House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Leigh of Hurley Excerpts

Monday 10th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Anderson of Ipswich (CB)]

My Lords, I support the amendments that would put HOLAC into statute, for the reasons given by the Convenor of the Cross Benches, which I shall not weary your Lordships by repeating. To the noble Lord, Lord Howard, I would say that, if HOLAC’s procedures are fair and if the courts are wise, which I believe they are, they will steer well clear.

Amendment 51, in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Devon, and to which I have put my name, is an amendment that is not for the long term but for the here and now. Although the Cross Benches notoriously still lack a hairdresser, we owe to the People’s Peers scheme a decent share of the expertise that so distinguishes your Lordships’ House. Without it, we would not have the noble Baronesses, Lady Grey-Thompson, Lady Watkins and Lady Kidron, or the noble Lords, Lord Krebs, Lord Pannick and Lord Hennessy. None of them, incidentally, are what the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, described as “public sector experts”, although we have some of those, too. We would not have had Lord Ramsbotham, whose former desk in this place I proudly occupy and whose detailed knowledge of the prison system no current Back-Bencher in any part of this House can equal.

None of those people—and they are only illustrative examples from a short but distinguished list—was active in politics or would have thought of standing for election. None qualified automatically by virtue of a previous job. None was proposed for membership by a political leader. But each has brought qualities of the very highest order to public life. Whether future political Peers arrive here by appointment or by some process of election, I hope they will continue to be joined by a modest stream of independent experts—ideally for a fixed term, as counselled by the noble Lord, Lord Burns—who owe nothing to party affiliation or prime ministerial patronage.

How modest is the stream? The noble Earl has given some figures. Let me give some more. Between the start of the scheme in 2001 and the 2010 general election, HOLAC’s website records that 55 People’s Peers were appointed—around six a year. But, more recently, the stream has slowed to a trickle. In the past 15 years, only 21 People’s Peers have been appointed, balanced between 11 women and 10 men.

I would be wary of any suggestion that might tend to increase either the numbers in this House or the proportion of peers who sit on the Cross Benches—but we do have a problem. The removal of 34 hereditaries will not only leave a large gap on the Cross Benches; it will leave gaps in the collective expertise of the House. How would we have navigated the cladding issue without the noble Earl, Lord Lytton? How could we provide a substitute for the remarkable energies of the noble Lord, Lord Vaux of Harrowden? Such gaps will not all be filled by the current trickle of People’s Peers.

That is where Amendment 51 comes in. It would operate independently of any special arrangement for which there might be support, in favour of the Convenor of the Cross Benches and perhaps others. It would increase the flow of People’s Peers—at least for five years—but the increase would be modest and well within the bounds of precedent. Four a year is somewhere between the current rate and the rate as it was under the last Labour Government.

The noble Earl, Lord Devon, has honourably made it clear that the purpose of his amendment is not to provide a route back to the House for hereditary Members who have been expelled—but, equally, there is no reason why such Members could not apply. I cannot speak for HOLAC, but surely a track record of superlative contribution to the work of the House could only be of assistance to Cross-Bench hereditaries who wish to try their luck again by a route that is open to all.

That leads to my last point. We are right to focus in these debates on the qualities of those who are already here, including the hereditary Peers who contribute so greatly to our work. But let us not neglect the qualities and the potential contributions of those candidates who have already applied to HOLAC or might be encouraged to do so. Though the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, as chair of HOLAC, cannot speak on this issue, I suspect she would agree that among those applicants are some of our very brightest and best—their expertise valuable and current. Let us give them a real chance, however small, to join this House.

The People’s Peers scheme has shown that the reputation and effectiveness of this place is capable of being enhanced by those who do not come from noble families, who do not benefit from political patronage and who are not members of a political party. I hope the Minister will agree that a modest but immediate revival of the People’s Peers, to which she could commit without accepting this amendment, could help to replace the Cross-Bench wisdom that will sadly be lost when the hereditary Peers leave us.

[Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)]

My Lords, the amendments in this group raise some very serious questions—perhaps the most obvious being the opaqueness of HOLAC and how it will work and conduct its business under these proposals. Why on earth would the public be happy for Peers who are their legislators to be appointed by a group of people most of whom they will never have heard of and who are, frankly, regarded just as members of the same elite club?

This is a political Chamber where the Prime Minister of the day needs his ideas turned into law and the Opposition need champions to challenge them respectfully. The PM and the leader of the Opposition must be allowed to choose their own team. The team need not be political people or people with political experience, but they must be people who the PM and the leader of the Opposition will regard as being helpful to what they want to achieve. A while ago, the Labour Party, I think—forgive me if it was another party—went down the route of their Cabinet being selected by someone other than their leader. It was an absolute disaster, as indeed it would be here.

As my noble friend Lord Howard of Rising said—I do not agree with him that HOLAC should be got rid of; I think it has a very useful role—one can see that, under these proposals, it could overreach itself and decide for itself who to appoint on grounds that might be a mystery to the rest of us but feel good to it. The very minimum is, of course, that such people who are appointed are fit and proper, but that is not enough by any stretch of the imagination. Under these proposals, we do not know on what grounds people would be selected in the future.

In previous Bills that have tried to address this issue, there has been discussion of conspicuous merit. I think the Bill brought forward by the noble Lord, Lord Norton, with whom I agreed on everything he said this afternoon—talked about “conspicuous merit”. How does define one that? I am not sure that I could say I have any conspicuous merit. I would ask each of your Lordships to ask yourselves whether you really do have conspicuous merit. Is long service conspicuous merit? We see that some sports people are put in here on conspicuous merit. I do not think that has gone particularly well. As the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, has quite rightly reminded us, what this Bill has got to focus on is hereditary Peers. I was taken by the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Moore, about the point being that people should be in this House to contribute—to make it more effective, to deliver—which is not a function of what they have done in the past but a function of what they will do in the future. Personally, one reason why I was very keen on hereditary Peers is that they do not come here to get a title, as many people do; they come here knowing, with their eyes wide open, that there is a job of work to do, and, by and large, they do the job of work.

An argument is also made that every person coming here must, in effect, be vetted by HOLAC, and that vetting is to be binding. I note that proposed new subsection (1B) in Amendment 47 would allow representations to be made, but, as ever, my noble friend Lord Howard of Lympne addressed the problem of those representations leading to further judicial review. However, there is no right of appeal—as far as I can see in this legislation—so that cannot be right. Of course, if we go down the route of judicial review—which, as my noble friend Lord Howard pointed out and the noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, suggested in the previous debate, would happen—I suggest that very few people would want to sit on a committee knowing that they were going to be subject to the awful process of a judicial review.

If HOLAC were to be made all-powerful—much more powerful—that committee would need to be investigated very carefully. Is it going to be balanced in ethnicity, gender, age, geography, politics, religion or diversity? We can see a real mess developing. Why would that committee be given so much power when it seems to me that we appoint a PM as we trust his—or, hopefully soon, her—judgment and we must let them get on with it? We elect our MPs to select their leader and, like it or not—obviously I do not at the moment, but I have in the past and I respect the will of the people—we must allow them to get on with their job.

If HOLAC is to be on a statutory basis, or if its recommendations are to be binding, surely we will need much greater access to its deliberations. Does HOLAC now work fully effectively? No, clearly it does not. In my case, I was told on 12 December that I was going to be elevated to the House, but it did not happen until the following December, so there was a huge gap, and I was told that part of the reason for that was HOLAC deliberations. Therefore, the idea of giving HOLAC more power, just when government has said that it wants to reduce the number of quangos, seems to me inappropriate.

[Lord Northbrook (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly. While I can understand the logic behind the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Newby, I believe that HOLAC, for which I have the greatest respect, is not totally infallible. I examined the issue of my noble friend Lord Cruddas’s rejection by the committee, and to summarise the matter, he was involved in a sting with Sunday Times journalists. He was then cleared by the Electoral Commission of any wrongdoing, sued the Sunday Times in a court and was given extensive damages. He is a respectable businessman, so I feel that, in that case, the Prime Minister was right to overrule HOLAC. There should be some sort of appeal mechanism in that case.