House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Earl Attlee Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 12th March 2025 Lords Chamber

While I know the Church of England response of old from my 14 years here—“It is open to HOLAC, Elizabeth, to appoint such people”—de jure, that is true, but in fact the privilege and monopoly of the Church of England mean that no further places in an already large House can be justified. While I ask His Majesty’s Government to look at this, with spaces becoming vacant on the Cross Benches, I also ask the Lords spiritual to give up some of their places, to give them away—to give away some of their privilege and power. It is time to let others in.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I do not actually believe in God. However, just in case, I always seek to adhere to the highest ethical and moral standards, especially so far as public life is concerned. I do not propose to speak to the next group because it is so closely related to this one.

The vast majority of your Lordships’ House are nominally Christian. If your Lordships want to have Prayers read by a Bishop—and I do—we need about 27 Bishops so that one of them can be the duty Bishop for the week or for two weeks, or however they organise it. An important point about the Bishops is that they normally retire, although, as the noble Baroness pointed out, a few come back as life Peers—and they are welcome. Bishops are appointed by the Prime Minister. If there were a problem, I am sure that in most cases the Prime Minister would find out; I am not sure that HOLAC is any better equipped, especially in so far as some of these safeguarding issues are concerned.

It would be profitable for the Leader to find some way for other religious leaders to have temporary membership of your Lordships’ House in the same way as the Anglican Bishops. I do not think this point has been made today, but just because only a few other states have a revising Chamber with religious or moral input, that is not a good reason for us not having such input. I would counsel leaving the Bishops well alone.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Scriven has his name to Amendments 48 and 49 but is unable to be here, sadly, so let me speak briefly from our Benches. I declare my interests as a member of the Church of England and as a former member of the Westminster Abbey Foundation; I am still active with it.

I am very disappointed that the noble Lord, Lord Moore, did not suggest that abbots should be restored to their places here. Clearly, if we are discussing longer-term reform of the Lords, we need to address the question of the Bishops. At the same time, we might as well—other noble Lords have done this via Amendment 34 —address the question of faith representation in the House. In my lifetime, I have seen the Church of England—and certainly Westminster Abbey—become much more welcoming to ecumenical arrangements of all sorts. The Cardinal Archbishop has read the lesson in Westminster Abbey several times. I have been to a joint Jewish-Christian service in the abbey. I have listened to readings of the Koran in the middle of an abbey service. That is part of how the Church of England now tries to maintain its position as a national Church representing all faiths.

It is worth mentioning in passing that this House is not entirely without representation of other Churches and faiths. My namesake was the Moderator of the Church of Scotland two years ago and the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths of Burry Port, is one of the most distinguished Methodists. The noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, was the lead rabbi of Liberal Judaism, and we had a retired Chief Rabbi on the Benches of our House for some time.

There is a broader question, which we clearly need to address, about the role of representatives of faith in a different House, if we are slowly moving further in that direction. The Bishops need to respond to that, and I hope they will contribute to that debate. That is as far as we need to go when discussing this Bill because it is not necessarily part of the Bill. But in the broader, wider discussion that we are unavoidably finding ourselves having in Committee, that has to be one of the questions under discussion.

The noble Lord, Lord Moore, did not remark that there were only 14 or 15 Bishops in the Middle Ages, as I remember, and that the reason the number was fixed at 26 was because the number of dioceses was mushrooming so fast in the course of the 19th century. Perhaps that is the number we should go back to as an interim measure, but I look forward to hearing from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Sheffield if he is about to contribute to the debate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I support the sentiment of this amendment. Again, this is a longer-term issue, but separating the honour from the obligation is an important part of how we should be moving forward. We know that a number of people have desperately wanted peerages—I am one of the many who found, after my appointment to this House, that the number of people who wished to invite me out to lunch to tell me what excellent Peers they would make increased very considerably.

This House has—happily—become much more professional in the past 20 years. We do now recognise this as a job, but we do not necessarily need to be Peers to do the job. Perhaps if we were called “Senators” or whatever, that would work quite as well. I immensely enjoy my title, in the sense that Saltaire is a very special village. It is now a world heritage site. It has a Hockney gallery, and I suspect that no one apart from me in this House knows that Paul Hockney, David’s elder brother, was a Liberal Democrat councillor and the Mayor of Bradford.

The more important thing for the long-term interest of this House is that we have good people appointed to the second Chamber, and that this is thought of first as a second Chamber and not so much as a House of Lords. Those who wish to have titles could perhaps have titles that do not have the obligations that we all now willingly accept to examine legislation, to debate difficult issues and to play a part in the governance of this country.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I just say that I will have to leave at 10 pm, but I think we have time for me to make a speech. I am not convinced that this is a good idea, although I understand my noble friend’s thinking. Like it or not, we live in a much less deferential society. It always depresses me when I read of senior military officers or junior ratings or NCOs in the Regular Army being referred to as “Mr”, even in a military context. Many years ago, when I was just a full corporal in the reserves, I was proud of the rank that I held and what it indicated. However, I am not sure now that being a Peer is an attractive rank or honour any more. We see one Baroness who is a national treasure more often referred to by her damehood than her peerage.

I have a point for the Minister and perhaps the Leader to consider. So far as I am aware, there is no reliable, regularly used database of preferred styles for their Lordships. Googling an active Member will take an unsuspecting user to a highly misleading page on the House website. The result is that the uninitiated will inadvertently send irritating emails to traditional Peers such as myself, but at the same time they may irritate other Peers by being far too deferential—the worst of all worlds. Would it not be better if the House of Lords website made it clear what each Peer’s preferred style was?

The situation is even worse, as some potentially really good members, particularly from the party opposite, may be deterred from putting themselves forward for consideration for a peerage because they would be horrified by the prospect of being addressed formally as a Member of your Lordships’ House. This problem could be alleviated by having the database I have referred to and encouraging its use, particularly by the lobbying industry.

[The Earl of Dundee (Con)]

My Lords, I refer to Amendment 76 in my name. Its effect is to make a distinction between non-parliamentary and parliamentary peerages. Political patronage, along with awarding other honours, would continue to create non-parliamentary peerages but no longer those which confer a parliamentary right to sit in the House of Lords. As a result, conversely, a parliamentary right to sit in the House of Lords would be decoupled from political patronage.

To that extent, Amendment 76 connects to other amendments to this Bill on the future composition of the House of Lords. These include: first, a revised role for HOLAC to appoint within a reformed House of 600 temporal Peers one-third—or 200—as non-political Cross-Benchers; secondly, the setting up of an electoral college representative of all parts of the United Kingdom to indirectly elect 400 political Members, or two-thirds of a reformed House; and, thirdly, the establishment of different membership group numbers in order best to ensure the continuity of our present very high standard of legislative scrutiny and revision.

In a reformed House, this would be done by having the non-political Cross-Benchers in the majority, with 200 temporal Members—50 more than either the government or opposition parties, which would have exactly 150 political Members each, while other political and temporal Members, including the Liberal Democrats, would number 100.

Amendment 76, therefore, is in the context of a continued high standard of legislative scrutiny in a reformed House. It is achievable, provided that, as a first step, the right to sit and work in the House of Lords becomes decoupled from political patronage.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord True (Con)]

I am sorry to persist. It is clear that we are getting nowhere on this tonight, but I believe this is a very constructive proposal. I am very disappointed by the noble and learned Lord’s response. A peerage is a peerage; a barony is a barony, whatever it is, under whatever part of the prerogative or Act of Parliament, or otherwise, it exists. As the noble Lord, Lord Burns, pointed out, we have retired people, we have hereditary Peers—the public are not reeling about in confusion. It may be that the noble and learned Lord is reeling about in confusion, but there may be many ways and many things that attach to the possession of the title “Lord”, just as if you have a knighthood, you can be a cricketer or a captain of industry, or many other things. The noble and learned Lord is ingeniously trying to create difficulties where, frankly, none exist. I would have thought this modernising Government would have the imagination to take a step forward.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, at the risk of being sent to a re-education camp by my Chief Whip, I find the noble and learned Lord’s argument more persuasive. However, I gave no notice to the Minister about my issue on styles. Can the noble and learned Lord give some careful consideration to that in due course and write to me on it?

[Lord Hermer (Lab)]

Yes, of course, I will.

Scotland: Independence Referendum

Earl Attlee Excerpts

Thursday 30th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

My Lords, I, too, pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Lang, for initiating this debate. He has done a valuable service to the House by raising the profile of this issue at a critical time in our national affairs.

I would like to say just a few words about our legal systems and what the Treaty of Union, to which the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, referred, had to say about them. In 1606, King James I and VI said of the English system, perhaps rather to the surprise of the Scots, of which he was one, that it was the best law in all the world. His vision was for the English law system to be the system throughout Great Britain. One hundred years later, that was not how the commissioners saw matters when the Treaty of Union was formulated. What was provided there, with great care, was that Scotland would be able to keep its own legal system, which by then had developed, in all time coming. In Article XIX, it was provided that no causes in Scotland were to be heard in any of the English courts sitting in Westminster Hall. At first sight, the idea was that the two systems would be kept entirely separate, standing on their own two feet. The two would never meet: one country, two systems.

However, that is not how the union worked in practice, and it is typical of what happened in so many aspects of the way in which the union has worked. It did not take very long for canny Scots lawyers to spot that the House of Lords did not sit in Westminster Hall, and that led them to bringing appeals before this House. In 1709, the House held that it had jurisdiction to hear appeals from Scotland. That gave rise to an increasingly close association between the English and Scottish legal systems which has lasted for more than 300 years—woven into the fabric, as the noble Lord, Lord Lang, put it. That is reflected today by the fact that the United Kingdom Supreme Court hears appeals from all parts of the United Kingdom, as this House did in this very Chamber for so many years before the Supreme Court was created, and by the fact that the court now has justices from Scotland and Northern Ireland among its membership.

There is a very important question as to what is to happen in Scotland if the referendum were to result in a vote for separation. Typically, the White Paper does not say a word about that, but I am not going to say a word about it either, because our concentration today is on the United Kingdom, not what is to happen in Scotland alone. For that purpose, I want to say just a little more about how that has developed since 1707.

It took a little time before the Scots judges began to sit in this House—the first was in 1867, as it happened—but a few years later, the Appellate Jurisdiction Act was passed, which provided for permanent Lords of Appeal in Ordinary and, more or less, since then there have always been two Scots Law Lords, and now two Scots Justices of the Supreme Court. The total has reached 21 over that period, but merely to mention the figure is only part of the story. It has always been understood that the Scots Law Lords could sit on appeals from other parts of the United Kingdom—as, indeed, those from England and Northern Ireland could on Scots appeals—and this has been greatly to the advantage of all three jurisdictions.

It could perhaps be said that the Scots have pulled somewhat above their weight in contributing to the development of law elsewhere in the United Kingdom. One has only to mention the name of Lord Reid, who sat as a Law Lord in this House for 26 years, from 1948 to 1975, the longest serving Law Lord of them all, to make the point. It is not only his long service that marks him out as one of the outstanding lawyers of his generation: the quality of his judgments, the perception of the issues that they raised and their clarity were all outstanding, and are cited every day in the courts up and down this country. There is no time to go over the contribution that others have made. My part is perhaps enshrined in the fact that I am shown in a portrait in Committee Room 1 delivering the House of Lords’ last judgment in an English appeal. Earlier this month, I was referred to in a case which came from Northern Ireland and, just yesterday evening, a decision by Lord Reid in an English case was referred to in the Supreme Court. The fact is that our contributions have been built into the entire system as part of its fabric.

This brings me to the consequences for the United Kingdom if that tradition is broken. The process of cross-fertilisation of ideas across the border will cease. The tendency to prefer principle to precedent, which is one of the characteristics of the Scottish approach, is also at risk of being lost. So, too, will be the breadth of experience which has always marked Scots judges out in comparison with the specialists from England. Of course, the loss of the two Scots justices, if and when this has to happen, can be made good, but the breadth of vision which comes from having what is at present a court for the entire United Kingdom that draws its ideas from a broad canvas, cannot.

As I said at the start, it was not anticipated at the outset of the union that these two legal systems should grow together as they have, but that is what has happened, as it has been appreciated on both sides of the border that their systems draw strength from working together with each other while respecting their differences, rather than working separately. Both sides have a lot to lose if that relationship is broken—jettisoned, as the noble Lord, Lord Steel, said earlier—as it is bound to be if the right of appeal is to be ended and Scottish justices are no longer present. I, for one, would very much regret that development.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, your Lordships are doing extraordinarily well at keeping to time, but timings are quite tight. If noble Lords speak when the indicator shows seven, they are in the eighth minute. If too many noble Lords do that, we will run out of time.