House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Norton of Louth Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 11th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Norton of Louth (Con)]

My Lords, time precludes me from digressing to explain why my noble friend Lord True and the noble Lord, Lord Newby, exaggerated the significance of Magna Carta. The charter of 1215 did not have the impact they ascribe to it. I fear that this may be the only observation I make today that has not already been made by others.

As several speakers in this debate have stressed, any proposed changes to the composition, or indeed the structure or powers, of the House should be assessed in terms of their impact on the capacity of the House to fulfil its functions. Form should follow function. This House complements the House of Commons by fulfilling tasks that the elected House does not have the time, or sometimes the political will, to carry out. It fulfils these tasks by virtue of having, at the individual level, a membership that is characterised by experience and expertise and, at the collective level, the composition that gives it some detachment from government. It is the latter point on which I wish to focus.

The principal argument for the membership of the House of hereditary Peers derives not from who they are, or what they do—important though both are, as we have heard from many speakers—but rather from how they get here. They constitute the only body of Peers who arrive independent of prime ministerial patronage. Not only who they are, but their number, is not within the gift of the Prime Minister. That ensures some degree of detachment.

Prime Ministers may nominate persons of distinction; they may show some restraint in the number they nominate; they may be generous in inviting leaders of other parties to put forward names. The problem is that they may do none of these things. This has the potential to degrade the capacity of the House to fulfil its essential functions. As several noble Lords have already said, there is value in having a route into the House that is independent of prime ministerial control.

That is not an argument against passing this Bill. It is an argument against passing it is as a stand-alone Bill. If one removes the independent route into the House, one has to substitute a route that brings in Members that are not here on the basis of unrestrained prime ministerial power. The Bill therefore needs to be linked to one that covers the process by which names are proposed to the sovereign, be it independent of the Prime Minister or through ensuring that the Prime Minister does not nominate individuals who lack the experience or expertise—or for that matter the commitment —necessary to fulfil the essential tasks of the House.

The passage of this measure addressing output therefore needs to be conjoined with one that addresses input. I have a Bill being debated later this Session that addresses the points I have made, but obviously it does not need to be that Bill. The key point is that the provisions of this Bill should not be commenced until such time as a Bill addressing nominations, ensuring that there is some means of Members coming in independent of unrestrained, and possibly ill-judged, patronage is achieved.

This is wholly in line with the Government’s proposals for House of Lords reform. It ensures that two of their proposals are linked rather than treated as discrete measures, each independent of the other. The Government’s commitment to reform the appointments process must march in step with their commitment to enact this Bill. Picking up on the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Quin, this would not be a big-bang reform and I believe there would be consensus. It will be valuable to hear from the Leader of the House what is the argument of principle against adopting such an approach.

House of Lords Reform

Lord Norton of Louth Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Norton of Louth (Con)]

My Lords, I begin with two propositions that, in my view, should form the basis for determining reform of this House. The first is that form should follow function—we need to determine what purpose an institution serves. What is the principal purpose of this House, as a second Chamber of Parliament? The second proposition is that good law is a public good. If one accepts that, that helps determine the principal role of this House. It is a House of legislative scrutiny. That is not its only role, but it is the one that establishes it as a necessary part of our constitutional system.

The House of Commons is the elected Chamber, and the fact that it is elected ensures that it enjoys primacy. The fact of election also creates political imperatives for its Members. They need to be elected and re-elected, and they focus on activities that enhance their chance of re-election. They devote time to constituents’ demands, which have become more onerous decade by decade. They focus on outward-looking activities that bolster their political profiles. The quest for electoral success drives them to put the interests of party ahead of the institution of which they are Members. Focusing on detailed scrutiny of legislation does not come high on their list of political imperatives.

That shapes the relationship between the two Houses. The House of Commons determines the ends of legislation, and we accept that. We focus on the means. If one accepts that good law is a public good, that is a necessary role, and this House is ideally placed to fulfil it. The fact of being an appointed Chamber is a benefit—we lack the political imperatives facing MPs. We have the benefit of the experience and expertise of the membership, and the benefit of procedure: we do not utilise programme Motions, there is no selection of amendments by the chair and we do not normally employ closure Motions. We devote as much time as is needed to considering all the amendments tabled to Bills. This House makes a significant difference to the detail of Bills, and its changes are generally acknowledged by government as having improved the legislation. The law of the land would be significantly diminished without the work of this House.

Those two propositions should therefore form the basis of reform. We should avoid big bang reforms that destroy the complementary role of this House as a Chamber of legislative scrutiny. There is a democratic argument for an appointed second Chamber—those familiar with the literature will be aware of that. We should equally avoid discrete reforms that are detached from the purpose of the House. An arbitrary age limit, for example, may remove some of the experience and expertise that contributes to the work of the House, but removing Members who may have made little or no contribution would not have such an effect.

To bolster the capacity of the House to fulfil its key function necessitates focusing on how Members reach this House. We need to ensure that those qualified to contribute to the work of the House are nominated. We need to enhance our structures and procedures to reinforce what we do. That means looking not just at how we deal with Bills once introduced—should we consider, for example, taking evidence on Bills?—but also at the legislative process holistically. Expanding pre-legislative and post-legislative scrutiny would likely contribute to better Bills and would play to the strengths of the House. We are ideally placed to enhance post-legislative scrutiny. Such changes would enable us to engage more with those outside the House who wish to contribute their knowledge on a particular measure.

There is scope for reform, but we need to ensure that it derives from our understanding of what this House exists to do. In my view, we already do a good job of legislative scrutiny. We can take steps to ensure that we do it even better—that should be our focus, and that should drive reform.