House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) (Abolition of By-Elections) Bill [HL]

Lord Strathclyde Excerpts

Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 15th March 2019 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Strathclyde]

2A: Clause 1, page 1, line 4, at end insert “and create a statutory House of Lords Appointments Commission”

[Lord Strathclyde (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 2A is not on the Marshalled List. I apologise; it was tabled rather late yesterday and I did not have an opportunity to discuss it with the noble Lord, Lord Grocott. I had a eureka moment in my bath yesterday morning, when I was thinking about the noble Lord and his Bill, and came to the conclusion that it was an appropriate way to deal with this legislation and solve a very serious lacuna at the heart of the Bill.

Before I go on, I join my noble friend Lord Cormack in saying how right it is that this House should stop at 11 am for one minute to mark the terrible attacks in New Zealand. I hope that my noble friend Lord Young will direct us at a suitable time so that we can honour that moment with appropriate dignity.

Given the sort of parliamentary chaos that has been going on over the past couple of weeks in another place, it is wonderfully reassuring for people to come to this House and find that we can have a straightforward debate—one we have held many times in the past 20 years—discussing in detail how to progress with reforming your Lordships’ House.

As the House knows, I have been involved in many such debates, as has the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, but this is the first time I have spoken on this Bill during this Session. I have no idea how long this Session will last, but even if it lasts just another couple of months, I hope the noble Lord will agree that it is extremely unlikely that this legislation will get into law. I do not know whether we will finish Report today or when the Bill will receive its Third Reading. However, to be clear, I oppose the legislation because it would create a wholly appointed House. As the House knows, I am broadly in favour of politicians in the United Kingdom being elected, not appointed, but I know that that is not a popular view in this House.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

If my noble friend is so certain that the Bill will not make it on to the statute book, why on earth is he moving this amendment?

[Lord Strathclyde]

I was just about to come to that. My amendment is small and humble but it deals with an important issue. As it is unlikely to become law, we now have time to study it in some detail—if the principle behind it is accepted today, as I hope it will be—before Third Reading, when we can add detail to it. I am grateful to my noble friend for allowing me to clarify that.

What is the most difficult part of this Bill? It is the third and fourth lines of Clause 1, which say,

“thereby making the House of Lords a wholly appointed Second Chamber”.

This is the central part of the legislation, to which I would like to add the words,

“and create a statutory House of Lords Appointments Commission”.

I have nothing but the greatest respect for the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, and for his integrity and tenacity in coming back time after time with this legislation. However, it is a profoundly political Bill. In Committee, my noble friend Lord True explained why that was. By doing this, we will remove the ability of 40-plus Conservative Members of this House to replace themselves without a guarantee that they would be replaced in any other shape. I wholly understand why the noble Lord thinks that is a desirable outcome, and I hope he will understand why I think it is an undesirable outcome. He certainly does not duck the issue. The noble Lord is completely up front about his objective.

The lacuna at the heart of the Bill is that it removes the ability to have hereditary by-elections but does absolutely nothing to improve the way others are appointed to this House. I want to put that right. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, will agree with me that it is something we need to tackle, and why not tackle it in this Bill? It has been promised for more than 20 years by the party that the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, supported so ably in government. It appeared in several White Papers in the early part of the century. Now is the opportunity to debate it further and, I hope, to put it in this Bill. I have said that it is a humble amendment but it deals with a big issue, and I hope very much that the House will accept at least the principle behind it.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)]

My Lords, has the noble Lord been advised that his amendment is within the purposes of the Bill?

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I went to the Public Bill Office to put the amendment down, and it took the clerk about 10 seconds to agree that it was entirely in order. It might also be worth flagging up that my noble friend Lord Caithness, after Clause 3, has a very substantial amendment, Amendment 59, which seeks to amend the Bill to include a fully thought through appointments commission. I think it is in order but if the noble Lord feels that it is out of order in any way, I will certainly listen to his argument.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord. I have to say that the loss of 40 Conservative hereditary Peers may not be greeted with great sorrow all around the House. Can he tell me how many years he would expect it to take to lose the total of 40? I suspect it would be many years.

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I am not an actuary but I am sure there are actuarial tables that the noble Lord, Lord Burns, will have looked at in the course of his report. But what the noble Lord’s question really begs is that he does not believe that there will ever be any long-term reform of this House. I have not given up hope. One of the few things that the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and I agree on is that that is a very desirable way to go forward. I accept that it is unlikely to happen in this Session of Parliament, or indeed in the next, but that does not mean that we should give up on that ability. My fear is that once we have a wholly nominated House, that will be it for another 100 years, and I am not in favour of that.

As the House knows, in 1999 we had a two-stage reform.

[Lord Redesdale (LD)]

My Lords, I do not want to intervene for long, but I am in rather a strange position. As a life Peer, having stood down as a hereditary Peer and been elected to this House, I have the issue that my son could stand on the hereditary Peer list. Obviously I have had to explain to him that I will have to be dead first—that is the way of it. But I question the noble Lord’s premise. In 1999, the number of Conservative Peers was set just because that happened to be the percentage of the number of Peers there were at the time. That of course led to the Liberal Democrats having only three. If the same situation arose today and was based on the number of Peers, we would have a larger proportion. Is he saying that, as a matter of luck, the Tory party ended up with a large number of hereditary Peers who will carry on for ever and that should be the basis going forward, or is he suggesting that perhaps we should rejig the number of hereditary Peers available to other parties?

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I wholly accept that everyone thought that the hereditary Peer by-elections would never actually occur because they would kick in, if I may use that term, during only one Session after the subsequent general election that took place in 2001. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, looked me in the eye when he made this agreement and said, “These things will never happen because we intend to come forward with proper reform early in the next Parliament”. I accepted that.

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, that it is always entertaining to hear a Liberal Democrat talking about the disparity of numbers in this House: need I say more? Whether it was luck or a matter of fact, those figures for the hereditary Peers were set at the time and no one thought that they would continue. But they are set now and my point to the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, is that if you take away the hereditaries’ ability to remove themselves and put nothing else in place, that could create a long-term unfairness, which I will deal with in a moment.

Post 1999 we were promised a second-stage reform, but we are not there yet. The by-elections are a central reminder of that failure. As well as being a nod to the past, I think the new hereditary Peers are perfectly capable people and I know that the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, has been at pains to say that there is no personal attack on hereditary Peers or their heirs; these are much more principled objections. But if we are stuck with this halfway house, we must deal with some of these issues. For the noble Lord that means the by-elections, while for me it means an appointments commission set up on a statutory basis.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

I hope the noble Lord will forgive me. Would his statutory commission apply just to Cross-Bench Peers, as now, or does he see it applying to party Peers too? He will know that there was a big debate when the commission was set up on a non-statutory basis about whether it would apply party Peers. Indeed, there was a radical idea that the commission itself, rather than the party leaders, should nominate the party Peers. Has the noble Lord given any thought to this idea, because the scope of his commission is an important question?

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[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, the noble Lord and I stand shoulder to shoulder in our radicalism. I would want a statutory appointments commission to do exactly that: to appoint all Peers to this House apart from the Lords spiritual, who of course get here in an entirely different way. At the moment the Bishops have their own route in and the hereditary Peers have their by-elections. The HOLAC nominations come in, but the overwhelming majority of new life Peers who come to this House arrive through the political route, advised and guided by the Prime Minister, who no doubt takes soundings and recommendations from other party leaders. This is the reason for the change. The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, is asking his question at exactly the right time because it is the time for radicalism on this.

I shall make some further points. First, nothing I say is a criticism of the current system championed by HOLAC. It does an excellent job and is led by the noble Lord, Lord Kakkar. However, HOLAC is not statutorily based. The commission can be abolished or its remit can be changed at any stage. Since I feel that in recent years our constitutional arrangements have become more fluid, in a sort of make-it-up-as-you-go-along mood, there is a real danger over the next few years, if we accept the case for a wholly appointed House, that a Prime Minister could well use those ancient constitutional powers to increase the House of Lords on a party basis. Remember, this has been threatened in the past. If we are to create a wholly appointed or wholly nominated House, we need new protection.

My humble aim today is to get the principle of this agreed—I cannot imagine that anybody would want to oppose it, but in this House you never know—and then to join others, including my noble friends and perhaps the noble Lords, Lord Grocott and Lord Adonis, to look at what has been written about this in the past and to come up with an amendment at Third Reading that might appeal to noble Lords across the House and to the Government. To those who might say that it would be inappropriate to table such an amendment at Third Reading, I say that obviously I would not do it if it were not clearly in the rules. We might even be able to recommit that new clause at Third Reading. I hope the House would regard that not as a constitutional innovation—it is not—but as an opportunity to debate in detail what I would propose.

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[The Earl of Caithness]

My noble friend is absolutely right, but I was trying for the convenience of the House to speed things up a bit. If we talked to both amendments now, as I have done, it might be helpful.

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, perhaps I may now be allowed to join this debate. I said in my opening remarks that I had not spoken in this debate at all; I had tabled one small amendment on which I was about to reply. If my noble friend Lord Cormack thinks that what he did was a clever little ploy, he has another think coming. As a result of that, I shall now speak on every single amendment that I can. It was outrageous for those who support this Bill to deny me, as the mover of the previous amendment, an opportunity to reply, particularly when the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, had electrified the debate on the purposes of the Bill and, frankly, had shot the fox of the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, in explaining exactly what its motivation was. That is why I am deeply shocked that so many Peers voted against that amendment, which would have provided for a statutory appointments commission.

I would like to calm things down while we go through the rest of the amendments. When the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, asked Peers to declare whether they were hereditary Peers, I rather cheered that he could not tell the difference. That is the point. I know exactly why I am here. I am here as a result of legislation passed at the end of the last century and by election. I am an elected hereditary Peer under law. More than 200 hereditary Peers voted for me, and in that list I came second.

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords—

[Lord Strathclyde]

No, my Lords, I am not going to give way to the noble Lord until I have finished this point. I was proud to have come second to my late noble friend Lord Ferrers—I hope that my noble friend Lord Trefgarne is not going to argue with me about that—and my noble friend Lord Trefgarne was third. I hope that the next time the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, gets up, he will tell us in some detail, as the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, did, why he is a Member of this House. Let every other noble Lord who is going to speak declare their interest and explain what brought them to this House and who ticked that box. I am happy now to give way to the noble Lord, Lord Grocott.

[Lord Grocott]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, for lowering the temperature. Perhaps we have had just enough of this faux anger. I was going to point out how lucky he was to be elected with 200 votes, because when I first stood in Lichfield and Tamworth I got some 25,000 votes and lost.

[Lord Strathclyde]

I notice that the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, ducked the opportunity to explain to this House why he is a Member.

[Lord Snape]

The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, said earlier that he was just like everyone else: a hereditary Peer, and one could not tell the difference between the two. Did he think that when we walked through from the Division Lobby a moment ago there was some confusion among noble Lords as to who was the former railwayman and who was the Scottish landowner?

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, I could not possibly comment on that nor tell the difference between the two. It was a pleasure to be in the Lobbies with the noble Lord, Lord Snape, and I was glad that we had a good conversation. However, I say again to my noble friend Lord Cormack that if really wants to have a Division on every single amendment, he may find this Bill delayed a bit more. That is the law of unintended consequences. I suggest that my noble friend does not try it again.

[Lord Cormack]

Surely my noble friend understands that, having had well over an hour on his amendment, it was time to move on. It was the general wish of the House to move on. His amendment was really without the scope of the Bill. It would be an admirable subject for a separate Bill and I would support it, but what we have seen today—I hope that my noble friend, having provoked me, will concede this—is a rather sophisticated filibuster to ensure that the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, does not complete all the amendments. That is a disgrace, given the overwhelming support he has in your Lordships’ House.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

My Lords, I gently remind your Lordships that we are meant to be discussing Amendment 5, which is about Standing Orders and the replacement of vacancies among people excepted from Section 1.

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I think that that was as a result of an intervention from my noble friend, so perhaps I could just finish my remarks but also say how much I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, said. The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, said that this is a short Bill of three clauses. The Maastricht Bill was four clauses long and that was debated for days and days in Committee on the Floor of the House in another place and then in this House, again for several days. The size of the Bill has no relevance to how much it should be debated.

As for the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, with his little lecture on amendments, I look forward to seeing his submission to the Procedure Committee to describe amendments in different ways. I accuse the Liberal Democrats of stretching every single sinew of the clerks’ patience in order to find ways of putting amendments down. I remind my noble friend Lord Cormack that this is the first time, the first day I have spoken on this Bill. He has spoken far longer than I have during the passage of this Bill.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

The amendment!

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I will get back to the amendment, but I say to the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, if you deliberately curtail debate in this House, those of us who oppose this Bill will find other ways, perfectly conventionally correct, to continue that debate.

[Lord Rennard]

Will the noble Lord recall his own very deep anger, which I witnessed, against repeated filibusters during the passage of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill 2011? He decided then that perhaps we should change the procedures of the House to prevent such filibusters. I wonder whether he is still of that view.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

My Lords, I very gently repeat the encouragement I made a few moments ago that the House should address Amendment 5 in the name of my noble friend.

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I shall make one very short point: what the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, has misunderstood in all of this is that although I oppose this Bill, I am prepared to accept it in exchange for an appointments commission, which I think would be extremely sensible. With that, I finish my brief intervention.

[The Earl of Erroll]

My Lords, briefly, I think we should look at rejigging the balance between the parties represented here, because freezing the 1999 position is silly. I suspect that when we get to Amendment 9, that is the one I shall support. They are not grouped properly, but I pre-warn noble Lords that I think they are interesting and we should look at them.

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[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, this is not a sensible amendment. We have one absurd system for electing hereditary Peers at the moment, which it is proposed be replaced by another. While I could not begin to justify the system of elections that takes place at the moment, I could no more justify the establishment of a commission to do it. The only justification for the status quo is that it is the status quo, and it is best to leave that until we do a radical reform of the House of Lords, which should of course end the election of hereditary Peers entirely.

There are a whole lot of problems in Amendment 32 and the construction of the commission which one could go into, but I am not sure that it is necessary. Rather, I make the point that the best thing to do—this is my fundamental objection to the Bill of my noble friend Lord Grocott—is nothing in respect of the existing House of Lords until there is a sufficient consensus or a Government who are capable of leading towards a radical reform of the Lords, which should fundamentally replace this House with an elected or federal second Chamber. To tinker with the precise way that hereditary Members of this House are appointed, whether it is by some absurd system of election, to be replaced by some equally absurd commission, seems entirely beside the point, playing the game of my noble friend Lord Grocott, which is to make tinkering changes to essentially preserve the status quo. I am not in favour of preserving the status quo—I want radical reform. The Brexit crisis we are going through at the moment and the huge public discontent in the country mean that we can no longer duck this issue of a fundamental reform of this House, and we should put paid to all these tinkering changes.

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Howard of Rising for reminding us of what happened in 1969 in the House of Commons and the argument that took place there that any change to your Lordships’ House would ultimately mean that it would demand more authority and be able to use its powers more vigorously. To some extent, this argument was made again, not nearly as effectively, during the passage of the House of Lords Act 1999, and proponents of the Act said, “No, it won’t happen”, including the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, who was then Leader of the House.

I wonder whether the House agrees that while initially that was the case, as the years have rolled by the House feels itself even more legitimate, being shorn of hereditary Peers. The automatic right of hereditary Peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords came to an end in 1989. I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, said some time ago—that we are all equally legitimate or illegitimate in this House—but the 1999 Act changed something. Therefore, the Bill, proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, will also change things and allow people to take even greater authority than they would otherwise have done.

I agree with the noble Lord about the status quo. This is not a satisfactory place: I have argued that consistently over the past 20 years. I understand why my noble friends Lord Northbrook and Lord Trefgarne have proposed the amendment. They have tried to solve the conundrum expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, and find a different way to honour the promise made in 1999, which my noble friend Lord Elton spoke so eloquently about before he had to leave, and this is their solution.

I must say that I am not entirely convinced, but it is a good effort. To return to a previous debate, a proper statutory appointments commission could also look at questions such as party balance, age, interests and expertise, commitment to participate and regional distribution, which I think is increasingly important. Of course, if we had an elected House, we would have solved all those problems, because people would decide. It is therefore unfair to accuse my noble friends of trying to overcomplicate matters. The system we have at the moment is actually very simple and straightforward. It is not adequate or perfect in any way, but it is at least an attempt to try to solve the problem that the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, is trying to solve through his Bill.

[Lord Grocott]

It obviously does not even begin to solve the problem, because the elephant in the room is that the only people eligible to fill these vacancies will continue to be those who have inherited titles. The noble Lord, Lord Colgrain, said that if you happen to have inherited a title, that gives you a dispassionate view of the world. Let me put it in more personal terms. The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, is an hereditary Peer. The noble Lord, Lord Howard, is a life Peer. Explain to me the crucial difference. I thought that they were both Tories who normally voted Tory and are indistinguishable from one another in that respect, but according to the noble Lord, Lord Colgrain, there is a fundamental difference between people who inherited the title and others.

How can it possibly continue to be right that 900 people, in this country of 60 million plus, who happened to have inherited a title have a one in 900 chance of becoming a Member of Parliament by being successful in an hereditary Peers’ by-election; whereas the rest of us—not us life Peers, but the remaining millions—have a roughly one in 75,000 chance of being a Member of Parliament? They have to get elected to do it. Why on earth should the descendants of Messrs Trefgarne, Colgrain, Caithness and Strathclyde have this assisted places scheme, as it has been referred to, which is denied to the rest of the population? Unless someone can give me a sensible answer to that, we will have to agree to disagree and, I hope, vote very soon.

[Lord Strathclyde]

I am not aware that anyone has made an argument in favour of the hereditary peerage since the end of the previous century. That is why, as I briefly tried to explain, the hereditary peerage came to an end in 1999. We are dealing with the dissatisfaction with the Labour Government. Let us remember who created these by-elections and introduced the Act: it was a Labour Government, whom the noble Lord supported. It was unsatisfactory at the time. I know that it was intended to continue to stage two. That has not happened yet, but we are patient and should continue to be. After all, it was in 1911 that the Liberal Prime Minister promised us reform on a popular basis, and no doubt we will get to that debate later.

I hope that that clarifies for the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, that no one is trying to defend the current position, but we do not want to create a wholly appointed House.

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[Lord Snape]

My Lords, I did not intend to speak on this group of amendments but I was provoked to do so by the intervention from the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde. He was around in 1999; indeed, I am pretty sure that he played a major role in what took place then. It is all very well for the likes of the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, to pray in aid the agreement that came about then and use it as an excuse to say that it was a solemn and binding—he did not use that particular phrase—way to reform the House, that it was at only an initial stage and that he intended to continue that reform later, but the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, knows full well how the 1999 agreement came about. It was accepted by the Labour Government because the Conservative majority in the House of Lords at the time was enormous. Despite the equally enormous Labour majority down the corridor as a result of the 1997 election, that Conservative majority, in which the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, played a major role, made it quite plain that it was either this particular deal or no reform of the House of Lords at all. So let us not have any nonsense that this was merely stage one and talk of solemn and binding promises.

Indeed, that agreement came about without the knowledge and permission of the leader of the Conservative Party in the House of Commons. The leader of the Labour Peers in the House of Lords lost his job as a result of the agreement. He was a descendant of Lord Salisbury. I would have thought that it takes a lot to shift a Salisbury from your Lordships’ House, but that is exactly what happened. The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, knows not only where the bodies are buried but I suspect wielded a shovel himself.

[Lord Strathclyde]

I really do think that I would try the patience of the House if I even attempted to respond to the noble Lord, so I will not do so, except perhaps another time in the bar.

[Lord Mancroft (Con)]

My Lords, while it is attractive and interesting to look back at the past and see what happened—what the noble Lord, Lord Snape, has been saying is interesting—

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[Lord Northbrook]

My Lords, Amendment 13 is a refined version of the amendment I moved in Committee. It again suggests that once the Burns report has passed into law any excepted person will remain a Member of the House of Lords for 10, rather than 15, years after that date. Limiting the term to 10 years would help the pace of the reduction of the size of the House but would still keep the by-elections after the 10-year period. I am open to suggestion that they could cease when House of Lords reform is complete, including a review of its powers. I beg to move.

[Lord Strathclyde]

As I understand the amendment, and I am not sure I entirely understand it, my noble friend is trying to co-operate with the idea in the Burns report to reduce the total number. I have not looked at implementation or at paragraphs 29, 35, 50 and 51 of the Burns report, but I think the notion is that once the House of Lords has been reduced to a certain figure, hereditary Peers should not be part of that figure. If they leave after 10 years, however, presumably they will be replaced. I wonder whether my noble friend thinks that will help the reduction.

Earlier in the debate, a view was taken that if the overall size of the House reduced, the portion of hereditary Peers would increase. I agree. However, it would still be a lower proportion of the House than when the elections first took place in 2000 because the size of the House has increased so much. I hope the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, will find that reassuring.

[Lord Adonis]

I have read this amendment twice, and I do not understand how it works. However, I shall address the big issue underlying it, which is the size of the House. Being today in the business of calling a spade a spade, I might as well carry on doing it because it is in my nature. This obsession with reducing the size of the House is entirely beside the point. If we are to have a large appointed House and its purpose is to function at least reasonably effectively and to keep its membership up to date, it is sensible to make new appointments. Choking off new appointments is basically a preservation activity by existing Members to see that the House is not increased in size by new Members, which would create a greater sense of illegitimacy because the number will be large. To be completely frank, that is not pursued out of any great constitutional principle. It is purely an act of preservation by existing life Peers who do not want to make this House look any more illegitimate than it does at the moment. The best thing to do is against the interests of the House in the short term because it would deprive us of new Members who might—how can I phrase this delicately?—be of an age where they would participate actively and fully in the work of the House, which some noble Lords tend not to as they—I probably ought not to pursue that line of argument because it will not be popular with some noble Lords.

The point is that the Burns report is being, and has been, used—it is the latest in-vogue thing in your Lordships’ House—to pretend that reform is being done while in fact no reform is being done. That idea is as old as the hills. In this House it is always important, to pursue a sense of legitimacy and progress, that some reform is sponsored. The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, has a special working group looking at very modest, tinkering reforms for this House so that he can pretend that he is in favour of progress, although, when he is present, he opposes substantial reforms.

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[Lord Northbrook]

My Lords, this amendment provides—

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, may I just check to which amendment my noble friend is speaking? Is it Amendment 15, in the name of my noble friend Lord Cormack, or Amendment 16 in his own name?

[Noble Lords]

Amendment 14!

[Lord Strathclyde]

All right. Thank you very much.

[Lord Northbrook]

My Lords, this amendment provides that,

“future vacancies … be filled using a method which ensures that over time excepted hereditary peers are elected on a basis which retains a fair representation of hereditary peers representing Scotland”—

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, as I have used the word “maintaining”—

“while over time reaching the same proportion … in relation to the total number of excepted hereditary peers as the proportion of MPs for Northern Ireland and Wales”.

I am not going into extensive detail on it, as the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, has talked about, the unfair treatment of the Irish representative Peers or the Scottish Peers. In fact, there used to be 28 Irish Peers who sat for life on the part of Ireland. However, after what I hope was my erudite exposition, at this hour I am not going to detain the House. For Scotland, 16 Scottish Peers were elected under the Act of Union, and this was maintained until 1963.

The noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, said I had missed out the situation with Wales, so that is where there is a change in the amendment. He reminded me of the Act of Union of Wales of 1542—although I question that because research for Committee revealed that there were two Acts, of 1536 and 1543, and they should really be called the Laws in Wales Acts, which has been the legal title since 1948. To qualify for by-elections, their peerage would need to have Welsh connections, with priority, as for Scotland and Ireland, being given to those who use their main residence for the purpose of claiming expenses.

This is an excellent opportunity to redress the scarcity of hereditary Northern Ireland Peers and maintain the number of elected Scottish hereditary Peers. I beg to move.

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[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I understand my noble friend’s intention, which is to try to guarantee some sort of regional representation in this House. That is very important, but I am not convinced that this is in fact the right way to do it. His amendment talks about, “hereditary peers representing Scotland”. Being someone who comes from Scotland—I was born in Scotland and live in Scotland—I do not suppose that anyone in Scotland thinks I am representing them. Indeed, the whole purpose of this House is not to represent anyone; we represent ourselves.

[Lord Snape]

The noble Lord is being too modest. After all, he owns a large chunk of Scotland, so who better to represent it?

[Lord Strathclyde]

That is a very kind thought from the noble Lord, but I do not represent Scotland or anyone in Scotland any more than he represents railway workers, train drivers, signalmen or anyone else involved in the transport industry. I hope my noble friend will withdraw this amendment and take it away.

[Lord Adonis]

My noble friend Lord Snape takes huge offence at that remark by the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde. He represents in his person all the railway workers of the United Kingdom.

[Lord Snape]

If I may say so, none of them Members of this House, despite what the noble Lord, Lord Colgrain, said earlier.

[Lord Strathclyde]

Okay, my Lords, I can see that I have lost that particular argument with the noble Lord, Lord Snape.

At the end of the last amendment, the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, wanted to place on the record exactly what was going on. That was his version—his truth. But what is also going on here is an attempt to create an all-appointed House with no guarantees of representation from anywhere in the UK, as laid out in this amendment, which of course would be solved if we had an independent statutory appointments commission. It is in no way an argument to say that, just because the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, believes he is right, no one from any part of the House should be able to argue against him. I have witnessed the noble Lord arguing many times on Bills, and it would be an absurdity to change the rules to stop him, any more than it would be to stop my noble friend Lord Caithness.

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, I am absolutely in favour of every Member of this House expressing their views on whatever subject is before us in a reasonable way and for considerable periods of time. The problem we have here is that it is not only me who wants this Bill to go through but the overwhelming majority of people in this House. There is a tiny minority, all of whom we have heard from today. They are perfectly at liberty to speak—I fully support that—but I do not support their right to use procedural tricks to thwart the will of the majority.

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I do not look forward to the next Labour Government, but there will be one. When that Government come in, I look forward to seeing, in their first Session of Parliament, a House of Lords Act, or a fully formed constitutional reform with this change at its heart. That is how things happen in this country: you win elections and control the legislative agenda. There is an opportunity for Private Members’ Bills, but this is a major constitutional issue and I do not think it is appropriate for the Private Members procedure. That is the underlying problem. The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and I disagree on most things, coming from opposite sides of the political fence, but we share a birthday and stand shoulder-to-shoulder on opposing this piece of legislation, because it is the wrong thing to do.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, before I—and, I suspect, many others in this House—lose the will to live, I declare an interest: Lloyd George knew my great-great-grandfather, and that is why I am here. I also share a reflection from my great-grandfather, Stanley Baldwin. When he arrived in this House, he said, “It is one of life’s great ironies that I am arriving in a place to which I have sent so many people, devoutly hoping never to see them again”. I suspect some of their descendants have contributed to these proceedings. This is the law of intended consequences, rather than the law of unintended consequences.

There are 90 hereditary Peers in your Lordships’ House. I would suggest that the fact that so few of us turn up at these proceedings, following this Bill, and an even smaller number take part is not an accident. Most of us have absented ourselves quite deliberately, first, because there is an obvious conflict of interest, and secondly, because, although I have not taken John Curtice-type soundings on this, I suspect that the great majority are strongly in sympathy and in favour of the noble Lord, Lord Grocott. I wanted to put that on the record.