House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Fowler Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 25th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Fowler (CB)]

My Lords, Amendment 85 is in my name. I will be extremely brief. I had originally written down that I agreed with some of what the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, had to say. Having listened to her, I am not sure that that fully explains my position; I found myself in sympathy less and less with what she had to say in her proposals, but there we are. I am much more in sympathy with what the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, said, because he put the case extremely well. It is always a great privilege to follow him, and it is very good for my reputation with my children that I can at last say, “I was supporting the Duke of Wellington in the House of Lords last night”. Even more, I support the provisions that he puts forward.

It was right of the Government to set out what they wanted to do, and what they are doing is the proper course to take. My only concern is the time that this three-line Bill is spending on the Floor of the House of Lords. A number of very important points have been followed, and I pay tribute to the definition from the noble Lord, Lord True, of what can and should be amended, but I think he concedes that not everything in the Bill can be added to and amended. That really is my point—it is not really a point, in a sense, for this Bill, but it is certainly for the handling of it.

I take the view that the whole value of this House is not just as a revising Chamber but because we have acknowledged experts here. In areas such as defence, for example, they can give their advice, and that advice goes not just to us but to the country. That is a very important function that the House of Lords has.

My advice is that we should have as much debate as we can, which will enable people to say why the House of Lords should listen but also why the public should. Yet we know that it is extremely difficult to get debates on the Floor of this House issues other than this Bill—I mean debates with speeches, and with proper time for those speeches, rather than Parliamentary Questions. We know very well indeed what problems that creates. Yet it seems that, at this point in our history—this time of unbelievable tension in the world—there is a particular need for the House of Lords to try to act as a funnel for the concerns being put forward, where the House and the experts within it can make their contribution. Yet I fear we are going to spend four or five sessions talking about just the House of Lords. That is a pity, and it is excessive considering the other issues. That means that we will not have long debates about the situation in Palestine, the position in Syria, or the 101 other issues that there are.

My proposal is basically this: we should deal as expeditiously and as generously as we can, in the way the Leader of the House suggests, with the issues that can be contained in this Bill, but we should recognise that not all of them can be. My amendment says that the Government, within 18 months of the day on which the Bill passes, should put before Parliament a draft Bill that seeks to limit the size of the House of Lords. That seems, frankly, non-controversial at the moment, but it is the most important thing, as my noble friend behind me knows. If we know what the numbers are we can make sensible policies. We need legislative proposals to introduce a retirement age for Members of the House of Lords—I perhaps speak with more authority than most on age and the rest, as far as this is concerned. Then, even if Ministers do not agree, there should also be proposals about electing a proportion of the membership of the House of Lords, which I know some parties hold very dear.

My proposal, therefore, is that we should first support the Government’s Bill. We should then add those rather different concerns to it in the future. Once this Bill is out of the way, we should go in for serious consideration of the other issues. I agree entirely with what the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, said: we cannot stop here. We have come a certain way in reform but it is not enough. To say that we will simply abolish the hereditary Peers—goodness knows that that has been on the books now since 1997—is insufficient and inadequate. We should address the other issues as well. That, I fear, means the Government making proposals on the issues that I have set out. I think that the House would approve of that, and so would the public.