House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Baroness Laing of Elderslie Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 25th March 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Laing of Elderslie]

67: After Clause 1, insert the following new Clause—
“Ministerial members(1) In each Parliament, a limited number of persons may be appointed as temporary ministerial members of the House of Lords.(2) Appointments are to be made by His Majesty the King on the recommendation of the Prime Minister.(3) A recommendation may be made only for the purpose of facilitating the performance by the recommended person of that person’s functions as a Minister of the Crown.(4) An appointment may be made only at a time when there are fewer than 8 ministerial members appointed to the Parliament by the current Prime Minister who are Ministers of the Crown.(5) Any person appointed as a ministerial member of the House of Lords ceases to be a member of the House of Lords when they stop serving as a Minister of the Crown.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to allow temporary appointments to the House of Lords for serving Ministers of the Crown.

[Baroness Laing of Elderslie (Con)]

My Lords, the amendment in my name on the Marshalled List, Amendment 67, regards the potential appointment of temporary ministerial Members of your Lordships’ House. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, for his support of this amendment and for having added his name to it.

In the very few months during which I have been a Member of your Lordships’ House, I have seen from the inside what outside observers cannot appreciate fully: that this is an institution that works. It is a House that does its duty efficiently and effectively. I hope that discussing Amendment 67 will give the House, and indeed the Government, an opportunity to consider how the House could work even more effectively.

It is vital that a significant number of Government Ministers should be Members of this House, and equally vital that a significant number of Members of this House should be Government Ministers. Our duty to hold the Government to account is accomplished in a variety of ways, as your Lordships are well aware, the most obvious of which is asking questions of a Minister at the Dispatch Box.

In recent years, 36 Ministers have been directly appointed to this House as Ministers. They have come in and made their maiden speeches at the Dispatch Box as Ministers of the Crown. I am not for a moment suggesting that there is anything wrong with that.

A Prime Minister is entitled to appoint the person he or she considers best for the job. It is in all our interests—indeed, in the interests of the country as a whole—to have Ministers carrying out the business of government who know their subject and know how to put policies into action.

It has long been an accepted practice that a Prime Minister can appoint a person who has not been elected to Parliament to become part of the Government. But surely we all accept—some of us more than others—that the ability to win votes at a general election is not the only attribute that makes a good Minister. A successful government department needs a mixture of talents. The aim of Amendment 67 is not to restrict the ability of a Prime Minister to appoint the right person to do a particular job. On the contrary, the effect of this amendment would be to make it easier for a Minister to be appointed.

At present, the only possible appointment to this House is as a Peer for life. I put it to the House that there should be an alternative: the Prime Minister should be able to appoint a person to be a Government Minister and they should be a Member of this House during their tenure of the ministerial appointment and only for that time. Of course I will give way to my noble friend.

[Lord Bellingham (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for giving way. I just seek some clarification. She is making a very strong, cogent argument. When they leave their appointment as Ministers, will they keep their title or not?

[Baroness Laing of Elderslie (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for that very pertinent question. I think the answer is yes. A title is an honour—we have discussed this in various aspects of the Bill and in the changes that we are considering. There is no harm in a title. It is the presence of being in this House and having the ability to vote, et cetera, that is really the point at question. So, indeed, a title, once conferred, would be kept for ever. It is a great honour to be appointed to this House, but I ask noble Lords to consider that an appointment for life means something rather different to a person aged 30 and a person aged 60. None of us can predict what “for life” will mean, but if one is planning one’s career, it looks rather different from the point of view of having accomplished most of the things you are going to do, rather than from the point of view of having accomplished not very much yet.

There might be bright young things out there who could serve a few years as very effective members of a Government but who do not wish to undertake the duty of being a Member of this illustrious House for the rest of their lives. All recent Prime Ministers have vowed that they want to reduce the size of your Lordships’ House. Let us try to help the current Prime Minister to do that, by giving him the option to appoint Ministers on a temporary basis. It would be a modest step towards a 21st-century House if the Government were to consider adopting Amendment 67. I beg to move.

[Viscount Trenchard (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lady Laing of Elderslie proposes the creation of a new class of Members of your Lordships’ House, as ministerial members. It is not clear from her very eloquent speech whether such persons would be created Peers or not. She did suggest that they would be accorded titles, not only for the duration of their tenure in office but for life. This amendment does not address the problem of unpaid Ministers in your Lordships’ House. I am not so sure there would be many volunteers for such posts in the absence of a salary and a peerage. I hope my noble friend will clarify whether, on reflection, these temporary Ministers would be given a peerage or the right to sit after retirement from ministerial responsibilities.

[Baroness Laing of Elderslie (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for his question. Just to clarify, it is set out in Amendment 67 that such a person would be created a Peer, but not a Peer for life. Although the title might continue, the right to sit in your Lordships’ House would not, once the ministerial appointment had ended.

[Viscount Trenchard (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for her clarification, but I wonder about the creation of yet another type of Peer. I wonder how many people would be happy to be created that kind of Peer, if others appointed as Ministers were created proper Peers for life. It might be a bit difficult.

I will comment on Amendment 90C, which my noble friend Lord Brady is going to move. He seeks to abolish the Lords Ministers altogether. Who would speak for the Government in your Lordships’ House? My noble friend clearly has in mind a very different role for the House, and I look forward to his elucidation of that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Laing of Elderslie (Con)]

I thank my honourable—I am sorry, he is not my honourable friend; he has stopped being honourable. I thank my noble friend for giving way. I was trying to be brief in my initial remarks, so I did not go into great detail. This amendment would not apply to all Ministers; it would simply give the Prime Minister the ability to appoint some Ministers on a temporary basis. It would not oblige the Prime Minister to make all ministerial appointments to this House on a temporary basis. I hope that reassures my noble friend.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

The noble Baroness was effectively my first employer, when I was 21 years old, and we have this telepathic understanding: she has seamlessly introduced the main point I wish to make.

I want to turn this round and pick up precisely on what the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, was saying. Moving to a system where the Government of the day could appoint temporary Ministers to this place would give the Prime Minister and the Government a huge amount of flexibility to fill government posts with genuine experts with, effectively, executive ministerial power to carry out their functions. There must be a small, niggling doubt when a Prime Minister is filling positions. Even with the very distinguished people appointed in recent months, he—and it is “he” in this case—must be thinking, “Am I appointing too many people to fill these Benches; people who are going be here for the rest of their lives?” If he had the freedom, for example, to appoint 12 or 13 experts in the field to fill specific ministerial roles, knowing that at the end of those roles they will leave this House, that would sit better with public opinion and give him more freedom. It would serve the country better if he were able to appoint such experts to carry out these functions—by definition, almost certainly as junior Ministers—and help the Government of the day. That is a very powerful argument.

As I say, there would be discretion to convert those Ministers into life peers at the end. In fact, I had not considered the question of whether they should have a peerage when they enter this House. My conclusion is that they should not. They should be called MILs—Ministers in the Lords—and then they can aspire, based on their service as Ministers and their contribution to the House, to a peerage after they have served as Ministers here.

Finally, I turn to the question, raised by one of my noble friends, of how many people would be attracted to the unpaid role of a Minister in the Lords. First, it does not necessarily need to be unpaid. It is a matter for the Government of the day as to whether they have the courage to face down public opinion and expand the number of paid ministerial positions. But this House should certainly seriously consider giving the Prime Minister and the Government of the day the freedom to appoint temporary MILs to help service its business.

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[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

As the noble Lord knows, we are going to look at participation generally. That means that we have to engage in proper dialogue and consultation, so I do not accept the noble Lord’s point. I ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Laing of Elderslie (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his assessment of the amendment that I have put before the Committee. It had not been my intention to have any argument ad hominem. I was not looking backwards in my tabling of this amendment in order to eject from the House any particular former Minister—and certainly not any sitting here.

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

I just make it clear, as far as I am concerned, that a copy of today’s Hansard is going directly to my mother, and I am very grateful for what my noble friend said.

[Baroness Laing of Elderslie (Con)]

In consideration of the feelings of the noble Lord’s mother, let me make it absolutely clear that I share the Minister’s admiration for recent Ministers on both sides of the House, and, indeed, those who are now shadow Ministers and those who were previously shadow Ministers. The quality of the personnel who take charge of this House is exemplary and magnificent. Does the noble Lord think that that will be enough for his mother?