House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Debate between Earl of Erroll and Baroness Butler-Sloss

Committee stage
Monday 3rd March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I read this amendment with some surprise, because the noble Earl says that everybody is going to be nominated by the Prime Minister. I was not nominated by the Prime Minister and there remains, I think, 20% of this House who were not. As far as I know, this Government have no intention of getting rid of the way in which we are appointed. As I understand the noble Earl to have said, the wording of the Bill from the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, was different. Of course we are appointed, but the noble Earl has limited it to the Prime Minister. To that extent, I profoundly disagree and I hope noble Lords will at least support the Cross-Benchers.

I recognise the manifesto and that this Bill must go through. I regret that there are so many amendments to slow it down. There are a large number of issues that need to be dealt with. I am not at all sure that this is the best place for them to be discussed when there is really a single issue occupying the Committee.

I hope that the Government will look at those whom they are removing and compare them with the Members of this House—at least 200—who virtually never come. I can speak as someone who is not a hereditary Peer but has been here for quite a long time. I have observed the enormous work done by hereditary Peers, who have been of invaluable use to the legislation that has been passed. For us to lose them and keep those who do not come and do not work seems profoundly wrong.

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

My Lords, I was going to speak to the last amendment. I will say very quickly now that it needed a little bit inserted to say, “Also to remove the power of the Prime Minister to have total control over the membership of this House”.

I remember and was very involved in the whole debate in 1998-99. In fact I and a bunch of Cross-Benchers produced a report on it at the time. The real problem with the whole thing is that it put the Prime Minister in total control of everything. He is the Prime Minister of the Civil Service and therefore the supreme person there. He is the leader of the majority party in the House of Commons and therefore controls that. The judges are also no longer separate and are now a Civil Service department, the Ministry of Justice. There were a lot of promises about independence, but it is no longer a third pillar of our constitution in the way it was.

Identity Documents Bill

Debate between Earl of Erroll and Baroness Butler-Sloss

Wednesday 17th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Erroll]

I spoke on this matter in Committee. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Brett, because I see that the card could still have some use. Although the national identity register, which is what we all objected to, has been removed, having a bit of plastic as a travel document to get around Europe would have been useful and still might be. Some of the 12,000 people concerned bought the card for that. Like the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, I certainly think that those people who thought that they had bought a plastic passport should be allowed to offset it against the cost of getting the more expensive passport that they will now require to go to Europe. For them, it was effectively a cheap way of getting a passport if you needed to travel to Europe.

We penalise insurance salesmen for being more honest than this. The Government are guilty of misselling. They went out and sold the card hard as having lots of benefits, and so people took it up. If you expect a member of the public, seven months ahead of the general election, to be able to predict its outcome, there are a lot of geniuses among the public whom we ought immediately to recruit to become pollsters. They may be all the people who did not buy the card. To me, it looks vindictive and nothing else. This matter could be a PR negative for the Government—a little spark that could catch the newspapers’ imagination. They will find someone who feels really hard done-by. It will get blown up; it will be in the Daily Mail, which will say that something must be done about it, but it will be too late by then.

I know that civil servants will produce reasons for the refund being difficult to administer et cetera. I cannot see the problem in saying, “The only people who get refunded are those who turn up with a card. If you hand in a card, you get 30 quid”. It would be as simple as that. That would not be very expensive to administer. If the Government wished to give the contract to one of the large systems integrators, however, they would end up with a bill for about £5 million, because it is their job to make sure that partners in America are well satisfied with lots of dosh. They are the people whom the Government will have to pay at the end of all this. They will have had unbreakable contracts, so they will have to be paid several million pounds for breaking the contract. A large slice of that will end up in American partners’ pockets. The poor old citizens of this country will get absolutely—I will use unparliamentary language if I go on.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and said so in Committee, that this is an expropriation of property, or certainly property rights. Even if the card belongs to the Government and is non-transferable, that card gave you rights—that is what they sold it on. I am quite sure that that is expropriation and that there could be a claim under the ECHR. It will go on top of the Digital Economy Act, which we were advising the Government against the other day. So they will have a nice time in the courts.

If I had been lucky enough to get a card, I would have kept it as a collector’s item, but I know that a lot of people would not like to do so and would like their 30 quid back. They are better Scotsmen than me.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

My Lords, I share the disquiet of many who have already spoken. I urge the Government to think again about this.