House of Lords (Peerage Nominations) Bill [HL]

Baroness D'Souza Excerpts

Friday 14th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness D'Souza (CB)]

My Lords, it seems that we never stop talking about ourselves to ourselves, but I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Norton, on securing a Second Reading of this well-aired Bill and want to touch on three aspects.

The first is the significant amendment to the House of Lords Appointments Commission remit to include the criterion of

“a willingness and capacity to contribute to the work of the House of Lords”.

The emphasis was, and is, on maintaining the quality of the House of Lords by recruiting from a pool of those with conspicuous merit. The Bill enjoins the nominating bodies—be they political parties or other organisations—to submit, along with the nomination, the procedures and criteria involved in the initial selection of potential Peers. This points to the elimination of individuals who may offer only their donor credentials, rather than those of suitability and/or conspicuous merit.

Secondly, the requirement for the House of Lords to be no larger than the House of Commons imposes on the Prime Minister an obligation to be mindful of the number of Peers nominated by his or her office. The “one in, two out” procedure first put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Burns, would, in time, contribute to a reduction in the size of the House if further augmented by a renewed effort on the part of group Leaders to ask non-contributors to retire. As the noble Lord, Lord McDonald, presciently said in November 2022 when discussing the earlier Bill, a lack of restraint on numbers might cause a future Labour Government to feel justified in introducing stricter mechanisms. This we know to be true.

Thirdly, while many of these changes do not require primary legislation—all that is needed is the agreement of the Government and, hey presto, we could, in a short time, have a smaller, more effective, less expensive and a more justifiable Chamber—they do require the willingness of the Government of the day and, in particular, the Prime Minister to relinquish a measure of patronage power. It can only be hoped that this Bill, and other internal and external pressures, will create a culture in which this can happen. What I mean by this is that current and future Prime Ministers will feel bound to nominate new peerages very sparingly and with the new HOLAC criteria in mind.

This second attempt to adopt a modest, practical and effective Bill is once again before us and I hope that it might go significantly further this time around.