House of Lords (Peerage Nominations) Bill [HL]

Lord Norton of Louth Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 18th November 2022 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Norton of Louth]

That the Bill be now read a second time.

[Lord Norton of Louth (Con)]

My Lords, some years ago a survey was carried out on what people thought were the most important factors in determining the legitimacy of the House of Lords. Ranked in order of those factors that respondents deemed very important, the one that came third was having Members who are experts in their field; second was the House considering legislation carefully; and the one that came top was trust in the appointments process. More than three-quarters of those surveyed thought it very important; when combined with those who thought it was fairly important, the figure rose to 95%.

We tend to stress what we do collectively—in effect, the outputs of the House. Fulfilling key functions such as detailed legislative scrutiny complements the work of the other place and adds value to the political process. What the House does is important for the health of our political system. But however important that work, it is not headline-grabbing. People tend to judge legislative chambers in terms of the activities of the individual Members rather than the work of the institution. A Member caught in a scandal gets headlines; achieving amendments to government Bills does not. Those who subscribe to the House’s daily news report will be only too aware that the House does not get a good press.

It was apparent from the evidence submitted to the Royal Commission on the Reform of the House of Lords in 2000 that those who know most about the work of the House of Lords tend to be the most supportive of it. The problem is that very few people know about the detailed work of the House as a revising and scrutinising body. The media focus on the individuals who form it and, key to today’s debate, the process by which they join the House.

Recent Prime Ministers have been rather profligate in making nominations for peerages. Just after the enactment of the House of Lords Act 1999, we were approximately the same size in membership as the House of Commons. We now exceed membership of the other place by a three-figure number. We have discussed, and agreed without dissent, that we are too large. The process of nomination is also a matter of contention, the media variously criticising those whose names have been put forward. I am concerned today not with particular cases but with the problems associated with the process. My key concern is achieving an appointments process that merits the trust of the people, and the Bill is designed to contribute to achieving that.

The monarch creates peerages on the recommendation of his principal adviser, the Prime Minister. There are no formal constraints on who the Prime Minister can nominate nor on the number of names that can be submitted. The Prime Minister is advised now, and has been for just over 20 years, by the House of Lords Appointments Commission, a non-departmental public body. The commission vets names submitted by the Prime Minister and can put forward recommendations for non-party-political peerages. Whereas there is no limit on prime ministerial nominations, the commission is limited—I would say too limited—in the number that it can put forward. The commission does a very worthwhile job, and I pay tribute to it for the work that it does, but it is limited, not least in its scrutiny. It can assess nominations only on grounds of propriety, not suitability. It is also the creature of the Prime Minister. A determined Prime Minister can not only ignore its advice but, if he or she chooses, disband it.

The Bill has several purposes, all of which are designed to enhance trust in the appointments process. There are five key features. First, it protects the Appointments Commission and its independence by putting it on a statutory basis and providing that members, including the chair, are nominated jointly by the Speaker of the House of Commons and the Lord Speaker. Members will serve non-renewable terms and be removable only by an address by both Houses. At least four must be independent, and there is a requirement for there to be a political balance in respect of the other members. The proposal to put the commission on a statutory basis is not new: it was made by the Wakeham commission, the last Labour Government and the Joint Committee on the Draft House of Lords Reform Bill. It is also a long-standing aim of the Campaign for an Effective Second Chamber.

Secondly, the Bill ensures that the Prime Minister does not submit a name to the King until such time as the advice of the commission has been received. Ultimately, the Prime Minister may not accept the advice of the commission, but it is up to the commission as to when, and if, it submits its advice. Furthermore, the Prime Minister has a statutory obligation, which I will detail shortly, to furnish the commission with information that it requires before proffering its advice.

Thirdly, it imposes an obligation on the Prime Minister to “have regard” to three principles that are widely supported in this House. The first is that at least 20% of the membership should be independent of any political party—in other words, Cross-Bench Peers. The second is that no one party should have an absolute majority of seats in the House. The third is that the membership of the House of Lords should be no larger than that of the House of Commons. These are included in order to protect core features of the House that enable it to fulfil its functions effectively.

The first two principles help to ensure that Ministers take the House seriously and engage with it. I previously distinguished the culture of the two Houses: the House of Commons is characterised by a culture of assertion and the House of Lords by a culture of justification. Ministers must listen and engage to carry the House. Perhaps the most important stage of the legislative process is the informal one of discussion between Committee and Report. A Government secure in the knowledge that they had a majority in the House would sweep away those attributes.

The other principle, that the House should be no larger than the Commons, addresses size and is intended to move us in the direction of reducing numbers. It does not prevent the Prime Minister making new nominations, but it is designed to induce some reduction. So adopting a two-out, one-in approach, as advocated by the Burns committee, would be entirely in order. A Prime Minister could justifiably claim to be working towards reducing the size of the House through adopting such an approach.

The fourth key feature of the Bill is that it addresses quality, enabling the commission to advise on suitability and stipulating the criteria that it must adopt in considering nominations. The principal criteria are specified in Clause 7(2): namely that a nominee must be someone of “conspicuous merit” and have

“a willingness and capacity to contribute to the work of the House”.

The commission may propose additional criteria, subject to parliamentary approval, and in so doing must have regard to the diversity of the population of the United Kingdom. The Bill empowers the commission to publish guidelines explaining how it will interpret the specified criteria.

The fifth key feature is transparency. When names are submitted to the commission by the Prime Minister acting as party leader, or on behalf of other party leaders, the leader responsible for each nomination must inform the commission of the procedure and criteria adopted by the party for the purposes of selecting the name for submission. Leaders must also supply such other information as the commission may request. Where the Prime Minister makes a nomination as Prime Minister and not as party leader, he or she must supply such information as may be requested by the commission. I attach particular importance to this feature in terms of enhancing public trust.

Clause 9 will impose valuable discipline on party leaders, who will need not just to submit names but to justify the criteria for putting them forward. They will know that the information they supply may not be judged sufficient and, if necessary, they may have to supply further information. The process will no longer be opaque.

Those are the key features, and they are embodied in a short Bill. Excluding Part 3, with supplementary provisions, there are nine substantive clauses. The Bill is short, but I believe that it is key to helping enhance the reputation of the House and helping it fulfil its essential functions.

Good government needs an effective Parliament. A Parliament enjoying the confidence of the public underpins the legitimacy of government. A confident Government should have no problem with embracing the provisions of the Bill. A YouGov survey for the UCL Constitution Unit, carried out just under two months ago, found that only 6% of respondents supported the existing system of nominating Peers, and a majority supported an independent body appointing new Members. Thus the public support going much further than what is proposed in the Bill. The Bill is modest, and it is in the interests of the Government to accept it, rather than wait until they are forced to accept something more radical. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Norton of Louth (Con)]

My Lords, I am extremely grateful to everybody who has spoken in this debate; it has been marked by the quality, as well as the quantity, of the contributions. I was particularly delighted to be followed, and not for the first time, by the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, as I realised that this year marks the 50th anniversary of us graduating together from the University of Sheffield.

I will make just three points in response to the debate. First, this Bill has received widespread support throughout the House. My noble friend the Minister could not have been oblivious to the fact that, preceding her, there were 27 speakers, at least 25 of whom expressed explicit support for the Bill. The only Member who actually spoke directly against the Bill was my noble friend Lord Leigh of Hurley—or, rather, he spoke against a Bill, which, as the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, indicated, is not necessarily the one before us.

The same point can be made about the response of my noble friend the Minister, who, in order to respond, raised the Bill into something that it is not. It does not create great constitutional issues. The issue of merit is independent of capacity to contribute to the work of the House, and that capacity is not necessarily measured simply in terms of attendance. The point she was raising does not even meet the lemon meringue test of looking nice from the outside but, when you bite it, there is nothing there; I do not think it even looked that attractive from the outside. So I trust that she will take on board all the points that have been made from around the House. Support has been notable not only from its breadth but its depth. The backgrounds of the Members who have spoken reflect the point about the quality of the House, and the experience and expertise in the House, expressing support for this measure. So I reiterate what some have said: I hope my noble friend will go back to her department—indeed, back to government generally—to make it clear that this House favours the changes that are embodied in the Bill.

That leads on to my second point. A number of noble Lords have raised points that are essentially ones that we can discuss in Committee quite legitimately. To be honest, I am pleasantly surprised that more points have not been raised for Committee deliberation. Of the two key ones that have been mentioned, one is the proportionality test, which I think quite legitimately we should discuss in Committee, and the other, which I pondered before introducing the Bill, was the one that was touched upon by the noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, and one or two other noble Lords, about the prospect of judicial review. I wondered whether we should consider that in terms of the content of the Bill or whether—the noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, touched upon this—we think the courts would probably want to steer clear of that anyway. However, that would merit coming back to in Committee. Those are germane points that merit further consideration, and I look forward to Committee.

Thirdly, as a number of noble Lords, especially my noble friend Lord Cormack, mentioned, this represents incremental change and is very much in line with what we have achieved so far. We got the House of Lords Reform Act 2014 on the statute book, and it was a Private Member’s Bill, and we got the House of Lords (Expulsion and Suspension) Act through as a Private Member’s Bill, introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman. Therefore, there is plenty of precedent for a change of this sort to come in as private Members’ legislation. The Minister was saying that it should normally be government legislation but normally it is not; normally it is government legislation that does not get through but Private Members’ Bills that make it to the statute book. It would therefore be completely appropriate for this modest measure to make it to the statute book.

As I stressed in opening, and as other noble Lords have quite rightly picked up, it is a modest measure—that is the whole point. The noble Lord, Lord Burns, the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, said that it is a first step but I think it is at least a further step on the road to achieving change, and we can then consider what else needs to be done subsequently. Therefore, it is in line with what we have done before and it is incremental; the Bill may not be sufficient but it is necessary. I beg to move.

Bill read a second time and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.