House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Cromwell Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 12th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

My Lords, my amendment is very technical. It provides simply that the sanction should not apply if the Member has good reason for not participating.

[Lord Cromwell (CB)]

My Lords, I have Amendment 63 in this group. If we can help the Front Bench with musical lyrics, it is surely:

“Oh what a circus, oh what a show”.


I declare my interest as a so-called hereditary Peer. I will make two general points before I turn to the detail of my amendment.

First, as earlier speeches from right across the House have made clear, it is accepted that the hereditary principle is no longer suitable and that the suspension of by-elections should become permanent. The Bill achieves that, full stop—a piece of punctuation that seems to have taken on unparalleled significance in our debates on this Bill.

Secondly, on Monday some noble Lords stated either on their feet or in not very sotto voce sedentary mutterings that all amendments are irrelevant, because this is a single-objective Bill. While I understand that view and share the intense frustration with the speed of the debate, some of the degrouping and the gratuitous rudeness to the Leader of the House, particularly on the first day, I nevertheless understand that amendments have been put down and marshalled in the usual way. Most are probing and, while they may seek to go beyond the tight circumference of the current text of the Bill, I am not sure that they can simply be dismissed as irrelevant. Such amendments have arisen because there is a widely expressed concern that, once the expulsion of the hereditaries is done, all further reform will again grind to a halt and the House will sink quietly back into a pattern of prime ministerial patronage and ever-growing size, neither of which enhance its reputation or credibility.

My amendment does not seek to obstruct the purpose of the Bill, but it does invite the Government to take some practical steps to enable the further reform to which their manifesto commits them. Amendment 63, like some others, addresses the issue of participation, but not by prescribing in advance and in detail exactly what such reform should comprise—rather, by seeking simply to put in place a process and timeline to progress it, something that speaker after speaker has been calling for over the days of this debate. It is thus complementary to the single purpose of the Bill and could be added to it without obstructing that purpose in any way.

The focus of this amendment is participation, for the following reasons. First, it is a Member’s participation and contributions, be they aged 91 or 21, that most affect both the quality and the reputation of this House. To touch briefly on a related point of age limits, I understand the convincing argument for imposing an age limit as a matter of public perception, and a wide range of dates was suggested in the debate on Monday and examples given of very competent individuals who would be lost at each gradation. I am not against an age limit, but what the debate on Monday actually highlighted was the inability of Whips to require Members to retire when—and there is no point tiptoeing around this—participation in the work of the House has become too challenging for them. Maybe that is the problem that needs to be addressed.

Secondly, a participation requirement is a commitment that needs to be transformed from a manifesto statement to an implementable set of actions. Finally, and I apologise for introducing a personal note, it does rather sting to be dismissed en bloc but leave behind some Peers—and there is no shortage—who do not attend, or who attend, claim their allowances and then do not participate.

The amendment has three key features. First, it requires, within six months of the Bill becoming an Act, that a cross-party group be set up to consult, to define participation and to establish suitable metrics to measure it. I have been told that defining participation is too difficult. It is not. The “too difficult” mantra has been given as an excuse for far too long. No doubt a range of views will be contributed to the cross-party group, as other amendments in this group illustrate, and account should be taken of previous work in this area. This amendment embraces both those factors. We already collect most of the necessary data, but previous Governments have, I am afraid to say, simply lacked the firmness of purpose to act on it.

This brings me to the amendment’s second feature: it enables the setting up of the processes required to implement the participation requirement as a basis for continued membership. Not all aspects of the outcome will please everyone completely, but we need to move beyond the wringing of hands and the gnashing of gums in order to resolve the participation gap in a practical way.

Some time ago we had the excellent Burns report, which made recommendations that Members across the House supported, but these have not been implemented. Other speakers on Monday recited a long list of failures to implement change. We need to do better. That is why the third and final feature of this amendment is to require the Government to bring forward measures to ensure that the findings are implemented. While the amendment as drafted anticipates the Government getting a grip on this, the House might itself, if it has the powers to do so, take responsibility for setting up the group, ensuring its work is done and carrying it forward to implementation. That is certainly worthy of consideration, so long as it does not become yet another consultation that, in the best traditions of Sir Humphrey, in “Yes Minister”, simply delays and dissolves what actually needs to be done.

In conclusion, this amendment does not—and I underline this—seek in any way to thwart the single-minded purpose of the Bill. It does not prescribe how participation should be defined, quantified or implemented, but it does put in place a process and a timeframe of 20 months for reform, based on participation, once the Bill is passed. For a Government who are serious about reforming this House, it is an opportunity to address its size, effectiveness, cost and reputation—all things that most Members agree are not currently what they should be. I therefore hope that the Minister will seize on this amendment, both as a means to move forward with the Bill and to demonstrate in practical terms the Government’s absolute commitment to resolving the participation issue: not in a general, aspirational sense, or as something that, in a phrase heard earlier in the debate, “we are working on”, but with a structure and a timetable so that the House can both understand and benefit from long-overdue change. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, given the comments of the noble Lords, Lord Grocott and Lord Swire, I will keep my comments short. Although I am reading from a piece of paper, I am reading from my scribbles, not a full text. I hope that is all right. I co-signed Amendment 26 from the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra. I do not think he needed any real encouragement, but I think it is very sensible. In fact, Amendment 63 from the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, has real value. If he took that to a vote, I would probably support it. I absolutely hate Amendment 28 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay. It might as well say, in brackets afterwards, “Kick the Greens out”.

I suggest that we could have got around this debate—all these days, hours and repetitions. We could have just made all the hereditaries life Peers, which would have removed all this. I understand that there is an issue about kicking them out but, personally, I think we will miss them. Making them all life Peers would have just shut them up, and we would be free to go and have an early supper.

[Lord Cromwell (CB)]

The rest of us are not blessed with the eloquence and wit that the noble Lord, Lord Swire, feels he has, but I think he has missed the point of my amendment and that, as a Committee, we are now trying to do all the detail on the Floor of the House. That is impossible. My amendment tries to establish that after this Bill a system is put in place to define these issues, to which we can all contribute usefully and sensibly—or foolishly, as we wish. That is the way to take this forward, not putting it into the Bill in detail. We need a system for the Government to show a bit of an ankle here and show us that they are really going to do this by putting this amendment into the Bill, not trying to work out the minutiae of percentages here. That is completely pointless.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

I have Amendment 40 in this group. I find myself very much in agreement with the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, which is a travesty of history. My route forward would be by Amendment 32, because I think it leaves the initiative much more with this House than with the Government. I would say, if the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Sentamu, were in his place, that St Matthew recorded some excellent advice about getting to grips with your adversary as soon as possible as the best way to deal with something. I think it is rather more likely that the next four and a half years will see the second coming of our Lord than a second Bill on the House of Lords, so to have something like Amendment 32 would be a great advantage.

The thing that unites us all is a determination to improve the way this House serves the public. There are many aspects in which we can work on this. The amendments we have in front of us are restricted by the nature of the Bill, but I absolutely think that this is the right moment to bring them forward and discuss them.

In my years in the House, I can remember one occasion when a Starred Question made a difference to government policy, which was when the Government were asked what their plans were to celebrate the 50th anniversary of El Alamein, in 1992. The answer was, “There are no such plans; it is the Germans’ turn to celebrate anniversaries this year”. With a House full of veterans, that led to a fairly rapid reverse of policy. I cannot recall one since. Much as we enjoy Questions, I think we should be much more critical about whether what we are doing actually has a function. I believe we should commission outside research, be self-critical, try to self-improve as a House and find ways of doing better.

When it comes to looking at our expectations of participation, I very much understand what the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, and my noble friend Lord Attlee were saying. There are many ways in which this happens. The form in proposed new Section 2A(1) in my amendment, asking people to sign a declaration to, as it were, say on their honour that they are participating fully in the business of the House, may be a good way forward. What the noble Lord, Lord Desai, suggests as a way of measuring that is certainly something to explore. We could also explore following the advice of Elon Musk and each week writing a postcard to the leader of our groups naming five achievements. I think that would put some of us on the spot.

In thinking about the worthwhile work this House does, we should focus on committees in all their various forms. That is where I have seen most value delivered and, in terms of what my noble friend Lord Norton says about fitting our membership to our function, that is very much the direction in which we should be trying to go.