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

Debate between Lord Trefgarne and Earl of Caithness

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

[The Earl of Caithness]

Yes, I read it too, and I remember saying it, so it is no good pointing and waving papers at me. My noble friend Lord Strathclyde has raised other points that were not mentioned in Committee and are worthy of debate and, on that basis, I support his amendment.

[Lord Trefgarne]

My Lords, I will speak for only a few moments. I support the amendment and very much hope that it will become part of this Bill if it reaches the statute book, which, naturally, I hope it will not. Just a few moments ago, the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, appeared to deploy what I believe he considers to be—

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[Lord Trefgarne]

My Lords, this amendment is largely self-explanatory but I believe it deals with some of the concerns that have been expressed. Any political party that does not wish to take part in the process of electing hereditary Peers would not have to do so if the amendment were agreed. I beg to move.

[The Earl of Caithness]

I rise to support my noble friend’s amendment and to speak to Amendment 6, which is similar to that of my noble friend. My noble friend’s amendment asks that vacancies be spread to other parties. I do not believe that that should necessarily be the case and that, if it helps reduce the numbers in the House, a party need not take up a vacancy. When the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, asked us to declare an interest, I hoped that I might be able to misquote Shakespeare. Some are born with peerages; some have peerages thrust upon them, and some achieve peerages. The great advantage of being a hereditary Peer is that everybody knows why I got my peerage. The other two categories are still open to debate.

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

Debate between Lord Trefgarne and Earl of Caithness

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 23rd November 2018 Grand Committee

[Lord Trefgarne]

My Lords, I have one simple thought about this. It is the one expressed by my noble friend Lord Caithness a little while ago. He, I and others object to the Bill proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, because it breaches the undertaking given in 1999. The context of that Bill was the total abolition of the hereditary peerage. At some point during its progress—the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, was, I believe, involved in the discussions that went on behind the scenes; I most certainly was not—all hereditary Peers were going to be removed from the House of Lords. A deal was done involving, principally, my noble friend Lord Strathclyde but others as well. An undertaking was given “binding in honour” those who gave their assent to it. Those were the words of the then Lord Chancellor, repeated in the House and, I believe, elsewhere. It is an undertaking that I hope, on reflection, all political parties will continue to be bound by.

[The Earl of Caithness]

My Lords, I want to comment on the percentage of hereditary Peers, which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, raised on a previous amendment. The best date the Library could give me figures for was 11 January 2000, just after the 1999 Bill went through, when the hereditaries comprised 13.89% of the House. As of March—I have not updated the figures since then—we comprised 11.66% of the House. When the House reaches a total of 600 Peers we would comprise only 15.33%. The percentage has gone down since 2000. That percentage will go up a bit, but I am very happy to discuss that point so that we keep the hereditaries at the same figure they are now.

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

Debate between Lord Trefgarne and Earl of Caithness

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 7th September 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Trefgarne]

It is not in my hands at my age, I am afraid.

[The Earl of Caithness]

My Lords, the point has been made about daughters inheriting titles. I would be in total support of my noble friend Lord Trefgarne’s Bill. I would be very happy if eldest daughters were entitled to inherit. In fact, I supported the Bill at an earlier stage. It is that mischief that needs to be corrected, not the mischief that there are only males, except for one, on the waiting list to stand for a by-election.

The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, said that if there were elections of the whole House only a small percentage of Peers would vote. If I remember rightly the figures that my noble friend Lord Trenchard gave earlier, I did a quick bit of maths and 50% of the House voted on the whole-House election. If that is considered to be a total waste of time because it is a small percentage, it is worth bearing in mind that the highest percentage of people who voted in the UK at a European parliamentary election is only 38%. Perhaps that is a very good reason why elections to that Parliament should be stopped. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment, but I will bring it back at a later stage.

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

Debate between Lord Trefgarne and Earl of Caithness

Friday 23rd March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Trefgarne]

I beg to move.

[The Earl of Caithness]

My Lords, I shall speak to this group of amendments. I also resent the accusation that I have been using delaying tactics. After the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, intervened to accept my Amendment 1, I immediately sat down so that progress could be made.

The noble Lord has presented his arguments under two headings. The first is that he has this prejudice against hereditary Peers and their succession. This is part of Labour policy, I fully understand that, and I fear that there is also probably resentment at being out-argued by my noble friends Lord Cranborne and Lord Strathclyde in 1999. The Prime Minister at the time is not the first person to have been out-argued by a Cecil, and doubtless will not be the last. That is well known in history.

The second flank of the noble Lord’s argument is about the by-elections. He has made some very witty speeches and written witty articles on this subject. These amendments deal with the by-elections. I wish to address in particular Amendment 10 in this group. The noble Lord has pointed out, at Second Reading last year and before that, that some circumstances in which certain by-elections are conducted are not entirely compatible with modern thinking on how they should take place. He has a point. However, the point of these amendments is to retain the by-elections but give the noble Lord what he wants: namely, a change in how they are constituted.

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[The Earl of Caithness]

Well, some survived that too and doubtless some of us will survive this onslaught against us. My noble friend Lord Deben, the then Mr Gummer, also said what a good thing it was to have some hereditaries here because:

“A society is better run when, even if it is not entirely rational, power is spread a bit, with the opportunity for different people to make different comments about different things.—[Official Report, Commons, 10/11/99; col. 1173.]


All I am asking is that the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, consider that we amend the way by-elections take place at the moment to make them for the whole House rather than just individual parties, and that we revisit this when, as I said earlier, there is greater implementation of the report of the noble Lord, Lord Burns.

[Lord Trefgarne]

In this short intervention I support the proposition to which I referred earlier that the by-elections should be conducted on an all-House basis.

Equality (Titles) Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Trefgarne and Earl of Caithness

Friday 6th December 2013 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, with the leave of the House, I will speak also to Amendments 5, 7, 16, 19, 29, 32, 36, 40, 44, 57, 60, 64, 67, 74, 82, 87 and 95. Into that group, I would like to add Amendment 79, which logically goes with the group but is omitted from the suggested grouping of amendments. It covers exactly the same point. With the leave of your Lordships, I will speak also to Amendment 4 because, on further reflection, what I want to say on that amendment ties in very well with Amendment 1; it covers the same points.

[Lord Trefgarne]

My Lords, did my noble friend include Amendment 91, which is mine? I hope that he did not, but I did not quite hear.

[The Earl of Caithness]

No, my Lords, because I am not my noble friend Lord Trefgarne, so I could not include it and deliberately omitted it.

I must first apologise to the House and, in particular, to my noble friend Lord Lucas for not being able to take part at Second Reading. I wish that I had been able to be here. I will declare my interest. I do not have any settled estates but I have an elder daughter and a younger son who could be affected by the Bill.

A title is a very complicated document. It is personal property and I therefore agree very much with what my noble friend Lord Wallace of Saltaire said at the end of Second Reading: namely, that this is not a matter for Parliament. It is a matter for the Crown. However, this is an extremely useful debate in order to guide advice to Her Majesty, because in my view this is a logical step forward. The situation that we are in now is anomalous, so in principle I have total support for what my noble friend is aiming to do. All that I would say is that it is horrendously complicated.

I declare my interest as not being an expert in this field. From what I read of Second Reading, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, and the Labour Party for their remarks. All my life as a hereditary Peer I have been persecuted and vilified by the Labour Party, but at Second Reading they did a wonderful U-turn and said, “We support hereditary peerages; we’re going to extend them to females so that the titles will keep on for many generations”. I take that point.

Let us look at my own title. The first official document for the Earl of Caithness goes back to 1334. There were Earls of Caithness before that, but 1334 is taken as the first creation. Those noble Lords who are aficionados of Shakespeare will know that the Earl of Caithness appears in the play “Macbeth”—and Macbeth got killed or died in 1057. That Earl of Caithness was Thorfinn, more of a Viking mormær, or Earl, than a Scottish one—it was under Norse law. The person who got the title in 1334, Maol Íosa V, also Earl of Strathearn, was the first creation. He forfeited his titles through treason and the title died out, so that was the end of the earldom of Caithness.

However, because it is the prerogative of the Crown, there was a second grant a few years later, in 1375, to David Stewart, a younger son of Robert II of Scotland, who left his title to his heiress, Euphemia—so the Scots were well ahead in showing that females could inherit a title. That creation died out, too; this is the wonderful thing about having hereditary Peers. There is another gap and then we come to the third creation, Sir George Crichton in 1452—but he surrendered the title in the same year, so the Earl of Caithness came to an end yet again. The fourth creation comes down to me. As one can see, one was able to perpetuate the title but with different families, and now the Labour Party is saying that we can extend that. I feel that after 65 years of persecution, today is a very happy day.

I said at the beginning that the issue was unusually complicated. There will be all sorts of legal problems to be sorted out; in fact, the Bill will become a lawyer’s paradise. For some titles, though not mine, a private Act of Parliament will be necessary in order to effect the Bill. The settlement of the Shrewsbury family had to be done by a private Act of Parliament, for example, so in order to break that, my noble friend Lord Shrewsbury would have to have a further private Act of Parliament. That is just one of the many areas that the lawyers are going to be rubbing their hands over.

[The Earl of Caithness]

Indeed, my Lords—if the end result is done by an Act of Parliament. Following the logic of my noble friend Lord Wallace, though, if this is a matter that the Crown decides because our titles are granted by the Monarch, it would not be an Act of Parliament. Therein lies one of the many complications.

[Lord Trefgarne]

My Lords, may I just intervene? There is a problem with the course of action proposed by my noble friend Lord Jopling, and that is the Long Title of the Bill. If we were to seek to amend the Bill to include my noble friend Lord Shrewsbury, for example, we would have to ensure that the Long Title provided for that. I am afraid that on my first reading of it, the mere three lines would not do.

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[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, perhaps it might help to bring the Committee to a degree of order if we allow the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, to move his amendment before we get into detailed discussion. I do not think he has yet moved it.

[The Earl of Caithness]

I am speaking to it and have a lot more to say. I know it is Friday afternoon and my noble friend on the Front Bench wishes to go home, but I have been working on this Bill for a couple of weeks, and I am not going to miss my opportunity.

Amendment 1 and my subsequent amendments are about the definition of hereditary titles. The Bill is quite clear that baronetcies include Irish baronetcies, but Clause 1 relates to the peerages of England, Scotland, Great Britain or the United Kingdom only. In fact, this is already a hybrid Bill because it incorporates the baronetcies of Ireland but not the peerages of Ireland. That is the effect of Amendment 4. It is particularly relevant for my noble friend Lord Clancarty. He is the Earl of Clancarty as well Baron Kilconnel and Viscount Dunlo—but they are separate titles in the peerage of Ireland. So there is a complication in excluding Ireland.

Amendment 4 shows that Amendment 1 is very relevant, because you need to define a hereditary title. If you do not define it, you face a gamut of things. Indeed, the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, has an amendment—I have similar amendments—that tries to include some hereditary titles from the Crown or state. That is a separate argument, and we will come to it.

The huge complication of the Bill as it stands is the definition of “hereditary title”. I wish to simplify that. I wish to include peerages, including Irish peerages, and baronetcies and leave it at that. I beg to move.

[Lord Trefgarne]

I have some doubts about the proposal being brought forward by my noble friend. I am anxious, of course, that the peerages and baronetcies of Ireland should all be treated fairly and equally if we possibly can, but the fact is, as my noble friend said, that these matters are of extraordinary complexity. We have already dealt with the problems being faced by my noble friend Lord Shrewsbury. My noble friend Lord Caithness described the problems being faced by the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty. What are we to do about this? At the very least, if we agree some of these amendments, we risk making the Bill a hybrid Bill. Noble Lords smile at that, but the fact is that a hybrid Bill is a very different animal from the one we are considering today. It needs Select Committees, learned counsel and all sorts of distinguished things that take a great deal of time and, no doubt, a great deal of money. My noble friend’s amendment takes us along that rather dangerous path, and I invite him to reconsider it.

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[Lord Trefgarne]

My intervention is on the Spanish example. They are the only recent Government to have created a new hereditary peerage. It was a new hereditary marquisate conferred upon the coach of a football team.

[The Earl of Caithness]

My noble friend will remember that Mrs Thatcher, as Prime Minister, created two hereditary peerages: the late Lord Tonypandy and our late noble friend Viscount Whitelaw.

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[Lord Trefgarne]

I am bound to say that some of us in this House have a little experience—somewhat distant experience now, I must say—of hybrid Bills and what the implications are. It is a serious matter. I believe that there is a procedure for referring a Bill to a Select Committee to consider whether it is or is not hybrid and to decide how to proceed. There are people called examiners, I seem to recall. It is probably one of our distinguished clerks, I imagine, who sits on a committee to examine all these matters. I do not wish to suggest that we unduly delay this Bill by such a process, but others may take a different view.

[The Earl of Caithness]

My Lords, I do not want to delay the Bill because it is going in the right direction, but it raises a huge point. If I had been present at Second Reading, I would have raised the question of hybridity. I am sure that my noble friend Lord Lucas wants to comment on that.

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[The Earl of Caithness]

My Lords, it is not quite as simple as the noble Earl has just said, because he has not put his name to Amendment 20, in my name, which covers exactly the same point. I think I am right in saying that it is Amendments 8, 15, 18, not 20; 28, 31, 35, 39, 43, not 47; 48, 49, 50, not 52; 53, not 54; 56, 59, 63, 66 and 73—I do not know about Amendment 77; I need advice on that, it is not my amendment—78, not 80; 81, 86, 91, 92 and 93. I hope that is helpful. I will therefore speak to my Amendments 20, 47, 52, 54 and 80 separately.

[Lord Trefgarne]

My Lords, I am afraid that this amendment seems to suffer from some of the difficulties that we have been discussing; namely, the possibility that there is a hybrid element within it. There seem to be a number of possible areas of hybridity in this Bill, which makes the whole Bill very difficult to proceed with. The proper way to proceed with a Bill that might or might not be hybrid is for it to be referred to the Examiners. I hope that if the Bill proceeds further after today, that will happen—it will have to happen; it will not be up to me alone, of course.

Has the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, considered this question? It is an important one, which will have to be raised time and again if it cannot be clarified.

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[Lord Trefgarne]

My Lords, the trouble with the line being taken by the noble Lord, Lord Richard, is that he has not taken into account the dreaded European Convention on Human Rights. If we leave the sort of uncertainties which my noble friend Lord Caithness is trying to resolve, someone or other will be off to Strasbourg to try to get it challenged and changed. That is not what we want.

[The Earl of Caithness]

My Lords, that is exactly the point. I declared at the beginning that I am no expert on this. The advice that I have been given is from an eminent writer to Her Majesty’s Signet in Scotland, and he advised me that it needs to be put into a Bill of this nature.

Amendment 34 of the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, is identical to the amendment in my name and that of the noble Lady, Lady Saltoun, who sadly cannot be here because of the weather conditions in Aberdeenshire; it has exactly the same effect. Both these amendments are consequential on the amendment we are discussing. It would only serve to confuse the Bill if both amendments were automatically passed. Therefore, when the time comes, I hope that we will accept Amendment 34 of the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, and I will try to remember not to move my Amendment 71.

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[Lord Trefgarne]

My Lords, if the Minister is proposing a Royal Commission on this matter, that is an admirable proposal and a number of us here would be happy to volunteer to be chairman.

[The Earl of Caithness]

My Lords, to come back to Amendment 11, given what the noble Lord, Lord Richard, said, which is contra to the advice I was given, it would be wise for me to withdraw my amendment at this stage. However, it is something which, in the discussions and consultation which I am sure the Government will be keen to continue, needs to be looked at.

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[The Earl of Caithness]

I succeeded at the age of 16 and was fully entitled to do so but I could not sit in the House of Lords. I took my seat when I was 21, so I have been here for 44 years and my age is still below the average for the House. No other job in the world could ever put one in that position. I think that that is why my noble friend is wrong. The minority in England is 18; in Scotland it is 16. Shall we just drop the “21”?

[Lord Trefgarne]

My Lords, I had a similar experience to that of my noble friend Lord Caithness. I was 19 when I succeeded to the title. I then had to prove who I was. As I recall, I had to produce my birth certificate and parents’ marriage certificate. I then got a letter from the then Lord Chancellor saying that he would have authorised me to be issued with a Writ of Summons had I reached my majority. I think that those were the words that he used. I did that a couple of years later and duly took my seat in your Lordships’ House.

House of Lords Reform Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Trefgarne and Earl of Caithness

Friday 21st October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Trefgarne]

Again I apologise to the noble Lord. As I was saying—I will say it again quickly—we are now dealing with the confusion caused by my noble friend Lord Steel insisting upon reordering the consideration of these clauses. I will not pursue the consideration of the amendment, which I shall withdraw.

[The Earl of Caithness]

Could we have an answer to the question posed by my noble friend Lord Astor? That is quite relevant to our future discussions. Can we come back to this amendment or to my consequential amendment—which we are about to come to—when we debate the original amendment from which these consequential ones flow?