House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Baroness Hayman Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 9th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, my support for this concept is not new. Indeed, this was one of my recommendations to the noble Lord, Lord Burns, for his report. If Prime Ministers had created fewer Peers so that we were not so numerous, I would continue to resist this concept of creating Peers with no right to sit in this House making laws.

However, our numbers are perceived to be a problem. We must recognise that Prime Ministers need to grant peerages not just because they need bodies in this House, legislating, but because they need to reward achievement in the same way as others receive other honours, like knighthoods and other gongs.

Being granted the title of Lord or Baroness is a great reward in itself, but I can see merit in Prime Ministers being able to grant a peerage and the title of Lord or Baroness to someone who would not be entitled to sit in the Lords and make laws, but in recognition of the good they have done in their own particular field. I cannot define a category of these people, but it may be like an even higher version of a knighthood.

This suggestion may give Prime Ministers the flexibility they need to create peerages and reward people for their great work without flooding this House with new Peers. Perhaps the noble Baroness the Leader of the House would like to make this suggestion to the new Lords Select Committee and ask it to report back with recommendations, because I believe there is merit in having non-legislative Peers.

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

My Lords, I apologise for intervening, but I have to do so because this is a concept that, like the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, I have proposed in your Lordships’ House on many occasions. I have not heard that support for it from the Conservative Benches in the past, but I have put it forward because I believe it would be a useful component of a wholesale reform programme of your Lordships’ House.

However much I agree that it is useful, I cannot agree that we should vote for it tonight. If I had written the Labour Party manifesto, I might have included it, with many other things, and if I had been the parliamentary draftsman for this Bill, I might have looked much more widely and had a much wider Bill —but I am neither of those things.

We have before us a very specific, narrow Bill. I do not believe that I shall argue later in today’s proceedings even about the content of the agenda for the Select Committee—but this should not be included in it, because it is not based on a manifesto commitment in any way. It is completely piecemeal, and I have not heard support for it in the past as part of a wholesale package of reform. Therefore, however much I might be tempted by the idea, I shall be happy to vote against it if the noble Lord, Lord True, puts the question to the House.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

Thinking of the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, I trust that no wives of these new Lords will take the title “Lady”. That just creates a whole lot—we have wives of Knights who call themselves Ladies, we have wives of noble Lords who call themselves Ladies, and now we have some of us who call ourselves Ladies. If this was to go through, I trust that the new Lords—who I am against, by the way—should not be able to give that honorary title, unless my husband could become Lord Hayter.

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[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I am disappointed by the response from the party opposite. Is this not the great reformist party? Is this not the party that speaks about its accomplishments in changing Britain?

We have heard from the Front Bench opposite that they cannot support the idea that anybody could be a Peer and not have to come and swell the ranks in your Lordships’ House. That is not the way that your Lordships’ House, in its evolving thinking, has been going. We have an important and interesting debate which is being put to us later by the noble Lord, Lord Burns. The feeling of the House is that we should find ways to reduce the numbers, and one way of reducing the numbers is by reducing unnecessary entries by people who have no intention of being working Peers.

I agree with what the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, said. As a matter of fact, if you google me, you will find that I have repeatedly, over many years, proposed this reform, and have even done so from the Dispatch Box opposite.

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

Perhaps I was not clear enough. The proposition to which I have always given support is that there should be a complete separation of honours and titles from membership of your Lordships’ House. For that, I have not had support from the noble Lord’s Benches.

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, the amendment includes a separation.

Do we have such a low view of the public that we think they cannot tell one person from another? In a previous debate, the Attorney-General offered the argument that it was so confusing. Does he think that the public could not tell an Attorney-General from a major-general? Are they so confused?

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

The noble Viscount, Lord Thurso, is absolutely right to make us think about whether time limits for service in your Lordships’ House are a way of looking at when retirement should happen, rather than the hard stop of a particular age. I am particularly grateful to him; I think he is giving me grandmother rights under his proposal, and I have been here a very long time.

This is undoubtedly one of the issues that the Select Committee the noble Baroness is putting forward should consider, even though she has been talking about retirement, because the question is rightly being put about the contributions that can be made. Even in the very short debate we are having now, it is very obvious—I would not be happy with a single term of office. It is important that a proportion of people serve longer than the 15 or 20 years proposed as a period of office.

If you look at the House of Commons and the value of the people who have been there for decades, such as the Mother of the House and the Father of the House, and the contributions they make, you cannot simply say that one size fits all. This is a useful contribution and I hope it will be considered by the Select Committee, but I am afraid I cannot support the noble Viscount’s amendment to the Bill.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Baroness Hayman Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 9th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I have added my name to Amendment 23, moved by the noble Lord, Lord Burns, and I will add a brief footnote to his speech.

When this country is confronted with a controversial issue, it frequently turns to the noble Lord, Lord Burns, for an answer. Those of us with long memories recall his Committee of Inquiry into Hunting with Dogs in 1999 and his Independent Commission on Freedom of Information in 2015. No sooner was that completed than we had the Burns commission on the size of the House in 2016. That followed a debate on 5 December 2016, in which the House agreed, without a Division, that

“its size should be reduced and method should be explored by which this should be achieved”.

The Burns report recommended that the size of the House should be reduced to that of the other place—then 600, now 650—and that the target should be achieved over time by a two out, one in rule. It suggested that, when it reached the cap, new appointments should reflect the result of the last election and be on a one in, one out principle. The report was welcomed by the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee in the other place.

We debated that on 19 December 2017; 72 noble Lords spoke and there was general approval. Winding up, the noble Lord, Lord Burns, said:

“The question I asked myself and members of the committee asked themselves was whether we should wait to make any progress on these other issues until we had a slot for legislation, or should try to put together a system that could be worked on on a non-legislative basis, but which legislation could be brought to bear on at a later point. That certainly remains my position, having heard the points that have been made today”.—[Official Report, 19/12/17; col. 2106.]


That is what then happened. We proceeded on a non-legislative basis and it clearly has not worked—the House is bigger now than it was then. That is not because noble Lords have not risen to the challenge by retiring—or, indeed, dying—but because, with the notable exception of my noble friend Lady May, Prime Ministers have been overgenerous with their appointments.

As the non-legislative option proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Burns, has not worked, we are left with the other option—legislation—and that is now before us. Winding up for the Lib Dems, their then spokesman Lord Tyler confirmed his party’s support for legislation, if the voluntary scheme failed. He said:

“Unless the Prime Minister is willing to abide by this constraint, we might as well give up now, and without a statutory scheme her successors cannot be held to her agreement in law either”.—[Official Report, 19/12/17; col. 2098.]


I then looked up what the current Leader said in that debate, when she was Leader of the Opposition. I quote:

“are any of the objections that have been raised insurmountable?”

These are the objections to the Burns report. She went on:

“I do not consider that they are but there is one insurmountable issue: the role of the Prime Minister and of the Government. This will work only if the Government play their part. It is not about giving up patronage or appointments but about showing some restraint, as it used to be”.


Since then, there has been no restraint. She concluded:

“If the House and the Government are to show respect for the work they”—


the Burns committee—

“have done, we will take this forward. I noted that a number of noble Lords quoted from songs and plays. I will quote Elvis Presley, when he sang, ‘It’s now or never’”.—[Official Report, 19/12/17; col. 2104.]

Clearly, then it was not “now”, but nor need it be “never”. If we meant what we unanimously voted for in 2016, we should support Amendment 23. We may never get the opportunity again.

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to speak briefly in support of this amendment, to which I have added my name. The noble Lord, Lord Burns, has come up with an elegant formulation—as he did several years ago in the committee he chaired—for a way out of the conundrum that we have. However good our provisions in terms of people leaving the House are, if we do not have any constraint—any guardrails at all—on people coming into the House, when we have a general election where there is a large majority, we will always see the ratcheting effect. We have seen that recently; there is every possibility that we will see it again in the future. It is tremendously important that we try to take some steps now.

The size of the House overall does matter. I am delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Gove, is in his place, and I am delighted that he obviously has become deeply affectionate and committed to the work of this House. I disagreed with most of his speech, but one thing he said that was incorrect was that the House was in danger of being bullied by those outside into thinking that it was too big and had to change. That is not the situation. As the noble Lord, Lord Young, just said, this House has repeatedly recognised the need for it not to grow exponentially, and has repeatedly recognised the danger of it being larger than the House of Commons. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Gove, that other second chambers across the world manage to find the right combination of expertise and experience without rising in their overall numbers to pretty near four figures—which is where we are in danger of going.

I believe it is tremendously important. There are those who say, “Oh, it doesn’t matter. Look at the average attendance figures. People aren’t claiming their allowances. None of this matters”. I spent five years as Lord Speaker and, in those five years, I do not know how many speeches I made about the House of Lords. The thing that most people knew about the House of Lords was not that it was brilliant at scrutiny, and not that it had fantastic Select Committees, but that only China’s National People’s Congress, in the whole world, had more members.

That issue of reputation should not be the only one that drives us; we should recognise that we need a House peopled with enough Members to do the job we ask it to do, but we do not have to have an expert on every single issue in the world. We have Select Committees that can call for evidence; we can hear that expertise. We need a House of a reasonable size and I suggest that it should be no larger than the House of Commons. Others have suggested much smaller Houses. They look at the United States Senate. They look across the world and say that other people manage with less. I believe that, as a part-time House, we need larger numbers because not everyone is here all the time and that is important—

[The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Smith of Basildon) (Lab)]

The noble Baroness saw me shaking my head. I was doing so only because I always refute that we are a part-time House. We are a full-time House with long hours, but many of our Members do not have to be here full-time.

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

I am rightly castigated by the Leader of the House. I did not mean what I said about being a part-time House; I meant a House that does not have Members who are expected to be full-time in performing their parliamentary duties.

I very much believe that the elegant solution that the noble Lord, Lord Burns, has put before us is the right way forward. However, alongside other issues we have debated in the course of this narrow Bill, these are very wide and important issues. I also recognise that the noble Baroness the Leader of the House wants, to use her phrase, to take this in bite-size chunks, and I very much welcome the setting up of the Select Committee. But it is incumbent on us all to recognise that, with the effects of the Bill, which will reduce the numbers and the membership of the House, and the effects of anything done on retirement—whether that is based on 10%, 5% or 20% attendance, and whether it is done by age or by term limits—we will be reducing the size of the House. That is an opportunity to get down to a rational and defensible size while, at the same time, putting right the imbalance that currently exists between the opposition party and the government party in their party-political representation.

It is a big opportunity but it will be short-lived if we do not take on the responsibility of looking to the future and at how we stop ourselves getting into this situation again, whether by the unbridled use of the prerogative by a Prime Minister or because of the electoral effects of a big change at a single general election. It is incumbent on us to take that into account when we look at those other two measures that the noble Baroness has suggested the Select Committee consider. They will have an impact on the size of the House and that impact should not be short-term but enduring. We saw that the very principled and welcome attitude of the noble Baroness, Lady May, had a short-term effect, but it did not last because it could simply be reversed by the next incumbent. We need some guardrails, and I hope that if the House does not decide tonight to adopt the details of this amendment, the Select Committee will look at the issue in some detail.

[Viscount Thurso (LD)]

My Lords, briefly, I support the noble Lord, Lord Burns, having added my name to this amendment. The noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, expressed perfectly my views, therefore I will not rehearse them again.

On an earlier amendment I listened with interest to the noble Lord, Lord Gove, who expressed a view which, if taken to its logical conclusion, would mean that you could go on putting people into the House more or less for as long as you like. There has to be a limit at some point; we do not want a House of 1,000, 1,500 or 2,000. Therefore, at some point, there has to be a mechanism that puts some brake on, such that what goes out and what comes in are in balance.

As the noble Lord, Lord Burns, set out so well in introducing his amendment, the problem is that each incoming Government find themselves at a disadvantage, having been in opposition, compared with what has gone before. Therefore, they have to do something to restore that imbalance if they are to come remotely close to getting their business through. I therefore think that tackling the size of the House is one of the most important things we can do.

I would make one small suggestion—it is not a quibble—to the noble Lord, Lord Burns. I might have left out proposed new subsection (1) in his amendment, which is what is happening over this Parliament. That will not come as a surprise, since my previous amendment sought to put it into the next Parliament. As I said in that debate, it would be rather unfair if we were to change the rules at half-time, as it were. I think the current Government deserve to have a reasonable number of Peers, but that simply underlines the necessity of having the guard-rails in place to ensure that, going forward, the House cannot go beyond a certain size and should be reduced, with something like the size of the Commons being broadly appropriate.

I do not know whether the noble Lord will press his amendment. If he did, I would happily support him, but I suspect that, like me, he might take a more pragmatic decision. In that case, I very much hope the Select Committee will be able to do its job, although my doubts previously expressed—that it will not be able to do enough—remain.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Gove (Con)]

I am very grateful to the noble and right reverend Lord for his intervention, but I do not believe that if we reduce the size of the House to meet the criticisms of some, the fundamental opposition of many to the operation of the House would diminish. More importantly, the principal criticism that can be directed at any legislature is not about its size but its effectiveness and the willingness with which it operates to ensure that new laws that come there are properly scrutinised, and the more voices that are capable of being deployed in that debate and the more arguments that are effectively made, the better.

That takes me to my final point. I do not believe that there has ever been a recorded set of votes in this House where when you add a Division’s Contents and Not-Contents, they have been higher than the full composition of the other place. This House is flexible; our constitution is flexible. These attempts to impose external rigidities to meet some Charter 88 rationalist view of what we should be doing is an utterly mistaken course to go down, and I urge your Lordships to reject it.

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

On the noble Lord’s last quip about some Charter 88, irrational view of the size of the House, I think that if he read the Burns report, he would learn how much thought went into choosing that size as providing enough person power to do exactly the jobs that he has discussed, to which I am as committed as he is. I believe that the size of the House, and the view outside of it, are not the most important factors, but they stand in the way of appreciation of what the House actually does and that it is not defensible to those who have not studied it in any detail.

[Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent) (Lab)]

My Lords, I am ever so sorry, but given the hour, I thought it would be helpful to remind noble Lords that this is Report and any interventions need to be short, please.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Baroness Hayman Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 2nd July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Lord did not mention the number of seats his own party is projected to get, but I think it is a little irrelevant. Members of this House are best placed to understand its requirements. One thing that has emerged from the debate many times during the passage of the Bill is that Members would like greater input on this. I am not proposing to provide answers; I am asking questions of the committee. How does a committee of Members of this House, who know the day-to-day running of this House, think these things could best be achieved?

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness the Leader of the House was very specific about the issues she wants the Select Committee to focus on, but, as she knows, one of the major issues that has been discussed for decades in this House is the size of the House. It was mentioned in the Labour Party manifesto, and we have seen very clearly the ratchet effect that changes of government can have on the size of the House. If it is not to be considered in the Select Committee, how are we going to make progress on that?

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a question of stages, and these are certainly issues we should make progress on. The more issues we discuss, the less likely we are to move forwards, as we have found so many times before. I am proposing a Select Committee on these two issues, but that will not stop us having further committees or looking more at such issues. I take great interest in the size of the House, and we need to address it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord True (Con)]

Well, it certainly encouraged the Labour Party, which removed the Law Lords—although allowing those who were here to stay—and are now removing the rest of our hereditary colleagues.

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

I did not follow the noble Lord’s argument that the ability to change the composition of the House of Lords by legislation, which has been brought forward after a manifesto was provided to the electorate, is the same as the ability of a Prime Minister at the moment to nominate and bring into the House as life Peers any number of people. The arbitrariness comes from the prerogative in terms of how people come in, but we are talking now about the composition of the House and changing it by legislation, and those two are not comparable.

[Lord True (Con)]

The Prime Minister has no power to exclude. Prime Ministers have the power, by royal prerogative, to recommend appointments to the monarch, but no Prime Minister in the world has the power to exclude. The only other House of Parliament in any way similar to ours is the Senate of Canada, and there is no power for the Prime Minister to exclude a Member or group of Members.

The debate ranged widely, but the decisions that we always make as people who make law must be on the face of the paper before us, the proposed Act of Parliament, and it is the Bill before us that the noble and right reverend Lord raised. In a few minutes, what each of us privately has to decide is not whether entry by heredity is over—it is—but whether we assent to the expulsion of over 80 of our comrades on all Benches. These are people we know and whose worth we know, as no one outside this House knows them. They are people we respect, as no one outside this House respects them, as we have seen them sitting on the Woolsack, on our committees and on the Front Benches, as my noble friend said, in service as Ministers over the decades. They are people we like, although that is a small thing in relation to their service and the holes that their departure will leave in our ranks.

When the Bell goes shortly, we will all rise from our place and we will go this way or that. We can go and say, “Out with you all”—that is what the Bill says—“and you must go for one wrong about which you could do nothing: by whom you happen to have been conceived”. Or else we may, by quiet assent or our active move into the other Lobby, say, “Yes, we agree that we will have no more new hereditary Peers but we do not wish to hurt those who serve now or to hurt our House. We value who you are and what you have done and may yet do for this House, and we should like you to stay, sit with us and serve as our Peers”. That is the choice we will make in a few minutes.

It is not about who comes here. That is settled; it is history. No other hereditary Peer will ever take the oath at this Dispatch Box. The decision we make is about who goes. It is simple and binary, and it is a decision that each of us in this great House of Lords—which, as the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, said, has the right to make this decision about its composition and its future, and to suggest a way forward to the other place —must now make, with our unique sense of this House that we love and the good that the people we are discussing do for it. We must make a decision about those people we know who have been, often for decades, are and, I submit, should continue to be our fellow Peers.

Israel: Arab Israeli and Jewish Israeli Communities

Baroness Hayman Excerpts

Monday 16th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

The Prime Minister has made it clear that Gaza remains the focus and priority of our activity. We are working with a range of groups, and, to repeat what the noble Lord opposite said, we have to recognise that a lot of them are financing themselves. We remain committed to the sort of organisations that the noble Lord referred to because underneath all the tragedy we now see is a genuine desire for peace and progress. That means that we need to see economic development in all parts of Israel and the Occupied Territories.

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

My Lords, like others who have spoken, I too have been supportive and admiring of the courage and commitment that many, whether Palestinians or Israelis, have put into their peacebuilding organisations, many of them brought together by the Alliance for Middle East Peace. The Minister talks about the two-state solution and how we get there. Does he agree, and are the Government taking steps to ensure, that representatives of ordinary citizens from those communities need to be there to build up that peace process when it eventually comes?

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

I could not agree more with the noble Baroness. Another important element of this is not only to ensure that a range of communities are properly represented in the future but to focus on our women, peace, and security agenda. Women can play an important role there too, and I am committed to that. We will have plenty of opportunity to address the big picture in our debate on the Statements tonight, but I repeat that, underneath all that, there is a real strong desire on the ground for intercommunity and interfaith organisations, and for economic development to lift people out of the situation they are in.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Baroness Hayman Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 25th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, what a pleasure it is to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, and, indeed, one half of our Green Party. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, and I have known each other since we met on the slopes of Mount Sinai nearly 40 years ago. She knows how fond I am of her—she supplies my family with her lovely homemade jam—but, as always, I completely disagree.

She cared very much about the gendered amendments but not about the name of the House; I am exactly the other way around. It seems to me utterly bizarre that the Government should have a view on succession to titles. I get the argument of republicanism and I get that it is an irrational thing to have younger brothers inheriting before older sisters. But it is equally irrational to have a prejudice in favour of first-born children rather than younger children. In fact, the whole thing is irrational and cannot be justified wholly on logical grounds. If you start pulling at that thread, you very quickly end up with a French Revolution-style abolition of the entire shebang. If we want to do that, fine, but the idea that you can keep the titles but apply a Guardian public sector equality test to them seems to me extremely strange.

I speak in support of Amendment 97, standing in my name and that of the noble Earl, Lord Devon. I think I said at Second Reading that even the architecture of this Chamber is a link back to the old House of Lords: that it was in the minds of Pugin and Barry to recreate the idea of a throne room and a monarch taking the counsel of his bishops and barons. There is, I think, a thread in the make-up of this House that connects us back, certainly to the earliest House of Lords in the reign of Edward III and probably to the Magnum Concilium of which the noble Earl spoke; or, before that, even to the pre-Conquest witans—I think a Saxon king taking the counsel of his thanes and aldermen would have been doing something not unrecognisable to a Chamber that contains a partly hereditary element.

That thread is being snapped; the link is being sundered. It is being sheared in two, as the Fates were said to do with the thread of a man’s life, and we are being cut off from a part of our history and our constitutional inheritance. I am Tory enough to regret that, but I am Whig enough to recognise that there is something irrational about having an inherited element of a legislature. I wish we were replacing it with something better, as was originally the deal promised in 1998, but we have lost that argument and it is an argument for a different time.

I come back to the bizarre anomaly of having a House of Lords that does not contain any “lords”—as the word would have been understood for the previous 1,000 years. That seems a case of having our cake and eating it. If there are no lords of the traditional, recognised, aristocratic variety then by what virtue and on what basis do we continue to appropriate the name?

This question has been faced before. During the Cromwellian interregnum, the Lord Protector was always trying to bring the old aristocracy back into government. He wanted to sustain the legitimacy of his rule by returning to bicameralism. His problem was that none of the lords would agree to serve. If memory serves, there was one—the sixth Baron Eure, who was a parliamentary soldier who inherited his title when the fifth Baron Eure, who was a distant cousin of his and a royalist soldier, was killed on the battlefield at Marston Moor. He was the only lord, in the old sense, to serve in what came to be known, with spectacular banality, as the “other House”—hence the convention of how the two Chambers refer to one another that we have to this day.

If you do not have any lords, in the Cromwellian sense, do you not face exactly the same dilemma? We can probably do better than “the other House” as a title—we could call ourselves a senate—but it seems utterly extraordinary that we should pretend to the authority and legitimacy that comes from this very old institution when we have deliberately, and in contravention of promises made at the ballot box, torn that thread in two.

I would like an answer to this when Ministers come to respond. Let us please hear their defence of titles.

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

My Lords, I have resisted so far the temptation to participate in the debate on the Bill. I shall keep to that, in the sense that I will resist the temptation to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, on the byways of nomenclature for the House itself.

However, I urge the Government Front Bench to think seriously about and respond positively to two issues raised by the noble Earl, Lord Devon. The first is the inappropriateness of this House in any way involving itself in the determination of peerage claims. This was an argument that I made, and lost, before the turn of the century, but I still agree with what I said then and I believe that it would be far better for the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council to take on that responsibility.

Secondly, we need to right the implicit wrong in the hereditary peerage: the sex discrimination against generations of women who should have inherited not only the title but the estate—which in many ways is much more important. I hope the Government will give us some hope that they will make progress on that.

I talked about inheriting the title. The noble Baroness, Lady Deech, pointed out the other anomaly of the husbands and wives of baronesses and barons. We should not right that wrong by creating another anomaly of giving someone else a title because of their sexual relationship with another person who has a title. That does not seem to make a great deal of sense or to be progressive in any way. I would just stop anyone giving their partner a title because of something that they have inherited or achieved.

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

My Lords, I want to say to the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, that while I am a hereditary Peer, I am not here to try to stay here; whatever happens, happens. The reason that I and the other 91—92 in all—stayed here was to ensure the further democratic and proper reform of the House of Lords. That was the promise given; not that we would be turfed out, 20 or 25 years later. The whole point is that the Government are trying to do one bit, and I bet we will not see more. That is why Amendment 55 is essential, to try to start putting a timetable on reform happening. Otherwise, after this, nothing will happen; we will end up with a House with no democratic legitimacy, and that will be a problem. I therefore very much support Amendment 55.

I am here because my mother was here before me. She was one of the first five Peeresses to sit here when they allowed Peeresses to sit; she was the Countess of Erroll, in her own right. It was quite amusing, as my mother and father used to have trouble getting tickets for the train. If they were travelling from Perth, where they were known, they could travel down in the same compartment as the Countess of Erroll and Captain Iain Moncreiffe, as he was when they were first married. If they booked from London, they had to go up as Mr and Mrs Moncreiffe, or otherwise that would not be allowed—they did not allow that sort of behaviour. In fact, Claridge’s would not give them a room on the night of their honeymoon for the same reason, so this has been a perpetual problem.

Interestingly, there was always that issue of equality. My mother was also Lord High Constable of Scotland, as that has been in the family since about 1314. As such, at the Coronation, when the Queen went up to receive the Honours of Scotland, my mother was not allowed to carry the sword, as it was not thought suitable for a woman to do that. The Earl of Home carried it as her deputy, but she stood next to the Queen as the Queen received the Honours of Scotland. She had to be there to supervise and to make sure that it was done properly. As a woman, there was no bar to her holding what was traditionally thought of as a male position, and there is no reason why there should be in the future.

I heavily support the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lord Devon, which I think are very sensible. We have got to move forward. There comes a point when it gets too difficult.

I want to say a little about how things get taken over. My father always told me that the communists took over the colour red, not as the people’s blood but because the nobles in Russia, as everywhere, used red as their colour; it is the colour of nobility. What they were doing was usurping the nobles, and taking over their mantle and structure. That is why the communists wave a red flag.

Personally, I am looking forward to future reform of this House, to bring it forward into the 21st century and onwards, in a proper form, not just as a whole lot of people appointed by one person who may be so-called democratically elected but not necessarily by the majority of the country. It is wrong.

Israel and Palestine

Baroness Hayman Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

I think noble Lords will appreciate that we have an opportunity to focus on the broader issues when we come to the Statement. The United Kingdom is ready to play a leading role with international and regional partners in the process towards that next stage of the two-state solution. It is predicated on tangible progress towards a Palestinian state, with Gaza and the West Bank united under one Government. The PA’s role in Gaza must therefore be front and centre. Planning needs to advance security for both Gazans and Israel, as the noble Baroness pointed out.

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

The Prime Minister’s support and leadership on setting up an international fund for Israeli-Palestinian peace has been welcomed by those involved in civil society peacebuilding, brought together by the Alliance for Middle East Peace. There was talk of a conference to launch this fund in this country early in the new year. Can the Minister give us any details on when that conference might take place?

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

Sadly, I am not able to give details at this stage, but since the ceasefire agreement we have been assessing how we can build that stronger alliance across allies and, in particular, the Gulf states to ensure that we can focus on the issues. When I get more information, I will write to the noble Baroness.

House of Lords: Nominations for Appointment

Baroness Hayman Excerpts

Tuesday 30th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

There is, but defining what that is is not easy. I entirely agree, and this is one of the things we are grappling with at the moment. All of us have been disappointed when we have seen colleagues come in, take the oath and leave, and we do not see them again till they next take the oath; that is not playing a part in this House. But neither do I want to deter colleagues who come in occasionally to speak on their area of expertise, which the House benefits from. That is why I do want to take soundings from across the House on how we can best deal with this. We want all colleagues who are Members of your Lordships’ House to understand the responsibility that the honour brings with it and play a full role.

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

My Lords, does the noble Baroness the Leader of the House accept that, welcome though her answers are on a long-term strategy of separating the honour from the responsibility of membership of your Lordships’ House, if we are to have a short-term reduction in the size of the House that will be sustainable and defensible in the long-term, we need a cap on the overall size of the House and a cap on the prerogative powers of the Prime Minister to appoint as many Peers as he wishes?

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, in terms of my comments on my noble friend Lord Foulkes’s Question, I have made a commitment to consider that, not to do it. It is interesting that, for many years, this House remained at a similar size, and it is only in recent years—partly from so many prime ministerial resignation lists—that the House has expanded. When Labour left office, after 12 years, in 2010, we had about 24 more Peers than the Conservative Party, when they became the Government. At the end of their term of office, there are over 100 more Conservative Peers than Labour Peers. I know Members of the House opposite agree with me that the House is better when the numbers are better balanced. That may be one way of achieving it. I am on record as saying—and this is not an invitation to have lots of appointments on the Labour side—that, when the government and opposition parties are better balanced, we do our work as a House much better.