House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Reay Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 11th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Reay (Con)]

My Lords, the United Kingdom constitution recognises two broad classes of Peer: the Lords spiritual and the Lords temporal. I do not often think of myself as a Lord temporal, but perhaps I should, as it has a certain to ring to it. It even has echoes of Doctor Who and the Time Lords—it might impress my children. There are four categories of Lords temporal: the Earl Marshal and the Lord Great Chamberlain, both royal offices and both hereditary; life Peers; and, finally, hereditary Peers, elected under Standing Orders—I repeat that they are elected, not appointed, and in a number of cases, including my own, elected by the whole House.

It is a source of political and personal sadness to me that this Bill seeks to remove altogether that latter category—in other words, to cancel their elections and to do so not merely prematurely, in flagrant breach of the agreement as enshrined in the law of 1999, but as soon as the end of this parliamentary Session. As for the cancellation of elections—our own elections—how strange, as my noble friend Lady Meyer suggests, those words sound in the mother of Parliaments. How strange, discordant and dismaying.

There is a small consolation, I suppose, that, if the Bill passes, I will spend a short time only on a constitutional death row as an altogether new kind of Lord temporal: a Lord temporary, a dead Peer walking—titles which I fear will not impress my children at all.

The truth is that, however things are dressed up, with no matter how many friendly smiles and whatever warm or weasel words, we are to be bundled out of this place with something that looks a little too like contempt for comfort. Moreover, we are to be bundled out not, say, by a burly bouncer at closing time, or because we have become drunk and disorderly—if only, perhaps—but by an institution and by people we know well, who know us and the nature of our service, its seriousness and quality, and the strength of our participation. This means that things will inevitably feel personal; they will feel personal because they are personal. That is a source not only of sadness but of real disappointment.

There is no public clamour for our instant removal; the Labour Party’s election manifesto made no such commitment. It is also inconsistent with the spirit of the Government’s Employment Rights Bill. We may not be employees but we are people. Frankly, it is not a great look for a governing party to remove from this House, in needless haste and in the absence of wider reform, large numbers of its opponents. It is not a great look, not a great example, and not a great precedent. Who knows who will be next?

The excuse is the strength of feeling to which the issue gives rise in the Labour Party—the passionate intensity with which it rejects the hereditary principle. I feel differently. I accept without hesitation that the hereditaries should depart when this House is fully reformed, and I accept the reasons why. But, at the same time, I do not underestimate our value—as legislators, of course, in a revising Chamber, but also, so to speak, our human value. Democracies are inherently imperfect and in constitutional arrangements, as in life and in love, rationality is not, thank goodness, or should not be, the be all and end all. Strict rationality, dry reason and narrow logic can actually be the foes of the body politic, not its friends—not the tiger in its tank but its kryptonite.

We live in a time of great—I would say revolutionary —cultural change. It is a time to remember that healthy, happy countries, with a coherent sense of themselves, have a past as well as a present and a future, with a soul and beating heart as well as a brain. It is a time to remember the importance of British culture and British political culture, and the growing importance of our historical and ancestral roots, and of watering and respecting those roots. This is one reason we have, and today need more than ever, a monarchy. Is it also the reason the hereditary Peers have survived for as long as they have?

Parliament has many roles. One of those roles is to represent the British people where it really matters and to reflect them back to themselves; to represent their character, fears and desires, hopes and dreams, and humanity, and to give expression to their inchoate feelings—feelings which are no less real or important, perhaps especially at times such as these, for being hard to articulate.

This House is a revising Chamber but it is also, or should be, part of the national conversation. One of its jobs should be—above all, at a time of cultural upheaval—to help elucidate, elevate and lead that conversation. Because they are neither politicians nor appointees, the hereditaries have had, and still have, a valuable role to play in this mission, as have the Lords spiritual and as did, once upon a time, the late lamented Law Lords. In a sense, perverse though this may sound to some, it is by virtue of our very ordinariness. This is neither the moment to remove us, nor the way.

House of Lords Reform

Lord Reay Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Reay (Con)]

My Lords, democracy is a strange animal: an animal of which no perfect specimen exists anywhere, nor ever has or ever could. It is an animal that is different from one country to the next, because countries have different histories, social and cultural characteristics, strengths and weaknesses, peoples and peculiarities. It is an animal that is different, too, from one moment to the next. Who would have thought that one-third of the popular vote in a British general election, on a turnout of 60% of the electorate, could generate, for the party concerned, nearly two-thirds of the seats in the other place and a majority of 174? Not I—yet that is what happened in July of this year.

As I say, democracy is a strange animal and at some moments, it is stranger than at others. Of course, politicians are strange and imperfect animals too. On the whole, whatever they themselves may fondly believe, they are very much stranger than most of those they represent. One might think that a truly freak election result, such as that of 2024, would necessarily lend a certain humility to the MPs, the party, the Government concerned, and therefore a certain openness and flexibility of mind, and a certain caution, not least on constitutional matters, such as the composition of this House. One might think that, and think it only normal, which it would be—but strange as it may seem, if one did, one would be disappointed.

That brings me to the topic before us today. I have three questions. We are, all of us—however we come to be here, by whatever strange route—Members of a revising Chamber. My first question is therefore this: would the loss of its hereditary Members make this place a better or a worse revising Chamber, or would it make no difference at all? I believe that it would make it a worse one, and that a majority of your Lordships, on all sides, know this full well and know why. Forgive me if that sounds vainglorious, but this is too important a moment for false collective modesty. We box, in this place, above our weight, and everyone knows it.

My second question is, would the loss of its hereditaries make this a more democratic and thus a more representative Chamber? At first glance, perhaps it would. After all, what could be less democratic than a hereditary legislator? Or, to speak of my own case, what could be less democratic than to owe your membership of this House to a title created, as the Daily Mirror put it, because your

“great-grandad’s cousin’s dad’s fourth cousin’s dad’s cousin’s great-great-great-grandad was made a Lord in 1628”?

Who could be less representative of the general population than the bearer of such a title?

Yet it is not quite that simple, is it? Not when one considers the underlying political, constitutional, cultural and human realities. To begin with, we have—all of us hereditaries—been elected, and some of us by the whole House. King Charles might be the King, and most of his subjects British, by virtue of an accident of birth, but it is not by accident of birth alone that we sit here. By contrast, the vast majority of Peers, all but the Lords Spiritual and ourselves, owe their place on these Benches to patronage. I have looked hard at this system of patronage—looked, so to speak, in its mouth, under its bonnet, in its nooks and crannies—and for the life of me, I can find nothing very democratic about it.

There is then the little matter of those cultural and human, flesh, blood and temperamental realities: the kind of people we are, individually and collectively; or more to the point, the kind we are not. We are not politicians or political players—or not of a conventional sort. We are of a conventionally strange sort, perhaps. Of course, this is something we have in common with most members of the public we seek to represent. I believe it to be something rather important.

My third and last question has to do with timing. Is this the right moment for such reform? There were negotiations. There was clear agreement to postpone our removal, if removal there must sadly be, until wider and deeper reform of this House. Present proposals seem premature, peremptory and unworthy of Parliament. So to my three questions: would the loss of its hereditary Members make this place a better revising Chamber? It would make it worse. Would our removal make this a more democratic and representative Chamber? No, it would not. Is this the right moment? If agreements mean anything, it is not.