House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Earl Attlee Excerpts

Monday 10th March 2025 Lords Chamber

If I were advising the Government, which I am not, and they were thinking of bringing in a narrow Bill—let us say about an age limit or the Bishops; I do not think they will, but if they did—I tell them not to, because it would lay itself open to a whole series of amendments just as we are seeing here today on a very narrow Bill. I am baffled as to why the House authorities here and in the Commons thought that it was absolutely in order to have this kind of huge debate on a very narrow proposition. At the very least—I know that the horse has bolted and that we are having these discussions now—I hope that the Procedure Committee will look at this, because it will be a massive deterrent to any future very narrow debate on a Bill relating to this House, let alone a Bill of the scope of that of the noble Lord, Lord Newby, which would take most of our lifetimes to discuss. That is my simple proposition: please let us get over all this stuff that is not directly related to the Bill. Perhaps the Procedure Committee should have a look at it.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, my first point in response to the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, is that the Bill will pass—the noble Lord does not need to worry about that. Secondly, simple constitutional changes can have very serious consequences. We have only to think about a simple change that my noble friend Lord Cameron introduced, the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, which created a disaster.

I think it would be helpful to the Committee if the noble Lord, Lord Newby, could tell us what he thinks the role of the House of Lords is now, and what he thinks it will be in the future. My noble friend Lord Blencathra touched on that. The noble Baroness said that there was mistrust from the public, and I think that arises largely from extremely misleading reporting in the media, which little is done to counter. I would ask the same question about the role of the House of Lords of the Leader of the House, but I expect she would be quite cautious, especially as regards the future. I remind the House that I intend to retire in the spring, so I am fairly neutral.

Many noble Lords—and others inside and outside the House—fall into the trap of proposing to alter the composition of the House of Lords without first considering its role, both now and in the future. I thought that the Labour Government had already studied this matter carefully by means of the Wakeham commission, to which the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, and other noble Lords referred. There is a solution very carefully worked out by my noble friend Lord Wakeham and his commission.

I have always believed that the role of the House of Lords is to revise legislation—and I mean revise, not just scrutinise. In the last Parliament, the House revised the Rwanda Bill: it did not merely scrutinise it. It should be an additional check on the Executive but not determine who the Prime Minister is or financial matters. Most importantly, it should be a source of expertise.

The noble Lord, Lord Newby, pointed out that we have a difficulty in that we are hideously London-centric, but getting rid of the hereditary Peers who are chained to their castles and estates up and down the country will make the situation worse, and it is not clear to me how being elected, either in whole or in part, will make us any better at performing our role—a point touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Moore. Of course, it may make us much less willing to give way to the elected House. Many advocates of an elected House suggest that we would be more effective and legitimate if elected. I suggest that being elected can be a disadvantage. For instance, about two years ago, I was dealing with a problem with a high street bank debanking a business in the wider defence industry—noble Lords will recall that recently the Secretary of State for Defence was forcefully raising this issue in public. I needed to have a meeting with senior executives of the bank in circumstances where a Member of another place would be blanked by the bank; they would get nowhere. Why was I able to secure the meeting and then understand what the problem was? The answer is that the bank trusted me. It could be sure that I was not getting involved in order to burnish my local credentials, my media profile or anything else.

I have a question for noble Lords proposing a change to the role of the House or introducing an elected element. In their proposed reformed House, would it be intended that the Government of the day could still easily be defeated? If it was, surely the House would claim democratic credentials and be far more challenging to the House of Commons, as noble Lords have already pointed out. However, if the new House could only very rarely defeat the Government, then in the case of something such as the Rwanda Bill, surely the courts would step in to fill the vacuum.

Finally, can the Leader of the House say whether she agrees with my view of the current role of the House of Lords? I appreciate that she cannot comment about its future role, which is a much more difficult question. When in the 2010 Parliament the Conservative-led Government tried to reform the House, I gleefully went around my friends in the House of Commons saying that I was looking forward to being Senator Attlee of South Hampshire. They obviously got the message.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, when we debated the role of the House of Lords last November and on every occasion that we have debated the subject to which I have contributed, I have started by saying, as I say again today, that in a modern, 21st-century democracy there must be a case that the legislature should be elected. Although it puts me therefore to some extent at odds with friends of mine on different sides of the House, I have to say that I generally support, not necessarily every detail, the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Newby.

If that was all I had to say, I probably would not have bothered saying it, because I think the Lord Privy Seal must have grasped that there is support for the noble Lord’s amendment from different parts of the House, and all I would be doing is adding my name to that. However, I want to go a little further into the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Newby, and point out that it is really very clever and has a lot of lot in it that should attract noble Lords, because although it sets a clear destination, it is very non-specific about the details of how we should end up and what the new House of Lords would look like in its elected form. What he is doing in his amendment instead is putting in place a process.

I think we all know what a process looks like. It has the sort of things that we find in this amendment: steps that need to be taken, in a certain order, and dates by which those steps should ideally be taken. The Lord Privy Seal seems to have some difficulty with the word “process”. She used it in Committee last week, when we talked about various matters to do with the future of this House beyond this Bill. She said that we were in a process, but the Lord Privy Seal is not actually in a process. She may think she is, but she is not, because if she were she would be able to tell us the steps, the milestones and the target dates that we find in the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Newby.

The only thing we know for certain about the process in which the Labour Government are engaged—the process that so is so important not only to this House, but to anyone who takes an interest in our constitutional balance—is that her door is always open. That is the process as far as the Labour Front Bench is concerned. There is no timetable, there are no milestones and there are no commitments as to what is going to happen, in what order or when. While it is perfectly legitimate for the Lord Privy Seal to say that she does not support the process proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Newby, it now becomes almost impossible for her, given what she has said before, both to oppose the noble Lord and to fail to come forward with a process of her own—which is what so many noble Lords in this House would like to hear. Otherwise, she will show that she is not being wholly candid with us in the way that we would hope.

The essential point about Labour’s sense of direction is that it came forward in its manifesto with a package of measures and obtained a mandate for a package of measures. Some of those measures were to be taken at an early stage—the Lord Privy Seal and I have had this argument about the weight of the full stop, and I am not going to go through that now—and at least one was going to be taken later. It was going to be a consultation involving the democratic character of the House and the representation of the nations and regions and so on. Clearly, anyone reading the Labour Party manifesto would say that that was something to be done in the latter half of the Parliament. It also explains to the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, why these issues arise in what appears to be a very narrow Bill: it is because that very narrow Bill sits in a context of a manifesto commitment and a mandate which is very much broader. It cannot be separated out; those threads cannot be pulled apart without having an effect on the rest of the fabric.

I will come to a close very quickly. If I tremble to find myself in agreement with the noble Lord, Lord Newby, I tremble even more to find myself in disagreement with my noble friend Lord Blencathra. While any new system or composition of the Lords is absolutely bound to require a crunching of gears as the two Chambers find a way of working together, the notion that this is impossible—that two democratic chambers cannot work together—is, as I have said before, simply belied. One can look round the rest of the democratic world, where it does work, with crunching of gears and not always ideally, and sometimes with surprises and unexpected turns of events—but of course it is possible to have two democratic chambers.

I agree with my noble friend Lord Blencathra that these matters are so weighty that there is a strong case for a referendum. I am rather more sympathetic to referendums than many people here and in the other place, and I find myself rather out on the extreme wing on this, but I certainly think there is a strong case for a referendum on the constitutional future of your Lordships’ House.

Coming back to my original point, I very much hope that the Lord Privy Seal will stop hiding behind her open door—if that is not too much of a mixed metaphor—and come out into the West Front corridor and tell us, if not in this Chamber today, if she does not like the process proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Newby, what process she has to offer us.

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[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, with the demise of the “good chaps” theory of government, articulated by the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Newby, and my noble friends Lord Dundee and Lord Hailsham, giving statutory powers in terms of probity, capability and experience to HOLAC, are essential. We should legislate for them at the first possible opportunity. Obviously, I do not agree with my noble friend Lord Howard on his amendment, but I understand some of his analysis.

On the amendments tabled by the noble Earls, Lord Dundee and Lord Devon, the Cross Benches have a great selection of hereditary Peers which they have carefully selected and elected and who provide great expertise to Parliament. For instance, we want to get to net zero, so they have a senior civil nuclear engineer. We have problems with shipping, including the Russian shadow fleet and the need for certain ships to go around the Cape of Good Hope because of the activity of the Houthis, so we have a former chairman of the Baltic Exchange. International aid is always important, which is why the Cross Benches have one of the few people in Parliament with any operational experience of international aid, who is in his place today. I could go on. Why does anyone want to get rid of that experience on the Cross Benches?

I have some concern about the selections that HOLAC makes. There is no doubt that noble Lords appointed by HOLAC are exceptionally good, as the noble Earl said, but there are too few of them. The problem is that—and I gently make this point—they tend to be public sector orientated, although there are obvious exceptions. Looking generally, I think that we have too many who are expert at spending other people’s money. Our debates are nearly always about spending more money and increasing resources, and never about spending less. Very shortly, we will have to make some very tough decisions about that.

I am surprised that no noble Lord has sought to put a duty on HOLAC regarding where noble Lords are based. I am sorry to say that the House is hideously London-centric, a point touched on already today by the noble Lord, Lord Newby. This problem will get even worse with the demise of the hereditaries, who tend to come from far and wide. Overall, we need greater involvement from HOLAC in vetting but to limit its selection powers to the Cross Benches. We need some better informal mechanisms to work out what experience and regional expertise we lack. Perhaps HOLAC should have some mechanism to deal with or advise on London centricity.

[The Earl of Dundee (Con)]

My Lords, in this grouping, there are two connected proposals in my name. Amendment 43 would not prevent political patronage creating non-parliamentary peerages.

Yet it would abolish the right of parliamentary political patronage to appoint Members to this House, replacing that practice, as advocated by Amendment 45, with a statutory appointments commission responsible for appointing 200 independent Cross-Benchers within a reformed House of 600 temporal Members, where the balance of 400 Members are political Members indirectly elected by an electoral college representative of the different parts of the United Kingdom.

These amendments also indicate three background considerations. The first is how thereby, in appointing 200 non-political independent Members, the new statutory commission appoints the largest group within a reformed House of 600. The second is the purpose of doing that and, thirdly, how membership, within a total of 20 appointment commissioners, reflects the proportions of different Benches sitting in a reformed House.

Among the 400 political and temporal Members, the Government and the Opposition would have exactly 150 each, while all other political parties, including the Liberal Democrats, would have 100. With 200, the independent Cross Benches, therefore, would have 50 more Members than either the Government or the Opposition.

The purpose of this is not House of Lords composition; instead, it is continuity of House of Lords quality function. So many of your Lordships have eloquently stressed that point today, including the noble Lord, Lord Moore, and my noble friends Lord Tugendhat and Lady Laing. This quality function is not just our current high standard of legislative scrutiny. As my noble friend Lord Attlee pointed out, it includes our achievements in revisions, and thus also the quality of that evidence. This quality of function would be undermined if the party of any Government having a majority in another place also had one here. That is why the Government and the Opposition ought to have equal numbers in a reformed House, while the non-political Cross-Benchers should be in the majority.

With a total of 20 commissioners appointing 200 non-political Members, subsection (5) of the new clause that would be inserted by Amendment 45 gives the ratios allocated to the different temporal Benches: five commissioners each for the Government and the Opposition; seven for the Cross-Benchers; and three for the Liberal Democrats as the third-largest temporal group. Amendment 46, referring to that subsection (5) in Amendment 45, proposes the additional words,

“or from a party-political group in the House of Lords not otherwise identified in this table”,

for which I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Hailsham.

I also thank my noble friend for the qualification in his Amendment 44A, referring to Amendment 43, that with appointments to this House the statutory Appointments Commission can only select people who are properly reliable and independent-minded. In addition, I am grateful to him and to the noble Lord, Lord Newby, for their proposed Amendments 47 and 12 respectively, envisaging that, in the period of time before a statutory Appointments Commission has replaced political patronage, life peerages can still not be conferred against the recommendations of HOLAC or the present non-statutory Appointments Commission.

In Amendment 51, the strengthening of HOLAC is also urged by the noble Earl, Lord Devon, who has just spoken to that, supported by myself and the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich. As outlined, the aim should be for HOLAC to become statutory, replacing political patronage and appointing one-third or 200 non-political Members of a reformed House, temporal membership being 600 of which 400 are political Members. As a revising Chamber, this arrangement is best able to protect our present very high standard of legislative scrutiny to the advantage of the United Kingdom democracy here and, by example, to that of national democracies elsewhere.

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We really ought not to mix up this Bill with other problems just because some people do not like the hereditary Peers being thrown out. We can discuss that, but we really ought not to mix it up because the Government ought to be allowed to think of how to reduce numbers and come to us with a good Bill, and then we shall discuss it. Right now, this arbitrary 15-year term or an age limit of 80, 85 or 90 years will not do. We ought to think again.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords—

[Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Twycross) (Lab)]

My Lords, with apologies for interrupting the noble Earl, I want to draw noble Lords’ attention to the subjects coming up for debate in later groups and remind them to try to stick to the subjects of the groups.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness is of course absolutely correct on her point and I strongly support her.

The issue of fixed-term peerages or membership of the House is indeed closely related to the issue of age limits, so I have some sympathy with what the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, said. I think that the overall answer to both issues is a retirement age that is agreed or understood at the time of appointment for new Peers. I hope that gives some comfort to the noble Lord, Lord Desai.

Once the hereditary Peers have gone, the remaining Peers who are over 70 now will come under considerable media pressure. It is no use avoiding this point. To an even greater extent than younger Peers, such older Peers are, rightly, not very responsive to what the media think or what the media want them to do. Rather, they do what they believe is in the public interest and in accordance with the Nolan principles. I am not sure that that is what the media want. I think that having 80 year-old Peers will be made to seem just as indefensible as hereditaries are incorrectly claimed to be today.

I would not underestimate the value to the House of Lords of having some Peers whose experience goes back a very long way. For instance, I advised a noble Baroness on the Cross Benches who was faced with an assisted dying Bill. She erroneously believed that she could not try to kill the Bill at Second Reading; I advised her that she could and that I had seen it done some time before. Sure enough, she succeeded in her endeavours. Unfortunately, when drafting this speech, I could not avoid the words “kill”, “fatal” or “euthanise” or the phrase “put out of its misery” when talking about the procedure related to an assisted dying Bill.

I am not opposed to term limits, provided that those who propose them are clear about what they want the House to do. However, the Wakeham report identified a danger, in that term limits could deter potential new Members—a point well made by the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell.

[Lord Burns (CB)]

My Lords, perhaps I could comment on one or two of the points being made. The Lord Speaker’s Committee, which I chaired, did indeed make the proposal that there should be either 15-year or 20-year term limits. We looked at both of them and came down in the end marginally in favour of 15-year term limits.

That was against the background not of this Bill, of course, but of also promoting the idea of a ceiling on the size of the House of Lords. The great argument in favour of term limits is that it generates a predictable number and a predictable flow of levers, which can then work alongside a limit on the size of the House. It then provides the scope for both refreshment of the House and a change in the political balance over a period of time, which is also very important, and it all can be done in an orderly way. The proposal that we made was in this context of several other changes that were suggested, rather than something which was standing on its own.

The proposal we made was also to be applied only to new Peers. We said that it should begin then and was a long-term proposal. It was the only real mechanism we could find whereby you could stabilise the numbers over time and have the capacity to make changes. After all, there are term limits for most people in most legislatures. Most of them are determined by the electorate and by what happens to people when they meet the voter. There is nothing new about this: it is a very useful mechanism, but not really a mechanism for this Bill. I accept that it is for another day, but in the argument about a more balanced and wider group of changes being made, I would be very supportive of this important mechanism at that time.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Earl Attlee Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 3rd March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby (LD)]

If the noble Lord looks down the list, he will see that there may be some people who come twice a year and vote three times a year, but I did not include those in the list of people whom I consider to be active. I am happy to go down the list with him; I did not do it with the intention of proving anything but wanted to satisfy myself as to the true position.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, the difficulty with the noble Lord’s suggestion, in my case, is that I would be relying upon knowing the leader of my party. I do not properly know any of the party leaders, and they do not know me either, so I would have as much chance as a snowflake in a blast furnace of getting a life peerage.

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

My Lords, I am sorry to disappoint the noble Lord, Lord Newby, but I am responding on Amendment 5, moved by my noble friend Lord Soames of Fletching from these Benches. In speaking to this amendment, I take the opportunity to recognise the significant and invaluable contribution that hereditary Peers have made to your Lordships’ House. With respect to the noble Lord, Lord Newby, this amendment is a different point conceptually from Amendment 9, tabled by my noble friend Lord True, which is essentially, if I may put it without any disrespect, the Grocott approach.

As my noble friend Lord True said earlier this evening, if we are to exclude anyone from the House, it should be those who do not contribute rather than those who have contributed and do contribute. To introduce a personal perspective, I say that as someone who makes every effort to play a proper part in the business of your Lordships’ House while maintaining a full practice at the Bar. That sometimes means that I miss the odd vote—may I record in Hansard for posterity my entirely sycophantic and appallingly oleaginous thanks to my Whip for his constant understanding? More seriously, that cuts into my downtime. I do not really have any downtime because of my work at the Bar and my obligations here. If I can use this rather demotic phrase, it does hack me off when some people do not contribute at all.

I therefore share the concern of my noble friend Lord Soames that we are removing people who contribute while leaving people who play very little, if any, part in the House. The key to a sensible approach, I suggest, while recognising that the hereditary principle has come to an end—like the noble Lord, Lord Brennan, I also enjoyed “Tomorrow’s World” in its day, and what was innovative then is commonplace now—is to retain those who have demonstrated over many years their commitment to public service and duty to the House. She is no longer in her place, but I respect fully agree with what the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, said in an earlier group. She expressly invited the Government to just look, to use what I think was her phrase, at those whom the Government are removing. She said that the approach in this Bill, which removes the fully involved and the truly indolent alike, was “profoundly wrong”. She is right about that.

Turning to the text of this amendment, I know that there are many ways in which noble Lords can contribute to the business of the House, but those who currently serve or have previously served as Ministers and Whips, Deputy Speakers, chairs of committees or as Convenor of the Cross Benches have made a determined and determinable contribution. Their institutional knowledge and dedication to public service has made them indispensable, I suggest, to the functioning of the House and thus to the functioning of Parliament. The positions which they have undertaken in the House have been earned through merit and service. To remove these noble Lords would be to discard a wealth of experience that simply cannot be replaced. I therefore agree with the points made by my noble friend Lady Finn in that regard.

We have had some stats thrown at us; let me try to identify what the position actually is. During the 2019-24 Parliament, 168 Members had official roles. This includes government and Opposition ministerial posts and parliamentary positions such as the Lord Speaker and Deputy Speakers. Life Peers filled 143 of these roles, 23 were filled by hereditary Peers and two by Bishops. About 18% of life Peers served in an official role compared with 26% of hereditary Peers. Despite making up only 12% of the total membership of the House, in the last Session hereditary Peers made up 20% of government posts and 26% of Deputy Speakers. My noble friend Lord Hamilton of Epsom rightly made the point that hereditary Peers as a group have contributed very significantly.

I will not read out my Excel spreadsheet, but do we really want, I ask rhetorically, to lose people such as my noble friends Lord Courtown and Lord Howe—who, as your Lordships have heard, has provided simply incredible service to the House? My noble friend Lord Strathclyde serves as chair of our Constitution Committee is a former Leader of the House and a former Chief Whip. He has served as a Minister over four departments. The noble Lord, Lord Ashton of Hyde, is a serving Deputy Speaker and Deputy Chair of Committees. His CV in the House reads for several pages.

I am not sufficiently brave to stand for much longer between your Lordships and your Lordships’ dinners, so I will not refer to every hereditary Peer, but I trust that noble Lords recognise the expertise, experience and dedication that those individuals have brought to our parliamentary system.

I make one final point. Some years ago, the House removed a number of Peers. The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, gave us the correct figure, which I think was 667. Yes, I was listening. I always do to the noble Lord, indeed to all noble Lords but especially the noble Lord, Lord Grocott on this topic. Does removing the final 88, or however many are left now, make any difference? Of course, the difference goes to the heart of this amendment. Those who remained some years ago were chosen wholly, or in the vast majority of cases, because they were contributing. That is why they remained. That is what this amendment seeks to do.

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[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

As my noble friend the Leader of the House has reminded me, she will be consulting on that and looking at ways for it to be implemented—she is already doing so, as she reminds me. The fact of the matter is that we have a clear commitment. The Government have a right to determine when and how they implement their commitments. The noble Lord knows that. I have heard speeches from him telling me that we should not push amendments because the democratic House has laid something down in the manifesto. He has made those points to me over the past 12 years, so this does not really wash with me.

The simple fact is that we established in 1999 that the hereditary principle would no longer apply. We put in temporary arrangements and we have now addressed that in our manifesto. Solutions were put forward in 1999. I say to the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, that his contribution is well known. Leaders know it. I certainly assume that the leader of his party knows the contribution that he has made, both outside and inside Parliament. Why would he not be considered worthy of a life peerage? I do not see why not. It is really important that we can establish a principle—

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

I am grateful for the kind things the noble Lord said to me, but the fact of the matter is that I do not know any of the leaders of my party. I do not know David Cameron—my noble friend Lord Cameron—or any of his successors. I simply will not be able to get a life peerage. They do not know me. I am not known. None of the special advisers know me. I am nowhere.

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

I do not accept that for one moment. The noble Earl is well known. His contributions are well known and valued—he must not undersell himself. The important thing is that there was an opportunity in 1999, when people left this House because they were hereditary Peers, for some to be made life Peers. That certainly is the case in relation to this last act, contained in our manifesto, to ensure that the temporary arrangements agreed 25 years ago no longer continue. I do not think that people would understand this amendment breaching that commitment in the outside world, but it is wrong to—

House of Lords Reform

Earl Attlee Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I too am grateful to the Leader of the House for introducing the debate. She and I have always had the most cordial of relations. I have been in this situation before, in the 1997 Parliament, but I survived it by becoming an elected hereditary Peer—although, of course, I had a plan B. Now, in the face of not just the Bill but a constant stream of very unfair comments about the House and its membership generally, all my motivation to undertake the role of Peer of the realm and Member of your Lordships’ House has been steadily corroded away, to the extent that I have now decided that I want to retire in the spring—and I am two years younger than the average age in your Lordships’ House. I need a lot of persuasion to do otherwise.

It is no good my friends around the House saying, “Don’t worry, you’ll pick up a life peerage”, as has been suggested in the debate. The chances of that happening to me are inversely proportional to the size of my independent streak and my lack of admiration of post-2016 Conservative Administrations—even though I think I am a proper Tory. As pointed out by many noble Lords, many outside comment on the composition of the House of Lords without considering its role, which is largely accepted to be to revise legislation, to be an additional check on the Executive and to be a source of expertise—that last part is extremely important.

When we read the post-US election analysis, we see that the Democrats failed to grasp that the US electorate were fed up with professional politicians who have limited experience of the real world and who inhabit only the Washington beltway. In the House of Commons, a minority of members of the Government, and perhaps even the House generally, have ever had a proper revenue-earning job.

The international security situation is dire—we now have state-on-state conflict in Europe. But research from your Lordships’ Library indicates that only about 17 Members of the House of Commons have any military experience, and only three have operational overseas aid experience. Only one MP, Alex Ballinger, has both. Of course, several of the current hereditary Peers have military experience, and one has both. No prizes, but it is sometimes said that Attlees are modest people with much to be modest about—but when the Bill comes into effect we will have no one in this House with both operational military and operational international aid experience.

It is curious to me that, in 32 years in your Lordships’ House, I have never been asked by the media what I am actually doing or working on. One current issue is prison reform, which, with the arrival of the noble Lord, Lord Timpson, is going rather well. The other is very niche, so far as Parliament is concerned. We have about 600,000 professional lorry drivers in the UK, and 400,000 heavy goods vehicles. The problem that I am dealing with is that a very few police forces are harassing the heavy haulage industry in circumstances where other police forces do no such thing. To do this work, I need to bring to bear practical experience of heavy road haulage operations—and this is important. It is something that no one else in Parliament possesses.

Once the remaining hereditary Peers are eliminated, the remaining life Peers will find themselves coming under increasing pressure in terms of composition of the House—a point raised by my noble friend Lord Forsyth and others. This is because the political Benches will be filled largely with party apparatchiks with varying levels of experience, party donors, and MPs who have left the House of Commons in a variety of circumstances. Most importantly, they will all owe their position in the Lords to knowing someone in the Westminster bubble, something that is not necessary for a hereditary. No wonder the House of Lords has been described as being “hideously London-centric”.

Business of the House

Earl Attlee Excerpts

Thursday 23rd May 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Privy Seal (Lord True)]

My Lords, although I agree with all that we have just heard, it had a rather valedictory tone. I must tell the House that the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, may well be back—like Arnold Schwarzenegger.

I understand that noble Lords wish me to move the Motions I had set down separately. In moving the first Motion in my name on the Order Paper, it will be useful for the House if I set out how we expect business in your Lordships’ House to work over the next two days.

Following agreement between the Government and the Official Opposition in both Houses, we expect to focus proceedings today on four Bills: consideration of the Commons amendments on the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill; Committee and remaining stages of the Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Bill; Third Reading of the Victims and Prisoners Bill; and the remaining stages of the Media Bill.

The tabling deadline for amendments to the first three Bills has already passed. The deadline for tabling amendments to the Media Bill is noon. Tomorrow we will sit to consider the finance Bill, some Private Members’ Bills and statutory instruments. Members can now sign up to speak at the Second Reading of the finance Bill, and the list for that will close at 4 pm today. If any of the Bills I have listed above are returned from the Commons, we will also consider their amendments or reasons.

We expect the House to be prorogued on Friday—tomorrow—and we will announce any changes to business and the associated deadlines in the usual ways. I am extremely grateful to all noble Lords for their forbearance and understanding in this unusual process, and we will endeavour to keep all Peers fully informed at every stage. I beg to move.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to my noble friend the Leader of the House for explaining what will be happening. I oppose my noble friend’s Motion, but in respect only of Clause 50 of the Media Bill, which seeks to repeal Section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act.

Section 40 is crucial to the system of press regulation proposed by Sir Brian Leveson and has largely been implemented already by a royal charter. This is a highly controversial and important piece of legislation. We know it is important because Owen Meredith, the chief executive of the News Media Association, has been writing about it in the national newspapers. We know it is important because, when I won a Division on a similar amendment to the Data Protection Act a few years ago, national newspapers devoted several whole pages of detailed and unhelpful coverage to noble Lords who had the moral courage to support me in the Lobbies.

The House should not get confused about how few noble Lords are prepared to debate the subject of press regulation. I have had to draw on huge amounts of moral courage to pursue these amendments. Unfortunately, this, combined with the proposed changes to our Code of Conduct, made me simply run out of moral courage on Tuesday. I am sorry to say that I left the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, largely on her own yesterday. I stress that nobody, inside or outside this House, has applied improper pressure to me.

There is simply not the time available to plan and draft a proper Report speech when the Committee amendments were debated only yesterday. For instance, I understand that my noble friend Lord Black made a very interesting speech, but I have not been able to read it. The Government should either drop the relevant clause completely or, better still, accept Amendment 84 from the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins. If they did the latter, they would still meet their manifesto commitments in full. Relaxing the Standing Orders against the wishes of several Members of the House to suit the needs of the usual channels, and some frantic horse-trading down the other end of the Corridor, is not acceptable to me.

[Lord Lipsey (Lab)]

My Lords, I was one of the people who asked the noble Lord to separate these two Motions and I am very grateful that he has done so. It shows the great courtesy that he has always shown to this House and its processes since becoming Leader.

I rise to make a brief point about wash-up. I have been working in one House or the other for more than 50 years and I just calculated that I have done 11 wash-ups. They are always a bloody mess and they always will be, unless the procedure is properly revised. I may be deceiving myself but, in this case, I think the Government are trying to smuggle things through under wash-up that should not be in the legislation.

Like the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, I feel very strongly about Clause 50 of the Media Bill. We debated it yesterday and will debate it today, but that is doing it in very short order. One of the unfortunate things is that not only do the Government support this Bill but so does my own Front Bench—at least that is what the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, said yesterday—although the Liberal Democrats take a different view. There are others involved, including Cross-Benchers, and I pay tribute to the role played by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins.

This is not the kind of change that should be smuggled through in wash-up. Wash-up is designed to allow elements in Bills that are still outstanding in the House and on which there is consensus to become law. There is no consensus about this. There is no consensus among the Cross-Benchers, among the Lib Dems and, if am honest, among Labour Back-Benchers.

I hope that lessons will be learned and that there will be no further attempts at smuggling. If I were an adviser to the Government, which I was once upon a time, in my good days, I would be saying, “Just forget about Clause 50. Let’s get the business we need through and proceed to the general election”.

House of Lords: Remote Participation and Hybrid Sittings

Earl Attlee Excerpts

Thursday 20th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to debate these matters and I fully agree with the approach of my noble friend Lord Howe. I join noble Lords in expressing gratitude to the staff and the administration for making remote working possible and so effective.

Recently, I was looking at my old prep school reports. I was not surprised to read that I was an academic disaster area—I was a very late developer and suffered badly with what we now know as dyslexia. The surprise was when the headmaster started regularly observing my citizenship and desire to help others for no direct reward. This may explain why I am not a very good businessman. Most of us agree that our role in the House of Lords is to revise legislation, to be an additional check on the Executive and, most importantly, to be a source of expertise. My expertise is broadly as a logistician, combined with practical engineering knowledge. I venture to suggest that very few Members of either House can match my practical experience of road transport operations or military logistics. Many other noble Lords have deep expertise in their own fields. We combine our own knowledge with our interpersonal skills to be effective parliamentarians.

The system of allowances has allowed me to undertake my parliamentary duties since 1992, albeit with a modest standard of living, and I have been content. There is of course, as the late Earl Onslow delicately put it, an element of hypocrisy with the system, but it works. Apart from my pay as a reserve officer, I have not been renumerated or otherwise influenced by anyone. My personal finances were at one point predicated on sitting for about 140 days per year, for about £300 per day. I have acted on my personal honour and addressed issues on which I have expertise. Of course, I ranged more widely when on the Front Bench

However, since 2010, Conservative Prime Ministers have been stuffing this House with as many Peers as possible, largely from London and the Home Counties, ostensibly to refresh the Benches but, I believe, to make full reform unavoidable. We all know that it is hard to devise something that will work better which is not accompanied by unacceptable risks. As a result, the House is becoming increasingly subject to adverse comments, which the leadership appears to do nothing to rebut. Worse still, our system of allowance has been altered, so that only Select Committee attendance, voting or speaking in debate is recognised. All the other, and arguably more important, work that we do is not recognised, whether it takes place on a sitting day or on other days.

Most of my parliamentary work is done driving a desk or attending meetings, whether formal or informal. I am not so foolish as to claim £162 for pressing a button to vote or for making a short speech. As a result of this bizarre system, I have not made any claims since 10 March last year, and I do not undertake much parliamentary work unless there is an overriding public interest in doing so. Nevertheless, I have had parliamentary effect, including in persuading DfT Ministers to undertake a policy review which they had not originally intended to do.

There are numerous serious adverse effects of this system of allowances. Noble Lords are putting their names down to speak in debates where they are not known to have any particular expertise, thus crowding out the genuine experts, as observed by my noble friend Lord Howe. He also drew attention to the increased number of Divisions. Despite my considerable relevant experience, including in both the military and overseas aid operations, I made no contribution to the overseas operations Bill, because I would not have been rewarded for doing so. Altruism goes only so far. Instead, since March last year, I have been engaged in other highly commendable pro bono activities, some of which, directly or indirectly, support the defence of the United Kingdom.

My plan to glide past retirement is going well, although I might advance it a bit. However, we should spare a thought for those who are subject to the moral outrage of being unpaid Ministers but who are not known to be fabulously wealthy. Even more serious is the position of some newer Members of the House who have altered their personal arrangements in accordance with the modest income stream that I have referred to but now find it largely cut off through no fault of their own. In this regard, I look forward to hearing from my noble friend Lord Shinkwin.

Business of the House

Earl Attlee Excerpts

Thursday 4th April 2019 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Ridley]

From opinion polls, and that is the best evidence we have.

As I said, one can be in favour or against the proposition that we should leave the European Union, or that we should leave it with or without a deal. I am acutely aware that, as we have seen in the past five minutes, most in this echo chamber of remain are wholly against it and are absolutely out of touch with people all over the country. However, we cannot deny that it is a matter of solemn importance, and, if the Bill goes through in the fashion proposed today, without proper debate and scrutiny, a lot of people out there may be very angry. They will be angry with us not because we spent a lot of time talking about procedure; they will be angry because we rammed through something without proper scrutiny and debate. I say again that the integrity of the constitution is the key point.

I am no historian, but I know that, for good reasons, we have arrived over the centuries at the delicate balance of powers we have in this complicated democracy. One of the key points is that all government Ministers are answerable in Parliament. Who is accountable in Parliament for the Bill that we will be asked to pass today? Will it be Sir Oliver Letwin, Yvette Cooper, Hilary Benn or Mr Bercow himself? They cannot be dragged to the Dispatch Box in the same way that a Minister can be, and they are not represented in this House by a junior Minister—unless the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, is now Sir Oliver Letwin’s junior Minister; I am sure she would be very good at it.

As my noble friend Lord Forsyth said, from the way Sir Oliver was talking in the Commons last night, in a shockingly disrespectful way towards this House, it certainly sounds as though this is the way he sees it. I remind noble Lords that he said:

“My hon. Friend may also wish to know, although I fear that it will also be of no comfort to him, that there is overwhelming support in the House of Lords for this measure”.


How dare he say that in advance of us even seeing the Bill? He went on to say that,

“we therefore anticipate that it will, in all probability … pass through the House of Lords very rapidly”.

He took the House for granted, and I hope that irritates noble Lords as much as it irritates me. He went on:

“To that end, the House of Lords has in fact already passed a motion that provides for the expeditious consideration of exactly this form of Bill”.—[Official Report, Commons, 3/4/19; col. 1067.]


Noble Lords will see how precedent works: suddenly, something we did in January comes back to haunt us. He went on:

“My sense, for what it is worth, is that although the House of Lords procedures are arcane and it is impossible to determine from the outside the time that will be taken, there is very substantial support for the Bill there”.—[Official Report, Commons, 3/4/19; col. 1071.]


Thus we are dismissed with a wave of President Letwin’s hand.

My time is nearly up. Let me end by saying that I find it peculiar that so many in this House urgently wish to rule out leaving the European Union without a withdrawal agreement, but show none of the same urgency and determination to rule out not leaving the European Union at all.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, my anxiety about going into Committee on the Bill today is that we will be doing so without the benefit of political commentators writing in broadsheet newspapers, without watching important television programmes and, most importantly, without taking account of academic constitutional experts. We will be sailing blind.

[Viscount Trenchard (Con)]

My Lords, I should like to speak in favour of the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Ridley. I had wanted to speak in favour of the two previous amendments but, because of the closure Motions, I was unable to do so.

I strongly agree with my noble friend that this House will not bring itself into disrepute in the country at large by using all the manoeuvres and powers available to it to prevent this Bill being passed by your Lordships today. The Bill has been passed improperly in another place, which has usurped powers reserved to the Executive in a way that is quite unforgivable when this country faces a difficult situation involving negotiations with the European Union and time is running out.

The Bill is designed to remove from the Prime Minister the ability to exercise the royal prerogative powers remaining to her to resist instructions by the European Union with regard to her request for an extension. She should be entitled to refuse a very bad deal. The European Union is likely to agree to her request for an extension—even for a long extension, God forbid. There is a huge majority in the country for bringing this matter to a conclusion as soon as possible. Any agreement with the European Union that resulted in a delay of another year or two years would be unwelcome, with ensuing costs to business, continuing uncertainty and the inability to make investment decisions that provide jobs for people. That is already happening—this situation is already costing companies more than might have been the case. Companies have got ready for no deal. I did not want no deal; I wanted a sensible, agreed deal—a Canada-plus-type deal.

I shall not, however, speak about Brexit now, as this is a procedural debate. It is quite proper for your Lordships’ House to have a procedural debate in circumstances where the House of Commons has broken its conventions, even on a matter of huge constitutional importance.

Furthermore, I am not sure that the Motion in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, is right. It says,

“further to the resolution of the House of 28 January that Her Majesty’s Government should provide sufficient time for this House”,

but it then goes on to contradict that. As I understand it, Her Majesty’s Government did not provide the time; the time was stolen by the noble Baroness and her associates, just as the time was stolen in the House of Commons.

We are seeing a complete breakdown in the rules by which our parliamentary democracy operates. In those circumstances, it is not correct for noble Lords opposite to suggest that this House will bring itself into disrepute or be regarded as overstepping the mark. This House is defending the majority of the people who want what they voted for to be delivered, and the Bill is designed to prevent that. It is quite improper for proper debate on the Bill to be truncated in the way proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, and I strongly support the amendment of my noble friend Lord Ridley. It is a reasonable amendment: it suggests that we debate the Bill over three days, taking one or two stages on each day. That is quite a reasonable compromise, and I very much hope that your Lordships will support it.

Role of the Lord Speaker

Earl Attlee Excerpts

Thursday 30th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the extremely experienced and noble Lord, Lord Grocott, for tabling his QSD. I have agreed with much of his counsel in the past, and even today, but on this occasion, I think we should maintain the status quo and rely entirely on our excellent system of self-regulation.

I observed that when I was a junior Member of the Opposition Benches, I had no difficulty in getting my fair share of questions, even though I do not particularly have the gift of the gab. When I have guests attend Question Time, they often marvel to me how your Lordships know when to get up, as the Lord Speaker appears to have no role and very often my noble friend the Leader has no need to intervene. When she comes to respond, perhaps she can tell the House how often she has had to intervene. I also take this opportunity to say how well she performs her duties and to express our gratitude to her.

No doubt, many noble Lords will focus on Question Time, and I shall point out some of the advantages of the current arrangement that could be lost with any changes. I expect many noble Lords will make the point that the Leader has a better view of the House than the Lord Speaker. Although, unlike the Speaker in the Commons the Lord Speaker sits on his own, in the House of Lords, the Leader, the Government Chief Whip and the Clerk of the Parliaments work together as a team, especially at Question Time. Either the Chief Whip or the Leader will create a matrix to ensure that each Bench has its fair share of supplementaries. The Leader will need to be seen by the House as being scrupulously fair or she will risk losing the confidence of the House, and then be in danger of losing her job.

For ordinary legislative business, Statements and time-limited debates, the role of the Leader is usually delegated to a junior Government Whip, who seeks to express or suggest the sense of the House, in the same way as the Leader. Your Lordships will recall that I have performed this role, and I sought to do so as a servant of the House and not of the Government. I had no difficulty in helping the House manage Statements: it was quite easy. Once, when I got the sense of the House slightly wrong, I was able to say, “My Lords, this is a self-regulating House and a self-regulating Committee. If the Committee wants to hear more from the noble Lord, he should continue”. That is what self-regulation is about.

When noble Lords address the House, they generally do so looking very carefully at the Minister and the Government Front Bench in order to gauge their reaction. They do not look at the Lord Speaker. If a noble Lord is running out of his time, the Whip has a number of non-verbal techniques, which can be escalated, and these can easily be detected by the noble Lord speaking long before the Whip need rise to the Dispatch Box. In these circumstances, noble Lords know that they should drop their remaining points and conclude. Indeed, when I did have to go to the Dispatch Box to intervene on a noble Lord regarding time, I regarded it as a failure on my part. The beauty of this arrangement is that the Whip’s activity will not be seen on the video link, and no guests will be aware—they will not realise that the Government Whip is giving non-verbal directions to the speaker.

I have another reason for being very cautious about expanding the role of the Lord Speaker. The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, was very careful to say that this would be only a very small change, but I fear that we are talking about a slippery slope—the noble Lord correctly anticipated that. With the sensible exception of money Bills, nothing on God’s earth can prevent a Peer tabling an amendment and having it debated to the extent that he or she desires and then if, necessary, calling a Division. In the Commons, amendments are grouped and selected by the Speaker, obviously,

“for the convenience of the House”.

We should be ever so careful about expanding the role of the Lord Speaker, lest we eventually find ourselves in the position of Back-Bench Members of the House of Commons, who are severely constrained.

My final point is this. I expect that the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, believes that he has a unique parliamentary style which will in time make it necessary to give the Lord Speaker increased powers. The noble Lord looks shocked at that, and I can assure him that this is not the case. When my noble friend Lord Trefgarne was a Minister, he had to enjoy the antics of Lord Hatch of Lusby, who had a similar style—I am getting gestures from the Opposition Benches, but I am not yet getting anything non-verbal from the Government Whip. When I arrived it was Lord Molloy. Now it is the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, and I can assure him that the House has no difficulty in accommodating him or his predecessors, or in enjoying his contributions.

Outcome of the European Union Referendum

Earl Attlee Excerpts

Tuesday 5th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Manzoor (LD)]

My Lords, the tone adopted by some leading politicians at times during the referendum debate was nothing short of racial incitement to hatred, and demonstrated the worst of British politics. I was so dismayed and concerned by the tone and exaggerations of the debate that I wrote to the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Jeremy Heywood, on 13 June drawing his attention to the fact that some Ministers were failing to comply with the Ministerial Code and the seven principles of public life, which include maintaining the highest standards of integrity and honesty. Despite the scaremongering about minority groups, immigrants, Turkey joining the EU and Turkish Muslims “swamping” the UK, we must not confuse the leave vote with people who are entirely far right in their political views or who are mostly racist or xenophobic.

I agree with my colleague, Tim Farron, who stated that it has been absolutely heart-breaking to see the spike in racist and xenophobic attacks following the referendum. Many warned that the rhetoric of Farage and the leave campaign could lead to a rise in the intolerance we are now seeing. We must be clear that the outcome of the referendum was not a green light to xenophobia. It must not be allowed to damage the multicultural, multi-ethnic and multifaith society that Britain is and will remain. The vote to leave the EU is not, and should not be seen as, a victory for the far right. No serious leader should fall back to regressive policies that demonise minorities or communities, or put in place policies which undermine our civil liberties.

The tone used in debates around immigration was disgraceful, and those politicians who took part in such attacks should hang their heads in disgrace. It is imperative now that all politicians give clear leadership in uniting and condemning racism and xenophobia, and work towards stressing the importance of the key roles that EU nationals play in making Britain—the UK—a success in every aspect of our daily lives. We are all, mostly, a nation of immigrants; it is merely a question of time.

I accept that there are legitimate questions and concerns about the state of our public sector and the services within it. I will share some facts with your Lordships on polling, which were thus: those working full-time or part-time voted to remain in the EU. Most of those not working voted to leave. More than half of those retired on a private pension voted to leave, as did two-thirds of those retired on a state pension. Around two-thirds of council and housing association tenants voted to leave. Among those whose formal education ended at secondary school or earlier, a large majority voted to leave. There is a pattern here and the polls demonstrate that many disadvantaged people in poorer communities voted to leave the EU because—I have heard them say this—they had nothing more to lose.

David Cameron has often expressed a simple message: “If you want to work hard and get on in life, this Government will be on your side”. Yet the terrible tax credit cuts envisaged by the Chancellor, which would have affected over 3 million Britons and their supplements to low-paid work, exposed the hollowness of this claim. Although the Chancellor reversed these cuts, when people move onto universal credit, regrettably, many of the larger and poorer families will again be disadvantaged. Yesterday, it was announced that there would be a cut in corporation tax. This is likely to mostly benefit larger businesses and corporations. Those benefits are not likely to translate into many more jobs, and so will do little for those needing help and support in disadvantaged communities. Indeed, cuts in corporation tax may lead to further cuts in public spending, such as in the NHS and in the welfare budget, as the Chancellor tries to make difficult ends meet.

Clearly, successive Governments have failed to listen, and act upon, improving the lives of the most disadvantaged and vulnerable in our society. You have only to visit places in the north of England to see derelict housing, poor transport infrastructure and struggling communities. Governments have talked the talk, but talk and slogans have not translated into concerted action; the northern powerhouse is one such example. Of course, many people have legitimate concerns about access to hospitals, GPs, good schools, good transport infrastructure and affordable housing, and to decently paid, permanent jobs. But the poor and the disadvantaged feel these issues more acutely, because they often find themselves and their families trapped in low-paid jobs and inadequate and expensive housing, with greater levels of ill health. Social justice and reform must work for everyone, and ensuring that everyone has the best chance in life must surely be a right for all, and not a right for only the privileged or those with power and influence.

The result of the referendum to leave the EU is likely to mean that inflation rises and that benefits continue to be frozen. This will hit the spending power of people on disability benefits, those who are jobseekers and those on low pay. Brexit-voting pensioners have already seen their annuity values crashing with the flight into gilts. Clearly, the disadvantaged people in every area who voted out will be worst hit by job losses and high inflation. What will the Government do to mitigate against this?

The Government have set out their life chances strategy to tackle poverty, aimed at transforming the lives of the poorest in Britain, with a focus on tackling the root causes of poverty, family breakdown, worklessness, drug and alcohol addiction, serious personal debt and assessing educational attainment at 16 years of age. But they omitted to include income as a means of getting on in life. The Government also need to look at reskilling and upskilling people in poorly paid and part-time jobs.

We need a new and inclusive vision, with new and honest politics that give hope to all in our nation—but most importantly to those who need us the most. We want an inclusive, tolerant, equal and fair society, committed to a new set of values of fairness and hope.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

The noble Baroness made a fascinating speech, and I am sure that the House was very interested—but where did she get the data to say which way individual voters voted?

[Baroness Manzoor]

My Lords, they were from polls that Lord Ashcroft undertook, and they were mentioned in the Guardian newspaper as well.

House of Lords Reform

Earl Attlee Excerpts

Tuesday 15th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I apologise for not being present for the majority of the debate. I put my name down to speak in this debate as well as the defence debate before the usual channels decided to separate the two, and I could not decide which one to scrap from.

The Leader of the House urged us to keep it simple. The role of the House of Lords is to revise legislation, be an additional check on the Executive and be a source of expertise. In answer to the Lib Dems, it is not clear to me why you need to be elected to perform that function. However, to be a revising Chamber, it must be possible to defeat the Government of the day in your Lordships’ House, or at least somewhere in Parliament, otherwise legislation cannot be revised. The Leader and the Prime Minister need to understand that you can alter the arithmetic in this House as much as you like, but you will not stop the Government of the day being defeated.

I can remember that, in the early 1990s, despite the huge Tory preponderance, the then Railways Bill nearly died in your Lordships’ House. As noble Lords have already said, of course the Government of the day must be able to get their business through the House. The simple answer is for the Leader to tell the Prime Minister to stop appointing new Peers and making us a laughing stock. However, it is a bit late for that, as—in my opinion and that of many of my noble friends—we already have far too many Liberal Democrat Peers.

I was intrigued by the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong of Ilminster, and my noble friends Lord Astor and Lord Ridley that we should consider some sort of cull. We should consider these suggestions very carefully. I am not sure about the committee component of the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong, because it hands too much power to the Whips and to the system. In the last cull— in which I took part, in 2000—all the affected Peers were electors as well. It might be a better system, if a bit tougher on the electors. It was indeed very painful in 2000, because we were electing on the basis of capability and availability, and nothing else. It was quite tough to write down the list of Peers you wanted to consider. Obviously, the Front Bench was fairly secure, but with the middle-ranking people, you looked at the name and thought, “He’s a lovely chap, but actually we don’t need him”, and put a line through it. It was a very tough process, but we might well have to go through it again.

The noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford, was right to draw attention to the snags of a cull. I did see one hereditary Peer make a strategic move from these Benches to the Benches opposite, but the machinery on the Benches opposite was very clever and he was not successful in staying in your Lordships’ House. My noble friend Lord Horam advised us to avoid legislation. If we wanted to go down the route of a cull, we could achieve this just by choking off the allowances of unsuccessful Peers, because in those circumstances they would probably decide to gracefully retire.

I have no doubt that this House is far too big in terms of active Peers. I say to my noble friend the Leader that even before 2010 it was starting to become a bit tight. In earlier years, if I got fed up with what the Government were doing and Written Answers were not really giving me the right answers, I could roll into the Minute Room and say to the clerk, “Oral Question—first available slot to ask Her Majesty’s Government”. You cannot do that now—you have to queue up—but in those days there were fewer active Peers and it was rather easier to operate. At the very least, therefore, we need no more new Peers and we will have to consider some sort of cull mechanism along the lines suggested by noble Lords.

Palace of Westminster Committee

Earl Attlee Excerpts

Thursday 9th July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

To follow on from my noble friend’s point, on a related matter, he is quite right that this is an issue that affects both Houses of Parliament but there are many other issues, one of which is highly relevant, pertinent and newsworthy at the moment: English votes on English laws. It has been suggested that the rules relating to that could be made in the Commons without any proper joint consultation with Members of this House. There should be at least a Joint Committee of some sort to look at the implications for both Chambers of changes of this magnitude.

I do not use the word “disgrace” lightly, but it is a disgrace that we are making fundamental constitutional changes by an order in the Commons without any reference to us whatever. Changing the legislative process, in which we are intimately involved, unilaterally in one House without any consultation, let alone agreement, between the two Houses is unacceptable. I put it to the noble Baroness respectfully that she, as Leader of the House, has a duty to those of us here, particularly the Scots, not to allow our rights to be in any way diminished by any changes in the constitutional arrangements—at least, not without both Houses being fully involved.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, returning to the subject of the debate, I urge my noble friend the Leader to carefully consider the need for full debate in your Lordships’ House before the committee does too much work.

[Lord Lea of Crondall (Lab)]

My Lords, is the logic of what is being said not so much whether or not this or that decision is the correct one but that this needs to be a two-tier consultation exercise? The noble Baroness the Leader may care to say a bit more about the process of selecting who goes on to the Joint Committee, as has been said, but there are also some leading questions about the 40-year impact and so on that surely need to be brought back to the House for people to be able to comment on, when they have been considered more systematically by the Joint Committee, before final decisions are taken. It should not just be a question of saying yes or no to a report from a Joint Committee.