House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Baroness Smith of Llanfaes Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 12th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness (LD)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Sheffield, who has made a very robust defence of the Lords spiritual in this House. As he was speaking and outlining the reasons why certain numbers would not work, it occurred to me that the logical thing was not to have Bishops at all. Then, they could devote all their time to their diocesan work without having to worry about sitting in Parliament.

I found the speech of the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, very persuasive for a number of reasons. The first is the historical link, which was also mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Moore, between the hereditary peerages and the Lords spiritual. A House of Lords Library briefing in 2017 said:

“The participation of the Bishops in public business dates back to the early feudal period, when Bishops were summoned to Parliament by virtue of their feudal status as royal tenants by barony. It has been said that ‘at one time the Spiritual Peers were the most influential Members of the House. They filled the more important offices of state, and in actual number they had a majority over the Temporal Peers’”.


So there is that historical link. The bishops were powers in the land. They owned land—as indeed the Church of England still does—and it was therefore not surprising that they should have a voice in Parliament, but that argument can no longer be made.

I have been reflecting on what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Moore: no bishops, no King. I come from a part of the United Kingdom, and am a member of the Church of Scotland, which has not had bishops since the Reformation, but I can tell noble Lords that the King is respected and very much loved in Scotland.

Next week, we will debate the Church of Scotland (Lord High Commissioner) Bill, which is a good illustration of the link between the monarch and the Church. It means that the Church is a national church, but without us having any desire or need to be in the legislature, not even the Scottish Parliament. It is a link. So, while the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Sheffield says we cannot break the link between Church and state, I think we can. There is no need for the Church, or any particular church, to have representation in the legislature—and it still can be a national church. It can still reflect the views from the different component geographical parts.

The noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, made the valid point that, while it is said that the Church of England has the great advantage of having its dioceses, and it brings views from different parts of England to your Lordships’ House, it is representation from only one part of our United Kingdom. It does not have any representation from Scotland, Northern Ireland or Wales, and in a Parliament that seeks to be a Parliament of the United Kingdom—and many of us here are very strong in our belief that we should continue as a United Kingdom—it is unfortunate that only one part of the United Kingdom has religious representation.

I have looked at the amendment that suggests a whole series of different denominations and faiths that could be nominated. It brought to mind that, when the Scottish Parliament was established in 1999, the first resolution we voted on was whether there should be a “time for reflection” or “prayers”, and time for reflection it became. One of my colleagues, Donald Gorrie, now sadly deceased, proposed prayers by proportional representation. I looked at the list in the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, and thought, “For heaven’s sake! They’ll be wanting to have faith representation here by proportional representation, and who knows where that would lead us to”.

The last time the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland discussed this issue, it took the view that there should be no bishops in a smaller House of Lords, and nor indeed should there be automatic representation of any other denomination or faith. By all means have bishops, moderators, clergy, or presidents of the Methodist Conference who get here on their own merit as life Peers, but there is no need for them to be automatically ex officio appointed to your Lordships’ House. For that reason, I am very supportive of the amendment tabled by the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham.

[Baroness Smith of Llanfaes (PC)]

My Lords, I extend my sincere thanks to the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, for tabling Amendments 48 and 49, which I am pleased to be supporting today. I rise in strong support of both amendments, which offer an opportunity for meaningful reform.

Plaid Cymru has long advocated an end to the automatic provision of legislative seats to Bishops, a change that these amendments would help to realise. Currently, 26 seats are guaranteed to Bishops of the Church of England, yet, as we have just heard from the noble Lord, no guaranteed seats exist for the Church in Wales, the Church of Scotland or for any other faith group. This disparity reflects a deeper issue: the exclusion of Wales and Scotland from representation within the Lords spiritual. It is, regrettably, another example of the UK Parliament’s continuing disproportionate focus on England.

Beyond the Vatican City and Iran, most countries do not grant automatic seats as lawmakers to religious leaders. While some Members of your Lordships’ House may propose the inclusion of representatives from other faiths, I firmly believe that this is not a viable solution. The complexity of deciding which faiths, denominations or non-religious organisations should be represented alongside the constantly shifting demographic of the UK make such a proposal impossible. This is why I cannot support Amendments 33 and 78; they do not differ significantly from our current system, which already grants 26 Bishops automatic seats. As such, they fail to address the issue of representation in a meaningful way.

Polling data from a YouGov survey conducted last September reveals the depth of public sentiment on this matter. Only 22% of respondents believed that the House of Lords should continue reserving places for Church of England Bishops. This consensus spans political divides, age groups, gender and regions. Across the board, the public support an end to reserved places for the Lords spiritual.

Let me be clear: this is not a reflection of the valuable work done by individual Lords spiritual. On the contrary, many Bishops have made significant contributions, particularly on prison reform, contributing to debates on overcrowding and offender treatment; and through their efforts to support migrants and refugees, including their vocal opposition to the Rwanda Bill, which should be commended. However, these accomplishments speak to the individuals involved, not the system that automatically grants them a place in the House of Lords. In a reformed second Chamber, such individuals could, and should, be elected on the merit of their work and dedication, not based on their religious office.

Therefore, I urge the Committee to support Amendments 48 and 49, which represent a clear and necessary step towards a more equitable and representative House of Lords.

[Lord Strathclyde (Con)]

My Lords, as somebody who is about to be expelled from the House of Lords, I cannot help feeling a little bit sorry for the right reverend Prelates on the Spiritual Bench. At the moment, they are, fashionably, everybody’s whipping-boy or girl. Everybody is rather against the Church of England at the moment. It is leaderless, with no Archbishop of Canterbury. So it is a pretty rotten way of attacking the Church, when they are down.

There are so many good reasons to have a spiritual side to the House of Lords. There are hardly ever more than three or four Bishops in the House at any one time, and usually there is only one. So they hardly make an enormous amount of difference to our voting, but they do make a difference to how we are seen and to the tone of our general debates. I do not think one should decry that spiritual side of the House and its important links as part of the established Church.

One of the reasons why I hate this Bill so much is that it takes a very piecemeal approach—flinging out just one cohort of the House without caring whether it does any good or what will happen when it is missed. I feel exactly the same way about the Bishops; they should be preserved until there is proper thought given to the kind of House we want. I know the Leader of the House will say, “If you want to wait for everything to be agreed, nothing will be agreed”, but that is not necessarily the case at all. It is not about everything being agreed but making sure that the worst aspects of this removal of various Peers are taken into account.

There has been much mention of other faiths, and I agree with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness. As a member of the Church of Scotland, it would be quite nice to hear from a fellow member of that church, and the noble and learned Lord is himself a distinguished former moderator of the Church of Scotland. There is obviously room for other faiths, and during the time I have been here there have been many occasions when representatives of other faiths have been present and played a useful part. Particularly when we deal with great moral issues of the day, whether on embryology, abortion or—no doubt soon if the Bill passes the House of Commons—assisted dying, the voice of the spiritual side of the House is very much to be welcomed.

When I came here, the noble Duke, the Duke of Norfolk, was the senior lay member of the Roman Catholic Church, and I spoke regularly against him. I think the current Duke does not want to take up that role—and in any case, he is going to be expelled as well. Less well known is that, over the last few years, the Roman Catholic cardinal archbishops have been offered places in the House of Lords, and often have wanted them, but have been denied the opportunity because of an issue with the Pope in Rome. I have got no idea what that is, but it is an interesting point about how this House is perceived and the importance with which it is perceived by other faiths.

On balance, this has been a very good debate, and one that no doubt we shall return to, and I hope that my noble friends will withdraw their amendments when the time comes.