House of Lords Reform

Lord Keen of Elie Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Keen of Elie (Con)]

My Lords, I begin by thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, for making this debate possible.

I quote:

“There is a place with a proud record of standing up to government. It works diligently and thanklessly to improve legislation. It applies expertise to policy … It acts with a seriousness that is absent almost anywhere else in the political system. It is the House of Lords … through a strange combination of circumstances, the Lords has developed into something unusual in the British political landscape: a functioning chamber. It is, simply put, one of the only aspects of our constitutional arrangements that actually works”.


I am, as some noble Lords will be aware, quoting the recent work of the political commentator Ian Dunt—not known for his conservative tendencies.

Can the House of Lords be improved? Of course it can. There is no part of our political system that could not lend itself to improvement in the face of carefully conceived and properly considered examination.

This Government’s expressed intention is to replace the House of Lords with a second Chamber of the regions and nations. A number of your Lordships have alluded to this proposal. I will not spend too much time on it, principally because it is not going to happen during the life of this Parliament and is unlikely to happen during my own lifetime, assuming that to be a longer timeline. I observe, however, that the House of Lords is an integral part of the legislature for the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and not an assembly of regions and nations, all of which have their own devolved competence. Of course we should be representative of our whole United Kingdom, but not just in terms of geography.

Pending its plan to replace the House of Lords, the Labour Party set out in its manifesto its proposal for immediate reform, which it described as “essential”. This has been touched on during this debate and is expressed by the Government as the requirements for “immediate modernisation”. I believe it important to actually look at the terms of that manifesto, because the noble Baroness, Lady Crawley, quoted only one part of the immediate proposal for reform, and repeated references have been made to the importance of the Salisbury/Addison convention.

As noble Lords will be aware, at page 108 of its manifesto the Labour Party stated its proposal for “immediate modernisation” and followed it with this comment:

“Whilst this action to modernise the House of Lords will be an improvement, Labour is committed to replacing the House of Lords”.


So what is this “action to modernise”? I quote:

“The next Labour government will therefore bring about an immediate modernisation, by introducing legislation to remove the right of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords. Labour will also introduce a mandatory retirement age. At the end of the Parliament in which a member reaches 80 years of age, they will be required to retire from the House of Lords.


Labour will ensure all peers meet the high standards the public expect of them, and we will introduce a new participation requirement as well as strengthening the circumstances in which disgraced members can be removed. We will reform the appointments process to ensure the quality of new appointments and will seek to improve the national and regional balance of the second chamber”.


That is the manifesto proposal for immediate reform of the House of Lords, pending the longer-term proposal —not simply the removal of the excepted Peers. What we have is the removal of the right of the excepted Peers, who are otherwise here for life, to sit in the House of Lords, a mandatory retirement age of 80, a new participation requirement, the removal of disgraced Members—I do not note any noble Lord having spoken against that proposal, so I do not see why it should not go ahead immediately—and reform of the appointments process to ensure the quality of appointments. I acknowledge that all the foregoing are capable of being done immediately, and the implication that they can be done together is, of course, compelling. As the previous Labour Government repeatedly asserted when faced with Private Members’ Bills such as those of Lord Steel, which addressed only some of these issues, the removal of excepted Peers or their elections could take place only as part of wider reform of the House of Lords.

In order of importance, the list from the Labour manifesto must surely begin with the urgent need to reform the appointments process. Where else in the world does the Executive, in the form of the Prime Minister, effectively determine the membership of the legislature? Montesquieu would be spinning in his grave. There are minor appointments that do not rely on the Prime Minister’s direct control—the Lords spiritual, the excepted Peers and the people’s Peers—but otherwise our Prime Minister is free to reward political success in the other place. Our Prime Minister is free to reward political failure in the other place. Our Prime Minister is free to reward anything that he puts his mind to, without us being able to essentially discover the underlying reason.

Consequently, how can you dispel the shadow of nepotism and the hint of cronyism—far greater, if unspoken, an issue than the excepted Peers? This point was touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, when he referred to the appointment of mates and pals, and by the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, when he talked about the executive takeover of Parliament. So we have an essential and important step to take immediately: how we deal with the appointment process.

The most immediate and urgent of Labour’s manifesto proposals is the modernisation of the Appointments Commission in order that it can effectively challenge Executive appointments. I note that one Prime Minister alone, Tony Blair, made 374 appointments to this House.

I used the word “reward”, and as the noble Lords, Lord Liddle and Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, observed, that is not the purpose of this House. We are not here to see people arrive simply because they have been rewarded for whatever service they may have given. They should be here in order that they can participate in an important part of the legislature of the United Kingdom, and our objective should be to secure those who are able and, indeed, willing to participate in that legislative process. I notice in passing that in the past five years the highest rate of participation of any cohort in the House, whether attendance or participation in committees, has been that of the excepted Peers.

However, there is an urgent problem that needs to be immediately addressed. As expressed in the Labour manifesto:

“Too many peers do not play a proper role in our democracy”.


This, like the present system of appointment, is liable to bring the House into disrepute in the eyes of the public. It could be remedied immediately. We could adopt the policy of the Scottish Parliament Act 1572. If I might remind some of your Lordships who have forgotten its terms, this provided that every noble, every elected baron of the shire, and every elected commissioner of the royal burghs would be subject to a daily fine if they failed to attend Parliament without reasonable excuse. So, instead of a daily allowance, we might have a daily disallowance. More seriously, it would be a simple matter to immediately require all Peers upon appointment or already in the House to give a solemn undertaking of participation. If they declined, they should not be able to take a seat in this House, and they should not be able to vote. If they fail to adhere to the undertaking, again they should no longer be able to take their seat in this House, and they should not be able to vote. If noble Lords wish, as many do, to reduce the numbers who may sit in this House, I suggest that such an immediate move would probably reduce the numbers by hundreds almost overnight.

The matter of a retirement age is clearly regarded as controversial—I note the number of noble Lords who did not mention it in their contributions. Of course, it does not exist in the other place, and it would clearly remove some talent prematurely. I have to observe that we adhere to the notion that our judges are not competent to interpret and apply the law once they reach the age of 75, while we consider ourselves capable of making the law without any limit of time, so there may be an issue there for us to consider.

What has exercised people more than anything else is apparently the hereditary principle, which was only one part of the immediate reform proposed in the Labour manifesto. One noble Baroness referred to it as “ridiculous” and another noble Lord as “indefensible”. I simply notice that the hereditary principle is the pillar upon which sits our constitutional monarchy, so we must be a little careful about such generalisations as we have heard during this debate.

Why is it so criticised? The noble Baroness, Lady Bryan of Partick, referred to the work of Gordon Brown, and his report of 2022 lies behind much of what has been proposed here. His report concluded that the 92 excepted Peers could not remain as they were merely the representatives of the landowning class. He raises an interesting point about the idea of a particular class being represented in the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Noble Lords may recall that Sidney Webb drafted the constitution of the Labour Party. When doing so, and in particular when drafting Clause 1, he was determined that workers should receive the proper reward for their labour, and that in order to do so they would have to secure representation in Parliament. That was the objective of the constitution of the Labour Party. So he intended that a class, the labouring class, should secure representation in Parliament. I wonder how that differs from the idea of the landowning class achieving representation in Parliament.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

There are more of us.

[Lord Keen of Elie (Con)]

The noble Lord, Lord Liddle, suggests that there are more of the workers. He may be right, but of course we are a democracy, so we all have the right to be represented in Parliament.

Not a lot has changed since Sidney Webb drafted that constitution. I can think of only two changes. One was when Tony Blair sought the amendment of Clause 4 and the second was when the present Prime Minister could not remember what a worker was. On that second point, he might have gone back and read Sidney Webb, who made it very clear that a worker was someone who not only laboured with their muscle but laboured with their brain. So there is a definition out there that we can fall back on and use. In passing, I always thought it was interesting that Sidney Webb became the first Baron Passfield and therefore entered this House as a hereditary Peer.

The issues that we have debated, and which the Labour manifesto identifies as a prelude to the replacement of the House of Lords, are, as I say, capable of immediate and simple implementation. Why then have the Government departed from what their own manifesto described as the requirements for “immediate modernisation”, to contradict their own previous judgment and put forward only one, albeit pending, replacement of this House?

For example, do we need to delay strengthening the circumstances in which disgraced Members can be removed? I ask the noble Baroness the Leader of the House: if so, why? Do we need to delay reforming the appointments process in order that it is less opaque and open to abuse by the Executive? I ask the noble Baroness: if so, why? Do we need to delay the introduction of a much-needed participation requirement? I ask the noble Baroness: if so, why? Do we need to ignore the previous Labour Government’s stricture that the removal of excepted Peers should only be part of this wider reform and modernisation? I ask the noble Baroness: if so, why?

As many noble Lords observed, including the noble Lords, Lord Birt, Lord Jones and Lord Curry, and my noble friend Lord Wrottesley, we are threatened with piecemeal reform. We have been threatened with that in the past; it is not an inviting proposition. All the points raised as essential and immediate in the Labour Party manifesto are capable of almost immediate and joint implementation. So I ask the noble Baroness the Leader: why is it that only one aspect of that essential Labour manifesto commitment is taken in the Bill? Would it be so difficult to address the issue of disgraced Peers, the issue of participation and the issue of appointment, which is so critical to the independence of this House as part of the legislature rather than as the poodle of the Executive?