House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 3rd March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Soames of Fletching (Con)]

My Lords, in moving the amendment in my name, may I say first, without sounding too much like Lord Copper, what a great privilege it is to take part in this debate, and to have listened in particular to two magnificent speeches from my noble friends Lord True and Lord Forsyth? These matters are not just events and things to be trifled with; they matter. As my noble friend Lord Strathclyde said, English legislation in particular is bedevilled with the law of unintended consequences, so these things matter.

I do not want to detain the House unduly and I have no doubt that other noble Lords will wish to say a few words. I wanted to put down this amendment just to urge the House to recognise the extraordinary service that has been given. I absolutely accept what the Leader of the House said about not differentiating between life Peers and hereditary Peer, which both make a very important contribution to the House. But if you look at the Opposition Front Bench today, of the 33 Peers currently serving on it nine, or 27%, are hereditary Peers. Of the 24 Deputy Speakers currently serving, there are the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, the noble Lord, Lord Ashton of Hyde, the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, and the noble Lords, Lord Russell and Lord Geddes; many more have served as Deputy Speakers in the past. I suggest that that is a staunch reminder of what a significant contribution the hereditary Peers make to this House.

There has been a lot of talk about hereditaries and life Peers. I am still not sure how I got here—which list I was on—because I was fired by the Prime Minister who I thought had promoted me to this House. Whatever it was, I very fortunately made my way here and was lucky to do so, but I recognise the extraordinary role that the hereditaries play, considering their numbers.

I do not wish to sound controversial but while this is a constitutional Bill, obviously of the first importance, it is also a mean Bill. That meanness can be unleavened by my amendment, which will particularly cover the question that the noble Lords, Lord Forsyth and Lord True, asked about honour and justice. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, said at the beginning of this debate that the world is falling about our ears, and here we are debating reform of the House of Lords. But a sense of certainty and tradition is now more important than ever, and that is represented in this House in a very meaningful and formidable way by the hereditary Peers. I beg to move.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Soames and agree with everything he said, particularly his praise for the two excellent speeches we had at the beginning.

We are removing the 88 hereditaries, but in the first 234 days of the Government’s existence the Prime Minister has created 45 life Peers, which creates a record, and in this Bill, we are removing some of the hardest-working Members in the House. Hereditaries have a better attendance record than we life Peers, they have a better turnout record at Divisions and they participate fully in all aspects of the work of the House. My noble friend talked in general terms about the contribution they make. I think it is time, if the House will permit me, just to briefly name names. Who would we be chucking out?

According to my noble friend’s amendment—I am grateful to the Library for producing this for me at rather short notice—we will be chucking out: my noble friends Lord Ashton of Hyde, Lord Bethell and Lord Camrose, who were also Ministers; the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, a Deputy Speaker; my noble friend Lord De Mauley, a committee chair and a former Minister; my noble friend Lord Courtown, a Deputy Chief Whip since 2016; the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, a Deputy Speaker, Convenor of the Cross Benches and a committee chair; my noble friend Lord Minto, a former Minister; my noble friend Lord Geddes, a Deputy Speaker; my noble friend Lord Harlech, currently a Whip; my noble friend Lord Henley, a committee chair, former Chief Whip and former Minister; and my noble friend Lord Howe, who is currently deputy shadow Leader, and who has been continuously on the Front Bench since 1991.

I do not know whether noble Peers remember the great Raymond Baxter, who was the best-ever commentator at the Royal British Legion Festival of Remembrance. He used to introduce the Chelsea pensioners during it; I can imagine that if my noble friend Lord Howe were there, he would have said, “And now we have the great Earl Howe, known to his mates as ‘Freddie’ and 34 years with the colours”.

Of course, there is also the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, a committee chair and former Minister; my noble friend Lord Peel, the Lord Chamberlain of the Royal Household for almost 20 years, and a superb Lord Chamberlain he was; my noble friend Lord Roborough, a shadow Minister; the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, a Deputy Speaker; and, of course, the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, a Deputy Speaker, who has graced us with his presence for the last hour.

Then there is my noble friend Lord Trefgarne, a committee chair and former Minister; the noble Lord, Lord Vaux, the former finance committee chair—he did a superb job there; my noble friend Lord Younger of Leckie, almost continuously in ministerial office since 2013; and my noble friend Lord Effingham, currently a Whip. Last but not least, there is my noble friend Lord Strathclyde, a Minister and Leader of the House, who was an absolutely superb junior Environment Minister under my command as Minister. I would like to say that I taught him all he knows, but that would not be the case.

Those are the colleagues—the hereditaries—who will be slung out by the Government and who are on the list in my noble friend Lord Soames’s amendment. But, very briefly, that is not the full story; his amendment does not go far enough. Many other hereditaries who do a superb job chairing other committees of this House and doing other work are not included in my noble friend’s amendment. If the House will permit me, I will run through them briefly; I will not use titles, such as “my noble friend” or “the noble Lord” but simply list the names which the Library has kindly circulated in a superb Excel spreadsheet.

Those Peers are: Lord Aberdare, Lord Altrincham, the Earl of Arran, Lord Borwick, Viscount Bridgeman, the Earl of Clancarty, Lord Colgrain, the Earl of Cork and Orrery, Lord Crathorne, Lord Cromwell—I know that the noble Lord was in Georgia, heading up the OSCE delegation that observed the elections; I was with the Council of Europe delegation, and he did a superb job there—and the Earl of Devon, who has also chaired committees. In the main, these are hereditaries who have served on committees or are currently serving on them.

To continue: the Earl of Dundee, who served for many years on the Council of Europe as well and did a superb job, Viscount Eccles, Lord Fairfax of Cameron, Lord Glenarthur, Lord Grantchester, Lord Hacking, Lord Hampton, Viscount Hanworth—we are halfway through.

[A noble Lord]

Oh!

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[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

But it is worth knowing the names of all those hereditaries who have been working their socks off in this place for years and will be thrown out. There is the Earl of Leicester, the Earl of Lindsay, Lord Londesborough, Lord Lucas, the Earl of Lytton, Lord Mancroft, Lord Meston, the Duke of Montrose, Lord Mountevans, Lord Moynihan —whom I see in his place in front of me, and who has already been rightly praised—Lord Ravensdale, Lord Reay, Earl Russell, Lord Sandhurst, the Earl of Stair, Lord Thurlow, Viscount Thurso, who has already spoken —I think that he welcomed his own demise—and Lord Trefgarne, also a former Minister, Viscount Trenchard, Lord Trevethin and Oaksey, Lord Vaux of Harrowden, and finally, the Duke of Wellington.

I make no apology for reading out those names; I have not taken very long to do so—less than six minutes. If the Committee is going to go ahead with ejecting hereditaries, we simply need to know all of those colleagues, the work they have been doing in this House and the expertise we will lose. We will not only lose their expertise but be doing them a disservice by rejecting all the work they have done over the last few years by saying, “You’re just a hereditary, you can now be slung out.” I think that is an insult to the hard work they have been doing.

[Viscount Astor (Con)]

My Lords, I knew that I was unimportant when my noble friend Lord Blencathra omitted me from his list, but now it has been confirmed. I am very grateful to him for doing that. As we approach the dinner hour, it is obviously time for very long speeches, and I intend for my speech to be very long and to cover a number of hugely important issues. I congratulate my noble friend Lord Soames on his amendment, because it would actually affect me, as a former Minister of the Crown, by inserting proposed new subsection (A1)(a). I thank my noble friend and support his amendment.

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[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, I think this amendment shows the problem that we were discussing earlier with the groupings, because we have actually been discussing, along with this amendment, Amendment 9 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord True, and they both deal with the question of the future of those hereditaries who play a major part in your Lordships’ House.

The noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, told us what he finds extraordinary. I think the vast majority of the country would find it extraordinary, if they realised it, that 10% of the legislature derives from fewer than 800 families in the country. Most people do not really realise that; if they did, they would be very surprised and most of them, frankly, would be appalled.

I looked at the hereditaries as a group one wet, sad afternoon. I divided them not into sheep and goats but into three: those who were active, those who were partially active, and those who were inactive. In response to the list of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, of those who are very active, I could, but will not, read out to the Committee a list of equal length, if not longer, of hereditaries who are virtually inactive. This is not a criticism of them more than it is of any other group. However, it is the case that some Members in the hereditary group are very active and well respected, but, like in all other groups, there are others who, frankly, are not.

Therefore, if we are looking to what should happen next and whether we should seek to retain some of the expertise that the hereditaries have, surely the way to do it is not as proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Soames, nor by the noble Lord, Lord True, but to encourage the parties to appoint those hereditaries who are very active and eminent in their groups to life peerages as those numbers come up. I hope very much that we will do so in respect of the Liberal Democrats—we have fewer hereditaries than some of the other groups—but that seems to me to be the logical way of doing it. It is what we did, to a certain extent, in our party after the vast bulk of hereditaries left in 1999. That is the precedent that we should seek to follow now, rather than having a broader category of exemptions, as the noble Lord suggests, or a complete continuation along the lines previously proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, which the noble Lord, Lord True, is about to suggest.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

Can I correct the noble Lord on one factual error that he has made—quite inadvertently, I am sure. According to the Library list, leaving aside the one mistake in the case of my noble friend Lord Astor, there are fewer than 20 hereditaries who do not participate in the work of the House or who are, as he said, doing nothing. The vast majority have served the House, are working in the House on committees or have been Ministers.

[Lord Newby (LD)]

If the noble Lord looks down the list, he will see that there may be some people who come twice a year and vote three times a year, but I did not include those in the list of people whom I consider to be active. I am happy to go down the list with him; I did not do it with the intention of proving anything but wanted to satisfy myself as to the true position.