House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 25th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, there can be no doubt from the very witty speech by the noble Earl, Lord Devon, that he is a hereditary Peer—but it is not always clear. Did we know when the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, spoke? Do we know when others speak? I would have thought that every hereditary Peer would be obliged to declare that interest at the beginning of their speech. If I was in the other place, I could ask the Speaker to rule on that, but that does not apply here. I hope the Leader of the House might indicate in her reply that it would be helpful not just for the House but for the public outside to know whether the Member speaking has a vested interest.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, that is an interesting concept, but I do not think there is a vested interest of mine in this set of amendments. I very much support what the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, said. I think this is a good direction to go down. Of course, I support the first two amendments from the noble Earl, Lord Devon. I was a supporter of Lord Diamond on those Benches in the days of John Major’s Government, when he tried twice to abolish the male exclusiveness of the hereditary peerage. I have promoted Bills to that effect, and it has never appealed to the Government of the day.

However, I rather like the noble Earl’s formulation, which puts a duty on the Privy Council to sort things out. I think leaving bits of sex discrimination lying around in prominent places matters. It is only a label, but I do not think it should be allowed to continue. It is not that hard to make a change, as the noble Earl shows, and I very much hope that the Government will feel inclined to consign one of the last bits of formal sex discrimination in our constitutional arrangements to the dustbin.

Amendment 62, like the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, is a device to get my proposed new subsections (2)(a) and (2)(b) discussed. My interest in participating in the Bill is to make sure that, if we can, we use it to make sure that, going forward, the House without us will be in a better place and able to function better than it does now.

The first barrier that needs to be removed is that the Government should not only let us but positively encourage us to innovate and improve. We ought to have that motivation too. Things stay the same and change only slowly in this place, but we need to do better. We are sure of the effectiveness of our scrutiny when it comes to legislation, but I have never seen it really examined. Where are the research reports and the independent investigations? Where are the committees looking into this and proposing how things might be done better? We ought to be in a condition of constant improvement.

To my mind, the same applies to our interface with the public. For a long time, we have been limited by the fact that it is only us and that there are no staff. What we can do is throttled by that and by the need to work in this Chamber, but artificial intelligence is in the process of changing that and making it possible for someone in our position to engage with a great deal more information and conversation than was ever possible in the past. It also makes it much easier for people outside this Chamber to have a connection with and understanding of us and what we are doing, in a way we can join in with, without overwhelming ourselves. We ought as a House to be determined to give the public the benefit of these technological changes.

I am not particularly attached to the mechanism in my proposed new clause. It will take some rethinking before Report to produce something that gives the House the initiative, but also the duty, to improve, that allows it to push forward and that encourages the Government to support that. Obviously, big changes need a Commons veto, but we can move so that most of this goes via Standing Orders, while the bits that cannot should go via secondary legislation. We would need the approval of the Commons but would not need to go through the rigmarole of a Bill. House of Lords Bills happen very occasionally, but our process of improvement ought to be constant.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I am standing up to speak before the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, because he is very fluent and I do not want to embarrass myself by following him. I can tell the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, that I am not a hereditary Peer, but he knows that because I am a woman.

I wholeheartedly support Amendments 91 and 94 from the noble Earl, Lord Devon. They make absolute sense and it would be a good move for the Government to take them forward as soon as they can, even if it is not in this Bill. In a sense, this are trivial—it does not affect many people—but, at the same time, it is an indicator of a lack of balance and equality in our society.

On the noble Earl’s Amendment 97, I really could not care less what we are, what we call ourselves and how we look. This whole architecture is Victorian kitsch. It is falling to pieces and it is time that we renovated. It is time that we sat not two sword lengths apart but in a circle like a modern second chamber. But I very much support Amendments 91 and 94.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 12th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Devon (CB)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to speak to Amendment 64 in my name, to which the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, has added his name. Like the other amendments in this group, it addresses the question of attendance.

By amending the House of Lords Reform Act 2014, which sets a minimum attendance of one sitting day every Session of Parliament, my amendment aims to ensure that Members attend a minimum of 10% of sitting days in each Session, which is similar to some of the amendments already mentioned. As I have said previously, I am of the view that the broad and largely amateur membership of your Lordships’ House is one of its enduring strengths. The fact that those who sit are, for the most part, not professional legislators is important to ensure that a diversity of experience and views are heard from a wide range of backgrounds. I believe that that was the consensus view of the House when we debated an elected House on Monday.

That said, a minimum attendance is entirely reasonable and this amendment puts that at 10% of the sitting days in any one Session. Such a modest attendance will ensure that Members are committed to service in the House and are able to keep suitably abreast of developments in Westminster. It will not, however, require Members to attend so often as to preclude them from continuing to maintain their outside interests, and will equally not require them to make unnecessary and numerous interventions, slowing down the business of the House as Members seek to pad their records of contribution. This is in nobody’s interests.

I note that the amendment is similar to Amendment 21, proposed so excellently and with so much Excel detail by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, but his amendment would require 10% of sitting days within any one Parliament, whereas Amendment 64 requires it in any one Session, which will ensure a greater regularity and spread of attendance. On that basis, I recommend it to the Committee.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I have Amendment 37 in this group. I think we have Members of extreme expertise in here but, unlike my noble friend Lord Hailsham, that we do not want to hear from them only when that particular expertise is engaged. We want their broader contribution and wider understanding of life; we want them to bring that expertise into our wider debates. We should expect people who are part of this House to turn up for a reasonable percentage of time—certainly 10%. As I learned from my noble friend Lord Strathclyde, Peers whose habit is to blow in, blow off and blow out are really no use to this House whatever.

The other characteristics of my amendment, compared with others, are to leave a lot of flexibility to the House of Lords in saying what the level should be and how it should be determined. That is rather better expressed in Amendment 32, which we will come to in a while and which I thoroughly support.

[The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 64, which is the one I am most attracted by in this group. I have in my right hand a copy of the Writ of Summons that we each receive when we come here. I am going to read an extract:

“We, strictly enjoining, command you upon the faith and allegiance by which you are bound to Us that considering the difficulty of the said affairs and dangers impending (waiving all excuses) you be personally present at Our aforesaid Parliament with Us and with the Prelates, Nobles and Peers of Our said Kingdom to treat and give your counsel”.


I believe that the Writ of Summons is a very serious document and this is why I think that Section 2 of the House of Lords Reform Act 2014, which allows for only one day of participation, is not consistent with the Writ of Summons, frankly.

I have been looking at my own spreadsheet; my numbers came from the Journal Office, so they are no doubt slightly different. In looking at those numbers, I felt that, as I said in November and in December, by raising that one day to 10% of the days sat in a Session, we would lose between 50 and 100 of our number who did not live up to what is in our Writ of Summons. I felt that that was proportionate. However, although I clearly looked at other percentages as well, 10% is a figure that, selfishly, suits the Cross Benches, because we have a large number of people on our Benches who are low-frequency, high-impact Members. I need not name them, because all noble Lords will be able to think of several, but they are people at the very top of their professions. They are able to come here to give devastatingly good speeches, but they are not able to make more than 10% of the time here. They go on to our committees and do a lot of valuable work for our House. That is why I feel that 10% is the right number.

The pleasing thing about the amendment in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Devon, is that, in it, attendance is measured as it is today, so the very methods that we use to measure attendance are there. The methods that we use if a Member wants to appeal a wrong marking out, as it were, are there and work well. I have confirmed with the Clerk of the Parliaments that these methods could be applied to this type of amendment. Therefore, in my eyes, the noble Earl has scored a hit.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Cromwell (CB)]

The rest of us are not blessed with the eloquence and wit that the noble Lord, Lord Swire, feels he has, but I think he has missed the point of my amendment and that, as a Committee, we are now trying to do all the detail on the Floor of the House. That is impossible. My amendment tries to establish that after this Bill a system is put in place to define these issues, to which we can all contribute usefully and sensibly—or foolishly, as we wish. That is the way to take this forward, not putting it into the Bill in detail. We need a system for the Government to show a bit of an ankle here and show us that they are really going to do this by putting this amendment into the Bill, not trying to work out the minutiae of percentages here. That is completely pointless.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

I have Amendment 40 in this group. I find myself very much in agreement with the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, which is a travesty of history. My route forward would be by Amendment 32, because I think it leaves the initiative much more with this House than with the Government. I would say, if the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Sentamu, were in his place, that St Matthew recorded some excellent advice about getting to grips with your adversary as soon as possible as the best way to deal with something. I think it is rather more likely that the next four and a half years will see the second coming of our Lord than a second Bill on the House of Lords, so to have something like Amendment 32 would be a great advantage.

The thing that unites us all is a determination to improve the way this House serves the public. There are many aspects in which we can work on this. The amendments we have in front of us are restricted by the nature of the Bill, but I absolutely think that this is the right moment to bring them forward and discuss them.

In my years in the House, I can remember one occasion when a Starred Question made a difference to government policy, which was when the Government were asked what their plans were to celebrate the 50th anniversary of El Alamein, in 1992. The answer was, “There are no such plans; it is the Germans’ turn to celebrate anniversaries this year”. With a House full of veterans, that led to a fairly rapid reverse of policy. I cannot recall one since. Much as we enjoy Questions, I think we should be much more critical about whether what we are doing actually has a function. I believe we should commission outside research, be self-critical, try to self-improve as a House and find ways of doing better.

When it comes to looking at our expectations of participation, I very much understand what the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, and my noble friend Lord Attlee were saying. There are many ways in which this happens. The form in proposed new Section 2A(1) in my amendment, asking people to sign a declaration to, as it were, say on their honour that they are participating fully in the business of the House, may be a good way forward. What the noble Lord, Lord Desai, suggests as a way of measuring that is certainly something to explore. We could also explore following the advice of Elon Musk and each week writing a postcard to the leader of our groups naming five achievements. I think that would put some of us on the spot.

In thinking about the worthwhile work this House does, we should focus on committees in all their various forms. That is where I have seen most value delivered and, in terms of what my noble friend Lord Norton says about fitting our membership to our function, that is very much the direction in which we should be trying to go.

[The Earl of Dundee (Con)]

My Lords, as has been said by practically everybody, participation statistics—such as simply the numbers of annual interventions by any Peer, without enough reference to the contents, let alone to the parliamentary usefulness and quality of those interventions—are thoroughly misleading.

At the same time, adjudications should obviously take into account how a Peer may have contributed in the usual ways through speeches, Written Questions, committee work, voting and so on.

Your Lordships may agree with what I think has emerged very clearly from this debate: rather than going only by participation numbers, a far clearer picture would emerge from assessments made by a cross-party commission set up for this purpose, as proposed in Amendment 63, and just now so eloquently explained and spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Northbrook (Con)]

My Lords, I am not quite sure what

“resolution of the House of Lords”

means: whether it is by amendment and, considering the mechanics of the whole thing, whether it would also have to go through the House of Commons. I am slightly perplexed at how this amendment would work in practice.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I find this a very attractive way of approaching the amendments proposed previously by the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, because it moves the initiative back to the House of Lords, which has to initiate the change. Given that it has to result in a vote of both Houses, the Government can just vote it down—so in reality it would have to be something negotiated between the House of Lords and the Government.

The amendment does two really important things. First, it produces a mechanism that can actually happen. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hermer, said that this Government are determined or committed on making further changes. Some of us heard that 26 years ago and it sounded just the same—and I believe it was just as real. There was a real determination then to move forward with stage 2, but it did not happen. I do not believe that under the circumstances in the world, in this Government, in this country or in this economy, any Government could find the time in the next four and a half years for another House of Lords Bill. It just will not happen. If we use this mechanism, we get the ability to change most of the important things that we are talking about in this Committee. The Government would retain control because it would require a vote in the Commons—but the House of Lords would take the initiative. That is a very attractive way of dealing with a lot of what we have talked about in the past three days.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, it has been an interesting debate. One thing that strikes me is that the House itself wants to lead on the issues of participation, retirement age, attendance and criminal conviction. The noble Lord, Lord Newby, said that legislation was not the way forward, and the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, was very suspicious of legislation, because he thinks that it is not going to happen. It is interesting how Members are now much more engaged in these issues than we have been in the past, so I am grateful for those comments.

On the noble Lord’s amendment, I feel the hand of mischief here a little. It feels a bit like a Henry VIII power; I wonder whether noble Lords are comfortable with an unelected House passing a resolution and then saying to the elected House, “You must put this in statute”. It goes against the grain of every speech I have ever heard the noble Lord make on that issue, with which I have always agreed, so it is a curious amendment—but just a probing one, I am sure.

On the issue of the House making these arrangements and looking at how it can do that—including whether we can do things more quickly—there are always arrangements in our manifesto for legislation. But if noble Lords can find a way to agree on a way forward on the issues in the noble Lord’s amendments, I am sure the House would be willing to have those discussions.

I am grateful to the noble Lord for raising those issues. As I say, this amendment raises constitutional issues. In any other aspect of the work he has done, I do not think he would ever have agreed to it, but I thank him for his contribution and hope he will seek leave to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

Can I ask the noble Baroness a couple of questions? First, as I read my noble friend’s amendment, the duty on the Government would be to put the matter to the vote, not put it in statute. So the House of Commons would have a controlling vote over whether these changes happen.

Secondly, in response to what the noble Lord, Lord Newby, said, is it the noble Baroness’s understanding that the current arrangements would allow us to change the Standing Orders so that we excluded Peers on the basis of non-attendance or non-participation—or would that require legislative change?

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

In our Standing Orders we are already able to exclude Peers for non-attendance. That right exists at the moment. The discussion we have had is about whether it is at the right level, but we could do that through our own Standing Orders.

I am not sure that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, is right in the first point he made, because the amendment says:

“Where a resolution is passed by the House of Lords in accordance with subsection (1) … a relevant Minister must, by regulations made by statutory instrument, amend this Act”.


So there are instructions for the Minister to amend the Act—there would have to be a vote, I am sure, but it is an instruction.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 10th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby (LD)]

Yes, it would constrain the Prime Minister’s powers; that is what I want to do. In my view, the Prime Minister has, on rare occasions in the past, acted in a manner that has allowed people who HOLAC thought improper to become Members of your Lordships’ House. That is what I want to stop.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, does it not strike the noble Lord as interesting that, in this amendment, he recommends the power of appointed people over elected people whereas in previous amendments he recommended the exact opposite?

[Lord Newby (LD)]

It may be interesting to the noble Lord; I think it is totally irrelevant to this case. We are obviously done with this issue today. I will withdraw my amendment but I will come back to it on Report.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord de Clifford (CB)]

I support this group of amendments and other groups that follow with regards to Lords reform. I take this opportunity to say again that, as an hereditary Peer, I am not opposed to Clause 1, but having the opportunity to be elected to the House of Lords is not an appropriate way of selecting people to sit in the House in the 21st century, for many reasons. This is a simple Bill with one purpose: to remove the right for hereditary Peers to continue to sit, contribute and vote. It is a great privilege to be a Member of this House, and I am fortunate enough to have experienced it for a short time.

The Bill achieves some reform of an outdated process, possibly the easiest one, as it is a simple one. If this Bill is so simple, why have so many amendments been put down? That concerns me and others such as the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries. The fear is that there will be no further reform for many years after the Bill has received Royal Assent and the hereditary Peers have left. The noble Baroness the Lord Privy Seal has said on many occasions that further House of Lords reform is under consultation. Sadly, the track record of the House in making decisions on legislative reforms is not a good one, as proven by Bills from the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, and many others, and the implementation of the recommendations of the noble Lord, Lord Burns, and his committee.

This group of amendments makes suggestions for reform, one of which concerns the length of term a Peer can serve in the House. Having been in the House for only just over a year, I would say that the ways of the House are quite challenging at times, especially if you are not used to the way that government works. A bit of time is needed to understand the way that the House works, to gain experience and to be best able to contribute. I feel strongly that, in the majority of cases, a term of 15 or 20 years is appropriate for Peers to serve in the House. As Peers have many skills and experiences that they can bring during their term, they can contribute to the workings of the House. When they come to the end of a term, there are many outside this Chamber, as some Peers have already commented, who have similar skills and different experience to bring to the House: the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, stated this clearly on the previous group.

Another feature of the 21st century is that there are not very many jobs for life with no formal review process, appraisal or performance review. That privilege and the privilege of the role can be maintained with just half a day’s work every year. I agree that a consultation on this matter is appropriate, and I agree with the amendment of the noble Viscount, Lord Thurso. That has great promise, and I agree that it should apply only to Peers who enter the House at this stage. I note what the noble Baroness the Leader of the House said regarding the consultation process that is ongoing. Can I ask when she might bring reform to the House on one or two of the areas that we are about to discuss in the next few minutes?

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I very much agree with the noble Lord, Lord de Clifford, that we are extremely unlikely to see any further opportunity of Lords reform in the lifetime of this Government. It would be the first Government that had ever managed to achieve that in my 35 years in this House, and I do not see why the rules should have changed again, so it is really important that we get the discussion done now and move things forward a bit.

I like the amendment in the name of the noble Viscount, Lord Thurso, very much. It has the virtue of creating a big change at the end of a Parliament, just when you need a big change so that you can alter the balance of the House a bit and bring in Ministers. In my experience of this place, I think that 20 years is the right time; 15 years feels too short. It takes a good long while to embed yourself, and then one does have a decent, useful life after that, so 20 years feels better to me. I agree with the noble Viscount that we should go for a proper way of remunerating Members of this House. The sooner that pensionable, taxable remuneration comes in, the better. There is no excuse for the current system.

I can comfort the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Llanfaes: if she ever feels powerful in this place, she will be immensely lucky. We are like waves breaking on the rocks of the seashore. Most of the time, we just bounce off. Occasionally, we manage to shift a grain of sand, and very occasionally, somehow, we all come together and shuffle a rock down the slope and into the deep, as with the unlamented Schools Bill in the last Parliament, or as my noble friend Lady Owen has achieved with her ambitions in this Parliament.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, the problem with any debate on House of Lords reform is that it very quickly descends into self-interest. As a relatively youthful Member of your Lordships’ House, who is already more than one-third of his way through what would be a 15-year term, it may not surprise your Lordships to hear that I am not especially attracted to this idea. By contrast, I am sure that some octogenarian colleagues on the Government Benches, some but not all of whom are in their places today, are perhaps keener on this potential reform than they would be about implementing that part of the Government’s manifesto which relates to a retirement age, but I think that it has been worthy of separate consideration.

When my noble friend Lord Remnant was speaking, I was struck by the fact that age is of course a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010, which the last Labour Government brought in, whereas length of tenure is a question of good governance. My noble friend spoke from his own experience in the private sector in making his points. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Garden of Frognal, that I have asked for one of my later amendments to be grouped with the others in the next group, so I am keen to make good progress.

I note that both the Minister responding and I are in what I suppose would be called in the terms of the noble Viscount, Lord Thurso, our primary working years—I am glad to see her in her place responding. I was struck by the question of the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, “What then?” not so much from the employment rights angle, although noble Lords have raised some pertinent points about the way that active Members of your Lordships’ House are remunerated, but more from the point that, if we were to be ushered out at the end of a term, those of us who have come in at a younger age would be thinking about what comes next in terms of our careers. In government, we have put in place a sensible mechanism, through the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments, to make sure that Ministers are not abusing their position to line up their next gig. I would worry slightly that, if we were to have limited terms here, people who were looking to serve in your Lordships’ House and then leave and do something next, in the next chapter of their career, would be thinking about “What next?” and lining up some lucrative opportunities, whether in financial or political ways.

My noble friend Lord Attlee rightly drew attention to the fact that we have less interest in media coverage or the clips that we might put on social media. I often say, when talking to friends outside the House about our work here, that we do not, unlike another place, play to the Gallery. That is mostly because there are very few people in the Gallery watching debates in your Lordships’ House, but I think that a lot of us are dispassionate, by virtue of the fact that we have taken an oath, as the noble Lord, Lord Desai, reminded us, to sit here and give our dispassionate views for the rest of our service here, and that is something that is worth holding on to. I am grateful to the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, for bringing this amendment before us for consideration and for highlighting its origins in the royal commission chaired by my noble friend Lord Wakeham under the last Labour Government.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 3rd March 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Lucas]

6: Leave out Clause 1 and insert the following new Clause—
“By-elections and life peerages for hereditary peer vacancies(1) Section 2 of the House of Lords Act 1999 (exception to exclusion of hereditary peers from membership of House of Lords) is amended as follows.(2) In subsection (2), after “time” insert “no more than”.(3) For subsection (4), substitute—“(4) In any case where a person excepted from section 1 dies or ceases to be a member of the House of Lords, an election must be held in which anyone on the register of electors anywhere in the United Kingdom may stand, and in which all members of the House of Lords may vote. (4A) Any person selected as a result of an election held under subsection (4) must be recommended by the Prime Minister for a life peerage.””Member's explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to probe whether hereditary peer vacancies could be filled by members of the public who would be elected by members of the House and recommended to the Prime Minister for a life peerage.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I shall also speak to my Amendment 7. My objective in this amendment, and indeed in all my others, is to improve the Bill, not upset it. I am not intending to immerse myself in the argument as to whether we should be Grocotted or garrotted. This amendment is written as if we were being Grocotted, but it works just as well if we follow the Government’s intentions and we all leave at once.

In this amendment, I am interested in the opportunity that the Bill presents to improve the House going forward without hereditary Peers. The history of Lords reform shows that this opportunity will not be back in any short order. In the time that I have been in this House, there were opportunities for reform in 1992, which did not come about because of the election; in 1999, when we were promised stage 2 but it did not happen; and in 2012, when the coalition’s Bill did not go through.

Opportunities to reform come along once a decade, and there never is a stage 2 because this is a really hard reform to do. There is no big constituency for it—not for getting rid of the hereditary Peers but for reforming the Lords generally—and those in charge of parliamentary time never find time for it. Why do your Lordships think we as a Government never reformed the Lords? Because there were always better things to do. The same is going to be true of this Government, and the silence of the noble Baroness the Lord Privy Seal is testament to that. There is no worked-out proposal for how the Lords should be reformed, only a thought that there may be discussions in the future.

Everything we know about Lords reform says that this will come to nothing, so we really need to use this Bill to see how we can improve the House. Amendment 6 says, “Don’t throw away by-elections. We can use them to improve the House”. They are a system that works. Look at the flow of talented, hard-working Peers who have come in over the last 25 years through by-elections. None of us expected things to go on anything like this long, and the noble Baroness and her colleagues are quite right that it is ridiculous how long they have gone on; none the less, they have resulted in the acquisition in this House of some very excellent Peers. That was no mean feat, given the smallness of the pool in which we had to fish.

As my noble friend Lord Hamilton of Epsom said, we were a set of voters who cared. We cared for the House. We did not want to bring people in here who would not come up to scratch. Perhaps we also cared a good deal for ourselves; we did not want to be seen to be bringing rubbish into this place. So we did well, and there is no reason why the House as a whole would not do just as well if it had this mechanism open to it.

Amendment 6 throws open the doors so anyone can apply to be in this House. We get round the problem of the aversion to hairdressers which has plagued the Cross Benches. But anyway, this is political Peers. This is not for the Cross Benches; this is for the politicians. The 90 or so places currently occupied by hereditary Peers would be shared among the political parties and would form a different way of becoming chosen to be in the House of Lords, other than the patronage of the political leaders at the time.

We can see from my Benches that this is not destructive of the force of the political party. We have been able to absorb a continued flow of independent-minded hereditary Peers within the Conservative Party on these Benches and it has not harmed our performance. Indeed, many of my colleagues have been chosen to serve on the Front Bench. It has been a success from that point of view. By having another source of recommendations other than the party leadership, we get some diversity in views, outlook and background, which can be quite hard to get when you are operating from within the Westminster bubble.

If we keep the by-elections going, we should have the ability to set the rules for whom we wish to apply, experiment with them, let them evolve, and learn how we can become a more open House. Something along these lines lays the ground in a controllable way for the sort of ambitions the Liberal Democrats have in their Amendment 11. They would like to see a much wider franchise for getting into this House, but with added legitimacy. That did not work in 2012 and I do not think it is going to work in the foreseeable future, but we can reach towards it by using the mechanism of by-elections.

Amendment 7 says that maybe Amendment 6 is a bit wide and that maybe throwing it open to everybody would be quite hard to operate. But we have a government ambition to give a voice to the Council of the Nations and Regions, and through repurposing the by-elections we have the chance to do that straightaway. We do not have to wait for this whole thing to grind through a fresh set of legislative machinery; we can just repurpose what we have and allow members of the Council of the Nations and Regions to nominate people to this place, subject to us being the people who choose, in the way that by-elections work at the moment.

That would allow us to experiment, to find out how this works, to find out what the right questions are to ask of the politically nominated, so that we get a flow of people who really work in this place. We would achieve the Government’s ambition, which would otherwise have to wait for the next reform in a decade’s time. We could combine the by-elections with other improvements. This might work quite well with having a 15-year term in this place, and other proposals that we reach later in the Bill.

My proposal is that we be realistic: that we recognise that we are not going to get another Bill, that we are not going to get further reform from this Government, and maybe not from the next one. We need to use this Bill to give ourselves the opportunity to improve the House as it goes forward, and not just to say goodbye—as my noble friend Lord True says we all accept—to the hereditary Peers. I beg to move.

Amendment 7 (to Amendment 6)

Moved by

[Lord Lucas]

7: In subsection (3), inserted subsection (4), after “stand” insert “if they have been recommended in accordance with procedures to be determined by the House of Lords by a member of the Council of the Nations and the Regions”

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to all who have spoken, and particularly my noble friend Lord Trenchard for his amendment, which is a very useful contribution to considering how to take this idea forward. I think my noble friend Lord Strathcarron is quite right that the elections process produces candidates who have staying power and determination over time, bringing us closer to democracy—not a huge amount closer to democracy, but at least it is a move in the right direction. I share the wish of my noble friend Lord Moylan to be much more radical in that. However, nothing in my experience of the House suggests that we will get there. It never seems to appeal to our colleagues down the other end.

As to the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, asking whether we would vote for a ballerina, the noble Lord needs to look at the background of the hereditary Peers that we have elected. We have artists, we have film producers and we have a number of other people whose hearts are very much in the arts. There is a notorious propensity for hereditary Peers to marry ballerinas, so I do not believe that there is any prejudice inherent in us against that particular profession.

[Lord Cromwell (CB)]

Apart from my curiosity about the noble Lord’s earlier remark about hairdressers, I cannot resist pointing out that my great-great-grandmother was in the Ballets Russes.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

There we have it, and a very fine great-great-grandchild she has, too.

I am grateful for the support from my noble friends Lord Murray of Blidworth and Lord Strathclyde, who quite rightly said that, if we are to believe that the Government as a whole, as opposed to any individual, are actually determined on giving us another House of Lords Bill within this Parliament or the next, a Green Paper would be the least of our expectations. Get the proposals out there for discussion. Let us get this process on the road. Without that, all history says that this will run into the sand. Those who, like me, have tried through Governments of both colours to move changes to this House and have never succeeded know just how hard it is. It really is extremely difficult to get the machinery of government to spend time contemplating what should be done with the House of Lords.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Lucas Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 11th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I repeat those congratulations. It is great to briefly have the company of my noble friend Lord Brady, in this House and very sad to lose the company of the noble Baroness, Lady Quin, a few months early. I find myself agreeing with the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett, in that it would have been very nice to get the hereditary peerage made sex-blind. Her colleague Lord Diamond tried and I supported him early on; I tried in my turn, as did the noble Lord, Lord Northbrook. None of us has managed to convince a Government of any colour that they should be prepared to give time to that. It is, I think, the one regret that I shall carry with me as I depart this House.

I support the Bill, and I accept its principle. I accepted it in 1992 when I joined. I expected Neil Kinnock, now the noble Lord, Lord Kinnock, to win the election and abolish us, so I joined in the expectation of being abolished but it has taken rather a long time. Along with the noble Lords, Lord Newby and Lord Norton of Louth, I think that the Bill is an opportunity to make some important changes for the benefit of the continuing House. We need to do something about the Prime Minister’s power of patronage. I favour doing that by defining the proportions of this House that are made up of, or appointed by, various parties. We also need to do something about quality, because this ought to be a self-improving House. Many noble Peers have mentioned ways in which this House could do better, which seems entirely in tune with the Government’s objectives as set out in their manifesto.

I will take quality first. We should be on our honour at the beginning of every Session by confirming, in writing, that we have the mental and physical capacity to play a full part in the House, and that we intend to attend a certain percentage of sitting days and play an active part in the committees of this House, which are the core of its business. Those who can, for one reason or another, not manage that should gracefully retire. As the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, says, there should be some stick available if Members who are clearly not acting on their honour refuse to retire. Obviously, the ability to grant leave of absence to Peers who are away temporarily should remain.

As the Government have proposed, when a party leader proposes that someone should be a Peer, they should make a declaration of what their qualities and experience are and how that will add to the work of the Lords and represent the interests of that party in Parliament. I suggest that, together, that would make a good way of approaching the problem of quality. The basic jury is public opinion, and our own sense of honour. Those are suitably deep and flexible ways of dealing with what would otherwise become a rather bureaucratised system.

Then there is the question of proportions. Having no set proportions of Peers in this House allows the Prime Minister to flood the Chamber with new Peers whenever he or she wishes, effectively rendering Parliament unicameral and the legislature ineffective. We could deal with that simply by saying that the Bishops and the Cross Benches have a set proportion of this House, and the Opposition has at least half of what remains. That would make sure that the Prime Minister was no longer able to pack the representation of parties in this House. It would seem to me entirely appropriate in the context of a House where there was no longer a hereditary principle, and it was entirely an appointed House. As my noble friend Lord True pointed out, we have a strong set of conventions to allow that sort of House, where the Government are in a permanent minority, to be manageable, and allow the Government to get their business through.

As other noble Lords have said, it would help these processes if peerages were no longer tied to a Writ of Summons. There are some people in this world who deserve a peerage, but who are really not interested in arguing “may” and “must” in the recesses of some 500-page Bill. Let them have the honour and not impose on them the obligation to attend this place.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes of Cumnock, that we need to do something about regional representation. I have been, in recent months, sampling what you can get for £100 a night, and I cannot see this is a great incentive for people to travel down from the north. I have not encountered any bedbugs yet, but I should not be surprised to do so.

If we wanted to introduce election to this House, why not open up the hereditary Peers’ by-elections to everybody, as has just happened with the chancellorship of the University of Oxford? All Members of this House could vote, but anybody could stand. That way, we could introduce an interesting principle of election without changing the law, much as it is.

I look forward to long and interesting debates on this Bill. As we have seen from the amendments there were accepted in the Commons, there is quite a lot of scope for arguing how we can use this Bill to improve the House that remains after we have gone. That, for myself, is the legacy I should like to leave.

House of Lords Reform

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I want to make it clear what my attitude to this Bill is. In a race between the Grim Reaper and this Government to see the back of me, I hope that the Government win. In 1999, we stayed on to secure the further reform of the House of Lords; I believe that we should make a further attempt to do that.

The current arrangements, with the Prime Minister’s unfettered power of appointment, will not do. What the Leader of the House described as incremental change is no change at all: a few Members gone but the basic structure of the House staying the same. The dangers of that were very well illustrated by the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood.

It is really not difficult to do stage two. The noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, set out one way of doing it and other Peers have set out others. They all focus on an element of quality control, but I do not think we need to create institutions to do that. As long as whoever brings in incoming Peers has to say why and how they will enhance the House, bringing in people who will not do that will reflect on the reputation of that party. One way or another, we will see fewer bad appointments.

If Peers who are still in the House have to commit, on our honour, to playing a proper part in this House and say that we have the capacity and intention to do that, then it will be quite easy to remove Peers who fail that test. We will have an ability under that sort of system to control our own quality. We can tie it back in to what my noble friend Lord Norton will doubtless refer to as being “assessed against purpose”. I am a follower of my noble friend and, after this evening, of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, also. He was a superb Minister in his day. It was always a huge pleasure to find oneself opposite him because he listened. If he agreed with you, he would take it back to the department and you knew that he would be effective in his arguments there, even if he did not always win.

Another change we should make, as has been said a lot this evening, is to numbers. We need to agree how many Peers are in this House and what proportions should be linked to the Government, Opposition and Cross Benches. It is not a difficult change to make. If that causes problems around an election, when the basis for assessing the numbers changes, as has been suggested by the noble Lords, Lord Campbell-Savours and Lord Foulkes, we can de-link peerages and the right to sit in this House. It has been done for hereditary Peers and it can be done for life Peers also. That, in a way, might be a useful change so that the people who have really earned a peerage but do not want to serve in this House can be given that honour, and membership of this House can be confined to people who really want to make a contribution.

I add that I very much support what my noble friend Lord Astor said about self-evaluation and improvement. We need to become a more reflective House. I would like to see us publishing proper independent research on our effectiveness and looking at ways in which we can do better. I would very much like to see us covering secondary legislation better. As other Peers have said, we are seeing much more of it. We need to get more control of it.

Lastly, when it comes to retirement age, one of my early memories of being on the Government Bench as a Whip and taking a Bill through is being thoroughly defeated by three speeches, mostly from the Cross Benches, from Peers whose total age when added together was 286. I do not think age should be the criterion. We live in an ageing society. We have to make the best use of all the good years that we have, and we should not set the contrary example in this House.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 18th September 2023 Lords Chamber

Amendment 281 in my name is intended simply to persuade the Government that it is important to provide this information to the public and to enable accountability of the Government for the state of very important public buildings. I beg to move.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I have Amendment 282NE in this rather miscellaneous group. It is one of the joys of England that we have a lot of towns with houses that have no driveways but front gardens. We need to take care of that in the context of our policy for making everyone drive electric. As we have set things up at the moment, we have introduced an imperative that people should pave over their front garden and use it to park their car. If they do so, they will have a dedicated parking space and can charge from their own house, at the rate they are buying electricity in a deal they have made themselves rather than from some organisation doing it in the street. They also pay VAT at 5% rather than 15%. Zoopla says that, if you do that, you will increase the value of your house by at least 10%.

It is both for people’s convenience and a necessity. If you get an electric car and rely on very thinly provided street parking, you may find that you have to park some long distance from your house and cannot be sure of being able to charge your car when you need to do so. We are creating an environment that will result, if we are not very careful, in our towns becoming much less charming and beautiful places because of our good ambition that more people have electric cars.

I ask my noble friend to make it clear to local authorities that they can do something about this and do not have to give permission for a dropped kerb or paving over front gardens. They can wind this into an organised rollout of on-street charging and not let desecration happen by default.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I will introduce my noble friend Lady Bennett’s Amendment 282NC, as she has been called away to “Gardeners’ Question Time”. Of course, I will vote to support Amendment 281.

I will be very brief. This is a quite simple amendment based on a report from the New Economics Foundation entitled Losing Altitude: The Economics of Air Transport in Great Britain. It takes on the Conservatives, on their own ground, on questions of growth and economics. There are still arguments that airport facilities are needed for business travel, but it has declined by 50% in the past decades.

All the infuriating by-products of air travel—the noise, disruption and pollution—are not actually worth while. The sector is one of the poorest job creators in the economy per pound of revenue. Automation and efficiency savings have meant that the rapid rise in passenger numbers between 2015 and 2019 was not enough to restore direct employment to its peak in 2007, plus wages are significantly lower in real terms than they were in 2006. That is obviously not for the top jobs; this is for the bulk of workers. Quite honestly, air travel just cannot be justified on any grounds anymore.

The amendment proposed a review to examine the costs and benefits of planned expansion of the UK air transport sector. Quite honestly, it is not worth it.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 13th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Randall of Uxbridge (Con)]

My Lords, I will be even briefer in full support of the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Young. I agree with everything that has been said. I will not rise to the bait at the mention of HS2; that is not going to happen. But we need legislation—we cannot afford to lose this incredible habitat.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I very much hope that the Government will take this amendment seriously. I would like to see them accept it. I do not agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Young, that ancient woodland is irreplaceable. It just takes a very long time—a matter of centuries—to replace it. As part of our planning, when it comes to 30 by 30, where to put woodlands and the extremely important issue of connection, we ought to be saying that losing 0.2% of our ancient woodland every year is not good. We want to plan to add 0.5% a year to where we plant and how we connect. We should have a long-term strategy to make sure that, in 100 years, we have twice as much woodland as now; otherwise, we will continue to bite into it.

A planning permission is currently being sought in Kent. I can see the argument for it. We want a supply of ragstone. A lot of important buildings are built of ragstone. This may be entirely the right place from which to get it. An additional Thames crossing is in prospect. We may well need it. We know that there will be circumstances in which we want to tear down ancient woodland. You cannot just take the soil and stick it somewhere else in the hope that things will re-establish themselves. It needs much better, more careful and longer-term planning.

Ten thousand years ago, there was none of this stuff. It has moved and come since. All these plants and animals have moved here during this period. We should not think that we cannot multiply it. We should be planning on the basis that we can, which needs a lot of thought, care and consideration. I declare an interest. I own a PAWS—a plantation on an ancient woodland site. I do not have any ancient woodland but I own a space where one used to be. We should give it careful attention, ensuring that every time we damage a woodland, there is proper consultation and consideration. It should not just be about whether we should lose this bit but about how we, as a local authority, plan to end up with more in a century’s time, rather than saying, “Shall we eat this slice of an ever-diminishing cake now?”.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, I ought to start by saying that I am a member of the Woodland Trust and therefore protection of woodland is very important to me, so I wholly support the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, in her amendment.

Ancient woodland is ancient. The definition of ancient woodland is that it has been around since the 1600s or even longer. The combined effect of a copse or even a small woodland area in biodiversity terms is enormous. The Woodland Trust and others define these areas as being our equivalent of the rainforests in the tropics in the extent of the diversity of nature that is encouraged to live among the trees. So, it is not simply a question of cutting down a tree; it is destroying a habitat. I think that is what we ought to be thinking of and it is exactly what the noble Baroness, Lady Young, thought about.

Some of these ancient woodland areas are homes to threatened or at-risk species, so again it is not just about, “Let’s cut down the old oak tree”; it is about protecting a whole habitat for a huge number of species. The National Planning Policy Framework, which was published last week, has a tiny paragraph saying that

“development resulting in the loss or deterioration of irreplaceable habitats … such as ancient woodland … should be refused, unless there are wholly exceptional reasons and a suitable compensation strategy exists”.

If only it had ended at “should be refused”. Because if we are, as a country, intent on protecting and enhancing our environment, those bodies of ancient woodland are exactly the sites that we should be protecting in full. What the noble Baroness, Lady Young, is asking, which we on these Benches wholly support, is that we strengthen that protection of ancient woodland, which is a key element of any Government’s environmental protection. So, I thank the noble Baroness for tabling the amendment and if she presses it to a vote, as she has indicated, we will be with her.

Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Tuesday 21st March 2023 Lords Chamber

For me, that threat of civil litigation reintroduced into the Bill by the Government in the other place is what was required as a deterrent. That would have helped to ensure that free speech was taken seriously by bureaucrats who run universities or student unions. It is disappointing to me that government Ministers here have folded, and under far less pressure than Royal Holloway’s debating society. I am opposed to the amendment. I hope that the other place will think again about us thinking again when it gets to consider the decisions taken today.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, what the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, has just said emphasises the main point I wish to make: that this applies to students just as much as to academics. The whole idea of freedom of thought is really important. We are bringing up our children to think that they must curtail their thought. I have a daughter at university at the moment and that is certainly her experience. The atmosphere of not being allowed to discuss and talk about things is prevalent. The Bill is really important in making a difference to that. I will be very interested to see what Members in the other place think of the amendments we send down to them.

We should not think that this is happening just in universities. On 8 March I received, as other noble Lords might have, an email from the parliamentary security vetting department asking us to fill in and sign a form. It said that we must not share passwords, override or undermine security measures and sensible things like that. But it then went on to say that we must not be offensive or put the reputation of Parliament at risk. I do not know how to survive in this place without doing both those things; I imagine that applies to other noble Lords too. Our freedom of speech is now to be curtailed by a directive from parliamentary security vetting without—so far as I can see; I have contacted the authorities without getting any reply—any way in which noble Lords can be involved in that process. I am not sure who will take me to task for being offensive in this place, but I find offensive the idea that I should be asked to sign saying that I will not be.

[Lord Triesman (Lab)]

My Lords, I am not sure that I am going to be offensive; I now feel that my presentation is lacking as a result. Let me at once declare an interest. I was the general secretary of the Association of University Teachers in times when the issue of—and necessity for—freedom of speech in universities was regarded as one of their paramount responsibilities.

I readily agree with the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, who said that that is fundamental to almost all of us who have been concerned with higher education. I appreciate what the Minister has said; this has been a very solid development. I also support the amendment the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, introduced, for much the same reasons as the noble Lord, Lord Grabiner.

I feel a sense of disappointment and sadness on behalf of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox. It is obviously never pleasant to be invited somewhere and then told you are not going to speak, but I urge her to get over it. The truth is that when you go into academic climates and start talking to academics, you are going to find—rather like with lawyers—that a large number will agree with you and a large number will disagree. They will tell you that with all the spitefulness, generosity and so on while they do it.

I have come across a lot of academics who want to make sure that the world of universities does not automatically become subsumed in a world in which people pursue litigation against one another, rather than try to resolve things through more sensible routes. It was bound to end in a reasonable compromise, and I think the Minister put that very fairly and very well.

In welcoming these developments, the academics who have bothered to get in touch with me have told me that the kind of change we are contemplating today is the kind they would find easiest to live with. They are more and more—probably in part because of the debates we have had—sympathetic and attentive to the problems that have been created by cancel culture. I used to cancel my own culture when I was a lecturer, largely by giving very erudite lectures on obscure mathematical problems. Very few people enjoyed them. There is only so much multiple regression you can hear about before you conclude that you should take yourself home because no one is going to be that interested, but it was what I was teaching.

That is why I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, that of course some people will be uncharitable and malevolent, but it is something we can get past with a sensible compromise of the kind we have seen—particularly in the light of the reservations the noble Lord, Lord Grabiner, has about it.

Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 7th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Macdonald of River Glaven (CB)]

My Lords, I do not oppose this amendment at all. I can see why it might be possible for material relating to this issue to be included in codes of practice. However, it is worth observing that a lot of the behaviour described by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, is patently criminal. It is a great shame that universities, colleges and other authorities do not always appreciate that.

As I said in Committee, a group of masked men letting off flares and shouting threats and abuse about a professor of philosophy inside her workplace is conduct that, in my view, is properly characterised as criminal. It is a great shame that the University of Sussex or other relevant authorities did not see it that way.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I am thoroughly with the spirit of this amendment. I have a child currently at university and I know that it is about not just the speaker, but the effect this has on the students. It becomes impossible to discuss anything when you expect to be shouted down. That is far harder for a student at a university to take than it is for a visiting speaker. Universities have to get this right.

In my youth, the extreme right openly contended with Maoists in the junior common room. It was debate. They argued in debate. To shut that down now is to tell students that they are not allowed to express their own opinions. That makes a university pointless. Universities have really not stood up for the purpose of universities, in a way that I hoped they would.