House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) (Abolition of By-Elections) Bill [HL]

Debate between Earl of Caithness and Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood

Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 15th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, prompted me to rise when I was not going to speak on this amendment. He quoted again the odds of becoming a Member of the House of Lords and said that the balance is tilted in favour of the hereditary Peers. Does he agree that once hereditary Peers are removed, the quickest and easiest way to get into this House is to become an MP? A third of the House are ex-MPs and that proportion will go up. Does he agree that that is an equally unjust way to fill the House of Lords, and that the right way is to hold elections?

[Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood]

My Lords, I suggest that a feature of this group of amendments—indeed, of all the others too with the single exception of Amendment 2A, moved by the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde—is the destruction of the Bill’s essential purpose: to abolish hereditary Peers for the future but keep our present invaluable 90, or 92. The original proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, was at least consistent with the Bill in the sense that he was prepared, as he said, to accept the abolition of future elections provided that we introduce a statutory HOLAC but that is not true of the rest of these amendments.