House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Earl of Erroll Excerpts

Monday 10th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Trenchard (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 11 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Newby, supported by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, my noble friend Lord Strathclyde and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb.

As I have said in earlier debates, the 1999 agreement always envisaged that the House would, as stage 2 of that agreement, adopt proposals for introducing elected Members to the House of Lords. However, I am not sure that all were firmly agreed that the elected Members should be directly elected. I believe that some kind of indirect election system—perhaps one representing the new estates of the realm, such as the CBI, the TUC, the BMA, the Bar Association, et cetera—should also be considered as an alternative way to introduce a more democratic and representative element of the House’s composition. The difficulty would be in agreeing which organisations should be entitled to select or elect representatives, but the possibility should certainly be explored. An alternative way to select indirectly elected Members of your Lordships’ House might be by granting election or selection powers to devolved legislatures and principal councils.

After the Second World War, and under pressure from the American occupation forces, the Japanese Government introduced constitutional changes that replaced the House of Peers with the directly elected House of Councillors, to which elections from large multimember constituencies are held. This introduced an element of proportional representation. Japan has two elected houses and, while they sometimes clash, the new upper house’s powers are restricted in a similar fashion to those of its predecessor House of Peers, and so it more or less works most of the time. I am not supporting moving directly to an all-elected, alternative second Chamber, but the Japanese example should be closely looked at.

Although I support the outcome that could flow from this amendment, it is wrong to make changes to the membership of the House before shaking the sand out of the shoe. To let the Bill go through with this amendment alone will not guarantee that it would definitely lead to any enactment of a Bill laid before your Lordships’ House and another place.

It is clear that the 1999 agreement was that the 92 hereditary Peers would remain until the enactment of proposals incorporating a democratic element. Nevertheless, I will support this amendment, but I believe the House should also adopt something similar to Amendment 6, as previously debated. I will support my noble friend Lord Lucas if he brings back on Report an amendment that would retain an elected and independent element within your Lordships’ House, which would keep the sand in the shoe. A combination of Amendment 6 and this amendment could well be developed to a level where a programme of change would enjoy a broad level of support across your Lordships’ House.

I also support Amendments 11A and 11B in the name of my noble friend Lord Blencathra, both of which seek to ensure that referenda will be held to make certain that proposals for an elected House really would be enacted with popular support. As my noble friend Lord Strathclyde said, some sort of popular support should be sought in making a constitutional change of this nature.

I cannot support Amendment 70 in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Llanfaes, and the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, because a review would most probably conclude that a House composed of only appointed Peers and Bishops would lack appropriateness—that is an understatement. Such a review would just be kicked into the long grass.

I like Amendment 72, but I think that the 92—or 88—should remain until the end of the Session prior to the new House being convened, following an election under a new electoral model.

I am not sure about Amendment 90D in the name of my noble friend Lord Brady, although I agree with much of what he said in his most thought-provoking speech. Clearly, a House comprising only 200 Members would have no room for people retaining activities outside the House and would lack the capacity to scrutinise legislation as it does at present, or to operate the number of Select Committees it does today. It would be a very different kind of House. However, I am certainly attracted by my noble friend’s proposal that elections should be held one year later than general elections. That should be considered as a part of any move to a partly elected House.

Lastly, Amendment 115 makes sense. The Bill should not be enacted without the adoption of at least a partial democratic mandate at the same time.

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

My Lords, I thoroughly support Amendment 11. People have tried picking holes in it, but it does not say that all have to be elected. It says:

“introducing directly elected members in the House of Lords”.

The proposals, which would be thought through and brought with a Bill within 18 months, could contain all sorts of different proposals, which I know everyone wants to debate in a moment. I will leave that to everybody else because there are some very good ideas in there.

The whole point about Amendment 11 is that it gives voice to that promise of Privy Council oath, given from the two Front Benches, that there would be further democratic reform of the House of Lords. That is what Amendment 11 states, and it puts a time limit on it. Therefore, the Secretary of State has to do something about it, not just kick it into the long grass. We will not be here, but those who follow us will be here to see proper further reform of the Lords, introducing a democratic bit to it. As I said before, without that democratic element, it will eventually have all its powers removed because it will have no democratic legitimacy.

[Lord Tugendhat (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Brady spoke very eloquently, but he did not refer to his Amendment 90C:

“A person can only be a member of the House of Lords if they are not a Minister of the Crown”.


I do not know why he did not refer to that, but it is a very bad idea.

One of the most striking features of politics in the more than 50 years since I was elected to the House of Commons is that as the diversity in gender and ethnicity has widened—which is a good thing—the diversity of life experience has narrowed considerably. When I was first elected to the House of Commons, there were people who had a lot of business experience, people who had been active in trade unions—