Thursday 4th September 2025
(3 weeks, 2 days ago)
Commons ChamberHouse of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill 2024-26 View all House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill 2024-26 Debates Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Amendment Paper: Commons Consideration of Lords Amendments as at 4 September 2025 - (4 Sep 2025)
16:25 - The House divided: - Ayes: 336 / Noes: 77 - Question accordingly agreed to.
16:40 - The House divided: - Ayes: 331 / Noes: 73 - Question accordingly agreed to.
16:52 - The House divided: - Ayes: 338 / Noes: 74 - Question accordingly agreed to.
The Paymaster General and Minister for the Cabinet Office (Nick Thomas-Symonds)
I beg to move, That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 1.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
With this it will be convenient to discuss:
Lords amendment 2, and Government motion to disagree.
Lords amendment 3, and Government motion to disagree.
Lords amendment 8, and Government motion to disagree.
Lords amendments 4 to 7 and 9.
Nick Thomas-Symonds
This House sent the second Chamber a Bill that had a simple and direct objective outlined in this Government’s manifesto, but I have to report to the House that something very strange has happened since then. People said that the Conservatives were in some sort of hibernation since the general election, but it would appear they have found an issue that has awakened them from their slumber. On the order of their Whips, some hundreds of Conservative politicians, finally mustering the strength to make their mark in Parliament and ready to take action for what the 2025 Conservative party believes in, have found their crusade. What is it? Keeping hereditary Lords in the jobs they accessed by accident of birth. I have to say that it is a tale as old as time—the Tories blocking progress. Who knew it?
Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)
This is an opportune moment for me to mention my summer reading list and the first Labour Government in 1924. Even at that time, there was talk about reform of the House of Lords, so this is very much a tale as old as time itself. In fact, looking back in historical Hansard, it goes much further back than 1924, so is it not good that this Labour Government are finally getting on with dealing with it?
Nick Thomas-Symonds
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Whether we go back to 1924 or even further back—and I will during my speech—we find Conservatives in this House protecting their friends born into positions of power. This Bill will finally remove such an archaic right. Just as the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) —he is overseas at the moment, I understand—wants to send people, certainly in Wales, back down the coalmines, the Leader of the Opposition is stuck in the politics of the past.
Before I turn to the amendments sent back from the other place, I want to draw attention to comments made by the noble Lord Strathclyde. He said of this Bill that
“inevitably, there will be repercussions. They”—
the Government—
“are storing up huge problems for themselves.”
The Conservatives have not only complained that the Government are removing hereditary peers while offering “nothing in return”; more sinisterly, they have threatened to use delaying tactics on this Government’s agenda. We only have to look at their behaviour in debates in the upper House, to see that they have been trying to hold the Government hostage on the Football Governance Bill, the Employment Rights Bill and the Renters’ Rights Bill—all to protect the hereditary principle. We know that the Conservative party is in no fit state to take action on very much, but where is their energy being directed at present? It is being directed at the self-preservation of hereditary peers in the House of Lords. That is unacceptable and, frankly, it deserves to be highlighted.
As I say, the Bill has returned to the House amended by the other place. Most of the amendments serve to undermine the core purpose of the Bill, or go well beyond the Bill’s intended remit. Lords amendment 1 has to be read with its consequential amendment—Lords amendment 8. It seeks to end the system of hereditary peer by-elections while retaining the current cohort of hereditary peers. The Government cannot endorse those amendments, which fundamentally undermine the core purpose of the Bill. The Government have a manifesto commitment to bring about an immediate reform by removing the right of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords. Lords amendment 1 would allow existing hereditary peers, the youngest of whom is 39, to remain in the other place for decades to come. That therefore blocks an immediate reform.
Sir Ashley Fox (Bridgwater) (Con)
The Minister will be aware that the reason hereditaries still sit in the House of Lords was the deal done in 1999. The promise made by the then Labour Government was that hereditaries would remain until the House of Lords was properly reformed. The Minister is aware that he is removing the hereditaries but giving no assurance about when full reform of the House of Lords will take place. What assurance can he give this Chamber about when the Government will make proper proposals to reform the upper Chamber?
Nick Thomas-Symonds
As the Leader of the House of Lords has set out in the other place, immediately this Bill is on the statute book a Select Committee will be created to look at those issues of retirement and participation. The hon. Gentleman is talking about politics as they stood in 1999. This Government were elected on a manifesto that delivered 411 MPs in 2024, and this Government are following that manifesto.
Across both this House and the other place, there has been broad consensus that the hereditary route to the House of Lords should end. I also make it clear, as Ministers have from this Dispatch Box and Labour peers have in the other place, that this is not a judgment on individuals. It is not a judgment on the work and contribution of individual hereditary peers; it is a judgment on the principle. Let me also say that there is no barrier to any hereditary peers—in the case of the Conservative party, through a party list—being nominated as life peers, should the Leader of the Opposition, for example, wish to do that.
Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)
The hon. Member for Harlow (Chris Vince) mentioned the very long period of time that his party has been anxious for and agitating about reform of the House of Lords. Is the creation of a future Select Committee really the sum of all that anger and agitation? As my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater (Sir Ashley Fox) has said, we could have seen a full picture of a modernised, reformed and accountable House of Lords that works to deliver bicameral scrutiny, but we do not have that. The Minister is asking us to vest hope in the creation of a Select Committee, with no timeframe attached to when it would report and no promise of future legislation. Surely, he must be as disappointed and unhappy with that situation as I am.
Nick Thomas-Symonds
It is great to see that the hon. Gentleman is disappointed that House of Lords reform is not going far enough. If he wants to talk about the 20th century and the length of time that his party was in power, I would say that it had every opportunity to bring about full reform of the House of Lords. Not only did the Conservatives bring about minimal reform, at best, but they blocked every attempt at major reform. It is difficult, therefore, to take their 2025 position seriously.
The point about the Select Committee is that we have had on the one hand accusations that the Government are acting in a party political way and, on the other, requests for the Government to do things cross-party. That is precisely what the Select Committee will do: it will give the opportunity to consider issues such as retirement age and participation. The debate in the upper House covered those matters across different parties. The Select Committee will be established within three months of Royal Assent. The hon. Gentleman asked about deadlines, and I can tell him that the Committee will issue its findings by next summer.
Peter Swallow (Bracknell) (Lab)
I, for one, am perplexed. We have heard Opposition Members say that they want us to go faster and further in reforming the House of Lords, and we have heard them chuntering about the divine right of whoever and whatever in that place. Does the Minister agree that the Opposition seem to be rather confused about this, which perhaps stands as testament to the ability of the Leader of the Opposition to lead her party?
Nick Thomas-Symonds
The word “confused” sums up the Opposition, whether on this Bill or any other.
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
I do not purport to speak on behalf of my party, but rather as an individual who has long had an interest in the positive role that the Lords play in revising legislation, which any elected and strongly whipped House would not be able to do. The Minister partly anticipated the point I want to make, when he mentioned the ability to appoint some of what would otherwise be outgoing hereditary peers to life peerages. That may be a way forward for people of good will to pursue, but given the quite high number of people who find themselves in quite responsible positions in the Lords, what sort of numbers does he have in mind to allow the parties that will lose a large number of hereditary peers to appoint as life peers?
Nick Thomas-Symonds
The right hon. Gentleman always makes an individual contribution, to his great credit, not only in this debate but in others. I will not be drawn on numbers, which are always a matter for the Prime Minister and the usual channels. As in every Parliament, the Leader of the Opposition of whatever party will have the opportunity to nominate. I am sure the right hon. Gentleman will make a persuasive case to her about some Members of the upper House.
Sir Julian Lewis
I do not expect the Minister to be specific about numbers, but can he at least tell the House whether he accepts the principle that a considerably larger one-off tranche would be needed to cater for this unique situation?
Nick Thomas-Symonds
There will be the usual periods in this Parliament when there will be an opportunity, and I repeat that there is no barrier to someone who serves as a hereditary peer being appointed as a life peer.
Jessica Toale (Bournemouth West) (Lab)
Opposition Members seem to want lots of reassurances for the people who feel they are born to rule. Can the Minister tell me what reassurances the Government can give my constituents and young people in Kinson and West Howe that they will have equal right to be part of this legislative body?
Nick Thomas-Symonds
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. She speaks powerfully about her constituents, and I want my constituents in Blaenavon, Pontypool and Cwmbran to be able to aspire to be Members of Parliament, including in the upper House, and that places are not reserved for people through accident of birth—[Interruption.] The shadow Minister chunters from a sedentary position. If he is in favour of the hereditary position, let him tell us, instead of hiding behind the smokescreen of pretending he is in favour of full reform. Let us hear him say from the Dispatch Box that he believes in the hereditary principle, if he does.
We have said from the outset that we wanted this Bill on the statute book before turning to the next phase of reform. Delaying this legislation means delaying the establishment of the Select Committee and delaying further reforms. As my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Chris Vince) mentioned, the reality is that since we last reformed the Lords, the outside world has changed. Our Parliament should always be a place where talents are recognised and merit counts. It should never be a gallery of old boys’ networks, nor a place where titles, many of which were handed out centuries ago, hold veto power over the will of the people.
Chris Vince
Does the Minister recognise the irony that, given these issues were discussed in 1924, we are probably now discussing the hereditary peers who are the grandchildren of the hereditary peers they were talking about getting rid of 100 years ago?
Nick Thomas-Symonds
My hon. Friend is right. One would think that the 1924 debate about bloodlines and pedigree as a basis for participation would no longer have any advocates, but it appears that a number of such advocates are left, a century later.
From the Parliament Act 1911 to the House of Lords Act 1999, the history of Lords reform is littered with examples of individual Members straining every sinew and making every different argument to try to resist reform. In 1911, Lord Curzon coined the term “the ditchers”—the Unionist peers who were to fight into the last ditch over the then Parliament Bill and whose efforts have acted as an effective block on further change. Today’s ditchers all sit on the Opposition Benches—
Paul Holmes
I guarantee to the Minister that, as a council estate boy from Lewisham, I am not someone who ever thought that my bloodline would get into the House of Lords—[Interruption.] One day!
I want to challenge the Minister about the points he has made about future reform. His party has a majority of 170, and we know that it won the general election. Why is he claiming that we are trying to block reform, which is completely untrue, while the Government are so lacking in ambition and do not have the courage or political will to bring a full package of reform to the House, which the Opposition might well support? What we are asking is why he is tinkering at the edges and then attacking us for not being in favour of reform, when he has refused to bring reform in the first place.
Nick Thomas-Symonds
In respect of the hon. Gentleman’s bloodline getting to the House of Lords, I am sure it is only a matter of time before we see that.
In terms of the antics of the Opposition, I do not know whether the Conservative parliamentary party in the Commons speaks to peers, but it should talk to them about their behaviour on the Bill and other Bills that they have blocked and blocked and blocked. I understand that the Leader of the Opposition is apparently spending time to come up with credible policies—no one will believe that the Conservative party is in favour of wholesale reform of the House of Lords.
It has been more than 25 years since Parliament agreed to end the hereditary route, with a supposedly temporary arrangement to retain 92 hereditary peers. It is almost 200 years since the Great Reform Act 1832, which took away the hold of the great aristocratic families, opening up the franchise and taking their presence in electoral politics from monopoly to anomaly. Nonetheless, the hereditary principle remains in our Parliament: sometimes as symbol of tradition, sometimes as obstacle to real reform—as Conservative peers have recently demonstrated.
There is a real opportunity today for the shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. He has protested several times about newly found passion for wholesale Lords reform—
Nick Thomas-Symonds
I am glad to hear that—there is the real voice of the Conservative party.
We have also therefore heard a lot of protestations that there is no attempt from the Conservative party to block this—we will see in the voting Lobby in due course whether the Conservatives actually seek to block further progress again. We talk about history and nostalgia, but this has in a real sense been used in the upper House to block Bills with a democratic mandate since last year.
Pete Wishart (Perth and Kinross-shire) (SNP)
For the completeness of history, it is 115 years since the Labour party promised to abolish the House of Lords, and I think we will be waiting another 100 before it even gets close to that. The Minister is absolutely right that the public cannot stand the hereditaries—it is something they are bitterly opposed to—but they are also opposed to prime ministerial patronage. It is almost as unpopular as the House of Lords. Now, 57 new peers have gone into the House of Lords since Labour came to power, and The Guardian has reported that dozens more are set to follow. Are we just going to be replacing the old nobility with new Labour nobility?
Nick Thomas-Symonds
Absolutely not, because the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is a Member of Parliament who enjoys the confidence of this House. That is entirely different from the situation of having places in the House of Lords on the basis of an accident of birth.
I should say, though, because I do not want to just criticise the Conservative party today, that I do appreciate that should the hereditary Lords finally be given leave, the title of “the most ancient and outdated relic” will then be awarded to the modern-day Conservative party, so I guess self-preservation is the Conservatives’ real motive. The hon. Member for Hamble Valley (Paul Holmes) spoke about our majority—we will not allow the Conservative party to block this change.
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
If the hereditary principle is so wrong, where does that leave the principle of an hereditary monarchy, which has infinitely more influence than any hereditary peer?
Nick Thomas-Symonds
We have a modern constitutional monarchy that enjoys very wide popular support. It is a completely different matter. I do not think a monarch has blocked an Act of Parliament since Queen Anne in 1714, so I would say that the monarchy plays a very different role in our constitution from that of the hereditary peers in the House of Lords.
The Government are determined to deliver this reform to rectify this historic wrong and move us closer to a fairer, more equitable Parliament. I therefore urge the House to reject Lords amendments 1 and 8.
I do need to deal with other amendments now. Lords amendment 2 would prohibit future unpaid Ministers from being eligible for membership of the House of Lords. I understand the strength of feeling expressed in the debate on this amendment in the other place, and I should make it clear that I am proud of the work of all Ministers across Government—I know that ministerial colleagues in the other place work incredibly hard. In this House, both Ministers and shadow Ministers are able to focus on our departmental portfolio—with the honourable exception of the shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, who, as far as I can make out, seems to be about a third of the shadow Cabinet with his various roles. In fairness, he carries out his public duties, as ever, with great dedication. In fact, the situation that the shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster finds himself in is quite regular in the House of Lords, where Front Benchers cover a number of different portfolios, which they do with skill and dedication.
However, I have to say that although I understand the motive behind this amendment, it would do little to address the problem it seeks to resolve. It would not result in all current Lords Ministers receiving a salary, and would instead mean that the number of Lords Ministers would in future be reduced. Ministerial salaries are determined by the Ministerial and Other Salaries Act 1975, which sets a maximum of 109 ministerial posts across both Houses, and the House of Commons Disqualification Act 1975, which limits the number of Ministers in the House of Commons—paid or unpaid—to 95. The reality is that any meaningful change to the number of Ministers or ministerial salaries would have to amend that legislation.
It is for the Prime Minister of the day to advise the sovereign on the appointment, dismissal and acceptance of resignation of other Ministers in line with those legislative limits. The amendment would therefore have the effect of placing a further restriction on that prerogative power and reducing the ability of the Prime Minister to choose the best people to serve in their Government. The Bill should clearly not be used as a vehicle to address changes to those Acts, and I therefore urge the House to reject Lords amendment 2.
Lords amendment 3 would create a new form of statutory life peerage and seeks to create a two-tier peerage system that distinguishes between the honour of a peerage and membership of the House of Lords. Under this system, individuals could receive the title of a peerage but not be entitled to sit and vote in the House of Lords.
Mr Joshua Reynolds (Maidenhead) (LD)
I wonder whether the Minister could help me out, because I feel that I might be having a dream about some strange alternative reality where the hill that the modern Conservative party is prepared to die on is giving unelected peers who are no longer peers the name and title Lord, as if that is the most important issue of the day in 2025. Can he help me—is that actually what is happening? Am I awake or not at this point?
Nick Thomas-Symonds
I can help the hon. Gentleman out on one issue: I can reassure him that he is most definitely awake; this is most definitely reality. Where I am afraid I will fail is in explaining the priorities on the Conservative Benches. The hon. Gentleman is quite right to draw attention to that.
Paul Holmes
I thank the Minister genuinely for giving way again; he is courteous and gentlemanly in doing so. I promise that this will be my last intervention. Could I just ask him about the difference between the problems he is discussing and what the Bill will enact, where a hereditary peer is not given membership of the House of Lords, but is still given the title and privilege of being a peer of the realm?
Nick Thomas-Symonds
Quite simply, the amendment is trying to create the title as an honour without the actual membership. That is the difference. I had an exchange earlier about there being no barriers to life peerage; that is not saying no barrier to the title. The life peerage, if granted, obviously confers both the title and the participation. That is the difference between the two.
On the point about the amendment being unnecessary, as my noble Friend Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent stated in the other place—[Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] Family connections exist on the Government Benches, as well. The UK already has an extensive and long-standing honours system, which recognises and promotes the outstanding contributions made by individuals the length and breadth of the country and from all sections of society.
As has been said, being appointed as a peer is an honour, but it also brings the responsibility to contribute to the work of the second Chamber. The Government have a manifesto commitment to introduce a participation requirement to ensure that all peers contribute to the work of the other place—an approach that has received widespread support from peers. I certainly do not think that creating another layer to that system to provide for the statutory creation of non-sitting peers is in keeping with the mood of either House. I therefore urge the House to reject Lords amendment 3.
I turn finally to an issue on which I hope there will be cross-party consensus, which is resignation by power of attorney. Lords amendments 4, 5, 6, 7 and 9 would allow the House of Lords to set out arrangements for resignation from the other place where a peer lacks capacity, including when someone is acting under a lasting power of attorney. During the passage of the Bill in the other place, it became clear that there was considerable support to address in legislation the long-standing concern that Members who lack capacity were unable to resign from the House of Lords, and the Government have listened and acted. Following discussions with peers across the House of Lords, the Leader of the House of Lords brought forward these amendments to address the matter. What they make clear is that a notice to resign from the other place may be given and signed by a person acting on behalf of a peer who lacks capacity, providing that it is done in accordance with the Standing Orders of the House.
The amendments relating to resignation would come into force on Royal Assent to ensure that families who wish to avail themselves of these new arrangements do not have to wait until the end of a parliamentary Session to do so. It seeks to provide certainty to peers who have raised this issue. It is a solution that has received unanimous cross-party support in the other place, and I hope that the shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster will confirm the support for that amendment.
This a short and focused Bill. It delivers on a manifesto commitment to immediately remove the right of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords. It is not personal, and nor is it a comment on the contribution that hereditary peers have made. The Government are grateful for their service in the other place, and I stress again that there are no bars on them returning as life peers if their party leaders wish to nominate them. However, the time has now come to deliver this immediate reform, so that we can move on to further reform of the other place, as set out in our manifesto, and deliver on what was promised in July last year. I therefore urge the House to support the Government’s position.
Alex Burghart
I am interested in my hon. Friend’s excellent point, and I hope the Minister will respond to that in his closing remarks.
What we will see is the removal of a group of public servants to make way for Labour placemen and Labour stooges—a huge act of patronage. I do not think anybody here believes that will improve scrutiny. It is just a numbers game. It is simply an attempt to give the Government a more compliant majority in the House of Lords, which they do not need. The Government will be able to get their business through the House of Lords anyway, so this is an unnecessary change that, despite the comments of the Paymaster General, belittles the contribution of the peers who already sit. It belittles their service, and it does not need to be done.
I turn to Lords amendment 2, on pay. I was interested by the Paymaster General’s response and listened closely to the detail he set out. There is an important principle here. We ask people to serve as Ministers of the Crown, and I think most of our constituents would agree that those Ministers should be paid. Members of the House of Lords are on no salary. They can collect their £361 a day if they turn up, but let us assume that one such Member is an unpaid Minister in the Home Office. They will find that on many working days they will be expected to travel—perhaps to Northern Ireland, Scotland or the north of England—and they will not be able to collect their allowance. On top of that, for taking on that important, unpaid job, they will also, for understandable reasons, have to give up their outside interests.
That means simply that many people in the House of Lords can afford to take ministerial jobs only if they are already of considerable means. I just do not think that the Paymaster General, in his heart of hearts, wants to see the perpetuation of that. If he does not agree with the Lords amendment, will he confirm whether the Government intend to bring forward comprehensive plans on that?
I will correct the Paymaster General on one small point of fact. He said that if Ministers in the House of Lords were paid, we would need to reduce the number of Ministers in the House of Lords as only a certain number of Ministers can be paid.
Alex Burghart
I will let the Paymaster General intervene if he wants to provide clarity on that technical point.
Nick Thomas-Symonds
It is a consequence of the interaction between the existing statute and this statute. I was not arguing for that; I was saying that that would be the effect of the Lords amendment.
Alex Burghart
With the amendment, what the Government could do is reduce the number of paid Ministers in the Commons and have more paid Ministers in the Lords. That would be possible under the Lords amendment.
Nick Thomas-Symonds
With the leave of the House, I will close the debate, and it is a privilege to close this wide-ranging and well-natured debate. The shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart), has been treated somewhat unfairly in the course of the debate. The hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire (Pete Wishart) accused him of a lack of energy, but he was completely wrong. The contribution from the shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster may have been ill-judged, but it was certainly energetic; we can give him that. His contribution was, in some ways, brave—some would even say it had a chutzpah about it—when he accused me of trashing precedent while simultaneously trashing precedent himself.
Alex Burghart
We are under no obligation to support Government legislation in the Commons.
Nick Thomas-Symonds
Let me just repeat that point to the hon. Gentleman, because it is important. He claims to respect precedent and the rights of Parliament, but the position he takes in supporting Lords amendment 1 runs a coach and horses through that.
Nick Thomas-Symonds
Fine, let me put it this way: the hon. Gentleman is supporting the position that his peers are taking, which is in breach of that convention.
I will give the hon. Gentleman another chance, because he is trying to put a defence up on that particular precedent. He supported the closing down of Parliament in 2019, and now he sits here lecturing me on precedent. I think it is best not to take any lectures from the shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster on that.
There was an opportunity for the Opposition this afternoon. They did not have to join in with the filibustering tactics that have been used, with tens of hours of debate on this very narrow Bill. The shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster could today have not joined in, but he will lead his troops through the Lobby to continue to try to block these reforms. That is what this is all about. It is not, as he pretended, about trying to improve the Bill. It is not that those on the Tory Front Bench are secretly in favour of radical reform, and this is not radical enough for them. They are trying to wreck this Bill, and that is exactly what he will do as he goes through the Lobby with his troops later.
Paul Holmes
The Minister may remember that at the beginning of the debate, I asked him to bear in mind the circumstances of some of the people who have given their life to this place over the last 25 or 30 years and are not in the best financial health. We are not in “Downton Abbey”—the film had its premiere last night. If he makes the decision to get rid of hereditary peers immediately, what support will be put in place by the House authorities, which I know he would want to work with, and the Government to ensure that those people are looked after? May I push him to consider the more practical proposal of waiting until the end of the Session, rather than immediately getting rid of the hereditary peers?
Nick Thomas-Symonds
It is not my decision; it was the decision of the British people at the last general election in supporting our manifesto. If the Bill gets on to the statute book, hereditary peers will leave at the end of this parliamentary Session. I repeat the point we have heard throughout the debate: there is no barrier to them becoming life peers. Indeed, there is no barrier to them standing to become Members of this House if they wish to continue their public service.
Sir Oliver Dowden
I thank the Minister for his generosity. He frequently cites the Labour party manifesto, which did include this provision in relation to the abolition of hereditary peers. However, it also included a provision in relation to a mandatory retirement age. Why has he chosen to bring forward the abolition of hereditary peers but not wait until he has resolved the position in relation to the retirement age? Surely there is only one reason for that, which is that it benefits the Labour party politically to remove Conservative hereditary peers immediately, and it is of less political benefit to the Labour party to have a mandatory 80-year-old retirement age.
Nick Thomas-Symonds
The manifesto was clear that the reform would be staged, and that this would be the immediate first step. The Government remain in favour of a House of Lords that is more representative of the nations and regions, and this is the first step. As the Leader of the House of Lords announced, a Select Committee will then look at retirement age, and indeed at participation.
My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Jonathan Davies) made the point, which I repeated, that this is not a personal issue but an issue of principle. I know the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney), welcomes the Bill as a first step, and she also spoke about the appointment process. Indeed, over recent months the Government have ensured that when people are selected for a place in the House of Lords there is now an explanation or citation. We always had a citation when people were awarded honours, but we did not have one for those nominated for a place in the House of Lords. That has now been changed.
My hon. Friend the Member for Telford (Shaun Davies) set out powerfully that Lords amendment 1, which concerns the abolition of hereditary by-elections, has been put forward time and again by Lord Grocott, and on every single occasion it was blocked by the Conservatives. The right hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), a regular sparring partner of mine, accused me of being a bit unfair to the Conservatives in the 20th century. Life peerages were of course introduced in the late 1950s, but it is certainly the case that the Conservatives have blocked every opportunity to abolish the hereditary principle, and that is exactly what they are doing again.
My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds South West and Morley (Mark Sewards) made a powerful speech about the central purpose of the Bill and the Government’s position on the amendments. The hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire made his characteristic contribution to the debate, and I would agree with the point he made about filibustering in the other place on this Bill. My hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Phil Brickell) made well the point that even after this change, the Conservatives will still be the largest single party in the House of Lords. I then come to the speech by the hon. Member for Windsor (Jack Rankin) who seemed, I think, to be simultaneously arguing for maintaining the hereditary peers and for radical reform. When he talked about a parliamentarian with the “attention span” of a TikTok video, I thought he meant the shadow Justice Secretary for a minute. We have heard the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) make a comparison with North Korea, but the hon. Member for Windsor made a comparison with Iran. This Bill is quintessentially British. It is about British democracy. It is about putting an argument to the electorate last July, and then putting that into practice.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage (Kevin Bonavia) made the powerful case that this is about principle, and about there not being a series of places in our legislature that are reserved for people by accident of birth. My hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead Central and Whickham (Mark Ferguson), who I am sure the whole House will wish well for the Great North Run, made a powerful case for the abolition of the hereditary principle and the position of the Bill. I also say a real “thank you” to my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell), who has made a powerful case for change throughout every stage of the passage of the Bill through the House of Commons.
This has been a perfectly reasonable debate—
Nick Thomas-Symonds
Before I conclude my remarks I will certainly give way.
Alex Burghart
I am grateful to the Paymaster General for giving way, as I feel that he is drawing to the end of his comments. One thing he has not discussed in his round-up of the debate is ministerial pay. I appreciate the remarks that he made at the start, and that he does not believe this is the right way or place to do that, but does he accept in principle that in future the Government should find a legal mechanism for ensuring that all Ministers of the Crown, regardless of the House in which they sit, are paid?
Nick Thomas-Symonds
I will just come to the other points that we are raising. I have made clear that Lords amendment 1 guts the purpose of the Bill, which is why the Government oppose it.
On the other amendments, first I am pleased with and thank the hon. Gentleman for his support on amendment 4, on the introduction of the power of attorney. I think that the whole House accepts that there are people who wish to retire, and that is a dignity that we should give them. We all appreciate that. On the other two points, I do not regard the creation of a new, separate honour as necessary or worthwhile—I had this exchange earlier with the hon. Member for Hamble Valley (Paul Holmes). We already have an honours system that recognises outstanding contributions to our society. I think that we should maintain that link between the title and doing work in our legislature.
I understand the point that the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar has made a couple of times about ministerial pay and Ministers carrying out roles. The point that I would make to him, however, is that that requires an amendment. If he wants to make that argument and have a debate, he is perfectly entitled to do that, but the mechanism in the Bill will not have the impact that I think he is seeking to have in that respect.
To conclude—I am concluding not just this afternoon’s debate, but tens of hours of debate in the other place—we are moving towards a House of Lords that is fair, open and truly representative of the nation it serves, a House where expertise is recognised and not inherited, where policy is shaped by merit and not by bloodlines. I commend the Government’s position to the House.
Question put, That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 1.