House of Lords Reform (No. 2) Bill

Lord Steel of Aikwood Excerpts

Friday 28th March 2014 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Steel of Aikwood]

That the Bill be read a second time.

[The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Hill of Oareford) (Con)]

My Lords, I have it in command from Her Majesty the Queen to acquaint the House that Her Majesty, having been informed of the purport of the House of Lords Reform (No. 2) Bill, has consented to place her prerogative and interest, so far as they are affected by the Bill, at the disposal of Parliament for the purposes of the Bill.

[Lord Steel of Aikwood (LD)]

My Lords, before any of your Lordships leap up to accuse me of telling a lie in my first sentence, let me admit that this is the sixth time that I have introduced this Bill, in its various incarnations. The first time was on 20 July 2007. The Bill before us today is almost identical to the fifth Bill, which passed through all its stages in this House in the previous Session, under the title House of Lords (Cessation of Membership) Bill. We therefore hope for an untroubled passage again today. I will outline the minor changes made in the Commons in a moment.

Before I go into the substance of the Bill, I should like to place on record my thanks to four colleagues who have been instrumental in getting us to this stage. The first is to Mr Dan Byles, the MP for North Warwickshire, who, having won a place in Mr Speaker’s ballot for Private Members’ Bills, took this one up, and as I saw, piloted it through all its stages in the Commons, not only with great skill but with a patience I would have found it difficult to summon in the face of some very odd attempts at amendment. I note in passing that Dan Byles, like Rory Stewart in Cumbria, is one of the few Conservative MPs to be selected for their constituency by one of David Cameron’s splendid open primaries. Before he produced his Bill, his main claim to fame was that he had rowed across the Atlantic and trekked to the North Pole—not things that many Members can claim to have done.

My second thanks are to my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth, who, as a political scientist, was responsible for the first draft of the original Bill six years ago and has been a source of good advice and assistance ever since.

The Bill today lacks two important provisions from the original Bill: the end to hereditary Peer by-elections and the appointment of a statutory appointments commission. However, these will reappear in the next Session in the Bill tabled by our former Lord Speaker, the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, who is very sorry not to be with us today because of a long-standing school speaking engagement. Today’s measure is a much more modest and slimmed-down version of the original. By the way, we should stop calling it the Steel Bill—its proper name is now the Norton-Steel- Byles Bill.

My third and fourth thanks are to the two Leaders of our House who, behind the scenes, have encouraged the adoption of these minor but necessary reforms. Both my noble friends Lord Strathclyde and Lord Hill of Oareford were not only generous in their advice and encouragement, but had to persuade various Cabinet colleagues of the need for the reforms, some of whom—not mentioning any names—were more difficult than others. The House should be deeply grateful to them.

The Bill consists of just three provisions. First, Clause 1 introduces the right to resign membership of the House. At the moment, a Peer is a Member of the House for life once appointed, notwithstanding the current availability of permanent leave of absence. That is not really retirement, as those who have taken it will discover next year when they still receive the Writ of Summons. For the first time, the law of the land will make it possible to end membership of the House. The Bill does not specify how that should be done; it simply gives the House the statutory authority to introduce a scheme for retirement, which will have to be prepared after the Bill becomes law. The Leader of the House will, no doubt, outline how that might be done. In the end, the House itself will have to approve a scheme, but I do not want us to get unduly distracted by discussing what that scheme might include.

Contrary to the findings of the working group under the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral, the Government—supported, I understand, by the other party leaders—have ruled out any financial package on retirement. We may have to return to that if we are to secure serious reductions in our numbers and if we can prove that, in so doing, there would be a saving to the House budget and therefore the taxpayer. However, there is no permanent financial provision in the Bill, nor is there any suggested age cut-off. Most Members appear to agree that retired Peers should enjoy some of the facilities made available to the hereditary Peers who were removed under the 1999 Act, and that there might be some ceremony on departure, but those are all matters for another day.

I add in passing that one of the more—how can I put this politely?—exotic amendments proposed in the other place, by Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg, was to encourage Peers to retire by offering Barons a viscountcy. I am sure all noble Baronesses would agree we should not go there. Nor did Mr Rees-Mogg say what would be offered to those who are already Viscounts or, for that matter, Earls, Marquesses and Dukes. The mind boggles at his ingenuity, but none of it, I hope, will appear in the scheme.

The second provision in the Bill is to remove those Peers who fail to attend our proceedings for a whole Session; there were 72 in the previous Session, most of whom had leave of absence. One amendment made in the Commons enables the House to decide to ignore that new rule in special circumstances—for example, if a Peer is forcibly detained abroad. Clause 2 would at least bring down our total numbers and save a small amount of work by not continuing to send them papers.

The third provision enables the House to come into line with the House of Commons by expelling serious wrongdoers from Parliament. Convicted offenders should not be legislators and, from the date of this Bill’s passage, any Peer convicted and sentenced to one year or more in prison will be automatically expelled. The second amendment made in the Commons, to Clause 3(9), dealt with a point that was raised in our House, about those convicted in foreign courts. In those cases, expulsion would not be automatic but only on resolution of the House. Those, then, are the three purposes of the Bill.

Clause 4 spells out the consequences of resignation. For example, it is now stipulated that hereditary Peer by-elections will continue to be held. Mr Byles fended off an ungracious amendment to the effect that any hereditary Peer retiring should be deemed to be dead, so that their heir could stand in a by-election. Peers resigning will have the right to vote restored, as well as the right to stand for the Commons. I do not, however, share the anxiety expressed by some distinguished academics that this will lead to people being nominated as Peers to train as parliamentary candidates. It is somewhat fanciful to think that any party leader would nominate in such a way.

As I said at the outset, this is a limited reform Bill, adding to the record of incremental reforms to our House passed over the years. It does not, in any way, cut across a large variety of possible future reforms. As we have little time left in this Session, we cannot play ping-pong with the Bill, so we cannot have any amendments if it is to pass into law; today’s debate really has to be the last if we want these reforms. The Bill has been supported in all quarters of the House, especially through the long-standing group chaired by Sir Patrick Cormack MP, as he was then, now my noble friend. I look forward to a short but effective debate.

One of many from the opposition Benches who has been consistently supportive is the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell. I am sorry that he has decided not to wait any longer for statutory retirement, but to withdraw from the service of the House, to which he has given truly outstanding service over 30 years. We all look forward to his contribution in a moment.

As we have already passed the Bill under a different title in the previous Session, I am confident in proposing that it now be read a second time.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Steel of Aikwood]

My Lords, I am most grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. I can be very brief because I am relieved to note that not a single speech was made against the Bill and not a single speech envisaged any amendments to the Bill—which would, of course, have the effect of killing it off. I am therefore absolutely delighted.

I was right, at the beginning, to anticipate the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, who has delighted us all with his closing speech to the House. However, if I may pick up one point that he made, I look forward to being able to read the Labour Party report when it is available to the public, other than through the Daily Telegraph. He said that his report recommended that the Labour Party should adopt as its policy the appointment of a commission on the constitution. I have made exactly the same point to my own party, to people dealing with the referendum, and I would hope that we can get agreement on that. I am concerned not just about this House but about what is happening north of the border. I think that, post the referendum there in September, it really is important that we all turn our attention to the fact that we have developed constitutional arrangements higgledy-piggledy over the years, and we really ought to take a grip on this. This upper House could have a major role to play in the future, with a more quasi-federal constitution for the country as a whole. I very much welcome what he had to say.

A number of noble Lords—the noble Lord, Lord Davies, the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, and the noble Baroness, Lady Flather—said that the section on expulsion is too restrictive, and I have a lot of sympathy with what they said. I would just make the point that, as my noble friend Lord Cormack said, this is unfinished business. What we are doing here is introducing for the first time the capacity of the House to expel anybody. It is a first step, and if, in fact, in due course it is felt that it is not enough, we should look at this in both Houses to ensure that we can remove those who transgress the rules of the House or the law of the land.

My last point is to refer to the several Peers who expressed some concern about the memorandum from Dr Meg Russell. I have talked to her as well. I have huge respect for the work that she has done—and, I hope, will continue to do—on Lords reform. However, I think that her concern on this matter of Peers standing for the House of Commons is misplaced. She refers to what happened in Canada. I can tell the House that it is true that at the last election in Canada, in 2011, two Senators did resign their seats in the Senate and stood for election to the House of Commons. Both failed to get elected and were reappointed to the Senate. However, as the Leader has pointed out, that is not possible here because Clause 4(8) makes it quite clear that once you leave this House, that is it: you cannot come back. I therefore hope that Members who were concerned about this matter can feel that the Canadian example is not one that will ever be followed here.

I am delighted, for the first time—well, for the sixth time, but on this occasion knowing that there is a good chance that we will see this Bill come into law—to beg to move.

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