House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord True Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 3rd March 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord True]

1: Before Clause 1, insert the following new Clause—
“PurposeThe purpose of this Act is to end the connection between the possession of a hereditary peerage and obtaining membership of the House of Lords.”

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, the effect of Amendment 1 is to underline the purpose of this Bill as ending entry here by the hereditary principle, but which does not endorse the wholesale removal of colleagues who are already here. There thus falls to me the lamentable duty to open Committee on this Bill, whose purpose is, as my amendment has just declared, to end the hereditary principle as a route of entry to Parliament. Some will find that regrettable; others will rejoice, rejoice. But most of us, however, will have feelings in which the elements are very mixed—where the wish the Bill might be stopped is checked by a proper understanding of the conventions; and, on the other hand, where partisan zeal is leavened with the personal respect owed to familiar and valued colleagues.

I submit that this great House draws its strength from that mixing of elements: from an ancestral, indeed very British, wisdom that does not view every question as black or white or insist that every victory must be total. That moderation is symbolised by the presence of those Cross Benchers, untainted by party. In what sense will culling and cutting those independent ranks ever benefit our House?

It is a paradox little understood outside that most of the myriad improvements we make to Bills are won not in the Division Lobby but through discussion and shared reflection. Our Chamber is unique in the world in conducting its business in order and courtesy without anyone to discipline us. That is possible only because we are a House of consensus, courtesy and compromise, of decency and humanity. I trust those qualities will inform us on this Bill in the weeks ahead, including in how we treat fellow Members.

We will hear that this is a simple Bill that brooks no amendment. Indeed, we are told no amendment will be allowed. Since when did this revising Chamber accept such an instruction from any Executive? It is in fact a Bill of the greatest constitutional significance. It says that a passing political Executive may scoop their hand into your Lordships’ House and chuck out any group of us that is not to the taste or political convenience of the Government of the day. I spoke of this at Second Reading as a very dangerous precedent, and I will address it again on Amendment 9. Once used, it will inevitably—inevitably—be copied.

The Bill is also of the greatest constitutional significance for what it does not say. It launches, without any checks on executive power or the number and nature of appointments, an all-appointed temporal House stocked at the direction of the Prime Minister of the day, of whatever party. Had that model for a legislature arrived in some capsule brought back from Mars by Elon Musk, we might well look askance at it.

The Government, in my submission, have a duty to set out in detail their plans for this all-appointed House. After all, in 1999, hundreds of hereditary Peers agreed to leave this place on the understanding, said then by Labour to be binding in honour, that 92 would remain until a final reform was agreed. Now it is said that that was some funny old deal of which we now know nothing, past its sell-by date, ready to be tossed aside like some embarrassing piece of mouldy cheese we find at the back of the fridge. It is even said that honour is some old-fashioned, even risible, concept of centuries past. I beg to differ, but I do recognise the raw realities of power. I see this new world around us where the strong may browbeat the weak, but that does not dispense with the constitutional duty of a Government to set out their plans and, as is normal in constitutional reform, seek some consensus across parties and beyond.

No such consensus has been sought. There have been no cross-party discussions, as led by Jack Straw in 2006 and 2007; no draft Bill, as in 2011; no Joint Committee of the Houses, as in 2002, 2003 or 2011; no royal commission, as under my noble friend Lord Wakeham in 1999; not even a White Paper, as in 2001, 2007, 2008 and 2011. At present, your Lordships have as clear a sense of what direction is planned for us beyond this Bill by Labour as Vikings on a longship becalmed in a mid-Atlantic fog without a lodestone.

That is no way to treat a House of Parliament. I ask the noble Baroness the Leader of the House, who always has the interests of this House at heart, whether she will share with us at some point during Committee—it need not be today—when we will see a White Paper on the Government’s future plans beyond this Bill. It should really come before Report. Your Lordships have a right in considering this Bill to ask how the all-appointed House will work and how it will be safeguarded. There have been many thoughtful amendments laid—and some I am perhaps not so fond of—but I look forward to all the discussions. Let no one say that they are filibustering or shenanigans. As I said at Second Reading, who will care for the future of this House if we do not?

Let me turn from what is left out of the Bill, which we must explore in Committee, to the narrow purpose within it, which is addressed in this amendment. Much has been said around this House about what I think and what my party thinks. Let me spell it out again. There are four elements of a sensible settlement that I believe could avert unnecessary conflict and damage to our House. The first is for all of us on this side to accept that the Government have a mandate to end the hereditary principle as a route of entry here. That is recognised in my amendment. This House should not block this Bill, though amend it it may.

The second is to address the danger of unilateral political expulsions of Members from this House by an Executive, with the attendant increase in power of prime ministerial patronage. When the Labour Government closed the gate to the Law Lords into 2009, they gave grandfather rights—acquired rights—to those already here, the same right that we all have: to stay for life. That showed due respect to those valued fellow Members and was of great benefit to the House. The Government say that is impossible in this case. It is not; it is perfectly possible. It is a political choice and a choice for this House, of whether to expel all existing Members of our House in scope of this Bill or treat them more generously. Were the Leader of the House to act generously, as I know is her normal instinct, and sign my Amendment 9 in its present form, or some mutually agreed modified form at a later stage, then all manner of resentment and difficulty would at once fall away.

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[Lord Hain (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord True (Con)]

If I may: this is Committee. The noble Lord can come in. I am concluding my remarks, but I will answer him later. We have seen in recent days the nature of negotiation with a big stick. That is not the House of Lords way, nor is it the way in which the noble Baroness leads us. I urge her not to reject these proposals or any part of them when she responds, but to agree to take them away. Let the Government block entry of new hereditary Peers, as my amendment accepts and as the House should accept, but otherwise let us together pursue the path of peace with expedition, and with honour and justice. I beg to move.

[Lord Howard of Lympne (Con)]

My Lords, in considering the purposes of this Bill, it is necessary to remind ourselves of the circumstances in which our hereditary colleagues continue to sit in your Lordships’ House. They are here because of an agreement which was reached in 1999 that they would continue to sit in your Lordships’ House until stage 2 of the projected reform had taken place. The late Lord Irvine said that that agreement was binding in honour; he said it was a guarantee. He gave those undertakings as—

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[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, made reference to me. I want to put it on the record, because he has said it before, that the amount of time that I spoke during the debates on his Bill in 2018—a Bill which had six hours of debate—was under twice as long as the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, has spoken today. In those six hours of debate, I spoke for 16 minutes; that was all. It was not a prevarication at all.

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I think it is right for me to intervene. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, who asked me for an apology, that I make no apology for carrying out the policy of my Government when I was a Government Minister. The policy of the Government was that we should not remove the 92 until a stage 2 reform came forward. Our Government, in coalition, in 2011-12, brought forward a Bill which would have led to the removal of hereditary Peers from your Lordships’ House. As was said earlier by others, that was frustrated by a group of Conservative Back-Benchers and the Labour Party in the other place. So, the Conservative Party did address that question, and I say to the noble Lord that I will never apologise for carrying out the policy of my Government.

So far as the noble Lord’s other remarks are concerned, there is a difference between this Bill and his Bill. We have another amendment on this later, so I do not want to protract this discussion now, but the difference was that his Bill allowed for the continuation of valued Members of this House—indeed, it was commended by a number of people who spoke on his Bill for that reason—while this Bill provides for the total expulsion of Peers who are here under the 1999 Act. There is a profound difference between those two Bills.

In the proposals I put forward to the Leader of the House—I am grateful to her for the manner in which she responded, and I hope we can return to that conduct of affairs—I said that part of the discussions we have will have to address what will be, in this moment when partisan zeal runs fairly high, a wound to the House—many people on the other side may accept what I say. If some of the very skilled, experienced and long-serving hereditary Peers whom we have among us are excluded, that will be a wound to the House, and it is right that the House should address that and consider it collectively. The noble Earl, Lord Devon, draws his own conclusion, but it certainly goes beyond horse-trading between parties as regards what the future of Members of this House should be. It is perfectly legitimate in Committee for us to consider the implications of legislation for the future of the House.

I was grateful for what the noble Lord, Lord Newby, said. I do not agree with the noble Lord that consensus is impossible—indeed, the coalition agreement demonstrates that that is not the case—but I am grateful for his agreement with me that it is important. I think the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, and my noble friend Lord Forsyth and others said that it would be helpful as we go forward if we could have some understanding about the timing and nature of the Government’s proposals beyond the Bill, because they are material to the future of the House.

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[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

It may be pedantic to point out that it was rejected in the other place by 277. I never said that it was not in the ability of this House to send back an amendment if it chose to do so. I pointed out what happened in the House of Commons. The only Front-Bencher whom I have heard say that the House of Lords should not pass an amendment to a Bill from the House of Commons was the noble Lord during the Elections Bill.

[Lord True (Con)]

If I may borrow a phrase from a more prominent person than I, did I really say that? The joys of social media and smartphones are very wonderful. I stand corrected by the noble Baroness, but the point remains that there resides great wisdom in this House and there remains the opportunity to reach an agreement which serves all parties and none, but the House collectively.

If such an approach were agreed, it would be easy for someone as formidable and dedicated as the Lord Privy Seal to persuade her colleagues in Cabinet that a generous and thoughtful approach, which offers advantage to all parties, should be followed. I sincerely hope that is what may happen in the days and weeks ahead. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 1 withdrawn.

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[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

I do not know. It has to be when the policy is determined but I would certainly have thought that the second part of it, around participation and retirement, is something that we can look at quickly. If the House came to an agreement, it could be done quickly as well.

I turn to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, about the grouping of amendments, as the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, raised this. The normal process is that the Government suggest groupings, as we did. In this case, the Opposition said they had their own groupings. They cannot speak for anyone else around the House but had their own groupings. I think there were originally around 18 government groups. The Official Opposition did not accept that and wanted—I think, the latest is—about 46 groups of amendments. The Government have accepted that, because we accept it if Members wish to degroup and have more groups.

My point was—as I think the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, has understood correctly—that a number of themes run through this legislation and if it is possible to debate those in groups, it is easier. At the moment, we have six groups of amendments on the commencement of the Bill. If it is what the House wishes, I would not deny it the opportunity to have those debates, but that seems to be quite a lot. I think three of those groups are single amendments but if that is how the House wishes to debate it, it is open to the House to do so. The Government did not deny the Official Opposition the right to have as many groups they wanted. I have to admit to being a bit surprised at how many there were, given the themes that run through the Bill, but we will see if that was helpful or not going forward.

The noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, wants to lock me in a room with the noble Lord, Lord True—

[Lord True (Con)]

That is not fair to the Leader.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

The noble Lord is resisting that temptation but I say to him, as I say to all noble Lords, that I have always been open to discussions. But I need assurances, so when we see degroupings, filibustering and threats on different things, that does not give the confidence that allows me to have those kinds of discussions. To have them, I need some confidence that the Opposition want to do this in a proper way.

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[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, I associate myself with the comments of both the noble Lord, Lord Brennan, and my noble friend Lord Thurso. There is not, and never has been, the sort of link between the hereditary Peers and the monarch that I suspect the noble Earl, Lord Devon, was suggesting. We have one period of worked examples of this, and I am afraid it was a little while ago. In 1649, when Charles I was condemned, he was condemned not just by Members of the House of Commons but by hereditary Members of the House of Lords.

A decade later, there was a House of Lords, but it was not called the House of Lords. It was called the Other Place—capital “O”, capital “P”—because the Parliamentarians, led by Oliver Cromwell, recognised the need for a revising chamber but did not like the concept of heredity. Therefore, Oliver Cromwell appointed a House of Lords. That House of Lords did not last very long, and the hereditary principle came back with Charles II. So it was not the case that a hereditary House of Lords meant that we were done with monarchy for ever. The two were just different things, and different considerations applied.

The lesson of Charles I—which is still relevant—is that, at the end of the day, Kings and Queens in this country rule by the consent of the people. If they go outwith the conventions, they will find themselves in difficulties again. With the current King and Prince of Wales, this seems an impossibly unlikely scenario, but it is still a theoretical possibility.

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Newby, that I seem to remember that in the House of Lords which, to its shame, agreed to the execution of the King, there were only about six Peers who still sat, because of the exigencies of the Civil War and purges afterward, only two of whom, to their lasting shame, actually watched the execution of their King. A few days later, the House of Lords was abolished by the House of Commons as a “useless” place. The other irony was that, when Cromwell produced his own equivalent of the House of Lords, there were only about 30 people in it, of which a high percentage were relatives either of Cromwell or of his leading marshals. These things can take you down many funny roads. It was in fact the House of Lords that reassembled in 1660 that recalled the House of Commons into being—a very significant constitutional moment.

Before I go on, I will respond to the comments made about groupings. Of course we should proceed in an orderly fashion; the difficulty, as the noble Lord, Lord Moore of Etchingham, said, is that so much is left out of the Bill which is germane to the future that we have to discuss a range of subjects, and I defend our right to do so. I would not personally have put down this amendment on the Royal Family, but since it is down it is clearly a subject that has to be addressed and should be addressed separately.

The noble Baroness referred to a group of amendments on commencement, but the amendments are very different: one proposes a referendum, which I would not support; one wants to move the date earlier and get rid of hereditary Peers very swiftly; another is a delaying amendment; one calls for a review before the thing is taken forward; and another says that there should be no enactment until after stage 2 proposals have been produced. These may lock around commencement, because of the short nature of the Bill, but the idea of having a referendum on the removal of 90 hereditary Peers, is, frankly, with all due respect to my noble friend, nonsensical. To spend tens of millions of pounds on a referendum on whether hereditary Peers should leave the House of Lords is not a case I would argue on “Newsnight”, to put it that way.

These are very different subjects, so we should be careful not to run away. Peers have great freedom in this House to group and degroup. I accept that I asked for my first amendment to be stand-alone; that was because, as Leader of the Opposition and former Leader of the House, I wanted to say something that I hoped the Committee would listen to, heed and reflect upon, and I did not want that to be complicated with other discussions. I apologise if that tried the patience of the Committee, but I did ask for that amendment to be taken separately.

On the amendment, I appreciate the concerns raised by many noble Lords, starting with the noble Earl. I do not think his concerns needed to be laughed at—they are concerns that some people legitimately have. Equally, I totally agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Brennan, said. The great Labour Party has always been a patriotic party and the overwhelming number of members of the Labour Party, like the overwhelming number of members of my party, are strong supporters of the monarchy, although there are republican Conservatives and republican Labour Party members. The only thing I would wish to see happen, which I fear is not that likely—I hope it could still be accomplished, and I have great hope that we will be able to carry it forward—is that, in the years to come, the noble Lord, Lord Brennan, and the noble Earl are still here, arguing the case together, for the retention of the monarchy.

The last thing I would want is for the monarchy ever to be brought into the situation that your Lordships’ House is now in, where the hereditary principle is overtly rejected, but the reasons and reasoning, as the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, said, are very different. I do not intend to argue that the removal of hereditary Peers from your Lordships’ House would have that effect on the monarchy. With all due respect to my noble friend Lady Meyer, I understand absolutely what she said about the appalling consequences for the people of France and of Russia when they thought that removing the monarchy would lead somewhere, but we are not there. I do not believe that there is a connection between the hereditary principle in this place and the hereditary principle of the monarchy.

However, as the amendment of the noble Earl, Lord Devon, shows, debate around his concern about the decision to expel hereditary Peers from the House of Lords, and what that might say about the hereditary principle, is one of several things that will always prompt debate and reflection about the importance of inheritance in wider society.

The noble Lord, Lord Moore of Etchingham, said that every family is inheritance. The instinct that families should be able to pass on what they have to the next generation is deeply imbued in our society—it is one of its absolutes, the root and the bedrock. One has to look only at the sympathy of so many people for the plight of family farms and family businesses: many people are responding to that, not because of particular views about farmers but because they feel it is unfair that a family cannot pass on its farm to the next generation because of levies on inheritance.

Noble Lords may think that I never have any leisure time, but occasionally I watch that charming BBC programme, “The Repair Shop”. I do not know whether anybody ever looks at that, but you can imagine me sitting sometimes watching it over my Marmite sandwich. Week after week, that programme throws up example after moving example of the natural instinct of ordinary people to preserve what their forebears left them and pass that on to their children and grandchildren, often amid tears and the deepest emotions. The hereditary principle is one of the most basic and honourable instincts of mankind and we should cherish it.

This is the instinct that I recognise gives birth to the sense of duty and responsibility displayed by the noble Earl in his speech, as it does for members of the Royal Family. I think everyone in the Committee agrees with those who have spoken that it is vital that we keep our Head of State hereditary and outside politics. Our monarchy provides a sense of continuity and stability that is unparalleled in any other form of governance. The English monarchy has endured for well over 1,100 years, long before Parliament, and the Scottish monarchy for close to 1,200 years, weathering countless political storms and societal changes as it evolved into our constitutional monarchy. In times of upheaval, the monarchy is there as a stay—a constant, unchanging presence that transcends transient party politics.

Further, the hereditary nature of the monarchy insulates the Head of State from the partisan struggles of politics that characterise a democratic system. It allows our monarch to represent our whole nation, or set of nations, serving as a unifying figure and bridging the divides that often stress our society, and indeed our counsels in your Lordships’ House. It plays a crucial role in preserving our cultural heritage and national identity, steeped in tradition. We here play our own part in the pomp and ceremony around monarchy. The noble Baroness opposite and I have both held the Cap of Maintenance—which is heavier than you might think—at the State Opening. Through this sense of ceremony and by maintaining these traditions, the monarchy helps to preserve Britain’s unique character, ensuring that our cultural heritage is passed down the generations.

I can say to the noble Earl that we absolutely believe in a hereditary monarchy. I know that the noble Baroness, when she speaks, will say the same thing from the point of view of the Labour Party. It serves as a powerful symbol of continuity and resilience on the global stage.

I was amused when the noble Lord, Lord Moore of Etchingham, referred to the maiden speech of His Majesty the King, then the Prince of Wales. I cannot claim to have been here, but there was a kerfuffle about it at the time and a great deal of excitement. Over 50 years ago, he made a delightful maiden speech on the subject of recreation and the importance of sport. I point out to noble Lords that his maiden speech lasted about 14 minutes. Whether that would go down well these days, I do not know.

One thing that he referred to in making his maiden speech was an occasion nearly 150 years earlier, I think it was in 1829, when three Royal Dukes—Clarence, Sussex and Cumberland—who were brothers, had, as His Majesty then put it in his speech,

“got up one after the other and attacked each other so vehemently and used such bad language that the House was shocked into silence”.

You could never imagine such a thing happening these days.