House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Debate between Lord Hamilton of Epsom and Earl of Kinnoull

Report stage
Wednesday 2nd July 2025 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)]

My Lords, I observed in Committee that everything in life tends to have a retirement age, so I feel that it is vital to bring in Amendment 20, or something like it, as part of the modernisation of the House.

I will make only two points. The first is in respect of the cliff edge. In organisations that I have worked in, we have often done mergers and acquisitions and had cliff-edge problems with people. It is generally the case that an organisation that expels the seasoned and the good—expelling the human capital that it has bought—without replacements right away, is an organisation that weakens itself. In our House we have people aged beyond 80 —we now know that there is a large number, thanks to the spreadsheets of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra—and, were we to show them the door, that would be very weakening.

This has an elegance in it, because it does not expel anybody but sets down the premise for the future. It is the route that is peculiarly British, in that it was chosen, as we have heard, by the senior judiciary when they did the same thing many years ago, and indeed by the bishops when they brought in a retirement age. In both of those circumstances—I have spoken to people who were around at the time—the people, in any event, chose an earlier retirement age. So we would smooth out the great problem of the cliff edge.

My second and final point is about the wrinkle that the noble Earl, Lord Devon, has cleverly introduced about the 10-year minimum alternative. From the Cross-Bench perspective—and indeed, through us, from the House’s perspective—this is a very good wrinkle. The Cross Bench has to provide quite a lot of judges. We need to provide judges for Special Public Bill Committees, the Ecclesiastical Committee and other purposes, for which we are lucky to have members of the senior judiciary on the Cross Benches—I am looking at at least one here—who are very valuable to the House. The trouble is that the Supreme Court has a retirement age of 75 so, if they can get trained up only by the time they are 77, say, we will have them for a very short period of time. So it is extremely helpful for us if the senior judiciary gets at least 10 years at bat. That is helpful for the Cross Benches and the House.

When I was at the Bar school, I was told that the judge only ever hears the point the third time you make it. I have now made this point four times. The Leader was pointing out that we are all judges and that we are here for judgment. I hope that noble Lords will ponder, for the fourth time, that this might be a good point.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I recognise that this country rather likes retirement ages, but I am afraid I do not share that view. I think of my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern, who recently retired when he was, I think, 93—someone says he was 97; even better. He was absolutely as sharp as a tack until the time that he stood down. His contributions to this House were memorable. He was a very serious man in every way and people listened to him in this House. To think that we would put in place a system that would have got rid of Lord Mackay fills me with absolute horror.

If we want to reduce the numbers, I have never understood why a committee of this House turned down the idea of internal elections. We all know who are the people in our parties who do not come, who do not contribute and who play very little role in this House. Why not allow us to elect them out and reduce numbers that way? Then we would not have this arbitrary business of saying that, because someone has reached a retirement age of X, that is the reason why they should go.

European Union: Negotiations (European Union Committee Report)

Debate between Lord Hamilton of Epsom and Earl of Kinnoull

Monday 16th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

That is the point I am trying to make; this should have been answered in the report. It does not matter where it comes from. Whether our closeness to the EU makes any difference to our relationship with it is questionable. The problem is that we have had the nerve to vote in favour of leaving the EU. Therefore, the EU must redefine the position of a country that leaves so that it can mete out special treatment to that country and somehow discourage others from leaving as well. This report should have addressed these issues. Does it make any difference whether or not a country is close to the EU? Does the size of trade make any difference? I agree that our trade with the EU is probably greater than that with the United States, but the United States does a massive amount of trade too. Nobody is asking for a level playing field with the United States, and they would be told where to go if they tried. We should be questioning these things, as I hoped the report would. Perhaps the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, can tell me why this was not included in the report.

[The Earl of Kinnoull]

Certainly I can make some practical points on the very interesting questions that have been raised by the noble Lord. These are vital documents that have become public. There has been no opportunity for Parliament to read a report or have a debate. We were given a power and a duty under Section 29 of the Act. We heard a very interesting interpretation of that, which I am afraid I disagree with. If we were to write and address a separate question, we would have to take evidence or find evidence in the stock of evidence that we have, and there was no time to do that. The second of those documents, the Command Paper, arrived on 27 February. We had a report agreed by people on every position of the spectrum agreed by 3 March. We felt that it was important to bring it to the House immediately so that we could have this very interesting debate.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

The document that I am reading says that this statement was made on 18 February. That is quite a distance from 3 March, when the report went to the printers. I question whether you can reach a decision as a committee unless you have taken evidence. The whole business of whether how close you are to the EU counts or whether the size of your trade is a determinant factor is surely something that the committee can make its mind up about without taking evidence.

[The Earl of Kinnoull]

Section 29 addresses that issue. The Command Paper—a key document in our report—was issued on 27 February. I do not have Section 29 in front of me, but it says specifically that such evidence as we have deemed necessary should have been taken. I am sure we would have loved to read a report about a whole lot of other very interesting questions, but unless we had the evidence on file we would have had to have taken more evidence, which would have slowed things down immensely.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

We could go on arguing about this indefinitely. However, the noble Earl is rather underestimating the intellectual abilities of his committee if it cannot reach a conclusion on this relatively simple issue without taking evidence. I will move on to the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter.