House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Borwick Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 11th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Borwick (Con)]

My Lords, in February 1987, nearly 38 years ago, I had the good fortune to be appointed chief executive of a public company at the age of 31. It was a terrifying prospect for me, the shareholders and the employees. It was an engineering and manufacturing company, employing 1,000 people. I also had the good fortune to be friendly with a wise union leader. Perhaps the noble Baroness the Leader of the House is in a similar position now.

My friend taught me a lesson about redundancies: the fear of redundancies is more stressful than the reality. Who will go? Will we all go? These are the questions in the minds of the victims. He taught me that morale would improve when the facts were clear, as any suggestion that the managers or CEO knew more about the business than the shop floor workers was a mistake.

One of the many changes in HR law since that date is that it is clearly illegal to choose the candidates for redundancies by political differences. Can this Bill pass the same test? I know that we are not employees here; we are different, and our terms are different, but the Labour Party has often preached that an individual should behave with a generosity of spirit towards his staff, as shown in the best of other organisations. I gather that hereditary Peers show up for work in the Chamber rather more frequently than other Peers. Do the civil servants in Whitehall and around the country show the same dedication to their employers?

I was elected in 2013, in an election of the whole House: an electorate of about 700 Peers, of whom about 400 voted, as I remember. There are MPs in another place, chosen to stand in a safe party seat by an executive committee smaller than that. However, my biggest problem is with the mean-spirited way in which the Bill has been drafted. That attitude shows up the differences between this Bill and its nearest equivalent, that proposed by the generous noble Lord, Lord Grocott. His Bill granted life peerages to sitting hereditary Peers, a course of action available to the Starmer Government if they were not, as rumoured, labouring under the self-imposed ambition to gain an overall majority in this House by appointing about 200 Labour Peers.

The Labour manifesto is clear that the reforms that they would like to propose include the abolition of Peers who have reached the age of 80 at the end of the Parliament after reaching this landmark. Personally, I believe that people age at different rates, so a better plan would be to introduce health checks at the age of 80, which might reasonably lead to voluntary retirement.

This Bill has the abolition of elected hereditary Peers at the end of this Session, perhaps four years earlier than those over-80s, and I can foresee amendments proposed to equalise that date by delaying the date of execution of hereditaries to the end of the Parliament.

I can also expect amendments addressing the subject of the Church of England Bishops, whose presence is an institution older than the majority of hereditary peerages. But why should we not widen the franchise, so to speak, by including bishops of other faiths, such as Catholics, imams and rabbis? If Catholic bishops would not be willing to take their place, perhaps Catholic theologians should be appointed. Either that, or all clerics should depart with the elected hereditary Peers.

In summary, my problem is with the bold statement in the Labour Party manifesto that hereditary peerages in the House of Lords are “indefensible”. I believe that there are several features in our constitution which are wrong in theory but right in practice. The monarchy leaps to mind; an unelected second Chamber is another. To take action because something offends your theory of government is not only unwise but rather petty. The reason to amend or reject this Bill is that the existing system works—do not redecorate with a bulldozer. We accept that the Labour Party won by a landslide—congratulations. Now build a good peace; do not sow the soil with salt.