House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Baroness Lawlor Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 12th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great privilege to speak after my noble friend Lord Bellingham, who makes very clear points very persuasively. Attendance in Parliament has been a long-standing issue throughout British history, and my noble friend Lord Hannan spoke extremely well about the motivations of parliamentarians. Previous monarchs have looked at this issue very closely, and both King James and Queen Elizabeth brought in roll-calls and fines because they struggled so much to get parliamentarians to attend.

Many parliaments around the world have attendance criteria. In Belgium, salaries are docked if you do not attend enough. In Oregon, you get only 10 spare days and if you miss your 10 days you are not allowed to stand for re-election. This is an issue that many parliaments face.

The first three Lord Bethells never spoke in Parliament at all. They regarded it simply as an honour. That is a shame and not at all tolerated in modern times. The British public expect parliamentarians to play an active role, and they are absolutely right. I will say two things on that. First, the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, made the point about “deep and infrequent”. I think that is right and I have enormously valued the participation of some Peers with enormous expertise but other commitments. Secondly, there is a collaboration element to being part of what is a collective House. Scrutinising legislation, our principal endeavour, requires an enormous amount of co-operation between Peers, and that requires a relationship that needs a little familiarity. If people do not turn up at all, you cannot build those bonds of trust and collaboration and cannot do your job properly.

For that reason, I strongly support the spirit of the amendments from my noble friends Lord Blencathra and Lord Lucas, and endorse the comments of the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull.

[Baroness Lawlor (Con)]

My Lords, we are all here to bring different things, and I am not sure that participation rates are the best way of going about reform. Peers contribute differently. They bring their counsel, as we were reminded from the Cross Benches. Some bring their expertise or knowledge of a particular subject, and most bring their judgment on all subjects.

The options being proposed as we debate this short Bill are very different. Because there really is no agreement on the best way to proceed, I urge the Leader of the House to consider trying to find a consensus across the House to get some agreement, given the extraordinary differences we hear about how best we should proceed.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, I am glad that we are debating this question of attendance separately from the question of participation, because they are materially different. I share the scepticism of the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Sentamu, about the Government’s willingness to accept amendments to this Bill and, indeed, his salutary warning about being careful of what we say now and remembering that it is taken down in the official record. These other issues are being raised because we all care very deeply about the future of this House, and one of the great tragedies of this Bill is that some of the people who care most deeply will not be here to give their opinions on the further stages of reform or the Government’s adherence to the rest of their manifesto once the Bill is passed. I know he will understand why they are getting their arguments in early.

As the Convenor of the Cross Benches reminded us, our presence here is not thanks to a democratic mandate of our own or any of our achievements but in answer to a call. We sit here in response to a Writ of Summons from our sovereign, who has commanded us, waiving all excuses, to be at the Parliament holden here at Westminster, to treat and give our counsel on certain arduous and urgent affairs. I agree with the noble Lords who have said that we are invited and treated to give our opinions on arduous affairs, even if they are outwith our own areas of expertise.

It is up to each of us to decide how we answer that call, and it is clear that noble Lords across the House do so in different ways. But we have some insights into how they do so thanks to the spreadsheets of my noble friend Lord Blencathra and to the data dashboard provided by the House of Lords Library. That shows that during the last Parliament your Lordships’ House sat for 701 days. On average, noble Lords attended on just under half—46%—of the days that they were eligible to attend. Of the 966 people who were eligible to attend at least some of the last Parliament in your Lordships’ House, 28 Members did not attend at all. More than 100 Members—116—attended on less than 10% of the days that they were eligible to be here, which is the threshold that many noble Lords have mentioned.

Further interrogation of these data by the Library reveals some interesting points. During our last day in Committee, we debated the ideal age of Peers. The data from the last Parliament show that the younger Peers are more likely to attend than older ones. Noble Lords aged 59 and under attended on more than half of our sitting days in the last Parliament. Noble Lords aged 60 or above were absent for most. While noble Lords in their 80s were with us on 45% of sitting days and those in their 90s managed 31%, those in their 30s were here on 55% of sitting days and the sole noble Lord in her 20s—the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Llanfaes—was here 78% of the time, despite travelling from much further afield than most.

Perhaps most pertinently for this Bill, average attendance rates were highest for our hereditary colleagues, at 49%. For life Peers it was 47%. For the Lords spiritual it was 14%, although we know that the right reverend Prelates have many other duties in tending to their flocks. Our remaining Law Lords were here on just 12% of sitting days that they could have been. These statistics, interesting though they may be, should not be taken at face value. Some may very well think it is better to have 12% of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hale of Richmond, than it is to have half of a thirtysomething.