House of Lords: Membership

Earl of Sandwich Excerpts

Thursday 24th October 2013 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Sandwich (CB)]

My Lords, I have joined the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, in this debate because I am another who believes in the modest reforms in the original Steel Bill, unfilleted. The noble Lord, Lord Hattersley, made a few comments in Dublin last month before the Irish people sensibly threw out the Taoiseach’s proposal to abolish the Senate. He said, quite fairly, that you cannot have a modern democracy in which one House of Parliament is appointed by the Prime Minister. We know that already, and we know the Lords is slowly moving away from Downing Street by means of the Independent Appointment Committee. Most people see that committee as the way out of patronage. We would like it to have statutory powers extending to party-nominated Peers and to have a better control of numbers.

The noble Lord, Lord Hattersley, has kept up our interest in Lords reform. I believe that the coalition is beginning to see the sense of incremental change. Today we are concerned only with housekeeping, with whether we can better organise our numbers and be more effective. The Clerk’s paper makes sensible suggestions, and I would like to discuss the more personal side of retirement.

This House has developed quite a range of services to Members, the sort of things you would expect from any modern corporation or institution. There is one service not offered to Members, although it is given to staff, and that is in human resources. You can talk to your party leader or convenor, you can get comfort in the Clerk of the Parliament’s office or chat to colleagues, but there is no one, apart from these offices, with whom you can discuss your future in the House.

I have worked in a number of businesses and charities, large and small. I have even been in a multinational. I have come to appreciate the role of human-resources managers in offices. I am not talking of career advice, because it might be impertinent to give career advice to a Peer, although some of the under-50s might appreciate it. Opening a small, comfortable office in an upstairs room would, I am sure, give Members a chance of opening up that they might not have elsewhere.

I tried to persuade the noble Lord, Lord Walton, to join this debate. He is unavailable today, but he knows that I am mentioning him as someone seriously contemplating retirement. He is an obvious candidate for human resources. I have spoken to others in the same situation, in which we will all be at some future date. I therefore propose that serious thought be given to the establishment of a human-resources officer, with an assistant, for Peers—not a department—who can talk to Members at any time of their parliamentary life.

This might be a suitable job for an existing Member of the House, someone of a sympathetic nature, who has been in the House for some time and already knows most of the characters. It could even be job-shared. There should not be a formal retirement age, but, like the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, I have for some time thought that the House should be able to afford a modest incentive out of internal funds. I remain in favour of the equivalent of one or, at the most, two years’ expenses. This would cost nothing because the Peer would remain for that extra year or two, and it might save the expenses of subsequent years. The Treasury does not need convincing of that mathematics. Nor does the Daily Telegraph.

I am not in favour of the enforced-attendance proposals in the Clerk’s paper, echoed in Dan Byles’s latest Bill, because it would dislodge one of the cornerstones of the House to discourage part-time attendance, especially among Cross-Benchers, among whom there are individuals with experience to offer, who can come in only occasionally. I believe part-time attendance also helps to keep down those extra numbers which come from the good concept of working Peers.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, for helping the House to go into some of these apparently minor, but important, reforms.