House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Debate between Earl of Erroll and Baroness Fox of Buckley

Report stage
Wednesday 2nd July 2025 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

My Lords, it may be worth thinking about where this power for the Prime Minister to appoint Lords came from—I am thinking of the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Butler. It derives from the fact that King John had his power to raise taxes taken away from him by the Magna Carta. He was left with the right to appoint Peers—to create Lords—to wage war and to write and sign treaties. Since then, the waging war and treaties have recently come under greater scrutiny. There are problems with that, and Parliament is certainly facing them at the moment in the treaties being written.

The one thing that no one seems to be questioning is that the Prime Minister has the right to advise the King, and constitutionally the King does not refuse the Prime Minister—because that is unconstitutional. Therefore, the Prime Minister has the ancient monarchical power to create Peers. If we think that this power is still right 800 or so years later, that is fine, but we should maybe be thinking, as our predecessors did all those centuries ago, about circumscribing this right and having more control over the unfettered power of the Prime Minister, who is also the head of the Civil Service—and the judiciary, which is now a Civil Service department, the Ministry of Justice—and the leader of the majority party in the House of Commons. I do not really like him having control over everything.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I have long thought that the problem with the Bill is that we all become rather high-handed in talking about the hereditary Peers, as though they are the epitome of anti-democracy in this House. To be honest, we have all been appointed; none of us was elected. Therefore, it seems to me that this is a way of feeling good about ourselves by looking down on the hereditaries, when in fact none of us has a legitimate right to be here.

That to one side, I had a lot of regard for the spirit of the previous amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Newby, looking for a democratic way of electing a second Chamber. The spirit of that, at least, was that the demos—the people—should decide, and I regarded that well. Yet the lead amendment in this group, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Newby, seems to epitomise the opposite of that last amendment, because it is all about anti-democracy. It would give the ultimate power to an unelected committee answerable to no one. The noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, explained that very well, and there have been follow-on speeches expanding on it.

In moving the amendment, the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, asked us to imagine that the Prime Minister—or indeed president, as he said—may not be a good chap or chapess. I wondered who would decide who and what is good. Would it be HOLAC, or the noble Lord, Lord Wallace? It is possible that he and I would not agree. The whole tone was that constitutional guard-rails would be set up by those who know better, who are more ethical or more virtuous, just in case the voters voted in the wrong way and voted in a wrong ’un. We all know that this is a nod to having a go at the previous Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, and that it is about President Trump, not President Biden. It has a partisan feel to it.

When it comes to legislation, I am very worried about how many Henry VIII powers are being used at present and about the number of statutory instruments contained in Bills. I argued that when they were put forward by the Conservative Government and agreed with many people in the Labour Party in opposition about that anti-democratic trend. I am sad to see that with Labour in government, there are even more Henry VIII powers and statutory instruments. In other words, we should be worried by an anti-democratic trend that we are witnessing. If we have to have a second Chamber, the Lords, and if we are going to appoint people, at least let us retain the notion that the Prime Minister—who has a democratic mandate—should be the person who decides, rather than an unelected committee.

As a note on the virtues of unelected expert committees, I am absolutely fine with them being advisory but not in charge. This morning, in relation to a discussion on the infamous door that has cost a fortune and does not work, and on that ugly fence that is an anti-social insult and looks like a barrier between this House and the public, we heard that it was all agreed by a very worthy committee. None of us even knew it was happening, because it was unanswerable. At the end of that discussion, I still could not work out who had made the decision. It was even more opaque than a Prime Minister deciding on who gets in this House. In other words, having a committee does not make it okay.

Finally, I will speak in favour of being partisan and taking sides. I am all for the virtues of the Cross Benches, but something seems to be wrong about the notion that the Cross Benches are full of the great and the good, who are experts, and that somehow they are superior to anyone who has an opinion, a passion or a principle, because they know more than the rest of us. I appreciate that I never joined the Cross Benches—somehow I did not get invited.