House of Lords: Size

Lord Hunt of Wirral Excerpts

Monday 5th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)]

My Lords, I was very proud to be elected earlier this year as chairman of the Association of Conservative Peers. I was then immediately able to endorse and promulgate a discussion paper recently produced by the executive committee of the association, and I congratulate my predecessor and noble friend Lord MacGregor of Pulham Market, who deserves much credit for this sensible, pragmatic and, most important of all, highly practicable piece of work to which he will speak later in the debate.

I hope that colleagues on all sides will recognise that the paper was drafted not from a partisan point of view but because we all want this House to be genuinely effective. In order to meet any useful conclusions at all, it was necessary to begin our work having made five assumptions, which bear repetition. First, this House is presently too large; secondly, the House of Lords should have as an objective a membership no larger than that of the other place; thirdly, the Government of the day should not enjoy an absolute majority; fourthly, Cross-Benchers should comprise at least 20% of the House; and, fifthly and finally, the composition of the House should be responsive to any major changes in support for political parties in general elections.

The very fact that those assumptions could safely be made without any significant demur from any side shows how far we have come in the almost 17 years since the report of the royal commission to which my noble friend Lord Wakeham referred earlier. The ACP paper also draws fully on the very helpful options paper prepared for the subgroup on the size of the House by the Campaign for an Effective Second Chamber. The paper acknowledges first and foremost that there is no ideal solution. Instead, it seeks—and I believe succeeds in finding—a judicious balance, a synthesis even, between the various options that have previously been regarded as mutually incompatible. The broad approach recommended is a combination of a retirement age and allocating seats based on party strength in a general election, with both to take effect from the start of the next Parliament. I firmly believe that a cross-party consensus is now a genuine possibility, and I warmly commend the ACP report as a possible basis for such a consensus.

I want to remind the House that six years ago I served as chairman of the Leader’s Group on Members leaving the House. It is perhaps a sombre thought, but Members leaving the House must inevitably be the key to any meaningful reform. Our report was published on 13 January 2011. Much of its spirit was captured in the reforms instituted by the noble Lord, Lord Steel of Aikwood. One or two other suggestions in that report are worth revisiting. In particular, I draw the attention of the House to paragraph 63, where we recommended that,

“in future the honour of a life peerage should not automatically entail appointment to membership of the House, which should be reserved to those who are willing to make a significant commitment to public service in Parliament”.

A precedent of sorts has already been set for hereditary Peers who have left the House or who have inherited titles since the reforms of the late 1990s and for those who have taken retirement, and I understand that 52 of our noble colleagues have done so. It seems to me increasingly anachronistic that we have, outside this Chamber with no right to speak or vote here, hundreds of people with inherited titles and a growing number of retired colleagues with life peerages, yet every new peerage necessarily confers on the recipient a parliamentary role. I believe it may now be time to extend that principle of separation to include the creation of new life Peers who have no intention of becoming active parliamentarians. Of course, that echoes much of what has already been recommended.

Rightly, we respect our inheritance, but we have to be sensitive to the changing demands and expectations of modern society. I believe we have within our grasp the possibility of creating a modern, credible, bicameral legislature, well respected by the people, well suited to its real and present role and well equipped to face the considerable challenges of the future.