House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Dobbs Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 2nd July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Meyer (Con)]

My Lords, this is not about ping-pong but about reform, and for reform to be legitimate, it must be principled, proportionate, fair and respectful.

The hereditary Peers currently serving this House entered under a binding cross-party agreement in 1999. They did so in good faith, committing to public service, many without expectation of office or reward. Some are relatively young and gave up successful careers to serve here. To subject them now to mass eviction is not just poor constitutional practice but an act of bad faith. They are not ceremonial relics but active and dedicated parliamentarians, as many have noted. The question is not about reform and whether it should happen—we all agree on that—but about how reform should be done. Can we do it with fairness and decency, or will we allow it to proceed with injustice and haste?

This amendment would not preserve the hereditary principle, but it would allow those already here to remain until they retire. This is reform done properly and fairly. The Minister will argue that the Bill fulfils a manifesto pledge, but the pledge said nothing about mass eviction. Delivering on a pledge does not justify injustice, particularly when it breaks a binding agreement and when just 34% of the electorate voted for it.

Without this amendment, the Bill amounts to constitutional vandalism. The Bill removes a long-serving group with an age-old sense of duty and responsibility, not for what they perform but for how they arrived. This is why it feels vindictive. It also sets a dangerous precedent, as my noble friend mentioned. Today it is the hereditary Peers; tomorrow it could be the Cross-Benchers or anyone who dares to dissent. This House draws its strengths from its independence and diversity of thought. Let us not mistake destruction for progress. Let us pursue reform the British way: incrementally, inclusively and fairly.

This amendment would allow reform without injustice. It honours service, and it gives the Government the chance to act with principle, not vindictiveness. I urge all noble Lords who value fairness and decency to support this amendment. This is a U-turn worth doing.

[Lord Dobbs (Con)]

My Lords, I shall make a very brief comment on the points of the noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, about the image of the House.

We know and accept that hereditary Peers are anomalous, but what about most of the rest of us? Let us be clear about this: we are here—the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, and I—because we crawled so far up the affections of a Prime Minister that we got parking rights. What is good for the goose is good for the gander.

As for the idea that this is going to cause a great change in the reputation of this House, I wish that were the case. Meg Russell of the Constitution Unit at University College London has just published a new set of findings, having done some opinion polling on this very point. One point was that you could either limit the number of prime ministerial appointments to this House or get rid of the hereditaries. She said that limiting the number of prime ministerial appointments had by far the highest support among the public. Just 3% of voters chose removing the hereditary Peers without also limiting the number of prime ministerial appointments. We are not in such a bad way as is sometimes suggested.

[Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)]

Does the noble Lord not think it possible to do both—to limit the number of appointees through the prime ministerial structure and to reduce the size of the House in the way that is suggested in this Bill?

[Lord Dobbs]

I had finished my remarks but will respond to say that I would love that to be the case.

[Baroness Browning (Con)]

My Lords, I have been waiting for the noble Lord, Lord Burns, to contribute to this debate. He has not done so, so perhaps I might, as a member of the Burns committee, set up by the former Lord Speaker, the noble Lord, Lord Fowler.

We brought before this House a report from the Burns committee with a suggestion of how we could limit the numbers and deal with retirements, but it was based purely on Prime Ministers of the day—and there have been quite a few of them since our report was debated by this House—making sure that they played their part in not sending so many people to the Chamber. As we know, it is only my noble friend Lady May who has kept that bargain and understood why that was important for it to work. Indeed, in subsequent Burns reports that have been available to the House, it was clear that the agreement on retirement was working. We had it within our grasp some years ago, agreed by this House that that was how we would proceed. Had we stuck to that—in particular, had former Prime Ministers stuck to their side of the bargain —I do not think we would be in this position today.