House of Lords Reform Bill [HL]

Lady Saltoun of Abernethy Excerpts

Friday 21st October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Campbell of Alloway]

My Lords, I have a question that is relevant to what was said. It was not an agreement for all time, if the noble Lord will accept that, but an agreement until a certain event took place, which was a substantive amendment of the constitution. That was the agreement. Forgive me for saying this as I do not want to contradict the noble Lord, but I can assure him and a lot of other Members of the House that this was not an agreement for all time.

[Lady Saltoun of Abernethy]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, is concerned that the general public find various aspects of our arrangements ludicrous, which brings the House into disrepute. The general public give very little thought to what this House does. Because the media think that Parliament consists entirely of another place, they do not hear very much about what we do and therefore do not think about us.

Much is continually being said about the ludicrousness of the hereditary Peers’ elections. It is said that they bring us into disrepute. I do not deny that. However, the principal thing that is ludicrous about the elections is that the electorate is only the hereditary Peers. In the case of Labour and Liberal Democrat elections, two or three Peers vote for many more candidates. That could be simply remedied by making the electorate all the Peers in the party. With hindsight, I believe that is how it should have been.

When stage 2 of the reform of this House has been enacted and comes into force, the 92 should be prepared to go. If any or all of them are offered life baronetcies by the Government, it should be up to them whether they accept them. As I have said before, for us hereditary Peers to be party to abolishing the elections would stick in my gullet. It is tantamount to saying to our erstwhile colleagues, who were so meanly and cavalierly sacked in 1999, and whose only hope of either getting back themselves or ensuring that their heirs did was to be elected: “I’m all right, Jack, and as far as you're concerned, hard cheese”. That is not on.

[Lord Northbrook]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Campbell of Alloway in his recollection of events. The deal with the noble Viscount, Lord Cranborne, and the Lord Chancellor was done in 1999 on Privy Council terms and was not to be overturned unless substantial reform of the House was to be done. Like the noble Lord, I remember the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, confirming this from the Front Bench only three or four years ago.

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[Lord Marlesford]

I think of two very simple facts. First, hereditary Peers who are sitting in this House are in no sense discriminated against as a result of Clause 10. Secondly, it is perfectly obvious that the arrangement for by-elections was always intended to be an interim one. The mistake, in a sense, was not to have had it ending at the end of that Parliament or, conceivably, the following Parliament because it was intended to make use of the reservoir of experience which we had, needed and wanted to keep. We have done it extremely successfully. Least there should have been a too rapid decline, there was an arrangement for temporary topping up.

In answer to the noble Lady, Lady Saltoun, it is so clearly for the reason she gives that the topping-up system is a farce. It is undemocratic, and I suggest that Clause 10 is a means of moving on to democracy, which is the reason why it should stand.

[Lady Saltoun of Abernethy]

I said that I agree that the topping-up system is a farce, but it could easily become not a farce if the electorate were all the Peers in the party, not just the hereditary Peers in the party.

[Lord Selsdon]

My Lords, I have been in your Lordships' House for a period of time, and I refer you to Standing Order No. 8. The problem with your Lordships is that you have very little knowledge of Standing Orders or precedents within the House. I am an elected hereditary Peer under an Act of Parliament, as are others. It has been quite convenient for people over a long period of time to drop the word “elected”, but it was an election. That was an agreement binding in honour on Privy Council terms, and should anyone in your Lordships' House wish to know the background, please just send me an e-mail or letter and I will give you a copy of all the submissions I have made over the past 10 or 20 years. We also take precedence according to the ancienty of our degree. Therefore, I can give way to the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, because he is slightly more ancient than me in the date of his Letters Patent.

There was an attempt for a long period of time to ignore the fact that there was an election. I do not support the replacement of current people by the proposed system. What I suggested was that all those hereditary Peers who would like to enter the House should have their names submitted to the Appointments Commission for consideration not as a hereditary Peer but as someone who might make a good contribution in future.

I did not really approve of the election process, but I have to admit I was wrong because the quality of the people who have come into this House as a result of those elections is very high. They have a great knowledge, and they make a great contribution. They become what your Lordships will understand to be working Peers although, as I have pointed out in this House on previous occasions, there is no such thing as a working Peer. A Peer sits here not with a job, other than the 10 who are paid, but with a duty and a responsibility. Certain hereditary elements put upon you a greater feeling of duty. Of course I am here because my grandfather was Postmaster-General. It does not matter; that was the way, indirectly, when my father died, but all my family have been in public life. Those of us who have been in public life have a feeling of duty which overwhelms everything else. I do not approve of the Steel Bill. I believe that we should still wait for the government proposals, and I will support all those proposals.

If anyone goes on saying that I am not elected, I am far more legitimate than those people appointed by patronage. At the moment, we have an overwhelming number of people who do not know each other, do not know the rules and do not know what to do. We should be asking what the House of Lords as it is today should be doing in the community and what initiatives it should be taking, instead of squabbling among ourselves about the future. We have a major economic crisis, we have a whole range of problems and within this House we have an amazing collection of people who do not know each other’s abilities. As noble Lords may know, I have a background on every Peer. You could not assemble these 830 or 840 people, but we fail again to understand communication. Half of them do not have PCs, and we are in a world of electronic communication. I believe this debate should go on. I would regard the Steel Bill as a White Paper or a Steel paper. When I first met the noble Lord, Lord Steel, on the Council of Europe many years ago, he tried to persuade me to become a Liberal, partly because of my grandfather. I think the noble Lord has done a good job. He is quite a crafty worker, and this is a bit of good craftsmanship, but it is too crafty by half.

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[Lady Saltoun of Abernethy]

My Lords, I agree that we have to reduce the numbers in this House; I do not think putting an arbitrary retirement age on Peers is the right way to do it. Apart from all the arguments against it which we have just heard, which are quite valid, it would be too haphazard. We will need to be a little more precise in our aim when we come to reduce our numbers.

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[Lord Steel of Aikwood]

For the third time, we have done useful work today. We have carried out the work that we are here to do. We have scrutinised the Bill line by line and we have put through three important housekeeping measures, which I am very keen we should report to the House and then move on to Report stage.

I am well aware that not everyone agrees with the withdrawal of the provisions for the statutory appointments commission. The amendment dealt with that but there are also about 116 amendments dealing with the appointments commission. It is not my wish that we should proceed with those but my noble friends Lord Caithness and Lord Trefgarne have every right, if they wish to, to start the proceedings on 116 amendments and keep us here until 3 o’clock. I appeal to their sense of the mood of the House and the votes that have already been made and to accept that that will not get us anywhere; it would simply mean that the Bill would be talked out. That would be a tragedy because, as I say, we have done good work today. It has been a good humoured debate and I would appeal to them to allow us to move to delete Clauses 1 to 9 of the Bill and we can all go home early.

[Lady Saltoun of Abernethy]

My Lords, it is a matter of opinion as to whether we have done good work today. The noble Lord, Lord Steel, thinks that we have done good work because we have done what he wanted us to do. However, for those of us who were thoroughly opposed to Parts 2, 3 and 4 of the Bill, we have done a day’s really bad work and it might be quite nice to start working on an appointments commission, which we badly need. If we worked on that, we would be doing good work.

[Viscount Astor]

Perhaps I could ask my noble friend Lord Steel a question. He has an amendment coming up, Amendment 163, which changes the Title of the Bill. It removes the provision,

“for the appointment of a Commission to make recommendations to the Crown for the creation of life peerages”.

Surely if that amendment is moved and carried by your Lordships' House, that is the moment when we should decide on whether to proceed with any of the following clauses.

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[The Earl of Caithness]

My Lords, I must respond to the noble Lord, Lord Lea. I say to the noble Baroness that I am not filibustering. I have done everything I can to be helpful today. I have said what I have said. My intervention just now was because I had not fully grasped the implications of going straight to Report. I was alerting the House. I will stick by what I said in that we will go to Report, but what I said was prompted by what my noble friend Lord Cormack said which made me realise that, of course, the reason why the noble Lord, Lord Steel, wants that is because we can speak only once on Report. I think that is unfair. However, having given the assurance I gave, I will stick by it, but I reinforce the point that it is a huge abuse of this House on a Private Member's Bill.

[Lady Saltoun of Abernethy]

My Lords, why can we not have another Committee day and finish the Committee that way?

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton]

My Lords, I beg to move that the Question on Amendment 2 be now put.