House of Lords Reform Bill [HL]

Lord Grenfell Excerpts

Friday 21st October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Trefgarne]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Steel, says that he does not want to do anything in an arbitrary manner. That may well be right as far as this proposal is concerned—although, frankly, I do not think that it is—but that is not the view that he has taken on other aspects of his Bill, when he has made it quite clear that he was not in the least bit interested in waiting for whatever the Government proposed, even though a Bill has been brought forward for consideration by the Joint Select Committee.

Confining my remarks precisely to the amendment proposed by my noble friend Lord Caithness, to which I have added my name, I think that the age of 75 is about right. At present, most judicial appointments—I think virtually all of them, including magistrates—have to retire at age 70. I do not think that there is any proposal that that younger age would be acceptable as far as your Lordships are concerned. Indeed, in answer to a question from me the other day, the noble Lord, Lord McNally, the Minister for Justice, said that this matter might be reconsidered in legislation next year. I happen to think that 75 would be a good age for magistrates, for judges of all the different courts and Members of your Lordships' House to retire. The amendment has some merit and some force and I hope that your Lordships will agree to it.

[Lord Grenfell]

My Lords, I am not sure that I agree with that. We have to be very careful in setting a limit. I declare an interest, being over 75, as one could say, “Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?” On the other hand, it is worth remembering that a respected demographer has recently told us that the person who is going to live to 150 has already been born. We have to take into account the fact that the pensionable age is now much higher than it was and that there is still a lot of life left in a lot of people who are aged 75. I agree that we need to reduce the numbers in the House, but this is not the way to go about it. There are other avenues to pursue to reduce the size of the House. I would be very wary of depriving it of the benefit of having some great experts. Under the proposal, when they had passed 75, they would not be invited to return in the subsequent Parliament.

[Viscount Astor]

My Lords, a previous proposed new clause was intended to get rid of your Lordships who cannot come to your Lordships' House; this amendment is intent on getting rid of some of your Lordships who do come to your Lordships' House and play a role in our proceedings.

The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, said on an earlier amendment that elections to hereditary peerages surprise and confound those who do not understand the proceedings of your Lordships' House, which is certainly true. Another thing that confounds them is the fact that your Lordships’ Chamber is the second largest legislative Chamber in the world, second only to the Chinese National People’s Congress. It is quite frankly absurd for us to go along and defend the number that we have in this place compared with that in another place. The noble Lord, Lord Steel, mentioned that this House should do something to reform itself to give itself more respectability to the outside world and show that we understand the concerns. One of the concerns that are constantly expressed to me is the number of Members who sit in your Lordships' House. We need to do something about it.

Seventy-five might not be the right age. I am not entirely sure what the retirement age for High Court judges is, but a retirement age, be it 70 or 75, would seem to be one possible solution. The noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, declaring an interest, was against that. Other alternatives have been promoted in the past; for example, when your Lordships have sat here for 15 or 30 years, they should also be retired. I declare my interest in that that would affect me, so, quite naturally, I am thoroughly against the proposal. However, it is for this House to consider this matter very carefully. It is also for my noble friend on the Front Bench and the Leader of the Opposition to come before your Lordships and say what the main political parties in this country feel that they can do about the size of this Chamber. We know that there is going to be long-term reform, but we really ought to address the issue beforehand because it is important.

[Lord Grenfell]

When I declared an interest, it did not imply that it was in self-interest that I was making the argument that the House would be deprived of a lot of expertise; I was speaking of a lot of other people. It is worth recalling that, since the noble Viscount spoke of the Chinese People’s Republic, I do not know of any other upper Chamber where there happens to be such a limit. If one is going to go down a different route, perhaps the noble Viscount might consider it a good idea if we limited the number of new creations. That would be one way of getting the size of the House down.

[The Earl of Erroll]

My Lords, it is a foolish idea to set an arbitrary age limit. There are some people who are pretty brain-dead by about 40, and there are some people who are highly intelligent in their 90s—I think immediately of the late Lord Renton and Lord Bruce of Donington, who always gave grief to his Front Bench on EU matters, because he knew far more than anyone else about it. The list goes on and on. To deprive the country of the accumulated wisdom of people such as that would be about the most foolish thing that we could do. Let us find some other mechanism. As has quite rightly been said, we are ageing now. An age limit might fall foul of the Equality Act, because we have removed the retirement age elsewhere—we are forcing companies in the corporate world to keep people for as long as those people wish to stay there. Why on earth are we operating in the opposite way? If we are finding it difficult, we should not be doing special legislation for Parliament. Let us keep our wisdom.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Earl of Caithness]

I absolutely take my noble friend's point. As I said to him earlier, that is not going to work because the only way you are going to get retirement from this House is to have a financial inducement, and I do not think that that will ever be acceptable, particularly in the present financial circumstances. For a House comprising Peers who are not paid but merely receive expenses, to be paid to leave is not acceptable. It was not acceptable for the hereditary Peers and it is not acceptable for the life Peers.

[Lord Grenfell]

I have to challenge the noble Earl’s assertion that the number of committees is driven by the size of the House. This is not the case. I have some experience of this. The number of committees is driven by the fact that legislation is becoming increasingly complex, particularly the scrutiny of European legislation, and, unfortunately, by the quality of the form in which legislation comes from the other place often being very poor. Your Lordships have a duty to scrutinise properly. It is not quite right to say that we create committees to make jobs for the boys and girls. We do it because there is a genuine need for better scrutiny.

[The Earl of Caithness]

My Lords, I certainly bow to the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, who has much greater experience of this than I have. There is no doubt that, as a result of the reforms in another place, there is less scrutiny there than there used to be and we have to do more. However, there are other committees that have grown since I was first here. It is a bit of both. The noble Lord is absolutely right that the complexity of legislation, particularly European legislation as it has come in, has needed committees. However, my figure of 300 is merely taken from the Government’s proposals. We will come back to that but we must get on.