Procedure of the House: Select Committee Report

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Steel of Aikwood]

My Lords, the report by the Procedure Committee simply demands that leave of absence be pursued more rigorously, which I am sure will be welcomed in the House but is unlikely to make a noticeable contribution to reducing our numbers. However, the committee under the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral, set up by the Leader of the House, recommended that,

“the House should introduce arrangements to allow Members to retire from membership of the House on a voluntary basis”,

and accepted that legislation would be necessary to achieve this.

The committee further argued that a reduction in numbers would result in an overall saving to the taxpayer and that part of that saving should be used to offer a modest pension. It called for this to be investigated in detail, but this has not yet been followed through. Perhaps in reply we could hear whether the House authorities intend to take actuarial advice on this matter, as recommended by that report. Because we are unpaid, it cannot be a pure pension and therefore requires a new statutory provision. The Chairman of Committees may be aware that a Private Member’s Bill awaiting Committee provides such statutory authority.

When this was previously discussed, the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, said that any such payment,

“would … not be understood by the British people”.—[Official Report, 16/11/10; col. 675.]

Of course, if he is talking about extra money from the Treasury, he is absolutely right, but I suggest that if it is money from savings of expenditure within the House of Lords budget, contrary to that view redundancy pay is well understood in the country at large and accepted as saving money. The current redundancy lump sum permitted tax free is £30,000, which is less than the annual attendance payments for those who come to this House, say, 75 per cent of the time.

Therefore, I hope that in due course, the Government may come forward with a modest payment proposal of a lump sum of, say, £30,000 to those choosing to retire after, say, 10 years’ service or having reached the age of 75, provided that they have had an attendance record of at least 50 per cent in the previous two Sessions. Those in the business world tell me that a modest lump sum of that kind is much more attractive than the financial sum appears. One can imagine Members of your Lordships’ House discussing with their spouses whether they might buy a new car for their retirement or go on a world cruise and listen to lectures by the noble Lord, Lord Steel of Aikwood—or choose another one to avoid that peril.

In any event, that a scheme is needed to get the numbers down is not in doubt. Of course, the Hunt committee was right to suggest that if that were pursued, Members who chose to retire should enjoy the same use of House facilities as former hereditary Peers do. I hope that this matter will be pursued as recommended by the Hunt committee and not simply neglected and brushed aside by this report, which we nevertheless welcome.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, I was a member of the Leader’s Group, chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral, to whom I pay tribute for his leadership of the group. He led it with great distinction and I very much support the conclusions of the group and the recommendations of the Chairman of Committees’ Procedure Committee report before the House today. I also welcome the initial and positive response of the Leader of the House, the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, when the report was first published. We on this side certainly support the Motion before the House.

I shall follow the noble Lord, Lord Steel, but in rather a different vein. The note in the report to the House says that the Procedure Committee has not considered those elements of the Leader’s Group recommendations, such as the provision to override entitlement to a Writ of Summons, the scheme of associate membership and extension of legislation. Nor has the committee considered the financial aspects of any scheme for voluntary retirement, which, if the House agreed to the report, would be a matter for the House Committee. I do not know if the House Committee will consider this report, but I imagine it will need to consider the implications very carefully.

I return to the issue of the potential for primary legislation. I hesitate to return to last week’s enjoyable debate on reform of your Lordships’ House. I realise that the Chairman of Committees cannot speak for the Government; perhaps we can tempt the noble Lord the Leader of the House to intervene helpfully in this debate. However, I wonder whether the Government have given thought to the potential for primary legislation on the issues to which I have just referred. The Government may take the view that they took last week on the Private Member’s Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Steel: since they have published a draft Bill on substantive reform, they cannot contemplate the noble Lord’s Bill. That, in essence, would accept that the Government do not think they will get very far with their own substantive Bill. Having been there myself, I understand the line that the noble Lords, Lord Strathclyde and Lord McNally, used last week.

However, it is just possible that, at the end of the work of the Joint Committee chaired by my noble friend, the Government might decide to pause on reform. We might not see a substantive Bill before your Lordship’s House in the next Session of Parliament. In that case, there must surely come a point where the matters in this report and the items covered by the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Steel, ought to be considered. If we simply carry on in a situation in which Governments cannot contemplate sensible interim changes because they will always have a proposal for substantive reform on the table at some point, the business of this House will become more and more difficult.

All I should like to do is to invite the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, to give some consideration to these matters. It may, in his eyes, be extremely unlikely that the Government will not proceed with a substantive Bill in the next year. However, there will come a point when such sensible interim reforms need to be considered.

[Baroness D'Souza]

My Lords, we can wring our hands about the House being too large. We may, unintentionally but unfairly, have made newly appointed Peers feel less than welcome, but until now there has been no serious consideration of what might be done. This is, therefore, a much needed report and a step forward. The real difficulties with which the group has had to grapple are very clear, but at least the issue is now being addressed.

The only feasible option is that of voluntary retirement. However, in common with the noble Lords, Lord Steel and Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, I feel this cannot be achieved in significant numbers in the absence of some form of payment. I recognise that there is a public perception issue here about additional costs. However, we may be looking at a saving. My maths may be somewhat different from that of the noble Lord, Lord Steel, but the outcome is the same. By my reckoning, if a Peer attends even irregularly—on, say, 100 out of 150 days—at the lower daily rate of £150, the cost over a year would amount to something like £15,000, plus travel costs of around £2,000. We are looking at something like £85,000 over five years.

Why would it not be possible to make the saving and offer something between £20,000 and £30,000 in order to promote and encourage Peers to take voluntary retirement—voluntary is a word that might not always be entirely appropriate here? It would be a major incentive for many Peers who have given years of service, some at the expense perhaps of a full professional salary, and would most probably achieve what this excellent report aims to do. However, for this to be effective there must also be a moratorium on appointing new Members and possibly a cap on numbers for the future.

The House is too large. It will be pointed out that many turn up only irregularly, but perception is important. As long as the media continue to talk about a House of well over 800 we will continue to appear ridiculously overstaffed. For this reason those who rarely attend should be asked in no uncertain terms to avail themselves of the retirement option. As I said before in this Chamber, there are a few among the Cross-Benchers who have not shown their faces for something like 10 years, which is ridiculous. I also feel that those who, through infirmity, are unable to attend might welcome the option of a dignified retreat from this House with the offer of some dining rights plus a lump sum. I think that the Cross-Benchers could be reduced by something like 30 Members, which would be very welcome news to those who think that there are too many of us. The truth is that over the past 10 years there has been a net gain of 55 Cross-Benchers, which is just over five a year. I do not think that that is a flood.

We will have to bite the bullet, grasp the nettle, acknowledge that one cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs. Leaders of each of the groups will have to approach those who attend very rarely, or make no contribution to the work of the House, with a firm proposal to take up the option of retirement, but this can be done only, in fairness, if there is to be some monetary compensation.