House of Lords Reform (No. 2) Bill

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Friday 28th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I pay my tribute to my noble friend Lord Steel for his persistence in this measure, but what will history say of the once-leader of the Liberal Party who vowed to change the House of Lords out of all recognition from what we now know but has his name to a Bill that in Scotland would be described in accolade as peely-wally?

I do not like quite a lot of what is in this Bill, as your Lordships know because I have spoken on it many times before, and I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford, said about Clause 3. I thought he made a very good case for us looking at that measure again. I see no justification for the 12 months as a cut-off date solely because it follows the House of Commons. It is one of the sadnesses of this House that we are increasingly following the House of Commons, which is not a wise route in which I think we should travel.

It has been mentioned that Dr Russell has put forward a suggestion that the House of Lords could be used as a stepping stone to the House of Commons. I think that she has a point, but a limited point. It is interesting that the House of Lords Reform Bill of 2012 said that there should be a four-year and one-month period before a former Member of the House of Lords was able to stand for election in the House of Commons. My caveat to that is that it should work both ways: a Member from the House of Commons should not be allowed to come here for four years and one month. We welcome some of the ex MPs, but we are hugely distorted by them. After the next election, there will be another influx of MPs. We have had quite enough from former Prime Ministers Blair and Brown and I am sad to say that I must include Mr Cameron and Mr Clegg in that. That has distorted the numbers in this House. We are all concerned with numbers in this House, and it is hoped that resignation and banning the non-attendees will help that number to decline. It will not. I think that it was the noble Lord, Lord Jay, who said that one day the House is going to topple over. I agree with him. The numbers will ratchet up. The age profile changes in this House. As one becomes older one is less able to attend, and Governments seem intent on winning Divisions so they just appoint more Peers. It does not matter which Government; they are all at fault, as the noble Lord, Lord Davies, said.

There has been talk of retirement. My noble friend Lord Jenkin of Roding said that there should be some sort of recognition of that. I immediately became concerned. I thought that this was perhaps a bad route. If we are going to have some sort of recognition of the service of somebody who has had the privilege of sitting in the Chamber of this House, I am not in support of that. Perhaps that is the difference between a life Peer and an hereditary Peer. I quite see that they might be allowed access to the Palace as a whole, but there should be no great ceremony in the Chamber of this House when we have been given the huge privilege—for whatever reason—of sitting in this Chamber. I agree that the introduction is right, but one can either go gracefully and peacefully in one’s sleep, or in other ways, or one can retire, but there should be no great fuss in the Chamber about it.

The noble Lord, Lord Haskel, who I am glad to see back in his place, made his usual rant about the hereditary Peers. Let us look at the statistics. Who are the people who attend the most, who serve on the committees the most, who go into Divisions the most? It is the hereditary Peers. They are the very people that the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, said in his report that the Labour Party was looking for: people who perhaps had jobs outside but who attended on a regular basis. May the life Peers take note.

House of Lords: Size

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Thursday 12th December 2013 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, a Session of Parliament without a regular debate about ourselves would not be the same. We have become so used to having such debates over the past 15 years, or even longer, and our regular navel gazing has become part of each Session. I therefore thank my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth for introducing the debate.

The noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, hit the nail on the head when he said, “What is the purpose of a second Chamber?”. Once you have the role of second Chamber, you can then decide how that is best fulfilled, and on its numbers. However, deciding on a role for the second Chamber depends on the role of the first Chamber—in our case, the House of Commons. Despite joining Europe and many powers going to Europe, both Houses have evolved to the state they are now in, and perhaps we ought to stand back and say what we really want from them.

It was interesting and a matter of concern to read that, despite the low level of scrutiny of legislation in another place, the number of amendments tabled in your Lordships’ House, and the number agreed, have gone down. The statistics on this from the Library are interesting. In the period 2005-06 to 2010, the number of amendments tabled in this House dropped from around 10,000 to about 2,000. We pat ourselves on the back and say that we are doing a good job, but I do not know whether we are. When I cast my mind back 44 years to when I first came here to the job the House was doing then, and a Conservative or whatever Government of the day were defeated, just as today’s Government are defeated, I wonder whether we are doing a better job than our predecessors. There are more people and we are doing more work, but is it better? I am not in a position to answer.

My noble friend Lord Maclennan made a good point when he mentioned the work of the European Union Committee sub-committees. When he said that, I immediately thought of two reports, one of which was on the common fisheries policy. That report had a marked effect on the thinking of the Commission in Brussels, because most of the ideas set out in it were taken up and brought forward as proposals in EC legislation. The other report is one that I have been involved with: the report of Sub-Committee A on the financial transaction tax. It made our Government think again and led to them submitting a legal objection to the Commission. Those are two instances where our reports have had a marked effect, but I wonder whether in the generality, despite some extremely good work, our reports are getting the attention they deserve.

On the question of our work, another statistic that has both surprised and alarmed me is the number of Written Questions that we are putting down. The rate is on an almost perpendicular upward trend at the moment. Each Written Question costs a lot of money to answer and takes up a lot of civil servants’ time. Why has there been this sudden trend? The population of the House has not grown markedly over the past couple of years, and yet the number of Written Questions has, and that is a potential cause for concern.

My noble friend Lord True mentioned the age profile, and of course he is absolutely right. I agree entirely that it is very good that an older House up here complements the young enthusiasm of the Commons, but a closer look at the statistics shows that we now have only 31 Members under the age of 50. I think that some of us regret the passing of the hereditary Peers in 1999, because at least a lot of young people were brought in, which added to the balance of the House. At the same time, 24 Members of the House are over the age of 90, and 13 of them are active. The great majority of the House, something like 66%, is aged between 60 and 80, and the average age is around 70. I cannot think of any job or organisation in the world that I could have been a member of for 44 years and still be under the average age, and I am extremely grateful that I am still here and able to participate. But perhaps it is something that we ought to contemplate.

As long as we have the Prime Minister’s prerogative to create peerages, we are never going to solve the problem of numbers. I do not think that past Prime Ministers, such as Prime Minister Blair and Prime Minister Brown, did this House any good, and in fact I am not certain that my Prime Minister and the Leader of the Liberal Democrat party and Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Clegg, have done us any good with the number of people they have appointed. That has changed the House quite markedly. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, said that the House ought to be politically balanced. To an extent that may be so, but if every five years there is a marked swing in another place, a whole lot of new Peers will have to be created here—

[Baroness Hayman]

I apologise for taking up time in a timed debate, but I did not intend to say that I thought that the House should be politically balanced. I said that I thought there should be some agreement on the parameters of political balance, and on the balance between political appointees and non-political appointees.

[The Earl of Caithness]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for that clarification. However, if one follows the argument that one needs political balance, if there is a dramatic swing in 2015, more Peers will have to be created to reflect that balance. If there is a sudden drop in support for the Labour Party—which I fully anticipate—I am sure that some Labour Peers would want to resign from here in order to get that balance, rather than see the creation of new Conservative Peers.

The suspension of the succession of hereditary Peers has been raised, but that would not be effective. Any Government—particularly a Conservative Government, because our party has the most hereditary Peers—would just appoint life Peers, most of whom would be older than the current possible successors to those hereditaries, so that would not be very good.

I have a couple of suggestions for my noble friend on the Front Bench. Why not create the equivalent of the Irish peerage? We could offer people a peerage, but no right to sit in this House. That would be a good thing. Then there are the ex-MPs, who make up 22.7% of this House. I welcome them. Most are Labour, and have kept this House even though they were all part of a party that wanted to abolish it. However, perhaps there ought to be a five-year moratorium after someone has been an MP before they are offered an active peerage in this House.

Death of a Member: Baroness Thatcher

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Wednesday 10th April 2013 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness]

My Lords, this has been a fascinating afternoon and early evening of paying tribute to an extraordinary lady. I am sure that history will be more accurate as a result. She has been shown to be not only an iron lady but a caring and sensitive woman.

She changed the lives of many of us. I remember sitting in the Lords’ Gallery in another place in 1979 at the vote of no confidence, watching some left-wing Labour MPs singing the “Red Flag” and thinking, “Who is going to be able to change this?”. Mrs Thatcher stopped the rot of what politicians had been doing for so long and what they started to go back to once she had been unceremoniously removed from power. They used to agree to take firm action but, by the time they had got back to their desks, their resolve had started to wane and the condition of the country, as so many have said, deteriorated. She gave not just herself but all of us a belief and a confidence that things could change. It required a woman to give us men and other women that backbone and inspiration and the belief that a country could be changed if you had the commitment.

She changed my life through the kind offices of our great Chief Whip at the time, my noble friend Lord Denham. I was asked to become a member of her Government in 1984. My noble friend Lord Hill of Oareford referred to her small, thoughtful actions. I had never met my Prime Minister when I was invited to a reception in Downing Street. I was taken by my kinsman by marriage, the late Earl of Swinton. I said, “David, will you introduce me?”. He did. There was a receiving line with many more important people behind me. Mrs Thatcher stopped, took me out of the line and spent five minutes showing me the pictures and other important things in Downing Street. For any chief executive to take time out with the newest employee of the company is extraordinary. We have heard other, similar tributes. How did that lady manage to find the time every day to make other people feel that they were important?

The noble Lord, Lord Armstrong of Ilminster, mentioned that she was a glutton for hard work and detail. After six months in the Home Office studying prisons day in and day out, I was summoned to a meeting with her and found that she knew far more about prisons than I did at the time. I came out of the meeting thoroughly chastened and realised that unless I learnt more and more I would be one of the next to be sacked from her Government—and rightly, because she was the chief executive. How did she know more about the one little section of the Home Office of which I was in charge, when she had a whole country to run? I thought that that was an amazing example of briefing and retentive memory, as well as of the experience by that stage of having been Prime Minister for a number of years.

There is one aspect that noble Lords have not mentioned. We have talked about how she changed her mind but not about how loyal she was when she had changed her mind. I remember this from my time as a junior Minister. Most of the speeches today have been from former Secretaries of State in another place. I am one of the diminishing band of people who have been elected to this House rather than appointed to it by a Prime Minister and have been part of the Government. When I was at the Department of the Environment, I had a discussion with her and she agreed to change a policy. It was a long and tough discussion that involved various other departments. When she grasped that the policy needed changing, she was the one who led from the front, leaving one carrying the standard behind her. I had never experienced a chief executive like that in all the jobs that I had done in the private sector. I had never experienced that sort of leadership. It was tremendous support for a junior Minister—not just for tea ladies and staff, or Secretaries of State, but for all levels of government. With a Government of 100 people, and given the number of times they change, it is a remarkable lady to whom we pay tribute today.

It is always an honour to be asked to serve your country as a member of a Government. To me it was a particular privilege to be the loyal lieutenant of an amazing lady who changed the way our country operates.

House of Lords Reform

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Tuesday 29th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness]

My Lords, when I saw that I was going to follow the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, I was reminded of that lovely quotation in the book The Leopard:

“Things have to change in order to remain the same”.

It is a delight to see the noble Lord back in his place, and it is a great benefit to this House.

The noble Lord, Lord Richard, reminded us that we are on an eternal roundabout and not making much progress. Although we are not making much progress with reform, the House continually evolves as we adjust our procedures and conventions. To me, one of the conventions that has changed markedly and, I think, for the worse is the number of interruptions in our opening speeches. We are a great debating chamber, one of the finest in the world, but the number of interruptions in opening speeches, particularly today, reduces the value of those speeches, and that is to our detriment.

I was sad when I read the document that my Government put out on 20 May. It says:

“Lords appointments will be made with the objective of creating a second chamber that is reflective of the share of the vote secured by the political parties in the last general election”.

Why was I upset by that? Because the House is large enough as it is. It is increasingly difficult for us to do our job, given the space that we have. The noble Lord, Lord Graham, rightly reminded us that the House was much bigger when there were a number of hereditary Peers, but they did not attend. The average attendance in those days was under 300, if I remember rightly; now it is more like 400, and growing. If we are going to get a whole lot of new Peers, that will mean that attendance increases because they will be the regulars.

It is interesting that the Liberal manifesto said that they wanted to have a fully elected second Chamber with considerably fewer Members than the current House. How small a Chamber should we be? Going by the recent edition of Dod’s, if we wanted a House of 400 people, there would be no one here over the age of 70. That would move me suddenly from the lowest quartile in this House, where I have been for 40 years, into a much higher one. If we wanted a House of 350, the retirement age would have to be 67, so a number of us who have spoken today would be leaving and not returning. There is no doubt in my mind that the key driving force now for reform is the number of people in the House.

I join the many noble Lords who have asked in this debate, “What is our role? What is the point of a second Chamber? What role do the Government really want us to undertake?”. At the moment we consider in great detail, and spend hours debating, legislation that has not even been discussed in another place. We have long debates; we then have a vote, as the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, just said; the Government are defeated; and what happens? It goes down to the other end and most of it is not even discussed there. At the moment we are not asking the other place to think again—we are not even asking it to think. We are an advisory Chamber, not a revising one.

The second Chamber should be a revising Chamber, and that is why I firmly believe that we should be a wholly elected House. That is the only way that we can have some brake on the Executive. The other place is not holding the Executive to account at all, while we are doing a little bit. But we ought to have a much stronger voice and we ought to be much more challenging. We should be a totally elected Chamber, not a partially elected Chamber. I see huge complications in having some Peers appointed and some elected. It would be much cleaner, much better, to have a totally elected House. I have been of that opinion for some years.

The noble Baroness, Lady Royall, said that she felt that the Conservatives were naturally anti-reform. I would have to remind her of the 1958 Act. I would have to remind her also of the 1968 Bill, which was passed in the House of Lords by the hereditary Peers, who were ready to abolish themselves. It was Michael Foot and Enoch Powell in another place who destroyed that Bill. So I take issue with the noble Baroness on her view that we are the party against reform.

The noble Baroness also mentioned a referendum. I found that interesting. I found it hard to believe, too, considering how the Labour Party behaved with regard to a referendum on the Lisbon treaty. Could it be trusted on a referendum on this House? However, the point of a referendum is important. Having listened to a number of noble Lords who have spoken on it today, I believe that what we agree—if we manage to agree anything—should be put to a referendum.

The noble Lord, Lord Steel, has put down his Motion. He knows that I have fought him on his Private Member’s Bills in the past, but, since then, things have changed—we are both very lucky, we are both noble friends. Nevertheless, I shall still fight him on his Private Member’s Bill, most particularly because of its proposals in respect of by-elections for hereditary Peers. Those were an integral part of the 1999 agreement which secured that Bill into legislation and without them it would have been a very different story. It is a major principle for all of us hereditaries and it needs to be retained until there is a major reform of the House of Lords. When there is a major reform it will be a different story, but to do this incrementally and to remove the one plank that saw so many noble friends all around the House leave this Chamber after making such a huge contribution for most of their lives, would be a great mistake. I shall therefore fight my noble friend on his Motion and on his Bill.