Retirement and Participation Committee Report

Baroness Andrews Excerpts

Wednesday 16th September 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Andrews (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness. I am very much in support of this report, and I congratulate my noble friend, as so many other people have already. I do so with the privilege of having been in this House for 27 years. I appreciate enormously the vast range of expertise and experience in this House, but I have always thought that there should be a retirement age, not as an expulsion but as a matter of course. I am grateful now that we have the responsibility ourselves as a self-regulating House to decide, if we take the opportunity, what is best for the House as a whole in the future.

I am very impressed by the work of the committee and for the careful and very inclusive way that it listened to so many opposing, passionate views, many of which we have heard around the House tonight, but it still agreed on what I think was a fair and practical solution. We have to consider the context. The committee has done its work in very heavy weather. Democratic politics can no longer be taken for granted. Much as we cannot expect this House to survive without radical intervention, the rule of law, as we have debated in this House recently, is under siege. The guardianship of the constitution is at issue. It is all the more important that Parliament retains respect and is truly effective and fit for purpose.

The House cannot be defended against change, but a retirement age creates the opportunity to think not just about the size and composition of the House but about what it needs to match the huge demands on it in the future, not least the changing nature of expertise, as well as perpetual questions about credibility and dignity as Members of the House grow older and more frail. Capacity varies enormously; we know that. I accept and am grateful for the phasing of retirement between 80 and 85, just as I am grateful that the ludicrous notion of a mass exit at any point, with all its perverse and undignified consequences, was put down.

I am also relieved that the idea of a participation bar was rejected. There is no fair way of doing that. Given the present size of the House and the way that, frankly, we do not make full use of our current expertise, a participation measure would have been bizarre as well as impossible to enforce. Much better to have attendance as a standard.

Therefore, the committee avoided the two huge bear traps, but it has come to the difficult but rational conclusion that age has to be a factor in future. I agree with that, just as I agree that our older Members have a unique and impartial wisdom and an invaluable institutional memory. Even if that institutional memory is rarely called upon, it is an aide-memoire for what can go wrong, alongside all the missed opportunities that might still be there. It covers not just the revision of legislation and scrutiny but how we manage the House and our relationships within it. But there is no doubt that institutional memory can also have a chilling effect on change. We in this House are past masters at arguing the case for unripe time.

We must be brave in recognising that the time is ripe. Judgment may improve in ways with age, but I do not think that the other value we hold close—our expertise—is of equal measure, and I speak from experience. Knowledge has never moved more quickly; nor has it raised such hard, ethical or existential questions. We must look at the scope for a continual renewal of knowledge in this House, whether it is the regulation of AI, hard choices over scarce resources or providing what young people need for a very different future. I agree that we must look at the way in which noble Lords come into this house.

That brings me to the size of the House. I do not think that there is any one right size; nor can we predict the future size of this House, but it should be smaller and nimbler, and we achieve that only if we have the courage to radically think hard about how we do legislation and scrutiny. Indeed, we do not have to wait to do that; I think the House is already too large to be effective in many respects.

I profoundly believe that the House has a duty of care to older Members but at the moment it is difficult to exercise that. Phasing in retirement gives us predictability and safety for the future.

As so often, I have turned to Trollope for a perspective. In his final book, The Fixed Period, he foresees a future British colony. A young unicameral parliament decides that the national lifespan should be 67 to improve productivity. The only recompense is that at age 66, in the final year, citizens will be provided with all their hearts’ desires. His prescription goes even further than the Labour Party manifesto, and I am not recommending it, but I shall certainly be taking advantage of what that last year holds.

Most importantly, let us, for goodness’ sake, decide for ourselves what is best and embed that decision within the practices and principles of this House. We do not need legislation to bring change.

House of Lords: Legislative Procedures

Baroness Andrews Excerpts

Tuesday 21st April 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, I think the whole House would agree that very late nights should be the exception. The noble Lord suggests we talk less—I have to say one of the sadnesses of this role of mine is that I talk less in this House than I did before I did this role. But it is about making effective use of the time we have to make our points, have our debates and reach conclusions. There are times when we have felt that debates have been a little longer than they needed to be, but at no point do we in Government want to take steps to limit the scrutiny; we just want to do it more effectively.

[Baroness Andrews (Lab)]

My noble friend Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe has already referred to the work of the committee in 2010-11. One of the recommendations—and there were quite a few that were not implemented—was that the House start on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 2 pm. That was considered a step far too far in 2010. Fifteen years on, can the Leader tell us whether the time might be ripe now, finally, for looking at and rethinking the time the House may start its business and maybe finding a way for us to use our time and expertise more effectively?

Standards in Public Life

Baroness Andrews Excerpts

Tuesday 10th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

I am grateful to my noble friend. We are not bringing forward legislation for the expulsion of Members from your Lordships’ House; that is a matter for our Code of Conduct, and I am seeing the noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, this week, and I wrote to him about that particular point. We will consult with Members, but there will be the normal process of legislation going through. The legislation I have spoken about concerns the circumstances in which, for example, somebody expelled from this House would not retain their peerage. That is what the legislation is about, not expulsion from this House; that is a matter for the Code of Conduct.

We have to ask: are we satisfied that, in all cases, we have got the Code of Conduct right? I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord True, that it has been reviewed. I see no reason why, if other matters are brought to the House’s attention, specific issues cannot be looked at. I have had several representations more recently on other issues where Members have felt that the Code of Conduct has not been fully implemented. If you look at the Code of Conduct, often the commissioners wait until a complaint is made to them. Members have to be aware of what is in the Code of Conduct and at all times have that in mind and ensure that we are behaving with absolute integrity in relation to that. There are a number of things I think we can review, but the legislation is specifically on removing a peerage from somebody, not on expulsion from this House.

[Baroness Andrews (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Leader for the way in which she introduced this Statement on this very serious situation. I want to pick up a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace. In his raft of suggestions, he made one which I think is particularly important, which is the revision of the Cabinet Manual, which is well out of date. The Constitution Committee has drawn attention to the delays in updating the manual, which I think would address many of issues of protocol and procedure and tighten the whole situation within the Cabinet Office. Perhaps my noble friend could pay particular attention to where that process has got to and try, given the notion of urgency which she has addressed, to see whether that could be expedited.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

I am grateful to my noble friend. I think it was last updated in 2011. My recollection is that even then its introduction was mainly about Brexit, which seems rather dated at this time. I cannot give any guarantees that it is an urgent issue at the moment, but I take on board what she has said. I think there is a need to ensure all these codes are updated and reviewed because they are a point of guidance to help us navigate our way forward when there are difficult issues.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Baroness Andrews Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 10th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I have also signed the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Newby, and I am surprised and delighted to say that I agreed with every word that he said. I think that there are some real problems with the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra. I always enjoy his speeches, but he made an awful lot of assumptions in that speech. While it was very entertaining, I am not sure that it would hold up to close examination. Does the noble Lord want to say anything? No.

I am not against getting rid of hereditaries: I think it is a long overdue move. I am extremely fond of some of them—not all of them, but some—and they play the most incredible role in this House. Once they are gone, we will see some really big gaps in all our processes, so we will miss them. However, it is time. It is something that is way past its sell-by date. Quite honestly, my main objection to the Bill is that it is so timid. Why not be braver and think seriously about the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Newby? Why not do something that has really forward-thinking, constructive ideas, rather than just the rather mean-minded blunt instrument of kicking out the hereditaries? I am not defending privilege; I do not like it at all, but in this case, it just seems so petty.

On the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Brady—he has not even introduced his amendment yet, but we all have views on it—I agree that 200 is too small. If I could give my own short history lesson, back in 2013 my noble friend Lady Bennett and I tabled a Bill to redraw the whole House of Lords under PR, and I think that the figure we used was 350, essentially at least reducing this House by half, because we are a bloated, undemocratic, archaic, ridiculously old-fashioned House and it is time to move on.

I am trying not to make a Second Reading speech, but I am not sure I am succeeding. The Labour Government told us they were going to modernise the House, which is fair enough. If I could see that this was the first of many alterations and many different Bills, it would sit easier with me. We have heard that everyone over 80 is going to be kicked out; I personally do not mind that, but the Government have been bringing in new Peers who are over 80; they will not have a very long shelf life. I am curious about that.

I argue that this amendment is a very good one because it covers the crucial aspect of the House being more representative. Certainly, if we had it under PR there would be a lot more Greens, which I know would be very welcome to your Lordships’ House.

Finally, in the Bill I tabled, there was an element of Cross-Benchers—I forget exactly how many, but it might have been about 100—and we can do that under a different form of election. We all agree that Cross-Benchers, hereditary or not, are extremely valuable, and so to lose their skills and expertise would be a mistake. However, I think that one of the first things this Labour Government should do is to stop the ridiculous appointment system by the Prime Minister which brings in people who love having a title but really do not love the work.

[Baroness Andrews (Lab)]

My Lords, in the interests of institutional memory, I will add a footnote to that. I was very surprised to see the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, as I know his passion for democracy in this House and the way he has pursued it in the Delegated Powers Committee. His explanation was more than welcome.

It occurs to me that in the historical palimpsest that the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, offered, the one thing he omitted was the report from the Joint Committee of both Houses in 2011-12 on the coalition Bill. Had the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, served on that Joint Committee, it would have taken two weeks rather than 18 months to write our report. We would have had infinitely more fun and would have come to conclusions that were infinitely crisper and more persuasive. In that report, we took exhaustive evidence from the authors of the Bill, from Ministers, from all the usual suspects and beyond, and—I hope the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, takes some comfort from this—we came to exactly the same conclusions as the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, has about the dysfunctional relationship that would be set up automatically with the House of Commons.

As we worked through our list of Ministers giving evidence, it became perfectly clear that none of them had asked themselves those questions about the implications it would have for the House of Commons, its legitimacy, its effectiveness and its relationship with the House of Lords. They had not considered whether there would be constituents who had competing notions of what was right or what would happen if we had different parties in command in the two Houses. It was an exhaustive review and there were differences of opinion—the chair was Lord Richard—but it was conclusive in its recommendations: the House of Commons must think again about the Bill it had been presented. It was the last time that either House looked at this issue in depth with any sophistication.

My point is simply—just as the noble Lords, Lord Blencathra and Lord Strathclyde, have said—that this is a constitutional issue of massive significance. It can hardly be dealt with through an amendment to such a narrow Bill on such a narrow point and where, frankly, these amendments have no place anyway. We should be addressing the substance of the Bill. Since the issue has been raised, however, we are right to remember that we had worked out our proper views on the implications of this subject separately in 2012. I wonder what happened to that Bill: why was it ever withdrawn? Unfortunately, the Prime Minister at the time is not in his place; otherwise, we might have been able to get an answer after all these years.

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth (CB)]

My Lords, there is one assumption in the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Newby, that needs to be questioned, and that is the total identification of democracy with direct elections. There are other forms of democracy that include indirect elections. I was particularly glad to hear the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, bring this up. The debate has moved on since the time of a great standoff between those in favour of a totally elected House and those in favour of a totally appointed House. Ideas were floated by the former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, for example, about a House that truly represents the nations and the regions. You can imagine a House that was indirectly elected by the Scottish Parliament, the Senedd, the Northern Ireland Assembly and the English regions. I am not arguing for or against it at the moment; I am just questioning the assumption that the only form of democracy is direct elections. You could have a form of democracy with the indirect elections by the nations and the regions.

I have just one other small point in relation to the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra. He mentioned the royal commission chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, which I had the great privilege to be a member of. The noble Lord suggested that we had recommended that the elected element would be only a third—150, I think. But, in fact, that commission recommended a series of stages in which the elected element would grow. I think on the commission’s recommendations, it would eventually grow to a majority. It is only a small point but that is what it envisaged.