Plan for Change: Milestones for Mission-led Government

Lord Birt Excerpts

Thursday 12th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

I do not have an organogram in front of me, so that is detail I probably cannot supply. But the purpose of the mission boards is to follow the missions we have in government. This is a way of having cross-governmental working, bringing key people together. If the Prime Minister is not available, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster is. On that cross-government working, Cabinet committees work, in some ways, and some may still do so, but we felt that the mission boards better reflected the missions we have outlined and made a commitment on.

[Lord Birt (CB)]

This is territory that I trod for six years when working as the Prime Minister’s strategy adviser. I have also trodden the same territory widely in the public and private sectors. I have a couple of points to make. First, it is entirely right, in any institutional environment, to have ambition—you have to start with that, and it right that this Government have it. A special factor of government is its sheer scale and size, and the multiplicity of departments. The Leader of the House is entirely right to emphasise that challenge. That is why I strongly support the notion of mission boards, which will be operationally not the same as Cabinet sub-committees. I will raise one issue positively and constructively: before you get to milestones, you have to have a holistic strategy that is deeply based on analysis of all the factors in play, which are always dynamic and changing. You always have to refresh your way of reaching ambitious goals.

Secondly, my experience in government was that, overwhelmingly, the Civil Service was properly skilled, very collaborative and fit for purpose—not always but generally. But, dare I say it, that was not always true of the politicians. I have great respect for their skills and experience, but they inevitably sometimes have to recognise that they lack the heavy-duty institutional experience necessary to achieve fundamental reform.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for those comments. He is welcoming the mission-led strategy with the milestones, and he is right to say that you have to measure them and look at what is behind them overall. He has a point about experience and longevity. The Prime Minister has been wise and has spoken about Ministers being in post for longer—I have some skin in the game here. We saw such a churn of Ministers under the last Government, and it gets very difficult for them to build expertise and relationships with civil servants and stakeholders, only to be moved on. I speak as a Minister who has served in a number of departments over the years, and the good sources of information are the civil servants who have been there a long time, as well as new civil servants—who bring fresh experience to you—and past Ministers in your role.

All of us, at any stage in our careers—whether we are new to the job or have been in it a long time, and whether we are politicians or civil servants—need to find that way of learning from each other, building on the best and having respect for different perspectives. We expect civil servants to give that professional advice and guidance and to understand that we are politicians, who need clarity. I hope the milestones bring that clarity to the workings with the Civil Service as well, so that both politicians and civil servants have clarity about what they are doing. My own experience of civil servants over the years has been very positive. I have never known a civil servant to balk when I said that I wanted outside expertise; they have never had any issue with that, and in fact, they have welcomed it in many cases.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Birt Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 11th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Birt (CB)]

My Lords, I will make three points. First, I entirely agree that the participation of hereditary Peers in the upper Chamber as a birthright is a medieval overhang and should be ended, but there is wide agreement that a number of hereditaries, on all sides of the House, make a substantial contribution to our work and in all justice should be retained as life Peers. The noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, provided a very compelling analysis a moment ago. I hope the Leader of the House will undertake in her closing remarks to initiate discussions with other party leaders and the convenor to identify a common approach to achieving this goal—perhaps on a one-in, one-out basis, with Members who, for whatever reason, make little contribution to this House, retiring and making way for ex-hereditaries who manifestly do.

Secondly, this Bill should be amended to remove another feudal overhang: namely, the right of Church of England Bishops to have a guaranteed place in this House. In the last census, 56 million people answered the question about their religion; 40% said that they had no religion at all; fewer than half declared themselves to be Christian. In other surveys, of those who do declare as Christian, more are Catholic than Anglican; and more people say that they do not believe in a God than do. We are a country of many faiths and of no faith. Our established Church is not even a church for the whole of the United Kingdom, its very name reminding us that it is established in only one of the four nations of this United Kingdom—again, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, said a moment ago. Moreover, recent events have demonstrated powerfully and emphatically that the Church of England is losing moral authority. I ask the Leader in her closing remarks to offer a clear and cogent rationale, which we are yet to hear, as to why the Church of England should retain a privileged position in the upper House of the United Kingdom’s Parliament.

Thirdly and finally, the House, as I am sure we all agree, performs an invaluable constitutional role, above all by bringing intense and expert scrutiny to the passage of legislation. But there are many aspects of this House that require reform, and the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, picked out some of them, as did the noble Lord, Lord Burns. We are too big and should reduce our number. A system is needed to determine the appropriate size within this House of the main political parties. A minority of Peers barely attend and contribute little. We are insufficiently diverse—by gender, ethnicity, regional origin, sexuality or area of expertise. While most Peers are appointed on merit, some are not, and some have bought their way in to this House through party-political contributions.

I ask the Leader if, in her closing remarks, she will commit not to allow these and other issues to fester—perhaps for another 25 years—and instead, once the Bill has passed, as it will, to produce a Green Paper on holistic Lords reform, setting out and weighing all these options.

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.

Lords Spiritual (Women) Act 2015 (Extension) Bill [HL]

Lord Birt Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 10th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Birt (CB)]

My Lords, no one will stand in the way of promoting greater gender equality in any grouping in this House, but I would like to express my disappointment that a new, and so far decisive, Government are not preparing a comprehensive, holistic and long-overdue approach to the overall reform of this House, including the representation of the established Church—a process hinted at by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton.

I support the plan to end the birthright of hereditary Peers to sit in this House—it is a feudal anachronism. That said, many individual hereditaries reach here on personal merit, as we all know, and I hope that a way can be found to retain those who make a most distinguished contribution to our proceedings.

The guaranteed representation of the Church of England in this House is a second feudal legacy, embedded centuries before the notion of democracy gathered pace. Its representation produces many peculiarities. For instance, it is essentially the Government who appoint bishops. I used to work at No. 10 alongside a most delightful and extraordinarily able civil servant, one of whose jobs, when a bishopric fell vacant, was to take soundings in the diocese—and more widely—and recommend who should be appointed as its bishop. Accordingly, No. 10, not the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury, announces the appointment of a new bishop. Church and state are very definitely not separate.

As this proposed legislation underlines, Bishops take their turn to sit in this House—except in the case of what I think is a bizarre anomaly. We heard the example earlier: if you are appointed the Bishop of Winchester, you are automatically and immediately entitled to a seat in this House. That is extraordinary.

Moreover, the Anglican Church may be represented in this House but it denies its clergy the right under law passed in this House and enjoyed by the rest of the citizenry to enter a gay marriage. Thus, that charming and witty national treasure, the Reverend Richard Coles, was denied the right to marry the man he loved. That is a shocking, unholy, indefensible anomaly.

There are other and very fundamental reasons why embedding representatives of a single church in this House is no longer appropriate. In the 2021 census, almost everyone—56 million people—answered the question about their religion. Less than half of the UK’s population declared themselves even to be Christian, and 22 million people declared themselves to be of no religion. In other surveys, more people say that they do not believe in God than believe in one. Of those who identify as Christian, only 21% are Anglican. More claim to be Catholic than Anglican.

The reality is that we are now an incredibly diverse society—a society comprising people embracing many faiths and none. We should not embark on a long-overdue radical reform of this House without recognising that fact, and that embedding the Church of England in our legislature is an indefensible, undemocratic anomaly.

That said, the greatest strength of this House is its diversity—its range of expertise, perspectives and experience. I have the greatest possible respect for the individual qualities and inherent goodness of the many leaders from many faiths whom I have met in my time. I think, for instance, of the outstanding and sensitive work of Bishop James Jones in leading the inquiry into the Hillsborough tragedy. I hope and expect to see faith leaders of every kind represented in a reformed House, but appointed on individual merit, not as exercising a right existing in one form or another for half a millennium.

Finally, I say to the new Leader of the House, another person whom I greatly respect, that piecemeal reform in any domain does not produce effective and enduring solutions. May we please consider the many ways in which this House needs reform, and consider them all together and in the round?