House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Debate between Lord Banner and Lord Murray of Blidworth

Committee stage
Tuesday 25th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Banner (Con)]

My Lords, I speak in support of Amendment 68, which, as my noble friend Lord Wolfson indicated, takes the premise of his Amendment 56 and rolls it out to all Supreme Court justices. I declare an interest as a practising King’s Counsel who fairly frequently appears before the Supreme Court, including in one appeal where judgment is still pending.

I supported the replacement of the Appellate Committee with the new UK Supreme Court, and I still believe that was the right decision. In a modern democracy, all courts, and in particular the final court of appeal, must not just be but be seen to be separate and independent from the other branches of the state.

However, a collateral and I think probably unintended effect of this, as my noble friend Lord Wolfson outlined, has been significantly to reduce the pool of Cross-Bench legal expertise in this House. By convention, certainly by the turn of the millennium, sitting Members on the Appellate Committee did not speak in debates and did not otherwise participate in relation to controversial matters, although they did sit in committees to some degree. However, upon their retirement they invariably would—and those who remain still do—make an invaluable contribution to the work of this House.

It is also the case that, prior to retirement and while in office as judges, by virtue of being Members of this House, those on the Appellate Committee would have a fuller and further first-hand understanding of the procedures of Parliament, which, as my noble friend Lord Wolfson indicated in his excellent lecture at Policy Exchange earlier this afternoon, may have assisted the judges in their consideration of the Prorogation issue in the second Miller litigation.

Now that the final court is outside this House, its members no longer need to receive a peerage upon being appointed and, contrary to what had been advocated in some quarters, no convention to that effect has been established. In recent years, among full-time Supreme Court justices, only the President has been by convention awarded a peerage—albeit that the Lord Chief Justice, who occasionally sits in that court, has also by convention been awarded a peerage.

The result of all this has been significantly to reduce the pipeline of top-tier judges able to contribute to the work of this House. Amendment 68 would rectify that by requiring all current and future Supreme Court justices to be awarded a peerage. I myself would envisage that, during their tenure on the court, they would follow the Appellate Committee’s former convention that sitting judges do not speak in debates and do not otherwise participate in controversial matters, but, upon retirement, they would be able fully to engage and thus continue the long-established and invaluable tradition of our most senior judges contributing to the work of this House on their retirement from the Bench.

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 56, 57 and 68 in this group, to which I have added my name. I declare an interest as a member of the Bar. I also declare a special interest in that, across the corridor in my chambers is the room of Lord Dyson, who was the first member of the Supreme Court not to be the beneficiary of a peerage under the Appellate Jurisdiction Act, and therefore the first person from these Benches that the House did not have the benefit of hearing from, which in my view was a great loss—and that applies to many members of the Supreme Court.

There is an element of confusion in the general public, and indeed even in the politically engaged general public. When they read of public pronouncements from the likes of Lord Dyson or Lord Sumption, they are under the impression that these people are Members of this House. When the Constitutional Reform Act 2005 came into force, there was a question about what title one gave to the Justices of the Supreme Court. So, when Sir John Dyson, as he then was, became a member of the Supreme Court, having formerly been the Master of the Rolls in the Court of Appeal, where he was Lord Justice Dyson, there was a need to differentiate him from the members of the Court of Appeal and to give a special title to members of the Supreme Court.