Queen’s Speech

Duke of Montrose Excerpts

Thursday 13th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Duke of Montrose (Con) [V]]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris, with his authority and perspective from a devolved part of the United Kingdom. The topics that we are asked to address today, from the gracious Speech, need our urgent consideration. I listened with much interest to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, picking apart some of the suggestions, and I hope that the Minister will be able to fill in a little more about what rebalancing the Executive, legislature and judiciary might entail.

I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Strathclyde for introducing the question of the purpose of the House of Lords. Once again we are entering a period where our concept of what purpose the House of Lords is meant to serve will be vital. We have always had in the other place a House of the people. My understanding is that the original criteria for membership of this House meant that it was to be composed of those with experience of administration. I hope the noble and learned Lord will forgive me if I sum it up as a gathering of the bishops, the barons and the beaks.

There is also a desire for continuity. As the Senior Deputy Speaker reminded us today, this is important when we consider the innovations in our experience of a virtual Parliament and whether they are worth preserving and, not so far in the future, the changes that will be brought about during the restoration and renewal programme.

The noble Lord, Lord Kerr, referred to the Act of Union 1707. My ancestor then was president of the council of the Scottish Parliament, which promoted the Bill which became the Act of Union. This, as we have learned, prompted the Scottish Lord Chancellor of the day to wind up the proceedings with the words “Aye, there’s ane end of ane auld sang”. As it is, history has not proved him correct, and since the establishment of the devolved Scottish Parliament the song is coming back again. For better or for worse, my family has been involved in various renderings of that song from the Declaration of Arbroath in 1320, which was resisting the depredations of Edward I, the Battle of Flodden, the signing of the Scottish National Covenant in 1638, which was resisting the insistence of Charles I, and so on. Even more recently, my grandfather was involved in bringing together two strands of Scottish nationalism to form what has now become the Scottish National Party.

The presence of hereditary Peers in this House can be traced back to this early history. In those days, the need to own property meant that Members had a connection to and could represent all parts of the country. They were required to provide military support to the Crown. Not only that, in the absence of any civic structure, they provided the planning and direction of construction and development, rudimentary concern for the needs of the local population and, in the early days, the dispensing of justice. Their presence gave an element of continuity. Whatever offices of state or other monetary income they received could be seen to have some bearing on all these responsibilities. The weakness of this system, which some noble Lords may like to remind me of, is that some tended to go for self-aggrandisement first. We have only to look at the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, to see how rigorously we now police the safeguards in this regard and see that they are maintained. Fortunately nowadays many of these functions have been taken over by institutions that are answerable to some portion of the public at large and can be judged for their effectiveness.

The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, is concerned first and foremost with the excessive numbers in our House. What is not settled is what elements of the historical attributes should be reflected in the second phase of the reform. That is what I, as one of the elected hereditaries, am waiting to hear. Perhaps the ex-politicians like to feel that they can provide this. That may be true for ex-Ministers, but the recent role of many who come in from that source has been largely as observers and commentators from the sidelines. I, of course, realise that the position of hereditary Peers on their own may not be a great priority for my noble friend—

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

Could my noble friend wind up, please?

[The Duke of Montrose (Con) [V]]

—but, as we go into other constitutional questions, it may well come into play and some discussion of the purpose of this House will be essential.