King’s Speech

Lord Butler of Brockwell Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Butler of Brockwell (CB)]

My Lords, a lot of congratulations could be in order this evening, but I particularly congratulate the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hermer, on his outstanding maiden speech. How marvellous it was to hear the priority he gave to the rule of law and to bringing legislation before Parliament in a full and proper form. I thought to myself how much Lord Judge would have welcomed that statement.

I welcomed the recognition in the Labour Party’s manifesto of the House’s role in scrutinising the Government and in improving the quality of legislation. I also welcomed the statement that reform of the House is “long over-due”, and the recognition that this needs to address the size of the House. Having said that, I was disappointed that the only specific measure announced in the gracious Speech is for the removal of the hereditary Peers. As others have pointed out, the proposed Bill could result in the precipitate exclusion of many Members who currently make such a valuable contribution to the House. I fully recognise the Government’s right to pass the legislation, which was in both the Labour Party manifesto and the King’s Speech, and I hope the House will recognise that also. At the same time, I hope that some means might be found to retain the services of those who continue to make such a contribution to the work of the House.

Of course, the exclusion of the remaining hereditaries will go less than halfway towards solving the current imbalance between Conservative and Labour Members of the House. While the Leader has ruled out the creation of massive numbers of additional Labour Members and has said that she would wish to see

“roughly equal numbers between the Government and the major Opposition party”,

it seems inevitable that, contrary to the aspiration in the Labour Party manifesto, the House will get bigger before it gets smaller. That can be dealt with in due course by the proposal for a compulsory retirement age. As one of those affected, I have no objection to that. But on this proposal the Government appear to be stalling, and I think it is right to stall. Paradoxically, a retirement age of 80 would remove more Labour Members than those of any other party, and thus make even worse the imbalance between the main parties in the House. So I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, that more needs to be done, and I disagree with the view of the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, that the Government are wise simply to be confining themselves to the Bill to remove the hereditaries.

How, then, is the House to be reformed? I share the view of the committee chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Burns, which was also reflected in a recent letter to the Times from the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts: that in the longer term the only effective means of permanently reducing the size of the House would be a statutory restriction on the Prime Minister’s power to appoint new Members. This could be combined with imposing a statutory limit of, say, 600, on the size of the House, to be accomplished progressively by the formula of two retirements to one appointment, as recommended by the Burns committee. As part of a comprehensive reform of the House, many of us would also like to see the implementation of what I know as the Norton Bill, to make the House of Lords Appointments Commission statutory and widen its terms of reference to include competence.

I am not entirely pessimistic about the future. I hope I am not reading too much into the speech of the Leader of the House last week, when she said that it will be

“helpful for us, as a House, to discuss how to move forward on these issues … to ensure we get things right”.—[Official Report, 17/7/24; col. 25.]

I hope that this might imply a degree of flexibility on the Government’s part. If it does, I believe that the great majority of the House will want to welcome and co-operate with the Government’s commitment to House of Lords reform.