House of Lords Reform

Lord Ranger of Northwood Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ranger of Northwood (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, who lives up to his name in his speech. I rise in this Chamber, first, to acknowledge both the immense contribution of many Peers—including earls, dukes and viscounts—who are here today and have given many years of service to your Lordships’ House, as I do for those who have in the past.

Being still a newbie to this Chamber, it is with immense humility that I engage in a debate about reform of this House, which I appreciate has been ongoing for many years. However, I will lean on my personal experience, having joined this House just over a year ago. Since then, one question above all others has continuously been posed to me by family, friends and members of the public: “What do you do in the House of Lords?” To be honest, at first I was rather flummoxed by that question too. Yes, there are generic answers: we are the second Chamber; we are described as the best think tank in the world, due to the breadth and depth of expertise we all share. There is even the straight-bat response: we scrutinise the Government and improve legislation.

These answers more than miss the point. We expect that most people understand the detail of what Parliament does and so should have a general understanding of what we do—that they appreciate the detail and difference between the responsibility we carry in this Chamber and that of the other place. This is, sadly, wrong. Most people do not have a depth of understanding of this place. Why should they, for we have spent relatively precious little time explaining it? Again, I base my view on my own experience. So many people have a vague sense of who a Peer may be and what they may do, but where have they got those views from?

I suggest that, over decades, inaccurate assumptions, media reporting—some misreporting—and the occasional noteworthy achievement in legislation may have enabled this House to be visible in glimpses to broader society, but in an extremely patchy light. Ask a member of the general public what we do and generally they are flummoxed too. There are thousands of hours of debate—much more, I may add, than in the other place —hundreds of amendments to Bills and numerous evidence sessions and committee meetings, painstakingly reviewing Bills line by line, with sincere passion. We have cases made on knowledge gleaned over decades, in a vast array of industries and professions. I appreciate that, in speaking here, we do our best to shine a light on the efforts that we put in, but have we really done enough to project outwards the work done in this Chamber, and this House, so that the British people can genuinely feel aware of the role that we play?

We speak of reform. Do we speak from the basis of saying, “The public understand what we do; they want it, and who does it, changed”? I appreciate that all institutions should seek, for their own good, to assess their relevance, governance and structures on an ongoing basis—and yes, there are areas of this House that need to change. But let us also do the work of this House justice by doing more to bring people closer to what we do, why we do it and who we are. For example, we have heard about the size of this House many times in debate today. The figure of 800 is used to demonstrate how large or bloated this Chamber is but we are not all here each day, as has been acknowledged. If we are knowledgeable in our subjects and areas, we seek to invest time and effort on those topics, which means that, like subject-matter experts, we will take part in those activities. Is that so hard for us to explain?

There may be those whose attendance is less, but are we going to judge value by an attendance record or by the quality of the input when attending? I appreciate that there are more nuances to this debate, but we must do more to explain how this Chamber is meant to work, not how people assume it works.

I reiterate that my time here has been short so far, but I highlight the work of the Lord Speaker in leading and championing numerous engagement activities on behalf of this House, and the work of the communications team and its ever-increasing efforts using social media to raise awareness of our activities. But this is the tip of the iceberg, and we need to do much more.

The pace of change, the speed with which the digital world moves and the ways and means in which society adopts, adapts and understands have changed and will continue to do so, so we must change too. We should reform the House of Lords. As the noble Lord, Lord Saatchi, suggested so eloquently, we should use more technology to engage, to be more digital, to be more open and to have our work more visible. Then, if there is a case to change or even remove some or all of us, at least we can say it was done with full and best knowledge of the efforts we all put in to serve the people.