House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Moore of Etchingham Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 9th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, I support this amendment; I feel that it is only fair to the noble Lord, Lord Burns, who is smiling because I have lobbied him on this issue on most of the opportunities when I have bumped into him in the corridors.

Whatever might be said about the number of Peers who have been appointed—it is very difficult; you feel rather impolite once you have been accepted into your Lordships’ House—we have never, thankfully, had a situation where the constitutional convention has been busted that the Government have the largest group but not an overall majority in this House. All of us here I think are believers in the parliamentary democratic system, but, if we were to have people involved in politics and, perhaps, in power who did not agree with that unwritten convention, we would be in a situation where the Prime Minister of the day could, within a few weeks of coming into office, appoint hundreds of Peers, placing the House of Lords Appointments Commission—and, potentially, even the monarch—in an unusual situation. We would therefore have a situation where the Executive would be in charge, having, obviously, not only a majority in the Commons but a commanding majority in the Lords. Of course, we have never before had the situation of having a Prime Minister who does not feel bound by that convention.

[Lord Moore of Etchingham (Non-Afl)]

Can I ask the noble Baroness something? The most important reform that ever took place in the House of Lords was caused by the threat of the Liberal Government to create hundreds of Peers. They had that right and they knew that they had that right, and the King agreed that they had that right. Had they not had that right, they would not have been able to bring in the 1911 Act. Does the noble Baroness therefore think that nothing like that should ever be repeated?

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for that, but we are now in the situation where we have the Parliament Act. I was just moving on to the point that any Prime Minister of the day could reform and make the situation a unicameral situation, but that would of course require the Parliament Act and would mean a delay of a couple of years. We all know how important it is to take your time in politics sometimes, particularly when you are doing constitutional change.

This is more analogous to the situation that happened in Hungary in 2010. Hungary set up its constitution with a President, obviously, but also with a unicameral situation, with a two-thirds supermajority needed to change the constitution. It never envisaged, of course, that one party would bust that majority, but it happened. Subsequently, the EU no longer fully regards Hungary as a democracy. It would be such a shame—I try not to use melodramatic language, but it would be a tragedy—if the Mother of Parliaments ended up in the situation of having what is described now in Hungary: you govern by law, so the Executive just bring their legislation to Parliament and rubber-stamp it.

I say this to the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman: it really matters that we, as a Parliament—at a time when, for very sad reasons, we thankfully have primary legislation—might not be looking at the main thing that we need to ensure. So I fully support the noble Lord’s amendment.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Moore of Etchingham Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 2nd July 2025 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Devon (CB)]

My Lords, I will briefly address Amendment 1 and will ask a couple of specific questions related to the Earl Marshal and the Lord Great Chamberlain.

First, in closing, can the noble Baroness the Leader of the House please confirm what discussions she might have had to confirm that their ceremonial roles will remain wholly unchanged following the passage of the Bill? As the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, stated, we owe them a huge debt of gratitude for their remarkable service during the recent succession of King Charles III.

Secondly, has anyone either proposing or opposing this amendment actually consulted with the present holders of these two high offices of state? I spoke this morning with the Earl Marshal; he was happy for me to confirm to the House that he insists upon his continued service in the role of Earl Marshal but does not think that a seat in this House should be reserved for his hereditary self. Perhaps it could be made available to someone of a more diverse background, he suggested. For hereditaries, our time, unfortunately, is up. We should perhaps accept that and go gracefully, albeit a bit reluctantly.

[Lord Moore of Etchingham (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I put my name to the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, and I did so because although it seems like a small point, it is part of a bigger point.

I am afraid the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, is mistaken in thinking that the Lord Great Chamberlain is here because of his ceremonial duties; it is quite the other way around. The ceremonial duties have emerged over time from the fundamental duties of the Lord Great Chamberlain, who—this is a very practical point about this amendment—has a great many practical duties.

Those duties include: the organisation of great occasions within Westminster Hall; joint responsibility for the control of Westminster Hall and the crypt chapel; the organisation when important Heads of State visit, such as President Macron next week; the sole responsibility for the monarch’s Robing Room, staircase, anteroom and the Royal Gallery; the ballot for the State Opening, which requires a certain amount of tact in its management; and correspondence with individuals and organisations relating to the Palace of Westminster. Those are all practical things. We need to ask ourselves whether, if the Lord Great Chamberlain were to be removed from this place, they would be so well accomplished. If they would not be so well accomplished, what other possible advantage could there be in removing them?

It is true that the Earl Marshal’s role is much more purely ceremonial; I will come back to that in a moment.

It should be obvious that the performance of these tasks is best fulfilled by a full Member of your Lordships’ House. The Lord Great Chamberlain needs to know the people here: our hopes and fears, our conventions, rules and traditions, and, of course, our quirks. It is very nice and encouraging that the present Lord Great Chamberlain is often visible in this Chamber, observing the habits of the tribe of which he is a member. I do not see how it could be done better any other way. If he cannot sit here, it is inevitable that his personal knowledge of the place will decline and, of course, his successor will have no such personal knowledge.

I very much endorse what the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, said about the restoration and renewal project. It is a very complicated project, and it is important that the Lord Great Chamberlain is able to do his job in representing the interests of the monarch on these matters. In doing so, he needs to understand what we all think, so that he can say something which reflects reality. His fundamental role is to maintain the crucial and historic link between the monarchy and Parliament. I think we can trust him when he represents the monarch’s interests here, because he is one of us; we can feel, if you like, that we have a friend at court. So what good comes of fraying that link?

On the role of the Earl Marshal, most of the points made about our connection with the monarchy apply to him as well. But I just want to mention something else, because this is not the first time that the Earls Marshal has been removed from this House, and it is quite interesting what actually happened—it tells us something. As is well known, the Dukes of Norfolk are hereditarily almost always Roman Catholics, and as such, they continued to hold their place under tolerant monarchs in the past. But Parliament was not so tolerant, and from 1672 until 1824, the Dukes of Norfolk were excluded from this House but continued to be Earls Marshal. This created considerable inconvenience in which they had to create deputy Earls Marshal to do the necessary work here, and they got around it in the rather traditional way of the aristocracy, particularly in those days, by appointing their Protestant cousins to the post.

In 1824, a Bill was brought in to change that and allow the Catholic Norfolks to come back into this House. It was a rather important Bill in the history of this country, because it was the forerunner of the Catholic emancipation Act, which, thanks to the ancestor of the noble Duke who is sitting beside me—who rather surprisingly took a very modernising view and said he would resign if it did not get through—Catholic emancipation came in, and so did a whole series of emancipations in the 19th century, which changed the franchise, the qualifications for university and for all sorts of public roles, and so on. So it is rather important.

I was slightly sorry to hear the noble Earl, Lord Devon, quoting the current Earl Marshal saying that more diversity should be encouraged, because, actually, the Norfolks brought great diversity in the 19th century. They were the Catholic voice in this House at a time when it was virtually not allowed. Is it not rather strange that, in this 21st century, when we talk about the importance of diversity and inclusion, we are now trying to kick out the Roman Catholic Norfolks from this Parliament and narrow in some sense the work that we are doing?

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Moore of Etchingham Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 1st April 2025 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

My Lords, I will not detain the Committee for long. I find myself very much in sympathy with the intention of this amendment and particularly with what the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, said a few moments ago.

Our tradition in this House is evolution, not revolution. We know the outstanding contribution that many of the hereditaries have made to our work. My concern is that in the ongoing work that we do, the sheer thousands of amendments that have been passed because of the detailed work that this House has done—I do not have the figures at hand—sorting out some complex but sometimes misguided Bills that have come to us, have often relied on some of the most expert, established and experienced Members of this House.

This amendment would not undermine the fundamental principle of the Bill. I think everybody in the Committee accepts that it has come because it was part of the election manifesto, and we want to work with that. But this would enable us to draw on the huge expertise and ensure that we can focus our abilities to keep doing our fundamental work. It would be only a temporary phase, and eventually the Bill would achieve what it wants to do. Meanwhile, I hope that His Majesty’s Government will look closely at this to see whether we can find a way through that draws on the best experience we can of the Members of your Lordships’ House as we take our work forward.

[Lord Moore of Etchingham (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I very much endorse what the right reverend Prelate said in his—to use a religious word—irenic speech, which I hope will help. I think we all want to address this subject without prejudice and, if we do, I think we will see how strong this amendment is.

By the way, one of the objections to the hereditary Peers remaining in this House is that they are all men, but I notice that four noble Baronesses have put their name to this amendment. If it is good enough for them, it should be good enough for the rest of us.

In my career as an employer, I have sometimes had the misfortune to sack people, and to feel that I had to sack them. I am afraid that one sometimes gets into a situation when one is sacking people when, in order not to hurt their feelings, one keeps telling them how marvellous they are. Sometimes, reasonably enough, they ask, “Well, why are you sacking me, then?”, and it can be difficult to say. Usually, the reason is that actually you do not think they are very marvellous. This amendment teases out the real motive of the Government here. That is what we want to know. We are all agreed, and the Government themselves seem to be agreed, that the hereditary Peers are marvellous as individuals, which is all that is being proposed here—not the hereditary principle but the actual hereditary Peers. So what is it—why do they all have to go? If you press and press, the underlying thought that the Government cannot express is what people used to say in other prejudiced situations. They are saying, “We don’t like your sort”, and that is a bad way to make a law in this House.

[Baroness Mallalieu (Lab)]

My Lords, I have not spoken on the Bill before, but I hope the Committee will forgive me if I do so very briefly now. I do not support the actual wording of this amendment, but I so strongly support the underlying principle behind it, and most particularly what the right reverend Prelate said. Why are we still sitting here? Why are people not sitting down in a room, privately sorting this out?

This amendment would give the Whips the power to decide who they are to choose. It raises the question of the future administration of this House and the numbers after the hereditary Peers have gone, which they undoubtedly will under the Bill. Something far bigger has arisen from the way in which this Bill has been debated—when I have not been in the Chamber, I have been watching it on the screen—and a great many ideas, some of them new to me, have come up about what needs to be done. It is clear that it needs to be major. There needs to be major restructuring, because otherwise we are going to have the power to send people to this House concentrated in one pair of hands, and that cannot be right.

Those Peers currently in the House who wish to remain, who contribute regularly and who are able and willing to continue to do so should, in my view, be offered life peerages. I am told that the number would be nearer to 30 than 90, so we would reduce the size of the House to a degree by just that move. We all come to this House by myriad different routes; sometimes they are strange or unorthodox. We are proposing to remove just those who have come by heredity, and of course the Bill will go through. Very few people, other than Sir Michael Ellis in the other place, would argue that it is wrong to insist on a right to sit in this Parliament because of heredity.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Moore of Etchingham Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 10th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Thurso (LD)]

My Lords, I do not think the noble Baroness wishes to answer the noble Lord’s question, and she has every right to do that.

I rise very briefly to support my noble friend Lord Newby. This is a very straightforward and simple amendment that seeks to place a duty on the Government to do something after this Bill has passed.

Some of us have spent a great deal of time on Lords reform. I started in this place just under 30 years ago and had 27 years between the two places, and one of the things I have observed in that time is that chances to do something to reform this place do not come along too often, and legislation comes along very rarely.

I greatly enjoyed the eloquence and oratory of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, although I have to say that he has once again convinced me that the more eloquent he is, the more incorrect his arguments are. I very much appreciated the way in which the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, with grace and gentleness, rebutted them.

The key point in all that—I am desperately trying not to give a history lesson—is that, when we did the draft Joint Committee of both Houses in 2011-2012, so ably chaired by the late Lord Richards, we came to a compromise position that addressed every single one of the points the noble Lord put forward, and they went into the draft Bill that went before the Commons. That Bill had a Second Reading and, had it had not been for a slightly sneaky operation by Jesse Norman on the programme Motion, it would have gone through and been discussed by both Houses.

So I support my noble friend simply because there needs to be reform. There needs to be reform because we need more legitimacy. In 1832, we were powerful and the Commons was not. From 1832 onwards, the power has moved to the Commons. We now need to regain some legitimacy so that we can again be a powerful part of a Parliament that holds the Executive to account. In asking for this amendment, my noble friend is simply saying, “Let’s hold our feet to the fire and get it done”.

[Lord Moore of Etchingham (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, on the eloquence of her speech. But she put forward a point of view about this House that I think is mistaken when she said that it is supposed to be representative of the people. It absolutely is not and it never has been. It has other purposes, for better or for worse, and we all sit here as representatives of nobody but ourselves. That is particularly true of Cross Benchers and the non-affiliated, but actually it is true of all party Members as well, and there are important reasons for that. We are well placed to bring to bear on the proceedings of Parliament as a whole a disinterested point of view, in the proper sense of “disinterested”: in other words, not representing an interest but trying to think as hard as we can about what is right.

The speech by the noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, was very important here, because, if we think about the function of this House, we may come to realise that its current composition is not so idiotic. Its function is to scrutinise, and the type of people that want to scrutinise are not the type of people who want to get on in life. The people who want to get on in life are those in the other place who are, as was eloquently pointed out by the noble Lord and others, trying to get the next position, higher marks on social media, more likes and jobs. Most of us have gone beyond that stage of life. That is obviously not true of the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, because she is very young, but she disinterestedly and kindly sits here in order to contribute her wisdom.

The trouble with the Bill is that we are not thinking about function but droning on about composition. As long as we think that it is a good thing to have a powerful House of Commons that forms most of the Government of the day, it is perfectly reasonable to have a not-very-strong House of Lords that tries to scrutinise. If we think that that is perfectly reasonable, we might consider that perhaps we should not be mucking around with our composition.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, we have already spent more than an hour on this and I do not intend to prolong that for more than two or three minutes. However, I am getting a bit alarmed by the breadth of the discussion we are having.

I remind the House—maybe the Procedure Committee needs to look at this—that the Bill is the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill. From looking at the amendments, of which this is a particularly bad example, not in the quality of the argument but in the dangers it presents for anyone looking for Lords reform in the future, we can apparently have absolutely any amendment whatever so long as it conceivably, by some long-stretched argument, has some effect on the future composition of the Lords.

A lot of people have been saying that we need to do more things once this Bill has become an Act, but, my word, I have been very much put off thinking that is a good idea having listened to today’s debate, because any one of the other issues—whether it is the age of retirement, the length of service, or the number of Bishops, for example— could apparently lead to precisely the same kind of debate that we have had today on amendments to this Bill. I have to say—and probably anyone could say it about me—that it is very unusual that you hear any new arguments in these debates, of which we have had many in the past.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Moore of Etchingham Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 3rd March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Meyer (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak in support of the amendment from the noble Earl, Lord Devon. This Bill is about not just the future of hereditary Peers but the stability of our entire constitutional order. Hereditary Peers are not relics of feudal privilege, as the Government claim; they are a vital link between our past, present and future. Remove them and we take another step towards dismantling the traditions that have kept this country stable for centuries.

Make no mistakes: this Bill disregards our history, weakens the House of Lords and ultimately paves the way for abolishing the monarchy itself. If hereditary Peers are obsolete, how long before the same argument is made against the Crown? For generations, hereditary Peers have served the Crown, upholding duty, service and continuity. Strip them away and the Lords becomes a Chamber of political appointees. Once it loses its independence, the monarchy loses its natural defenders.

Britain has never been a nation of radical upheaval. We have adapted, not abolished; we have evolved, not revolted. That careful, deliberate reform has kept our constitutions intact. Contrast and compare this with Russia and France, the two nations of my heritage. Both believed that radical change would bring stability, but instead they have suffered instability and disorder. In Russia’s case, it led to a regime even more oppressive than the one it had overthrown, including my grandparents. Why would we throw the baby out with the bath-water?

This Bill is ill-judged: it overturns the 1999 constitutional settlement; it ignores consensus; and it disrupts the balance that has protected us from political chaos. The path from abolishing hereditary Peers to dismantling the monarchy may not happen overnight, but it will set a precedent. Let us be clear: those who cheer the removal of hereditary Peers today will be the same voices calling for the end of the monarchy tomorrow. This Government reassure us that they support the monarchy, but how can we trust them? If they can remove hereditary Peers today, what stops them targeting the monarchy tomorrow?

History teaches us that, once safeguards are eroded, they are rarely restored. The monarchy is not just a symbol of our national unity but a powerhouse of soft diplomacy and economic strength. It generates billions for the UK. What greater demonstration of its soft power than the Prime Minister presenting the King’s invitation to President Trump—a move that could actually place Britain apart from the European Union in negotiations over tariffs, despite Brexit.

This is not outdated tradition; it is a vital asset for our future. We must stand firm against this misguided attack on the traditions that define our nation. That is why this amendment is crucial. It will protect the delicate balance of our constitution and safeguard the stability, continuity and integrity of our institution. That is why I support this amendment.

[Lord Moore of Etchingham (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I rise to support the amendment tabled by the noble Earl, Lord Devon, which is very creative and imaginative. For anybody who thinks this is beside the point, I certainly would not want to press the issue too hard—it is somewhat absurd to suggest that the removal of 92 hereditaries will turn the British constitution completely upside down—but the point is important.

It is said by those who call for the abolition of the remaining hereditaries that the hereditary principle is indefensible. That is often said, and then not really argued—it is simply stated. If it is indefensible, that must apply to other aspects of the hereditary principle, of which the monarchy is the most prominent. One point I would make to the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, is that he is, in fact, mistaken. The present King did make a speech in the House of Lords, when he was Prince of Wales: he made his maiden speech here and was entirely entitled to do so. I remember no parliamentary crisis arising from it.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, that this must be quite annoying because there are so many things flying around; could it not all be grouped? This is the problem with the Bill: it raises a very big issue and then tries to make it very narrow. Masses of issues come out of this which we need to think about, and heredity is one of them.

Heredity is a very important principle in life. It is for our monarchy, which is much respected around the world and here, for all the reasons the noble Earl, Lord Devon, said. It is also very largely the principle on which our citizenship and all families are based. What are families other than hereditary? It answers a very important aspect of people’s way of thinking about things. It may well be appropriate in modern times to remove that from a parliamentary chamber, and that is what is very likely to happen. But we need to understand that this may reflect badly upon us if we get it wrong; that it may expose this House to lots of questioning about what we really are and whether we deserve to be here; and that it may make people feel that our history and our understanding of ourselves is diminished.

Last week I was in Ukraine. I was taken out to Zaporizhzhia, right by the front, by a very nice Ukrainian driver who had previously been a rock star, or at least in a rock band, but harder times had come upon him—as they often do with rock stars. As we parted, he said, “I am so pleased. First time I ever meet real Lord”. I felt very ashamed because I am not a real Lord: I am a Boris creation. I said that to him, but that only made me rise in his estimation, because in Ukraine, Boris is an immensely popular figure. It is interesting that over there in that snowbound, war-torn place, the idea of a Lord means something to an ordinary person. It is a universal idea, and it is an idea which is essentially British and retains a certain importance. All that can be done away with, and it probably will be in legislative terms, but let us think about the way this is being done and be cautious.

Andrew Marvell, the great poet—who was a Parliamentarian, by the way, not a Cavalier—wrote a famous poem about Oliver Cromwell’s return from Ireland. He warned Cromwell about the danger of ruining what he called

“the great work of time”.

That is something we need to think about. This Bill is Cromwellian, and therefore is dangerous.

[Viscount Thurso (LD)]

My Lords, I have bitten my tongue for the first two or three groups our Committee has considered, but I feel obliged to make a quick comment on the amendment tabled by the noble Earl, Lord Devon—and also because my gluteus maximus has gone to sleep.

We have a constitution, which is the Crown in Parliament. The Crown, based on heredity, works extremely well. Parliamentary democracy, based on heredity, works extremely badly, and I can make the difference between the two. We need a second chamber that is either selected or elected—my preference is elected—and I will stand with the noble Lord, Lord Brennan, in defence of our King.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Moore of Etchingham Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 11th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moore of Etchingham (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I join in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Brady of Altrincham, whom I am proud to call a friend in the non-parliamentary sense of the word. I also thought that the noble Baroness, Lady Quin’s valedictory speech was lovely, and I am very grateful to her personally, because she was instrumental in putting up a plaque to my great aunt Kathleen in Newcastle, who was imprisoned for suffragette activities. I am glad to put that on the record.

I am sitting next to the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, and I admired the self-sacrifice with which he went to the scaffold, as it were. But it rather spurred me in the opposite direction. Why cannot those of us who oppose the Bill, and many of us clearly do, act like Prince Blücher to his ancestor and get there just in time? I think we should try to.

Your Lordships may be familiar with the story of Randolph Churchill, the irascible son of the great Winston. Randolph was diagnosed with a tumour. Surgeons removed it and, having inspected it, declared it benign. On hearing the news, Randolph’s acerbic friend, the novelist Evelyn Waugh, remarked, “How typical of modern science to find the only part of Randolph which is benign and cut it out”. The Government are offering similar surgery today.

It is generally agreed in your Lordships’ House, and has been repeated by the Government Front Bench, that the 92 hereditaries do good work in this place, and their collective presence is benign. Yet here we have a government Bill whose sole purpose is to excise them from the body politic. This is a strange approach to constitutional reform.

Last week, the Prime Minister sought to revive his prematurely flagging Government by announcing six milestones. Milestones mark progress on a journey. On what journey will the Bill take us? We already have good reason to suspect that no other Lords reform will come into Parliament before the next election. So this journey is a cul-de-sac and, when drivers go down a cul-de-sac by mistake, the only sensible thing they can do is reverse. But, since it is likely that the Bill will become law, we need to think ahead. Speaking as a journalist, one thing you sometimes say when inventing a headline is, “Let’s throw it forward”—and that is what we have to do here.

What will this House be once the last element of the principle on which it has existed for 800 years has been surgically removed? I do not want to pursue my Randolph Churchill analogy any further because, even without the hereditary element, your Lordships’ House will do its best to remain benign and public spirited. But I foresee two things. The first is that it will inevitably become more partisan. This is partly because the change will weaken the Cross Benches, who will lose significant numbers and talent, including that of their Convenor. More generally, it is because a House chosen almost solely by government patronage will naturally tend to put party first. There is surely enough partisanship in the other place: the more it is replicated in your Lordships’ House, the less valuable and distinctive we will be.

The second effect is on public perception. Shorn of the historic associations that many people respect, and which the noble Lord, Lord Roberts of Belgravia, so well described, we who remain shall be looked at more bleakly. Once accident of birth is fully removed from our composition, we shall be exposed as creatures of successive Prime Ministers. We shall lack the legitimacy of tradition on the one hand or of democratic validation on the other. As the noble Lord, Lord True, pointed out, we shall be a House of Lords born in 1958—therefore very slightly younger than me, and therefore not to be revered.

It is no coincidence that, since the great majority of hereditaries were removed in 1999, your Lordships’ House has been ridiculed and challenged more often than in the past. This experience fulfils the famous prophecy of Ulysses in Shakespeare:

“Take but degree away, untune that string,


And, hark, what discord follows!”

Because we observe our own workings every day, we can see the genuine value of our collective contributions to the work of Parliament. We should recognise that this may be much less obvious to the wider public. We probably tend to think of the 92 as a rump. But I predict that, if the Bill is enacted, we life Peers shall look like a rump instead, and so, as is the way with rumps, more people will want to kick us.

House of Lords Reform

Lord Moore of Etchingham Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moore of Etchingham (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, it is 25 years yesterday that the House of Lords Bill reached the statute book. Many noble Lords have pointed out that the exception which permitted 92 hereditary Peers to remain was agreed because Peers of all parties did not want their unconditional abolition. They therefore secured a down payment on the Blair Government’s promise of full reform. As the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, very eloquently pointed out, that promise was not fulfilled. Now, however, the down payment is being grabbed back.

We are offered only the plain proposition in the forthcoming Bill that we should:

“Remove the remaining connection between hereditary peerage and membership of the House of Lords”.


So we must ask: why? To a certain type of mind, the answer seems blindingly obvious. It is that the hereditary right of Peers to sit in this House is, to quote the relevant Minister, Nick Thomas-Symonds, “outdated and indefensible”. Actually, this is by no means as self-evidently true as the Government suppose. After all, the succession to this Throne, which watches over our proceedings every day, is based on a hereditary right—that of one family to produce our Head of State. That right is strongly supported, I believe, by the majority of the King’s subjects.

It is not our task today to debate the hereditary principle; we need to debate the present practice and how it helps or hinders the work of Parliament. We must ask how that work would be improved if the 92 departed. We would be a wholly appointed House, as other noble Lords have said. Would that be better? Some 25 years ago, it meant more of what were called “Tony’s cronies”; today, it will mean more of Keir’s Peers. I am a defender, and indeed a beneficiary, of prime ministerial patronage, but can we honestly claim that a House composed by that means alone will add value to what we have today?

Is there something bad, not in principle but in practice, about the 92 hereditary Peers who are currently Members of this House? The 92 are in a difficulty here, because they are well brought up people and reluctant to blow their own trumpets—although I am delighted that the noble Earl, Lord Devon, blew his in the most tremendous way. If this Bill passes, it will be their duty to go in dignified silence to the scaffold. I rather feel that it falls to the rest of us to defend not the individual merits of individual hereditary Peers but the collective merits of their being here, until, at least, a better replacement is agreed.

I am still fairly new to your Lordships’ House, but I venture to observe much that is valuable. One is that the hereditaries are usually modest and courteous. They know, to use Lord Melbourne’s phrase about the Order of the Garter, that there is no damned merit about their right to be here, so they are not self-assertive; they know that they must serve. For similar reasons, I think the hereditaries are, on the whole, rarely creatures of party. They bring to bear on legislation independent judgment of the sort that the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, praised. I do not think it a coincidence that the 1999 amendment that kept them here is called the Weatherill amendment. The late Lord Weatherill was the Convenor of the Cross Benches, and in that capacity he wisely discerned the value of the public-spirited hereditary presence. He did not want that element cut out without proper reform. His attitude lives on today on the Cross Benches under its distinguished, and, as it happens, hereditary, convener. I believe it is appreciated right across your Lordships’ House.

Another fact concerns the wider balance of power in this country. It has been said, and many believe, that we are overly governed by London-based elites—mostly people on the public payroll. These are sometimes disparagingly referred to nowadays as the blob. The hereditary presence in our midst seems distinctly unblobby. The 92 are frequently not London-based; they have strong territorial connections with most parts of the United Kingdom. This makes them well-informed on matters from which Whitehall is sadly distant, such as farming, many environmental issues, and practical economic matters such as the effects of tax and regulation on small entrepreneurs and small businesses. Overwhelmingly, the hereditary Peers come from the private sector, and it is shocking how untrue that is of the other place nowadays. It is a clear benefit of their presence here.

When we debate the legislation, I hope we will not throw away an identifiable good on an ideological speculation about some better system which no one has yet devised.

Iran and Israel

Lord Moore of Etchingham Excerpts

Monday 15th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, there is much to be desired in what the noble Baroness says. As a historian and someone with a sensitivity to all the genius of human culture, of course I understand what she says about the experience of the Jewish people. It is clear that Hamas cannot remain in charge in Gaza: the British Government have made that clear, and the Foreign Secretary has said that it is a requirement.

On her important remarks on Iranian nuclear ambitions—if there be such, and the objective observer suggests that there might be—there is no credible civilian justification for enrichment at the levels that the IAEA has reported in Iran. The British Government remain determined that Iran must never develop a nuclear weapon. We are considering next steps with our international partners and we are committed to using all diplomatic tools available to ensure Iran never develops a nuclear weapon, including using the snapback mechanism if necessary. These matters, as I said earlier, must be carried forward in co-operation with our international allies, and that is our diplomatic objective.

[Lord Moore of Etchingham (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I am sure that no one in your Lordships’ House would advocate escalation, but I wonder whether protesting against the idea of escalation does not come a bit too easily to the lips of Israel’s allies. Should the Government not reflect that, if you were in Tehran today, you might be quite pleased that the immediate reaction of the western allies is to call for Israel to restrain itself, when Israel is not the problem. Is it not the case that we would not think in this way about an attack on any other country in the world? It would not be our immediate response to aggression against another country that we would urge the victim to do nothing.

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, that is a slight elision of what I have said from this Dispatch Box; indeed, I said that one must not forget where this whole matter began with the most atrocious eruption by terrorists into private and peaceful civilian life. The Government are absolutely clear that threats to destroy what some term the Zionist entity, the State of Israel, are wholly unacceptable and unforgivable, and can be no basis for any way of going forward to a long-term peaceful solution. We express our full solidarity and support to Israel and its people. We have reaffirmed our commitment to its security, and we condemn the Iranian action. But every human part of us would wish that somehow a road can be found to peace—and a road to peace must ultimately come from restraint and forgiveness. May all those involved see that.

Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill

Lord Moore of Etchingham Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Tuesday 21st March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moore of Etchingham (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I listened with great interest to what the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, had to say and I sympathised with the anguish he felt as a loyal Conservative supporter trying to deal with the problem the Government have presented him with. As a non-affiliated Peer I do not have that problem, but I share his anxiety about what the Government have done as it seems very vacillating and unhelpful.

I draw noble Lords’ attention to the famous words of Adam Smith that no people of the same trade are ever gathered together, even for diversion or merriment, without at some point conspiring against the public. It is lovely to have so many noble Peers in this House who hold or have held high positions in universities and university administrations—chancellors, vice-chancellors, professors and all the rest of them—but overall they constitute an interest. Their interest, naturally enough, is to believe that they are right, universities are well run and the critics are wrong. I ask them perhaps to consider that none of this would have come about if universities were being well run. These freedom of speech issues are very important and need some bolstering. When so many noble Peers who are associated with universities challenge and reject that, they must be conscious not to behave like trade union leaders in the 1980s who were defending powers that, it became clear, were unacceptable.

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

As a former trade union leader I am a bit hesitant to contribute, but let me just say to the noble Lord, Lord Moore, that what has been excellent about our consideration of this Bill from Second Reading through to Committee is how, through excellent scrutiny, we have tried to reach a consensus, not a compromise. That is the important thing. On Report I confessed that I had changed my mind about the need for this Bill. I accept that better, more effective regulation will help to change culture in a more sustainable way. All this emphasis on tort does not really help the real problem that we have heard described.

I will be brief. I appreciate the comments of the noble Lord on non-disclosure agreements—a key element in terms of openness and transparency. The duties and responsibilities of the regulator, and how they are applied, will be important; I accept that universities need time to properly do that. But they have been developing good practice and best practice. They have responsibilities to freedom of speech, and I absolutely support that. I stress that the Opposition’s approach to this Bill has been totally non-partisan. I have supported the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Willetts. I have certainly encouraged him because I have listened across the board as we have moved through each stage, and I think we will end up with a better Bill. In fact, with the consensus that has been reached, we now have a better Bill.

Despite some of the Minister’s concerns about what might happen down the other end, across this House and across all political parties we have reached a consensus; let us put the matter to bed. With our non-partisan approach, I assure him that the Government will have the Opposition’s support on their support for the amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Willetts. We can safely say that this Bill shall pass, and it will pass to defend the freedom of speech values that we all share. That is an important step that we can make.

I hope that the Minister will feel reassured about our approach to this Bill and how we have listened, changed our minds and supported very important consensus changes, which I think will ensure that all academics and university institutions will support this legislation.

Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill

Lord Moore of Etchingham Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 7th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Shafik (CB)]

My Lords, I speak in support of Amendment 22, to which I have attached my name. I declare my interest as director of the London School of Economics and Political Science. It is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, whose remarks I very much agree with. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, and the noble Earl, Lord Howe, for the constructive way in which they have engaged with all of us throughout the passage of this Bill.

It was made clear in Committee that Clause 4, as drafted, was not fit for purpose and that statutory tort would provide an avenue for vexatious, costly and damaging cases to be brought against universities by troublemakers far more concerned with self-promotion than free speech. The clause would have the perverse effect of limiting free debate and exchange of ideas on our campuses by creating exactly the kind of chilling effect that it aims to prevent. Student unions in particular would be frightened of inviting anyone at all, given this risk of lawsuits.

LSE hosts literally hundreds of events every year, which are all open to the public, and as its director, I have chaired hundreds of them. We work very hard to foster an environment where free speech and critical thinking are encouraged. I feel strongly that the solutions to the chilling effect, which I acknowledge exists, lie in education, dialogue and codes of practice, not the courts. Peers in the US, a far more litigious country than ours, are now petrified of inviting any speakers at all for fear of the consequences they may face. I fear that this legislation could take us to a similar position.

I was grateful that Ministers acknowledged that changes were needed and that significant revisions have been tabled on Report. Despite those positive moves, which are very welcome, I am still convinced that Clause 4 remains both unnecessary and potentially very harmful. I believe analysis and redress should be overseen by the regulator, as the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, has said. The existence of the tort system would call into question the working and judgment of that regulator, as well as universities’ own procedures. It would open up our institutions to potentially long, drawn-out and unnecessary complaints brought by individuals with axes to grind, time on their hands and, potentially, the financial backing of those with an agenda. I do not believe that having to go through existing complaints procedures would deter those kinds of individuals.

The potential costs of time, effort and money in highly constrained circumstances are unduly high. Of course, we would have to ask about loss, as the noble Lord, Lord Grabiner, very eloquently noted. Who has sustained this loss? It is still very indeterminate and the legislation as drafted does not require that loss to be material. Is it monetary, reputational or temporal? Is there a minimum threshold for the loss? Could it be the price of hurt feelings or the unquantifiable effects of media attention? All those things are highly intangible. There is still far too much uncertainty and confusion, and too much potential for this tort to be misused or have the perverse effect of stifling freedom of speech, which would be contrary to the other, more meritorious, objectives of this legislation. I concur with the proposal to remove the tort, as I believe it will be counterproductive.

[Lord Moore of Etchingham (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I cannot call the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, my noble friend because I am non-affiliated, but outside this House, I call him my friend. He has been my friend for 45 years. I can testify that his well-known nickname is correct and that he does have double the cerebral capacity of the rest of us, so we should all listen very carefully to anything he has to say.

However, although he made many good points, I do disagree with his conclusion. We must not lose sight of the wider context, and I think there is a slight risk that we might do so in some areas of this House. There is a danger of us suffering from what economists call producer capture. By that, I mean that there are a great many people here who are very close to the top of universities. It is not very surprising that they all tend to think that universities are running themselves quite well and that it is all basically all right. However, I think there needs to be a little more power for the voice of the ordinary student and the ordinary, not-very-important academic who is having a rough time. I was very grateful for and impressed by some of the points made about that by the noble Lords, Lord Macdonald of River Glaven and Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, in particular, who really tried to bring home the reality of these difficulties.

Going back to why the Bill exists at all, it is to do with the fact that the traditional freedom of speech ethos in universities came under threat. In the past, threats to academic life came from without but now they are coming from within. That is the essence of the problem and why the Bill got going. Even though there have been some changes and alterations of behaviour—for example, the establishment in Cambridge University was defeated in its attempt to suppress free speech and real free speech won—there are still examples.

In Cambridge quite recently, the master of Gonville and Caius College—I think she did not fully understand that the word “master” in the Cambridge or Oxford circumstances is a misnomer and you cannot issue orders at all; it is a very unmasterly position—said that the presence of Helen Joyce speaking in that college would be hateful and that, on those grounds, her talk should not take place. I believe that Helen Joyce would not have been allowed to speak had it not been for the fact that Professor Arif Ahmed, the great leader of free speech, was a don in that college and stood up for Helen Joyce, so the meeting finally took place.

There is a problem, and it has not been sufficiently acknowledged by everybody here. Therefore, it seems that there has to be in the Bill—as there was and to some extent still is—some form of deterrent. There has to be something that goes beyond the universities themselves to make them feel a little nervous about where they have got to. Since universities are currently failing in many cases to uphold the duty of free speech, we cannot just depend on people such as the expert regulators, to which the noble Lord, Lord Grabiner, referred.

The idea of a new tort is to change that. The law of tort offers remedy to private citizens when private duties are breached. This is as opposed to the upholding of more general aspirations, as might be achieved, for example, by judicial review. This difference has not been sufficiently acknowledged in some of the things that have been said. If an academic could bring timely action under a statutory tort, that would concentrate the mind of the university at which he or she worked. That university would face a real deterrent to impeding his or her free speech, because a county court could find against it, with legal, financial and reputational consequences. As the noble Baroness, Lady Shafik, said, I do not quite understand how the prospect of some suit about free speech would frighten people who were inviting people in the cause of free speech. If, however, free speech complaints must always be brought first to an internal complaints procedure, the university will be tempted to mark its own homework favourably or to spin out the process. Early complainants will then retire exhausted and later, prospective ones will not even bother to start.

I add that the Office for Students, on which much reliance is being placed, is not necessarily the best arbiter. As its name suggests, it is for students. The people at universities for whom the free speech stakes are highest are not undergraduates but career academics. The statutory tort, pursuant to which injunctive power could be exercised, would give them the strong protection they increasingly need. I therefore oppose the amendment in the name of my real friend, the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, and support the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Moylan.

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, I do not want to detain the House too long because I realise that there will be a move to a vote relatively soon. I support Amendment 22 and will politely say a few words against the noble Lord, Lord Moore, if I may respectfully put it that way.

I am an academic at the University of Cambridge, I signed the amendments put forward by Professor Ahmed and I believe in free speech. However, I am concerned that the idea of a tort will do exactly the reverse of what the noble Lord, Lord Moore, just said. If we want to support the junior academics and students, the way to do that is not to have a legal procedure. As a noble Lord on the other Benches mentioned, the people who will benefit most are the lawyers; the people least likely to be able bring these legal cases are students and junior academics, particularly junior academics at an early stage in their careers. Therefore, the whole idea of a tort will do exactly the opposite of what the noble Lord just implied.

I absolutely agree that we need to listen not just to heads of Oxbridge colleges, chancellors and vice-chancellors of universities, and people like me. However, I hope I speak on behalf of students, members of the casualised part of university staff and other academics in saying that this legal provision will not benefit individuals because those who will have the resources to fight are the university bureaucracies, not individuals.