House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 10th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, my first point in response to the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, is that the Bill will pass—the noble Lord does not need to worry about that. Secondly, simple constitutional changes can have very serious consequences. We have only to think about a simple change that my noble friend Lord Cameron introduced, the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, which created a disaster.

I think it would be helpful to the Committee if the noble Lord, Lord Newby, could tell us what he thinks the role of the House of Lords is now, and what he thinks it will be in the future. My noble friend Lord Blencathra touched on that. The noble Baroness said that there was mistrust from the public, and I think that arises largely from extremely misleading reporting in the media, which little is done to counter. I would ask the same question about the role of the House of Lords of the Leader of the House, but I expect she would be quite cautious, especially as regards the future. I remind the House that I intend to retire in the spring, so I am fairly neutral.

Many noble Lords—and others inside and outside the House—fall into the trap of proposing to alter the composition of the House of Lords without first considering its role, both now and in the future. I thought that the Labour Government had already studied this matter carefully by means of the Wakeham commission, to which the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, and other noble Lords referred. There is a solution very carefully worked out by my noble friend Lord Wakeham and his commission.

I have always believed that the role of the House of Lords is to revise legislation—and I mean revise, not just scrutinise. In the last Parliament, the House revised the Rwanda Bill: it did not merely scrutinise it. It should be an additional check on the Executive but not determine who the Prime Minister is or financial matters. Most importantly, it should be a source of expertise.

The noble Lord, Lord Newby, pointed out that we have a difficulty in that we are hideously London-centric, but getting rid of the hereditary Peers who are chained to their castles and estates up and down the country will make the situation worse, and it is not clear to me how being elected, either in whole or in part, will make us any better at performing our role—a point touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Moore. Of course, it may make us much less willing to give way to the elected House. Many advocates of an elected House suggest that we would be more effective and legitimate if elected. I suggest that being elected can be a disadvantage. For instance, about two years ago, I was dealing with a problem with a high street bank debanking a business in the wider defence industry—noble Lords will recall that recently the Secretary of State for Defence was forcefully raising this issue in public. I needed to have a meeting with senior executives of the bank in circumstances where a Member of another place would be blanked by the bank; they would get nowhere. Why was I able to secure the meeting and then understand what the problem was? The answer is that the bank trusted me. It could be sure that I was not getting involved in order to burnish my local credentials, my media profile or anything else.

I have a question for noble Lords proposing a change to the role of the House or introducing an elected element. In their proposed reformed House, would it be intended that the Government of the day could still easily be defeated? If it was, surely the House would claim democratic credentials and be far more challenging to the House of Commons, as noble Lords have already pointed out. However, if the new House could only very rarely defeat the Government, then in the case of something such as the Rwanda Bill, surely the courts would step in to fill the vacuum.

Finally, can the Leader of the House say whether she agrees with my view of the current role of the House of Lords? I appreciate that she cannot comment about its future role, which is a much more difficult question. When in the 2010 Parliament the Conservative-led Government tried to reform the House, I gleefully went around my friends in the House of Commons saying that I was looking forward to being Senator Attlee of South Hampshire. They obviously got the message.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, when we debated the role of the House of Lords last November and on every occasion that we have debated the subject to which I have contributed, I have started by saying, as I say again today, that in a modern, 21st-century democracy there must be a case that the legislature should be elected. Although it puts me therefore to some extent at odds with friends of mine on different sides of the House, I have to say that I generally support, not necessarily every detail, the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Newby.

If that was all I had to say, I probably would not have bothered saying it, because I think the Lord Privy Seal must have grasped that there is support for the noble Lord’s amendment from different parts of the House, and all I would be doing is adding my name to that. However, I want to go a little further into the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Newby, and point out that it is really very clever and has a lot of lot in it that should attract noble Lords, because although it sets a clear destination, it is very non-specific about the details of how we should end up and what the new House of Lords would look like in its elected form. What he is doing in his amendment instead is putting in place a process.

I think we all know what a process looks like. It has the sort of things that we find in this amendment: steps that need to be taken, in a certain order, and dates by which those steps should ideally be taken. The Lord Privy Seal seems to have some difficulty with the word “process”. She used it in Committee last week, when we talked about various matters to do with the future of this House beyond this Bill. She said that we were in a process, but the Lord Privy Seal is not actually in a process. She may think she is, but she is not, because if she were she would be able to tell us the steps, the milestones and the target dates that we find in the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Newby.

The only thing we know for certain about the process in which the Labour Government are engaged—the process that so is so important not only to this House, but to anyone who takes an interest in our constitutional balance—is that her door is always open. That is the process as far as the Labour Front Bench is concerned. There is no timetable, there are no milestones and there are no commitments as to what is going to happen, in what order or when. While it is perfectly legitimate for the Lord Privy Seal to say that she does not support the process proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Newby, it now becomes almost impossible for her, given what she has said before, both to oppose the noble Lord and to fail to come forward with a process of her own—which is what so many noble Lords in this House would like to hear. Otherwise, she will show that she is not being wholly candid with us in the way that we would hope.

The essential point about Labour’s sense of direction is that it came forward in its manifesto with a package of measures and obtained a mandate for a package of measures. Some of those measures were to be taken at an early stage—the Lord Privy Seal and I have had this argument about the weight of the full stop, and I am not going to go through that now—and at least one was going to be taken later. It was going to be a consultation involving the democratic character of the House and the representation of the nations and regions and so on. Clearly, anyone reading the Labour Party manifesto would say that that was something to be done in the latter half of the Parliament. It also explains to the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, why these issues arise in what appears to be a very narrow Bill: it is because that very narrow Bill sits in a context of a manifesto commitment and a mandate which is very much broader. It cannot be separated out; those threads cannot be pulled apart without having an effect on the rest of the fabric.

I will come to a close very quickly. If I tremble to find myself in agreement with the noble Lord, Lord Newby, I tremble even more to find myself in disagreement with my noble friend Lord Blencathra. While any new system or composition of the Lords is absolutely bound to require a crunching of gears as the two Chambers find a way of working together, the notion that this is impossible—that two democratic chambers cannot work together—is, as I have said before, simply belied. One can look round the rest of the democratic world, where it does work, with crunching of gears and not always ideally, and sometimes with surprises and unexpected turns of events—but of course it is possible to have two democratic chambers.

I agree with my noble friend Lord Blencathra that these matters are so weighty that there is a strong case for a referendum. I am rather more sympathetic to referendums than many people here and in the other place, and I find myself rather out on the extreme wing on this, but I certainly think there is a strong case for a referendum on the constitutional future of your Lordships’ House.

Coming back to my original point, I very much hope that the Lord Privy Seal will stop hiding behind her open door—if that is not too much of a mixed metaphor—and come out into the West Front corridor and tell us, if not in this Chamber today, if she does not like the process proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Newby, what process she has to offer us.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 3rd March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathcarron (Con)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Lucas’s Amendment 6, which seeks to open up the by-elections to registered voters—and, in fact, take it even further than that—to correct the wrong impression of by-elections held by many noble Lords who have never had first-hand experience of them.

The concept of by-elections to your Lordships’ House has been dismissed because of the singular nature of the candidates, but if the candidature is broadened, as envisaged by this amendment, the idea suddenly becomes much more attractive. To succeed in a by-election is no easy task; to have succeeded proves the candidate worthy to the selectorate involved in choosing him or, in the future, her.

The candidates must first a show real determination to sit in your Lordships’ House. Library research shows that, on average, an hereditary stands for election four times before being successful. As elections are held on average once a year, on the death or retirement of an existing Member, this typically means committing to a four-year election campaign to succeed. On average, there are 14 candidates for each vacancy and only one successful candidate each time—so one a year. There is no reason to suggest that the by-election process for registered voters, as imagined in my noble friend Lord Lucas’s Amendment 6, would be any less rigorous than the hereditary by-election process that has existed until very recently. First, there are hustings, where candidates hone their skills in political public speaking, followed by some very pointed and topical questions by members of the selectorate, who want only the brightest and the best to join them. Then, the voting process itself could hardly be more democratic, being a secret ballot conducted under proportional representation.

There is a lot to be said for scaling this up, not just for vacancies filled by registered voters, as in this amendment, but as a form of appointment to the whole House. Many amendments have called for a democratically elected House, but the reality is that this would mean the House of Commons agreeing to lose primacy, something to which it will never agree. I contend that that is simply never going to happen. On the other hand, we could have a democratically elected House if new Peers were elected by Members of this House. This is, after all, how political parties elect their leaders in the other place—at least partially. As ever, there is some devil in the detail, but it cannot be beyond the wit of sitting Peers to devise an election process based on the one that has worked so well, selecting only the very best hereditaries standing for election.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I speak in support my noble friend Lord Lucas’s amendment. I say as a preliminary that I was somewhat horrified to hear, from his remarks, that there is an aversion, on the Cross Benches, to hairdressers. I have not heard that before. I cannot imagine why there would be an aversion to hairdressers among Members of your Lordships’ House, on the Cross Benches or elsewhere, and I hope that there will be opportunity before this short debate concludes for at least one Member of the Cross Benches to put my noble friend right about that and give us all a proper, egalitarian assurance.

Turning to the amendment, I remind noble Lords of my general position. I said at Second Reading that in any 21st-century democracy, there will always be a case that the legislature should be elected. That must surely be the default position, and it must apply to both Houses. All those who say that you cannot have two elected Houses are ignorant of the vast majority of functioning democracies which do have two elected Houses, although they are often different in their composition and method of election. Of course, it is perfectly possible to have two elected Houses that work together to generate effective legislation. That is what I find so frustrating about a large part of the debate, and I have sat in for much of the debate today.

My noble friend makes a sally. I do not intend to go into the details of whether it should be an open candidates list, a closed candidates list, a vetted candidates list or any of the other tunes that could be played on this theme; I simply say that he put his finger on something in saying that a House that is entirely appointed in a 21st-century democracy—with the exception of the Bishops—is mildly ludicrous and is indefensible as a long-term proposition. That is presumably why the Labour Party put forward in its manifesto a package of reforms to be delivered at different times; some immediately and some for consultation or enactment later—that is a clear distinction in the manifesto—and why it is such a frustration. The noble Baroness the Lord Privy Seal seems to be frustrated that there is some sort of filibustering going on. If there were a filibuster, I wish somebody had told me about it: I would like to have taken part.

[Noble Lords]

You are.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

This is the first time that I have spoken in this debate. The two Bills that I have been involved in, sitting on the Front Bench, speaking for transport, have gone through your Lordships’ House in record time. The buses Bill ended on its third day of Committee when it had had four days allocated to it. I find it mildly offensive to be told that there is a filibuster going on when many of us are in fact working to see the House’s business dispatched with reasonable efficiency.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Smith of Basildon) (Lab)]

My Lords, it is an interesting group of amendments and I praise the ingenuity of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, in coming up with their proposals. I say at the beginning, however, that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, the noble Lord, Lord Strathcarron, and the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, spoke specifically to the amendments before us. I have to say that the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, spoke in more of a Second Reading way on a wider debate about other issues.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

I am very happy to be rebuked, but I have spoken only once so far today. If the noble Baroness wants to provoke me to speak a second time, that is another matter. I think I spoke clearly to the import of what my noble friend Lord Lucas said, which is the introduction of an element of democracy, the importance of doing that and the context in which it sat, all of which I thought was very pertinent to the amendment. I am sorry the noble Baroness feels she has to disagree with me and rebuke me about that.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

The noble Lord is very sensitive. It was not a rebuke; it was more of an observation that his comments went wider. I think he would agree that he wanted very much to know what comes next. I also think he accused me of being silent—I made some notes of his comments. It may not have been the term “silent”, but it was something about my having nothing to say or bringing the shutters down on what he said.

I will talk to the amendment, but I have been clear from the beginning of the many debates we already had on this issue that there is a process, with this as the first stage. It is not surprising that talks and discussions about Lords reform have so many times, as the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, said, been driven into the ground and gone nowhere. Focusing on what is in front of us and what can be achieved by a single Bill is very important, but we seem to want to talk about what comes next and after that. Amendments later on will address some of these issues, but I say to noble Lords: there is a Bill before us with specific amendments and I will mainly address my comments mainly to them.

That does not mean what comes next does not matter, but I can think of no other area of policy or manifesto commitment where the Minister proposing it is constantly demanded to say what comes next and in what order we will do things. I have been quite clear from the very beginning that this is the first stage. It was in the manifesto and there are two stages following that. The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, cannot help himself; I am beginning to love the sound of his voice. I look forward to hearing from him again.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Moylan Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 11th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Brady of Altrincham on his maiden speech and wish the noble Baroness, Lady Quin, every happiness in what I am sure and hope will be a long retirement with her family.

There have been only two successful attempts forcibly to remove a body of Members of Parliament, consisting mostly of one’s opponents, from Parliament. One was carried out by the New Model Army in the 17th century, and the other by the Labour Party in 1998. It is not a very flattering comparison, but it illustrates—or, at least, the former case illustrates—that violent action taken against this Parliament results only in constitutional complications that can take several years to extract oneself from.

One has to ask oneself: what is the practical political benefit to the nation of carrying out this measure? There could be several. The noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, could have said that her purpose is to achieve a permanent reduction in the size of your Lordships’ House. She could have said that her purpose is to create capacity for the appointment of Labour Peers to fill up those places. A perfectly respectable case could be made for doing either, but in fact she has given no practical benefit or purpose for carrying through this measure. The Government are doing this entirely because they can, which is exactly the same rationale that Colonel Pride used.

I take this opportunity to say that the attempt by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, somehow to blame the Conservatives, and particularly my noble friend Lord True, for this measure, on the grounds that he should have embraced the Grocott Bill in the past, does not succeed in putting me or many of my colleagues on the moral back foot. Many of us were not here for the Grocott Bill; we know almost nothing about it. I did not reject the Grocott Bill, because nobody ever asked me to give an opinion on it. The one thing I would say about the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, for whom I have a great deal of respect, is that the abolition of the by-elections for hereditary Peers—by what undoubtedly remain legally dubious means—has the very sad result that we will be deprived of his commentary on the results of the by-elections on each occasion that they are announced. That has always been a highlight for me and, I think, for many other noble Lords.

I turn to the political and constitutional basis for what the Government are doing, which rests, of course, on their manifesto. To anybody picking up their manifesto, as I have many times, it is absolutely plain that under the heading

“Immediate reform of the House of Lords”,


a series of measures and commitments is proposed. One is the removal of hereditary Peers but there are others that I do not need to recite since they have been mentioned several times. They include the age limit, getting rid of disgraced Peers and so forth. There is a list of them. They sit together quite clearly as part of that immediate commitment. There is another commitment, which has no timeline attached to it—a separate matter—which is that

“Labour will consult on proposals, seeking the input of the British public”.

That does not have a timeline commitment, but the others do, and they clearly belong as a package.

Today, and previously in a meeting that the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, was good enough to have with all Peers, she said, particularly in respect of my comment about this in an earlier debate, that I had “missed the full stop at the end of the sentence”. It is true that I may be at fault. I had taken little notice of the full stop at the end of the sentence. I assumed that there would be a full stop at the end of the sentence. It turns out that this full stop is to bear a constitutional weight that the noble Baroness relies on. God knows where we would be if there had been a paragraph break at the end of the sentence.

In that meeting, the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, characterised my position as “Do nothing until you do everything”. That has never been my position. My position is that the Labour Party should commit to carrying out, and show us that it is carrying out, its own manifesto. Why is that so difficult?

House of Lords Reform

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I surprise myself by taking as my starting point agreement with the noble Lords, Lord Newby and Lord Foulkes, that in a democratic society there is always a case for a democratically elected legislature—and that is to understate the matter, I would have thought. Legitimacy in a democratic society is derived primarily from election but, for a conservative, legitimacy can also be derived from history and from tradition. It might sound a little quixotic to say that, but large numbers of people in this country completely understand it; that is why they have as much respect as they do for the monarchy.

It is the presence of hereditary Peers in this House that maintains that strand of legitimacy. Being appointed gives you no legitimacy at all. For the majority of people, it just looks like cronyism and, if I may say so with respect to the noble Lord, Lord Birt, who has just spoken, and to others, that is not addressed by having a statutory HOLAC. If that is not elected—if it is not in itself a form of electoral college—where does the electoral legitimacy reside that justifies its appointment of the people whom it would appoint to the legislature? One ends up in an infinite regress. There is no legitimacy.

Those who say you cannot have two democratic Chambers seem to have missed what has happened in at least 100 countries that I can think of. Even the United States manages to pass a huge amount of legislation, and that is a country where people deliberately designed the legislature to have a degree of conservatism, shall we say—a degree of holding back. That needs to be our starting point. Why should we not be a democratic House? Where does our legitimacy derive from?

There is a large measure of agreement among us on the need for reform. The passing of the hereditaries has always been part of that—there has been a consensus about that for the last 25 years—but that is not what this argument is about. This argument is not about the passage of the hereditaries as such; it is about the context in which that happens. That context is meant to be, and has been pledged to be, a reform of this House. I am not going back to what Tony Blair may have said to somebody in a corridor or behind the Woolsack or whatever in the past. I am going to this Labour Party’s manifesto.

The noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, said there were six proposals in it; I have identified seven. They come under the heading: “Immediate reform of the House of Lords”. Those are the words in the manifesto, a copy of which I have been careful to bring with me in case there is any dispute about it. They are removing the hereditaries. There is mandatory retirement at 80. There is a revision of the code of standards. There is the removal of disgraced Members. There is a requirement for participation. There is a reform of the appointments process and a commitment to addressing national and regional balance. All of those come under the heading of “These things will be done immediately”. They are not being done immediately. That is the problem. The democratisation of the House, which is also mentioned in the manifesto, is something that they say will be consulted on. It is not to be done immediately but the seven things I have read out are—and they are not.

This Government, in my view, have no mandate to introduce one of them outside that context—to revert to the argument that getting rid of the hereditaries is what it is all about when in fact it is not. For the last 25 years, it has always been about the reform of the House of Lords and removing the hereditaries only in a context that provides a new form of legitimacy. We all know in practice that nothing is going to be done about those things. We know that they are being kicked into the long grass and we are very unlikely to see them again, except possibly for a few administrative matters which can be dealt with fairly easily.

We have had arguments over the last century about reform of the House of Lords and I join others in saying this or something along these lines. In 1910 and 1948 constitutional conferences were held between both Houses of Parliament on precisely this type of question. We should do that again. Neither conference succeeded but they had the great merit that they informed the legislation the Government then brought forward so that it was much more acceptable and turned out to work. We need to see this in its proper context. We need to find a compromise. A conference of that character would be the best way forward while the Bill is withdrawn.

House of Lords: Composition

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Thursday 5th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

I recall the Countess of Mar from some years ago, and there may have been one other Member of the House of Lords who was a female hereditary Peer. There is none currently and, as far as I am aware, none is eligible for election in the hereditary Peers by-elections.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

May I return to the extraordinary decision to use the standing orders of this House in order to avoid our statutory obligations in relation to the holding of excepted Peers’ by-elections? When I raised it before, the noble Baroness the Leader of the House said that she was confident that that move did not breach the law. However, it has since been suggested to me that the legal advice she received was more ambivalent on the matter. Is she willing to publish the legal advice on which that extraordinary decision to avoid our statutory obligations was based and, in doing so, show respect for the rule of law?

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

When that decision was taken, it was entirely and completely within the rule of law. The legislation states that the House should hold by-elections. How it holds them is a matter for this House. I was approached by Members from across the House, including from Front Benches, who said that they wished that those by-elections would not take place during the passage of the Bill. Therefore, the House made the decision, under its Standing Orders, to pause the by-elections for a period of 18 months. That is entirely within the law and was done with the full agreement of this House.

Business of the House

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Thursday 25th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Leader of the House for explaining the rationale of this Motion, which, as she said, reflects the recent discussions and agreement reached in the usual channels. On behalf of my noble friend Lord True, I am happy to give my approval to the Motion as the right and sensible course to take. As the noble Baroness is aware, the spirit of the discussions in the usual channels has been open and constructive, with good will expressed on all sides. I welcome the Government’s willingness to continue engaging in the same constructive spirit and in a way that enables us to work through the implications of their proposals for this House in the round and in their totality. The 18-month timeframe proposed in the Motion will enable us to do that. On that basis, I join the noble Baroness in commending it to the House.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I am slightly concerned about this. I am not a usual channel and the conversations that have taken place with such amity and warmth seem not to have reached me. I was unable, I am afraid, to be present for the debate on an humble Address on Tuesday, but I have read it carefully in Hansard and great attention and sanctification were given to the principle of the rule of law.

We have a statutory obligation to hold these by-elections. To proceed by using standing orders to eviscerate, in effect, that statutory obligation, which is what we are doing, seems to cast a very early question on this commitment to the rule of law that we have heard about. Understanding fully, of course, that this Motion will pass, I ask the Leader of the House why 18 months has been chosen and what that portends for the Government’s legislative timetable in relation to the reforms they wish to bring forward. We have no excuse here as we did before in relation to Covid; we are not in the middle of a major global health emergency, which was what justified the use of standing orders before, so can the noble Baroness explain to us what the Government’s plans are that make 18 months the appropriate time? Why could it not be six months?

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, I never quite thought this day would come. We have had endless Private Members’ Bills and numerous discussions on the Floor of the House, and now we have recognition, which I am delighted about, from the usual channels that to hold two further hereditary Peers’ by-elections at a time when Parliament was considering ending such elections would make us even more of a laughing stock than these by-elections do in any case.

I have to say it slowly: this almost certainly means the end of hereditary Peers’ by-elections. That is wonderful as far as I am concerned. It means an end to the clerk having to moonlight as a returning officer; it means an end to me having to give observations on the political significance of a particular by-election as and when it is declared; and of course it means that I shall not fulfil my ambition, which was to become the House’s equivalent of Professor Sir John Curtice in relation to by-elections. I should say as well, just as a general observation, that it means an end to elections that are men-only elections and an end to elections such as one where there was an electorate of three and six candidates—unknown in the western, eastern, northern or southern world, as far as I know.

So the time has come at last, in a puff of smoke on a damp Thursday morning, when these wretched by-elections will come to a conclusion. I simply say to the noble Lord, Lord Moylan: know when it is over.