House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Debate between Lord Forsyth of Drumlean and Lord Newby

Report stage
Wednesday 2nd July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, will not be surprised that I do not agree with this amendment, for the reasons so pithily put by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick. There are a number of points with which I could take issue, but I will pick up a couple from the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson. He implied that those of us who supported the “Grocott Bills”, in their various guises, were almost being hypocritical by not voting for this today. The truth was—with all due respect to the noble Lord, Lord Grocott—that the Grocott Bills were second best. They were the best that was on offer, and we saw them as a way of making some progress while believing that what is in this Bill was preferable.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

How can the noble Lord possibly argue that it was second best when the Leader of the House has told us that, had we accepted Grocott in the last Parliament, this would not have been necessary?

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, I am explaining to the House what I thought at the time, not what anybody else might think.

The noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, said that the system of by-elections should not be thought to have been eccentric. The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, was very eloquent in pointing out just how eccentric they were, particularly in respect of by-elections for the Liberal Democrats. On one notable occasion, there were seven candidates and three electors, and nobody in the Liberal Democrats knew who half the candidates were. They were truly eccentric. They brought the House into disrepute, certainly in respect of those by-elections, and they were simply not sustainable in any way.

I strongly agree with the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, in pointing out that one consequence of this amendment would be to maintain over a considerable number of years—unless there was a great increase in the size of the House—a significant Conservative plurality over the Labour Benches. That seems me to be a bad thing, because the inevitable consequence would be that the Government would increase their numbers, and we would have a bloated House. Apparently, everybody agrees that the House is too big, yet this amendment, if agreed, would have that consequence for decades to come.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Newby (LD)]

Of course, that would be debated as part of that process; I accept that.

If I could proceed, I was saying that I believe that, under our proposals, people should be elected on a regional basis, so that they could look to the common interests of a wider area than a single constituency. They should be elected by proportional representation, so that we can avoid the dramatic swings in membership that we have seen in the Commons.

After the 2015 general election, I was mocked—very effectively, if I may say so—by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, because we did very badly in that election yet retained significant numbers here. After the last election, the Tory party finds itself in the position we found ourselves in. If we had the system that the noble Lord, Lord Brady, is proposing, a future Conservative Party in the House of Lords could be decimated in the way it has been in the Commons. What I am proposing here is a more balanced system that means that these wild swings, which you see through first past the post, do not persist. That would bring an element of stability to Parliament that would be extremely sensible.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

I wonder whether the noble Lord would stand for election under this system. I am thinking about how it would operate: I knock on someone’s door and they say, “I’m worried about the health service”, “I’m worried about housing”, or whatever, and I say, “Actually, that’s for the House of Commons, but I’m very good at revising legislation”. There might be a reaction on the doorstep that is even more hostile than we are used to—certainly those of us who were in the House of Commons. How does the noble Lord expect the voters to take us seriously if we are not able to say that we will absolutely fight for whatever it is? This division of powers will mean that we are second-order operators. I suspect that the noble Lord’s answer is that he would not stand for election, and that is probably true of most of the Members of this House. So what we will get is a whole load of party-list B-team people.