House of Lords Reform

Lord Burns Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Burns (CB)]

My Lords, reflecting my role with the Lord Speaker’s committee, I will speak about controlling the size of the House. The Lord Speaker’s committee started by trying to understand why the size of the House had risen in the way that it has and the pressures that have emerged on membership to bring about this increase over time. It has sometimes been a quite rapid increase. The committee concluded that there are several features of our existing arrangements that generate this problem, leading, of course, to the adverse publicity the House often receives. To solve the problem, we need to identify the outcome we seek and implement a package of measures that addresses these features.

The first feature is the absence of a limit on the size of the House, which makes the House of Lords almost unique among legislative Chambers. The second, which has already been mentioned, is that Prime Ministers can make any number of appointments and to whichever party they choose. It is a quite astonishing situation. It is not surprising that appointments during a Parliament have tended to be predominantly to the Prime Minister’s own party, and that decisions on appointments are not always based on the likely contribution a Member will make to the business of the House. Thirdly, there is no retirement age or term limit. The number of leavers is not predictable and generally it is less than the number of appointments Prime Ministers wish to make.

The consequence of these three features is constant “leap-frogging” when there is a change of Government, as successive Governments seek to change the balance of the House in their favour. Over time, as this is repeated, we see an inevitable increase in overall numbers. Putting this right is likely to require changing each of these features. I do not believe that there is any single measure that would in isolation sustainably solve the problem we have identified. Simply getting the number down today is not enough; it is also about keeping them down.

For me, the most important change remains that there should be a limit on the size of the House. It should probably be no larger than the House of Commons. When the Lord Speaker’s committee undertook its work, it was proposed that the House of Commons would come down to 600 Members. Of course, it has remained at 650, so we have more generalised this to say that we are looking for a House that has a membership no larger than the House of Commons.

On that basis, and if we had a limit, appointments would be made only when there are vacancies. This would go a long way to providing incentives for sensible appointments and departures. To avoid leap-frogging, there needs to be a fair balance of appointments between the parties so that, when there is a change of government, the new Government do not need to make a rush of appointments to catch up. The committee recommended that this should be based on an average of the percentage of votes and seats at the most recent general election.

Finally, there should be a term limit, an age limit or some combination of the two. This would ensure a steady flow of leavers to make way for refreshment and adjustment to the composition when it is needed.

What does this mean in practice for our present situation? First we need an agreement on these principles, and then we need agreement on a transition from where we are today.

For the purposes of my remarks and thinking about this, I assume that the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill becomes law, although I recognise from listening to the debate that this remains a very contentious issue. Today, including those on leave of absence or disqualified, there are 716 life Peers. Getting the numbers down to 650 during this Parliament probably requires introducing an age limit. Again, rather like the leader of the Liberal Democrats, I am not averse to age or retirement limits. They apply in almost every other activity that I have been associated with and are an essential part of the refreshment of organisations.

However, the Government’s manifesto proposal is to introduce a retirement age of 80, which would mean some 300 of the present life Peers retiring by 2029, if the Parliament runs its full course. This goes further than needed to have a House smaller than the House of Commons or to create space for rebalancing the numbers between the parties. On its own, my fear is that without a cap on the size at the same time, we will be back in the same place before long, despite having gone through this process. A higher retirement age of, say, 84 or 85 coming in following any legislation and then every year afterwards would be a more gradual process and could get us close to 650 Members by the end of the Parliament.

At some point there will have to be legislation, or agreement between the parties, on a fair allocation of future appointments between them along with a continuing proportion to the Cross Benches. I hope that within these principles, identifying what the problem has been about size, the Government are able to come forward with the kind of co-ordinated action I have described today rather than this emphasis upon one or two measures.

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

Lord Burns Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 13th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Burns (CB)]

My Lords, I am speaking in this debate because I am asked from time to time whether the reform in this Bill would help to meet the proposals made by the Lord Speaker’s Committee on the Size of the House. I chair that committee, which continues to meet. We met again this week to review our position on this Bill. As a committee, we agreed that, since the Lord Speaker asked us to come up with non-legislative solutions, it is not within our remit to take an official position on the Bill. However, I can say that we as individuals do not oppose the Bill and some of us, including myself, are in favour of it.

For me, the decisive issue is that it is unreasonable that some positions in this House should be filled by candidates from such a narrow hereditary group. We accept that some talented people have joined the House through this route, but they could have come through the normal processes of party recommendations and HOLAC appointments. We acknowledge that the effect of the Bill is small and does not address wider questions about the future of this House, but it follows in the footsteps of the 2014 and 2015 Private Members’ Bills that made small but crucial improvements to the House. In my view, this Bill falls into that category.

Last autumn, the figures for appointments and leavers were not too far away from the committee’s targets in aggregate, even though the balance between the parties strayed somewhat from our suggestion. But now, it appears that any restraint seems to be at risk. The change in Prime Minister produced a resignation list and we understand that, following the early general election, a dissolution list is forthcoming. Taken together, they are in danger of undoing all the progress that was being made on reducing the size of the House.

Relevant to this Bill, the long-term solution to our problem of size is hindered, as was said, by the continued existence of hereditary by-elections. First, as the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, pointed out, hereditary Peers are not subject to the two-out, one-in formula, which the committee argued should guide the reduction in the size of the House. They are replaced one-for-one. Secondly, over the longer term, by-elections inhibit the rebalancing of the House; as political trends change, the allocation of the hereditary spaces in the House between the parties is set in stone. As we warned in our first report, by-elections use up some of the Conservative and Cross-Bench notional allocation of appointments, which could otherwise go to life Peers. I note that, during the last short Parliament, between 2017 and 2019, there were only three HOLAC appointments to the Cross Benches, yet there were three by-election appointments to the Cross Benches during the same period.

Amid this renewed concern about the size of the House, I close by emphasising that the most important question for me is not how quickly we reach our target size but how we stop it constantly growing, while also refreshing and rebalancing the membership. The underlying problem is that life membership means that only about 20 to 25 of our Members leave each year. The committee suggested non-renewable terms of 15 years for new Members to provide more scope for appointments. Without changes like this, it will be impossible to refresh and rebalance the membership as political trends change without seeing the size of the House creeping ever closer to the 1,000 Members that we mentioned in our report.

Our committee will continue to seek progress in this area and scrutinise the performance of the groups towards the departure targets. Meanwhile, my position, along with that of many others, is that we should welcome this albeit minor Bill and the valuable improvements contained within it.

House of Lords: Lord Speaker’s Committee Report

Lord Burns Excerpts

Tuesday 19th December 2017 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Burns]

That this House takes note of the Report of the Lord Speaker’s committee on the size of the House.

[Lord Burns (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness the Leader of the House and all those who have made today’s debate possible so soon after the publication of our report. I also recognise the contribution of my fellow committee members. It has been a great pleasure to work with them. We produced a unanimous report and the contributions of all members were very important. We were fortunate in having the support of the talented Tom Wilson as clerk, together with his team, and some experienced external advisers, who are listed in the report.

The committee has been greatly encouraged by the response of noble Lords to our proposals, and indeed from those outside the House. For their part, the Government have made it clear that they are interested in finding out whether the committee’s conclusions command widespread support in the House. I hope that today’s debate, involving almost 100 noble Lords, will serve that purpose and demonstrate that the proposals have strong backing.

Today, I will not repeat the details of the report. Many noble Lords have already heard me go through them—some more than once, I am afraid to say. Rather, first I will make a few general comments about key aspects of the committee’s approach and proposals. Then I will tackle some of the questions and issues raised with us since publication. Later today—if it is today—I will try to answer queries and concerns raised in the debate.

From the outset, the committee recognised that most people were understandably focusing on how to reduce the current number of Members of this House. By contrast, little thought had been given to how to stop the historic tendency of the House to increase in size. Whatever your views on the current or future size of the House, such a trend is simply not sustainable. Accordingly, while looking at how to get numbers down, we also focused on designing a system which would cap the membership of the House for as long as it remains an appointed Chamber—we called this the “steady state”.

Throughout our discussions, the committee’s overriding priority was pragmatism. We all know how difficult it is to achieve any legislative reform of this House. We set out to design a system which could be implemented without legislation, but which could be formalised in statute in due course if the political will was there. I stress that the purpose is not to exempt our proposals from the spotlight of legislative scrutiny in both Houses. Rather, it is to make progress in the areas where widespread agreement can be reached, as quickly as possible.

The first step was to analyse the options for ensuring a turnover of Members sufficient to allow the membership to be rebalanced and refreshed within a cap. It is clear to us—the reasons are set out in the report—that fixed terms are the only solution which will provide a steady stream of vacancies in a way which is fair to all groups. Therefore a key pillar of our recommendations is that all new Members should serve a single, non-renewable fixed term of 15 years. They would be offered the peerage on that basis and would make an undertaking to retire after 15 years when joining the House. We do not envisage any Members going back on their word, but we have robust legal advice that the House has the powers to enforce the undertaking to retire.

A second pillar is that appointments which became available would be allocated between the parties on the basis of the most recent general election results. This would be calculated as a combination of each party’s share of Commons seats and of the national vote. Along with 15-year terms, this would mean that the composition of the House at any point once we reach a steady state would give a 15-year picture of the political views of the country, as expressed in elections. Our calculations in the report show how the relative strength of the parties would have developed historically under our proposals. For recent years, they generally mirror what happened in real life in broad terms—with the single crucial difference that it would have been within a cap of 600 Members. Election results would of course not affect the Cross-Benchers. They would, as proposed by the great majority of your Lordships and others, make up a constant proportion of at least 20% of the House.

I now turn to the more immediate question of reducing the current membership to a reasonable level in a way that is fair to all, which is what the committee called the transition. The weight of opinion supported a membership of about 600, although our proposals would work just as well with a higher or lower number, within reason. In reducing the current membership of 824 to 600, there are two important but conflicting priorities. The first is to make the reduction within a reasonable period. The second is to enable a continuing flow of new appointments, so that the membership can be refreshed and rebalanced rather than stagnating.

The committee came to the view that, until we were down to a membership of 600, the best compromise would be a system with half of the departures contributing towards a reduction in the overall membership and the other half being allocated to new appointees. Once the target had been reached, each departure would lead to one appointment. I emphasise that these figures apply in aggregate across the House, not within each party group. I will touch on this later because there has been some confusion.

Appointments would be made in line with election results as I described earlier, so replacement rates would vary between parties. The speed by which the target of 600 is reached depends on how rapidly existing Members leave the House. We understand that no current Members can be forced to leave without legislation, so it will be for the House as a whole to decide how quickly to proceed and for individual Members to retire when the time comes.

The committee’s report sets out a proposed profile of departures, which would enable the House to come down to 600 over about 11 years. The departure rate starts off gently but increases over time; the committee came to this view because it reflected the increasing age and length of service of current Members, and the fact that they will have longer to make retirement plans. Each party group would contribute the same number of retirements as a proportion of its pre-2018 membership each year, but of course the number of new appointments would vary according to how well that party had performed in the most recent election. As for which individuals should leave and when, the committee felt it was right to leave this decision in the hands of the party groups, but we have made some suggestions. For example, age or a combination of age and service might be useful yardsticks.

These are the key elements of the scheme. If we are to make progress, we will need agreement from the Prime Minister that she will make new appointments in line with the suggested formula for total numbers and for the allocation of appointments by party. She has the power to give this scheme the momentum it needs. If subsequently we can show progress it is difficult to imagine that her successors would revert to the current unsustainable position. But to get to this position we require the support of the party groups, which will be responsible for meeting the retirement targets agreed by the House—and a willingness from all of us to take a constructive approach to our own retirement plans.

I now turn to some of the main comments and queries we have received since the report was published. First, many people have asked why the reduction to 600 cannot take place more quickly. It certainly could, but increasing the ratio of departures to new appointments would slow down the flow of appointments, with a knock-on effect on refreshment and rebalancing. The only desirable way of speeding up the reduction is for people to retire at a faster rate. This is in the hands of your Lordships. The committee put forward what it thought was a reasonable pace.

Secondly, others have suggested that the “equal contribution” process is unfair—why should each party be required to achieve the same rate of departures regardless of whether they are currently overrepresented or underrepresented in the House? But departures are only half the story. It is necessary to take into account both departures and appointments. Because new appointments will be allocated on the basis of the most recent election the party breakdown will adjust accordingly from day one. If a party’s electoral performance is better than its initial share of seats, its overall share of the House will gradually increase—and if its electoral performance is worse than its initial share of seats its overall share of the House will fall.

The third common query has been about what happens to groups that miss or exceed their departure targets. The answer is straightforward: for each departure below or above target the party gets one less or one more appointment. We are satisfied that there is no realistic way of gaming this arrangement. A party that overdelivers on retirements will have more appointments but this will not affect its total strength in the House. Similarly, a party that underdelivers on retirements will have fewer appointments but will not gain in its overall party strength.

Fourthly, some Members have expressed their dissatisfaction that the hereditary by-election system is left intact under our proposals and that the number of Bishops will remain at 26. We have stressed that this does not reflect our personal preferences, but the reality is that legislation would be needed to make any changes in these areas. We suggest that this is not an issue for today.

Fifthly, a number of people have stressed that a Prime Minister needs to be able to appoint Ministers directly to the House. The committee agrees. Our proposals make specific provision for Prime Ministers to bring forward one of their appointments when they are due, enabling them to appoint Ministers at short notice.

Sixthly, there was some concern about effective Ministers being forced to leave office when their Lords terms expire. We propose that serving Ministers within the statutory cap, as well as certain Lords officeholders, should be allowed to remain in the House until the end of their period of office, even if this takes them beyond the 15 years.

Seventhly, some Members have asked what would happen in certain unusual circumstances, such as the swift emergence of a new party or a party refusing to use its allocation of appointments. I refer noble Lords to appendix 5, which deals with these issues.

Finally, we are aware that our proposals in respect of non-affiliated Members need further work. We hope that they will sign up to the principles of the scheme and take a responsible decision about when to retire, but we accept that the House may need to exert pressure in some instances. It is particularly important to get this right so that there are no incentives for Members of the main groups to join the list of non-affiliated Members to avoid the tap on the shoulder from their group.

We have also received representations on a number of issues which, while we have sympathy with the points raised, were not within our remit. These include the regional, gender, age and ethnic balance of the House, which lies in the hands of the party leaders and HOLAC, who are responsible for selecting new Members. We have also had questions about the system of financial support for Members, which is a matter for the House of Lords Commission and the party leaders.

These are important issues for the future. The only question now is whether implementing our proposals would make it more or less likely that we would be in a position to make progress with these issues. For myself, I cannot see why the position would be worse and in the longer term I hope we would see an improvement.

In concluding, I say to your Lordships that this may well be the last opportunity for the House to tackle its size on its own terms. Our proposals would end the anomaly of it being the only Chamber in a western democracy which has no cap on its size and no limits on length of service. Resolution of this issue would comprise the third and final key step in the development of a sustainable appointed House, without prejudice to any future introduction of elections.

The first step was the introduction of life peerages in 1958, which enabled Prime Ministers to rebalance the composition of the House without creating permanent titles to be handed down the generations. The second step was the House of Lords Act 1999, which largely dealt with the outmoded phenomenon of membership by birthright. The problem is that neither reform dealt with the inflationary pressures which stem from combining political rebalancing with lifelong membership. I regard the committee’s proposals as this third step.

If we can create a system which enables rebalancing and refreshing of the membership within a fixed cap we will have cracked a problem inherent in granting peerages that entitle the recipient to a lifelong seat in this House. I greatly look forward to hearing the views of noble Lords throughout the day. I beg to move.

Death of a Member: Baroness Thatcher

Lord Burns Excerpts

Wednesday 10th April 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Burns]

My Lords, like many other noble Lords, I owe Baroness Thatcher a huge debt of gratitude. Towards the end of 1979, on the advice of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe, I was appointed as chief economic adviser to the Treasury, a position that I held throughout the rest of Mrs Thatcher’s time as Prime Minister. During that 10-year period, I had the privilege of attending many meetings with her. I had enormous opportunities to watch the particular style of debate and the method that she used when challenged, something that I had never seen before.

Apart from late-night speechwriting sessions which I occasionally got involved in, most of my experiences were of accompanying the Chancellors of the day, initially the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe, and then of course the noble Lord, Lord Lawson. By their very nature, we were dealing with the major issues of economic policy and, even more so by their nature, they were usually very controversial. We normally had these sessions because there were some difficult issues to sort out. They were very tense and very often there were tricky issues to resolve. At times one did not expect to reach resolution. On more than one occasion when I left she said to me, “I just want you to look as you go out at what it says on that door”, to remind me that it said First Lord of the Treasury. She was trying to indicate that, in the final analysis, it was going to be her word.

Of course, those people who did not work with Mrs Thatcher assume that by her very nature she began and ended with an entrenched position and refused to listen. The main point that I want to make today, like many noble Lords who have spoken, is that that is not at all how the process took place. Part of her enormous talent was her ability to question, challenge and press you on issues as a way of trying to find whether the views that she held herself could stand that stress-testing. I always felt that she was trying to test her own ideas and your ideas to see how they stood up to this process of questioning.

Like all very great leaders, she had a strong set of principles and values and a clear sense of what she wanted to achieve. But thinking back through some of the episodes and having spoken, sometimes at length, to people who have been writing biographies of Mrs Thatcher, the issues that we dealt with were looked at in enormous depth. The notion that these ideas were pulled off in a casual way and immediately pursued could not be further from the truth. They were issues that we went through time and time again, very often at meeting after meeting until all the aspects of the problem had been identified and she was satisfied that we had covered the issues. I often think that it was as a result of the extent of that process and the argument and debate that she gained strength in the end to make decisions and stick to them in the way that is well known.

As many people have pointed out, she was not always right. She often changed her position on issues. But whatever view you take of individual parts of it, I join with many others in thinking that her contribution in terms of the transformation of the British economy was enormous. I have little doubt that it came about by this combination of a very clear strategic mind and the ability to concentrate and look at issues in depth, stress-test them and go through them at great length before finally coming to a conclusion.

In recent days, I have heard it suggested that somehow the recent financial crisis has its origins in her approach to economic policy. Nothing could be further from the truth. Those who worked with Mrs Thatcher know that she disliked financial excess whether in the private or the public sector. In the early 1980s, when we were struggling with rapid growth of the money supply, she frequently asked why there could not be some limits to the leverage ratios of banks, even in a deregulated system. She was only very reluctantly put off this approach, which has now become much more fashionable after the events of recent years.

A surprised journalist said to me yesterday that after the events of recent years he had been looking at some of the things that Mrs Thatcher had said about the single currency and had been astonished to discover that most of the things that had occurred in the past few years were part of the debate that took place then and why she came to the view that the UK should not be part of the single currency.

Along with many others, I regard myself as enormously fortunate to have played a small part in those momentous years. As the noble Lord, Lord Butler, said, there was a real greatness about Mrs Thatcher and I feel very privileged to have watched that. I would like to hope that I learnt a great deal from those sessions and that extraordinary process of discussion, challenge and debate and really testing the ideas of the people you worked with.