House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 25th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, for raising this issue. It has been raised in your Lordships’ House previously, and the noble Lord the Leader of the Official Opposition has raised some of the legal issues around the legislation that causes part of the problem.

I have to say—and I think the noble Lord would say the same—that I am immensely proud of the work that my ministerial colleagues do. If you look across Parliament, you find that there are few Ministers who work as hard as Lords Ministers. Partly that it is because Lords Ministers—as I look at the team, I think, “What a team!”—have to cover a range of issues, including for their colleagues. They will answer any issue raised across their department. I have enormous respect for the work they do.

The problem lies with legislation that is 50 years old that limits the number of Ministers overall: it limits the number in the House of Commons and then it limits the number of different categories of Minister. As the noble Lord says, it has been the case for a number of years that there have been a small number of unpaid Ministers. I am pleased to say we have made some progress. We have five paid Ministers of State in your Lordships’ House now and significantly fewer unpaid Ministers. However, I take the point; I do not think that any Minister should be unpaid. It is not just the issue of pay; it is the respect that we gain in doing the role.

The noble Lord refers to arrangements that he tried to come to with his Government and failed to do so, and how he and I spoke. I have to say that the reason we did not reach agreement was that the arrangements did not address all the issues that I think need to be addressed. I considered that it was a stopgap measure that would get us through a short period, but I did not think it was a long-term solution. This is something that is very much on my agenda, and my colleagues know it is on my agenda. It is a good old trade union principle that people should get paid for the job they do, and that should be the case.

I have to say, though, that it is not related to this Bill. It is quite a stretch to get it in the Bill, and I admire the noble Lord’s ingenuity. However, the effect of his amendment if it were to pass would either be immediately to reduce the number of Ministers in the Commons or to lose Ministers from this place. The third option would be to change the legislation, which is probably a bit above my pay grade for now. I can say that these matters are under discussion, and I will do what I can with my colleagues to ensure that all of them get the proper support that they should get when doing their jobs. For now, I ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

Surely it would be possible, if the noble Baroness is not prepared to accept my noble friend’s amendment, to have a one-clause Bill which simply alters the number and is agreed between the usual channels, which could pass through both Houses. It is very hard to understand why this could not be done. The noble Baroness may say, “When you were in government you did not do it”, but the former Leader of the House, my noble friend Lord True, made perfectly clear the effort that was put in. I would have thought a Labour Government would stand for the principle that everyone should receive equal pay for equal labour.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

The noble Lord is right: if there was agreement across both Houses—if he could persuade the leader of the Opposition to support this in the other place as well—I would certainly talk to the Prime Minister. But this is something that has to be done cross-party and not with party-political capital made out of it. We also need to say a bit more about the work that our Lords Ministers do. There is nobody in this House who does not hold Lords Ministers in the highest regard. Perhaps we ought to be saying that to our colleagues in the other place as well.