions to this debate. Amendments 55, 62 and 97, tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Inglewood and Lord Lucas, and the noble Earl, Lord Devon, all seek, in different ways, to place a duty on the Government to review and report on the impact of legislation after it receives Royal Assent.
As a matter of principle, and when they are applied in the right case for the right reasons, obligations to review and assess the impact of legislation can serve a very valuable public function. For example, the scope or size of the subject matter of a Bill might give rise not just to a range of predictable outcomes but to a material risk of adverse impacts in the real world that cannot be adequately assessed at the time of the Bill’s passage. Those impacts could be wide-ranging: for example, they could be financial or environmental or could entrench any manner of inequality. While Parliament can always review the impact of legislation at any time of its choosing without an explicit statutory authority, on occasion, as I have said, a mandatory obligation can serve a proper and indeed important function. However, the Government’s view is that there is no adequate rationale for a review and reporting requirement here.
This Bill is very simple. The primary purpose it seeks to achieve is singular: to remove the right of the remaining hereditary Peers to sit and vote in your Lordships’ House. We also know well what the impact will be: the loss of those Peers. I mean no disrespect to the great public service of those Peers to say that their loss will not give rise to unforeseen, significant adverse consequences that come anywhere close to the sort of justification we would want for the measures sought by these amendments.
We know from experience what the impact will be, because your Lordships’ House has already experienced a far more significant reduction of hereditary Peers following the 1999 Act—which, I note, itself had no post-legislative reporting requirements to scrutinise impact. There has been little suggestion that those reforms produced any profoundly detrimental impacts, let alone ones that would justify the steps proposed in these amendments. The House continued to function effectively then, and, as I say, while we truly value the work of hereditary Peers to date, the House will continue to function when this reform is completed. As the Leader of the House said at Second Reading, the Bill does not alter any core functions of your Lordships’ House.
I hope those points address the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood. I thank him for clarifying that his is a probing amendment, and for his thoughtful contribution and the important points he made about our constitutional framework. However, the noble Lord’s amendment is not confined simply to a review-and-report requirement: if agreed, it would continue in perpetuity to impact any subsequent legislation that alters the composition of your Lordships’ House. In other words, there would be a requirement to undertake reviews indefinitely after every general election until the end of time. With the greatest respect, I suggest that would be a disproportionate measure—but I hope the brevity of my response will not be mistaken for a lack of gratitude for his thoughtful contribution to the debate.
The noble Lord asked what insurance policy is in place. I hope that there are several, not least the Government making plain that this reform—completing the work, as we put it—is the beginning of steps for a further reform of your Lordships’ House, the next being close consultation across the House on the shape of further reform. I agree with very many of the sentiments expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Finn. As we go forward, it is important to ensure that we capture and protect the important role of the second Chamber in revising and reviewing legislation, ensuring that it has a degree of independence from the other place. The reassurance I give is that it is our intention to consult widely and collegiately on the steps ahead.
I turn briefly to the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst, whom I have known for a long time prior to coming into this House. As he knows, I greatly respect him and our friendship, but I am afraid I consider his remarks, drawing a comparison between the Bill and the risks faced in the Weimar Republic, quite misplaced. All of us in this House are no doubt acutely aware that this is a delicate moment for liberal democracies and your Lordships’ House no doubt has an important role to play at this delicate and important time, but the power of our contribution will be diluted if we reach too quickly for overstatement or—the more so—inappropriate overstatement. This is a manifesto commitment that is limited in scope, and we serve ourselves well to remember that and not to rhetorically overreach.
I turn to Amendment 97, tabled by the noble Earl, Lord Devon. The House of Lords will continue to be called the House of Lords following the passage of the Bill. The removal of the right of hereditary Peers to sit and vote in this place does not change the fact that Members of this House, save for the Lords spiritual, will continue to consist of Peers of the realm. The answer to the eloquent speech of the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, as to why is simply a literal one. In answer to the point raised by the noble Earl, Lord Devon, about the dictionary definition of the “House of Lords”, I respectfully suggest that that version of the dictionary, like this House, requires some subtle updating.
Amendments 91 and 94 have joined this group to accommodate the noble Earl, who is, sadly, not available for the final day of Committee. I hope I accurately capture the amendments in saying that they address a narrow point about the power to refer disputes to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, but also a wider point that seeks to address gender inequality in the succession to peerages. I will first address the narrow point about referrals to the Judicial Committee, which I will come to again substantively when we discuss the amendments to Clause 2 tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, next week.
As your Lordships know, this House currently has a role in handling complex and disputed peerage claims under Standing Order 77. The aim of Clause 2 is to remove that role. The intention is that that role will be fulfilled by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, whose jurisdiction to do so is already established by virtue of Section 4 of the Judicial Committee Act 1833. The effect of the noble Earl’s amendment would be to place the issues arising out of inheritance and title, irrespective of complexity, on the Judicial Committee. The Government, and indeed the Privy Council, would perceive this to be an unacceptable burden on an already exceptionally busy body. It would, in short, amount to an unnecessary and disproportionate use of its resources and expertise. For those reasons, and given the points raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, we cannot accept the amendments.
Finally, and most importantly—
The Earl of Devon (CB)
The Minister may have misunderstood the purport of my amendment, which is merely to ensure that when the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council exercises the functions that it will exercise following the passage of this Bill, it does so in a way that does not discriminate against claimants due to their gender. It is nothing more than that—I am not adding any work. I just wish that women could inherit hereditary titles.
Lord Hermer (Lab)
I am very grateful for that, and I shall turn to that point now, but the actual wording of the noble Earl’s amendment would have the effect that all disputes, not just complicated and contentious disputes, would be referred to the Judicial Committee, so there is a very practical objection to it.
I turn to the wider point, which I know is the one of most interest to the noble Earl. I shall deal with both amendments in turn, starting with Amendment 91. In the Government’s view, the amendment unacceptably seeks to force on the Judicial Committee how it should exercise its jurisdiction with regard to gender equality and to impose an obligation on it to report on how that obligation has been discharged. With the greatest of respect, that misunderstands the appropriate constitutional role of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, which is to apply the law. If the law distinguishes between the sexes, as the noble Earl is aware that it does currently in succession to hereditary titles, the Judicial Committee must apply it accordingly.
As I leave that aspect of Amendment 91 and turn to Amendment 94, I of course recognise the importance of the issue that the noble Earl seeks to raise through his good faith amendments. The Government very much share his unease at the inequality baked in to so many hereditary peerages. The fact that fewer than 90 hereditary peerages allow women to inherit titles is something that I know Members in both Houses and across this House are not comfortable with. The Government are committed to the principle of greater equality.
On careful reflection, not least through the engagement that the noble Earl has had with my noble friend the Leader of the House, we do not consider that the amendments have a place in this Bill. The law around succession is complex and the inequities are not confined to gender. The law around succession to hereditary titles also affects adopted children, those born to unmarried parents and children born via assisted conception, using donors. That is before we enter into the issue of whether any future reform should protect the expectation of living heirs or managed property rights. We consider that those are issues that should be considered, but they need to be carefully considered holistically and do not properly form part of this legislation, however aligned we are with the noble Earl on the rationale behind his amendments.
There is also an additional objection of a constitutional nature to Amendment 94, because it seeks to impose on the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council an obligation to consult. Such a requirement to consult on how the law should be applied in the area of peerage claims very significantly cuts across the judicial independence of the Judicial Committee. I appreciate, of course, that that is not the noble Earl’s intention, but I fear that his amendment would critically undermine the independence of the committee. Either the committee independently and impartially applies the law or it takes views on social policy. It cannot do both. However, as I have said, nothing in my response to the amendments from the noble Earl should be taken as a suggestion that he is not raising very important points—he is—but they are not part of the policy aims outlined in our manifesto commitments or in this Bill.
I turn briefly to the issue raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Deech. As the contrasting contribution from the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, demonstrated, there is no consensus on this point, and it underlined— I say with the greatest respect—that this Bill is not the place to determine that question. For those reasons, I respectfully request that noble Lords do not press their amendments.
Lord Inglewood (CB)
My Lords, I begin by thanking the noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General for his remarks about my amendment. He got the message I was trying to convey. All I would say, to use his phrase, is that we are living in delicate political times. It is incumbent on us to think about the worst possible eventualities that might emerge long after the passage of this Bill.
I, as a hereditary Peer, was trying to do something that lawyers say you cannot do: issue commands from beyond the grave. We should bear in mind extreme eventualities, because the one thing that is certain is that this reform is not the last reform. This is not a dialectical process, ending up in some nirvana. We must be alert.
As far as the wider debate is concerned, I thank those who participated. It seemed to me that it struck a divide between those thinking along the lines I described and those thinking rather more differently. I think the noble Earl, Lord Devon, got it right. He said in the future people will be concerned about titles and sex, because that was what a great deal of the discussion earlier this afternoon was in fact about.
Finally, the noble Earl, Lord Devon, on the Cross Bench, who is a personal friend, made me feel very inadequate. I may be a hereditary Peer, but my hereditary peerage did not exist at the time I was born. This is in very great contrast to the noble Earl. All I would say—I hope this gives pleasure to the noble Lords, Lord Foulkes and Lord Grocott—is that I came into the world as citizen Vane, and I am quite happy to leave it under that epithet. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Lord Wolfson of Tredegar
“President and Deputy President of the Supreme Court(1) Omit subsection (3) of section 137 of the Constitutional Reform Act 2005 (parliamentary disqualification for holders of disqualifying judicial offices).(2) On the day on which this Act is passed, the Prime Minister must recommend to His Majesty the King that the President and Deputy President of the Supreme Court be granted a life peerage under section 1 of the Life Peerages Act 1958 (power to confer life peerages).(3) When a person is appointed as President or Deputy President of the Supreme Court, the Prime Minister must recommend to His Majesty the King that the person be granted a life peerage under section 1 of the Life Peerages Act 1958.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would ensure the President and Deputy President of the Supreme Court are granted life peerages.
Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)
My Lords, in moving Amendment 56, I will speak also to Amendment 57. Both seek to ensure that senior members of the judiciary are appointed as life Peers with the right to sit and vote in your Lordships’ House. I will declare an interest— and a non-interest.
First, the non-interest: I have no intention of becoming a judge. Indeed, when I became a Minister, I received advice from the propriety and ethics committee of the Cabinet Office that, having been a Minister, I had probably rendered myself unable to accept an appointment as a judge. I thought that was a little odd. I am not sure whether the noble Baroness, Lady Gray of Tottenham, was involved in that decision or warning; we all know that the Cabinet Office at that time kept a very close eye on the impropriety of people moving from non-political posts into others in our constitution. The interest I have is as a lawyer; I want to make this House work as well as it possibly can.
The historical position is this: for over 600 years, from 1399 to October 2009, the House of Lords was the highest appeal court in the land. This House had a vital judicial function. Between 1876 and 2009, that function was served by the Lords of Appeal in Ordinary. From 2009, the Supreme Court of the UK assumed that jurisdiction; the then 12 Lords of Appeal in Ordinary —the Law Lords, as they were colloquially called—were the first Justices of the 12-member Supreme Court, and they were disqualified from sitting or voting in your Lordships’ House.
When they retired from the Supreme Court, they could return to the House of Lords as full Members, which they were, but—and this is the point—newly appointed Justices of the Supreme Court do not have seats in your Lordships’ House. From that point on, apart from the grandfather rights—if, in light of the debate on the previous group of amendments, I can use a sexist term—given to existing Lords of Appeal in Ordinary created under the 1876 Act, the long link between this House and the judiciary was severed. Indeed, the last Law Lord was created in 2009.
It is important to appreciate that the old system preserved a clear distinction between the Law Lords’ role as judges and as legislators. I will give a simple example of that. When Lord Lyndhurst, as Lord High Chancellor, considered himself bound in his judicial capacity to decide the famous Lady Hewley’s charity appeal—Attorney-General v Wilson 1848—it turned on the difference between trinitarianism and unitarianism for the purposes of charity law, a topic into which I fear to venture. While he held himself responsible to decide that point in accordance with legal orthodoxy, which he did, he then introduced, as Leader of the House of Lords, a Bill—which became the Nonconformists’ Chapels Act 1844—to remedy, and indeed to overturn, the perceived injustice consequential on his own judicial decision.
Why are we in this position? The great absence today is that of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton. His Constitutional Reform Act—I will have more to say about that Act in the next group—is, frankly, responsible for quite a lot of the constitutional mess that we now find ourselves in.
The basis for my amendment is this: your Lordships’ House has been deprived of the experience of many Supreme Court Justices who could and would contribute a great deal to the work of this House in the way—if I may say this without nominating myself for Private Eye’s “Order Of The Brown Nose”—that the current former judicial Members of this House play such an important part and lend their expertise.
When I sat on the Government Benches as a Minister, I was not worried about the barrage that I might receive from the Opposition Benches, and I certainly was not concerned about the occasional small-arms fire from the Liberal Democrat Benches; I was worried about the incoming missile from my right—from the judicial Members of the Cross Benches. Without this amendment, it will be unclear on what basis peerages will be awarded to those who reach those lofty judicial heights. What we must avoid at all costs is any impression that peerages are given or withheld by the Prime Minister of the day to senior judges, depending on how particular cases have been decided. The only way to avoid that is to have clear rules as to when a peerage will be awarded. That is why I have sought, in my amendments, to highlight the highest judicial offices and to attach a peerage to those offices.
I see that the impressive legal twin strike force of my noble friends Lord Banner and Lord Murray of Blidworth has taken my amendment and added “all Supreme Court Justices”. I will listen carefully to what they have to say, but the principle underlying our amendments is the same.
Finally, the amendment also disapplies Section 137(3) of the Constitutional Reform Act, which disqualifies a holder of relevant judicial offices from sitting or voting in your Lordships’ House. We do not need that provision; we managed perfectly well under the old system. The problem we have now is that, although we have a wealth of judicial experience, it is not as current as it used to be when we had the Law Lords here. I know this may be shocking to many Members of your Lordships’ House, but even the law moves on and changes. The way law is done—and what the law is—is simply not the same now as it was five, 10 or 20 years ago. That is especially the case in areas such as family law.
I remember taking the Domestic Abuse Bill through this House—I pick a topic which was taken on a total cross-party basis. Family law in 2025 is radically different from family law in 2000, and certainly family law in 1980. So I suggest that this House would benefit from the presence of judges who either are sitting or who have very recently sat. My submission to this Committee is that these amendments will improve our debates and our membership, and I therefore beg to move.
Lord Banner (Con)
My Lords, I speak in support of Amendment 68, which, as my noble friend Lord Wolfson indicated, takes the premise of his Amendment 56 and rolls it out to all Supreme Court justices. I declare an interest as a practising King’s Counsel who fairly frequently appears before the Supreme Court, including in one appeal where judgment is still pending.
I supported the replacement of the Appellate Committee with the new UK Supreme Court, and I still believe that was the right decision. In a modern democracy, all courts, and in particular the final court of appeal, must not just be but be seen to be separate and independent from the other branches of the state.
However, a collateral and I think probably unintended effect of this, as my noble friend Lord Wolfson outlined, has been significantly to reduce the pool of Cross-Bench legal expertise in this House. By convention, certainly by the turn of the millennium, sitting Members on the Appellate Committee did not speak in debates and did not otherwise participate in relation to controversial matters, although they did sit in committees to some degree. However, upon their retirement they invariably would—and those who remain still do—make an invaluable contribution to the work of this House.
It is also the case that, prior to retirement and while in office as judges, by virtue of being Members of this House, those on the Appellate Committee would have a fuller and further first-hand understanding of the procedures of Parliament, which, as my noble friend Lord Wolfson indicated in his excellent lecture at Policy Exchange earlier this afternoon, may have assisted the judges in their consideration of the Prorogation issue in the second Miller litigation.
Now that the final court is outside this House, its members no longer need to receive a peerage upon being appointed and, contrary to what had been advocated in some quarters, no convention to that effect has been established. In recent years, among full-time Supreme Court justices, only the President has been by convention awarded a peerage—albeit that the Lord Chief Justice, who occasionally sits in that court, has also by convention been awarded a peerage.
The result of all this has been significantly to reduce the pipeline of top-tier judges able to contribute to the work of this House. Amendment 68 would rectify that by requiring all current and future Supreme Court justices to be awarded a peerage. I myself would envisage that, during their tenure on the court, they would follow the Appellate Committee’s former convention that sitting judges do not speak in debates and do not otherwise participate in controversial matters, but, upon retirement, they would be able fully to engage and thus continue the long-established and invaluable tradition of our most senior judges contributing to the work of this House on their retirement from the Bench.
Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 56, 57 and 68 in this group, to which I have added my name. I declare an interest as a member of the Bar. I also declare a special interest in that, across the corridor in my chambers is the room of Lord Dyson, who was the first member of the Supreme Court not to be the beneficiary of a peerage under the Appellate Jurisdiction Act, and therefore the first person from these Benches that the House did not have the benefit of hearing from, which in my view was a great loss—and that applies to many members of the Supreme Court.
There is an element of confusion in the general public, and indeed even in the politically engaged general public. When they read of public pronouncements from the likes of Lord Dyson or Lord Sumption, they are under the impression that these people are Members of this House. When the Constitutional Reform Act 2005 came into force, there was a question about what title one gave to the Justices of the Supreme Court. So, when Sir John Dyson, as he then was, became a member of the Supreme Court, having formerly been the Master of the Rolls in the Court of Appeal, where he was Lord Justice Dyson, there was a need to differentiate him from the members of the Court of Appeal and to give a special title to members of the Supreme Court.
Lord Strathclyde (Con)
My Lords, I am following my noble friend’s argument and I very much support him, but does he believe, as I do, that, after 2005, there was an understanding between the Labour Government and the Justices of the Supreme Court that they would all be made Members of the House of Lords—Peers in their own right—but would not sit in the House of Lords until after they had retired. If such an understanding had taken place, it would have solved a great number of problems. I hope the noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General might give us an answer, if he knows, on whether there was such an understanding after the 2005 Act.
Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
I am very grateful to my noble friend for his intervention, and I very much hope there was such an understanding—but I am afraid I cannot find a trace of that agreement.
Turning to the answer given to a question put to Jack Straw on this question in January 2009, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, asked him about the future of the justices of the Supreme Court. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, noted that the Law Lords performed an important function in the legislative process and asked the then Lord Chancellor what the position would be once they had retired, along the lines outlined by my noble friend—thus suggesting that there was an informal agreement that this would be what would occur. The then Lord Chancellor’s answer was:
“Of course, that was one of the arguments against change and … I can see the case”.
He then said that
“it crucially depends on whether we continue with an all appointed House of Lords”.
So the answer was that they just parked the issue, saying that it was all dependent on what was going to happen in future to the House of Lords. The Lord Chancellor goes on to say that
“if we go to a 20% appointed chamber”,
which was one of the things then being considered, the number of noble Lords would be “fewer”. That was why he refused to commit at that point in answer to that question.
The issue was raised again in July 2009 in a question from the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and it was answered by the noble Lord, Lord Bach, the then Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice. He said:
“My Lords, justices of the Supreme Court who are appointed after October 2009 will not automatically become Members of the second Chamber on retirement, but could be considered for appointment by the Appointments Commission. It is right to say that former Law Lords will be able to take up their places again … on retirement from the Supreme Court, and it is right that this House needs a lot of expertise, particularly in that field”.—[Official Report, 20/7/09; col. 1375.]
Of course, he was right in that respect. But the reality is that that has not happened. If one looks at the appointments that have been made by HOLAC, one sees that former justices of the Supreme Court have not numbered highly among the appointments. This has been a very significant omission and now is the moment, I suggest to your Lordships, to rectify that error.
At the very least, the Wolfson-Elie compromise of giving peerages to the President and Deputy President of the Supreme Court should be strongly considered by the Government, but I would suggest it should go more widely than that: every member of the 12-member court should receive life peerages on appointment. That should be the convention. There would then be no need for these courtesy titles. When they retire, they would then hopefully become engaged and active Members of your Lordships’ House.
Lord Grocott (Lab)
My Lords, I will make one brief contribution to this debate, which is likely to go on for some time. I enjoyed listening to the contributions entirely from lawyers except for the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde. They had one thing clearly in common: none of them had any reference whatsoever to the subject of hereditary Peers being removed from this House. They are entitled to have made their amendments because of some ruling, which came from somewhere that I have not yet discovered, that under remote circumstances hereditary Peer membership could relate to other parts of the constitution. I accept that this might be the case in some remote circumstances. However, it is very difficult for me to understand, in any sensible conversation, what relevance adding, through these amendments, 25 protected places in the House of Lords has to the subject of this Bill.
I do not want to prolong it because I do not want to promote debate. However, with such a loose definition of what is included and what is not, on the same logic if you had a Bill to reduce class sizes in infant classes it would be entirely within the scope of the Bill to discuss university admissions processes—because, obviously, if you reduce class sizes, that gives an opportunity for children to develop more effectively and stand a better chance of getting into university. Lawyers can do that but, in the interests of common sense and as a general principle, if an amendment has nothing whatsoever to do with the subject of the Bill, it would be a good idea to determine that it is out of order.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness (LD)
My Lords, I want to speak to my Amendments 58A and 59B. I have a lot of sympathy for what the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, has just said. I tabled these amendments against a background of also aspiring to a wholly elected House, where appointments would not come into it.
What prompted my amendments was that Amendment 57 recommends that
“the Lord Chief Justice, Master of the Rolls and Lord President of the Court of Session be granted a life peerage”.
In the interests of the union, we should not forget one part of the United Kingdom, and that is why I have sought to add the Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland. I do not know the present Lady Chief Justice, Dame Siobhan Keegan, but I know her predecessor, Sir Declan Morgan, who would make excellent contributions to your Lordships’ House—and may yet do so for all that I know. If we are passing legislation for some parts of the United Kingdom, there is no logic at all to why Northern Ireland should be omitted.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
My Lords, I agree with what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, has said. Like him, I spotted the omission of the Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland and note that we have not had a holder of that office since Lord Kerr of Tonaghmore, who was the last person to receive a peerage under the Appellate Jurisdiction Act 1876, so I welcome the noble and learned Lord’s amendment.
My Amendments 58 and 59 are designed not to disagree with the proposition that senior lawyers are very important and useful people but simply to point out that useful and important people can be found in other walks of life as well. There is much sense in the amendments that my noble friend Lord Wolfson of Tredegar, my noble and learned friend Lord Keen of Elie and my noble friends Lord Murray of Blidworth and Lord Banner have tabled.
I agree with what my noble friend Lord Wolfson said: a lot of the mess that we are in stems from the Constitutional Reform Act 2005. The fact that we are still, 20 years on, debating some of the questions that were left unanswered, perhaps even unopposed, at the time of the passage of that Act, answers the point that the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, raised. It is important when embarking on constitutional reform to try to think of the implications, and that is why I welcome noble Lords scrutinising this Bill and its knock-on effects in many other areas. I know the noble Lord regrets that we are debating it at such length, but this is a very important Bill with serious consequences, and we do not want in 20 years’ time to find ourselves with the sorts of problems that were not properly addressed during the debates on the Constitutional Reform Act.
From my experience working in Downing Street under my noble friend Lady May of Maidenhead, I can say a little bit about a more recent chapter. Noble Lords know that, when he was Lord Speaker, the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, established a committee chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Burns, to look at the size of the House and propose non-legislative ways that it could be reduced. Not everyone agreed that the size of the House was a problem, but a clear majority did, including those who spoke in a well-attended debate held on the committee’s report on 19 December 2017. As Prime Minister at the time, it fell to my noble friend Lady May to respond to this initiative, which had been taken by your Lordships’ House to reduce its size. She wrote to Lord Fowler on 20 February 2018, responding to the report, as well as to the points that were made in the debate in December about it.
My noble friend Lady May acknowledged that, if noble Lords were to be persuaded to embrace retirement, an innovation which at that point had only recently been brought about through the House of Lords Reform Act 2014, they would need an assurance of restraint from the Prime Minister. In her letter to the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, my noble friend gave that assurance, and she stuck to it: she and Gordon Brown are the only Prime Ministers in modern times under whom the size of the House of Lords has gone down rather than up. As part of her policy of restraint, my noble friend said that she would
“operate on the basis that there is no automatic entitlement to a peerage for any holder of high office in public life”.
That is the reason, in addition to the Parliamentary Answer that was highlighted by my noble friend Lord Murray a few moments ago, why senior judges have not, as they might have expected, come to your Lordships’ House automatically.
This has certainly been disappointing to them, and it has denied your Lordships’ House the valuable contributions that they would all undoubtedly have made. In his memoir, Lord Dyson records with very good grace his understandable disappointment at being the first Master of the Rolls for, I think, two centuries not to sit in your Lordships’ House; only death prevented others from doing so. His successor, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, has come here and plays a very valuable role indeed in the work of this House.
As my noble friend Lord Murray says, Lord Dyson was also the first Justice of the Supreme Court not to come to this House. The first cohort were, of course, Lords of Appeal in Ordinary, so entitled to return to this House on their retirement. Unlike my noble friend Lord Banner, I am among those who regret their removal from your Lordships’ House. I tend to the view that cases like some of those that we saw in the Brexit years would have been less politicised had they been decided in this building, rather than pitting two institutions on opposite sides of Parliament Square against one another and asking them to settle the matter over the heads of protesting crowds standing between them.
But if all Justices of the Supreme Court were to come here on retirement, as my noble friends Lord Murray and Lord Banner suggest, we would be adding a tally of 20 new Cross-Benchers—nine former justices and 11 current ones—on current numbers alone. It would also seem to run counter to the argument that was made by those who supported the Constitutional Reform Act 2005 that the judiciary and Parliament should be more separate.
My noble friend Lord Wolfson and others, in their Amendment 56, suggest that there should be peerages ex officio only for the President and Deputy President of the Supreme Court. Stepping aside from the debate on numbers, they crucially and sensibly suggest that the peerage should be granted on appointment and not at the end of their time on the judicial bench. As I said at Second Reading, there are dangers in allowing politicians to pick the judges on whom they wish to bestow favour; but that same danger relates to other key public servants, such as Chiefs of the Defence Staff, Commissioners of Police of the Metropolis, heads of the intelligence agencies, Cabinet Secretaries and many more.
Lord Anderson of Ipswich (CB)
My Lords, although I am also a lawyer, I will be brief because the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, has a point. I am rather against rules that require people to be appointed to this House by virtue of offices that they have held. As a former holder of the least distinguished of the offices listed in the generous Amendments 58 and 59 of the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, I certainly did not feel entitled to such elevation, although the work I did in that office emboldened me to try my chances with HOLAC.
The glory of the Cross Benches—if that is not too strong a word—lies in the very diverse backgrounds of those who are here. I fear that a mandatory inflow of establishment figures, rigidly predefined and appointed irrespective of any scandals that may have attended their time in office, would tend to reduce that variety, in particular by inhibiting the appointment of people’s Peers, about which I have spoken in a previous debate.
With respect to the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, I would make an exception for the very senior judges named in the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, for the reason that he gave: judges at that level often have impartially to determine cases to which the Government are, and sometimes even the Prime Minister is, party. That is what distinguishes them from Chiefs of the Defence Staff, Cabinet Secretaries and so on. They have to choose, in any case, on the basis of the law, whether they are on the Government’s side or not. That is why, between judges of equal rank, the state has to be scrupulously even-handed about conferring honours or preferment.
I am sure that every Government see the priceless benefit that former Supreme Court judges bring to our deliberations, but such judges should not be appointed to this House, any more than they should be given knighthoods or damehoods, simply because the Government of the day like the cut of their jib. Something less arbitrary is required. Either all should be appointed, as proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Banner, in Amendment 68—which would be my own preference, I hope not only because, like him, I am awaiting a judgment from the Supreme Court—or, if that is thought to be too rich a diet, the honour should be rationed, as proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, on the basis of rank. I hope Ministers might agree; I hope they might even be prepared to say so.
Lord Garnier (Con)
My Lords, I am very attracted to what the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, has just said. I find what my noble friend Lord Banner had to say extremely attractive, and I hope that the Government will find it their—
Lord Garnier (Con)
Yes, wisdom—I was clutching for the word. I hope they will find it in their wisdom to reach a conclusion similar to that advanced by my noble friend.
Quickly, while the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, is still in the Chamber—
Lord Garnier (Con)
He is never far absent from it. This series of amendments does not appeal to the noble Lord because it does not deal with the hereditary peerage, but of course, right in front of us—of me—is my noble friend Lord Hailsham, the third Viscount, whose grandfather and father were both Lords Chancellor and therefore senior members of the judiciary in their day. He demonstrates the agility of the British constitution, in that, although a hereditary Peer, he sits here as a life Peer.
Lord Garnier (Con)
Exactly; and we are all the better off for that. However, I think it very important to recognise that, although our constitution is odd, strange and, in many ways, not very neat, it does function all the better by having people from a variety of backgrounds in this place.
The fact that we do not any more regularly have the presence of what used to be called Law Lords, and now are justices of the Supreme Court, is a disbenefit to us. Also, I suspect that there was a time when the Law Lords gained advantage by, if not speaking and voting in the Chamber, at least being here and listening to or discerning the political mood of the moment. This is particularly so when they are dealing with cases involving public policy. I suspect that we have missed a trick by informing the Supreme Court and our being informed by it in our respective deliberations.
Lord Bellingham (Con)
I am very grateful to the noble and learned Lord for giving way. He will recall that, when we both became MPs a while back, we attended APPGs regularly. It was customary at those to see a number of sitting Law Lords in attendance—obviously, never making controversial points but adding a great deal of wisdom and knowledge to the work of the APPGs.
Lord Garnier (Con)
My noble friend was obviously a keener member of APPGs than I was, but I am sure he is entirely right.
None the less, I think it important that we in this House, and the Supreme Court, for its part, should mutually benefit from each other’s membership. I hope the Government will accede to my noble friend Lord Banner’s amendment, even if it does not go as far as my noble friend Lord Wolfson asked for in his.
I heard two particularly hurtful and outrageous suggestions this afternoon. One was from my noble friend Lord Wolfson: that he was not in the least bit bothered by the submissions from Members of his own Back Benches when he was a Minister.
Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)
When I said, “the Opposition”, I meant the Opposition as then constituted; anything that came from our own side was obviously of the highest quality.
Lord Garnier (Con)
I was fishing for that compliment —and it does take a lot of effort. Anyhow, the other outrageous thing was my noble friend Lord Parkinson claiming that exceptionalism from lawyers was something to be criticised; I find that very distressing.
I will finish on this point. I cannot compete with my noble friends Lord Wolfson and Lord Banner, or indeed the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, on the number of times I have appeared in the Supreme Court, and I am certainly not awaiting a judgment now, but the last time I appeared there was in 2019, when I had the joy and honour of being against my noble and learned friend Lord Keen of Elie. He was acting for the Government and I was not. I had the advantage of being able to describe his client, the Prime Minister, very frequently as “the defendant”.
Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)
My Lords, I hope the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, will forgive me for intervening. I certainly do not wish to prolong these proceedings, and I agree with a great deal of what he said about their irrelevance to the Bill, but I should say a word because, as it happens, I am a former holder of two of the offices referred to in these amendments—first as Lord President of the Court of Session, later as a Law Lord, and later still as a Justice of the Supreme Court—so I can say a little bit about what these amendments might mean for them and for the House.
As far as the Lord President is concerned, I think the noble Lords, Lord Wolfson and Lord Anderson, will be alarmed to know that I received a peerage not when I was appointed as Lord President but after I had been serving as Lord President for about five years. It came to me as an honour in the New Year Honours List, for which I was, of course, extremely grateful.
A few years later, I became a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary, but I was already a Peer, so I did not have to become another form of Law Lord—that is, a Law Lord Lord—as I was already a life Peer. I thought that would see me through until retirement, but in 2003, when I was travelling home to Edinburgh and was in the lounge at Heathrow Airport, I was greeted by an announcement on the television set that the body to which I belonged—the Law Lords—was being abolished and that a new Supreme Court was to be created. So it was that, when the Constitutional Reform Act 2005 was enacted, I became disqualified as a result of Section 137. I never came here during that time, except possibly once to sit on the steps of the Throne to see what was going on. It was only after I retired that I was able to come back here because the disqualification was lifted.
I do not remember there being an agreement, as it were, that at some stage the Justices of the Supreme Court would be granted peerages. Certainly in 2003, when the whole issue blew up, there was very strong resistance to the judges being in the Lords at any time, whether serving or retired. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, knows where the bodies are buried, not I, but there certainly was that resistance. I do not recall any undertaking and nor was it buried under the sofa, because it was quite a strong feeling at the time. There it is—that is what the position was at that time.
So far as the amendments are concerned, I will say a word about the Lord President. The Lord President’s place of work is as a judge in Edinburgh. I found it an extremely demanding and time-consuming job. I came here to take the oath after I received my peerage and I came later on, for one day, to make my maiden speech, but I cannot remember coming at any other stage as Lord President. My predecessor, Lord Emsley, was in much the same position. He received a peerage after he had been serving as Lord President but he very rarely, if ever, came to speak.
Those were pre-devolution days. Now, the situation has changed markedly. The system over which the Lord President presides is devolved, and much of the law that he and his colleagues in the court look at is devolved, so the occasions for the Lord President feeling justified in taking time to come to London to sit and speak in the House of Lords will be very few and far between. The same would be true, with respect to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, of the Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland. It is a different matter after retirement, of course, but as serving judges their place here would be difficult to justify.
So far as the Supreme Court is concerned, of course, its place of work is not here—it is just across Parliament Square—but I can say, having worked there for four years, that it seems a very long way from this House. In the summer months you have to fight your way through the crowds to get here from there, and, of course, there are all the problems of finding a place and finding an occasion to speak. One thing we have lost, inevitably, is the connection with the House, which I felt very strongly as a serving Law Lord: I used to come here, not to take part very much but to listen to debates and understand what was going on. That connection and the wish to participate has been lost.
The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Smith of Basildon) (Lab)
It is appropriate that we hear from the Lib Dem Benches, as we have not heard from them yet.
Lord Newby (LD)
My Lords, I very strongly agree with much of what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, said, particularly his last comment. As long as we have independent Cross-Bench Peers in your Lordships’ House, there is a very strong argument for having former senior judges and civil servants as part of their number. However, I have three reasons for disagreeing with these amendments. I realise that, as a mere Lib Dem, I will not at this point have the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, shaking in his shoes, but I hope that the Committee will forgive me if I have a go.
The first point is that I am opposed in principle to the idea that people should get a peerage just because of their formal title and position. The reason was explained in part by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope: although some people in that position will then come and play an active part in your Lordships’ House, others will treat it as an honour. We will not see them and they will not play a part. One thing that has gone through the debates on this Bill is a view that everybody who is a Member of your Lordships’ House in future should play a full part in its activity. I simply do not believe that these proposals to automatically grant people places would achieve that aim.
The second argument is the slippery slope argument. In a way, my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness’s amendment demonstrated this: there was a clear gap in what was already proposed, so he came up with another category that might justifiably form a part. In respect of the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, once you start specifying a greater range of people it becomes a more difficult problem. I see the noble Lord, Lord Macpherson, in his place; I certainly think that former Permanent Secretaries to the Treasury, as a general rule, have a greater claim to membership of your Lordships’ House than directors-general of the BBC.
Lord Newby (LD)
I say that much as I respect the noble Lord, Lord Birt. That just demonstrates the problem of specifying individual placeholders who should get a place in this Chamber.
Thirdly, the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, made a valiant attempt to explain why he did not think the separation of powers mattered. The only thing I will say is that the separation of powers was legislated for by Gladstone in the Judicature Act 1873, a provision that was not implemented when Disraeli became Prime Minister the following year. As in many other things, I prefer Gladstone to Disraeli. This may or may not have been Liberal policy for 152 years—it actually beats our commitment to having a directly elected House of Lords as the longest commitment continuously held by a political party before it was implemented— and I see no reason why we should change from that position now.
Lord Keen of Elie (Con)
My Lords, the first life peerages were conferred under the Appellate Jurisdiction Act 1876, which remained in force until the impact of the Constitutional Reform Act 2005. It is perhaps notable that the first three appointments as Lords of Appeal in Ordinary were Scottish lawyers. It is also notable that the next three appointments as Lords of Appeal in Ordinary were Irish lawyers. However, 15 years later, a suitable English lawyer was identified and appointed.
Against that background, I turn first to Amendments 56 and 57, in the name of my noble friend Lord Wolfson, to which I have added my name. I must note two points. First, I express a degree of surprise about the advice he received from the Cabinet Office upon his appointment to the Government. There is a long and perhaps dishonourable tradition of Attorneys-General, Solicitors-General and Lord Advocates assuming high judicial office after their service in government. Indeed, in the case of the Lord Advocate, it was invariably the practice into the 1960s that he would appoint himself to the most senior judicial office available, there being no conflict of interest. However, there are very good reasons why it is of benefit to this House, as a political House, to have the benefit of those who have served in high judicial office, whether they do so following their retirement or at an earlier stage.
It was a point made by my noble and learned friend Lord Garnier and touched on by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, that, while Lords of Appeal in Ordinary sat in this House, they would do so with a self-denying ordinance. They would not engage in matters that were potentially controversial from the perspective of their judicial office; for example, you would not have seen them engage in debates with regard to the Human Rights Act and other similar matters. However, as my noble and learned friend pointed out, it gave those in high judicial office some impression of the political mood so far as legislation was concerned, and that would have an impact on them when they came, in due course, to address what were potentially politically controversial issues that were raised to a point of law. I suggest that there was always a significant benefit in having such qualified persons in this House, albeit that it may be appropriate that they should be here after the judicial retirement age of 75 and up to the Government’s intended retirement age of 80—I see some of the government Back-Benchers wincing at that, but I understand that that is the intention.
I support the points made by my noble friend Lord Wolfson. I do not go so far as the amendment proposed by my noble friends Lord Banner and Lord Murray, and I do not take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, that we are dealing here with protected places. We are dealing here with those who are not executive appointments to this House, of which a greater proportion are going to emerge as a result of this legislation.
In these circumstances, it appears to me that there are two elements. There is the element of an honour conferred on those who are granted high judicial office, and that is already reflected in the fact that the present President of the United Kingdom Supreme Court had a peerage conferred on him upon his appointment and the fact that the Lord Chief Justice, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Burnett of Maldon, had such an honour bestowed upon him as well. Frankly, I would be confident that those who have held high judicial office and have been public servants for so long a part of their career will, as a matter of course, become engaged in the proceedings of this House if that opportunity is presented to them.
I do not agree with the noble Lord, Lord Newby, that there should be no link between the peerage and a distinguished office which has been held. I do not believe we have to go down a slippery slope. However, I acknowledge that the separation of powers has to be noted and acknowledged, albeit Montesquieu was talking about the United States’ system and not our own—and even there, there are changes afoot.
I invite the Government to consider very seriously Amendments 56 and 57, and to comment on the other attendant amendments which would bring those who have held high public office and been distinguished public servants into this House, almost invariably on to the Cross Benches.
Lord Hermer (Lab)
I am grateful to all noble Lords for their contributions, which in this group concern the appointment of specific public servants to your Lordships’ House. I will start, if I may, with the amendments that concern the conferral of peerages on serving members of the senior judiciary, tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Wolfson and Lord Banner, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness.
I start from a happy place of consensus, set out so eloquently by the noble Lords, Lord Wolfson, Lord Banner and Lord Anderson, and the noble and learned Lords, Lord Garnier and Lord Keen. There can be no doubt as to the enormous benefit that your Lordships’ House gains from the presence and participation of former members of the senior judiciary. That benefit is not limited to the contribution of judges. As all the noble Lords I have just listed demonstrate, the contribution of eminent practitioners in the law adds to your Lordships’ House. If I may say so, there was no finer reflection of the contribution made to your Lordships’ House and its importance than the contribution made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead.
Before it is thought that I am in competition with the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, and others for a Private Eye award, there are three reasons why we cannot agree to these amendments. The first is that the Government’s intention is that this is and will remain a single-purpose Bill, to give effect to our manifesto commitment to remove hereditary Peers from participation in your Lordships’ House. I am not going to labour that point because it has been made in respect of so many amendments and was reiterated by the contribution from my noble friend Lord Grocott. We do not consider it appropriate or desirable to seek to piggyback quite separate proposals for reform on to the Bill.
That merges into my second reason. The future composition of your Lordships’ House beyond the proposal in this Bill is a matter best considered in the round. The Government have committed to consult on an alternative second Chamber—and before that, on further reforms—in due course. One can anticipate that it is highly likely that Prime Ministers of all parties will wish to continue to appoint retired senior judges to your Lordships’ House, but, before more comprehensive reform, we consider it appropriate that appointments remain for now at the discretion of the Prime Minister. Of course, if there are to be changes, we entirely accept the point made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, that logic dictates that, in respect of judges, it should be extended to Northern Ireland if it is extended to Scotland, England and Wales.
Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord for giving way. The answer he proposes is that the Prime Minister retains the discretion to appoint retired members of the Supreme Court to this House. How does that answer the point made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, that this appears to place a slightly invidious choice on the Prime Minister where he is conferring a favour on a judge? If it were automatically all judges, there could be no suggestion that decisions are made that might favour them in the list of peerages.
Lord Hermer (Lab)
I am grateful for the noble Lord’s intervention. I can well anticipate that, if this is an issue that arises on consultation, there may be a distinction—to my mind, it is potentially a constitutionally important distinction—between the appropriateness or otherwise of the appointment of senior judges on their appointment to judicial office, which gives rise to the constitutional tensions that I alluded to a moment ago, and appointment upon retirement. I hope that that answers his question, at least in part.
Lord Anderson of Ipswich (CB)
The noble and learned Lord draws a distinction between appointment to the Lords on taking office and appointment at the end of office being served, but we have heard already that the current President of the Supreme Court was appointed to this House on assuming the office—of course, on the understanding that he would not participate in the debates of the House. Is the noble and learned Lord saying that that is unconstitutional?
Lord Hermer (Lab)
The constitutional tension is between judges who sit on cases that may often concern government legislation also sitting in the legislature. The distinction I seek to draw simply seeks to exemplify the merits and demerits of a debate that may well take place during consultation. It is not meant to reflect any firm view of the Government as to where that may ultimately land.
I make one final point on the amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, drawing on the wider point that I made a moment ago about the merits of looking at this in the round. It is worth reflecting that, if this were to come into effect today, it would create a significant number of new Members of your Lordships’ House. Putting aside judicial Members, of that large number, only five would be women. It is also right to remind ourselves that, in the long history of the Appellate Committee of your Lordships’ House and then the creation of the Supreme Court in 2010, there have been only four women judges or members of that committee.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
The point I was making with my amendment was not necessarily to make the case for all—I take the arguments that the Minister and others have made about a slippery slope—but to tease out the distinction between the constitutional point that the Minister identified, on the necessity of appointing judges on appointment, and maintaining the independence of action of senior public servants who might want to curry favour with Prime Ministers who have the power to put them in the House of Lords after they complete their jobs.
Lord Hermer (Lab)
The noble Lord’s intervention exemplifies the important conversations that lie ahead as we try to unpick those tensions.
As I have just alluded to, there are wider questions around the future composition of this House. The Government are committed to other reforms, not least the alternative second Chamber set out in our manifesto. There is no doubt that this House will continue to be blessed with legal expertise. There is also no doubt that, with any appointment to your Lordships’ House now or in future, the expertise offered by former members of the senior judiciary will be a blessing to your Lordships’ House. Although noble Lords have pressed an important point and this has been an important conversation, I respectfully ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Northbrook (Con)
Before the Minister sits down, may I kindly ask him to comment on the claim by the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, that the amendments to the Bill in this group are too wide-ranging in scope? The clerks have been clear that amendments on the composition of your Lordships’ House are in scope on the basis that the removal of one group of Members is closely connected to, and has repercussive effects on, the wider membership. I believe it is against the practice of the House implicitly to criticise the clerks on the Floor of the House, which the noble and learned Lord appeared to do. Apparently, on 12 March the Government tabled amendments to change the scope and long title of the Employment Rights Bill. The Government have therefore done it on another Bill, so there is no need for the concern of the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, on this Bill.
Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent) (Lab)
My Lords, on behalf of the Government, I thank the noble Lord for his question. Obviously, it is not appropriate for the Government Benches to respond. The clerks have been clear, and we are discussing all amendments as laid out. We are on the second group of 12 today, so I beg we move forward.
Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)
My Lords, I am going to move forward by thanking everybody who contributed to that very interesting and informative debate. I did not declare an interest as a practising barrister—although of course I am—because I do not have any outstanding cases from the Supreme Court. The reason for that is that I received judgment in my last case in the Supreme Court only last week. Full disclosure—I lost. I knew things were bad when I saw in the draft judgment that the court had been very kind about how well I had argued it. That is always fatal; when the court is nice about the way you argue a case, it is going to decide against you. It is an immutable rule of English jurisprudence.
I am grateful for all the support I received on these points from various parts of the House, particularly from the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, who brought his experience to bear. I listened extremely carefully to what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, said about participation; that is a real issue. However, I was somewhat alarmed to hear that the first the Law Lords heard of the demise of that venerable institution was on the TV and that they had not been told in advance. I would have thought that a Labour Government would have wanted to tell people about any change in their—so to speak—employment status. Again, it is such a shame that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, is not among us.
As far as the noble Lord, Lord Newby, is concerned, the answer to the point he gave about individuals was precisely the point that was made by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, and that was made thereafter by my noble friend Lord Murray. I confess that whenever it comes to a bust-up between Gladstone and Disraeli, I will invariably be on the side of Disraeli.
I am grateful for the support from my noble and learned friend Lord Keen of Elie, both by way of him adding his name to my amendments and from his position on the Front Bench. I wonder whether the reason I received the advice that I would be effectively barred from becoming a judge—although the prospect of Wolfson J was always somewhat theoretical—was because I was becoming a Minister and not a law officer. I was a little surprised, but there we are.
I am extremely grateful to the Attorney-General for his response. He is right that there appears to be a consensus across the Committee that we need to find a way to have more judicial Members here, at the right time. I therefore look forward to continuing the conversation. I would make only one final point: my understanding is that so far as unamended Bills are concerned, in the previous Session only four Bills went through entirely without amendment. Two were money Bills, one was an emergency Bill and one was a Bill on animal welfare that had cross-party support. It is a somewhat worrying approach for a Government to say, ab initio, and before listening to the debate, that they will brook no amendments at all, even if they have cross-party support in principle, as this one has. With that caveat, I will withdraw my amendment.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Pitkeathley) (Lab)
I cannot call Amendments 58 to 59B, as they are amendments to Amendment 57.
Amendment 60
Lord Wolfson of Tredegar
“Lord ChancellorIn the case of any person who holds the office of Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain who is not currently a member of the House of Lords, the Prime Minister must recommend to His Majesty the King that the person be granted a life peerage under section 1 of the Life Peerages Act 1958 (power to confer life peerages).”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would ensure that the Lord Chancellor is a member of the House of Lords, as was the case for over two centuries leading up to the passage of the Constitutional Reform Act 2005.
Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)
My Lords, Amendment 60 seeks to ensure that,
“any person who holds the office of Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain who is not currently a member”
of your Lordships’ House must be recommended by the Prime Minister for a life peerage under the 1958 Act.
Viscount Hailsham (Con)
My Lords, I sympathise with a very great deal of what my noble friend said. I speak with a certain family background, and I too regret the diminution of the role and status of the Lord Chancellor. That said, we are where we are and we cannot sensibly address this amendment without asking ourselves what the role of the Lord Chancellor is and should be. Since 2007, the Lord Chancellor has also been Secretary of State for Justice, sitting in the House of Commons. The Secretary of State for Justice has a very large number of responsibilities that touch on the constituency interests of Members of Parliament. I find it very difficult to believe that Members of Parliament would accept the Secretary of State for Justice sitting in the House of Lords.
That takes one directly to the role. Are we to separate the role of the Lord Chancellor from that of Secretary of State for Justice? That is certainly possible; it could be done. But what other departmental responsibility would the Lord Chancellor then have? I accept that there are some senior offices that can be represented in this House—if I may say so, the noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General does so with distinction. He has been preceded by other Attorneys-General in this House, and I regard that as perfectly proper because there are a relatively few constituency interests that would engage Members of the House of Commons.
That, to a lesser extent, was also true of the Foreign Secretary. My noble friend Lord Cameron occupied the role of Foreign Secretary with great distinction. It caused real problems in the House of Commons, as indeed did the role of Lord Carrington at the time of Lady Thatcher’s Government. In both cases, this had to be met by having a very effective deputy. But, again, the Foreign Secretary’s role, although hugely important, raised relatively few constituency interests.
My point is this: if the Lord Chancellor is to have a serious departmental responsibility, which has constituency interests engaged so far as Members of the House of Commons are concerned, that Lord Chancellor, Secretary of State for Justice or whatever, has to be in the House of Commons. If this Committee accepts that, one is then driven to ask: what, if any, departmental role would a new Lord Chancellor have? I find it very difficult to identify one. If that is the case, we are diminishing and not enhancing the role of the Lord Chancellor. So, while I agreed with an awful lot of the underlying sentiments expressed by my noble friend, I cannot back him on this one.
Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
I have my name on Amendment 60. It seems to me that the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, in this regard—the Lord Chancellor having by law to be a Member of your Lordships’ House—is sensible. My noble friend Lord Hailsham’s point is easy to answer. Part of the constitutional pottage made by the Blair Government when they passed the Constitutional Reform Act 2005 was the creation of the Ministry of Justice, with its Orwellian-sounding name. It has not been a happy experience melding the operation of the prison system with the court system, and I suggest that the answer is that that is broken up and the Prison Service returned to the Home Office. Accordingly, there would be no need for a separate Secretary of State for Justice, thus answering my noble friend Lord Hailsham’s point, and the Lord Chancellor could therefore return to this House and protect the interests of the judiciary in the Cabinet. He could indeed also return to being Speaker of this House, which would further guarantee his independence from the Government of the day. That, of course, is for another day, but, at the moment, I strongly support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson.
Lord Keen of Elie (Con)
My Lords, I too support the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, with regard to the future position of the Lord Chancellor. Of course, that will not involve the Lord Chancellor sitting as a judge in the future, and I question whether it would involve him sitting as Speaker in this House. However, he clearly does have a role, but one that he can perform effectively only if, as the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, observed, the office is seen as one of the great offices of state, as it once was; if it is acknowledged as “a destination job”, as he described it, the final step in a distinguished political career. By that means, he could also be appointed Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs, something that is sorely lacking at the present time. Because responsibility for the constitution is somewhat nebulous within government, and I acknowledge that that has been the case since 2005.
The responsibility is devolved to the Cabinet Office to some extent and to the Ministry of Justice in other respects, and there is a clear case for identifying someone who is in a position to discharge the role of Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs. A suitable person appointed to such an office would also resume the position that great Lord Chancellors occupied in the past. He would be not only the adviser to government on matters of constitutional nicety, but the moral conscience of the Government as well.
That role is difficult to define until it is absent, and it is a role that a suitable Lord Chancellor sitting in this House would be able to perform, with the strength to speak truth to power—something that has sometimes been absent in executive government in this country, as we have faced various constitutional challenges. I heartily endorse the amendment proposed by my noble friend.
Lord Hermer (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, and other noble Lords for their contributions to this debate. We do not accept Amendment 60 for three reasons, beyond the fact that it falls outside the intended scope of this single-issue Bill.
First, the amendment seeks to fetter the power of a Prime Minister to shape the Cabinet according to his or her own choosing. Under this amendment, if the Prime Minister wished to choose a sitting MP to be Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, as has been the case for every Lord Chancellor since 2007, that person would have to vacate their seat and trigger a by-election; or, if this amendment were to be accepted, the Prime Minister would be required to separate the roles of Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice. In the Government’s view, that would be a constitutionally inappropriate fettering of the Prime Minister’s discretion to pick a Cabinet of his or her own choosing.
Secondly, there is no constitutional or public policy rationale to justify taking us back to the position that we were in before 2005. One cannot, for the reasons set out by the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, simply pick and choose without going wholesale back to the 2005 position—putting the Lord Chancellor back on the Woolsack and as the senior judge—because what else is left of the Lord Chancellor’s role? It cannot simply be a rationale driven by nothing more than to have a member of the Cabinet committed to upholding the rule of law. That should be a commitment consistent with the ministerial code for all members of the Cabinet but, if I may say so, I also see it quite properly as a role for an Attorney-General. As the House will be aware, with the Prime Minister’s and the monarch’s grateful permission, the oath of the Attorney-General was changed when I took it to include an express commitment—although it would always have been implicit—to the rule of law.
Thirdly, the amendments fail to address what we would respectfully say are the most important attributes for a Lord Chancellor in the post-2005 age. Those attributes were identified by the Constitution Committee, which considered the Lord Chancellor’s role in a report two years ago—and I acknowledge the committee’s current chair, who is not in his place, the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde. In its final analysis, the report said that
“character, intellect and a commitment to the rule of law are the most important attributes for a Lord Chancellor to possess”.
We agree, and we do not consider that the acid test of those attributes is the House in which a Lord Chancellor should sit.
My right honourable friend the Lord Chancellor exemplifies the qualities of a great officeholder committed to the rule of law. More widely, as she has made clear, this entire Government see the rule of law as our lodestar. I have no doubt that the Prime Minister has appointed my right honourable friend in the confidence that the House in which she sits is no hindrance to her in discharging her vital constitutional responsibilities. For those three reasons, I respectfully request that the noble Lord withdraws his amendment.
Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful for the contributions in this short but important debate. I make the point, although it really ought to go without saying—but I say it for the avoidance of doubt—that none of this is any reflection on the current occupant of the role, for whom I have the greatest personal respect. What we have to do when we consider constitutional matters is to move away from the personal and to the principled, and that is what my amendment is directed at.
The noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General has identified three reasons why this amendment cannot be accepted by the Government. First, he said, it would fetter the PM’s choice of who to have in the Cabinet, but it does not; the PM can still appoint anybody to the role of Lord Chancellor. In fact, the Prime Minister is able to appoint anybody and is not limited to Members of the House of Commons, because somebody could be parachuted in, as has happened on previous occasions. There is no fetter at all—that is a good red herring.
The second point is about what the Lord Chancellor would do. That was the point made by my noble friend Lord Hailsham—and the noble Lord, Lord Murray, gave the short answer. The Lord Chancellor would be there to oversee the really important parts of our constitution: constitutional affairs, devolution, human rights and international treaties. We should therefore go back to the Lord Chancellor being in charge of a Department for Constitutional Affairs.
As to the last point, that the current Attorney-General is the first one to add into the oath a commitment to the rule of law, of course I share that commitment to the rule of law with him—although I think that our interpretation of what it contains may sometimes differ, but that is not a matter for now. With regard to statute, the Lord Chancellor is in a sui generis position. I continue to think that we have lost something important in the 2005 Act, and I hope that this conversation may continue, but of course I beg leave to withdraw the amendment this evening.
“Ministerial members(1) In each Parliament, a limited number of persons may be appointed as temporary ministerial members of the House of Lords.(2) Appointments are to be made by His Majesty the King on the recommendation of the Prime Minister.(3) A recommendation may be made only for the purpose of facilitating the performance by the recommended person of that person’s functions as a Minister of the Crown.(4) An appointment may be made only at a time when there are fewer than 8 ministerial members appointed to the Parliament by the current Prime Minister who are Ministers of the Crown.(5) Any person appointed as a ministerial member of the House of Lords ceases to be a member of the House of Lords when they stop serving as a Minister of the Crown.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to allow temporary appointments to the House of Lords for serving Ministers of the Crown.
Baroness Laing of Elderslie (Con)
My Lords, the amendment in my name on the Marshalled List, Amendment 67, regards the potential appointment of temporary ministerial Members of your Lordships’ House. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, for his support of this amendment and for having added his name to it.
In the very few months during which I have been a Member of your Lordships’ House, I have seen from the inside what outside observers cannot appreciate fully: that this is an institution that works. It is a House that does its duty efficiently and effectively. I hope that discussing Amendment 67 will give the House, and indeed the Government, an opportunity to consider how the House could work even more effectively.
It is vital that a significant number of Government Ministers should be Members of this House, and equally vital that a significant number of Members of this House should be Government Ministers. Our duty to hold the Government to account is accomplished in a variety of ways, as your Lordships are well aware, the most obvious of which is asking questions of a Minister at the Dispatch Box.
In recent years, 36 Ministers have been directly appointed to this House as Ministers. They have come in and made their maiden speeches at the Dispatch Box as Ministers of the Crown. I am not for a moment suggesting that there is anything wrong with that.
A Prime Minister is entitled to appoint the person he or she considers best for the job. It is in all our interests—indeed, in the interests of the country as a whole—to have Ministers carrying out the business of government who know their subject and know how to put policies into action.
It has long been an accepted practice that a Prime Minister can appoint a person who has not been elected to Parliament to become part of the Government. But surely we all accept—some of us more than others—that the ability to win votes at a general election is not the only attribute that makes a good Minister. A successful government department needs a mixture of talents. The aim of Amendment 67 is not to restrict the ability of a Prime Minister to appoint the right person to do a particular job. On the contrary, the effect of this amendment would be to make it easier for a Minister to be appointed.
At present, the only possible appointment to this House is as a Peer for life. I put it to the House that there should be an alternative: the Prime Minister should be able to appoint a person to be a Government Minister and they should be a Member of this House during their tenure of the ministerial appointment and only for that time. Of course I will give way to my noble friend.
Lord Bellingham (Con)
I thank my noble friend for giving way. I just seek some clarification. She is making a very strong, cogent argument. When they leave their appointment as Ministers, will they keep their title or not?
Baroness Laing of Elderslie (Con)
I thank my noble friend for that very pertinent question. I think the answer is yes. A title is an honour—we have discussed this in various aspects of the Bill and in the changes that we are considering. There is no harm in a title. It is the presence of being in this House and having the ability to vote, et cetera, that is really the point at question. So, indeed, a title, once conferred, would be kept for ever. It is a great honour to be appointed to this House, but I ask noble Lords to consider that an appointment for life means something rather different to a person aged 30 and a person aged 60. None of us can predict what “for life” will mean, but if one is planning one’s career, it looks rather different from the point of view of having accomplished most of the things you are going to do, rather than from the point of view of having accomplished not very much yet.
There might be bright young things out there who could serve a few years as very effective members of a Government but who do not wish to undertake the duty of being a Member of this illustrious House for the rest of their lives. All recent Prime Ministers have vowed that they want to reduce the size of your Lordships’ House. Let us try to help the current Prime Minister to do that, by giving him the option to appoint Ministers on a temporary basis. It would be a modest step towards a 21st-century House if the Government were to consider adopting Amendment 67. I beg to move.
Viscount Trenchard (Con)
My Lords, my noble friend Lady Laing of Elderslie proposes the creation of a new class of Members of your Lordships’ House, as ministerial members. It is not clear from her very eloquent speech whether such persons would be created Peers or not. She did suggest that they would be accorded titles, not only for the duration of their tenure in office but for life. This amendment does not address the problem of unpaid Ministers in your Lordships’ House. I am not so sure there would be many volunteers for such posts in the absence of a salary and a peerage. I hope my noble friend will clarify whether, on reflection, these temporary Ministers would be given a peerage or the right to sit after retirement from ministerial responsibilities.
Baroness Laing of Elderslie (Con)
I thank my noble friend for his question. Just to clarify, it is set out in Amendment 67 that such a person would be created a Peer, but not a Peer for life. Although the title might continue, the right to sit in your Lordships’ House would not, once the ministerial appointment had ended.
Viscount Trenchard (Con)
I thank my noble friend for her clarification, but I wonder about the creation of yet another type of Peer. I wonder how many people would be happy to be created that kind of Peer, if others appointed as Ministers were created proper Peers for life. It might be a bit difficult.
I will comment on Amendment 90C, which my noble friend Lord Brady is going to move. He seeks to abolish the Lords Ministers altogether. Who would speak for the Government in your Lordships’ House? My noble friend clearly has in mind a very different role for the House, and I look forward to his elucidation of that.
Lord Brady of Altrincham (Con)
I am grateful to my noble friend for introducing my remarks so capably. I hate to disappoint him, but my intention is to speak briefly in support of my noble friend Lady Laing’s Amendment 67, not to move Amendment 90C in my name. I tabled it intending for it to sit with the earlier amendment that I proposed, which we debated at an earlier stage. My intention was to draw out a broader debate about the importance of a separation of powers. We heard earlier about the separation between the judiciary and the legislature, but we do not speak very often about the possible separation between the Executive and the legislature. That is the debate I was wishing to have, but it does not sit comfortably at this point in our proceedings.
I do, however, very strongly support my noble friend Lady Laing’s amendment, which serves quite an important purpose—and sits naturally with the avowed intention of the Bill. Most of us across the House recognise that the odd process of exempted hereditary Peers being chosen by by-election has become very difficult to justify. It has been widely said at previous stages that it had already really fallen into disuse and most people have been happy to see that there would not be future by-elections.
In dealing with what appeared to be an anomalous route for appointment to your Lordships’ House, it is very hard to see how the appointment of a Peer for life simply because they are being appointed to do a specific job for a specific period of time is not at least as anomalous.
I strongly support my noble friend in her intention. As she has said, it would increase the freedom of Prime Ministers to bring in people to act as Ministers from a much broader field or a much wider spectrum of life experience—and it would not have the unintended consequence of constantly swelling the ranks of your Lordships’ House.
Viscount Hailsham (Con)
My Lords, I wish to make two brief points. First, with regard to what has just been said by the noble Baroness, I strongly support the idea of time-limited persons in this House, whether they are Ministers, appointed for a particular short term or—my own favoured proposal—for fixed terms of, say, 10 years, which addresses some of my noble friend’s point.
Amendment 90C, which my noble friend Lord Brady does not intend to move, would be seriously bad news. If this House is to perform its function as a revising Chamber by scrutinising legislation, it is essential that the Government of the day are represented by competent Ministers who can answer questions from the Opposition or their own Benches. If my noble friend’s amendment, which he does not intend to move, was ever to find favour, the role of this House would be hugely diminished.
Lord Rennard (LD)
My Lords, I, too, support Amendment 67 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Laing of Elderslie, which I have signed.
As a stalwart participant in debates about the future of your Lordships’ House, in particular on the principle of its hereditary membership, it has been a source of constant frustration to me that the House has been unable since 2015 to make even minor and sensible reforms to our composition, until now. There are several sensible amendments to this Bill that go beyond removing the hereditary basis for membership, and I support the principle of this one.
I have looked at ministerial appointments made by way of creating a new peerage since 2015. There have been 29 in this period, of which nine—or approximately one-third—have lasted as Ministers for less than a year. Only seven of the 29 new Peers created in this way have lasted as Ministers for more than two years. Therefore, 76% of them have not lasted as Ministers for two years, but all of them have been granted lifetime membership of the House. I then looked at the record of those appointed Ministers in this way after they ceased to be Ministers. Of the 29, 11 have gone on to make fewer than 10 spoken contributions and only 12 have made more than 50. Fifteen did not serve on a committee, 17 took part in fewer than 50 Divisions and only eight took part in more than 100 Divisions. It is a great source of frustration to many in the House that we have seen so many ministerial appointments which involved the granting of a life peerage, with the newly appointed Ministers lasting only a very short period of time in office and then mostly disappearing without trace from our Chamber but without choosing to resign from it.
If ministerial appointments created in that way continue at the same rate over the next decade, we will add another 30 Members to the House. That would make the cull of the hereditary Members less justified, if it were simply about numbers. One ministerial Peer would be created for every three hereditary Peers removed, and the ministerial Peers are likely to be of less value to the House in the long run.
All the evidence suggests that peerages created to enable ministerial appointments inflate our size while not invariably providing Members who are very active beyond the term of their ministerial office. We need to end the practice of a peerage for life being granted simply to enable ministerial appointments to be made from outside the membership of the House of Commons. Almost everyone agrees that the House of Lords is too large and that it is not well served by having Members who inflate our numbers without properly participating in our work.
Therefore, I hope that the Government will look favourably at ending the link between a life peerage and ministerial office. They could, at the very least, expect any new Ministers appointed in this way, at the end of their term of ministerial office, either to remain as active in the House as expected by the standards of the House of Lords Appointments Commission or to resign immediately from membership of the House. A public statement from the Prime Minister that this will be the case would be a welcome step, pending more wide-ranging reforms of the House. It would make an amendment such as this less necessary and avoid further debate.
Earl Attlee (Con)
My Lords, I hold my noble friends proposing these amendments in high regard, but I am sorry to say that they display a misunderstanding of the relationship between a Lords Minister and other Members of your Lordships’ House. I do not understand how the House would work if my noble friend Lord Brady’s amendment were to be accepted. What would be the point of being in the House of Lords if we were unable to influence a Minister on a Peer-to-Peer basis?
Lord Brady of Altrincham (Con)
Had I intended to move my amendment, I would wonder whether it occurs to my noble friend that it would be possible to bring Ministers from another place to answer Questions here.
Earl Attlee (Con)
I could not resist having a pop at my noble friend.
My noble friend Lady Laing mentioned the 36th direct ministerial appointment, and the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, in his important contribution, said more about that. The underlying cause of that is that Prime Ministers have been offering peerages, rather than attractive salaries, to fill ministerial vacancies in your Lordships’ House.
My noble friend Lady Laing’s amendment would have a very serious and adverse effect on the culture of the House. In all my time in your Lordships’ House, I have looked decades ahead. I will give an example. In the 2001 Parliament, we had a perfectly decent, hard-working and effective Minister for Defence Procurement as our Lords Defence Minister. At the time, we were militarily overcommitted, and at Question Time I asked for how many years we had operated outside the defence planning assumptions. He misled the House by saying, “My Lords, none”, and sat down. Unfortunately, that was the wrong answer. I could have wickedly arranged for him to come to the Dispatch Box, immediately after Prayers, to apologise to the House for misleading it—but I did no such thing. Instead, I located the crestfallen Minister and said, “Don’t worry, Willy, just put a Ministerial Statement in the back of Hansard and it will be fine”. Nine years later, when I accidentally cut a £1.7 billion railway electrification scheme, it was my pals in the Labour Party, including the noble Lord on the Woolsack, who said, “Don’t worry, John, you have another Question tomorrow and you can clarify the situation then”.
In the past, I have worked very closely with parachuted-in Ministers, and I am doing so now. I am working very closely with the noble Lord, Lord Timpson —who is a parachuted-in Minister—on prison reform. This is the House of Lords, and our role is to revise legislation and to be an additional check on the Executive and a source of expertise. We cannot perform this role unless other Members of the House and Ministers work together collegiately, with mutual trust and in accordance with the Nolan principles.
Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)
My Lords, I will speak in support of my noble friend Lady Laing’s amendment.
I begin by pointing out two problems with her proposal before I give her my unwavering support. I call the first the “Wolfson problem”, or perhaps the “Timpson problem”, whereby we appoint extremely experienced and able people to fill a ministerial role and then discover, when they leave that ministerial role, that they will be extremely distinguished and able Members of our House for the rest of their lives.
I gave three cheers when my noble friend Lord Wolfson came into this House, and I gave three cheers for the three excellent Ministers appointed by the new Government to the Front Bench, each with huge expertise in their areas. I invidiously agree with my noble friend Lord Attlee that one of them is the noble Lord, Lord Timpson. I have absolutely no doubt that they will continue to make extremely distinguished contributions to the House long after they have left their ministerial posts. The “Wolfson problem” is easily solved by converting those temporary Ministers into full-time life Peers at the discretion of the Prime Minister of the day.
The second issue is the element of—
Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)
The only problem with that is that I left my ministerial office because I resigned from it. The prospect of the Prime Minister of the day thereafter appointing me as a life Peer might be regarded as somewhat remote.
Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)
As somebody who left the Whip because of the capriciousness of the then Prime Minister, and then managed to get the Whip restored and to be put into this House, I know that there are ways around the problem, particularly with extremely clever arguments put forward on one’s own behalf. But I digress.
Baroness Laing of Elderslie (Con)
I thank my honourable—I am sorry, he is not my honourable friend; he has stopped being honourable. I thank my noble friend for giving way. I was trying to be brief in my initial remarks, so I did not go into great detail. This amendment would not apply to all Ministers; it would simply give the Prime Minister the ability to appoint some Ministers on a temporary basis. It would not oblige the Prime Minister to make all ministerial appointments to this House on a temporary basis. I hope that reassures my noble friend.
Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)
The noble Baroness was effectively my first employer, when I was 21 years old, and we have this telepathic understanding: she has seamlessly introduced the main point I wish to make.
I want to turn this round and pick up precisely on what the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, was saying. Moving to a system where the Government of the day could appoint temporary Ministers to this place would give the Prime Minister and the Government a huge amount of flexibility to fill government posts with genuine experts with, effectively, executive ministerial power to carry out their functions. There must be a small, niggling doubt when a Prime Minister is filling positions. Even with the very distinguished people appointed in recent months, he—and it is “he” in this case—must be thinking, “Am I appointing too many people to fill these Benches; people who are going be here for the rest of their lives?” If he had the freedom, for example, to appoint 12 or 13 experts in the field to fill specific ministerial roles, knowing that at the end of those roles they will leave this House, that would sit better with public opinion and give him more freedom. It would serve the country better if he were able to appoint such experts to carry out these functions—by definition, almost certainly as junior Ministers—and help the Government of the day. That is a very powerful argument.
As I say, there would be discretion to convert those Ministers into life peers at the end. In fact, I had not considered the question of whether they should have a peerage when they enter this House. My conclusion is that they should not. They should be called MILs—Ministers in the Lords—and then they can aspire, based on their service as Ministers and their contribution to the House, to a peerage after they have served as Ministers here.
Finally, I turn to the question, raised by one of my noble friends, of how many people would be attracted to the unpaid role of a Minister in the Lords. First, it does not necessarily need to be unpaid. It is a matter for the Government of the day as to whether they have the courage to face down public opinion and expand the number of paid ministerial positions. But this House should certainly seriously consider giving the Prime Minister and the Government of the day the freedom to appoint temporary MILs to help service its business.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friends Lady Laing of Elderslie and Lord Brady of Altrincham for their amendments. My noble friend Lord Brady seems to have pulled off the ingenious feat of engineering a debate on an amendment he did not want to move or speak about himself. So I will not say very much about his Amendment 90C, other than to note that the answers that noble Lords get to their questions would be far less satisfactory if the people responding had less authority to seek or determine the answers, and that our scrutiny of legislation would be diminished if the Ministers responding did not have the authority to make changes and compromises based on the arguments they have heard. We live in hope that we might be able to persuade Ministers of the need for some changes to and compromises on the Bill before the Committee.
I will focus on my noble friend Lady Laing’s Amendment 67, which has far more going for it. It is certainly valuable to be able to bring people into government who might not have had the inclination or the opportunity to stand for election. The present Government have made good use of that. Mention has already been made, rightly, of the noble Lord, Lord Timpson, who had a distinguished career in business but also helped those who had been in the penal system. More pertinent examples are people such as the noble Lords, Lord Vallance of Balham and Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill, who were distinguished public servants in their fields before they dipped their toes into more political waters. Similarly, the noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General stepped away from a successful career at the Bar to provide counsel and public service in government. Governments of all colours have been able to persuade distinguished people from all sorts of walks of life to pause or sometimes abandon their careers in order to serve the country. What my noble friend says is right: they could perhaps persuade more if it were not accompanied by a life sentence in the legislature.
Although some noble Lords who have given service in government remain active members of your Lordships’ House, drawing on the expertise they have added in office, others do not. I was struck by the figures that the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, quoted on the rate of continuing participation of former Ministers. Indeed, when I look down the list of those who served in the Conservative-led Governments of the previous 14 years, I am struck by the number who have chosen no longer to sit on these Benches. I remember one difficult conversation with a noble Lord, who will remain nameless, who was anxious to step down as a Minister, having already served for longer than the late Lord Heywood of Whitehall had promised them they would have to in return for their life peerage.
So, although I am firmly of the view that Ministers of the Crown should be represented in both Houses of our bicameral system, my noble friend Lady Laing’s suggestion that temporary service in government should be separated from perpetual service here in the legislature is worthy of consideration. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say.
Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Collins of Highbury) (Lab)
This has been a really interesting debate. I will not address the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Brady, because he has not moved it, which makes life a bit easier. However, he supported Amendment 67, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Laing, which seeks to allow individuals to be appointed as temporary Peers so that they can serve as Ministers, after which they would depart this House.
Although the Government see the reasoning behind this amendment, we do not think it is the best way of achieving our objective of a smaller, more active Chamber. Ministers are appointed to the Government because of the experience and expertise they bring to this House, and the House benefits hugely from that. Some Ministers appointed to this House who were Members of Parliament bring both an intrinsic understanding of the other place and valuable experience of particular government departments. I have said before that in my view, both Houses work most effectively when we understand each other’s day-to-day workings. That is a really important point.
Others have been appointed as Ministers in recognition of the value of their experience outside of government, in the private sector and in other areas of public service. As noble Lords have said, we are lucky enough to have a number of such experts on the Benches with us. My noble and learned friend Lord Hermer and my noble friend Lord Timpson were recently appointed to this House to serve as Ministers, as was the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, in the last Parliament.
Whatever the precise reasons for their appointment, I think noble Lords would agree that these individuals proved valuable to the House long after they ceased to be Ministers. This amendment risks depriving the House of often considerable experience.
I understand the sentiment of this amendment. New Peers, whether appointed as Ministers or not, increase the size of this House, because appointments are for life, and the House has become too big. What the House has found frustrating is that, often, when Ministers are appointed and come into this House, they leave their ministerial posts quite quickly and make no further contribution. That is not the case for the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, and certainly not for the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, and the noble Lord, Lord Agnew. All three of them resigned from government on a matter of principle, but they have continued to participate.
We would not have had the benefit of the noble Lord in the debate today if he had been subject to the noble Baroness’s amendment. This is an important point to make. The noble Lord, Lord Agnew, has continued to contribute. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, has been contributing to today’s debate. I hear what the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, says, but I suspect that they do not have his unique skills in persuading the Prime Minister to keep them in.
The noble Baroness’s amendment is not the way to address the problem of the size of our House. Our objective is to create a smaller, more active Chamber that represents the country it serves. As we have said throughout Committee, the Government believe that a mandatory retirement age is the most effective way to do this. It is right that we take time, as a House, to continue the dialogue on how best we can implement these manifesto commitments, and this amendment would pre-empt that dialogue.
I have heard what the noble Baroness has to say, but the evidence is here before us. It is not for the first time that I have congratulated the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, on his participation, and it would be terrible if we did not have him here in today’s debate. I ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.
Lord Rennard (LD)
My Lords, would the Minister consider raising with the Prime Minister the suggestion that I made of a statement along the lines I indicated in my speech, which would enable a Prime Minister to make Ministers by way of creating a peerage, but for such Peers to continue in the role only if they undertook regular participation in the House in future, and, if they did not, that they should therefore resign their membership of the House?
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
As the noble Lord knows, we are going to look at participation generally. That means that we have to engage in proper dialogue and consultation, so I do not accept the noble Lord’s point. I ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Laing of Elderslie (Con)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his assessment of the amendment that I have put before the Committee. It had not been my intention to have any argument ad hominem. I was not looking backwards in my tabling of this amendment in order to eject from the House any particular former Minister—and certainly not any sitting here.
Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)
I just make it clear, as far as I am concerned, that a copy of today’s Hansard is going directly to my mother, and I am very grateful for what my noble friend said.
Baroness Laing of Elderslie (Con)
In consideration of the feelings of the noble Lord’s mother, let me make it absolutely clear that I share the Minister’s admiration for recent Ministers on both sides of the House, and, indeed, those who are now shadow Ministers and those who were previously shadow Ministers. The quality of the personnel who take charge of this House is exemplary and magnificent. Does the noble Lord think that that will be enough for his mother?
Lord Ashton of Hyde
“Retirement from the House of LordsIn section 1(2)(b) of the House of Lords Act 2014, after “peer”, insert “or a person holding a lasting power of attorney for that peer”.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment allows for a person holding a lasting power of attorney for a peer to sign on their behalf when notifying the Clerk of the Parliaments of the peer’s retirement.
Lord Ashton of Hyde (Non-Afl)
My Lords, in 1934, Percy Shaw patented the cat’s eye, the ubiquitous reflective road stud that we all recognise. It is one of the most perfect inventions and recognised as one of the top 10 British design icons, along with, among other things, the Spitfire, the telephone box and the world wide web. It is simple, effective, self-cleaning and, most importantly, was wholly beneficial to everyone. It had no downsides.
I am not claiming that my Amendment 69 is quite in the same league, but it is non-political and non-partisan; it applies to all noble Lords, whether elected hereditaries or life Peers; and—the noble Baroness the Leader of the House will like this—it helps address the view of the Labour manifesto that
“the second chamber of Parliament has become too big”.
The problem it addresses is to do with the composition of the House, which is why it is relevant to this Bill, and one that faces all party leaders, Chief Whips and the Convener of the Cross Benches. They often have conversations with Peers about retirement, and sometimes those conversations are quite difficult. That is understandable, because it is a sensitive subject, and particularly so when it occurs because the Peer feels that he or she might be losing the mental capacity required to be a Member of the legislature. It is, as I say, a sensitive subject, and I pay tribute to those Peers who have made the difficult and brave decision to retire for that reason. But mental capacity is not a cut and dried issue, and it can vary from day to day or week to week, and it can often reduce over time. When you are over the hill, as they say, you begin to pick up speed.
The House of Lords Reform Act 2014 allows a Peer to retire if he or she signs a letter which is witnessed and addressed to the Clerk of the Parliaments. The Catch-22 situation is that the Peer has to have, in the opinion of the Clerk of the Parliaments, the mental capacity to be able legitimately to sign the retirement letter. Even if there is a lasting power of attorney in place, the attorney cannot sign a retirement letter on behalf of a Peer who has lost mental capacity. So we have the perverse situation that an attorney can sell a Peer’s house or use his or her money to pay for long-term care, but has to leave that same Peer able to vote and speak in Parliament, even if their mental capacity continues to reduce steadily. I think everyone would agree that this is not good for the reputation of the House and potentially unkind to the Peer who may still attend the House when, frankly, they should not.
Not all Peers will have a lasting power of attorney, even though we should all at least consider it. However, if they have thought it through and decided to establish a lasting power of attorney while they still have mental capacity, this amendment would remove all doubt and allow the Clerk of the Parliaments to accept the attorney’s signature on the resignation letter. I beg to move.
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
My Lords, what feels like many years ago when we had the first day in Committee on this Bill, the noble Lord, Lord True, moved a completely unnecessary amendment to restate the purpose of the Bill as already expressed in the short title. That focused on the content of the Bill, which is about hereditary Peers.
The problem with the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Ashton, which has a great deal to be said for it in terms of substance, is that it is not relevant to the Bill. It focuses on another matter, a matter which needs to be resolved—for the future of this House and for the reputation of this House—but it is not a matter for this discussion in this Bill.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, I have taken a certain interest in this issue because a Peer who was extremely kind to my wife and me when we were young academics, and was himself then a senior diplomat, was the case in point.
This is something which needs sorting. It can be sorted by either a change in Standing Orders or an Order in Council. If that is not allowed, it needs legislation. We have just passed a short Bill through this House, the Church of Scotland (Lord High Commissioner) Bill, which covered one extremely small element that was forgotten or not allowed by the Church of Scotland in the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829. If we can do that, then we can add, if necessary, a short amendment to this Bill to have that effect.
As I walked through the Lobby the other day, another Peer, who happens to be a relative of the Peer in question, said to me, “This is not just a single case. Until we have agreed a retirement age, we are likely to be facing this again and again with others”. We all know that there have been cases of Peers who have continued to come here as they begin to lose their mental capacity.
I have another reason for intervening on this. I recall my mother, aged 93, trying to sign a power of attorney for me to act on her behalf. Her paralysis had reached a point where she was unable to sign and thus not able to confer the power of attorney, despite being completely in her right mind.
This can be done. We are entitled to ask the Government that, by Report, we have clear advice on whether it has to be done by legislation or can be done by an Order in Council or a change in Standing Orders. I know that there is conflicting advice on this, because I have taken some interest in the case.
I know that the Government’s preferred outcome is that there should be no amendments to this Bill. However, this is a Bill about some further reform of the Lords, and we are unlikely to see another one for some time. Therefore, this House is entitled to say, as it goes through, that we are interested in some further reforms and that some further limited reforms might appropriately be attached to this Bill. That is what we are now discussing.
I look forward to the Government making an announcement at the start of Report on what further changes in the structures, Standing Orders and procedures of this House they propose, what further consultation on legislative changes they have in mind and when they propose to complete them, so as to help the passage of this Bill through the House. I strongly support this amendment. I do not mind whether the changes are made in one form or another, but they are simple to make, and it should be done.
Lord Garnier (Con)
My Lords, as a signatory of the amendment, perhaps I may make one or two points in support of my noble friend Lord Ashton.
A lasting power of attorney gives the attorney a power to make decisions about two sets of things—health and welfare, and property and financial affairs. Under health and welfare, the attorney can deal with your daily routine—washing, dressing and eating. They can make arrangements for your medical care, for moving into a care home and for life-sustaining treatment. They can make use of that power when you are unable to make your own decisions.
A property and financial affairs lasting power of attorney can be used as soon as it is registered and with your permission. That allows the attorney to manage a bank or building society account to pay bills, to collect benefits or a pension, and, as my noble friend Lord Ashton mentioned, to sell your home. These are big decisions in both types of power of attorney. However, as he pointed out, what they cannot do is enable you to retire from this House when you have lost your faculties.
I am particularly interested in this amendment because, having been on the Conduct Committee for the last three years—I came off it in January—it appeared to me and perhaps to other members of the committee that loss of mental capacity is something that this House will have to deal with in a humane but none the less determined fashion. Had the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, been making that point about this being out of scope of this Bill in a court, I would have said it was a mere pleading point and, “Shall we just get to the substance?” The substance is that this is an issue—the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, was right to address it—that has to be dealt with, if not within this Bill then in some other way by the House, because we are facing a growing and difficult problem of people who are beginning to fail to understand that they should no longer be here. It may be cruel to expel people, but if they could make up their own mind, they would do so. We need to cater for those who have lost the ability and the capacity to make that decision.
I urge the House, if it does not accept the amendment in its current terms, to understand that this is a problem that faces us, and we must deal with it as a House.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach (Con)
Perhaps I may say a few words as the predecessor of my noble friend Lord Ashton of Hyde as Chief Whip for the Government in this House. When I was serving under the noble Baroness, Lady May, she was very keen to make sure that the numbers in this House did not increase exponentially. We have the noble Lord, Lord Burns, in his place today, to thank for a very good report on not increasing the numbers in this place.
I spent a lot of time, along with my noble friend, trying to urge people to retire when they could no longer participate in this House or do anything to add to our deliberations in any way. I felt that we needed to do something about this. So when this amendment was pointed out to me, I did not take the view of the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, although I totally agree with his analysis that it is not covered by the Short Title of the Bill, except for the reference to “hereditary Peers”. This should apply to all Members of the House, and I urge the Government, when they come across this issue on Report, to propose their own amendment to address it on behalf of the whole House, or to suggest ways in which we can do so with the support of all Benches. The need to achieve this objective has been very well explained.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)
My Lords, I simply want to make two points, one on procedure and the other on substance. On procedure and the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, he will know, as a long-standing Member of this House, that if my noble friend’s amendment were not in scope, it could not have been tabled. Also, as much as the noble Baroness the Leader of the House may pray in aid her manifesto and the promise of more legislation, we know that, despite the standard argument of Ministers that a particular piece of legislation is not an appropriate vehicle and another one will be along shortly, it very often does not happen.
That leads me to my point concerning substance, which I am sure the noble Baroness the Leader of the House will acknowledge. As my noble friend has already said, this sensitive issue is one that all of us who have had the privilege to serve as Leader or Chief Whip of our respective groups have faced, and we cannot leave it unanswered or unaddressed. I urge the noble Baroness please to take this seriously, and I hope that the Government’s desire not to amend the Bill will not be advanced as an excuse in response to this debate.
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, I have put my name to my noble friend’s amendment. My noble friend, as a former Chief Whip; my noble friend Lord Taylor of Holbeach, as a former Chief Whip; my noble friend, who is a former Leader; and I as a former Leader: we all know that there is a serious issue of law and principle that needs to be addressed here. I agree with the very wise words and advice to the House from the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire.
The noble Lord, Lord Harris, took exception to a speech I made at the outset of these debates. In part of that speech, I said that there are several parties to this legislation. One is the Government’s desire, which we accept, to stop the inflow of hereditary Peers; the other is the views of other parties in the House; but there is an overriding interest of the House. This is a House of Parliament, and there is a Bill before us which directly affects your Lordships’ House. It is absolutely reasonable, as the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, submitted, that this House of Lords should put forward propositions for sensible and limited amendments to legislation that will improve, potentially, the reputation of the House. I believe that this proposal fits squarely into that. I assert the simple principle that those who cannot conduct their own affairs should not conduct the affairs of Parliament. If this is not addressed, it risks one day bringing disrepute on this House.
The clear intention of the House at the time of the 2014 Act that brought in retirement was exactly that those life Peers who no longer wished to take part in the House, or who perhaps felt that their powers to do so effectively were declining, might retire permanently from the House. That was a sensible and useful reform, but, as has been described in the debate, a potential problem has arisen. In the 2014 Act, it is clear that a Peer must personally sign a witness document stating that he or she is wanting to retire. That was the clear advice I received from the House authorities when I was Leader: that where a Peer has ceded control of his or her affairs by means of a lasting power of attorney, as explained to us by my noble and learned friend Lord Garnier, doubts have been expressed as to whether the Clerk of the Parliaments could accept the letter of a duly appointed attorney as conclusive in relation to retirement. Thus, as my noble and learned friend said, in extremis an attorney might be able to sell the property of an individual, move their bank account contents anywhere or put them into a retirement home, but they could not effect a request for that Peer to retire from the House. That is a quite extraordinary position.
In the worst imaginable case, an attorney might know that a Peer is wholly incapable of managing his or her own affairs but could not prevent that Peer coming to the House to take part in directing the nation’s affairs because no valid document of retirement could be presented to the Clerk of the Parliaments. Such circumstances should never arise, and they would never be accepted in any House of Parliament in most other countries of the world. I simply disagree with the view expressed that an amendment cannot be considered or accepted because it was not part of the original intention of the Government in presenting a piece of legislation. I have presented many pieces of legislation to your Lordships’ House on behalf of the Government and found that the House did not agree with the purpose I had in mind for the Bill, but that it thought that the Bill might be a useful vehicle for making changes to the betterment of the public weal.
If there is before us a vehicle that could enable us to do something swiftly and easily that would be useful for this House and for Parliament, I believe we should take that opportunity. This is not a question of prevarication or wanting to cause difficulties. It is the easiest and simplest thing to do and would involve a 15-minute debate on Report if we get agreement on a way forward, if that is necessary. This Bill provides an obvious opportunity to put the law beyond doubt. It is under doubt and it is conflicting advice, and we have a vehicle through which we could make it clear. The issue has no relevance to politics or to the other contentious issues in the Bill. In my submission, it is simply common sense. Frankly, it is an amendment to the law that no one in the other place could conceivably take any exception to.
I trust very much that your Lordships will support my noble friend and take advantage of this opportunity to set this small but important matter beyond doubt, if it is indeed necessary to do so. I know that the noble Baroness the Leader of the House takes this matter very seriously—we have had the opportunity to discuss it and other matters in our normal conversations—and that she will give full consideration to the arguments of my noble friend. But it is my submission that the Bill should not leave this House without this difficult and sensitive matter having been solved swiftly, clearly and permanently, and with the utmost, crystalline clarity.
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Ashton of Hyde, for raising this issue, as he knows from the brief conversation we had about it. We have heard from two former Chief Whips and two former Leaders of the House how serious an issue this is. For me, it is a matter of the dignity of the Member. Where Members are not able to participate in the role of this House, particularly Members who have—I hesitate to say “career”—given distinguished service to your Lordships’ House, they should be able to leave with dignity.
I am slightly ahead of noble Lords. One of the first things I did as Leader of the House, knowing there had been problems in the past, was to seek further legal advice on this matter. I am still seeking advice, and I think there is a way forward, but there is not much more I can say at this stage. It is an issue that needs careful consideration.
I am sorry that the debate has been a little “It must be in the Bill”; I think that the best way forward is to give effect to it quickly, and I do not really care what the vehicle is. We may be able do it more quickly or we may have to wait to pass legislation, but what I can say is that it is more legally complex. It may be that a change in the law is not the best way and is not what is required; it may be that we can do it from the House itself. Those are issues that I am looking at at the moment. I am happy to talk to the noble Lord about it, but I am looking at ways to give effect to this.
I ask the noble Lord to withdraw the amendment and give him the assurance that we will return to this issue. As the noble Lord, Lord True, said about our conversations, it is one of the first things that I raised with him very early on, soon after I became Leader, as I feel that it has been around for far too long and it needs resolution as quickly as possible. This engages a number of issues, but I assure your Lordships that I will take this away and bring something back to your Lordships’ House in one form or another. I ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment, but I give him my assurance that this is not something I will let drop: I have already been working to get a resolution as quickly as possible.
Lord Ashton of Hyde (Non-Afl)
I thank all noble Lords who have spoken, including the noble Lord, Lord True, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, who added their names to this amendment. I particularly thank the Leader of the House for her encouraging words.
I was a bit disappointed by the point from the noble Lord, Lord Harris, which was, to a certain extent, a political point—that there should be no amendments to the Bill and that, even if we have a perfect vehicle to achieve the solution to a problem, we should not use it. The Leader of the House has said that there may be other ways and that the most important thing is to address the problem, which we all agree exists. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, who explained better than I can why the noble Lord, Lord Harris, was in error, but he may not agree.
On the basis of what the noble Baroness said, for which I am grateful, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. I think we can address this before Report and deal with it then.
Baroness Smith of Llanfaes
“Timeline for the next stage of reform of the House of LordsThe Secretary of State must, within six months of the day on which this Act is passed, set out a timetable outlining additional reforms to the composition of the House of Lords during the Parliament in which this Act is passed.”Member's explanatory statement
This new clause requires the Secretary of State to promptly publish the next stages of reform to the House of Lords.
Baroness Smith of Llanfaes (PC)
My Lords, although I welcomed during Second Reading His Majesty’s Government starting efforts to reform the composition of this House, I am still perplexed as to why they have still not seized this opportunity to go much further. My Amendment 71, supported by my noble friend Lord Wigley, aims to address that.
Most of your Lordships will be aware of Plaid Cymru’s long-held position that this place should be abolished and replaced with a democratic alternative—a view that I thought the Prime Minister shared. It was certainly the position of his party prior to the 2024 general election. This Government can and should go so much further, but we remain with a very thin Bill and no firm commitment to further reform in this term. This thin Bill is utilising so much parliamentary time for not that much change, and I am not alone in this view; even some on the Labour Benches have expressed it.
The noble Lord, Lord Hain, was reported in the Guardian on 3 March as saying that
“time was of the essence for any possible further changes”.
He said:
“I think if you don’t do it in your first term then are you ever going to do it?”
We have far to go.
Amendment 71 seeks to ensure that momentum is not lost and that there is a firm continuance in reforming this place and ensuring that that mission is not dropped. My amendment is very simple: it requires the Secretary of State to publish the next stages of reform for this place within six months of the day on which the Act is passed. What is there to disagree with?
It is imperative that we see commitment from His Majesty’s Government for further reforms in the future. We need certainty and action. Further reform must stem from consultation with citizens—those whose lives are shaped by the decisions that we make in this place. How can we possibly know what serves them best without asking them? Citizens’ assemblies could be a way of doing this.
Following the 2024 general election, a Modernisation Committee was established in the other place, driven by a new generation of MPs determined to bring their working practices into the modern age. Its purpose is to review procedures, standards and working practices. In the implementation of Amendment 71, perhaps there is a strong case to be made for the establishment of a similar committee in this place. However, that has not been defined in the amendment and would be up to the Government. It would be a modest but very meaningful step towards a second Chamber that would be more accessible for a broader range of people in our society.
The Duke of Wellington (CB)
My Lords, I apologise for being absent from the Chamber earlier, when I was attending the European Affairs Select Committee. At Second Reading, I said that I thought the Bill should be allowed to pass largely unamended, and I said that with great sadness. However, since Second Reading, many noble Lords from all sides of the House have told me that, in their opinion, it is unlikely that the Government will take Lords reform any further. That is regrettable. There is considerable support for further reforms from throughout the House, and I think it would be sensible for the Government to introduce further reforms.
Of course, other reforms were also in the Labour Party manifesto. Matters such as minimum participation were mentioned in the manifesto. I realise that a retirement age has become controversial, but the handling of misconduct by Members was also in the manifesto.
The sole purpose of my Amendment 81, which I hope the Government will at least consider, is to require the Government to go to the next stage of reform within 24 months. The noble Baroness, Lady Smith, has put six months, and the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, has put 18 months, but I have put 24 months to give the Government more time. I have purposely not specified what reforms should be in the next piece of legislation because I well understand that the Leader— I am so pleased that she is in her place—wishes to consult extensively on these matters.
We have discussed at some length in Committee possible further reforms and, as I said earlier, the manifesto included certain specific further reforms. It is right that these matters should be considered, probably outside this Chamber, by wise heads and at a sensible pace, but it would not be correct for Ministers to say to the country that by removing the hereditary Peers they have completed reform of the House of Lords. They should be more ambitious and find a way to bring here men and women prepared to undertake public service in this House and—this is the important point—who would be unlikely to be nominated by party-political leaders.
I ask the Government to consider Amendment 81. I do not believe that the other place would necessarily object to it. Although I am sure that it will reject many other amendments that may or may not be passed on Report, this amendment could find favour in the other place. I hope Ministers will consider it.
Lord Fowler (CB)
My Lords, Amendment 85 is in my name. I will be extremely brief. I had originally written down that I agreed with some of what the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, had to say. Having listened to her, I am not sure that that fully explains my position; I found myself in sympathy less and less with what she had to say in her proposals, but there we are. I am much more in sympathy with what the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, said, because he put the case extremely well. It is always a great privilege to follow him, and it is very good for my reputation with my children that I can at last say, “I was supporting the Duke of Wellington in the House of Lords last night”. Even more, I support the provisions that he puts forward.
It was right of the Government to set out what they wanted to do, and what they are doing is the proper course to take. My only concern is the time that this three-line Bill is spending on the Floor of the House of Lords. A number of very important points have been followed, and I pay tribute to the definition from the noble Lord, Lord True, of what can and should be amended, but I think he concedes that not everything in the Bill can be added to and amended. That really is my point—it is not really a point, in a sense, for this Bill, but it is certainly for the handling of it.
I take the view that the whole value of this House is not just as a revising Chamber but because we have acknowledged experts here. In areas such as defence, for example, they can give their advice, and that advice goes not just to us but to the country. That is a very important function that the House of Lords has.
My advice is that we should have as much debate as we can, which will enable people to say why the House of Lords should listen but also why the public should. Yet we know that it is extremely difficult to get debates on the Floor of this House issues other than this Bill—I mean debates with speeches, and with proper time for those speeches, rather than Parliamentary Questions. We know very well indeed what problems that creates. Yet it seems that, at this point in our history—this time of unbelievable tension in the world—there is a particular need for the House of Lords to try to act as a funnel for the concerns being put forward, where the House and the experts within it can make their contribution. Yet I fear we are going to spend four or five sessions talking about just the House of Lords. That is a pity, and it is excessive considering the other issues. That means that we will not have long debates about the situation in Palestine, the position in Syria, or the 101 other issues that there are.
My proposal is basically this: we should deal as expeditiously and as generously as we can, in the way the Leader of the House suggests, with the issues that can be contained in this Bill, but we should recognise that not all of them can be. My amendment says that the Government, within 18 months of the day on which the Bill passes, should put before Parliament a draft Bill that seeks to limit the size of the House of Lords. That seems, frankly, non-controversial at the moment, but it is the most important thing, as my noble friend behind me knows. If we know what the numbers are we can make sensible policies. We need legislative proposals to introduce a retirement age for Members of the House of Lords—I perhaps speak with more authority than most on age and the rest, as far as this is concerned. Then, even if Ministers do not agree, there should also be proposals about electing a proportion of the membership of the House of Lords, which I know some parties hold very dear.
My proposal, therefore, is that we should first support the Government’s Bill. We should then add those rather different concerns to it in the future. Once this Bill is out of the way, we should go in for serious consideration of the other issues. I agree entirely with what the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, said: we cannot stop here. We have come a certain way in reform but it is not enough. To say that we will simply abolish the hereditary Peers—goodness knows that that has been on the books now since 1997—is insufficient and inadequate. We should address the other issues as well. That, I fear, means the Government making proposals on the issues that I have set out. I think that the House would approve of that, and so would the public.
Viscount Trenchard (Con)
My Lords, all the amendments in this group seek to bind the Government to undertake some further reform of your Lordships’ House. They variously cover some of the other manifesto commitments the Labour Party made before the general election. As one of those who sit here as
“the sand in the shoe”,—[Official Report, 22/6/1999; col. 791.]
as we were described, to ensure that the House does indeed move in the direction of accepting more democracy at the expense of prime ministerial power, I welcome all three amendments.
The Bill without any such amendment seeks to achieve the reverse. None of these three amendments by itself guarantees real democratic reform. Amendment 71 is non-specific as to what changes to the composition would be proposed, although Amendment 70, proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Llanfaes, and the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, on 10 March, did contain proposals for an entirely elected House on a proportional representation model. During that debate, the noble Baroness stated that among bicameral legislatures, the only entirely appointed upper chambers are your Lordships’ House and the Parliament of Lesotho. She forgot to mention Canada.
The noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, allows the Government a full two years to lay a Bill before Parliament, and his Amendment 81 would not bind them to enact any substantive changes, such as were envisaged in 1999. The noble Lord, Lord Fowler, allows the Government 18 months to produce proposals covering three areas: size of the House, retirement age and the election of a proportion of Members. All these areas were referred to in the Labour Party manifesto, including the retirement age provision, which was included in the first paragraph containing matters that the Government would address first.
I am not sure that the models proposed in any of these amendments contain the best way forward, but I am certain that it is a mistake to change the composition of the House before deciding the direction in which we should move. It is also arguable that the public should be invited to endorse the final recommendations in a referendum.
Lord Newby (LD)
My Lords, whether or not one agrees with the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, that many of the issues we have been debating should not have been debated—I think with every passing hour, his arguments will gain more support among your Lordships—the one thing they have done that should help the Government is tease out the views of the House on the whole raft of issues the Government say in their manifesto they plan to legislate for later in the Parliament.
The Government are in a much better-informed position of what your Lordships’ House thinks on issues such as retirement age and what is acceptable behaviour than they were at the start. So we should all be—at one level, in theory—extremely relaxed, because the Government have a manifesto commitment to do all these things, on which we broadly agree, during the lifetime of this Parliament.
The problem is that a number of noises have emanated from the Government—not in your Lordships’ House—that perhaps they will not actually do it and that this might be the endpoint. That is why people are getting nervous, because the other things the Government are committed to—on which there is consensus, virtually, in your Lordships’ House—may not actually happen. That is why these amendments have been tabled and I completely support the principles behind them.
I am not sure that having an amendment that says that within a certain time the Government should come forward with unspecified things gets you desperately far. My problem with the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, even though the third component of it mirrors our own amendment on an elected House in some respects, is of a different order. There clearly is no consensus in your Lordships’ House about an elected House, however much we would like it. That has to be dealt with separately from all the other issues where there is agreement and on which we need to make progress during this Parliament.
I hope that, if not tonight—I hope it will be tonight—then certainly on Report, we have a much clearer idea from the Government what their timetable is for getting to the next stage, because if we had that, it would ease a lot of the current debates, behind which lies a fear that the issues on which we are agreed may not be progressed in a timely manner. I look forward to hearing the Leader of the House’s response to this common plea from the House to keep at it and let us know the pace the Government intend to adopt in doing so.
Lord de Clifford (CB)
My Lords, I support these amendments, especially Amendment 81 from the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington. I refer to my interest in the register: I am a hereditary Peer.
As stated on many occasions in Committee by the Minister on the Front Bench, this is a simple Bill with one simple action: to remove the right of hereditaries to sit in this House. Other than the first day in Committee, when your Lordships spoke on amendments to Clause 1, the remaining days have been spent mainly on reform of the House of Lords, with many different proposals being suggested, such as the length of a term a Peer should serve, a possible retirement age, a participation requirement for Peers, and a longer-term view of an elected Chamber or a partially elected Chamber, with regional participation.
The Labour manifesto mentioned the immediate removal of the hereditary Peers, which we are debating and which will most likely go through. I support this, although with disappointment, bearing in mind the good work that hereditary Peers have done in this House. The manifesto sets out more options for future reform, such as a retirement age and a participation requirement, with a long-term vision of a second Chamber to replace this esteemed House.
By the end of Committee, we will have spent nearly 20 hours discussing Lords reform. That is why I support these amendments: they require the Government to come back at some point in the future to say when the next Lords reform will take place—therefore, not wasting the time spent in this Session of Parliament discussing Lords reform. The track record of this House in agreeing some form of reform is not good. Hereditary Peers have remained here for 25 years.
Amendment 81 in the name of the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, which I support wholeheartedly, is simple—a bit like the Bill. It requires the Secretary of State to lay before Parliament a draft Bill containing legislative proposals for reform of the House of Lords within two years. It does not set out any detail about what should be in the proposed legislation; all it does is force the Government to take forward the next stage of reform, which, it appears from Committee, most Peers agree needs to happen.
The Leader of the House has encouraged us all to engage with her on the future of the House. I thank her for the time she has spent with Peers. These amendments may add to her workload because they put a deadline on making decisions with regard to reform, but some proposals have already been set out in the manifesto. They set a deadline for things to happen; without deadlines on difficult and indecisive issues, things just continue on and on. That is why a date would help to take reforms forward—it is important.
The reforms may not be perfect despite the length of time we have debated the issue. The legislation will not be a perfect solution and not everybody will agree, but reform is wanted from outside the House and therefore a deadline to force something through is appropriate at this stage. That is why I support these amendments to continue Lords reform after the removal of hereditary Peers.
Earl Attlee (Con)
My Lords, all these amendments are unnecessary as, in my opinion, there will be no next stage of reform at any time soon—certainly not in this Parliament. The drivers for this Bill are class-based and a need to reduce overall numbers, thanks—wait for it—to the mismanagement of various Conservative Prime Ministers. The only one of them who seemed to grasp the need for restraint was my noble friend Lady May.
The evidence for my statement is that Sir Tony Blair had two successive, clear election victories after the 1999 Act, as well as the benefit of the very carefully thought-out royal commission report chaired by my noble friend Lord Wakeham. He did nothing; I suspect that was because he could not be sure that any further reform would result in a better arrangement than what we already have. My question for the Minister is: why not just implement the Wakeham reforms?
Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)
My Lords, I will respond from these Benches to these three amendments, which all seek to hold the Government to their manifesto commitment to deliver “immediate”—that was the word used—reform of the House of Lords. I mentioned that commitment in my Second Reading speech on this Bill.
I can be brief this evening as the essential points have been made by, in particular, the three noble Lords who tabled these amendments. We have heard much of the Government’s plans, and there has been much talk in these debates of the importance of punctuation in the Government’s manifesto, but the central point on these amendments is this: the Government ought to give the Committee reassurance that the wider reform will come and, importantly, that it will come soon.
When the House of Lords Reform Act 1999 was passed, the Government claimed that the compromise as to some hereditary Peers remaining in your Lordships’ House would act as an encouragement to the Government to complete their reform of the House. However, we are now more than two decades on and still the Government have not brought forward to this House—as opposed to a few sentences in a manifesto—anything approaching proper reform. The obvious question is: why?
The Government often say that, if we seek to change everything, we run the risk of changing nothing, but the truth is, as we all know, that legislative time is precious. In SW1, the most valuable commodity is parliamentary time on the Floor of a House. We have seen Governments fail to deliver second-stage reform before, so why would it be different this time? As the noble Lord, Lord Newby, rightly pointed out, the noises off—if we can call them that—are not encouraging at all.
Therefore, I completely understand the concerns of the noble Baroness and noble Lords who have brought these amendments. We should reasonably expect the Government to give the Committee a much clearer sense of when, in their already busy legislative timetable, they intend to bring forward the next stage of reform. This House, on this issue, is very much once bitten, twice shy. I look forward to hearing from the Leader of the House on this important issue. I hope that she can be more definite than saying, “At some time in this Parliament”.
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
My Lords, I smiled at the point where the noble Lord said that “the party opposite” had done nothing for two decades. I just have to remind him that, for 14 years of those two decades, he was in government and we were not, which did hamper our ability to take action.
I want to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Llanfaes, the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, and the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, for their amendments. What seems clear—and I welcome this—is that there is a bit of momentum about change, which has been lacking for a very long time. I seem to remember that the only proposal the party opposite came forward with about the House of Lords in its time in government was to move this House to York while the rest of Parliament stayed in London, which was not a particularly helpful or constructive suggestion. We seem to be moving now towards a much more collegiate way of doing things and seeing some way forward. I am grateful for that; it is very helpful.
Several times in the debate, noble Lords have raised the question: why this particular proposal first? I have explained that this is the first stage, and the reason that this is the first stage of reform is that it is the one described as “immediate” in the manifesto, but it also completes the start of something that started 25 years ago. The principle of removing the hereditary Peers was established 25 years ago. It seemed very straight- forward, even though we have had very long debates about other issues around it. I am not criticising that; it is just a matter of fact. That principle was established, and this completes that principle.
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, has not spoken during this debate, apart from in a sedentary position. He sits and mutters, “Ain’t going to happen”. My, such cynicism in one so young.
Lord Strathclyde (Con)
My Lords, I feel deeply flattered by the noble Baroness. I always thought she was younger than me, but there we are.
In her introductory remarks, she accused the Conservative Government of the last 14 years of not having done any reform. She has forgotten the 2012 Bill that was introduced in the House of Commons and passed its Second Reading with flying colours but then, because of the lack of support from the Labour Party on a timetable Motion, did not go any further at all. Surely the noble Baroness should show some humility. The Labour Party, which promised further reform in 1997 and again on the passage of the 1999 Act, has done no thinking whatever since then.
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
The noble Lord’s memory may need a bit of jogging. We are talking about a time when there was a majority; had the Conservative Government wanted to push that through, they would have been able to do so.
The proposal from Michael Gove to move the House of Lords to York—which was really a nonsense and did not help the reputation of this House or of the Government—fundamentally misunderstood how this House operates. We are trying to look at how the House operates. We are fulfilling a manifesto commitment but we are also fulfilling what started 25 years ago. The noble Lord is critical that we did not do it sooner, but it is here now, and I have made clear that further proposals for the next stages will come forward, so he can park his cynicism for now. We will come back to this and see who gets it right.
I thank the noble Baroness and both noble Lords for tabling these helpful amendments. I am grateful to them, and I respectfully ask that the noble Baroness withdraws her amendment.
Earl Attlee (Con)
My Lords, I am at one with the noble Baroness the Leader about Mr Gove and York, but can she explain why she cannot blow the dust off the royal commission report—the Wakeham report—and just implement that?
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
The Wakeham report was some time ago, but I am always happy to look at it as we go forward to further our considerations. But the House today should come to the view on what the House today would like to do.
The noble Earl gave a list of his Government’s failures on the House of Lords. I suggest that another of them was not accepting the Grocott Bill.
Baroness Smith of Llanfaes (PC)
My Lords, I thank everyone who has spoken in this debate, and I am grateful to all noble Lords who have supported the proposal that was brought forward. I will not be able to refer to each point made, but I will try to respond briefly.
The noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, noted that there is a consensus around the House for further reform inside and outside the House. That is an important point to note and something that we should push forward. Although the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, may disagree with my reasoning, at least we agree on the outcome: we cannot stop here.
The noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, rightly pointed out that my Amendment 71 does not provide a specific model. My Amendment 70, previously debated on another day, does so, but this was on purpose and Amendment 71 was more of a probing amendment. I hope the Government bring forward a clear timetable on the next stage before Report. The noble Lord, Lord Newby, pointed out that if the Government published a plan, there would be far fewer amendments on Report, so I hope we see a plan.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord de Clifford, for his support for the group of amendments. He noted that some reform is wanted outside the House. There was a good consensus from around the House. The Leader of the House welcomes the momentum for change, and I hope she will join and lead that momentum.
While I welcome the Government’s commitment to removing hereditary Peers, this reform cannot and must not be the end of the journey. We must push for a fully democratic second Chamber, one that is chosen by the people it serves and not by birthright or privilege. The momentum for change must continue, and we cannot afford to let it falter.
Amendment 71 would ensure that the Government were held accountable on their long-held calls for abolishing the Lords and would require them to outline the next steps for reform within six months. I hope that the Government further consider publishing the next steps for reform before the Bill completes its stages in the House. I welcome the Leader of the House’s words today, particularly looking at how we engage with the public on what the second Chamber looks like. For those around the Committee who agree that this is a sensible ask, I would welcome them getting in touch with me.
I will withdraw my amendment today, but I retain my right to reintroduce it on Report if a plan is not published. Not only do I hope that His Majesty’s Government reflect on this debate today but I encourage them to be bold in delivering further reform and to follow through on the Prime Minister’s own desire to see this place replaced with an alternative second Chamber. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.