House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Debate between Baroness Finn and Lord Newby

Committee stage
Tuesday 25th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, on these Benches, we strongly agree with the central thrust of the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Burns, which is that the House is too big and should be reduced in size. It is interesting to consider that if all parties and the Government had accepted the Burns report and we had legislated for the Grocott Bill when they were first proposed, we would not now be faced with a House of this size.

One of the elegant things about the original Burns report was that it was a way of dealing with the size of the House without legislation at a time when no legislation was likely to be forthcoming. This is obviously not the case now that we have this Bill, but we are also looking at having a retirement age and a bar for participation, both of which, even if retirement age is phased in, will have a very significant impact on the size of your Lordships’ House.

Although the noble Lord makes the case that his amendment sort of dovetails with those, one could equally argue that they drive a coach and horses through it. Not that I wish to disagree even in the interim with the principle of it, but the one thing it does not deal with, and is an extraordinarily difficult problem with or without the Burns approach, is what the balance of the composition of the House should be.

We are in a five-party political system at the moment, leaving aside the nationalists in Scotland and Wales, and this House conspicuously fails to reflect that. The position that my party has found itself in is that over a decade we have had three new Peers, all three of them within the last year. I have been, as it were, commanding a slowly shrinking iceberg floating south with no prospect of new Members.

On what basis does the Prime Minister determine how many Liberal Democrats there should be in the House? It is a whim, truth be told. You can have a principle that says that there should be parity between the two largest parties, but beyond that no principle has ever been adumbrated while I have been in your Lordships’ House as to how you deal with all the other parties.

This is a real problem and under the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Burns, there is not even a hint of how you deal with this conundrum of balance. Under it, the Prime Minister could, if he wished, replace every two departing Peers with a new Labour Peer—he could do any variety of mixture—and that seems to me a real problem. Noble Lords will not be surprised to know that we favour having an elected House because we do not believe that there is a logical or defensible way around the conundrum of the prime ministerial whim deciding on the composition of a second Chamber in a mature democracy.

[Baroness Finn (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Burns, with Amendment 82, proposes an immediate restriction on appointments—a two-out, one-in policy— until this House reaches 650 Members, at which point it would transition to a one-out, one-in model. Your Lordships are no strangers to this proposal. It echoes the recommendations of the Lord Speaker’s Committee on the Size of the House, known to us all as the Burns report. Once again, the noble Lord makes a compelling case with his usual eloquence and my noble friend Lord Northbrook pursues a similar objective by different means. He would require the Government to publish a draft Bill implementing the Burns report before the provisions of the current legislation can take effect. Reflecting on both these amendments, I venture this: it is not size that matters, but the perception of it.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Debate between Baroness Finn and Lord Newby

Committee stage
Wednesday 12th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, I am afraid I cannot agree with this amendment, because it requires all these changes to be implemented via a legislative route. As I said in my earlier speech, I do not believe that minimum attendance or participation requirements should be dealt with through legislation—they should be dealt with directly by a resolution of your Lordships’ House. As we have just heard, the Conduct Committee is perfectly capable of dealing with criminal convictions and recommending the expulsion of a Member of your Lordships’ House when it believes that he has behaved in a criminal manner.

[Baroness Finn (Con)]

My Lords, this is an interesting amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Blencathra. To continue the Lloyd Webber theme, he has certainly been a diamond in our dull grey lives today.

As my noble friend described, this amendment seeks to provide a mechanism by which resolutions passed by this House on matters such as retirement age, attendance, participation or criminal convictions could be translated into statute through regulations. I know that my noble friend, as a former and long-serving chair of our Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, makes this suggestion with a great deal of knowledge and consideration for the workings of our House.

This amendment also reflects an important principle that we have discussed throughout our debates: that constitutional reform should be done with consensus and that your Lordships should have a say in any reforms that affect your Lordships’ House. However, we must also acknowledge that the House of Lords is an unelected body, and allowing it to self-regulate its membership with legal force would raise democratic concerns and risk undermining trust in our institutions. Traditionally, and rightly so, significant changes to the composition of the Lords have been matters decided by Parliament as a whole, not merely by your Lordships’ House.

While I understand the spirit of the amendment, I have some practical concerns—for example, about the proposal to require that resolutions be translated into statute without any alteration. Some House resolutions, though well meaning, can contain ambiguities or practical challenges that would need refining before they could be translated into statute. By requiring strict adherence to the wording of resolutions, there is a risk of making ineffective or impractical law and creating unintended complications.

To conclude, there is much to commend in the principle of this amendment, namely that your Lordships’ House should have a meaningful role in shaping its own composition and standards for the future. However, allowing the House to self-regulate its membership in this way would raise democratic concerns that have not been satisfactorily addressed today. That said, my noble friend’s proposal rightly challenges us to consider how we can translate our internal deliberations into actionable reforms, should there be consensus to do so.

Plan for Change: Milestones for Mission-led Government

Debate between Baroness Finn and Lord Newby

Thursday 12th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finn (Con)]

I apologise to the Lord Privy Seal. We welcome this relaunch and look forward to more in the months ahead. However, the Statement, while undeniably rich in aspiration, is regrettably bereft of a clear plan for transforming its lofty ambitions into real change for the British people.

Few would disagree with the Government’s aims and their six missions. A mission-driven approach to governance makes sense—indeed, it is something that echoes the last Government’s levelling-up missions—but, unless the Treasury waives its dogmatic commitment to rigid silo budgets, it is hard to see it working.

It is encouraging to see the Government recognise the need for clear objectives. There are many words that we welcome, such as growth, value for money, getting rid of waste and accountability. However, as we all know, governance is about more than words; it is about action, and the Government will be judged on what they actually achieve. The Prime Minister has been quicker than most to blame his Government’s shortcomings on the Civil Service, which he describes as being all too comfortable in

“the tepid bath of … decline”.

Yet, while the diagnosis may be accurate, the prescription is notably absent. Indeed, the Prime Minister seems to have been forced into what is known as walking back his words of criticism.

I have spent many years working with civil servants, and I put on record that I believe we have some of the finest civil servants in the world. However, there is widespread agreement—especially among those of us, both politicians and officials, who have had the privilege and responsibility of participating in government—that the Civil Service is not performing to the standards of the modern, effective state. We cannot ignore serious failures identified in several public inquiries: the infected blood scandal, the Post Office Horizon debacle and the handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. In each instance, inquiry chairs identified systemic issues: officials neglecting statutory duties, misleading Ministers and, in some cases, deliberately destroying evidence.

Furthermore, institutional failings have been identified over decades, since the Fulton committee report in 1968 and beyond: the cult of the generalist and lack of enough deep pools of knowledge; churn; the unplanned and random movement of officials without regard to business need; and the resistance to influence and incomers from outside. Yet we have heard nothing in the Statement about how this Government intend to address any of those shortcomings. Instead, we are told vaguely that more will be said about reform soon. Government requires more than promises of future promises, and we look forward to hearing the detail of a serious programme of reform.

I have some questions for the noble Baroness the Lord Privy Seal. First, raising living standards in every part of the UK so that working people have more money in their pockets, no matter where they live, is obviously a good idea, but how is that to be measured? What are the metrics? When will the data be published, and who will be held to account?

Secondly, the Office for Budget Responsibility said that this Government are very unlikely to build more homes than the last one. Why do the Government now believe they will be able to deliver on their commitment to build 1.5 million homes? Is there more money? Have the spending plans changed?

Thirdly, getting children ready to learn is also a good idea, but what do the Government mean by “ready to learn”? What are the definitions and metrics by which they will be measured and held to account?

Fourthly, the missions are notable for what is not in them. The Government have dropped the target to be the country with the highest sustained growth in the G7. There is no commitment on unemployment or getting people back to work, nor is there, as the Leader of the Opposition pointed out yesterday, any clear objective of reducing migration. The Government have chosen these six issues over GP surgeries and A&E or defence. Can the Lord Privy Seal explain the rationale for the choice of government priorities?

Lastly, can the Lord Privy Seal clarify the purpose and function of the so-called mission boards? Who attends them? What powers do they exercise? What decisions are they empowered to make, and under what legal authority do they operate? Crucially, do they work alongside, or in substitution for, the established Cabinet system of government? Why did the Prime Minister break his promise of chairing these himself?

At the PACAC hearing on 4 December, the Civil Service chief operating officer said that

“the governance and the wiring of how we do this might not be immediately observable”,

and made clear that the publication of the membership terms of reference and regularity of meetings was a matter for Ministers. Can the noble Baroness the Lord Privy Seal therefore commit to that information being in the public domain, in the interests of transparency and to monitor progress?

Ultimately Governments are judged not by the promises they make but by the results they deliver. This Government have set out an admirable if incomplete wish list but, without a hard-edged commitment to institutional reform and stronger implementation capability, that is what it will remain. Words without action are a disservice to those citizens who rely on public services and who look to government for leadership.

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, in my view, the targets—or possibly milestones—set out in the Statement are laudable, but I have severe doubts about the Government’s ability to meet them. Setting targets is easy but, without a proper plan for delivery, they are so much hot air.

In an attempt to improve delivery, the Government’s focus is on how budgets are used and whether the right systems are used to deliver policy outcomes. That is clearly crucial. In relation to that, the Statement poses the question: is power being devolved enough? Our view is that it is not being devolved nearly far enough, and that, unless power over budgets and tax raising is devolved to a far greater extent than the Government plan, those on the front line will not be in a position to exercise their discretion to deliver policy in the most appropriate way for the communities in which they live.

So I ask the Government: how rigorously are they going to look to devolve power? Will they report regularly, with reasoning, on the extent to which they have considered and accepted or declined to devolve power in individual policy areas? Given that their targets can be achieved only if the Civil Service is highly motivated, how do the Government believe that recent statements by the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, which cast doubt on the competence and enthusiasm for change of civil servants, will help meet that requirement?

Of the six milestones, I would like to question those on health and housing. On health, how do the Government reconcile their milestone of reaching the standard of no patient waiting more than 18 weeks for elective treatment with the Secretary of State for Health’s statement earlier in the week that the NHS should prioritise emergency treatment and “forget targets”? How is the NHS supposed to know what its priorities are if they appear to be changing from day to day? How can any target in respect of hospitals be achieved unless the Government fix the broken care system, which currently sees so many people stuck in hospital who do not need to be there?

Of all the targets, the one which strains credulity most is that on housing. The Government have pledged to build 1.5 million homes during the lifetime of this Parliament. They seem to think that changes to the planning system will be the most significant contribution towards meeting this target. I do not intend to comment on today’s planning announcement, but no planning changes are likely to come into effect until a year after the election at best. So the Government will have to meet their target with a maximum of four years’ increased rate of housebuilding.

This seems implausible, particularly as the Government have said very little about two of the non-planning policies that will be needed to make this happen. First, what is the Government’s numerical target for the building of social homes? Social houses are desperately needed to meet demand but, without a major increase in social housebuilding, it is very difficult to see how the Government can meet their overall target.

Secondly, where will the workers come from to enable the houses to be built? Present skills shortages in the construction sector make a rapid scaling-up of housebuilding literally impossible. Changes to the skills regime will help, but they will not yield a significant increase in new skilled employees until towards the end of this Parliament. The only way to meet the skills gap in the short term is to allow more migrant workers into the building sector. Will the Government therefore replace the arbitrary salary threshold for work visas with a more flexible, merit-based system to enable this to happen?

Finally, having set such clear priorities, what plans do the Government have to report regularly on their achievements? Will today’s Statement be followed by regular updates on progress? Setting targets is easy, but being able to achieve them is vastly more difficult.