House of Lords Bill [HL]

Lord Cullen of Whitekirk Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 21st October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cullen of Whitekirk (CB)]

My Lords, the quality of the work of this House and its committees depends on the range and depth of the knowledge, experience and expertise possessed by its Members. It is surely essential that whatever is done to reduce the size of the House should not impair those resources.

The proposal in this Bill that for each successive Parliament there should be an election of a limited number of Peers presents a number of practical implications. Voting in an election would call for each Member of the House to make a personal choice. He or she could hardly be expected to gauge the overall effect of that choice on the availability, strength and balance of the resources to which I have referred. As regards candidates, some Peers may be less visible than others, preferring to concentrate on subjects on which they have some particular expertise. So there is a risk that the outcome of an election may be a loss of Members who are distinctly well qualified to assist the House and its committees.

If a Member of this House fails to secure election under the proposed system, it appears to mean his or her final exit from the House. I say final, since he or she will have ceased to be a Member of the House and so would not be eligible to stand as a candidate for the next Parliament after that. That is reasonably clear from the draft Standing Order attached to the Explanatory Notes for the Bill. On the face of it, there does not appear to be any way in which that Peer could stand as a candidate in the next Parliament, however desirable that might be.

New Peers, such as new Cross-Benchers, provide a particular case in point. There is nothing in the Bill to prevent those who have newly been made Peers becoming Members of the House during the life of a Parliament. However, their membership would indeed be short-lived if they did not secure election for the next Parliament. They may have been Members of the House for only one or two Sessions and thus would be at a disadvantage compared with seasoned Members of the House who were better known to the electorate. If they were not elected, it follows that they would not be able to stand as candidates for the next Parliament after that. That would be particularly unfortunate. The House surely benefits from the infusion of new Peers who can make valuable contributions, perhaps in fields not previously well represented in the House, if at all.

I have mentioned the Explanatory Notes, which brings me to say something about the content of the Bill. It is remarkable how brief are its provisions. One might expect the Bill to set out the substance of what was proposed, whereas notes would set out the explanation for the Bill, what the point of it was and how it fitted into the law. However, in this case, the Explanatory Notes seem to extend the content of the Bill in various ways that I need not go into. I wonder whether that is a usual or appropriate use of Explanatory Notes. At least some of their content should appear in the legislation. That is not an academic point, since the Bill seeks to restrict the entitlement of Peers to sit as Members of this House. For the purpose of discussion in this House or, for that matter, in the other place, the legislation should contain what is proposed and do so with clarity and certainty.