House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Baroness Finn Excerpts

Monday 10th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, I do not want to detain your Lordships long. I feel that I also have to swim rather against the current, as my noble friend Lord Leigh of Hurley was doing. Is there not something intrinsically wrong with a committee of the great and the good getting to appoint one of our two legislative Chambers? Why bother to get yourself elected to another place and be one among 651, when you can get yourself appointed to a committee which would then, in its turn, appoint a huge chunk of one of the two legislative Chambers? Is that not the very definition of oligarchy?

I am conscious that what I am saying is going to be unpopular here, because we are all, I suppose, to a greater or lesser extent, beneficiaries of the existing system, and I am also conscious that it is going to be unpopular beyond this place. In my years as an elected politician, I found that the most popular thing you could say about any subject was: “This is too important to be a political football. Why don’t we just get all the elected politicians out of the way and let the experts get on?” If you wanted a round of applause on “Question Time” or “Any Questions”, all you had to do was say, “Trust the professionals”, because on some level, everybody loves the idea of an expert. Everybody loves the idea of a disinterested patriot who can raise his eyes above the partisan scrum and descry the true national interest. However, I have to tell your Lordships that no such person exists. We all have our prejudices and assumptions—the expert more than anybody if, by expert, we mean somebody who has spent their entire career in one particular field. The idea of having such people appointing jolly good chaps like themselves is the antithesis of representative government.

I heard all the arguments that were made about what is wrong with concentrating this power solely in the hands of the Prime Minister, and I agree with that. If this were happening in Xi’s China or in Putin’s Russia, we would all say, “How terrible—imagine having the Executive filling one of the two legislative Chambers. What a travesty. What an affront to democracy”. I slightly fall back on saying that, if we are not happy having the Prime Minister doing it all, and we do not want a committee replicating itself like some Borg in “Star Trek”, we have to come up with an alternative. My own preference would be to keep something closer to what we have, where we would at least have some diversity, with some of our Members having been through some kind of election, albeit with a small enfranchised group.

[Baroness Finn (Con)]

My Lords, I think we can all agree that we want the same thing: a House that serves with integrity, a Second Chamber that commands public trust, and an appointments process that preserves the best of our traditions while adapting to the demands of modern democracy.

The House of Lords Appointments Commission provides a non-statutory safeguard within the process for appointments to your Lordships’ House. It has a clear but limited role: to recommend non-party-political Members for the Cross Benches, ensuring that this House benefits, as many noble Lords have pointed out, from independent expertise; and to provide vetting advice on nominations for life peerages. Crucially, its recommendations are advisory and do not bind a Prime Minister.

Many of the amendments in this group seek to place the power of nomination to this unelected Chamber in the hands of an unelected committee, as my noble friend Lord Hannan emphasised. This includes proposing significant changes to the powers and operation of HOLAC, including making its recommendations binding, rendering it statutory or altering its remit entirely. While I deeply respect noble Lords’ intentions in tabling these amendments, I must express my concerns, which were echoed by several noble Lords, including my noble friend Lord Leigh of Hurley, about the direction of travel that most of these proposals suggest.

I appreciate my noble friend Lord Dundee’s Amendment 45 and the clarification that my noble friend Lord Hailsham has suggested in Amendment 46. These amendments would establish HOLAC on a statutory basis and establish a cross-party board to oversee its work. They received support from my noble friends Lord Attlee and Lord Norton of Louth, the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, and the noble Lord, Lord Anderson. Their aim—to secure greater legitimacy and transparency for HOLAC—is honourable. Their effect, however, would be disastrous: a great mistake, as my noble friend Lord Howard pointed out.

Placing HOLAC on a statutory footing would not clarify its role; it would fundamentally alter it. Legislation would create a legal framework against which HOLAC’s decisions could be formally challenged in court, opening the door for the malicious and the litigious to claim it had failed to fulfil its legal duties. Candidates who were not recommended for appointment as Cross-Bench Peers could contest the basis on which they were excluded. Those who failed the propriety test, which is based on judgment rather than law, could argue it had been misapplied. Instead of providing independent advice to the Prime Minister, HOLAC would become a body subject to judicial review, forced to justify its reasoning in court, constrained by legal precedent and bound to operate based not on judgment, but within the narrow confines of justiciability. The Prime Minister’s discretion, exercised on HOLAC’s advice, would be second-guessed in not this House but the courts—a point made brilliantly by my noble friend Lord Howard. The process would become slower, more contested and more uncertain, exposing every appointment to challenge, delay and dysfunction. We should be under no illusion: making HOLAC statutory would not reinforce its authority but undermine it. It would not enhance trust but erode it, and it would not improve the system but entrench its weaknesses.

[Lord Norton of Louth (Con)]

In the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill, now an Act, we included an ouster clause. Why could that not be included in this measure?

[Baroness Finn (Con)]

I defer to my Front-Bench colleague, my noble and learned friend Lord Keen: because of the way the ouster clause would be interpreted in court.

Amendment 43 in the name of my noble friend Lord Dundee takes a step further by transferring the responsibility for proposing peerages to HOLAC and away from the Prime Minister. This amendment would strip the Prime Minister—the only person in this process with a democratic mandate—of the power to propose life peerages and hand it to an unelected body. That would be a well-intentioned mistake. The Prime Minister does not act alone. HOLAC already plays an important advisory role by scrutinising appointments and applying the propriety test; but, crucially, it is the Prime Minister who makes the final decision. That balance matters. If HOLAC gets it wrong, if it misjudges a candidate or applies the propriety test too narrowly or too loosely, the Prime Minister can correct it. If the Prime Minister gets it wrong, he or she faces scrutiny, challenge and, ultimately, the judgment of the electorate. This is a system that holds both in check. If the Prime Minister is stripped of that role, HOLAC’s decisions become final. There is no backstop, no political oversight, no democratic accountability.

More than that—this point was made eloquently by the noble Lord, Lord Butler—the amendment breaks a fundamental constitutional principle. The Prime Minister is the monarch’s chief adviser. It is not for an unelected commission to take on that role. Appointments to this House must be made by those who answer to the people, not by a body with no democratic mandate, no political accountability and no direct link to the people. We all want higher standards, but high standards must be upheld in a way that strengthens, not weakens, our democracy; in a way that builds trust, not erodes it; and in a way that reinforces the legitimacy of this House, not undermines it.

Amendment 44A from my noble friend Lord Hailsham seeks to add an additional test: that nominees must be fit and proper and independent-minded. While I entirely understand the intention behind this, I struggle to see how one could determine legally whether a potential appointee is independent-minded. It is, by its nature, a subjective judgment, and in a democracy such judgments should ultimately rest with those who are accountable to the people, rather than with those who are accountable to no one.

Amendment 12, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Newby, and Amendment 47, in the name of my noble friend Lord Hailsham seek to prevent life peerages being conferred if HOLAC has recommended against the appointment. Amendment 12 establishes this power as absolute, but Amendment 47 concedes that HOLAC must give an explanation and allow representations before a decision is final. Amendment 116 merely amends the Short Title of the Bill in relation to Amendment 12.

These amendments do not simply tweak the appointments process; they fundamentally recast the role of the House of Lords Appointments Commission. HOLAC was created as an advisory committee: to advise, not to command. To make its recommendations binding is to transform it from a source of counsel into the ultimate arbiter of membership of your Lordships’ House. It would no longer be a check, but a gatekeeper. This is not some dry technicality. It is a profound shift in constitutional authority. At present, the system balances expert scrutiny with democratic accountability. HOLAC advises; the Prime Minister decides. If a Prime Minister presses ahead against its recommendation, the commission ensures transparency by informing Parliament. The check is there, the scrutiny is real and, crucially, it is the Prime Minister, not an unelected committee, who must justify their judgment to the country.

We do not strengthen the system by stripping discretion from those whom the people can ultimately hold to account. The power to recommend appointments to His Majesty should rest where it always has: with a democratically accountable Prime Minister, not an unelected tribunal with the right of veto. That is the system we have; it works. These amendments would replace it with something far more rigid, less democratic and more dangerous.

This brings me to Amendment 12A in the name of my noble friend Lord Howard of Rising. This amendment proposes the opposite of the rest in this group, rendering HOLAC ineffective. While I am incredibly sympathetic to my noble friend’s position, especially on the untameable growth of committees and quangos, I accept that HOLAC has some role to fulfil, even if it should be limited. HOLAC plays an important role in safeguarding propriety and ensuring that this House retains, and is seen to retain, its reputation for expertise and integrity. I am sure that the Prime Minister, like his predecessors, will continue to place great weight on the commission’s careful and considered advice. The House of Lords Appointments Commission has an independent and important advisory role, but it is and must remain advisory. It also has a clear remit and that too must remain clear.

There was a suggestion while I was serving in government that HOLAC might seek to dictate the timing or publication of a peerage list. That is clearly not part of its remit and illustrates a potential tendency of the commission, even in its non-statutory form, to succumb to the temptations of overreach.

Finally, I turn to Amendment 51 in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Devon, the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, and my noble friend Lord Dundee, which seeks to encourage HOLAC in its current form to confer life peerages on up to 20 Cross-Bench hereditary Peers. As my noble friend Lord True set out so eloquently last week, we firmly believe—

[The Earl of Devon (CB)]

The amendment does not seek to apply 20 life peerages to hereditary Peers; it merely suggests life peerages to refill the Cross Benches.

[Baroness Finn (Con)]

I apologise to the noble Lord. His amendment seeks to confer life peerages for up to 20 Cross-Bench Peers. As my noble friend Lord True set out eloquently last week, we firmly believe that all hereditary Peers serving in our House should be permitted to stay as they are, albeit without being replaced or granted life peerages.

No advisory body is truly neutral and objectivity is hard to achieve. HOLAC is no exception. It offers judgment, not infallibility, and expanding its powers risks creating a system neither accountable nor impartial. We must be wary of trading one form of discretion for another, especially when it moves further from democratic oversight. The balance we have is not perfect, but it preserves scrutiny and responsibility. To abandon that balance is not reform but retreat.