House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) (Abolition of By-Elections) Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Blunkett and Lord Northbrook

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 7th September 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Northbrook (Con)]

My Lords, I apologise to the House for having been unable to take part in Second Reading and the first day of Committee. I declare an interest as a hereditary Peer.

I agree with my noble friend Lord Trefgarne that important constitutional legislation should be brought forward by the Government rather than by a Private Member’s Bill. In June 1999, my noble friend Lord Denham asked the following Question of the Lord Chancellor:

“Just suppose that that House goes on for a very long time and the party opposite get fed up with it. If it wanted to get rid of those 92 before stage two came, and it hit on the idea of getting rid of them by giving them all life peerages … I believe that it would be a breach of the Weatherill agreement. Does the noble and learned Lord agree?”


The Labour Lord Chancellor, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, said in reply that,

“I say quite clearly that … the position of the excepted Peers shall be addressed in phase two reform legislation”.—[Official Report, 22/6/1999; cols. 798-800.]

Nothing could be clearer than that. That is why I believe that this Bill indeed breaches the Weatherill agreement and the House of Lords Act 1999.

I remind the Committee of the importance of the Labour Lord Chancellor’s words in March 1999, when he said:

“The amendment reflects a compromise … between Privy Councillors on Privy Council terms and binding in honour on all those who have come to give it their assent”.—[Official Report, 30/3/1999; col. 207.]


As the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, was Tony Blair’s Parliamentary Private Secretary at the time, he must have been well aware of this. To the hereditary peerage, it was a vital part of the 1999 Act and a condition for letting it have satisfactory progress through the House.

I cannot understand why this area of the House needs reform when the by-elections have produced such capable replacements for the 90 such as the noble Lords, Lord Grantchester and Lord De Mauley, the noble Earl, Lord Cathcart, and the noble Viscount, Lord Younger of Leckie, all of whom are or have been on the Front Bench of their respective parties. It would seem more urgent to reform the life Peers system, which the Burns report proposes. The hereditary Peers are a strong link with the past, a thread that goes back to the 14th century. Until relatively recently, in House of Lords terms, the House was entirely hereditary. By-elections provide a way into this House that is not dependent on prime ministerial patronage.

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

My Lords, to address the issue that has been put before us and to avoid prevarication, there is a new phase 2: it is Burns. There may be a phase 3—who knows? If a Jeremy Corbyn-led Government were elected, there would a phase 3 which might disturb the Benches opposite slightly more than not having by-elections for hereditary Peers. Burns is a phase 2, and it has consequences. Unless the issue of hereditary Peers and by-elections is addressed in the way that my noble friend Lord Grocott proposes, it is not my party or the broader opposition who will find themselves in difficulty, it will be the Conservative Benches. I would like them to reflect on what would happen if we implemented Burns and this House were decanted in six years’ time, with the two things coming together, and the Conservatives were faced with hanging on to their hereditary Peers while losing their life Peers.