House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Earl of Dundee Excerpts

Monday 10th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Devon (CB)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to speak to Amendment 65 in my name, which is a further variation on the introduction of a retirement age. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, for adding his name. I would also like to thank the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, who discussed this amendment with me, and who addressed the topic so wisely in his speech at Second Reading.

As with the other amendments in this group, Amendment 65 gives effect to the Labour Party manifesto commitment. However, contrary to the other retirement-age amendments, this one introduces important leeway for those who join your Lordships after the age of 70, as it provides that retirement is at 80 or the 10th anniversary of the Member’s introduction to the House, whichever is the later. This is an important distinction, as it does away with the arbitrary 80 year-old age limit. Having noted the number of recent appointments of Members over the age of 70, my amendment would permit such Members to enjoy at least a full decade of activity in your Lordships’ House, irrespective of the age at which they are appointed.

I should perhaps note in the spirit of full disclosure that I am not an octogenarian. Indeed, as a hereditary Peer in his late 40s, I will likely be removed from this House before I turn 50, let alone 80, so I have no dog in the fight. However, I have hugely appreciated the wise contributions of elder Peers and consider the sagacity of our membership to be one of the House’s most valuable features. I remember vividly a Cross-Bench discussion on the constitutional crisis arising from Boris Johnson’s ill-advised efforts to prorogue Parliament, during which a wise voice piped up, saying, “It wasn’t as bad as this during the Suez crisis”.

Just as hereditary Peers provide a length of institutional memory that spans centuries, so individual Members over the age of 80 provide an invaluable personal memory that spans decades. We abandon that at our peril in our rush for youth and the appearance of vigour. Amendment 65 permits us to temper the age-based guillotine, at least a little. On that basis, I recommend it to your Lordships.

[The Earl of Dundee (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friends Lord Blencathra and Lord Hailsham eloquently compare 80, 85 and 90 as different options for a retirement age from this House. Within this grouping, and following my own amendment in favour of 90 as a retirement age, I would therefore also support Amendment 101D in the name of my noble friend Lord Blencathra, which calls for a resolution to enact this.

The argument is that, compared with the other options, a retirement age of 90 far better assists a transitional House, a reformed House and, not least, the present House itself.

Regarding the necessary transitional period between the present House and a reformed one, as your Lordships are aware, a short while ago the noble Lord, Lord Burns, produced a very useful report. One of its recommendations was that, in a given year, the collective total of life Peers who retire or die are replaced at 50%. This means that, in a natural way and over not too many years, current numbers of temporal Peers, at just under 800, will come down to 600.

Obviously, numbers would come down more quickly if life Peers were coerced to retire at either 80 or 85. Yet surely it would be much wiser not to enforce that. Instead, with a retirement age of 90, the transitional period can be expected to be over five years, with the advantage that some new Peers, when they first begin to serve for a fixed period of time, will do so alongside some existing life Peers, thereby becoming all the more able to develop and uphold the skills and democratic efficacy of this House as a revising Chamber.

Then, for a reformed House, there will be many excellent candidates who have just retired from their professional careers, yet who are still prepared to dedicate their time and considerable abilities here. If new Peers serve for 15 years—and I agree with my noble friend Lord Hailsham that they should—a retirement age of 90 thus enables a commencement age of up to 75.

Regarding the present House, research figures already on the face of this Bill give us the mathematics, as my noble friend Lord Blencathra has just reminded us. By 2029, while a retirement age of 80 would cull 327 life Peers, and that of 85 would cull 187 life Peers, a retirement age of 90 would remove 78 instead. Clearly, that is a much more balanced and acceptable figure. In any case, before reaching the age of 90, life Peers playing an active part here after the age of 80 should surely be left to decide for themselves when they will retire.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to my Amendment 86, which forms part of this group. The noble Baroness the Lord Privy Seal was not in her place in the last debate when I pointed out that I had asked for this amendment—which was initially down to be debated on its own—to be grouped with these amendments so that we can deal with expeditiously in recognition of the points that she and other noble Lords have made.

I raised my concerns with an arbitrary age or time limit in our debate on the last group, so I will not address the merits of the other amendments that noble Lords have moved so far in this group, other than to ask one question. When I was reading my copy of the Daily Mirror this weekend, I saw that the Leader of the House had given an interview saying that she would like to move quite quickly on the matter of a retirement age, which was in the Labour manifesto. She said it might not even require legislation for that to be done. So, to echo the point raised by my noble friend Lord Blencathra a moment ago, if your Lordships’ House votes during the passage of the Bill for a retirement age that enjoys the support of most noble Lords in this House, will the Government keep it in the Bill and implement it so that they can act with the speed the noble Baroness says she would like to move on this?

My Amendment 86 would make it clear that a peerage can be conferred on anybody over the age of 16. I am sure that, when some noble Lords saw this on the Marshalled List, it caused a few raised eyebrows and they may have wondered whether the point was entirely serious. It is—I have tabled this amendment in order to probe the Government’s thinking in relation to their other manifesto commitment to lower to 16 the age of voting for elections to another place. Is it the Government’s intention also to lower to 16 the age at which somebody can stand for election to the House of Commons, or do they plan to give 16 and 17 year-olds the vote but not yet give them the opportunity to put themselves forward for election if they find that there is nobody on the ballot paper who meets their approval?

As noble Lords will know, for many years after the Representation of the People Act 1969, there was such a discrepancy. People could vote from the age of 18 but had to wait until 21 to stand for election. That was changed in time for the 2010 general election—I think the noble Baroness the Leader of the House was a Minister in the Cabinet Office—and the two ages were finally brought into line. I would be grateful if the Minister who is responding could say a bit more about the Government’s intention on the age for candidacy as well as for election.

Whatever the answer to that question, I have tabled this amendment to see the view of His Majesty’s Government on allowing 16 and 17 year-olds into your Lordships’ House to scrutinise the decisions that are made by a lower House which is to be elected and perhaps also partly filled by 16 and 17 year-olds. A bit of scepticism sometimes accompanies the arrival of a relatively younger Member of your Lordships’ House to these Benches, but we have seen in recent weeks and through the valiant work of my noble friend Lady Owen of Alderley Edge, supported by Peers of all ages from across your Lordships’ House to tackle the scourge of deepfake pornography, the benefits of having a multigenerational House, looking at issues that affect our fellow citizens of varying ages.

There is a barrier to having such a multigenerational House in our Standing Orders. Standing Order No. 2 says:

“No Lord under the age of one and twenty … shall be permitted to sit in the House”.


I see that that Standing Order was adopted on 22 May 1685, so, while it is relatively recent in the history of your Lordships’ House, it is a Standing Order of fairly long standing. Does the Minister think that this 17th century barrier should still be in place, given the Government’s wider commitment to give 16 and 17 year-olds the right to vote for and perhaps stand for election to the other House of Parliament?