House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 12th March 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Blencathra]

33: After Clause 1, insert the following new Clause—
“Lords Spiritual(1) A maximum of five Church of England bishops may sit in the House of Lords.(2) Of those five bishops, one must be the Archbishop of Canterbury, one must be the Archbishop of York, and the remaining three must be nominated by the Synod of the Church of England.(3) No bishop may sit in the House of Lords beyond the end of the Parliamentary Session in which they turn 70 years old.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment reduces the number of bishops sitting in the House of Lords from 26 to five.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to move Amendment 33 in my name, which would reduce the number of Bishops in the House from 26 to five: the most reverend Primates the Archbishops of Canterbury and York and three other right reverend Prelates nominated by the synod of the Church of England. I am delighted to see the right reverend Prelate in his place—he has booked his slot among my remaining three by being here tonight.

I accept that this is not in the Bill, and nor was it in the Labour Party manifesto, but spending perhaps 20 or 30 minutes on this will be worthwhile, and I cannot see any other way to raise the topic. Naturally, I expect all Front Benches to keep a million miles away from this subject. I shall be very brief and leave it to other noble Lords to speak in favour of or against this probing amendment.

I shall give the House some statistics for consideration. The number of Church of England baptisms in 2023 was 67,800. The average Sunday attendance is about 700,000. The average Christmas attendance is about 2.3 million. Of course, we have 26 Bishops and an electorate of 48.2 million people, as of the last election. Therefore, there is one Bishop per 27,000 people at attending church on Sunday. There is one Bishop per 88,500 people at Christmas attendance. The maximum size of a constituency is 77,000.

Last year, the daily attendance in this House was 397. Of course, we do not have constituencies and neither do the Bishops, but the number of Peers who attend divided into the electorate would mean one Peer for every 121,000 electors. But, even with Christmas attendance, we have one Bishop for every 88,000 Church of England attendees.

I accept that it would not take an expert statistician to find fault with my conclusions from these statistics, which I admit are highly flawed, but it seems to me that we are overrepresented by Bishops in this House and I leave it to other noble Lords to offer a view for or against that view. I beg to move.

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 48 in my name and the consequential Amendment 49. Perhaps I might begin by saying that I am not making any personal criticism of any of the present Lords spiritual. Most, and perhaps almost all, are important contributors to our debates. However, in a debate of this kind, we have to ask the question: on what basis do the Lords spiritual sit here? My suggestion to the House is that we should examine the criteria and ask ourselves whether they are well founded.

The objection to hereditary Peers is very similar to the objection to the Lords spiritual. In the case of hereditary Peers, while both the pool of candidates and the electorate are small, there are, at least on the Conservative Benches, both hustings and elections. But the way in which individuals become Bishops is very far from transparent, and there is no filter of elections and hustings. Moreover, the pool of candidates for the episcopacy is a very small one, and indeed the selectorate is even smaller. The process itself is very discreet.

Once an individual becomes a fully fledged bishop, that person, subject to gender preferences, has a very good chance of becoming a Member of this House. It is, in short, a case of the Rt Rev Buggins. In the case of the two Archbishops and the Bishops of London, Westminster and Durham, membership of this House is automatic—a self-perpetuating oligarchy. That is obviously not a good way to constitute our legislature.

So one has to ask: what about the tests of suitability and propriety? Most of the Committee agree that such tests are important. These debates—the last three days—have shown that the Committee values the role of HOLAC. Some of us, in fact, want to enhance its role. But HOLAC has no role to play in assessing the propriety or suitability of individual bishops to become Members of this House. I note, incidentally, that my noble friend Lady Berridge’s Amendment 90B addresses this matter. I know of no scrutiny—certainly none of a publicly transparent kind—that addresses the question of the propriety or suitability of appointment.

Then there is regional representation. Again, that is an issue viewed as important by most of this Committee. The Lords spiritual are drawn exclusively from dioceses in England—there are none from Scotland, none from Wales and none from Northern Ireland. So one has to ask: on what basis are the Lords spiritual here? As with the hereditaries, it is historic. The Bishops once represented a landed interest—no longer. The Lords spiritual once reflected the pre-eminent national Church—no longer, I say with regret, as an Anglican who regularly attends my local church. This country is now a secular society and, to the extent that it is not, Anglicanism is no longer pre-eminent.

Then there is the question of numbers: 24 Bishops and two Archbishops—not, I acknowledge at once, a large proportion of the House. But, once we embark on a serious attempt to reduce numbers and refresh our membership—and if, as I suggest, it is very hard to discern reasons of principle to justify the presence of the Lords spiritual in this House—I am afraid that the occupants of the episcopal Bench become candidates for removal. I know that will not be the consequence of the Bill, but I hope that we will be prepared to debate the issue with honesty and candour.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, if I may mix my metaphors, someone had to put on the suicide vest and poke his head above the parapet by putting down this highly controversial amendment for a drastic reduction in the number of Bishops. It had the desired effect: in a debate of one hour and 10 minutes, we have had some very interesting speeches and suggestions for a possible way forward in looking at other faiths in another amendment.

We have had the benefit of three very powerful speeches. My noble friend Lord Hailsham made a very powerful speech about the removal of all Bishops. That was immediately countermanded by an equally powerful speech by the noble Lord, Lord Moore of Etchingham, who made the finest case for retaining the Bishops that I have ever heard; he mentioned the line—in fact, the truth—that we must not disturb the settlement. The third excellent speech was from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Sheffield, who made the valid point that having only five Bishops would make it impossible for them to work here. I accept that, but he also said that the Bishops were open to discussion on their possible numbers in any future settlement or change to the House of Lords.

My noble friend Lord Dundee wanted to reduce the number of Bishops from 26 to 20. Forgive me, but I cannot see the big difference that that would make. My noble friend Lady Berridge called for a check on the propriety of Bishops. I have no intention of entering into that detail, but she spoke at length on adding other faiths, which is the subject of my Amendment 34.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

I discussed Christians.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Amendment 34 intends to add representatives of five other faiths, so I accept that our amendments are not exactly the same. She talked about lots of other churches and religions not being represented. That is something I was going to talk about in relation to my next amendment, if I moved it.

When the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, spoke, I asked myself, “What on earth is he doing here at 9.15 pm on his birthday? It certainly can’t be to hear my speech”. I should say that, on my next amendment, a colleague complained that I missed out the Church of Scotland; it was not the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, but the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness. He also made the point about including other faiths.

The noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Llanfaes, quoted the polls. If this House or the Government were to do everything the polls wanted every time they wanted it, they would be changing policy every six months—so I do not necessarily go along with that.

I accept my noble friend Lord Strathclyde’s point that this issue needs further consideration, in the round, with further Lords reform.

I simply do not want to get into the detail of what my noble friend Lord Northbrook said; I hope he will forgive me.

At first, I thought that my noble friend Lord Strathcarron was going to support getting rid of all the Bishops, but his speech was a rather intriguing way of keeping the Bishops by criticising everything they did. But he did make the point that they make a very valuable contribution to this House.

My noble friend Lord True, the shadow Leader, made a very careful and thoughtful speech, mainly arguing for the status quo and making the point that the Bishops may be sitting on the only Benches in this House that will not be appointed by the Prime Minister in future. The Leader also made a thoughtful and wise speech, calling for wider discussion.

I was due to move the next amendment—Amendment 34—which seeks to reduce the number of Bishops to five and add five representatives of other faiths. However, given that we have had some extensive speeches tonight on adding other faiths, I may change my mind on moving that amendment. For the moment, I beg leave to withdraw this amendment.

Amendment 33 withdrawn.