House of Lords Reform

Lord Birt Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Birt (CB)]

My Lords, at its best, the House of Lords is an unrivalled repository of experience and expertise that can challenge the first Chamber to think again, as the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, said, and our very limited power if we cannot persuade is to delay legislation for a short and limited period—a power hardly ever used. That is no argument for retaining the status quo, for this House is certainly in need of reform.

First, mainly thanks to successive Prime Ministers, the size of the House has been steadily increasing and is far too large. On 22 October, we had 829 Members. We should reduce to 600 Members, and, importantly, that 600 should be a hard cap not to be exceeded. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Burns, on both counts.

Secondly, whereas the majority in this Chamber have had distinguished careers and bring extraordinary expertise and experience to our discussions of policy and legislation, some do not. There are a number of examples of unwarranted appointments, but I shall mention just one category: no donor to any political party should be able to buy their way into this House. As others have said, a second element of reform needs to be a broad-based statutory body, a new HOLAC that validates the quality of anyone put forward for membership of this House by whatever route.

Thirdly, we need a formula to establish the appropriate size of the political parties and Cross-Benchers in a reduced House. For the parties, it could be the share of the popular vote in the last two elections—not one—with Cross-Benchers, bringing a non-politically partisan perspective, taking up something like 25% of the 600 seats. Under that formulation, both main parties today would be virtually equal in size, with the rest of the House holding the balance.

Fourthly, to allow that to happen, we obviously need measures to bring down the size of the House from today’s 800-plus to 600. There is wide agreement that many hereditaries and Bishops make invaluable individual contributions, but their participation in this House by right is an historic anomaly not mirrored anywhere else in the democratic world, and it should end. That said, many individual hereditaries and Bishops have a strong claim, which I completely support, to be reappointed as Cross-Benchers, and I hope they will be. However, removing the hereditaries and Bishops would reduce the numbers by only 114. Removing the minority of Peers, around 150, whose participation is limited and who attended fewer than 20% of the sittings in the whole of the last Parliament would reduce the total number close to target.

Labour’s manifesto also trails the idea of Peers stepping down who are 80 or over at the end of a Parliament. Assuming an election in autumn 2028, that principle would produce 303 exits. I am conflicted, but losing at one go 300 of many of the most active and effective Peers in this House would be brutal, to say the least. No organisation of any kind could afford easily to recover its competence after such a scale of loss, and, to put it very politely, the idea that some of the most active should give way to the least active appears perverse.

Fifthly, every part of this House needs to be more diverse, more systematically representative of every kind of interest, whether by gender, ethnicity, experience, nation or region. I do not think enough people have said that. One role of a redesigned HOLAC should be to foster diversity, as well as to validate the appropriateness of individual appointments on all sides.

I conclude by saying to the Leader of the House: please do not kick the can down the road. Partial reform does not work in any setting. If we do not deal resoundingly with all these issues, an institution that has evolved over centuries into something of unique constitutional value will come under existential threat.