House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Debate between Earl of Dundee and Lord Lucas

Committee stage
Tuesday 1st April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 95, I will speak to my other amendments in this group. I very much hope that we will be able to amend this Bill so that the House of Lords, as it carries on from it, is a great deal better at improving and reforming itself, and being a reflective, ever-improving place than the House of Lords has been in the 30 or so years that I have been here. This amendment is a small attempt to add some drive and mechanism for self-improvement to the Bill. I beg to move.

[The Earl of Dundee (Con)]

My Lords, within this group, I will refer to my Amendments 96 and 99. Amendment 96 focuses on four connected aspects, including the quality of legislative and government scrutiny that the House of Lords provides; the relationship between His Majesty’s Government and Parliament; the balance of power between His Majesty’s Government and Parliament; and the example that the Parliament of the United Kingdom sets to the Commonwealth, member states of the Council of Europe and the rest of the world.

Within 12 months of this Bill becoming an Act, a duty would be imposed on the Secretary of State to produce a detailed review of how these four aspects have been affected. Central to them is

“the quality of legislative and government scrutiny that the House of Lords provides”,

as expressed in proposed new subsection (b). Your Lordships will agree that it is that attribute of our present House which must continue within a reformed House, where its quality function takes precedent and to which membership composition is a secondary and subservient consideration.

Thereby, this consideration connects to the three other aspects, beginning with the relationship between His Majesty’s Government and Parliament. As indicated in proposed new subsection (a), within a reformed House, the sustained quality of function of the present House has to enable the same constructive working relationship as that at present between this House as a revising Chamber of Parliament and the Government in another place, the House of Commons.

This is not so much to challenge or contradict legislation proposed by the Government, but instead constantly and competently to revise and improve whatever that proposed legislation might be. Consequently, as a by-product and in the light of the huge number of amendments accepted every year, cross-party solidarity and resolve develop among parliamentarians, both here and in another place, to help the Government of the day to improve their initial versions of proposed legislation.

That in turn reflects an achievable balance of power between His Majesty’s Government and Parliament, which is referred to by proposed new subsection (c). Within the United Kingdom, such balance is dependent on the democratic forces of local authorities and regional Parliaments, and the opportunity for those energies to contribute towards a desirable balance of power between the Westminster national government and Parliament.

This opportunity comes as a result of a reformed Westminster second Chamber to which the majority of its temporal Members, serving for 15 years, might be indirectly or directly elected, coming to the House with the authority of parliamentarians representing all parts of the United Kingdom and therefore assisting the balance between His Majesty’s Government and Parliament—exactly in the necessary direction implied by Quintin Hogg when, in view of our voting system allowing large government majorities for one political party or another, he coined the term “elective dictatorship” as he warned of the risk within the United Kingdom of political imbalance and extremes. Here, I am very grateful to his son, my noble friend Lord Hailsham, for his support for Amendment 96 and, in particular, of its proposed new subsection (c), in favour of an improved balance between His Majesty’s Government and Parliament.

Proposed new subsection (d) highlights the example that the United Kingdom Parliament sets to the Commonwealth, the 46 member states of the Council of Europe and the rest of the world, in which regard your Lordships will agree that if a reformed second Chamber can strengthen democracy in the United Kingdom, by example it may be able to do so elsewhere as well.

Amendment 99 also refers to the duty of the Secretary of State to carry out a review within 12 months of the new Act, yet it also outlines various other proposed amendments already debated. All these have in common that they seek to sustain the present quality of function of this House, where numbers in a reformed House are capped at 620, with 20 Lords spiritual and 600 temporal Members, of whom the majority are of political Members, with the government and opposition parties having exactly the same numbers, and where, through HOLAC, the numbers of non-political Cross-Benchers are increased.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Debate between Earl of Dundee and Lord Lucas

Committee stage
Wednesday 12th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

I have Amendment 40 in this group. I find myself very much in agreement with the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, which is a travesty of history. My route forward would be by Amendment 32, because I think it leaves the initiative much more with this House than with the Government. I would say, if the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Sentamu, were in his place, that St Matthew recorded some excellent advice about getting to grips with your adversary as soon as possible as the best way to deal with something. I think it is rather more likely that the next four and a half years will see the second coming of our Lord than a second Bill on the House of Lords, so to have something like Amendment 32 would be a great advantage.

The thing that unites us all is a determination to improve the way this House serves the public. There are many aspects in which we can work on this. The amendments we have in front of us are restricted by the nature of the Bill, but I absolutely think that this is the right moment to bring them forward and discuss them.

In my years in the House, I can remember one occasion when a Starred Question made a difference to government policy, which was when the Government were asked what their plans were to celebrate the 50th anniversary of El Alamein, in 1992. The answer was, “There are no such plans; it is the Germans’ turn to celebrate anniversaries this year”. With a House full of veterans, that led to a fairly rapid reverse of policy. I cannot recall one since. Much as we enjoy Questions, I think we should be much more critical about whether what we are doing actually has a function. I believe we should commission outside research, be self-critical, try to self-improve as a House and find ways of doing better.

When it comes to looking at our expectations of participation, I very much understand what the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, and my noble friend Lord Attlee were saying. There are many ways in which this happens. The form in proposed new Section 2A(1) in my amendment, asking people to sign a declaration to, as it were, say on their honour that they are participating fully in the business of the House, may be a good way forward. What the noble Lord, Lord Desai, suggests as a way of measuring that is certainly something to explore. We could also explore following the advice of Elon Musk and each week writing a postcard to the leader of our groups naming five achievements. I think that would put some of us on the spot.

In thinking about the worthwhile work this House does, we should focus on committees in all their various forms. That is where I have seen most value delivered and, in terms of what my noble friend Lord Norton says about fitting our membership to our function, that is very much the direction in which we should be trying to go.

[The Earl of Dundee (Con)]

My Lords, as has been said by practically everybody, participation statistics—such as simply the numbers of annual interventions by any Peer, without enough reference to the contents, let alone to the parliamentary usefulness and quality of those interventions—are thoroughly misleading.

At the same time, adjudications should obviously take into account how a Peer may have contributed in the usual ways through speeches, Written Questions, committee work, voting and so on.

Your Lordships may agree with what I think has emerged very clearly from this debate: rather than going only by participation numbers, a far clearer picture would emerge from assessments made by a cross-party commission set up for this purpose, as proposed in Amendment 63, and just now so eloquently explained and spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell.