House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Debate between Lord Grocott and Lord Swire

Committee stage
Monday 3rd March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

What has changed is that there was a general election, and this was a manifesto commitment. Broadly speaking, it is a good idea to obey manifesto commitments. The longer answer to the noble Lord’s question is that I was not the first to introduce such a Bill; Eric Lubbock was the first Member of this House to propose that there should be no more by-elections. Had it been agreed at the time that the Lubbock Bill, which I will call it, was introduced, there would be only about 25 hereditary Peers left. Due to the constant refusal of people to accept the end of the by-elections, a whole new generation of hereditary Peers has arrived, so that, for the objective of ending the hereditary principle in this House to be concluded, it would take another 40 or 50 years. It is spilt milk. I respect noble Lord, Lord Forsyth: he occasionally made the odd favourable comment towards my Bill, for which I am very grateful; it was an all-party Bill supported by all parties and in huge numbers. But times have changed. It is the time for apologies from Messrs True, Mancroft and Strathclyde to their colleagues for blocking the Bill in the way that they did. Along with the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, who we will have the pleasure of hearing from in the next amendment, they are the ones who have the explaining to do, not me.

[Lord Swire (Con)]

Does the noble Lord, who should be a little more cheerful having achieved what he set out to do, not accept that there were many of us who were not in this House and therefore unable to support his Bill or otherwise?

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[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, I will just make a couple of points. First, we are not abolishing hereditary Peers; we are abolishing the right of hereditary Peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords. Secondly, 26 years ago we removed 667 hereditary Peers and as far as I can judge, that has not had a devastating impact on the monarchy; in fact, the monarchy seems to have survived quite well. Thirdly, the fundamental difference between the hereditary principle as applied to sitting and voting here, and the hereditary principle as applied to the monarchy—like my noble friend Lord Brennan, I support the constitutional monarchy very strongly—is that if the monarch started to do what hereditary Peers in this House do, which is to express, as they are quite within their rights to do, detailed arguments in favour of one political party or another, I do not think the monarchy would last very long. There is a fundamental difference between the political role of hereditaries in this House, and the wholly significant and important non-political, head-of-state role of the monarchy at a national level.

[Lord Swire (Con)]

With that in mind, I invite the noble Lord to have a word with those who drafted the Labour manifesto, which says, as a standalone sentence: “Hereditary peers remain indefensible”.